Now, we’ve warned you about the Downtown Eastside. We’ve told you the life expectancy is thirty-some-odd years less than the rest of Canada. We’ve told you that the streets down here are tough and the street dwellers tougher.
But the shameful secret can be kept no longer, for January, 2010 has seen the release of “The Raven,” a short film by the same man who became the toast of MTV for his masterpiece “Spiders on Drugs.”
If you can’t beat ’em, you can at least get pageviews for posting the video, eh?
This actually happened back in October, but somehow I missed it. Me, missing an opportunity for a filthy, misleading headline! I musta been drunk!
That’s right, UK government advisor David Nutt has lost his job after making controversial remarks characterizing alcohol and tobacco as more dangerous drugs than E, pot or LSD (from which the government derives no taxes).
Nutt had criticised politicians for “distorting” and “devaluing” the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.
Arguing that some “top” scientific journals had published “horrific examples” of poor quality research on the alleged harm caused by some illicit drugs, the Imperial College professor called for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.
“Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth,” he wrote in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King’s College, London, published yesterday.
“Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively.”
While the impulse to speak truth to power is, as always, the single MOST dangerous intoxicating substance known.
On the upside, I bet it was a wicked going-away party at Jocelyn Elders‘ house!
And I was thinking of them both today, when I went out in this podunk town for a two-hour walk and, of all the people I passed, including the church group that was loudly praying to the empty downtown sidewalks, not one said, “Merry Christmas.”
Not one.
Now, I may live in a pretty ratfuck part of the big city, but we always hear that small towns are frendlier. It’s a certain fact I couldn’t walk around the Downtown Eastside for two hours without hearing Merry Christmas repeatedly, and sometimes even from sober persons. Whichever PR firm small towns are hiring to spread this myth around, they’ve earned their money, cuz not one word of that claim is true. Hell, the only one who even looked me in the eye was the chocolate lab whose owner yanked him roughly away because for a second I looked like I might pet the doggy. Oh, perish the thought.
So, the following pair of videos and the following classic Christmas story (which I post every year, and you should read every time I post it, you’ll thank me) go out to those three men I saw sitting on the bar stools at the pub, staring into space with one carefully calibrated empty seat between each of them, presumably for Clarence. Or Harvey.
This is simply the finest, most moving and remarkable Christmas story I have ever encountered, and I have, as I happened to have remarked recently, well over two dozen books of Christmas stories. Moving as it does from England to Saudi Arabia to the far eastern tip of Russia, it qualifies as multiculti, too! It is a unique jewel by an author who emerged from nowhere, left this small masterpiece for us, and vanished again into a swirling blizzard of obscurity. I’ll post it using the MORE tag, so that if you enjoy it you can read the rest. If you don’t enjoy it, I suggest you seek medical assistance promptly, for your brain matter must be leaking out your ears or something. Merry Christmas!
A Christmas classic which gets heavy airplay around the ol’ raincoaster blog is that beloved oldie, Christmas on Acid by the Vestibules. Not only is the tune catchy and the lyrics accurate (um, from what I hear) but the video is a winter wonderland of the wonky and weird. But don’t take my word for it: check it out for yourself:
And now, may we present for the first time on this website, an authentic, original tale of Christmas Eve on Acid or At Least Giving Every Appearance of Being Under The Influence of Something Hallucinogenicish?
Well, it was the Drive. For those of you who don’t know, the Drive is Commerical Drive, or rather a section of it extending from about Venables to maybe 2nd or at a stretch Broadway, although that really IS stretching it. It has many nifty shops forartsies and hippies old and new, particularly those with a fondness for plants and produce. And yeah, they’re big on altered states there, whether you alter your consciousness by reading Sartre or by ingesting something.
The audACIDy of Dope
So my conclusion that the young man in the following story may have been under the influence of influencers is not without foundation, however shaky, particularly after the fifth eggnog. NEVER let your foundation get into the eggnog ahead of you, or you don’t know where you’ll end up.
Where he and his overcoated companion ended up one snowy Christmas Eve was directly in front of a butcher store window.
Now, the Drive, I should explain, is the old Italian part of town, or used to be before the dirty hippies moved in. Now it’s full of old, stubborn Italians (do I repeat myself?) and dirty old hippies, dirty young hippies and a fair sprinkling of hipsters, who have begun going over the wall of their reservation along Main and infecting the rest of the city, wherever they can buy clove cigarettes and ironic tees.
Now these two? They were none of the above. One was a sturdy-looking, dark-haired (and possibly Italianate) twentysomething in, as explained above, an overcoat. A really quite snazzy overcoat of camel, though that’s probably just a euphemism for beige, as camels are not known for cold resistance now that I think of it.
The other, our befuddled protagonist, was equally twentysomething, and clad equally in an overcoat, although this was of the navy rather than camel persuasion and now that I think of it, it probably contained no fibres that had ever served in a military capacity at all.
And he was freaked out. Deeply, deeply freaked out. Like, screaming in the street, grabbing his head and running in circles Freaked The Fuck Right Out.
He’d probably have been running in a straight line, away from The Drive and back to Kerrisdale or the West End or whatever strange land from whence he came, but Camel Coat had a hold of his naval elbow and wasn’t letting go, cooing, “it’s okay, it’s okay, it can’t hurt you,” and causing his friend to zoom around in circles like a Jack Russell on speed.
And what Merry Christmas sight had caused a hitherto passing for sober young man to lose it right there on the Drive on a snowy Christmas Eve? Only a simple, homey, Old World holiday tradition, sitting right there in the window of the old-timey Italian butcher shop. Just this: click on if you DARE!
I’ve been told (repeatedly) that I’ve been in a bad mood lately, which is something that’ll put you in a bad mood even if you weren’t in one already, which I usually am, so I thought I might as well just fucking go with it. So. Merry Fucking Christmas.
… you boys at FOX still freak out every year about how everyone’s out to get your special trees. This is really the most important thing you have to talk about? Whether Target says Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas? Here’s a brainstorm: there’s a fucking war on. Our soldiers are out there dying while you guys do your 14th live feed of the day from WalMart to show us what good little consumers we are. What Would Jesus Do? He’d jump over that newsdesk and kick your ass for that shit. Are you sure you want to hang your journalism credentials on a story about what some guy calls a tree?
Well we’ve fucking had it. You want to play bullshit games and scream about how God’s fucking judgment is gonna come raining down on us if we don’t start watching our vocabulary? Go right the fuck ahead. But let me clue you in on something: fire and brimstone ain’t no deterrent for us. We’re not going to hell, assholes, we’re fucking in hell. We live with you.
Merry Fucking Christmas, by Denis Leary
Ol’ Saint Nick’s got bourbon breath
It’s so cold you could catch your death
A cop sold me some crystal meth
It’s a Merry Fucking Christmas
Everything’s so Christmassy
The streets are twinkling with frozen pee
My priest just sat on santa’s knee
It’s a Merry Fucking Christmas
All the kids go to bed each night to dream what santa brings ’em (brings ’em)
Unless they’re jewish or muslim or some other gyp religion
Crappy toys flying off the shelves
Midgets dressed up to look like elves
Spread good cheer or burn in hell
It’s a Merry Fucking Christmas
All the kids go to bed each night to dream what santa brings ’em
Unless they’re jewish or muslim or some other gyp religion
Cracklin’ fires to keep me warm
And my collection of asian porn
Cradle my bells and work my horn
It’s a keep on truckin’, last year suckin’, midget chuckin’, slap the puckin’, how much wood could a wood chuck chuckin’, Merry Fucking Christmas
Among many others. But not, I repeat, NOTMerry Fucking Christmas, which was done by Denis Leary. Or, for that matter, the War of 1812, which was done by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie and which is wonderful, but has nothing whatever to do with Christmas as far as I know. There is, in fact, no shortage of anti-Christmas music, although not quite enough to drown out the pathetic warblings of some long-dead alcoholic on the mall speaker system croaking out yet another twee iteration of “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree“.
Have yourself a merry fucking Christmas
Shove it up your ass
Pardon me for a seasoned greeting so crass
Have yourself a merry fucking Christmas
Keep drinking that eggnog
Chased with Jag shots so you’re in a drunken fog
No such thing as “the good old days”
Just get that out of your head
Though it’s better than the future
When we’ll all wish we were dead
Good luck on getting yourself together
That’s IF time allows
I wanted to kill this sacred cow somehow
So have yourself a merry fucking Christmas now
But wait, there’s more!
Merry Fucking Christmas was also done by the bad boys of South Park, who did such a super job on Team America, World Police (fuck yeah!) and here it is:
(apparently South Park has better lawyers than Denis Leary does)
I heard there is no Christmas
In the silly Middle East
No trees, no snow, no Santa Claus
They have different religious beliefs
They believe in Muhammad
And not in our holiday
And so every December
I go to the Middle East and say…
“Hey there Mr. Muslim
Merry fucking Christmas
Put down that book the Koran
And hear some holiday wishes.
In case you haven’t noticed
It’s Jesus’s birthday.
So get off your heathen Muslim ass
and fucking celebrate.
There is no holiday season in India I’ve heard
They don’t hang up their stockings
And that is just absurd!
They’ve never read a Christmas story.
They don’t know what Rudolph is about
And that is why in December
I’ll go to India and shout…
Hey there Mr. Hinduist
Merry fucking Christmas
Drink eggnog and eat some beef
And pass it to the missus.
In case you haven’t noticed
It’s Jesus’s birthday
So get off your heathen Hindu ass
and fucking celebrate!
Now I heard that in Japan
Everyone just lives in sin
They pray to several gods
And put needles in their skin.
On December 25th
All they do is eat a cake
And that is why I go to Japan
And walk around and say…
Hey there Mr. Shintoist
Merry fucking Christmas
God is going to kick your ass
You infidelic pagan scum.
In case you haven’t noticed
There’s festive things to do
So lets all rejoice for Jesus
And Merry fucking Christmas to you.
On Christmas day I travel `round theworld and say,
Taoists, Krishnas, Buddhists, and all you atheists too,
Merry Fucking Christmas, To You!
Now if that doesn’t put you in the right mood, there’s only ONE thing I can do to shake the Christmas Spirit into your thick skull, and that is to introduce you to my new favorite Christmastime movie, In Bruges.
.
raincoaster 