Continue reading »]]> pic nicked from here

After months of fucking about, fooling around and figuring things out, my migration to a site that’s mine –all mine– is finally complete.  This journey began when WordPress blocked me out of my own site for “objectionable content.”

It is now, hopefully over.

So now I have to give some props.

First of all, to Danielle of Final Fashion.  Without the use of her credit card, I couldn’t have bought a domain.  She also allowed me to use one of her hosting accounts for a while and never interfered with nuthin’.

Also props to Anita of I Want – I Got.  Without her technical expertise, I’d be lost.  She spent a lot of time helping me set all this up and endured my stupid questions, boneheaded blunders and irritating know-nothingness.   Anything annoying or broken on this site is my fault.   That it exists at all, is hers.

Who says fashion is full of hypocritical, backstabbing phonies? Well, I do, but not today.  Today, it’s full of helpful people.  Thank you helpful fashion people.

And props, to you, dear readers, who enjoyed my brief hiatus but, if  you are reading this, are back.  I know how short your attention spans are.  Coupled with the shallowness of your interest, it’s amazing any of you are here.

We’ll now be returning to our regular programming.

Thanks everyone.

Continue reading »]]> I’ve been experiencing some technical problems here at The Grumpy Owl.

Some of these are related to a behind the scenes overhaul (this hopefully won’t impact you) and some things have something to do with other things.

The worst problem has been fixed –I can post again– but, even so, there are still problems to be resolved and The Grumpy Owl may be a bit light and eccentric for the next week or so.

I would have mentioned this to you earlier but I couldn’t.  Any post or comment-response that I write now might just vanish by next week so I’m unwilling to put forth the effort.  I hope you understand.

Everything should be up and running again by Thursday but I have my doubts.  You know how it is with technical difficulties; one thing leads to another.

So, if you commented but it didn’t show up or anything along those lines, it wasn’t me moderating you.   Just you know, some crap happening.

Please standby – I will be with you again as quickly as I can.  And there’ll be pics of me playing ping-pong.

Continue reading »]]> Brace yourself ladies:  I’m getting married.

Holy fucking matrimony, Batman!

I dislike marriage.  Not because my heart lacks love or that I fear commitment.  Not for any notion popularized by romantic comedies.  I’ve just never believed my feelings needed the approval of the State/Church.

Boy, was I wrong.  Turns out they do.

I’m in the rather unfortunate position of loving a foreigner who is attempting to immigrate to Canada.    The government has already barred her entry into the country once and, should some bullshit like that happen again, I would like to have some sort of legal recourse.  Hence matrimony.

Though the lady and I plan to build a life together, though we love each other, I would never have gotten married.  I don’t invite the government into my house.  They’re like a vampire.  Once in, they don’t leave until they suck you dry. Unlike a vampire, they needed no invitation.  They simply broke in.

Our government lacks the manners of vampire.

So on Oct. 11, hoping to arm myself with the crucifix of marriage,  I popped the question over twitter:

And I received a prompt reply.

It’s not terribly romantic to propose over twitter but that was hardly our first conversation on the subject.  What might be less romantic was my reaction to her acceptance:

Before you judge me, you should try those tacos.  They’re incredible.  Shalome is a great cook.  As I recall, it was a bowl of gumbo that finally made up my mind.

Besides, I’ve never pretended to be a romantic and I don’t have a single friend who would judge me as a romantic.  The demands of my stomach are more important than the demands of my heart.  That I have found a woman who meets both is luck.  You understand that.  I understand that.  But will the government understand that?  I doubt it.

You, lucky Grumpy Owl reader, are now reading evidence.  I have been informed by a lawyer that Shalome and I must produce pictures of ourselves together. We’re going to be investigated by people behind desks.  I’ll get no jury of my peers.  I’ll be judged by some fellow in a shabby suit – if he’s even wearing a suit.

Our lawyer told me he was used to representing people who were squeaky clean.  I told him that I do not squeak.  He said that Shalome and I should move in together.  I asked: “Who wants to live with their wife?”  All of this will be problematic.

In a country that allows Adam and Steve to get married, my relationship might be too strange.   I don’t see how our plans or lifestyle becomes subject to government judgement but they are.  On pain of deportment.  If they don’t like us, they can fuck us up.  The man has us in a bind.

I am reminded of that classic Public Enemy lyric:

I got a letter from the government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me given’ a damn I said never
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like me and myself
Because they never did
I wasn’t wit’ it but just that very minute…
It occurred to me
The suckers had authority

The suckers have authority.

It can safely be assumed that they will google the pair of us.  Looking for a fraud.

I wonder how they’ll react to my assertion that marriage is a fraud.  Not my love, not our plans and not our relationship.  But the signing of of papers and marching down an aisle to have some fat-faced priest deliver his sanctimonious blessing upon two humans fucking?  That is a fraud.  A complete fraud.  Fucking needs no blessing.  Love doesn’t require Jesus.  It needs no tax breaks.

Unless you’re in the unfortunate position of loving a foreigner. Then you need this shit.  And maybe if you’re buying a house or something. Does it strike anyone else as odd that you more often need the law to protect you from the law than you need it to protect you from crime?  Just sayin’:  Things could be simplified.

I wonder what conventions the validity of my marriage is to be measured against.

The so-called family has all the solvency of GM.  It’s been propped up by the government for years.  Why?  Because the family is dead.  Like GM, it’s bankrupt.

The divorce rate is at 50%, children are raised by a mixture of television and school while the parents who actually remain together are at work.  In today’s world, the so-called family only exists in freakish, isolated circumstances.  It’s an old institution.  Obsolete.  Broken.

Not all of the tax breaks, propaganda, king’s horses and kings men, can put the family back together again.

And, in light of all this, my relationship is going to measured against what?  Some platonic ideal of family life?  By who?  Fucking bureaucrats? And why?

So I can hopefully stay with the woman I love, eat her tacos and play with her dog.  So the woman I love can stay in this bullshit country and work as someone who helps the old and infirm while paying taxes and bitching about the weather.  So that her and I can have a life together but in separate homes.

I know why I do what I do.  I just don’t know how the government can judge it.

They can’t.

Fuck ‘em.

Continue reading »]]> My morning routine, which actually takes place in the afternoon, is usually rock solid. I wake up and have coffee and a smoke in front of the computer.  I look at email.

But I’m not quite ready to answer.  Mainly I’m just deleting the bullshit. (Invites, sales pitches, your last email etc.) Then I have another smoke and more coffee.

Sometimes I blog something, sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes I reply to emails, sometimes I don’t. After I’m done doing or not doing all that, I perform my toilet.

Freshly cleaned, I return upstairs to get dressed.

When I come back down I either  fuck around on the computer until I go to work or I get undressed and prepare for  my pre-chore nap.

But today all of that went crazy,  Shalome is training to be a personal support worker and needed someone to practise her chops on.  She was to bathe, shave and dress me.

This, of course, sounds great.  Who wouldn’t want to be bathed, shaved and dressed by a buxom young lass?  And all I needed to do was act old and grumpy.  Believe me, I can do that.  Particularly in the morning.  It all sounded great.  Porn mythic, even.

pic nicked from here

I was laying in bed, getting a “bed-bath” and complaining like a motherfucker, shouting “YOU’RE HURTING ME! YOU’RE HURTING ME! YOU’RE HURTING ME!”, making demented demands and practising the grab-ass that will serve me so well in my autumn years, when I realized something:  It’s not all that much fun.

While it’s quite enjoyable to be pampered, it must be quite awful to be cared for.  Shalome was good at it.  That doesn’t really matter.  I felt like a giant, skinny baby.  Although you can be assured that, when I’m old, I’ll be molesting every nurse that passes into grabbing distance, the situation was quite unsexy.

Once again, I feel like porn has lied to me.

pic nicked from here

For starters, Shalome is not Asian.  I was told that’s important.  And she’s not even going to be a nurse.  She’s going to be a personal support worker.  Porn is full of crazy lies.  It just makes unsexy things sexy.  Like pizza delivery.  Or gang-rape.

Having thought about it, I don’t suppose the experience is meant to be sexy.  At all. Maybe that’s why Shalome called me Mr. Oakley.  That just reminds me of my mom.  And that makes me think of sexy again. Then again, so do most things.

So, you see, I’m confused.

At any rate, my behaviour set the cat to howling.

This was odd.  Not only is she quite passive and quiet, I never knew she cared.  But when she saw me flopping around on the floor, pretending to have a seizure (my own little improvisation) she must have realized her supply of tuna juice was in danger and, as a result, grew quite upset.  She made noises I don’t often hear her make.

I guess that watching Shalome carry me to the bathroom, while I knocked my pyjama pants down about my ankles and shouted about the woman in the next room (my beleaguered roommate) was more than my sweet little kitty could handle.

That cat is really upset with me right now.

And the whole incident has done nothing to help the already troubled relationship between Shalome and my cat.  Jealousy is so ugly.

In the bathroom, Shalome shaved me, then returned me to the couch and proceeded to dress me.  A three piece bespoke suit may not be the best thing for this sort of practise.  It is not, after all, what most people wear.   But that’s what I planned on wearing today so there it was.  Besides, when I get old, that’s what I want to wear.  It will make my advances on the nurses seem charming instead of what they truly are:  The depraved actions of a desperate and morphine-addled lecher.

It must be quite awful to have other people dress you.  I did not like it.  For starters it took quite a long time.  This time could be better spent trying on different ties and socks.  When I get old, I’ll certainly need to have outfits preplanned right down to the last detail.  Otherwise my poor personal care worker will be spending all her time tying things around my neck.  And I can guess where that will lead.

pic nicked from here

I guess we all learned something today.  I learned that being old is going to be awful and Shalome learned what happens when you give me an inch.  Next thing you know, I’m faking a seizure with my pants around my ankles while my cat is howling.

Valuable lessons.

Continue reading »]]> Being a teenage romantic and believing in hell, he’d always thought that five minutes after his death he’d wake up with a fresh lease on life.  But at age fourteen, only ten minutes into his first bottle of cheap scotch, he got on the phone, called everyone he knew and told them he was now sure that was not the case.  There was no decent hell or sin.  Having looked at the devil, he found him wanting.  The devil felt the same about him.  Both have been in mourning ever since.

Continue reading »]]>

Most of what you need to know about anything you can learn from baseball.

In real life, when asked for advice or insight or just feeling a need to offer it,  I’m prone to telling a short story about baseball players.  Having trouble adapting to something?  Well, let me tell you about Travis Snider and his problems at the plate. He’s an object lesson in things that work yesterday not working today.   Approaches must change.

Surrounded by problems and unsure what to do?  Did you know that I once saw Roy Halladay put two men on base with no outs then strike out the next three batters?  From this we can learn the importance of focusing on what’s in front of you and in your control.

Need a lesson in aggression? Let us look to Ty Cobb.

You would think that this constant comparison of life’s little problems, like your divorce or the death of a loved one, to the serious drama that occurs on the baseball diamond, would add perspective  Instead it often annoys people.  It’s probably because Toronto is more of a hockey town.  Besides which, most of the art-fags I know can appreciate pig vomit on a canvass but are blind to the beauty is a perfectly turned double play.  They can derive wisdom from menstrual smears on a wall but fail to see the lesson in a sacrifice bunt.

I don’t get it.

But I do get baseball and I tuned into the world series game two between the Phillies and the Yankees.

This was a great game but a gruesome sight.  For starters, the Yankees won and I hate the Yankees.  Everything that’s wrong with the world, society and whomever you happen to hate, is symbolized by the Yankees.  And these bad guys usually win.  That makes it worse.  But what made this game especially hurtful to watch was seeing a pitcher like Pedro Martinez being out-duelled by a pitcher like A.J. Burnett.  I love Pedro.  I can’t stand A.J.

A.J. beating Pedro is a travesty.

A.J. played with Toronto for a few years.  To say that he had a ton of talent would be putting it lightly.  This was never in doubt. But, mentally, he was unavailable.   He only put effort into his last season here and only then because he was becoming a free agent.  In that last season, we finally got to glimpse the A.J. Burnett that could have been.

It drove me crazy.  He was gifted but unable to rise to the level of his gifts.  And all because of a lack of trying.  And trying is the one thing you can control.  A.J. Burnett just doesn’t try.

Pedro Martinez, on the other hand, is everything I like about pitching.  He started off as a power pitcher.  He could just wind-up and throw that fastball right past the best hitters in the majors  But, he got older and lost his speed.  These days, the worst hitters in the majors could smash his fastball out of the park.   Pedro adapted.  He reinvented himself.  No longer able to overpower batters, he started fooling them.  He outsmarted them by changing speed and location.  Having lost the thing that his whole game depended on, he changed up and became a new pitcher.

Did anyone else see him quickstep Jeter?  That, my friends, was a thing of beauty.

So watching A.J. Burnett beat him was disgusting.  A.J. Burnett does not deserve to beat Pedro Martinez.

Yet, in baseball, as in life, deserve rarely has anything to do with who wins.  They both pitched remarkable games and, in the end, the lesser man won.  Because on that day, he pitched better.

There was a moment, however, when I thought the real A.J. Burnett was going to emerge.  Jimmy Rollins had reached base and, being a notorious thief, started playing with A.J.  He faked steals, got into A.J.’s brain and forced pickoff throw after pickoff throw until A.J. was incapable of coming to the plate.  And that’s when real A.J. showed up.

He got wild and couldn’t find the strike zone.

That’s normal.  Someone like Rollins on the basepaths in a high pressure game will do that to a pitcher.  It’s what they do.  But what’s abnormal, what makes me loathe A.J., is how he handled the situation.

After extravagantly missing the strike zone, he started walking off the mound and looking at his hand.  He chewed his finger.  He pretended that he had a blister.  The commentators seemed to fall for it.  They started talking about how throwing a breaking ball can cause blisters on a pitcher’s fingers.  Bullshit, I thought.  A.J. was in trouble, he had lost his focus and he was pretending to be hurt to explain it.  That, right there, is A.J.-Fucking-Burnett.

The pitching coach visited the mound and said something that soothed A.J.’s fragile emotions.  All of a sudden, his finger problem was cured. He bounced back and continued to pitch well.  And I can’t hold that against him.  After all, lacking that sort of bounce, is what I hate about him.

But those of us who watched him in Toronto know the real A.J. when we see him.  It’s not the talented pitcher who held the Phillies to one run over seven innings.  It’s the guy who has a mental problem, falls apart and then plays sick to explain it.  He’s Pussy Finger.  And somehow, in October, Pussy Finger beat Pedro.

The World Series, like the world, can be one fucked up place.

Continue reading »]]> I’ll try anything once (especially things I don’t like)  so last week I tried advertising on this blog.  It wasn’t for me.

Some people can happily advertise away and get something out of it.  Money, I suppose.  Maybe even a fair bit.   Not me.  I got squat.  Apparently my roughly 700 unique visitors a day aren’t buying whatever google is selling.  I knew you people were clever (you’re reading me , after all) but I had no idea you were also cheap.

I can’t blame you:  I never click through those things either.

I could have kept up with the idea, changed my strategy and tried to discover new ways of making money off this thing.  And it’d be nice to make some money.  (Since these days, I’m fucking paying to have a blog.)  But time is money and investing all that time to make that little  money is a losing proposition.  I’m not sending the kid down the well to rescue the goat.  The old lady who ate the fly will have to be satisfied with that.

And looking at those ads made me feel a little sick.  They just don’t belong here.

It’s not that I’m anti-whoring.  Pay me the right amount and I’ll whore like crack addicted runaway.  It’s just that I have no reason to whore for small amounts of cash.  At the very least, I need a new pair of cufflinks out of the deal.  At the very least. And they have to be nice cufflinks.

Even given all of that, I remained on the fence with the whole thing until I was perusing the wonderful collection of smut on Penetrating Insights and saw this:

An owl with a message?

Owls are always sending me secret messages and I try my best to listen.  So I’m not ignoring this one.

It’s not even an issue of credibility.  I don’t really care about that.  I’m more interested in the incredible than the credible.  It’s an issue of genuine orders from the owl kingdom.  I have to follow and relay those.  It’s in my contract.

But even without such clear instruction,  I like writing here and I do it for free.  I’m not wild on having to pay the costs of upkeep and all that shit but, when it comes right down it, being read by you people is a privilege.   (Often a dubious one.)  If it costs me pocket change to enjoy it, so be it.

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Not that it’s any of your business but I’m heading into the country for a few days.  Hopefully, I’ll get to go swimming.  I went all summer without swimming and I hope that I won’t go all fall without swimming too.  If you’re all that interested in my business, twitter is your best bet.  My infernal device allows me to update that account.

The pics I take on my blackberry will appear in the sidebar.

If you leave a comment on anything, I’ll get to it when I come home.

Ta.