My most recent invention is a dating service called Hater Mater, where people are paired based on the things they dislike rather than the things that they like.
This is the preliminary questionnaire I have written for people using the App:

1. On a scale of 0-10, how much do you hate the sky?

2. Please choose the stupidest fucking sign in the zodiac.

3. Order these celebrities in the sequence in which you would most want to see them surreally injured in a crossbow incident:

Amy Schumer
The Ikea Monkey
Ethan Hawke
The entire cast from Orange is the New Black
Eric Trump
Adam Driver and Terry Richardson

4. On a scale of 0-10, how much do you hate the ocean?

5. Which Margaret Atwood novel gives you the worst stabbing stomach pain?

6. What do you hate more, squirrels or birds? (Please elaborate)

7. Do your parents hate you more than you hate them, or do you hate them more than they hate you?

8. Is you best friend kind of an asshole?

9. Do you find chopsticks to be infuriating and stupid and pretentious?

10. Do you often find yourself fantasizing about making over-rated Canadian author Margaret Atwood cry?

11. Which part of this passage from a celebrated Margaret Atwood novel do you despise the most?

“Who are you? And I mean really. Who are you?”

My gut tells me that if I tell her right now, in this moment, it will not be well-received. “A friend,” I say, my gaze lowering to her lush mouth and lifting. “And the man who wants to kiss you. Really kiss you. Can I kiss you, Myla?”

“You’re asking?”

“Yes. I’m asking. After all you’ve been through-”

“He hasn’t destroyed me. He hasn’t beaten me and I don’t like that you think he has.”

“I don’t think he’s beaten you.”

“He hasn’t,” she insists. “I’m not giving him that power and damn it, you better not either by treating me like I’m broken and fragile. So kiss me if you’re going to kiss me or let me go, if you don’t want-”

I cup the back of her head, and slant my mouth over hers, my tongue sliding against hers, stroking, caressing, and the taste of her, one part hunger I welcome, but the other part, the torment, I intend to drive away. I deepen the kiss, my hand pressing beneath her tank top, finding warm, soft skin. My fingers splay over her rib cage, while my mind reminds me that no matter how big she talks, she wants this escape for a reason. She has been abused, used, hurt. “

12. “Everybody loves a parade,” true or false?

13. Is Real Estate for fools?

14. When you hear the word “Mindfulness” do you want to build an attack drone or buy a magic killing sword?

15. What do you hate more, having to use a sink or writing with a pen?

16. Which superhero would you most like to beat-up in a fight?

17. Do you hate it when people say, “Good Morning!”

18. Are relationships insanely unrealistic and entirely impossible?

19. On a scale of 1 to 100, how much do you hate non-Spanish speaking people who pronounce Nicaragua as ‘Knee-ah-rah-hah?”

20. If you heard that Margaret Atwood opened a restaurant and that all the sandwiches were named after her poems, would you immediately vomit?

***********************************************************

Hello America!!

I am Melania, the luckiest woman in the world, and I am so happy to be here before you!

Why, you might ask, am I the luckiest woman in the world?

Is it because I am beautiful?

Is it because of my gorgeous dress and luxurious jewelry?

Is it because I am like champagne?

Is it because I am so very rich and famous I never have to wait in line?

Is it because I speak five languages?

Is it because I am white?

(Wait for enthusiastic screaming to subside)

NO!

It is because I am married to the greatest man in the entire world, Donald Trump.

Donald is the perfect husband. He has bought me so many wonderful things! He is so smart and such a great negotiator, and he loves America so much! He wants America to be the best, like him. He wants America to be #1 again!

(Wait for applause)

Thank you for your applause, you are such a classy audience, so very classy!

(Wait for applause)

Some people, some very bad people, say that I copied my last speech from a black woman. This is monkeyshines! I would never do such a thing. I am innocent and I will sue!

(Wait for cheering and celebratory gunshots to cease)

Thank you America, thank you!

Donald Trump, the next President of the United States and author of the hit bestseller The Art of the Deal, is not just my husband, but also my lover.

Yes, and let me tell you, he is as good at making love as he is at making deals!

(Crowd goes wild)

My lover is also tough on terror!

He will not tolerate it!

He will fire it like a bad apprentice!

With Donald you will always feel secure because you know that if any terrorists, or some loser country, were to try any monkeyshines, he would destroy them.

(Pretend to be a sexy cowboy/stripper shooting a gun)

He would. It would be no joke.

(Wag finger)

Let me ask you beautiful Americans, who does Hillary Clinton reminds you of?

Ha, yes, she does remind me very much of an old Jew!

Who else does she remind you of?

Yes, a lesbian for sure! She has no fashion sense, no class. She dresses like a box.

A hag robot! Yes!

And of course, yes, a serial killer. It is in her eyes, the killing.

So many horrible things she reminds us of, so, so many horrible things!

In closing I want to say that Donald Trump is a beautiful, beautiful man. So rich and so successful and so sexy. Not only does he live the American dream, he is the American Dream, and he will restore the American dream for all of you beautiful patriots.

I love you, America, open carry for all, and remember to follow the next President of the United States @realDonaldTrump!

Middle-aged men, guys getting off work and who are still in their FedEx or Hydro uniforms go there. Each night, as part of a promotion, the bar host’s a card came which takes place at the back on one of those poker tables you can buy at Canadian Tire. The other night it was Texas Hold ‘Em they were playing, and although it’s a cashless game, since it’s poker, people felt heavily invested.

As I was sitting at the bar drifting through the sports section, a fight erupted at the back of the bar. It was extraordinary how quickly rage, explosive rage, swept in and over the table. Men, something now ignited within, had pushed back their chairs and were standing. Screaming and swearing, they waved their arms about and stiffened into fighting posture, fists clenched. A woman, who seemed to be at the centre of it all, had a voice that was a black, untranslatable hiss, more the unearthly vocalizations of possession than language. She threw a glass against the wall, her long hair waving in fury, as the men shouted. It seemed the very manifestation of mental illness, that from the collective interiors of these people, a dark, stormy cloud of violence had been summoned.

But the thing that struck me the most was how quickly it all passed, and how everybody seemed to enjoy it. It had been fun for them. What, I wonder, does that say about us? On a frigid, lonely night in February a group of strangers go out looking for something. They find one another at a card table in a bar, and what they needed was this, to wake up and experience that jolt of electricity spiking through their bodies, so that for a moment each one of them was alive in the streaming arteries,  heroes on a battlefield, the lion’s roar that answered back to the night.

Here are three:

Dear Mike,

I have just read a novel in which an Englishman sees Spokane, Washington for the first time from a window of an airplane. It reminds him of Northwest Pakistan. Do you ever look at a place or a thing and it reminds you of something on the other side of the world? The first time I saw Athens from the air it reminded me of a coral reef deep in an ocean where I had never been.

Dear Mike,

Do you think you would ever be able to remember everyone who ever asked you the time? The only instance I remember very clearly was when I was 18 and sitting in the airport in Milan. An Italian man in a suit said something to me and pointed to his watch. I was terrified and shrugged and waved my watchless wrist at him. It became a habitual gesture. People ask me the time and I point to my wrist, whether I am wearing a watch or not.

Dear Mike,

The first time I saw the Milky Way I was seven years old. We were driving home to Chicago from my grandparents’ house in Lorain, Ohio in the middle of the night and my dad pulled the car over in a place where there were no streetlights and showed it to me. I remember the feeling of crouching as I looked at the sky.

I sat at the bar, listening to your message once again, and still smiling, spun on my stool like a liberated child. Before me on a little stage a beautiful woman with severe and mysterious bangs performed music that was alien and precious and entirely lovely. In a nearby booth there was a young couple– arm in arm, their heads pressed together. They swayed to the music. Oh, oh, what a beautiful autumn night, really, what a lovely night, and this couple, you could see that they weren’t expecting to find this tiny miracle unfolding before them, this music playing just for them. They were just out for a quick drink, maybe a bite, but now they were in the middle of a poem, everything they encountered a happy accident, the soundtrack to their romance.

I had to leave a little bit early and the musician was still performing. As I passed by her I turned and smiled, giving her the thumbs up and mouthing the word, “awesome.” She smiled and nodded, and I like to think her eyes sparked with a little bit of surprise and gratitude, and then I hit the street, a little bit of rain falling, and I was then, as I am now, thinking of you.

Heidi, our dog:

Our eight-year old Miniature Dachshund has a mysterious marking that looks a little bit like a scar on her nose. When we asked the breeder about this she became very nervous and evasive, worrying the Rosary Beads she had around her neck. She told us it was a “bee sting,” but then begged us not to ask any more questions, knocking $50 off the price for Heidi, “Just take her now, please!!”

Since we took her, we did some research and found out that she was rejected by a previous family. The dog, apparently excited, jumped on the family’s three-year old daughter, knocking her over onto a coffee table. The girl hit her head and was rendered unconscious. The family found her probably about ten minutes after the encounter, with Heidi licking the blood off her head so that it was all over her muzzle. The family was utterly traumatized.  The girl fell into a coma, and although she survived, she now has an imaginary friend named Heidi who makes her do bad things. The family returned Heidi, our dog, to the breeder immediately after the incident. It was the fourth time Heidi had been returned to the breeder by frightened families.

Heidi has knocked me down on at least seven different occasions.

The Crying Boy:

This print, by the Italian artist, Bruno Amadio, was “given” to us by a friend who said he no longer had space for it as he had moved. The painting is huge, perhaps seven feet by five feet, and it looms massively above our living room sofa. Wherever you are, the crying boy is staring at you. We have had the painting for 1 year, and in that time I have been fired from 6 jobs, got shingles and assaulted 4 people. The painting is cursed. I tried to burn it once, but it was impervious to flames.

Heidi’s toy, Belial:

The breeder hastily shoved this toy into Heidi’s crate just as we were about to drive away, “It’s named Belial,” she shouted, “ it is of your dog!” We thought it was a pretty weird thing to say, but whatever. As it turns out, this squeak toy is indestructible. I have thrown it out at least a dozen times and even gone so far as to bury it in the backyard, but it always returns, lying at the end of our bed, staring at us with it’s dead, demon eyes.

Sometimes, when Heidi is playing with it and there’s a frenzy of squeaking in the apartment, Rachelle and I can sometimes hear recognizable phrases forming amidst the cacophony. ” Four-eyes must die,” “Drown him in blood,” “Eat all his food,” “His fear feeds you.” Once, I woke up from a nightmare*(see next entry) to see Belial in the chandelier above our bed just staring down at me. It was the most chilling thing I have ever felt.

Squirrel Pelt Blanket:

When we first got this blanket as a gift, we kept it at the foot of our bed, but both Rachelle and I were plagued by horrible dreams about being a squirrel and getting hunted down and skinned by an old, West Pennsylvania Mountain Man. The same dream, again and again and again. They were utterly terrifying and we’d both wake up screaming, the dog shrieking, too. When we moved the blanket and put it on a radiator in the living room, the nightmares stopped, although squirrels, baleful and lost, often mass on the fire escape outside the window and just stare in at it, as if in silent, foreboding judgment.

August 15, 2014

Dear J-Law:

It’s me, Michael Murray again, just writing you a quick note to wish you a most excellent and happy birthday! It must feel incredible to be just turning 24, having already won an Academy Award and been nominated for a few others, all the while being utterly adored by absolutely everybody on the planet, including the Chinese, who are known to be cautious with their affection.

Chinese people never seem to like me. I don’t know why but I’m starting to think it might be because I’m really good at ping-pong and that they’re just a really insecure people. Any thoughts?

I would like to play ping-pong with you- we’d be a great match! ( I am gifted at puns)

At any rate, I have to say, I’d really like to feel incredible like you must feel all the time. It must be pretty cool, that feeling. Sometimes I feel depressed. Like right now, as I think about the insecure Chinese and how they hate me, I’m also realizing that I’m old enough to be your father! Funny, that, because it really feels like there’s great chemistry between us. If we starred in a movie together I think we’d become the next great couple.

Jennichael.

Do you know what helps depression? Touching. If you were to touch me I would feel less depressed. It’s a medical fact. It’s called Touch Therapy.

There’s also Sensual Touch Therapy for the people who really care.

It was a real shame about Robin Williams, don’t you think?

Anyway, I don’t want to be a drag on your big day, my depression isn’t that bad! I only get down because I’m sensitive and feel life more than most people! I just wanted to give you a big shout-out and wish you an incredible birthday full of much happiness, health, joy and success, and to let you know that Touch Therapy really works. It does, it saves lives. You are beautiful, staggeringly beautiful, and I bet you have cool, soft hands that smell like poems.

I would love to hang with you if you’re in Toronto for the Film Festival next month!

Michael Murray

PS: Bradley Cooper (pretentious name) is much older than you. Did you sleep with him when you made Silver Lining Playbook? I have seen that movie 24 times, once for every year you’ve been alive.

The girl in front of me in the line-up was squarely built and dressed like a farmer. She had the red hair of an outsider and looked quiet, like she was still trying to decide who she was to become. On her right wrist there was a tattoo, a vividly green box with the word LIFE beneath it– a rebellion of optimism. You could see how the liberty of a new city and the excitement of an unwritten life, just now, finally developing, was animating her eyes, her eyes, which were so alert and watching everything,  just waiting for what was to happen next.

*********************************

Prince:

“ It was in 2004 and I was on a flight from London to Dubai. While flipping through the stations on my headset I started to listen to the Oldies station because they were playing a little known Beach Boys song that I just adore called “I Can Hear Music.” I just sort of fell into the station the way that you do, and then as if plucked from my nightmares, they played “Purple Rain.” I will never forget the cheesy announcer saying, “He may be a gracefully aging king now, but he’ll always be a Prince to us.” I wanted the plane to crash.”

Bryan Adams:

“I was at the fucking Home Hardware buying a couple of those big 5 gallon water pumps for my studio, okay?”

Michael Stipe of REM:

“I was paying for gas in Michigan. Funny, though, it didn’t make me feel old or irrelevant, it just made me feel beyond time. How long did it take for that to happen? 20 years? That’s really not very much time, but that’s all it took for us to become a part of musical history, to become the music that your parents loved. “

Sarah McLachlan:

“Oh Christ, I wish you hadn’t asked me that! I was in a Vancouver wine bar with a friend and the place was playing some generic radio station, and I don’t know why, but I was listening to the DJ just as she announced, “And here’s an oldie but a goodie by our own Sarah McLachlan—a classy woman.” And then my song “I Will Remember You “ came on and all I could think about was some woman in a retirement home singing along, broken and out of key, while thinking of her dead husband. Oh, it was just awful, I mean, it shouldn’t have been, but it was, it really, really was. And my friend Liz, who was sitting across from me, could see the obvious look of mortification on my face, and she just said, “Classy, classy woman, that Sarah McLachlan. “

Randy Travis:

“The God honest truth is I’m not positive that it was an Oldie’s station, but I was damn sure at the time that it was. I was in jail, that first night after my infamous DUI, and as I was getting processed one of the clerks was playing her radio and my song “Forever and Ever, Amen,” came on. I looked up, startled and ashamed, thinking about the words and what was actually happening to me, and I must have looked a fright because she turned it off immediately.”

“In this picture I was thinking about the colour of the car, how it was like the bottom of one of those above-ground swimming pools that the poor people put up in their backyards. I grew up with a real pool. We were rich. Pools are a good way of excluding people and creating pecking orders. The football guys liked to hangout at our pool, but without the pool, who knows? I was also wondering about all the sex that took place in that car. A lot, I bet.

“ In this photograph I was thinking about what it would feel like to shoot a monkey, the Ikea Monkey in particular. What was his name? Genesis? Something stupid. Anyway, ever since that monkey became a big media story I’ve been having fantasies about shooting it. Not sure why. It might be the little, gay coat that bugs me. It’s not natural that a boy monkey is dressed that way. “

“ Blow Jobs and the way that pets look at you funny when you’re having sex.”

“I don’t want to sound vain because I’m a man of the people, but I was thinking that I look good in hats. A lot of people say that you can measure a politician’s success by how natural and at ease he looks in different hats. (Don’t know what the policy is for chicks). I think a lot of my political success has to do with my ability to look good in a hat.

“ I probably should have been thinking about the owl, but I was deep in thought right there considering the works of Roman poet and philosopher Lucretious and his views on Epicurean principles and Atomism. I think that a lot of people misunderstand hedonism and I was trying to untangle that philosophical quandary and than suddenly I was like, “Oh fuck, an owl!”