Enthusiastic sh.it.head
Or questions that sound like they’re rhetorical, or being asked for provocation’s sake, but are being asked in good faith.
Source: I say ‘honest question’ a lot, and not as a rhetorical device - I just want real answers to questions that might be dumb/asked dishonestly (e.g. as put-downs) in other contexts.
Start here for inspiration: https://piratebox.cc/faq
Trogdor, which is 21 years old now
Oof, right in my consummate v’s…
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If I have this kind of influence, please let me know where I can guffaw so y’all can get some socialized health care.
Oh, 100%, dude was factually correct and I didn’t chuckle at him, just found the whole “Canadian in a Californian dollar store buying ‘exotic’ Japanese beer that is actually Canadian macrobrew from a brewery 5 hours west of his home” thing really amusing.
It was from far away - like, the other side of the continent - but not the kind of far away you’d expect given the branding.
Edit: That said, this was several years ago - a little Googling suggests that if I did this now, it would be even less exotic, and brewed by Stone Brewing in Escondido, CA.
Canadian, so it’s not all that different, but why. can. I. buy. liquor. in. a. PHARMACY?
Don’t know if this is just a California thing, but it was weird as fuck. What’s even weirder, in light of this, is they didn’t go whole hog and sell cigarettes too. 'Cause helf.
Side story: Went into a Dollar General and bought a can of Sapporo. Ok, not so weird, it’s functionally a super basic grocery store with a bunch of other cheap goods. Guy at the counter said, “Oh yeah, they make this beer in some place very far away”. Looked at the can - I’m pretty sure he meant Japan, not Guelph, ON Canada.
He wasn’t wrong but I did chuckle.
Naturopaths.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s folks doing sane, evidence-based care in this area. But I’ve seen so much bullshit from practitioners, ranging from the grossly unethical to the blatantly dangerous, that I find them hard to trust about anything as a group.
Besides, we already have health professionals that can provide good, evidence-based care (issues like ego v. evidence/new findings to improve care notwithstanding - but there’s crappy people in all fields) - we call them doctors and nurse practitioners. And we need more of those.
-Neutral name (sorry SJW)
Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)
Naw, screw that - we need more people trying to make this place fun. If by some chance it is Ottawa, I’m sure they’d find receptive folks at The Dom/House of Targ/Arts Court/The Mayfair/Rainbow/AskAPunk/Tuesday Club/PROBE/One of the festival committees (except poutine and rib)/Spectrasonic/Awesome Ottawa/Canada Council for the Arts/White Rabbit/SPAO/One of the Zine collectives/Gladstone Theatre/Ottawa Little Theatre/Brass Monkey, for some reason/T’s Pub/Swizzles/Enriched Bread/Absolute Comedy/Cafe Dekcuf/that one house in Barrhaven (iykyk)/CKCU/CHUM/probably quite a few others I’m not aware of. Heck, you could bug the Night Mayor, what exactly is he up to these days?
It all really comes down to what you consider fun. Are you going to have the same degree of options as you would in Montreal and Toronto? No. But if you want fun, there’s things to do, places to check out, people to meet and a not-insignificant number of folks who want more of these.
Off the top of my head:
The big starting point is really just defining one or two things you want to see, and working to get to the point where you see them. In the course of this you might be surprised by what you find (someone mentioned good ol’ Ottawa, ON as an image of the place you’re describing - but there’s actually a decent amount of stuff, both above- and underground, you can find when you start poking around).
What up, fellow Ottawan?
Trying to dive into the local music scene was my approach - mostly because I suck at trivia.
@textfiles@mastodon.archive.org Thoughts?
So from ages 16 to about 22, I was the guy who would get blackout drunk and into wacky situations. This is one of them.
I had just moved to a little town in Ontario with some buddies from BC. We moved into our apartment on Halloween, and one of said buddy’s cousins was having a party. I tossed on my army jacket, put some blue hair gel on my head, deemed myself a punk and headed out with my 26 of Jamieson in tow.
The last thing I remember was telling the host “Nah, I don’t need a cup or chase, I’ll just keep drinking from the bottle.” Things got hazy, then suddenly I was in a holding cell.
Let’s take a step back for a moment. This wasn’t my first time inside a holding cell - but this was literally my first night as a resident of this place. I had only a vague sense of where my place was relative to the rest of the town. I did not memorize the address. I had no family or support network there, other than my two friends. And I had exactly zero knowledge of the journey from the party to the cell.
So naturally, I start screaming, asking why I was there and what I did, trying to squeeze through the bars, etc. etc. Cop comes by, says “If you don’t know why you’re here, that’s why you’re here. Just get some sleep and we’ll talk in the morning”. Still freaking out but recognizing there wasn’t much I could do, I passed out on the slab.
In the morning, the cops got me out of the cell, and explained that I had passed out on someone’s lawn on what I learned was the other side of town from the party. When they picked me up, I apparently told them I had no fixed address, and they took me in. As I was apparently very cooperative they handed me a ticket and sent me on my way.
So there I was - it’s about 7:00 AM on November 1st. I had blue-smeared, slept-on-a-concrete slab matted hair, I was in that nasty ‘still drunk but also hungover’ pocket, outside of a cop station with still no idea where I was relative to my place. So I just start walking.
Eventually, I make it to the centre of town. I notice a big gathering of people and stumble over to see what it was. Some guy sees me, and hands me a protest sign. After a few minutes, I realize it’s an anti-New World Order protest of some kind. I look around for some place to drop the sign, and see a sudden flash. Someone took my picture - and the dude was wearing one of those press passes around his neck.
My second day in town, and there was me - haggered, literal gutterpunk looking ass holding a protest sign at an unhinged protest, with a picture taken for the local newspaper. Neat.
Eventually I find my house. I walk in, and my buddies are like “Holy shit, what the fuck happened?”. Apparently, I got so drunk I fell off the porch and was just generally being a fool, and got kicked out of the party. These guys then took me to try and get some pizza in me at some place. At a certain point, I just dropped my piece on the floor, left the building, and the rest is history.
I don’t talk to those guys anymore. I don’t drink whiskey from the bottle anymore either.
What’s funny to me is that this isn’t even my first unhinged drinking story from that place - I found myself on the wrong end of a 12 v. 3 brawl at a chain pizza restaurant over someone calling my buddy a chicken nugget, the day we went to sign our lease - but that’s a tale for another day.
Weed’s soooo much better, kids.
I don’t know if it was actually under rated or unrecognized where it aired, but as someone who was trawling for TV to watch that you don’t see in North America, I fucking love Monkey Dust out of the UK.
Dark comedy animated sketch show.