I Wanna Be Your Dog

Baby Rattle #72

Finished Hunter’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail the other day. Suppose I was curious about the volatile political circumstances surrounding my childbirth.

The period documented in the book parallels my time in the womb. You might even say the placenta looked eerily like Hubert Humphrey by the third trimester.

Richard Nixon was re-elected, my Mother relaxed and I catapulted into the arms of Venus Di Milo! (cue Television guitars) two days later. Actually she voted for McGovern. Nixon would get 86’ed a couple years later and Hunter never would reclaim the balls-out mastery and endurance that produced this 500 page marvel.

As my Mother would say about my childbirth, I now say about this excellent piece of reporting: it’s a serious rollercoaster ride. As explosively lucid an explanation as you’re likely to find about voting, campaigning, strategizing, subterfuge, intrigue, now I am just making words up, I still scratch my head over electoral votes and delegates. Campaigns are a terrible confusion. Felt like I was lost in a woman’s department store full of women impersonating my Mother. If someone would pay me for it I would write an entertaining story about being born then and how this year’s feetuses are as similar to me as that political contest was similar to them!

I bought two more Hunter S Thompson books yesterday to go with Gonzo, the PLimpton style bio I’m devouring at a rollercoaster rate. I picked them up at my new favourite secondhand book and records shop on Johnston Street. The guy in there has really good taste and everything is so well organised. He’s nice too like he told me that the Billy Squier record I picked up was the guiltiest of pleasures. I responded in the most lugubrious tone, it’s irrefutable genius.

Death Rattle #69

They opened a Pet World where the All-American Burger joint used to be. Now when you order a Chilli and Cheese Bull Dog, you get a Chilean Bulldog named Cheese. People on their lunchbreaks dealing with a whole different set of ramifications now. I considered standing outside the pet shop when the duped come out holding their new pets and ask them, what, didn’t you hear the pet sounds?

The neighbourhoods we used to know and love are changing before our eyes and for all the wrong reasons. The whole character of the place is departing like the soul of the dead. What we once held precious about the places we loved will soon be unrecognisable and no longer worth any of our time at all, might as well stay home watch TV, play whatever game console there is. I heard those games where you pretend that you’re a race car are pretty accurate in terms of torque, etc. There aren’t any reasons to leave the house anymore. Don’t get me wrong, once there were, but there aren’t anymore. Three years time, the most popular game will probably be one where you leave the house and go to the bank. Ten points each for not forgetting your keys or your bankbook.