Gerbils, Scammers, and Books That Go F*ck

Fuck you, scammer

I just got a text message from one of those now ubiquitous scammers trying to get you to part with your banking info. This is our exchange:

Feel free to text him your own vitriol.


Gerbils. Yes, gerbils.

Ask my long-suffering girlfriend. For the past year (and probably longer), I’ve been casually writing an epic song called, “Gerbils In My Bum.”  Sometimes it’s sung to the theme from Stargate, sometime to the theme from Jurassic Park,  often to the theme from The Office, sometimes to countless other themes. You get the picture.

Perhaps one day I will share with you a sample of the evolving set of future Grammy-winning lyrics, which shift tempo and content depending on which theme music is used as a backing track, but that day is not today. Rest assured, though, that there are frequent references to Richard Gere, various species of rodent, and choice synonyms for anatomical structures in the human gastrointestinal tract.

Some Random Videos

Let’s start today’s post with a couple of random videos. My lovely Significant Other had given  my mother a bird feeder for my parents’ kitchen window.  (I almost wrote “chicken window”, possibly because I’m two months into veganism, and it’s affecting my subconscious).

However, instead of birds, what arrived were creatures that might one day belong in the lyrics mentioned above:

 

 

The second video is actually an audio clip. See, 18 years ago CBC Radio invited me to read one of my short stories on the air. Back then, I was not the relaxed narcissist you know today. I was actually self-conscious and nervous. We had to record several takes before my narration had any sort of life to it. The version I was able to rescue from CBC before they purged their public recordings was quite corrupt. But I was finally able to filter out a lot of the noise and now have a serviceable recording.

So please enjoy my short story, “Seasonal Youth“, which was first published in The World of English in Beijing, China, and then immortalized (I like to think) in my anthology, Sweet Like Saltwater:

Overly Complicated Breakfasts

Since I left Facebook, I haven’t been able to publicly post images of my “breakfast”. There’s a reason I did this. I have an evolving, carefully considered diet designed to fix to some of my medical issues, to extend my life, and to afford maximum health, based upon some questionable scientific assumptions. I have been doing intermittent fasting for more than a year now, have been a vegan for 2 months, and typically only eat one or two meals per day, with no snacking or junk food.

So I find it useful to have a visual record of what I’m actually eating, so that I can’t delude myself. Here are some recent meals…

Aug 18, 2018
Dal, rice, curried eggplant & potato (bhaigan & aloo, in Guyanese parlance) and mango chutney… all courtesy of my mother:

Aug 19, 2018
A little less interesting, I admit…. Peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich, blueberries, a hunk of halva, and a bowl of frosted mini-wheat cereal with soy milk:

Aug 20, 2018
Guyanese pilouri (a falafel thingy made from chick peas and spinach by my mother who mispronounces ‘falafel’ and calls them ‘fafalo’, which is now what they are officially called); cassava bread, also made by my mother, topped with store-bought spicy vegetable spread; blueberries; pesto made by my uncle from whatever he had in his garden; baba ganoush, moussaka, and mushroom salad all from Adonis middle Eastern grocery store:

Aug 21, 2018
Cassava bread, made by my mother, topped with almond butter with a side of pickles; blueberries & strawberries; my uncle’s homemade pesto; my mother’s ‘fafalo’ (see above); moussaka, mushroom salad, baba ganoush, and hummus all from Adonis grocery store, and all overseen by Dogulus Prime:

What The F*ck

In my ongoing efforts to recapture the creative boredom of my youth, I was –for the first time in years— once more wandering through a bookstore last week, in the company of my old friend Ed (the co-founder of our now defunct online magazine, The Podium).

Ed had long since noticed a trend in publishing that I had not: this annoying tendency to almost curse in a book title. This is particularly noticeable in the “self help” or “wellness” section, which is always the most entertaining browsing section. At first I didn’t agree with him that this was a thing. But I was quickly convinced of his correctness. Take a gander:

My one question is… who are the f*cktards buying and reading this sh*t?

Robin Herjavec

I already covered this is an earlier installment of Separated At Birth, but check out this book cover featuring Robin Williams and tell me you don’t see Robert Herjavec!

Ancient AlienWat

As noted in my last post, I’m going to be interviewed for a documentary on the History Channel. I’ll reveal more when the deed is done. But it got me thinking. See, as I write this, I am binge-watching Ancient Aliens in the background. Why? Because I love that nonsense!

The thing about that show is that they often have real, respectable scientists on it. And I’ve often wondered if those scientists were told which show they were being interviewed for, or whether they were just told, “History Channel,” and saw their erudite faces appearing on a, shall we say, less than erudite TV show.

Let me say for the record that if this interview is a ploy to get me on Ancient Aliens, then I am ONE HUNDRED PER CENT okay with this 🙂

Until next time, bye-bye from Dogulus and me!

 

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