Porocrom’s Crappaper

It’s been long overdue (I know some of you are still waiting on that Cake album review for Pressure Chief – I’m not doing it), but here is the second installment of…

This week I’ll be talking about Winnepeg’s own The Weakerthans

I first heard The Weakerthans when I saw the video for “Our Retired Explorer” on Much Music. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a look. A guy lives underground in the Antarctic. The song is great to listen to as well. Many of you may be more familiar with their most recent single “The Reasons”:

I don’t know how to sing
I can barely play this thing
But you never seem to mind
And you tell me to back off

The single was released this past summer to great accolade among pseudo-intellectuals (read: music snobs) but pretty much ignored by mainstream media.

The Weakerthans are one of my favourites for two main reasons

The Reasons

1 – Lyrics
Okay, for all you cynics out there who think that Canadians have butchered the art of song-writing, put down the Avril Lavigne, put down the Nickelback, put down the Sum 41… you can pick up Celine Dion but only if you drop her off of something very tall into something very fattening. John Sampson of the Weakerthans might be the best lyricist I have ever come across (and he can SING too, so in your face Leonard Cohen!). The two words that immediately spring to mind when trying to describe Sampson’s style are ‘organic’ and ‘honest’. For a prime example of what I mean, check out “My Favourite Chords” or “Reconstruction Site”. All of the metaphors and similes and anecdotes are seemingly drawn from personal experience, and are so in tune with the small-town Canadian heart that I wonder if Gord Downie doesn’t shed a tear to hear them.

2 – Relative Obscurity
One thing I look for in a band is that they’re not incredibly popular. This may make me a music snob (read: stupid prick), but I think a certain level of poverty keeps a band honest. If you don’t believe me, look at bands like Weezer and Metallica that had HUGE fan bases until they got rich, alienating the fans that filled their pockets. There is a flipside to this though, because I have seen the bands that the hardcore music snobs listen to, and they suck. Yeah that’s right Bombs Over Providence, I saw you open for Flashlight Brown at the 360 and you guys suck. Hmm, imagine seeing System of a Down, except instead of hard-hitting, insightful lyrics, they’ve used a dart board and a dictionary, and instead of killer guitar riffs and bass lines, they’ve used a tenderizing mallet and an electric ukelele. That’s Bombs‘ live show. But we’re not talking about them.

The Weakerthans are obscure enough that I still get the satisfaction of knowing I can still impress my friends with them, but not so obscure that I can’t meet at least one cute girl at a party who’s got a copy of Fallow in her CD rotation and would I like to come back to her place to have a listen. The only thing that makes me sad is that they’re not so popular that they get to headline shows, and have to open for lesser bands.


Anyways, suffice it to say, The Weakerthans are a certified Crommunist pick. This isn’t head-banging like Muse or tear-jerking like… well… Muse. More toe-tappin’ like Cake, but without the American roots. If you’re looking for some tracks by which to judge them, here are a few suggestions:

- My Favourite Chords
- Manifest
- A plea from a cat named Virtue
- Leash
- Fallow
- Sounds Familiar


Stay tuned, hopefully something funny will happen and I can write about it. Until such an occurrence, I’ll keep writing these.

    Hello dear reader, and welcome. I would like to inaugurate our new section, aptly entitled “Cooking”. Do you live alone, and you are too lazy to cook yourself? Is your girlfriend a worthless bitch and she couldn’t cook to save her life? Are you tired of eating out and spending a fortune on Big Macs? Do all cookbooks assume like you have all day to cook and a servant to keep your fridge stocked and clean after you? Then our new section is for you. Read on, and you will understand.
Dish: Tortellini con Prosciutto with bacon (sounds impressive, huh?).
Preparation time: 1 South Park episode.
Stuff that will need cleanup afterwards: 1 pot (WARNING: This will look like you held a bukkake session in it, but don’t despair), 1 knife, 1 tablespoon, a strainer.
Ingredients: 1 bag of tortellini (with prosciutto if you like meat, or cheese if you don’t), 1 pack of cream (the white gooey stuff that looks like cum), 1/2 tsp. of salt (levelled), 5 slices of bacon, 70 grams of grated Parmesan (or other cheese).
Calories: Enough to keep your house warm for a few months, so make sure you get light cream.
People: This dish is enough for 2 normal people, so you’ll get quite full with it.
    First of all, pour some water in the pot (not a lot, about 0.75 lt or so), and let it boil (you will know when it does from all the bubbles. Wait for the big bubbles, not the little ones). When it boils, throw the tortellini and the salt in. You should let those boil for 11 minutes while stirring frequently with the spoon (no idea why) and watching South Park (preferably episode 107 – Pink Eye). When it is done, pour them in the strainer and leave them to dry as you cunningly prepare for the next step.
    Empty the pot, rinse it a bit and let it dry while you also rinse the spoon, then throw in the cream. Chop the bacon up into little pieces and throw those in too, and then some grated cheese. Then put the tortellini in and throw the rest of the cheese in for good measure. Put it on the stove (on the lowest temperature it has to offer). Stir fervently with the tablespoon until the cream thickens, the cheese dissolves and the tortellini are all covered in the gooey mess that will appear.

This is what it should look like. If it’s any different, you’re a dumbass.
    Now your gourmet lunch is ready to be eaten. Serve in the pot (why make a mess in a plate when you can avoid it?). You have just prepared a meal that would make your mom jealous and you still have time to watch the South Park episode while eating. You can definitely impress chicks with this (on the other hand, if they do get surprised it means they can’t cook for shit, so what are you doing with her? Unless, of course, she’s hot).
    Warning: You should clean the pot and stuff RIGHT AWAY, otherwise, much like semen on your ass, the cream will thicken and it will, again much like semen on your ass, mean that you have gotten screwed, and that will be a bitch to clean. If you do leave it despite my warnings, you deserve to die, so I will not tell you that you should put some hot water in it and leave it to soften the cream.
    I hope you liked today’s cooking update. We will be back with more food.

It is a few months ago. I wake up as usual, and stumble over to the kitchen to see if there is anything to eat. There never is, so I wait until midday to order some takeout, which promptly arrives a few minutes later. Neither I nor the takeout delivery man (or anyone else, for that matter) could perceive the historical importance that fateful day had, for it will truly be forever written in the annals of science for ever and ever, amen.
The importance of that day lay not on the fact that I ate takeout, but that the takeout was significantly different. To this day, I do not know the ingredients, but by some odd twist of fate, that meal reached me and eventually caused me to take a HUGE dump, of which people will also talk in the years to come. Still, I did not know the significance of those turds until today.
My toilet had been oozing little brown shitties ever since, which led me to believe that a mischievous turd had been lodged in the toilet to forever torment me, and I have to flush every single day. I, of course, tried to get rid of it using conventional means like chlorine, more turds, nuclear weapons and flushing embryos down the toilet so they may clean it and return safely home (umbilical cords come in VERY useful when there’s no air), but to no avail. Any other person would be frustrated from this seemingly inexhaustible turd, but it got me thinking. WHAT IF WE COULD USE ITS ENERGY TO POWER OUR HOMES?!
And thus, the notion of harnessing the power of shit was born. Einstein in his theory of relativity tells us that mass, when completely annihilated, will produce energy equal to mc^2, where c is the speed of light (299,792,458 m/sec in a vacuum). So, for the less technically inclined, this would give us a whopping 89,875,517,873,681,764 Joules of energy for a mere kilogram of shit! As you can imagine, this is a major scientific breakthrough, but this fact has been known to physicists the world over for many years. The revolution that I propose today comes from the fact that the turd in my toilet (and thus every turd in the world) has apparently infinite mass, so we could power everything in the world by a single turd.
This, however, would be a bit impractical, since we would have to distribute the energy to everyone. Turds, though, are so abundant, that we are not limited to my turd. Anyone could shit and convert it to energy and be happy for a lifetime. Therefore, to avoid anyone making money off my scheme, I am patenting the idea of making energy from shit, or making anything from shit, for that matter. USING MANURE IS ILLEGAL FROM NOW ON, YOU MUST PAY ME. Hey, while I’m at it, I will patent the idea of producing energy altogether. Aha, yet another ambitious plan hatches! But I digress.
Think of all the uses this would find! The implications are manifold, and the uses are various and all equally important:

• Cars. Your car has run out of gas in the middle of nowhere and you have no cell phone? Just open the special hatch, take a dump in it, and voila! Your car will run great for at least another ten years, at which time it will break down (the shit will continue to give off energy, though). You can even eat some extra beans or burritos, if you’re street racing and you need that extra oomph. Forget about NOS, Turdous Oxide is here to stay.
  
• Turd bombs. Unfortunately, every major discovery is bound to be used for evil, so here it is. That country over there is getting cheeky?. You need more weapons to win the war against terrorism? The neighbour is giving you a hard time? Create a TurdBomb™ and blow the entire galaxy up! That’ll teach ‘em!
  
• Getting paid to shit. Don’t let restaurants, gas stations and other public/private restrooms con you into shitting for free. From now on shitting will only take place in special donation banks, much like blood and semen. You will get paid handsomely for a single turd, and sending crap as aid for third-world countries will not only be accepted, but greatly endorsed!
  

These were only some of the magnificent uses of this great new technology that I have discovered. Only time will show how deeply this will affect us and how rich it will make me. If you are a company and have lots of money to spend on me, call me at 555-EATSHIT.

Well my Christmas vacation was over, so I decided to pick up some food supplies for school. I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted so I went to a local store (can’t say the name, let’s just say they don’t have a lot of frills) to purchase some of these items. I have discovered something that may shock or baffle you, unless you are not a total moron in which case it will be old-hat.

People are stupid animals.

I was in the produce aisle looking for some items for a soup I was planning to make that night. I saw a mom take her 7-year old kid out of the cart because he was whining and screaming. As she turned her back on him, he dashed off because he is a little ADD fucker. As she proceeded to squeeze EVERY SINGLE TOMATO in the display, the kid went to the cereal aisle and started opening boxes like an allergic person searching for his epi-pen. So, as I go over to get some cereal, I see this result of a bottle of cheap whiskey and a broken prophylactic run back to his mother who is calling for him. It is not until I realize that the only cereal he could get at is the stuff on the bottom shelf (a.k.a. the ones I want) and I have to rummage around for undamaged boxes.

So I shrug it off.

Then, as I am heading to the frozen food section, I am held up by a family of 7 with three shopping carts walking along like they are on holiday in an art gallery. I have seen groceries before, and I have to tell you, they’re not that interesting. Apparently these people came from a country without Rice-A-Roni because they found it to be the most fascinating thing since 15 year-old boys found the internet. Now, ordinarily I would just manoeuvre around these slow-moving people, but because of their sheer numbers they managed to block the entire aisle. So I, in my most polite voice said ‘excuse me please’. After they got over the initial shock (the look on the dad’s face was priceless, like I had just appeared out of the sky from a space ship) they attempted to move to allow me and my cart past. Unfortunately, since they had a collective IQ lower than my height in Astronomic Units (1 AU is roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun), it took about 5 minutes of shuffling and coaching to get 7 people and 3 shopping carts out of the way. I don’t know what they were buying with all those carts, but I can only hope that it was a clue.

So I take a deep breath and try to calm myself.

As I am finishing up my shopping experience, I notice this girl who has been making a very similar trip to me. Everywhere I have been in the store, she was there on her cell phone, undoubtedly to her boyfriend or somesuch. The reason I noticed her at this point is because she is giving me a look so dirty I feel like the second-to-last guy participating in the Houston 500 (where Houston the porn star has sex with 500 consecutive guys – I am not making this up). Evidently she thinks that I am following her around with sexual thoughts in my mind. If you are reading this, blonde girl with the white and black Nike jacket, YOU ARE NOT THAT GOOD-LOOKING. I am glad you have such high self-esteem, but I am not going to follow you around in the store. If you were to look at my shopping cart, you would notice that it is full of groceries. Apparently I am the kind of perv who stalks anonymous women in grocery stores and buys food at the same time (it’s the age of multitasking)

So I count backwards from 10, unclench my fists, and move on.

There was a really short grocery line, so I hopped in it. I realized that the reason it was so short is because the cashier is new. Now when I say new, I don’t mean that it was just her first day on the job. She must have been new at LIFE because I am pretty sure I could have scanned myself through faster than she did. Not to malign the rocket-science level thinking that is required to operate a cash register, but can we speed up the process a bit please? The machine does the adding for you, all you have to do is hit the PLU button at the end. How do I know this? I was a register jockey way back when. I KNOW how easy it is. She didn’t even have to handle change or anything, I paid with debit!

So I close my eyes, take a second to put things in perspective, then I slug her really hard in the face.

The court order says someone else needs to buy my groceries for me now.

What is wrong with scriptwriters? Why are they so detached from reality? Consider the following oh-so-familiar scenario (in a movie):
Man: Oh my love, I love you, will you marry me, <3?
Woman: Oh yes, I will, my love. I <3 you too, it does not matter that you are piss poor and we cannot even afford cereal decoder rings for our wedding!
Man: Oh yeah, about that… I am actually very very rich. I kinda didn’t mention that.
Woman: Oh my God, you pig! How could you do this to me?!
Man: Nono, I said rich! You know, the opposite of poor! You know, lots of money and stuff
Woman: Oh my God, I hate you. I never want to see you again!
Man: Uh, no, wait!

Seriously, who would act like that? If I were a woman and that happened to me, it would go like this:
Woman (me): Wow shit, I have a vagina. Let me go masturbate, I wonder what that feels like. Oh shit, look at these boobs. I am SO hot. Be right back.
(A few hours later)
Man: Oh my love, marry me.
Woman: Oh well, okay, for some reason I love you, it’s probably the scriptwriters. It doesn’t matter that you’re poor, I’ll marry you.
Man: Oh, that is so great, I am happy. By the way, I’m a millionaire.
Woman: Wow, shit! That’s grand, do you have a swimming pool and stuff?
Man: Yeah, the works!
Woman: Wow, great. I understand that you wanted me to love you for who you are and not your money (I am so hot, by the way) and that’s why you didn’t tell me, and now we can get married and live in luxury forever. Can I order some lesbian hookers please?
Man: Yeah, sure. I actually have more money than I can count, so knock yourself out.
Woman: Great, thanks! <3!
Man: <3!

Also, I was watching that series with Alyssa Milano (nice boobs), the one where they’re all witches, I forget the name, and she didn’t know how to tell her boyfriend that she was a witch. Finally he found out and he freaked out.
He: Oh my God Alyssa, you’re a witch!
Alyssa: Yeah, I know. Sorry!
He: Omgomgomgomg, how could you do this to me, despite your nice boobs! I have a serious problem coping with this, oddly!
Alyssa: But look! I can pull rabbits out of hats!
He: I can never forgive you!
Alyssa: (Cries)
Alyssa: Wow, hey, my boobs ARE nice. I shall play with them a bit.

I mean, what the fuck is wrong with these people. If my girlfriend was a witch, I’d get her to spawn two top models and some sex toys and give me two more dicks or something. These people really should lighten up a bit and have fun. Oh, and another thing that pisses me off, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH PEOPLE AND PHONES? Why does everyone turn retarded when they speak into one? By the way, do you Americans never say bye when you’re on the phone? Conversations on the phone are like this:
Person 1: Meaningless stuff.
Person 2: Response to meaningless stuff.
Person 1: OK, I’ll take care of it.
Person 2: (Hangs up)

Have you never heard of something called etiquette? At least we say bye or something when we’re going to hang up. Is that an American thing, or just in movies? And, to get back to my original point, HOW CAN PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND WHEN THE OTHER PERSON HANGS UP?! Consider this:
Person 1: Sorry about sleeping with your sister, honey.
Person 2: (Hangs up)
Person 1: (Hears a deafening continuous tone signifying that the other person has hung up) Hello? HELLO? HELLO OMG PLEASE RESPOND WHERE ARE YOU ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME WHAT HAS HAPPENED OMG PLEASE TALK TO ME oh she hung up.
No shit, genius! That’s why that tone is there, why do they wonder what happened when they can hear the fucking thing? Or do they think that the other person is humming and they’re trying to get them to talk to them? It’s just stupid.
Also, on a somewhat totally unrelated note, why do women sign letters to people that answer that shit as Clueless? That’s so fucking stupid, if you’re clueless you shouldn’t be alive. You should learn the basics about living and then go on to writing letters. Use Has a clue but wants more, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t even makes sense, and what’s more, it sounds like you’re retarded. Oh wait, how fitting. Forget I said anything.
By the way, women: Say yes to weird sex stuff!