Dear Santa:
I hope you enjoy your protein shake for your long journey.
I would like to know what it’s like to be Santa Claus.
Love,
Talullah from LA
Dear Talullah:
You should know that Santa is very grateful to you for leaving him a protein shake. You are a very sweet girl. Unfortunately, Santa is very lactose intolerant and suffers acute gastric distress whenever he has a protein shake, so he had to give it to Dasher, his lead reindeer, who is a bit of a hippy and really very experimental in his tastes. Last year Dasher tried Ayahuasca– saw serpents and had diarrhea for two days.
Santa isn’t sure how that “blessed” him with “spiritual advancement,” but whatever.
Santa will now try to answer all your questions!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-tunnel-dug-by-2-men-as-man-cave-police-say-1.2978109
Ever since I was asked to leave my UFO Watchers club and Fantasy Hockey League, I’ve been kind of lost and having a really hard time filling my days. My wife Rachelle suggested that instead of just lying around watching Friends on Netflix all day, I get a hobby, and so I did.
Tunnel Diary: Day 1
The best thing about my Hobby Tunnel is that it really puts me in touch with nature. It’s really going to be more of a “Fun-nel” than a tunnel! It’s so nice being alone in the forest with my shovel. The trees are my friends and I think digging a hole in the middle of the woods is an absolutely great hobby! I mean, it’s fantastic exercise and inexpensive! And I’m not scared, cold or lonely at all. Nope, my mind never wanders to worst-case scenarios, and I doubt very much that the curious assemblage of twigs, branches, dismembered dolls and a candle over there has anything to do with satanic ritual. The wind probably just blew it there like that so it’s reaching out to me like a message, not an accident. Nature sure is funny!
Tomorrow I will bring my iPod.
Reminder: Make digging play list.
Tunnel Diary: Day 2
Bringing the dog with me as company and protection was an excellent idea. It’s nice to be able to spend some quality time with her and watch her do something that she really loves. It’s true, Dachshunds are amazing diggers and she’s scared away at least two squirrels! Good dog, Heidi, good dog!
It’s funny though, whenever she goes near the dead doll shrine at the big oak she starts to whimper. Actually, looks like there’s a new disfigured doll over there today, one with a little pet dog doll.
Reminder: Research satanic rituals and voodoo.
Tunnel Diary: Day 9
All I think about is the tunnel, about how when it’s done it will be exactly like a long, narrow grave for many squirrels. How many squirrels? That’s a good question. Maybe 300, but it depends on the squirrels.
The trees have voices. My iPod cannot drown out the tree voices. Some trees like to share bad thoughts.
Tunnel Diary: Day 18
Today I killed a squirrel that strayed too far into our territory. It was a cleansing. I suffocated it with a zip lock baggie I had left over after my snack. (All the shoveling and tunneling really works up an appetite) In the wild you must learn to use anything you can to defend yourself and complete your mission. My grave tunnel will fit 666 of such purified squirrels, the exact number the trees require, and then the mission shall come to darkness.
Reminder: Remember to pick up tetra pack of white wine for tonight’s Game’s Night.
]]>He’s receded from public life and many have been wondering what he’s been doing. As it turns out, one of the things he’s been doing is applying to attend an Icelandic Writer’s Retreat in April. The application required that you write a short story or essay based on the following photograph of the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center:
This is Doug Ford’s entry:
Sometimes a guy can go to a pretty black place. That can happen after you lose an election. When your whole life has been about winning, and winning hard, losing feels like a sucker punch to the gut. Not even football or pornography or yelling at people can fill the hole. Sometimes a guy has to go to therapy.
Therapy is for the weak, and Ron Ice, a very successful businessman and philanthropist, was not a weak man. He was a powerful man, a man who was a shot put champion at his high school.
Girls used to gather around to watch him throw the shot put. Ron was like a Nordic god and he did very well with the ladies, thank you very much. Those were good times for Ron, but now, with all the critics and small people yammering away at him after the election, all the people who don’t understand how to run a business, he realized he needed to clear his head, even if it was the weak thing to do.
Ron looked deep into his soul and realized that he wanted to broaden his horizons.
Iceland.
Iceland was the territory that Ron always started in when he was playing Risk.
It had access to markets in both the east and west, had plenty of challenging terrain to hide in and there was little pollution. Ron would move to Iceland and start his empire there!
People loved Doug Ford in Iceland. He stood a good six inches taller than the rest of the population, and as he still looked like a Nordic god, people began to worship him, “Look!” the villagers would cry, “The prophecy is true and the Ice King now walks amongst us! Ron Ice took the country by goddamn storm.
One day ISIS terrorists took over the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center where they planned to burn Christians in cages. Ron Ice would have none of that. Ron drove down there in his jeep, got out and just walked into the place. People were in awe of what big balls he had. When the terrorists saw him they all started yelling and getting excited in that language of theirs. They waved machine guns around, but Ron was as cool as ice.
He just stared at them, a penetrating hate stare, and then he began to yell, his mighty eyes bulging, and when he did they all put down their weapons like subservient kittens and were arrested.
Ron Ice walked out of there, got back in his jeep and drove up to the misty green hills of Norðurland vestra, where he had some property and a condo, and from where he would soon launch his internationally successful printing business Ice King Labels and Tags.
]]>Me: (Examining the flyer he handed me while our dog Heidi was jumping about barking hysterically) Mister Adam Vaughan, let me quote here, it says, “I understand the transformative effect that good public transit can have on a community.”
Adam Vaughan: Yes, I think good transit is essential to relieve congestion, ease pollution and allow people of all income levels to have access to all the wonderful things our city has to offer.
Me: You know, I once saw a man expose his penis on the Queen streetcar.
(Awkward silence but for Heidi’s barking)
Me: It was there for people of all income levels to experience. Would you say that penis was one of the wonderful things our city has to offer? That it had the power to transform?
Adam Vaughan: I’d say that was an unfortunate incident that’s another example of the TTC being underfunded and the mentally ill underserved.
Me: One woman screamed and threw her knitting at him. It was a good strategy actually, as he hurried out through the back doors after that.
Adam Vaughan: Well, I’m running to become your Member of Parliament and I’m hoping I can rely on your support.
Me: I guess my endorsement would mean quite a bit for your campaign. I’m sure you want to get as many well-known writers as possible on board. Just makes sense, that.
Adam Vaughan: Yes, of course.
Me: I have a few more questions for you, do you mind?
Adam Vaughan: That’s why I’m here. Please, feel free!
Me: Well, the truth is that I know absolutely nothing about you other than what I just scanned on this flyer, so let’s start with some basics: If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
Adam Vaughan: Oh, geez, that’s a tough one.
Me: You can’t say “ a great fiscal policy for Toronto” or something lame like that.
Adam Vaughan: Spiderman. I’d love to be able to swing through the city.
Me: You can’t say Spiderman. He’s fictional. And that’s not much of an endorsement for our public transit, you know.
Adam Vaughan: Okay then, perhaps a cat. A cat that’s smart enough to take public transit.
Me: Good choice.
Adam Vaughan: Thanks.
Me: What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Adam Vaughan: Probably piety, it’s a kind of arrogance. This sounds like the Vanity Fair questionnaire, is it?
Me: Yes, the bits of it I can remember, anyway. Personally, I think confidence is horribly overrated.
Adam Vaughan: I see. Are you on disability?
Me: No.
Adam Vaughan: Well, thank you for your time, and please remember to vote on Election Day!
]]>
Painting #1
A lot of people fantasize about being the President. They like the idea of power, of absolute power, like I had, but what people fail to think about is that when you’re President of the United States of America there are an awful lot of people that want to kill you. I did a lot of stuff when I was President, stuff that made some people mad, and I never forgot this. Wherever I was, it was always in the back of my mind. Who was trying to sneak up on me? How were they going to do it? What did they know?
These feelings don’t go away, they stay with you.
In this painting I’m naked in the shower, vulnerable yet powerful. I hear the door open in the bathroom and I don’t know if the Day of Judgment has come in the form of an assassin or if it’s Laura just wanting a little. And so, in a moment of uncertainty, suspended between the anticipation of an erotic encounter or a battle to the death with a would-be murderer, I’m looking in that little mirror there to see what’s going to happen next.
Note the muscles in my back. I keep in pretty good shape.
Painting #2
I really like hot baths. It’s good alone time for fantasizing. But still, I always think of the assassin, of when the Angel of Death is going to come and get me, but when I’m in the bathtub I like to imagine the Angel of Death being like Angelina Jolie in that movie with Brad Pitt. They’re both assassins and she’s all like a dominatrix. Very sexy stuff.
In this painting I was thinking about that. Angelina Jolie is going to assassinate me and as she sneaks up behind me she sees my naked body. She’s attracted. The stream of water coming out of the faucet between my legs reminds her of a boner. Curious, she gets in the water with me and we go at it, but you never really know if it’s violence or passion, and then after we have wicked sex, I strangle her with the little chain from the bathtub plug and then I call Secret Service.
That’s what I was thinking when I made this painting.
]]>