Pumpkin Time

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Do you remember the "scary sounds" cds you'd get with Jack O' Lantern carving kits? Remember how while they were a lot of fun, you'd eventually forget to put them in the case, or break them, or get them all smeared with orange entrails? And remember how that lone cackling witch would freak the hell out of you? Seriously, what did that bitch want? I was fine with the rattling chains, I was fine with the creaking floorboards, but she was too much.

Anyway, if you fondly look back on those days, here's the thing for you. Last weekend between bouts of non-H1N1 related coughing and failing at pizza, Valerie and I recorded a short Halloween soundtrack for you (and your friends!) to play while you hand out candy to annoying-as-hell-any-other-day children. If you're wondering where those sounds come from, it's primarily this amazing instrument, with a little bit of my typical trickery thrown in the mix. How I managed to resist using eBow is beyond me.

In case you're looking for something to put in and around that spookgasm above, my dangerous and Tarantino-esque friend Jon has constructed his annual Halloween party devastating mixtape. While posting a file of the Mp3s here would probably get me banned from the internet (closer inspection of my hosting policy does in fact, confirm this), I would gladly like to share the tracklist with you, should it help in any way.

• 1) Zacherle - Happy Halloween (spoken word intro)
• 2) Rob Zombie w/Ghastly Ones - Halloween (She Gets So Mean)
• 3) Danny Elfman - Beetlejuice Theme
• 4) Reverend Horton Heat - Halloween Dance
• 5) Misfits - Monster Mash
• 6) Nekromantix - Trick or Treat
• 7) Los Straitjackets - Munsters Theme
• 8) Misfits - Halloween
• 9) Murder by Death - Intermission
• 10) Tyler Bates - Halloween Theme 2007
• 11) Legendary Shack Shakers - Ichabod!
• 12) Marilyn Manson - This is Halloween
• 13) Nightmare on Elm Street Theme
• 14) Misfits - Crimson Ghost
• 15) Danny Elfman - Tales From the Crypt Theme
• 16) The Bomboras - A Fistful of Terror
• 17) Green Day - Misery
• 18) Alkaline Trio - Halloween

I'm a particular fan of Murder by Death. Get on that one. 

Happy Everything!

I Kissed Ten Sharks On The Lips

This is my current favourite song. I really can't stop.

The glow from your brass instrument stabs me in the heart of your persons of interests list. Have you ever been a member of the Marxist Party of Canada? This is your piano clatter? I guess this is your idea of ambiance, right? Step back, nothing to see here? That’s perfectly acceptable. Even though you’re a jerk, even though you’ve been living with a terminal disease, I’m not going to feel sorry for you or the crap you put up with. No one wants to assassinate the Secretary of State, right? Oh god, even though your eyes are bright red from crying I'm offically out of sympathy. I’m going to headbang to the National Anthem. Who decides what gets capitalized? I don’t know if my own name is deserving. I don’t really think this respect, in literary form, is really warranted. I wish comedy was an excuse for dissidence. Though it may be.

I’m really not sorry, but I wish my excuse was valid. That last shot, of you crying, hugging your friends and storming that VW van. That means more than anything I've ever done. Your cup runneth over, mine, broken and razor sharp, sticking gracefully in the meaty footbottom of toddlers and debutantes. 

Fireworks Accidentally On Purpose (I Never Played Those Kinds Of Games At Parties)

A strung up creature of habit with a busted lip—I'm all post-traumatic stress. I'm staring at the quality of this print job and it's absolutely impeccable. The calibre of home printers now has escalated to the point of ecstasy. I made this sign for my door the other day, that says something in latin, and it's amazing, you feel like you could climb the letters, hang yourself by the back of your jacket off the serifs. This thing prints better than the one at the office. Christ, there's this woman there, she's just moved into that vacant office, and she's got the thinest wrists I've ever seen. I want to do psychedelics with her and hold hands and nuzzle like some foreign creature.

I'm trying to get over the ritual of last night, drinking orange juice to help excuse myself to my body, to offset the damage I did to my liver. I'm a bad partner. Oh, I'm sorry baby, I tell my body. This was the last time. I'm here for you, just you. Yeah, you're my everything. We both know I'm lying, but leaving each other, of course, is detrimental. I'm wondering what would happen if I put my brain into a computer. I'd probably try to kill myself, but only after we became best friends. I'm pausing, and wondering if that's what being a best friend is. Now I'm playing a game on my cell phone. No really, I'm actually doing that. It birdchirps a little victory noise to me and encourages me like a patronizing lover. Jerk.

In my older years, I feel like I will say “In my younger years,” a lot. In my younger years I was a lot faster. I was alone a lot more often. I walked three miles to school in the snow. I told my friends that a candle burning at both ends is just twice as hot. I never thought I'd do junk with a pinup. I always new I'd never get sick of models and always knew that they'd always be sick of me, and knew they'd always know I'd never know when to know them, and that'd they'd always never want to really know me. I never appreciated the ocean.

Behind me in the other room the TV is turned on and I'm shocked, and I'm frozen because someone is in my house and I realize that in that moment, I'd never forget what it was once like to live alone, and despite how much I tried, I was always going to remember it, and in that second it made me sad, so sad the warm smell of rising crusting bread in the oven couldn't undo it. Well, actually, it did, because let's be honest—there is nothing that can do anything quite as good. So.

Oh god, what's the point, procrastination is just holding a thumb over the end of a hose. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I'm sorry to whoever I did it to, I'm so goddamned sorry, I don't even remember their name. In my younger years, I probably did something that I should probably remember right now.

Dying Listening To The Kinks (NSFW)

This is something from the summer I was supposed to submit to an anthology—I ended up not submitting it, because if you knew the confines of the requirements, it would seem really forced. For that reason, I'm not going to tell you. Anyway, it has some bad language, so shy away if you're a way shy.

We've already driven five hours and every time she asks me if I would like her to drive I tell her no, I am fine, because when I say it like that I know it pisses her off. Neither of us has acknowledged it but her cousin's wedding was a complete disaster and I should have known that sticking to the plan and carrying on was just going to make things worse. “It'll be nice to get away with you.” I remember I nodded, like an idiot. Even then I could see the faint outline of our future, the next few days reflected in her brown eyes that always looked gaudy with her fake blonde hair. I saw my knuckles on the wheel, her fingernails drumming on the passenger window, us arguing over a radio station. The first time I met her, I told her I liked her eyes.

“Are you sure?” she asks, like my mother might ask. “Yes,” I sigh. “I'm fine,” and because I say it like that she grinds her teeth and cracks her knuckles because once, in a lighting sharp pang of weakness I once told her I hated it. Her peach tinted dress blows in the air conditioner's simulated breeze and she looks at herself in the fold-down mirror. She is sharply pretty, features pointed, her eyebrows tamed into matching deliberate slices. She will never be cute, but she is pretty. I glance at my own eyes in the mirror, and decide today the word I will use is “green,” though I can never really be sure. I am not handsome, but I have learned to trim my facial hair and ensure I brush my teeth, which I understand, for a man, is better than most, and as a result although I am not handsome I am occasionally thought of as charming. At best, my face has character.

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