Yeah.
That's *hick* right!

You know how I know I haven't hit rock bottom? There ain't no rocks.

Tonight was a night of wine, absinthe, and Kubrick. How do I get myself in these situations, I'll never know. A day at the mall = a day in hell. Though I escape with a new discman and a pair of dickies. Later we pop the cork and eat grilled cheese sandwiches. Classy. After an Antonioni film that is boring as one could expect it's onto Kubrick and films about orgies. Then more Kubrick and films about roving gangs of rapist teens. At some point I turn wine into absinthe. Jesus would be jealous. Now it's 3:47am and all I can hear is the rattling bass of cars as they pass by my bedroom window. Life keeps looking up and up.

Could this be
Pizza Diarist, Sr.?

So I've pretty much come to the conclusion that Jonathan Richman had sex with my mother sometime around 2 a.m. on October 1st, 1977. As much as it makes me ill to refer to such acts of repulsive disgustingness, it's the only explanation I can come up with for our striking similarities.

I mean, just look at him. Isn't it just like you're looking into a mirror. A mirror that I'm looking into? Hairy chest, bad hair, bulging forearms. Well, maybe not the forearms, but he dances just like me. Just look at the wrist action. And sure, he may have the ability to wear jeans, something that I lost a long time ago, but he writes songs about his love of the bells on the ice cream truck. And I love ice cream!

Today I reached just short of my goal of spending $100 at the boxing day sale at the local record store. It's a sad world we live in when $87.34 only gets you three albums, but what albums! Other than Pizza Diarist Sr.'s Rock and Roll with the Modern Lovers, I snagged the Minutemen's Post Mersh Vol. 1 and The Cure's Seventeen Seconds [Deluxe Edition].

Here's some more pictures of my dad.

My parents used to always complain every Christmas morning that I slept in far too long. I guess they always wanted one of those cute commercial scenes when the kid wakes their parents up every 5 minutes from 3am on, desperate to open his presents. Instead, my family's Norman Rockwell painting usually consisted of my father pounding on my bedroom door screaming at me to get the hell out of bed so we could start our merry fucking family Christmas while my mother could be heard in the background pacing back and forth crying and asking God what she ever did to deserve such lazy children.

So imagine the look on their faces had they seen me this Christmas morning, staggering from bed at roughly 1pm. The only pounding this holiday was the post gin binge jackhammer behind my right eye. After a short stint of dry retching in the toilet, I surveyed the room to confirm that Santa does in fact not exist.

He doesn't.

With that done I flopped onto the couch with a cup of joe and finished watching a film about female genital mutilation in Africa that I hadn't finished the night before. I realize that this might not be the most politically correct thing for me to say, but there really isn't anything else like a film about female genital mutilation in Africa to make you feel a whole lot better about spending a Christmas alone.

Luckily I clean up well as I was expected at my sister-in-law's parent's place for Christmas dinner. Luckily my brother and his wife being in town coincided perfectly with there being no one else in town better for me to hang out with, so I took them up on their invite. During the next four hours I meet a lot of people whose names I forgot as soon as the hand shake ended. I also drank far too many beers and am convinced I'm now going to be known as "my daughter's brother-in-law never invited to a family function again."

So, yeah, I guess that's it then. Call me when you get back in town. I want my presents.

Pizza Diarist Bids Adieu
to the Ecclesiastical
Gregorian Calendar

(at least until next payday)

In roughly 1582, Pope Gregory XIII proclaimed the existence of a new, more accurate calendar. This new Gregorian Calendar kicked the previous Julian Calendar's ass and swept the world faster than the bird flu. Amazingly enough, it's pretty much exactly the same calendar being used the world over today to mark the birth of Jesus.

Being an atheist means that I pretty much don't believe in any of this crap. So I guess it would be a hypocritical of me to follow a calendar that was proclaimed to exist by a Pope of all people. Which works fine for me since I really didn't want to celebrate Christmas this year anyhow.

So instead of today being December 25, 2005, it's actually December 12, 2005 based on the old Julian Calendar. But that's just too close for comfort.

According to the Mayan Long Calendar, today's date is in fact 12.19.12.16.7. That's better!

Today is day Qawl of month Masáil in the year of Hubb in the Bahá'í Calendar. But try saying that three times fast. Especially after one too many gin & tonics.

It's Excel Serial Day #38711 in the 1900 Date System still used in every PC. But since I'm soon to be a Mac user, I'd better use their 1904 Date sytem I guess. In which case it's actually day #37249. Whatever any of that means.

In Unix time value it's 1135468800. And yes. I am a geek.

Though, leave it up to the Chinese to make the best calendar. According to them it's the Year of the Chicken. How fitting.

So Santa, don't bother. I've left no cookies out for you because I've decided to be Jewish today. I'm really sorry, but it's not December 25, 2005. You're too late! It's actually 23 Kislev, 5766.

In your face, Christmas!

My Life In Film

Bill Murray, alone, in Lost in Translation

In order to keep whatever shred of sanity I had before this whole holiday debacle began, I've disappeared into the pixilated world of DVD Land. The nerdy counter boys at Supervideo must think I'm just about the saddest thing they've ever seen. I mean, who rents a dozen 2-hour movies then returns them, all watched, 24 hours later?

Takashi Shimura, alone, in Ikiru

I'll be the first to admit that movies have ruined me. My real world is so skewed by the influence of films I've seen that I will tell someone a story only to realize as I finish it that it was actually a scene from a movie. Like this time that I jumped in my car and drove up to a ski lodge to confront a woman that I once dated in high school and make her fall in love with me. That wasn't me! That was Emilio Estevez in St. Elmo's Fire!

Clive Owen, alone, in Closer

And then there was that time that my personality was split into my good and evil side by a new form of kryptonite and I had to battle a super computer invented by Richard Pryor that intended on taking over the world's oil industry. Or was that Superman 3?

Art Garfunkel, alone, in Bad Timing

Not all the films I picked were all that good. Closer was terrible. But Mysterious Skin wasn't bad (for a Gregg Araki film). And you can never go wrong with Kurosawa. But you can go wrong with Art Garfunkel. Trust me.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, alone, in Mysterious Skin

It was only through searching for images from the films for this post that a strange pattern began to emerge. Subconsciously I had apparently rented a dozen films involving people far worse off than myself. And let me just say, it did the trick. I guess if you take anything away from today's lesson it's not to knock other people's hard luck. It can come in handy when getting over your own.

10 years ago today...

More on D.Boon.

Trailer for the Minutemen documentary

"get off your ass, turn off your PC and don't come back until you've found this album and listened to it two thousand times."

Pizza Diarist's Big
Night on the Town

Ok, I admit, it's far too soon for me to be making eye contact with the opposite sex. So I did my best to keep my eyes trained on the bottom of a glass as much as possible. But when the beer was disappearing as fast as it was last night, you run out of things to look at.

I was sporting my normal uniform of bowling shoes, old man pants, fraying cardigan, and fur lined chesterfield coat. Add to this my new fur lined hunting cap and fur lined jowls, and you couldn't tell where the hat stopped and the jacket began.

Reflections was pretty empty when I first arrived and there's nothing sadder than being a newly single straight guy in a vacant gay bar on punk rock night. So I decided to slip unnoticed into the back of a pub around the corner for a drink. Or two. Or whatever. So I settled myself into a faux retro couch, leaned my head back against the trendy exposed brick wall, and proceeded to nurse my drink to death and wallow in my recent morose disposition. I figured my scowling would keep the hyenas at bay and the odour from not having bathed for a few days would give me some peace and quiet to think. I was wrong.

I guess I can't blame her for trying. The smell of vermouth that accompanied her blocked my defensive odour and she probably couldn't see straight enough to know that I was half her age. She was into older men and I fit the profile.

"Hi."
"Hi."
"Waiting for someone?"
"Yes." (no)
"Oh."
"..."
"I like your hat."
"Thanks."
"They make the best martinis here."
"..."
"*hick* Oh my. Excuse me!"
"I have to go."
"Oh.. well it was nice to..."

Even a vacant gay bar on punk rock night is better than this. I beat a hasty retreat.

Reflections was more my style. A smattering of a dozen or so sad souls, most of whom drinking straight from the pitcher. Between set blasphemous skits about baby Jesus' prowess at cunnilingus and a cover of "Taking Care of Business" but altered to "Taking Care of Christmas."

Bachman. Turner. Overdrive.

I beat a hasty retreat.

I end up passing out while watching the new Todd Solondz film. Nothing says Merry Christmas like getting hit on by a middle aged woman who thinks you're older than she is, Bachman-Turner Overdrive cover bands, and 12 year old girls in tube tops having sex with truckers in an attempt to become pregnant.

Pizza Diarist Bids Adieu to 16-Color Online Porn

Did you know that in 1995 Bill Gates paid Brian Eno $35,000 to write and record that sound you hear when Microsoft Windows starts up. Well, I'm truly sorry Brian Eno. I still respect you and all, but no more will I have the pleasure of listening to your 6 second "Hello" five times a day when I'm forced to restart my PC after it randomly freezes up and I'm forced to reboot because I'm running two programs at once. Sure, this computer is old, but even my grandmother can rub her tummy and pat her head at the same time. And she must be running at, what, like 25 MHz these days.

"DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT"

It was a tough decision to be sure. But I was prodded into taking my tendency towards impulsive purchasing to new heights by crack Mac dealer, Bishop. I must have stared at that "Purchase" button for two hours, all the while my Internet Messenger dinging threateningly. I guess what sealed the deal was the image of the beautiful new iMac, just glowing off of my 8" screen in all the 16 colour, 640 by 350 pixels of my EGA monitor. So I closed my eyes and clicked. That is, I flicked some switches and turned some knobs, inserted a punchcard, and watched all the dials on my 1963 mainframe computer light up like Fourth of July fireworks. Excitement coursed through my veins at 2400 baud modem speed.

Pizza Diarist like a pig in shit depression era homeless child living in a cardboard box

Alright, so I might be evicted when I can't pay next month's rent. True. But I figure the box my iMac arrives in should be big enough to fit my bed. And I'll just have to buy a printer and use that box as my office. It will also be worth it to see what the porn sites I frequent look like with actual realistic skin tone colours. No more EGA porn for Pizza Diarist!

p.s. Hopefully my new Mac will improve my photoshopping skills.

Heartbreak, Crushing Disappointment, Gut Wrenching Loneliness and Blindness Inducing Melancholia

or
Pizza Corner Christmas '05

Oh man. I could so milk this one for pity. Breaking up with my girlfriend a week before Christmas. Missing my flight because I fucked up and didn't look into the requirements to cross the border. Spending the holidays alone. I mean, come on people... This is one for the books!

And I admit it, I did a little suckling at the teat of Mrs. Pity at the start. But you know what, God works in mysterious ways. And if you removed from that sentence any reference to God, I could possibly almost agree.

I've expounded on my theories of the world ad nauseum, so I won't get into it any more than to say that to me existence is merely a pinball game, each of us a silver ball bouncing randomly off rubber bumpers. And love? Well that's just another world for "tilt," something that freezes the game if you shake the table too hard. But it will all start up again if you wait long enough. And, just as there are more fish in the sea, there are plenty of rubber bumpers on the board.

(while none of this is meant to take away from what I had, it probably goes a long way in explaining why I don't have it anymore)

So this holiday season I want to see couples breaking up. And not just because they "work better as friends." But because one of them is dying in the arms of the other on some fog shrouded cobblestone street in Paris after being shot just moments before hopping on a boat to eternal happiness.

And it's got to be subtitled.

So I've rented ten of the most melodramatic films of mid 20th century French cinema. Add to this a few bottles of the cheapest wine known to man (the one with the kangaroo on the label) and I should make it through just fine.

So from everyone here at Pizza Corner Diaries, and once again we find that means just me, have a nice holiday. Honestly. No matter where you've abandoned me to.