Gluemeat

I guess my recent contacts with the VampireFreaks.com community inspired me.

An Amish family from North Dakota is seeking refugee status in Canada after settling down in a small town in Québec.

Last May, Matthew Hunt, accompanied by his wife and five children, took the bus all the way up to Saint-Raphaël de Bellechasse, a town on the south shore of Québec City. They have since solicited the help of star Québec lawyer Guy Bertrand to represent them in obtaining refugee status in the country. Because of the nature of such a request, the details which have brought the Hunts to flee their country have not been made public. According to the residents of Saint-Raphaël, the tense political climate in the United States statutes as the main reason for their emigration. Allegedly, their first country of choice was Germany, but the trek to Europe was abandoned for unknown reasons.

The reasons why the family chose Saint-Raphaël are unknown as well.

In the meantime, the rural Québec City suburb has accepted the newcomers rather well into their community. The house they reside in was an abandoned ancestral home which the town’s mayor, Clément Lacroix (no relation!), sold to them for a modest amount of money. There are also reports of the Hunts exchanging bread, danishes, and home-churned butter to the already established residents who stop by to offer food, firewood, or car rides into the village.

Mr. Bertrand believes that they are the first Amish family in Canadian history to seek asylum within Canada’s borders.

The Hunts are now currently in Ottawa preparing their case.

Source: Journal de Québec, september 27 2006

I’m extremely proud to announce the kickoff of a neat new comedy project that I am involved in.

Minivan Cabaret is gonna rock your world. If you can speak French.

This is a short video we did explaining how to become a robot. In French.

Okay.  I’m in a mood.  A bad mood.  I’m like Thor, baby.  Thunderclaps with my mighty hammer Mjolnir of justice which I call GLUEMEAT DOT COM.
I love root beer. Like, yeah. I love root beer. I love root beer like you love your lives, people. That’s how bloody much I love root beer. Okay? I’m a root beer lover enthusiast. I know a good glass of root beer from a bad glass of root beer. Yeah, that’s me. I can do that. CAN YOUR MOMMA DO THAT? NO, I DIDN’T THINK SO.

I love root beer but I can’t drink any old slop. Like don’t get me started on that high-end windshield washing liquid Coca-Cola calls Barq’s root beer, or that boiled potato swill Mug root beer. A&W root beer is about the closest mass-produced root beer which will do the trick when you’re stuck and need a glass, but it’s like saying you’ll settle for Mirage when you really wanted Optimus Prime.

Okay, so I know root beer. I love root beer. My local supermarket of choice is the only place around my redneck, under-educated, root beer ignorant neighborhood to carry a premium brand of root beer: Stewart’s Fountain Classic Root Beer. But you know what? Guess what? THEY NEVER HAVE THE BLOODY STUFF IN STOCK.

So tonight I go over to the supermarket to pick me up some oranges, right? Yeah, I eat oranges. I love oranges. YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ME EATING ORANGES? I wanted oranges, and we were out, so I went to buy oranges, okay? OKAY? Okay.

So I went in for oranges and figured I’d pick up a bottle of Smithwick’s root beer for the evening, but lo and behold, as freakin’ twenty seven hundred times out of twenty seven hundred and five, THEY WERE OUT OF STEWART’S ROOT BEER. Yeah, that never sits well with me.  When I want a good glass of root beer, I want a good glass of root beer.  But no.  They never seem to be able to keep it in stock.  They have all the other STEWART’s flavours: Orange n’ Cream, Key Lime, Cream Soda, Ginger Beer, Wishniak Black Cherry… oh, they never seem to run out of THOSE.

But no, that wasn’t really the problem.  Here’s the kicker.  Here’s the deal.  Here’s what made me fly off the handle and pull out my cameraphone:

They ran out of Stewart’s root beer and filled in the empty space with bottles of A&W root beer. THEY FILLED IN THE SPACE WHERE THE PREMIUM ROOT BEER WOULD GO WITH BOTTLES OF PLAIN JANE A&W ROOT BEER! The NERVE!  It wasn’t insulting enough for them to be unable to keep the Stewart’s root beer in stock, no, they figured we’d settle for a sub-par beverage which, in reality, is NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL.  Premium root beer and A&W root beer are in TWO SEPARATE CLASSES and one cannot be passed off as the other!  How dare they do this?

Gee, they’re out of Maxwell House Dark Roast blend… I wonder if they’ll replace it with Mellow Roast.  Apparently, they didn’t… BECAUSE IT’S NOT THE SAME THING!

Hm… running low on bottles of VH plum sauce.  Maybe they should stuff the empty shelf with bottles of ketchup.  Um, no, BECAUSE IT’S NOT THE SAME THING.

Oh, if I were pissed before, it up on the next level now, baby.  They’re not going to take me for a sap! NO SIR.  Time for me to defend my intelligence as a root beer drinker!  TIME TO THROW DOWN, IGA!

Wow. The past few days were, um, populous here at Gluemeat.

A single link off the main page of VampireFreaks.com (VF.com) pointing to a recent post I made in regards to the lameduck rhetoric that’s been going around in favour of shutting down VF.com gave my site it’s biggest influx of traffic in, well, ever.

But this is far from one of those vanity posts where I post a screenshot of my hourly stats and snap my suspenders in pride. I mention it mainly because of the buckets and buckets of comments the post became host to, as VF.com users poured in to add their thoughts to my own, as any good blog exercise should be. As such, it was quite interesting to read how members of the community feel about the whole situation.

Many lauded the site’s cohesiveness and how well it’s run, clamouring the great job that owner “Jet” is doing with it. Some even mentioned a few results of the monitoring that the site runs to ensure the protection of its users. It’s a subject I would love to hear more about.

There is indeed a great sense of community among the members of VF.com. Most members talk about “we” when they speak of the site. There is mention of how everyone looks after each other, with some referring to the community as “family.” Countless comments started with a sentence along the lines of “I have been a proud member of VampireFreaks.com for X years” denoting a deep attachment. It’s not surprising. After all, the site exists as a haven for those who don’t “fit in” and who feel that mainstream culture has nothing to offer them. Therefore, it’s normal for pardon the expression, “the rejected” to create such a tightly bonded atmosphere as they feel isolated everywhere else. You can’t blame anyone for wanting to feel accepted and part of something.

It also demonstrates the point of my previous article quite well. Social websites allow for escapism from everyday drudgery and connect with people who you will immediately be able to identify with. Whether it be with something as vast as MySpace or more genre-specific as VF.com, the end result is the same: you will be able to interact with others who will not judge you on a whim.

In fact, most members have affirmed that if it wasn’t for the rash judgement most folks extend to them, sometimes unjustly so, perhaps VF.com and goth culture wouldn’t serve as scapegoats in these situations. A noble sentiment, but one which many VF.com members failed to adhere to themselves. Despite these calls for open-mindedness, many (if not most) of the VF.com members who commented here attacked my post vehemently, as if I was the enemy.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I can’t handle someone disagreeing with something I write. It just comes across to me as completely strange that people would get their flame on and tear into the post, Gluemeat, and myself for things I didn’t even profess. It’s almost as if they read the title, read the first sentence or two, then hit the comment section thinking that I was among those who believe VF.com should be shut down.

Many comments said that I was wrong to target VF.com when places like as MySpace have similar destructiveness going on there as well. I was attacked on that front, despite drawing that very same parallel within the post.

Some comments said that I was stupid to consider VF.com to be the source of the problem and that we should look to other sources for people feeling like they do. Yet, I suggested exactly that in the post as well.

Some comments said that the media and those in power blame websites because it’s easier to shift the blame and that I was stupid to blame VF.com. I never blamed VF.com; and actually I made that very same point in the last paragraph of the post.

So while the community asks for tolerance and, as a couple of comments noted, to “look under the surface,” my article wasn’t given that same courtesy. It was hastily attacked by people who skimmed its surface, made up a quick opinion, and reacted angrily against it. The double standard shocked me. Here I was sticking up for them, and yet I ended up being demonized.

Had they read the whole article instead of jumping to conclusions off the first few lines, I would have been better understood. Gosh, doesn’t that sound familiar?

Of course, VF.com and its members have been under an umbrella of bad press recently, so I guess it’s almost a reflex action to believe a website which isn’t covered in black and purple with countless quotes from The Crow and Poe must be saying bad things about them (I’m being sarcastic, of course). You can’t really blame that. But when you attack those who defend you, it kind of makes one wonder.

Since then, the link to the Gluemeat post from VampireFreaks.com and the resulting comments has been deleted from the website for some reason. Perhaps the owner saw the hasty commentary and felt bad?

However, there are many VF.com members who did understand what I meant and felt vindicated by it and which keep me from believing that most VF.com members are judgemental meanies. Just as they seemed happy to see that someone else “out there” understood their point of view. I guess that means there are idiots everywhere, regardless of how much eyeliner you wear.

The last thing this whole experience has taught me was the “flame you to smoldering embers” note I put in the comments section. Anyone who knows me understands how much of a joke that is, so I guess the fact that I supposed everyone would get the joke was my fault. I never figured anyone would take that literally since it’s so completely over the top. So I’ll just change it to something cute. Everyone likes cute things. Like bunnies. Bunnies with machine guns.

I adore these following videos of random chemical experiments. From the antisceptic layout, to the narrator’s voice, to the fonts used on the bottles. Oh, and the results, too.

These, of course, not only carry the “do not try this at home” tag, but also the “don’t inhale bromine” and “if you go to the pharmacy to ask for concentrated sulfuric acid you will get a call from the FBI” ones, too.

“It smells of sulfur still today.”

- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, addressing the United Nations, after referring to George W. Bush as the devil.

There’s been a recent uprising of folks who are asking the question “Should we shut down VampireFreaks.com” followed by a resounding “YES!”

The main reason for this line of questioning, is best summarized in a post from fellow Progressive Blogger Wendy over at Wendy’s Thoughts:

In the last 5 or so years since it’s conception, vampirefreaks.com has been linked to numerous violent crimes including:

- In 2003 vampires.com surfaced in the media for the first time when 2 boys were arrested for the stabbing (71 times to be exact), and killing of a 12 year old boy (a younger brother of one of the boys) known only as “Johnathan”.
- It’s also the place where 12 year old Jasmine Richardson from Medicine Hat, Alberta, met 23 year old Jeremy Steinke who helped her plan and execute the killings of Jasmines parents and younger brother. They also posted their killing plans on the site.
- In June of this year, three young men were sentence for a deliberate fire that destroyed the 105-year-old Minnedosa United Church, in Minnedosa, Man. One had posted his profile on VampireFreaks.com. Referring to Jesus Christ, he wrote: ‘’If he comes back, we’ll kill him again.”
- And just this past July, New York City police charged a 23-year-old man with a series of rapes of underage girls, some of whom he met through VampireFreaks.com. Police said they found a photo of him on the site depicting him standing over a tombstone with a black cape and long purple locks of hair hanging over his face. After an investigation he was arrested after arriving at a cemetery one night with the expectations of having sex a 13-year-old girl he met through the site. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for us his alleged online prey was actually an undercover police woman.

Of course, there’s Dawson College to toss into the mix there as well.

With such a dark alumni, many people have portrayed VampireFreaks.com as a “hate-filled” place, even wondering if another Kimveer Gill is festering in its bosom. After all, it’s apparently filled with impressionable young teenagers; Is VampireFreaks.com really a lightning rod for the sociopathic and a nexus for crime?

Not nearly as much as MySpace is.

Anyone who thinks about wanting VampireFreaks to shut down to keep Gill wannabes at bay should definitely go take a nice, serious read at MyCrimeSpace, a blog which records all MySpace-related misdeeds in a single place. Everything from beatings, to rape, to scams, to pedophilia. It’s all there in its undesireable glory and, trust me, you don’t really realise just how much garbage is going on until you skim through it. Like those teens who posted a video of themselves beating another kid up. Or how about brawls being set-up online? Or Matthew McCombs, who boasted on his MySpace that he wanted to be a killer, then shot a 16-year old in the face at point blank range? These aren’t all vampire-loving goths. They are kids from a range of social contexts.

Also, if you take one of Gill’s most publicized quotes, “I hate the world,” and do a Google search on MySpace, you’ll find 111,000 different results, ranging from usernames to comments to blog entries. Not all are related to doom and destruction, but a lot are. Therefore, by the same applied logic, should we assume that MySpace is the breeding ground for our next goth malcontent-with-a-gun and shut it down? Or should we just realise that most of these types of comments are made by distruaght people who are alienated by the world we live in? Should we start looking for real reasons instead of firing at the methods they took to momentarily flee their malaise? Because that’s what places like VampireFreaks and MySpace offer.

Some folks are literally flying off the handle because of some comments which are being made concerning the whole ordeal; comments being made by other teenagers. I would agree that there is something to be worried about when a child identifies him or herself with a killer, but not because doing so makes them a “potential risk.” I worry because somehow society has failed to offer them anything better to feel better about themselves. And calling them “white trash” isn’t going to help mend any bridges.

We sometimes seem to forget that teenagers are children who are becoming adults, who are entrenched in deeply formative years. Accusing websites (or video games, or popular music) of their strayings is an attempt to shift the guilt from ourselves. It is, after all, a whole lot easier to handle.

ARR! Today is international Talk Like A Pirate Day. What’s great about today is that it’s a lot like Saint Patrick’s Day: instead of everyone being Irish for the day, we get to be a pirate; also, it’s an excuse to drink! So if you want to have the best chances to freak out middle management, your pastor, or your grandparents with your dextrous use of pirate lingo, the UK headquaters of the event have this excellent lexicon of typical pirate words and their contextual usage.

Startin’ Rules

- Double up on all your adjectives and you’ll be bountifully bombastic with your phrasing. Pirates never speak of “a big ship”, they call it a “great, grand ship!” They never say never, they say “No nay ne’er!”
- Drop all your “g”’s when you speak and you’ll get words like “rowin’”, “sailin’” and “fightin’”.
- Dropping all of your “v”’s will get you words like “ne’er”, “e’er” and “o’er”.
Instead of saying “I am”, sailors say, “I be”. Instead of saying “You are”, sailors say, “You be”. Instead of saying, “They are”, sailors say, “They be”. Ne’er speak in anythin’ but the present tense!

Vocabulary

In which ye’ll find words submitted by many pirates o’er the years, an’ which comprise a loose piratical dictionary.

Ahoy: Hey!
Avast: Stop!
Aye: Yes
Black spot: to be ‘placin’ the black spot’ be markin’ someone for death.
Booty: treasure
Buccanneer: a pirate who be answerin’ to no man or blasted government.
By the Powers!: an exclamation, uttered by Long John Silver in Treasure Island!
Cat o’ nine tails: whip for floggin’ mutineers
Corsair: a pirate who be makin’ his berth in the Med-…Medi-…that sea ‘tween Spain and Africa, aye!
Davy Jones’ Locker: the bottom o’ the sea, where the souls of dead men lie
Doubloons: pieces of gold…
Fiddlers Green: the private heaven where pirates be goin’ when they die.
Furner: a ship which be yer own, not one ye steal an’ plunder.
Gentlemen o’ fortune: a slightly more positive term fer pirates!
Go on the account: to embark on a piratical cruise
Grog: A pirate’s favorite drink.
Jack: a flag or a sailor
Jolly Roger: the skull and crossbones, the pirate flag!
Keelhaul: a truly vicious punishment where a scurvy dog be tied to a rope and dragged along the barnacle-encrusted bottom of a ship. They not be survivin’ this.
Landlubber: “Land-lover,” someone not used to life onboard a ship.
Lass: A woman.
Lily-livered: faint o’ heart
Loaded to the Gunwales (pron. gunnels): drunk
Matey: A shipmate or a friend.
Me hearty: a friend or shipmate.
Me: My.
Pieces o’ eight: pieces o’ silver which can be cut into eights to be givin’ small change.
Privateer: a pirate officially sanctioned by a national power
Scallywag: A bad person. A scoundrel.
Scurvy dog!: a fine insult!
Shiver me timbers!: an exclamation of surprise, to be shouted most loud.
Son of a Biscuit Eater: a derogatory term indicating a bastard son of a sailor
Sprogs: raw, untrained recruits
Squadron: a group of ten or less warships
Squiffy: a buffoon
Swaggy: a scurvy cur’s ship what ye be intendin’ to loot!
Swashbucklin’: fightin’ and carousin’ on the high seas!
Sweet trade: the career of piracy
Thar: The opposite of “here.”
Walk the plank: this one be bloody obvious.
Wench: a lady, although ye gents not be wantin’ to use this around a lady who be stronger than ye.
Wi’ a wannion: wi’ a curse, or wi’ a vengeance. Boldly, loudly!
Yo-ho-ho: Pirate laughter

Avast! Lots more over at yarr.org.uk, ye squiffy sprogs!

Okay, seriously.

Last week, Condi Rice was in my tasty country to thank Nova Scotians for helping out in the aftermath of September 11. She got to meet our Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay for a couple of days. Then the media spent the week tooting that MacKay and Condi hit it off and that there was a “thing” brewing between each other.

Holy hell, is this what the Conservatives meant when they said they wanted tighter bonds with the US? I’m starting to think MacKay jumped up and screamed: “I’ll do my part!”

But what I’m fearing is that our pals in the US and across the world will come to think of Peter MacKay as what an international Canadian playboy is.

Sure, he was gettin’ it on with politico hottie Belinda Stronach before she STABBED HIM IN THE BACK AND BECAME A LIBERAL. Then he was putting the moves on Sophie Desmarais, the daughter of Power Corporation honcho Paul Desmarais. I mean, dude can mack like a master, but is this is picture of a desireable, available Canadian man?

Is this the definition of Canadian manliness?

Though he does look good in a rugby uniform. Better than fellow Conservative MP Barry Devolin, who could barely make it out of his suit.

And when Stronach dumped him, he did go back to his family farm to be alone and pull off the sad, downtrodden guy routine.

Well, he probably gets something. Which is why he’s a cabinet minister and I have a blog.

Peter MacKay: he puts the “Affair” in “Foreign Affairs.”