I’m in the process of updating the look and function of this site; rather than simply a writing & music blog, phoenixwolfray.com will become an umbrella and portal for my other web identities such as earthmatrix.net, word of mouth, myspace and who knows what all. So ‘Truth is a Crazy Poet’ will no longer be the title of the blog, sad to say. I was fond of that name, though it met with resistance from certain quarters (’crazy? why crazy?’). Off it goes, and the site will nakedly stand in my own name.

Stay tuned for further tweaks and changes!

So what do you think of the new masthead? I rather like it. A little more mysterious, less in-your-face.

Woman of a certain age and shape seeks soul mate

Must be willing to surrender everything to the one you love (me), to adopt my particular form as your physical ideal and to be my ardent admirer in all areas. The sound of my voice must thrill you and the scent of my body intoxicate you. I will become your drug.

I expect to occupy the center of your attention at all times, and while I am absent, you should spend your free time devising new ways to please me. You will be expected to pay frequent sincere compliments without being asked. It is essential that you know exactly what I am thinking at all times to ensure that you do not say anything that might hurt, shock or antagonize me. You must learn to consider my feelings and well-being to be a sacred trust which it is your task to nurture with the utmost care and tenderness.

I am unique, and I know exactly what I want. You will be expected to know what that is at all times, to serve me without question or complaint and to worship me as your Queen. I will not reciprocate the worship (though I will occasionally caress your flesh and feed you enough crumbs of affection to keep you enslaved) because living in a patriarchal society has put me off Kings. Women must rule! - beginning at home, of course.

Once I have practiced my domination technique on you and gotten it right, I will move on to conquer patriarchy and grind the former world masters under my cleats. I expect you to follow faithfully at my heels, for I shall require someone to keep me supplied with excellent coffee, chocolate and back rubs.

As a reward (if you behave impeccably in all ways), you will be allowed to retain your testicles intact. More or less.

I’ve never been much for sports. Looking back, my sporting experiences have been disappointing. The one exception was Swedish Dodgeball in high school. For some unknown reason, that was the most popular game in the high school I went to.

The point of Swedish Dodgeball was to hit people with the ball. If they were hit, they were out, and then they’d go back behind the other team’s line and join in trying to hit whoever was left. In that game, I was magic. Untouchable. By the end of the game, it always came down to me and whoever was left on the other team.

My secret, of course, was fear of being whacked with the ball. They used a regular volleyball, which wasn’t nearly soft enough for me. Nerf dodgeball I could have handled. The girls shrieked ‘ouch’ and the boys made stoic grunting sounds when they were hit. It was a sadistic sport. I don’t remember ever actually being hit (though I suppose I must have been), but I do remember going to almost supernatural lengths to avoid the ball.

More advanced version of the game involved multiple balls, so in addition to being incredibly coordinated you had to have eyes in the back of your head. I could do that. Fear of pain will spur a body to feats of magic. I’ve always had a low pain threshold; I allowed myself to become pregnant only by dint of conveniently forgetting (until the eighth month) that pain was (gulp) centrally involved, then spending the last month in terror listening to ubiquitous tales from other women relating their own childbearing agonies in salacious, play-by-play detail.

But I am speaking of sports. My only other brief spasm of sports-related activity was as an adult. I played ladies’ rec softball for a single season. I got better fast; in fact, I won the trophy for ‘most improved player’… but that doesn’t mean I got good. It just shows how really, really pathetic I was at the beginning.

Nothing could have induced me to play a second season, though. Way too much pain. I couldn’t handle a game that involved actually trying to make physical contact with the ball; not a big soft squishy ball, either, but a hard round missile that left purpling bruises all over my body. I could never quite catch those bouncing low grounders..

By the end of my first and last season playing softball, my legs weren’t fit to be seen in shorts. I looked like I’d been mugged by a midget. If the point of the game had been to avoid the ball, I could’ve been a star, but as it was, I was middling pathetic, flinching away instead of chasing after the ball, and then getting hit in the legs anyway.

Softball was a masochistic game all around. Everything resulted in pain. Sprinting at top speed from a standing start, whacking a hard ball with a hard wooden bat and screeching to sudden bone-jarring stops all resulted in various agonies in hips, shoulders and other wrenchable joints. And for what? The rewards were never clear to me, while the punishments were obvious. Even the best players hurt after a game. It was a joke.

My other problem with softball, aside from the pain thing, was I could never get the hang of how to throw the ball properly. Naturally, I threw ‘like a girl’. I couldn’t figure that out. Why didn’t boys throw like that? Was there a “Secret Order of Balls (S.O.B.)” in which boys were initiated into proper throwing techniques and warned, on pain of expulsion from the brotherhood, never to reveal the sacred mysteries to a female?

Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, I eventually decided it must be a matter of anatomy. Boys’ arms were jointed differently than girls. The occasional girl or woman who could throw the ball properly must have had some boy genes somewhere. Then there were boys like my brother who also threw like girls. Well, clearly they lacked the ball-throwing boy gene.

Now, I’m told it’s a simple matter of technique: how you ‘cock your elbow’ (hmm…). I’ve been assured that I could easily be taught to throw a ball much farther than I ever dreamed possible. Even if it’s true, frankly, I’m not interested. There’s still the pain problem, and the question ‘why bother?’ has never been adequately answered.

Part of a series using the names (in bold font) in the ‘from’ field of spam emails I receive. They’re too good not to use!

Spamville Community News

by Deadline K. Lent

Top story: Spamville native son Frillier K. Recruited has joined the army in an apparent attempt to prove that he ‘is not a homo’. His stepfather, patriot and ex-military man Flagstaff L. Bright, stated to the press, ‘That pussy kid’ll shoot himself in the foot. Those limp wrists can’t hold up a rifle.’

Mr. Recruited’s mother Manana E. Saddling (who uses her maiden name), celebrated down at the Spamville Pub, pouring beer after beer down the reluctant boy’s throat, reportedly shouting, “I knew he had it in him! You go shoot yourself some Ay-rabs, Frilly boy! Whoo-hoo! That’s my little hombre!”

Barstool therapist Houseflies I. Psychoanalysis had this to say about the young man’s chances for military success. “Well, he’s got some steel under those rose petals, and his body language suggests a certain level of determination. I’d say he’ll make it through basic training all right. But under fire? There’s the real test.”

Onlooker Retrospective P. Bias said, “I remember that boy from when he was a kid. He used to run home crying when the other kids picked on him. He won’t last out the first day.”

Slumped on the next barstool, pub regular Baboon Q. Tediousness began a long-winded monologue which drove other customers home.

Over at the barbershop, barber Pigeonholes H. Haircuts went on record with his opinion. “That boy’s a homo, no question in my mind. I had him pegged from the first minute I saw him.”

In other news, ex-Spamville Mayor Defamed R. Vacationing, forced from office under accusations of embezzlement, was heard from recently by email. “I didn’t do it, I swear,” he wrote from the deck of a cruising luxury yacht in the Caribbean.

Suitor M. Straiting is still engaged in his unsuccussful courtship of local girl Kathie V. Transition. “I’m changing and growing, and he’s just so stuck,” she explained, when asked why she kept refusing his offers of marriage.

Scrounger H. Redistributing, owner of second-hand shop ‘Collectibles and Reusables,’ discovered a surprise passenger in a shipment from Toledo. Disgusts V. Stowaway emerged, coughing, from a box that had originally contained fish fertilizer. When asked why he was there, he claimed to have been dared to do it by a reckless ‘so-called friend’, Riskiness T. Jeremy. Mr. Jeremy himself was ‘probably in Alaska by now, and good riddance,’ avowed Mr. Stowaway.

A local man, Pornographic A. Array, has been arrested with an extensive collection of obscene material, including kiddie porn. The porn was being circulated all over the world via the internet by Centrifuge Q. Distribute (also under arrest). Child-protection activist Tenderness B. Crusaded accused unsavoury pair Pigsty P. Displacement and Zefirelli U. Deathly of complicity in the porn ring, using children under their care. Freelance investigator Mulder E. Aggregations is checking into the possibility that this may be part of a global and extraterrestrial conspiracy.

Australian exchange student, Vegemite U. Carom, got into a scrape yesterday with the aid of local boy Wheelbarrow Q. Bugle. Veggie was seen pushing Wheelie full tilt down the middle of Main Street in a barrow full of potato chips and chocolate bars stolen from Spamville Foods. Police caught up with the two by following the sound of Wheelie’s trumpeting voice. The youngsters were reprimanded and the wheelbarrow confiscated.

Marry H. Obtusely has filed for divorce from her husband of two weeks, Fumigator D. Spooned, claiming, “I was an idiot to hook up with this guy. What was I thinking? He smells horrible and then he wants to cuddle up in bed. I haven’t slept a wink in two weeks!”

Local ‘reincarnation cult’ leaders, Turns O. Relives and Preexisted O. Begets, have announced that they have co-written a book of past-life memoirs, entitled “Born Again (and Again, and Again)”. Skeptic crusaders Disputation K. Furze and Unbend I. Ahriman have vowed to do everything in their power to turn people against such rampant fuzzyheaded nonsense, which they claim will ruin the country if left unchecked.

“I don’t see what their problem is,” shrugged publisher Honestly I. Immunity. “I think folks are generally smart enough to stick with what they know is true. These guys have as much right as anybody to tell their story.”

I’m beginning to look forward to the spam in my inbox. Sometimes the name in the ‘from’ field provides me with the best laugh of the day! I’ve accumulated a wealth, a veritable cornucopia of deliciously oddball spam names since the last ‘Recycling Spam’, so I figure it’s time to revisit the form. Besides, my number one fan keeps bugging me to write another one… I have enough material now for a whole spam novel, so I’ll do this in segments.

The first episode is devoted to my favourite type of spam name: the ones that tell the story all by themselves, while bearing no resemblance to any actual English proper name.

Backing D. Egregious is the silent (and controlling) partner in a multinational corporation known for its Third-World employee abuses (verging on slavery) and heavy polluting practices. Backing’s ‘lawyer’, Hedges U. Offenses, is infamous for his knowledge of law loopholery and liberal use of sleazy backroom palm-greasing.

This next group of names lends itself well to the tale of a typical Canadian high school, which we will call Spam High.

Hectically P. Roughhouses is the gym teacher, popular with the boys, though the girls prefer their English teacher, Skitters R. Nightingale. Mr. Nightingale unfortunately suffers much from the practical jokes and vexatious teasing of the boys in the class as well as Mr.Roughhouses himself. The girls swoon over Skitters’ poetry, which makes the boys jealous and threatens poor Hectically, whose vocabulary is rather limited.

The principal, McLeod D. Haughty, not known for her ‘people skills’, has her hands full mediating a feud between the brilliant new computing teacher, Cybernetics D. Gingkoe and the aged chemistry teacher, Microbe H. Gangrening. Mr. Gangrening, envious of the cachet that computing carries with kids in the modern world, has taken every opportunity to poison the students against Mr. Gingkoe’s classes (to no avail, I might add). Mr. Gingkoe, in turn, thinks Mr. Gangrening is a repulsive old troll and makes his opinion known with acerbic wit, much to the students’ glee.

The ‘bad kid’ in school, Scorning O. Hallucinates (who is chronically high in class), is becoming a thorn in the side of the Social Studies teacher, Ms. Blighted D. Occident. Ms. Occident’s bigoted western-centric view of history and the world in general strikes Scorning as impossibly narrow, and he heckles her mercilessly from the back of the room.

Drama and music teachers Coy D. Mississippi and Flutist H. Rhone have caused some drama of their own with their newly-fledged lesbian romance. More than one boy has been smitten with Miss Mississippi’s soft beauty and Southern charm, while Ms. Rhone has been known to lacerate her less-than-brilliantly-gifted students with sharply-edged criticisms, puncturing their self-esteem and all but destroying any musical career aspirations.

Gdansk K. Southerlies, the new kid from the south of Poland, was himself hopelessly in love with Coy and has conceived a jealous hatred of Ms. Rhone (though himself her star student). He has been muttering darkly in the hallways (in Polish) about little else, frightening some of the younger students terribly.

This situation is causing no end of concern to the spiritual leadership of the community, who consider the doings at the school to be within their province. The strongest pressure comes from the Catholic priest, Crucifix H. Burnside and the United Church minister, Simpling D. Eulogy. Father Burnside demands that the school immediately fire both women, who will surely be further punished with eternal Hell; Reverend Eulogy holds out hope for their redemption, but also calls for a ‘compassionate’ dismissal.

Simpling, unbeknownst to anyone, has a daughter by an estranged former wife. His daughter (who calls herself Fishes H. Patricide), a proud lesbian, has rebuffed all attempts at contact by her father. Simpling blames her mother, Brigitte N. Sargent, for marrying a weakling she could dominate (Lawrence Bland). In Simpling’s mind, Brigitte twisted Fishes’ attitude towards men and therefore, him. Simpling’s motives aren’t as simple as they seem.

Believe it or not, as I write, a new spam name has come into my Inbox:

Epoch F. Sweated, who has been waiting forever for this opportunity, arrived breathlessly at the last minute–just under the wire–in order to make it into this story. Epoch is chronically late for class, is picked last for every team, is terrified of girls and is basically just waiting for school to end.

The drama continues at Spam High.

Watch for the next episode of Recycling Spam.

I can’t decide if writing is a craft or a purge
It’s just sometimes I get this primitive urge
(and I don’t know whether to shit or give birth.)

Braincells swell to bursting like blind mice in a bag
and bust out just like popcorn, it’s another writing jag
(I don’t know whether to swell up or sag.)

Can’t tell if I’m writing real poetry or shit
It’s hard to know the difference from right here where I sit
(I don’t know whether to bear down or quit.)

If a piece of work is shit, then it don’t need quality
To me it’s still important, even necessary
(the consequence of stopping could be very messy.)

But if I am a poet, and I give birth with my words
then I should know the difference twixt my babies and my turds
(The consequence of raising shit might be quite absurd.)

Whether crapping or creating, I really must be wary,
my children I should care for, and my turds I ought to bury
(Once upon a time I met a turd I tried to marry.)

My perceptual discrepancies have left me in a bind
I’ve carried shit around with me while babies crawled behind
(if you see me holding shit, tell me - I won’t mind)

I get a fair amount of spam, though not nearly as much as some people do. It used to really bug me. I hated it. I would growl and hit the delete key hard. Then I started to notice that some of the names in the ‘from’ field were actually pretty funny. Now spam has become entertainment! Peter and I swap our favourite spam names of the day, and I’ve developed quite a collection by going through my Deleted Items and culling out the weirdest and wackiest of the bunch.

My favourites are the ones that tell a story all by themselves.

Spectrum H. Shirk, the ultimate lazy man’s hero, is able to effortlessly avoid the full range of work-related behaviors.

Poor Lancer G. Atonement, who once committed a vile crime, has had to make up for it the hard way.

Flunked A. Satinwood suffered a tragic childhood educational trauma, but was redeemed by learning to craft fine wooden cabinets.

Muffs L. Showeriest, the high-school tramp, later went into the sex trade, to be cruelly treated by her sleazy pimp, Shinning I. Dooms.

Injury-prone Banging B. Agony is the maltreated blue-collar employee of heartless but wealthy industry mogul, Martinet H. Tyrannies.

Omelet Brister had a run-in with con artist Dexter Deal, and has regretted it ever since, but some things can’t be remedied (like broken eggs). Of course, Dexter got away with it; he gets away with everything.

Titted H. Kruger, however, never had a break in his life until he met his future wife, Lorinda Herring, who will never let him forget that she was the best thing to ever happen to him.

I love the ones that mix and match ethnicities:

McIntyre Joaquin… Scottish and Spanish…
Nils Duarte? Scandinavian-Spanish.
Neelan Gendreau sounds Indian and French.
Tuan Carmack… Vietnamese and ….?
Guiseppe Cortes is obviously Italian and Spanish.
Zebedee Silva is the son of a Puritan mother from Plymouth Rock and a Portuguese father.
Che Magee comes from a revolutionary Irish background.

But wait… there’s more. These ones I think of as ‘fiction names’… if you’re trying to think of a good name for a character in a book or story you’re writing, look no further:

Zabrina Frey is a poverty-stricken waitress daydreaming of being rescued by a rich customer, who arrives in the form of Chauncey Buttington. Chauncey is on the rebound from his childhood sweetheart, Cherry Valentin, who rejected him when she became a lesbian. Chauncey’s mother, soap-opera star Chanel Collins, refuses to allow Zabrina to stay with Chauncey, however, and bribes Rudolph Nicewander (who needs the money but isn’t a bad guy, really) to woo Zabrina away from her son, “who is too good for that cheap floozy.”

Sanford Staples, hard-up small-time Hollywood agent, is trying to find a good role for his washed-up former star, Rex Tallent. However, up-and-coming youngsters like Royal Bogle and Dallas Militano have been scooping all the good leads.

Noemi Knight wrote a scholarly feminist treatise which was scathingly criticized by reactionary anti-feminist icon Calista Goin, whose claim that women are biologically predetermined to serve men was ‘proved’ by quoting various scientific studies. Calista’s work was lionized by gay New York Post science columnist Bruce Numbers, whose lover, Brooks Sprague, once met Calista at an art opening and was impressed by her sense of style.

Eustace Bender, a failed salesman (he lost a big account that day), got drunk and was robbed in an alleyway by Dirk Bowling. Dirk, good-hearted but desperate, used the $75 he found in Bender’s wallet to purchase the drugs from back-alley pharmacist Jonah Testa that were needed to save his son Peabody’s life.

Chadwick Kimble and Violet Bake are both in the church choir, but only Violet can sing. Chadwick gets by on good looks and the fact that the choir leader, Melba Alexander, has a crush on him. Valentine Cyran, on the other hand, has a voice like a nightingale, much admired by music critic Vaughn Torred, mentor of child star Chasity Torres.

Efren Iott was a devotee of famed Eastern mystic Confucius Rouse, until he was deprogrammed by his pragmatic (and ham-fisted) friends, Tybalt Hammer and Storm Gee. Tybalt and Storm were a little over-enthusiastic in their deprogramming, and poor Efren suffered severe permanent brain damage.

I haven’t made these up, I swear. And that’s just scratching the surface. There are so many more! What about Wilmer Colon? Poor guy, I feel sorry for him already. And Malory Goins! That slimy bastard! How could I forget poor Athelstan Norman? Now his is a sad tale.

These people live! Twanna Willis, country gal, fell in love with Woodrow Tuton, smooth-talking city fella. And Kip Effner tries so hard, but his boss Horatio Gaete just won’t give him any respect.

Some of these folks could only belong in a lurid romance novel, while others would be at home in a murder mystery. Some are victims (Ody Spafford), while others are villains (King Dodson). Some would fit right into a Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut or J. K. Rowling novel.

This is a recycled post. It originally appeared on Word of Mouth on November 28 / 05. One day soon, I’ll write another one; I keep accumulating more great spam names! My favourite from yesterday was  “Backing D. Egregious”: Backing is the silent controlling partner in a corporation known for its Third-World employee abuse (verging on slavery) and heavy polluting practices…

A recent conversation brought up the idea of the weird foods we were raised with. This person grew up on the East Coast of the US, while I grew up in Northern BC, without television to influence my parents’ food buying choices. We had an amazing number of very specific weird childhood foods in common!

For example: creamed canned salmon with peas, on toast. This doesn’t, on the surface of it, seem particularly weird, except that the peas (of course) were from a can, therefore more grey than green, the ‘cream sauce’ had no actual cream in it (white flour, I believe), and the toast was white bread.

Another: canned soups such as tomato (bland liquid, pinkish because of added milk, no lumps) and cream of mushroom (bland whitish liquid, weird lumps). Nobody made soup from scratch when I was a kid. Maybe I’m the weird one, because I still see these products for sale in the stores, but who is eating them?

Memory flash: packaged chicken noodle soup, with needle-like noodles and a strange sharp flavour. This was considered to be a necessity when ill, despite the fact that the only detectable chicken was in the form of minute cardboard cubes.

Macaroni with canned tomatoes was a childhood staple in my house. This was elbow macaroni with a can of tomatoes dumped into it, with maybe some salt and pepper for seasoning. Otherwise, blah-nd. It was a favourite amongst the kids except me.

The east coast version added hamburger and V8 juice to the canned tomatoes and macaroni. They called it ‘American chop suey’ (really?? Weird!)

Another variant is what my mom called ‘guck’. This was hamburger cooked up with various (canned) veggies  including tomatoes and served with macaroni. Heavy on the macaroni. Some spices were added to this, so despite its name, it was edible.

Another way to eat burger (my favourite!) was cooking it up with onions, water added to make a thinnish gravylike sauce, the whole mess served on mashed potatoes. Lots of salt and pepper. Yumm. (Weird!) They had that on the east coast, too!

Many of my favourites as a kid are things I would now find inedible. I loved to broil slices of process cheese on toast until the cheese developed a thick blackish skin and cracked open to reveal the orange goo underneath. Sprinkle it with lots of seasoned salt, yumm. (Weeiiird)

I liked liver paste smeared on bread with tomatoes, lots of mayo and enough pepper to blacken the whole mess.

I used to like cheese whiz and strawberry jam sandwiches. This was all with white bread, of course, but at least my mom sometimes made the bread.

Speaking of homemade bread (this is not weird but talking about childhood food reminded me): fresh from the oven, smeared with butter (actually it was margerine then but I prefer butter now). YUMM

Other weird pan-coastal childhood snacks: saltine crackers thickly smeared with margerine. Nobody ate butter then. Sometimes we’d stack them so there’d be several layers separated by margerine.

Baloney is weird. Period. Therefore, any combination of food involving baloney (excuse me, bologna) qualifies as weird. The weirdest being plain baloney sandwiches, followed closely by baloney with anything else.

Fried baloney. It served to help disguise the bland pinkness of the ‘meat’ with char, but really, why bother?

Do they even make baloney anymore?

Cheese whiz. An early version of kraft dinner was cheese whiz mixed with macaroni.

I’d say ketchup was weird, but I still eat it on fries, so I guess it doesn’t qualify. But in those days, I ate it with everything, including eggs. (weird!)

Everything from a can. Nobody grew food when I was growing up except for maybe cucumbers and tomatoes (for sandwiches). Although, to be fair, my grandparents generally had a lush garden (I remember weeding it). But who ate from it? Maybe it was the grownups. Aha! They ate the garden veggies and fed the kids the weiners with canned pork and beans (almost forgot that one—the ‘pork’ was really a glob of lard. Brrr).

They’ll claim it was because we refused to eat the veggies. Of course, all I remember being offered (and forced to stay at the table until I finished) was the inedible canned stuff. Sitting at the table for hours holding a mouthful of canned peas that I couldn’t swallow because everytime I tried, I’d gag. (Anybody else belong to the ‘Clean Your Plate Club’ growing up?) Eventually I escaped by finding a place to spit it out.

Tomato sandwiches were weird even then! I’m talking about the kind of tomato sandwich we used to be sent to school with, which, by the time lunch rolled around, had turned into pink mush. Inedible even then.

Iceberg lettuce. The name says it all.

My kids will have their tales to tell of childhood weird foods. But the nature of the weird food offered was different. Things like strange things in stir-fries and failed experiments which I’ve forgotten but they are doomed to remember forever.

I did briefly try forcing my kids to eat the food I put in front of them. But one of them put a stop to that by the simple expedient of vomiting into his plate.

Now why didn’t I think of that?