It’s been a month-and-a-half since I posted a video. I fell a little bit out of the videoblogging loop for a while. Turns out November was Remix Month over at We Are The Media. They’re having a big remix showdown, which ends today.

I figured it would be silly of me not to at least try to enter… so even though I should’ve been practising for the show tomorrow I spent the evening cutting up clips with my new toy, QuickTime Pro.

https://swordfight.org/video/swordfight-watm-remix.mov [you need a quicktime player]

Having plunked down the $40 for QT Pro I might as well get my money’s worth so I’ll probably be getting back into the video stuff in December.

Dec. 5 ’05:
I’m on dialup so there’s a limit to how many videos I can download. When Jan and Randy came to visit on the Road Node tour, Randy was kind enough to leave me a great big DVD full of videobloggage. Hundreds of videos. So when I went to make the remix, I popped Randy’s disc into my iBook and started dragging QuickTimes off the disc pretty much at random. There were also one or two videos already sitting on my desktop. And that’s what I made this video out of.

Thing is, all the files on Randy’s vlog disc have file names that are about 20 characters long and consist of a bunch of random letters and numbers. Must be some secret code that only Randy understands. There’s no way I can tell what the original file names were, and some videos don’t list a URL in the actual movie. So unfortunately I’m unable to provide direct links back to the original blog entries as I would prefer to do.

But anyway these are the talented hardworking folks whose videos went straight into the blender, now I wantchyall to pay close attention or it might go by ya: Josh Leo, Crash Test Kitchen, Big Time Television, 29 Fragile Days, Missing Kitten TV, Scratch Video, Hot Action [nsfw], Faux Press, Richard Show, let’s see, I think we got some Phil Hamilton in there, Richard BF gets pwn3d by r0b0t5, rboom.com represents, tip of the hat to Michael and Ryanne of Maximilian with the spyhole, I sampled some Bottom Union but musta forgot to put it in there, Clark ov Saturn oh yeah baby, and the whole thing wraps up with Gabe Mac who’s not taking any guff from the Man and neither should you.

A lot of links for 53 seconds but all it did was whet my appetite for more remixing. If you’re into electronic music you might be familiar with a genre known as “microhouse.” I’m calling this video a “microvlog” due to its use of a lot of short samples arranged in a rhythmic fashion. There will be more microvlogs.

“Hey Philip how did you get that scar on your forehead?”

“I bit myself.”

“How in the world did you bite yourself on the forehead?”

“I stood on a chair.”

~ I just carried Vickers all over the house, singing at the top of my lungs:

“Big-fat, big-fat, big-fat cat
Big-fat, big-fat, big-fat cat
Big-fat, big-fat, big-fat cat
BIIIIG FAAAAT CAT.”

~ The causeway makes a sharp bend in the highway, just past the Red Bank Cemetery on Route 123. I hit a patch of black ice and my car spun out of control into the opposite lane. Okay, steer into the skid. Then the vehicle started sliding back the other way. I spun the steering wheel in the opposite direction. There’s the guard rail, and then there’s the dropoff to the river. The instant the wheels of my car touched the gravel shoulder I let myself lay hard on the brakes. The car finally came to a stop in the original lane, half-off the road facing back in the direction I came.

I didn’t even get any adrenalin out of it. Still mumbling along with the song on the radio. Accidents, I can do.

I slowly turned the car around on the narrow causeway and continued up the road. A big truck piled high with logs came barrelling down the highway. I flashed my hazard lights a couple times as a warning. If that truck had come a minute sooner, I’d have been wearing sawdust to my funeral.

I’m going to have another accident. I’m somehow convinced of it. Just a matter of when. The best I can do is try to be careful and hope no other people are involved.

I stopped at the store on the way home to pick up a grrreat big steak. And the living shall feast on the dead.

~ My favourite thing on the Internet today has been the Mi’kmaq Online Word List from mikmaqonline.org.

The Mi’kmaq are the First Nations people indigenous to Eastern Canada and the state of Maine. Supposedly there are 6 or 8 thousand people still speaking the language. The dictionary has WAV files of all the words. I love the sound, it seems musical to me. It just has a different feel than European languages I’m more used to hearing.

As far as I know there is no Native blood in my family tree. I guess the connection I feel comes from the fact that I was born and raised here, and if it had happened a few hundred years earlier, this would have been the lingo.

emegwatalg: eat in a disgusting manner
se’saltugwepit: have messy hair
amjaqa’lsit: smear something on self

There aren’t any words listed for “sex.” So I think the dictionary people must be holding out on us. I did find sespeiatijig (“having an affair”) and enmigjo’gwet (“bent over with buttocks up”).

So far my favourite Mi’kmaq expression is aligjo’gwet meaning “going about with buttocks stuck out.”

~ The Zen master went to the dentist to have a root canal. The dentist wanted to give him Novocaine. But the Zen master refused. He wanted to transcend dental medication.

robin ~ charles st, halifax ~ fall 2003

To mark the occasion of Remembrance Day, I made a website for my father’s uncle Peter.

http://privatepeterclark.com

I took Arpeggio to the car wash for the first time today. For those of you just joining us, “Peggy” is my trusty steed, my 1993 Ford Tempo. I took Peggy to the car wash because she’s been thinking dirty thoughts, and also because she had egg all over her. Somebody egged my car in Saint John, New Brunswick.

It wasn’t even Hallowe’en. Peggy was just sitting there on Park Hill Drive, wheels turned into the curb, minding her own business. And then some jerks decided that their idea of a perfect parabola was the arc of an egg through the crisp autumn air.

I came outside in the morning to start her up and there was egg running the whole way down my rear window. Bits of shell and yolk were scattered across the roof of the car. Based on the angle of impact, I’m calling it a drive-by.

Could you imagine if I ever get hold of the person who egged my car. I will grab him or her by the shirt and say “Listen fucker, are you part of the problem or part of the solution. How long does it take you to poop your own weight.”

So today as I was leaving the car wash I drove through the parking lot of the Riverside gas station. A teenaged boy was pumping regular fuel into a Ford F-150 pickup. I rolled down my window and pulled up beside him.

I said, “Dude. Your mom’s hot.”

He looked up. “Hey don’t talk about my mom like that.”

“I’m just sayin’ dude. Your mom is smokin’.”

“Shut up!”

I rolled up my window. Then I pulled out onto Route 10 and hit the gas.

The car wash did a good job of making my car wet and sparkly. But it didn’t even clean off all the egg. In my rear view mirror I could still clearly see the egg-stain down my back window.

Eggs are some sticky shit. I’m now thinking that an egg might be used as a substitute for glue in certain situations. Are you having trouble getting your gig posters to stay up on telephone poles? Throw an egg at them. Do you have an aversion to licking postage stamps? Why not just dip the stamps in an egg instead.

You could theoretically use an egg to help your identity stick in a person’s memory. The next time you meet somebody who has forgotten your name, throw an egg right at their face. Make it a rotten one. Crack it over their silly head and say, “Remember my name now? What’s my name now, asshole? Philip Clark, you’re goddamn right.”

These were my thoughts as I cruised down Route 10 in my trusty chariot Arpeggio, alias Peggy-Eggy the egg-splattered auto.

Riding shotgun with me was the ghost of a dead chicken–the spirit of all things unhatched–the phantom of that which was and that which shall never be.

I turned to the chicken and said, “So tell me something. Have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with?”

“Bok bok bok,” said the chicken in the passenger seat.

“Don’t give me that, you bastard. I know you speak English.” I was fumbling to open a gum wrapper with one hand. “Care for some Trident?”

“Bok b’gok,” said the chicken. He reached out his wing and accepted the piece of gum.

Pretty soon I was lost in thought again. I guess I must have been talking to myself without being aware of it. “Hmm…but if it calls for two cups of sugar… Wouldn’t you think that would be way too sweet?…”

“You are way too sweet for me, handsome.”

The chicken in my passenger seat had been replaced by Victoria Principal, circa 1984. She said in her low, sultry voice, “Hello.”

“Oh, no. Not you again.” I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. “Get the fuck out of my car right now.”

Victoria Principal with her full, shiny lips made a pouty face. “Why are you always so mean to me.”

“I don’t care whose mom you are,” I said. “Get out. You’re not riding in this car.”

I prodded her perfectly-shaped calf with the toe of my sneaker.

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” said Victoria. “It’s a pretty big bone.”

“Why don’t you go pick somebody else’s bone, sugar,” I said with a sneer.

“Oooh. You are such a bastard.” Victoria Principal balled her right hand into a fist and drew it back and then punched me right in the face.

“Owwwww.” I slumped back against the car door. My head bumped against the window. “That hurt.”

“Well it serves you right.”

“You skank. I’m gonna have a black eye for sure now.” I held my hand over my eye. “I can’t believe you.”

Then I jumped on top of her and we started making out all over the front seat.

Victoria Principal was kissing and sucking my neck, biting my shoulder and my earlobes. “Ohh god. Oh, yes. Take me, lover.” A film of hot steam crawled across the car windows.

I grabbed her legs and threw them up in the air and stuck my head up under her short little leather skirt. Victoria Principal leaned back and ran her fingers through her thick, lustrous hair. “Oh my god… oh god yes. No one does it like you do.”

I reached down to unbuckle my belt and unzip my fly while doing my magical finger trick.

“Oh yessss…. Oh wait… wait,” she panted. She reached down on the floor to grab her stylish designer purse. “I don’t know if I have anything with me.”

I reached down between my legs and tried to find the lever to pull my seat back. “Check the glove compartment.”

“Ha ha. Check it yourself, sucker.”

That was not a low sultry voice.

“Bok bok.”

Sweet Jesus. I pulled up my zipper. Victoria Principal had turned back into a chicken.

I slumped forward and sighed, my arms resting on the steering wheel.

“Why do you do these things to me?” I said.

“Because you’re fun to play with,” said the chicken.

“You lousy bird.”

I started up the car, put it into gear and eased back onto the highway.

“Listen,” said the chicken.

I glanced over. The chicken was looking at me with his sideways chicken eye.

“Yeah, what.”

“Tonight you will have a dream,” said the chicken. “You will dream that you are in a serious car accident. Your body will be mangled and you will die. Your funeral service will be held in an ancient church of the Druids. At your funeral service, I will be sitting right there in the front pew, laughing at you.”

“That’s not fuckin’ funny,” I said.

“Oh yes it is,” He said. “It’s very funny. Hahahaha. AHHH, hahahahaha.”

I slammed on the brakes right in the middle of Route 10. I leaned over to pop open the glove compartment. I reached inside and grabbed a ball-peen hammer and raised my arm and swung the hammer down on the chicken’s skull as hard as I could.

The hammer travelled through thin air and smacked against the soft fabric of the bucket seat. The chicken had vanished.

My grandmother used to keep kittens in the basement. I saw something that I hadn’t noticed before. A little dish sat on the basement floor right beside the woodpile. The dish had smiling cat faces drawn all over it.

The thought occurred to me that I might take this dish upstairs and use it to feed Vickers from. But with the very next stroke of the axe, a chunk of log went flying. The log landed on top of the dish and smashed it to pieces.

For the better part of five years I worked at the foremost rock club on the East Coast. Night after night, I was right in the centre of everything, all the beauties and the VIPs mingling with the scum and the dregs of humanity.

The place must’ve been awash with every bug and every germ and every virus you could think of as well as a few you probably don’t want to think of. But that whole time I scarcely ever got sick. I might’ve had a couple colds during that time but I shrugged them off for the most part. Maybe I built up a tolerance due to to constant low-level exposure, who knows.

Now I’m a librarian in a small village library. Today at work, I waited on no persons under 30 who were not accompanied by a guardian, and I waited on no male persons at all. It’s quite a change of pace.

And I am a friggin’ mess. Yesterday I came down with the nastiest cold. My arms and legs are sore. I have been unleashing sneezes of such colossal power that they are strangely satisfying. It feels as though my brain has turned to liquid and is pouring out my nose.

I find it all kind of funny. A cold is an absurd state to be in. Why is my body doing all this silly stuff? I think I’m not in as good shape as I used to be when I was riding my bike to work 12 months out of the year and walking everywhere. I have a car now, it’s cold out and pretty much anywhere I’d want to go is driving distance.

So here we are at eight o’clock on a Saturday evening. You’re probably getting ready to go out and make it all happen. You’re going to get drunk, rock out, make noise, make love, make all kinds of ruckus. Whereas, when I left work today I signed out four novels and the complete Back To The Future trilogy. I’m going to turn on the space heater and crawl into bed and read.

I’m going to fall asleep. I’m going to wake up a passenger in some kind of moving vehicle with no idea where I am, no idea where I’m going, no idea why my clothes are covered in someone else’s blood. I have no idea what is happening to me. I’ll never see any of you again.

Are you looking at this website on a Mac? Good. It’s time to give your computer an X-ray. Here’s what I want you to do right now: I want you to hit control-option-command-8.

Whoa. I’ve seriously been rocking this all day.

That’s all for now. I’m writing a novel and it’s completely retardable. I’m thinking of calling it “The Throw-Up.”