Day In The Life Of A Weirdo

Weirdos

I thought today was a perfect day to tell you the reason for why the only neighbours that want to speak to me are former work mates, drag queens and the guys who are drunk in the middle of the day. Thank goodness. 

Nobody who lives across the street from me wants to meet my eye anymore, here is what they witnessed today. I will refer to myself in 3rd person because it is uncomfortable. 

I like this picture because it looks
like she's just a head on two legs.

0800 - Cathy leaves the house with Zoe the dog. Zoe is afraid of summer and whips around on the leash like a kite in a turbine. Zoe thinks that even though there's not a cloud to be beheld, the thunderstorm is always waiting for her.. always waiiiitinggg. Eventually Cathy picks up her 60 pound dog and walks with her a half a block before Zoe decides to give in and have a walk. 

(Zoe will one day be featured on Weirdo Unite because talk about your pets) 

0900 - Cathy walks to work reciting a poem to herself. She doesn't even pretend to be on the phone. She couldn't care less. She lives in the city so things like that make you vanish rather than become more obvious. 

1530 - Cathy races home with several bags of groceries that are balanced on her shoulder deploying Sherpa techniques. She uses a golf umbrella to balance it all on her shoulder it all as the rain pours down. No, there aren't hands to hold the umbrella for actual umbrella optimisation. 

1535 - It is a solid piss type of rain, so much so that the eaves troughs get clogged and since Cathy got the groupon company coupon to help her with this, they've never called her back. She'd do it herself only she'll ruin her old lady knees by standing on ladders

#selfie for weirdos

1545 - Why bother putting on a rain suit? Cathy pulls on a really fancy Old Navy bathing suit and climbs the blasted ladder to unclog the spout. She spots one of her neighbours doing all they can not to look at her as he runs from the door to the nice guy car and back to the front door. 

Plans for the rest of the night. See if the dog will go outside, carry cocktails to and from aforementioned drag queen's home wearing an evening robe (I got him a matching one in beige, mine's peacock blue. Why? Why won't he wear it?). 

Later, Cathy will practise the bugle along with The Silverhearts CD while playing laser light tag with the dog so atrophy doesn't set in. It's loud as hell and she's just learning it. 

Doesn't this sound like a lovely day weirdos? I should think so. Neighbours be dammed. Personally I think they're getting off really easy.

Waterbowling for Weirdos - a Wetrospective

As the world descends into a mayhem and murder of all things that make us worthy of earth, there must be a way out.  A vehicle that sounds of hope and deliverance. A beacon in a sea of broken dreams. Don't jump out of the air plane my sweet weirdos. Listen to the sound of the music right in front of you. Rising from the well to our quivering lips lapping. Let us be lebrile lyricists, let us place faces in bowls and become single engine motors of change.

Let us be Waterbowl.

WHO? WHO will bring us on this journey of change and seduction of senses. Could there be a raft in this bowl of diminishing water called life?

WHY YES, WEIRDOS, THERE IS. AND HIS NAME HENCEFORTH WILL BE KNOWN AS JOHNNY MACRAE!

Currently he is sprawled all legs and arms, this maestro of maelstrom on my couch. This divine son, this miracle of non-monotony.

He has been spreading the word of waterbowl from B.C. to Georgia with his straight husband Shayne Avec I Grec in their movement, "The Anthropocalypse," (humanity's self-destruction). They are "2 Dope Boys in a Cadillac."

When asked about waterbowling. this is what Johnny has to say.

"Waterbowling is the traditional music of the Cadillac Mountains, handed down from uncle to nephew. My uncle Robert was the last fully trained waterbowler, before me.  He disappeared before he could complete my training.  No one's certain where he went, though many suspected he had returned to his life as a touring musician with Canadian folk music hero, Crofton Harmac. After he disappeared, and our home was destroyed in the War on Drugs, my training was completed with an old friend of his, and shaggy wise-person: the Grateful Yeti.

"The instrument was created shortly after Francois d'Cadillac had led people into the Cadillacs to escape the Anthropocalypse. He was one of the first people to predict its coming. When they arrived no one had any musical instruments, not even a drum, and no knowledge of how to build and instrument."

"Francois recognized this as problem and he was the one who influenced the first waterbowler, Farquhar, who was always drumming on things, and hummin.  Francois gave Farquhar a bowl of water and told him it was the music of the lakes and oceans. The wisdom of Francois that was passed down through the years was the following. The world of the Anthropocalypse was still out there, and the Cadillac people may one day be made to face it.  'Yet,' he said, 'the music of water might cleanse the world of this darkness.'"

Key figures:

Francois d'Cadillac, "Through the music of water might we might cleanse humanity of this darkness."
Robert the Waterbowler, my uncle, last great waterbowler before me
Crofton Harmac, Canadian folk legend, Robert toured with him, in the late '70s and early '80s.

Farquhar MacRae, first in the line of waterbowlers.  MacRae became the given surname of all waterbowlers, though most were known merely as The Waterbowler or Waterbowler.

Crofton Harmac, with Johnny MacRae: "Murals of Chemainus" at Campbell Bay Music Festival: http://youtu.be/LOeui8WhH1s?t=7m42s

2 Dope Boys in a Cadillac with Peter Mynett: "(This is Not) A Revolutionary Poem" at Campbell Bay Music Festival: http://youtu.be/LOeui8WhH1s?t=17m15s

I cannot tell you of the feelings I get watching this man stick his face into a bowl of water and blow and hum. It's like having to go to the washroom, but more like how I feel when I swim really quickly. Weirdos, let's swim really quickly together. Click on the above links to change music into a full philosophical movement.

Drive by Exhibitionism

Some people never ask me - "Hey weirdo, what do you miss most about having a car?"

Thanks, well let me tell you. Nose picking.

Or more importantly, the feeling that no matter how loud I am blasting Die Antwoord, or how many fingers I have shoved into my nostril, somehow we think no one can see or hear us when we are behind the wheel. It's like a travelling sideshow for exhibitionism.

How have we all somehow come to the same conclusion? The windows aren't tinted, some are even rolled down so everyone can hear you belt out the oldies 

and miraculously people have formed eyeballs that can see through the densest of glass.

The inside of a moving vehicle, to me, seems like the last vestige of assumed anonymity. I find it fascinating that we somehow have collectively assumed that the inside of our cars is a sacred space that, although everyone has access to it, is assumed to be akin to a closed door bathroom. I get nothing but sheer pleasure when I hear Sheryl Crow lyrics being demolished by a gorgeously large bald man with his finger knuckle deep inside nasal orifice.

Yes to public picking, yes to screaming lyrics, yes to that moment when people realise how exposed they are inside these steel boxes but they just keep keeping on

Best Van Ever

 

So in my neighbourhood there exists the best van that has ever been born. Sure it looks like a normal van from the front, dents, pseudo fake wood, crushed up cigarette packs and maybe that's Jesus on the cross hanging from the rearview...  but then.. you walk to the past and catch a glimpse of van ass... and your very existence is called into question. 

BEHOLD THE TIRE COVER

Yes, that is the same van painted as if by a semi-talented child or kind aunt and no, it is not their house. They live in a two floor duplex. Which leaves me to believe that maybe this was the house they always wanted, a rolling rambler somewhere in Surrey B.C. And yes maybe that is the sun turning into rust over top of their house. For some reason this makes me want to cry, to laugh and scream at the same time as if finding myself stuck in a snow globe in summertime. Is this the house of their dreams that they never had? Is it the dream house of the van's never to be realized? 

I want to crawl inside of this little scene, worry about the rust flaking off the sun, will that affect my beautiful van? My enchanting bungalow? My stick family tucked inside? My majestic pinery? Sometimes I want to paint the owners in there, begging to escape their own alternate reality. Seriously, it's the Ray Bradbury story he never wrote.  

Weirdos Unite: Launch of Weirdos Unite!

Weirdos Unite: Launch of Weirdos Unite!: And they never saw that garden gnome again Having lived for many years now I realize that we don't often boast about what makes us...

FOUND Fellow Weirdo On The Subway

If I were Vice magazine I would be a total dick about this sweet guy who didn't freak when my dog sat on his foot.

No, he just kept flossing his teeth and taking up the seat next to him with his bag. Why? Because we live in a city full of people with unflossed teeth.

When I think about his bag, I think : "what if I told him that he should move his bag so that people could sit there and then he pulled a tiny person out of that bag. What if this tiny backpack person was my soulmate and I started off our relationship by insulting their existence. Is this how I want our love story to start?"

You keep your bag there weirdo. You g'wan and floss your grimy teeth. I wish I had the balls to out myself as a flosser.

Weirdos Unite!

Launch of Weirdos Unite!

And they never saw that garden gnome again

Having lived for many years now I realize that we don't often boast about what makes us weird.

But what do we do when we're bored and alone? We pop our zits, pick our noses, build tiny scenes in bookcases, speak to our pets in pet voices, examine that one hair that seems like it came from a dinosaur... 

Just admit it, you're weird and so is everyone you know. It's time to be proud of it. To boast about how you've finely crafted your weird, how maybe you belong to a secret society that shares your weird. 

*disclaimer, weird isn't meant to harm anyone, weird is for you and your consenting weird friends.