Iceberglandia

GOING AWAY
In less than a week, I’ll be living and breathing, eating and shitting in Cd. Victoria, Mexico. One fucking month doing absolutely nothing, what with two of my closest friends going away, and then it’s back to the winterland. At least I saved enough to buy the newspaper everyday, so that’ll keep me busy.

 WHAT’S SPINNING IN THE OL’ DISCMAN?
I randomly came upon Pigface’s “Easy Listening” a couple of years ago. Since then, I’m hooked on anything Martin Atkins has ever done.
Mind you, I’ve been a big fan of Ministry’s “The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste” since it came out, but the biggest surprise of the year has to be my recent encounter with the complete Pigface discography.  Thank God for discmans that support the mp3 format.

STEREOTYPIN’ AND PROFILIN’
So, I’m going to spend one month in the land of Vitamin T (tacos, tamales, tequila, tortas…). Namely, in a one-horse town where the motto appears to be “A whole lot not going on”. Sure, it’l be cool to see the people I want to see, but I´ll also be getting a laugh of driving by the same old places, seeing the same old faces, seeing nothing much has changed.

 ICEBERG AT WORK
Fuckity Fuck, am I the only motherfucker with a brain there? It is not only sufficient that in the past month I’ve had all but one day off (voluntarily, I’ll admit… this going to mexico thing has me on a ‘lets make lots of money’ phase), but now I have to cover 100% of my area, and 50% of each of the other 5 areas (area 2, medium duty, heavy duty, shipping and receiving), with the recently added bonus of having the washers get fired, so on top of that I have to bust my ass washing shit… and don’t forget, I’m the dumbass who makes x-4 dollars an hour.

ICEBERG AT HOME
Well, life in the house ain’t much easier. Now that I’m working the day shift, I leave at 6.30 and get home at 5 PM, when it’s already dark. The owner kicked out most of the assholes, but it turns out he didn’t kick out one of them, which happens to be friends with the rest… so nothing has changed much, everybody is still around. But I still get a rent increase in February. Upon my return in January, I’ll be out of here faster than the next idiot rom N’Sync coming out of the closet.

SHIT ADVENTURES
This is a keeper… At work, I try to use exclusively the bathroom facilities set at the receiving area (statiscically, they are the cleanest in the plant). So one day, I felt the need to, um, relieve myself of some intestinal pressure. It just so happens that when the contractions began, and I approached the delivery room, it was busy. So I waited, no big deal. A minute later, out comes this fat disgusting truck driver who by the looks of things hasn’t seen a mirror in quite a while. “Good, I can go in now”, was my last thought, before I saw the unseeable. Sure, he flushed, if the shitstains on the porcelain were to be believed. That’s not what bothered me. What disgusted me was that in the afterflush (the water that oh so graciously returns from the drain), there were living creatures. Worms. The expression “like a bat out of hell” has never so perfectly described someone as it did that day as I rushed across the building into the opposite bathroom.

OH ICEBERG, PLEASE BURN CALORIES
I’ve been walking home from work for the past couple of weeks. It’s a one-hour walk, if I make it straight home. As I stated previously, Pigface has done a good job of keeping me company. But it kinda sucks when it’s -10°, -19° with the wind chill. And walking on ice isn’t fun, either. Fuck Mexico, I’d rather book a vacation to Algeria, right about now. You know, someplace warm.

THIS HAS TO LOOK BAD ON MY CREDIT REPORT
I owe 320 dollars on my Zellers credit card, over 100 to the lunch lady at work, 327 to my cell phone company, and well over 100 to Bell Canada, for my home phone. Almost 1000 dollars in debt, and I still plan to buy a car sometime next year. Good luck with that!

THE LIGHTER SIDE
As of today, the Guadalupe Reyes marathon is under way. My challenge stands, so don’t sing it, bring it!

AUF WIEDERSEHEN
So, that’s just a random assortment of things that are going on right now. Of course there’s lots more, but this’ll suffice for the time being. At least, so you don’t assume I passed away, or anything. Remember, evil never dies!

The Iceberg

Wow. Just wow. Just when I thought I had seen it all, from out of nowhere comes this tale of a guy who, I swear, must’ve been dropped a few times as a baby.
See, my good buddy JM posted about him on his blog. He was the one ‘lucky’ enough to be the one to experience the encounter first hand, but I can still hope to live long enough to meet this guy and share a few words with him.
He seems like the kind of guy who you’d describe with the word “interesting”, while using said word in a negative connotation. Apparently JM met him at a gathering of some sort (I’d fathom with this guy around it wasn’t much of a party, per se), and was enlightened by, among others, the following pearls of wisdom:

In order for a cover song to be good, it HAS to be completely unrecognizable from the original.
So, according to whatshisface, Avril Lavigne’s cover of System Of a Down’s “Chop Suey” is a masterpiece, while Disturbed’s versions of “Shout” and “Land of Confusion” (by Tears for Fears and Genesis, respectively) are utter crap.
I’ll agree that sometimes, just sometimes, an unrecognizable cover turns out to be good (like Tori Amos’ “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), but usually I prefer to get even a slight resemblance to the original song that’s being covered. You know, just to make sure it’s a cover song.

Class of ’99’s “Another Brick In the Wall” is IDENTICAL from Pink Floyd’s original, with not a single change at all and that’s why most people like it while at the same time they dislike the Scissor Sisters.
Hmmm… last time I listened to the “The Faculty” soundtrack, I still heard Layne Staley on vocals, which sounds nothing like whatever the guy from Pink Floyd sounds like (I hate PF). The song might sound similar, but hey, that must be because it’s a cover song. But, since it sounds somewhat like the original, it must be utter garbage. What do I know?

Our opinion in music is worthless because we don’t like “modern” music, despite our individually pointing out several current acts that we enjoy, and a fair amount of the participants being younger than 25.
See, I’m 34 years old. And while many people my age hold on to the classics for dear life, I am somewhat of a Jacques Cousteau in the ocean of music (pardon my shitty comparison). I like to explore, and thanks to that I have encountered a lot, believe me, a lot of good music, modern and not-so-much.
So it comes as a shock to me that someone can conceive the fact that 25 year olds do not like modern music. So, what do the newer generations listen to? Blues Traveler? Miles Davis? John Denver?

Nirvana’s “Nevermind” sucks because his Dad likes it, “In Utero” is better, but “Bleach” sucks because it wasn’t commercially successful (I wonder about the basis behind this claim…sales? production? number of band members?).
Well butter my ass and call me a donut! I’ll not go into the details of how  much “Nevermind” ’sucked’, so much as to change an entire music industry. In my opinion, it’s a good album, much better than “In Utero”, but not as good as ‘Bleach’. But I’m just one of the unenlightened ones, so I’ll shut up.
Wait, before I shut up, I’ll add this: This guy’s dad liked Nevermind, so it sucks. Well, I’m guessing this guy’s dad also liked his mother, somewhat, so there you go!

The Discovery Channel sucks because his housekeeper watches it.
No, the Discovery Channel sucks because they repeat their programming into oblivion. They have good shows, but just like any cable station, they tend to repeat everything just a little too much. And as far as the housekeeper watching it, more power to her! Boy, will our buddy’s face be red when somebody makes a Mythbusters! reference and his housekeeper gets it and he doesn’t!

Reality shows involving B-list celebrities dancing are cool.
Oh, dear Lord (rolls eyes). Watching a show about tornados or reverse engineering sucks, but watching “Bailando Por Un Sueño” or “Dancing With the Stars” is quality TV?
Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s a common occurence that housekeepers in Mexico come from environments in which the pursuit of culture is not a priority. So it is more commonplace that a housekeeper would be more likely to be entertained by the cheap thrills of “reality TV” (they call them reality shows, and they have celebrities dancing with people… go figure). But, apparently Aristotle here sits and watches this drivel while his housekeeper watches the Discovery Channel. Did someone switch brains or something?

Rabbits and cats can breed, based on the evidence of someone he knows keeping a cat and a rabbit in the same pen and eventually getting offspring.
Holy Mary, Mother of God! I never expected to hear something like this coming from what I assume is an adult. If a 6 year old came up to me and said that, I’d say “that’s cute” (and then mutter “what a moron” under my breath), but anyone over 12 saying something that stupid to my face would receive, at the very least, what Butt-Head calls ‘a smack upside the head’.
Fuck, let’s not get into the biology of the matter. Bunnies are fuzzy and cute. Kittens are fuzzy and cute (yes, I said that). Wouldn’t a crossbreed between the two be the fuzziest, cutest, most popular item at the pet store? Wouldn’t everyone in the world own one? Or two? Or a couple hundred, what with the rate at which rabbits are supposed to breed?

Different races of Homo Sapiens descend from different animals, a case in point is Chinese people descending from pigs.
Oh, fuck, now I wish I had terminal cancer. A painful tumor in my brain and just 24 hours left to live. Just so I could die a horrible death in the knowledge that my death wouldn’t be as horrible as the fact that I share the same genetics as this guy (at least it would seem, unless he descended from another animal…).
Fuck, his theories on the appearance of humans on earth are stupider than anything I’ve ever read in Genesis, and that is saying a lot!
It’s not even funny anymore. Well, it is, but in a sad way. I guess I’ll never look at the pork platters at the Chinese restaurant the same way, ever again.

There is a wolrdwide deliberate conspirancy to keep the masses ignorant and manipulate any and all information appearing in all media.
Hey! I’ve read about this… it’s the Jews, right?

Jews control all media and pull the strings of said conspirancy to keep people stupid.

Yup! There you go! Those pesky jews, controlling everything…

Art has got to be commercially successful to be considered such.
Which must explain why washed up hacks like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Vincent Van Gogh died flat broke. Nevermind the Sixtine Chapel, which by its nature cannot be “commercially successful. But hey, don’t let that get you down, I hear Britney Spears, 50 Cent and Nicho Hinojosa are doing quite well for themselves, with their “art”.

An artist must want to change the world as a prerequisite to being one. Not express himself, but change the world, deliberately.
When did George W. Bush become an artist? Seriously, this guy needs to quit taking amphetamines for breakfast.

And last, but definitely not least, upon my asking him flat out if he thought that he knew more about every subject that anybody else in the world (despite the previous list proving otherwise) and believed himself to be virtually perfect, the fucker actually had the gall to answer “Yes, that’s more or less the thing,” making us finally realize we were dealing with a delusional retard.

So there you have it. Think about this guy when you start thinking I’m fucked up.
Man, I can only wonder how his train of thoughts starts each morning. “Is it really friday? The jews must’ve conspired to make me think it’s friday, which it obviously isn’t, just like they conspired to make my housekeeper watch the Discovery Channel. I wish Dad would turn the volume down on ‘Nevermind’, I can’t watch my tape of “Bailando por un sueño”. Oh well, I guess I’ll go see if my friend has crossbred any more animals. I wonder what they’ll evolve to in a couple thousand years.”
Now, where’s my brain tumor?

The Iceberg