Dr. Spring Breaker vs The Revolution

The world is on the brink of destruction, as per usual. It's Easter Saturday 9:40 p.m. a.d. 2013 and the holy ghost isn't due for a good little while. I see no reason why I shouldn't go see a film about the scantily.

Draped over a divan of cinema chairs, jackets, and pre-packed contraband cookies and coke, I took it upon myself to sit back and chew the millennial cud. Harmony Korin's latest, Spring Breakers, Scarface for the Hello Kitty generation, was about to start its cheerful jaunt down the beachwalks of depravity, and my critical faculty was set to slowcooker poignant. 

THE PREVIEWS

As I said, the world was on the brink of destruction, as per usual. I did not need Rob Stewart to remind me, with all the eloquence of a beached lawnmower, that I needed to begin "engaging with different governments, engaging with different corporations". The 8th graders sitting behind who snuck in to the movie might have sympathized with his "pothead high schooler reading Hamlet aloud in class" delivery of what may very well have been a new Declaration of the Rights of Mermaids...I remained, beyond passive, annoyed. If he was going to start me thinking seriously about evolution (insert big red "R" before previous word in 2 seconds), he could have at least had the decency to be ugly.

Does it not seem that we are getting a little lazy in our Jeremiads?  I am not saying it isn't appropriate to address the question of inevitable human destruction in the cinema. Far from it. I am more concerned with what I detect to be an odious optimism in the film's preview. I posit that there are certain epic conventions that come with attempting to agitate by means of propaganda. These conventions are as sacred as the Three Unities, and ought never to be tampered with. They include:

• Shrill organ music
• Intertitles with nonsensical French slogans
• Sweaty Arabic politicians listing off complaints on their fingers
• V for Vendetta masks
• Cheeky animated depictions of the "oil situation"
• Bearded eastern European professors who harangue with poop jokes
• Black and white only
• An utter pessimism tempered only with off-colour innuendo

Well, I was in such a tizzy, that it took a whole half hour into Spring Breakers to realize most of my grievances were dissipating through the varieties of religious experiences jiggling before my eyes, and the transcendental empiricism of James Franco's marvelous dental situation.

I got … I got SHORTS! Every fuckin' color.

"Well now," I said to myself, "This is how the world should end. Not with a whimper, but with a bang bang bang bang pew pew bang slap stab bang!"

Perhaps some of the optimists among you disagree. Perhaps you really are motivated by films that do well "in Vancouver", that depict a chance for the human race beyond the "artisan grilled-cheese sandwiches until cannibalism" esprit du temps. 

I'm not asking you how you'd like your planet. I'm asking you how you like your movies. Remember when the world was going to end in the 60's?

Bitch Don't Kill My Vibrant Academic Atmopshere

It seems that students at Ottawa's Raven University are up in arms again, this time against Rap all-star Rick Ro$ado. The controversy is focused on some lines in his upcoming lecture entitled "HNIC" (an unidentified acronym). Professor Ro$ado apparently quotes a rapacious verse, here transliterated for the common reader into normalized English:

"Putting various potables into her beverage, of which she is none the wiser. I then proceeded to enjoy her in flagrante delicto, with her none the wiser, ho ho."

But Raven students are having none of it. A petition has gone up to keep the controversial academic from giving his sold-out lecture on campus.

"We can't stand by and let this sort of sexist smut be promulgated on a University campus" says Christine McSneeze, a 3rd year student writing her thesis on her two favourite works, Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Marquis de Sade's Justine.

"It's outrageous the things he says about women. Guns, violence, rape...Who says we can talk about these things just like that? The money and time spent on this show could be used for something beautiful, like a production of Titus Andronicus, or a bust of my favourite philosopher, Friedrich NietzCHA."

 Ranked by MacLeod's Magazine as "Canada's Most Outraged University", Raven has a long history of protest. This sense of left-wing working class resistance stretches back to its earliest days as "Raven College", founded in 1942 as a training school for canine veterans of the second world war. Since then, the school's bark has been consistently and progressively growing in relation to its bite. In the last decade, students from Raven have led campaigns against:

-Abortions on Campus
-Anti-Abortions on Campus
-Israeli Abortions on and off Campus
-Cystic Fibrosis or "The White Man's Disease"
-Gaybortionism on Campus
-Student Fees
-Cystic Feebortionism
-Anti-Student Association Non-Fees
-The Collected Works of Catullus, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other major rapists of the canon

Yet it seems like all the public scrutiny has mollified the heart of Ro$ado, gentle giant, to the fairer sex. Upon learning that his music would be pulled from ethically conscious radio stations across North America, Ro$edes spoke a sincere speech later forwarded as an email attachment to the world (again, sanitized into standard English):

"Who doubts my appreciation for the fairer sex? There was misapprehension in your interpretations. I would never utter the phrase "non-consensual" in my work. The community will not abide it. Hip hop will not abide it. I just want to address all the females on my social networking platforms... I brook it not!"

Water Margin Clan

LIANG SHAN CLAN PUTTING FAR EAST COAST RAP BACK ON THE MAP

Album: Enter the Marshland
Single: "Protect ya Son of Heaven"
Heavenly King Records
Mid-13th Century





Say what you will about how the Song Dynasty rap industry is dominated by Shaolin, Tibetan Lama, Upanishadic, and any of those other West Coast groups - pure, hardcore Far Eastern rap is on the rise again, and no group better represents this than the 108 members of the Liang Shan Clan.

Since the mid-Tang dynasty, rap has been dominated by Buddhist themes and styles focusing on the impermanence of existence and incorporating foreign Sanskrit slang, known on the streets as "Dharma Rap" and "OM Steez" due to the prevalence of the popular Indian word.

With roots going all the way back to the Three Kingdom stylings of Guan Yu and Cao Cao, Liang Shan represents a resurgence in the hardcore eastern banditry style of rapping. Their lyrics are sharp as the various traditional Chinese weapons they wield - Tiger fork, Guan Dao, Horsecutter - but when it comes to throwin down with the mic, Liang Shan cut through diamonds.

"We killin' tigers and shootin' arrows up in dis bitch!" screams Li Kui AKA the Black Whirlwind, the Clan's most wild and exuberant representative.

"We got 72 Earthly Fiends and 36 Heaven Spirits, making up 108 members of the Clan" says the more estoric Wu Yong AKA WZA, whose mythology for the clan stems from various eclectic gang and prison religions (I Ching, White Lotus, Yellow Turbans etc). Although the clan certainly incorporates Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist themes - one of its most popular members is Lu Zhishen the drunken monk - the core of the lyrics focus on the street-style martial arts upbringing of the clan members.

"These guys came from nothing. Criminals, gang members, southern Chinese Taoists - the Liang guys came from nowhere. Now they puttin' the Marsh on the map, see?"

The clan's dark, dirty street inspired production come from DJ Song Jiang AKA Timley Rain aka the TZA, who formed the clan with now deceased member Chao Gai. The sampling and production on their first album, "Enter the Marshland", is unprecedented for the cheapness of the gongs, drums, erhu and flutes used in recording sessions - most of which took place in Song Jiang's basement tea-room.

"Their music always sounds so raw - like you drinkin in a nasty old inn at the side of the road and the crickets be chirpin and the timber be fallin off the roof and shit... Starts rainin, two merchants playin go, wiv some old dude playin on some out o' tune guqin - some rugged ass provincial shit, y'know?"

The Clan origins, according to Song Jiang, are shrouded in the warrior past of all the members: "we had all these bandits and warrior types, and they was fightin and killin and trying to make it big with they lyrics. And they all started  running from the Imperial Guard and shit, and gathering down at my place in this shitty swampy ass area, a place called Mount Liang. And I thought, we need a clan, you know, a real deep clique...They done shit like that up in Shaolin, it's working for the Buddhists, why not us?"


The Clan's violent style is rooted in the traditional Confucian doctrine of saving the Emperor (whom the clan totally respect) from the corrupt advisors around him. But the Clan is all about hip-hop innovation. Previous to the Liang, rap shows typically consisted of only one or two MC's on stage plus DJ. Liang Shan Clan broke new ground by having all 108 members on stage - and the audiences loved it.

"You couldn't beat the energy of those guys" says local tea-shop owner Big Belly Wong. "You just had these chiggas, a hundred or so of em, and they was all just givin' and givin', ya know? You'd have Wu-Song just killing it with a tiger-slaying verse, right, like:

Three bowls don't cross bridge but I throw em back huh
Drunk as fuck tiger style tiger bitch on my back huh
Ain't no tiger it's a pussy im'a crack huh
Pass the bowl, pass the bowl or i'ma attack bruh

And while he doin that right, you got all the other members throwin' up and yelling "LIANG SHAN CLAN! LIANG SHAN CLAN!" and of course you got Black Whirlwind drunk and high as fuck strippin down naked to his chigga ass and just throwin hisself and his two axes all over the fucking place. And then you know you got Song Jiang on the beats, he razor sharp, but then it all cuts out see, and we all hold up our torches and fireworks and shit and pour out a pot of rice wine for CHAO GAI.

RIP CHAO GAI! LIANG SHAN CLAN FOREVER MOTHERFUCKERS!"

The Clan obviously inspires devotion among its fanbase, who insist on purchasing Liang Shan Brand clothes, tea sets, wine gourds, weapons, go boards, even Chinese head rags. And of course, the tattoo designs found on the sleeves and body of "Nine Dragons Shi Jin" are inspiring tons of copycats. Before Shi  Jin, tattoos were considered a sign of a criminal or gang-related past - now it's a pure Hip-Hop fashion statement.


"Don't know what all the fuss be," says Nine Dragons, "I jus' wanted some dragons and shit on ma body. Dragons be mean as fuck. Ain't nobody fuckin wit dem mothafuckers, ya know?"

But perhaps the most inspiring part of the Clan's story are the solo careers. Song Jiang, who conceived of the clan as an act in itself, also planned for the individual members to sign-off on different labels for totally solo adventures. As such, the Clan plans to completely infiltrate the hip hop industry of the Middle Kingdom.

Key members of the Liangshan Clan with big solo albums include:

• Wu Song AKA Tiger Killah, whose album "Tiga Style" is rugged and raw
• Panther Headed Lin Chong, solo album "Only Built for Three-Sectional Staff"
• Lu Da AKA Sagacious Lu the Tattooed Monk, solo album "Iron Enlightened Man"
• Li Kui AKA The Black Whirlwind, solo album "Enter the Marshland Dirty Version: Return to Mount Liang"

And with many more coming from Wu Yong AKA the WZA, the Three Brothers Ruan, and Sun Er Niang AKA The Witch. The Clan are planning a big "Enter the Marshland" album tour of the Middle Kingdom some time in the late Song dynasty.

Ritualized Cannibalism and Apocalypse: An investigative report by Major Sir Basil Marjoram Paprika (Esq.) (Mad)

TIMELINE – Time: 0376 Hrs. Day: Wednesday or Saturday (Can’t remember). Month: December. Menstrual cycle: Full moon.

LOCATION – The Water Under The Burned Bridge, Battersea St., Dunhamphries, Northwickhouseshire-uopn-Wenslydale, Canada.

Notez-Bien: This article is not for the faint of heart. As a hobbyist in anthropology, I have observed many different practices of mankind, mostly from a low-lying bunker of cloth and poly-fibrous semi-flexible corrugated insulation that is apparently invisible, and yet never have I witnessed such a horrific display of the Hobbesian “life of man in nature” coming to the forefront in our contemporary society. Read it, and forevermore become aware of the fragility of the thin crust of civilization, politesse, and sanity of those who surround you.

When most of us think of cannibalism, it is in a comedic sense. Who doesn’t have fond memories from their youth of turning on the TV and watching, entranced, as cartoon characters fantasied about eating one another. Whether it was in a charmingly dated reference to the practice of cannibalism among pacific island natives (who apparently found the best way of cooking people to be putting them in a big cauldron and dancing around it in a circle), or the mesmerizing cartoon leitmotif of people stranded on a boat or island imagining each other as fully cooked chickens, the first thing that most of us associate with cannibalism is laughter.

But cannibalism also has a dark side. Each year at the festival of Saturnalia, anthropophagy enthusiasts in the guise of children eat thousands of human forms, in a grisly ritual that would disturb the mind of any sane being. The craving they nurture in their young minds for human flesh overrides their good sense, and the cracked and twisted versions of mankind that they carve out of sugared and gingered dough shows how unavoidable their desires become. Not content with consuming the unadorned, naked, and raw substance of the man they have summoned out of nothingness for their own pleasure, they invent a new torture for their unwilling and helpless victim. They bake it. They put these men in an inescapable gas oven at a high temperature and wait. It is a certain crispness they desire in the flesh of the small being, a golden colour in the formerly Once this gruesome process is completed, they begin anew at the process of humanizing this homo ex gingibus. “Anew,” for you see, they had already begun at the time they had carved the sacrifice initially – they not only brought a single man into existence, but acted as a malevolent demiurge in the creation of an entire falsified world to surround him. Evergreen trees, houses, gifts, trains, dogs, snowmen – an entire world revolving around these people, all of it a lie, all to humanize them. But the destruction of such a bland world wrought out of a single colour would be meaningless to these seekers after the forbidden repast of what the Zambesi tribesmen of east Africa have forever called “Long Pig”. After the men and women they have crafted have had the heat exact brutal changes to their bodies, the brutish lords of their demise grant them a series of gaudy and colourful boons. They clothe their victims, adorn them with jewels, decorate their newly-formed mansions with warm and welcoming icing, and style the traditional tannenbaum with all descriptions of pretty baubles and accoutrements. They give them gifts, and family, and pets, and hobbies, and strive as strongly as they can to give them true happiness after the trial by literal fire they had endured not long ago. But this is not generosity. It is cruelty. It is the desire to make these small men and women in to real human beings, to give them emotions and desires by giving them a spouse and possessions, to give them not just a house but a home so that it means something when it is taken away, and to give them a world to live in, so that it can be destroyed and the despair experienced by the object of their brutality can be total.

Once humanized, the ritual of consumption commences. Nor is this the enshrined cannibalism of the transubstantiation of the body of Christ, or the transmogrification of carrots into hilarious pretend penises. The helpless beings to which so much sentience has been forcibly transferred are one-by-one dismembered and consumed. Their smiling faces become grimaces as their limbs slowly disappear – for most of the anthropophagraphers believe that the most supreme of joys can be gained from this ritual only when the face gives the appearance of consciousness until the man’s final end. The process is slow and grinding, yet it wears not at all on the nerves or the conscience of the child consuming the flesh of another humanized and glorified person. Much the same behavior is evident in the consumption of the comestible known as “Candied Gelatin-based Bears,” which suffer the same loss of limbs and torsos before succumbing to and extremely painful death only after their head is fully consumed. However, there is not the same process of humanization, and so less joy is in evidence on the face of the children. No, taste is not the explanation for this phenomenon. The cannibalism of the contemporary North American child springs from a simple love of cruelty towards one’s fellow man.
The men and women these children create are meant only to be consumed. The world created for them is an altar for ritual cannibalism, upon which their lives are gruesomely sacrificed to sate the mad desires of a god as savage and arbitrary as Ouranos who forged the sky and ate his young. The apocalypse our world was supposed to suffer was an invention, but for these poor doughty souls the Apocalypse is real and present and violent.

And who is responsible for this grim reminder of the earliest and most vicious days of our civilization invading our modern, sterile, homely kitchens? The very parents of the child themselves! They remember the ritual as the same violent induction into the human race that they yearly celebrated as children, and so they propagate the desire to consume manflesh to their children as well, trapping our society in an endless cycle of desire to strip the soft meat of our nieghbour’s thighs from their bones and thrust it down our own gullets and those of our children. We must, as a society, rise up against this behavior! We must break the shackles of tradition and burst into a glorious new world where we try to eat fewer people! Anti-cannibals of the world UNITE! You have nothing to lose but a tasty snack now and then!

Major Basil Paprika is a freelance writer for Rooters and The Thymes of Laudanum. Donations to his cause can be sent to Brickstoleunderthestickywicket St., Moosejaw, Greenwich.

The Binder Boys, or, A Pain in the Astral

What's a snob? What's a lowbrow? What's a dandy? What's a magic picture show? Just because I sport a pair of Happy Socks that aren't too dissimilar in formal construction from the lusty battleworn Normands on the Bayeux tapestry, does not mean I am not a man of the people.

I'll prove it.

It was a cold February's day in the heart of old Bytowne. I had just indulged the tooth beside the sweet one, the one that insists on garlicky middle eastern sandwiches (I think it's one of the incisors but I've never been much for cryptozoology) when I hit old Rideau, promenade of filth. Now I'm something of a fast walker, and that something is a bipedal colon with a lackadaisical bohemian Greenwhich village agenda to end the tyranny of my bourgeois white-collar obsession with dignity and cleanliness.

Forward then! My two minds were as one.

Imagine my terrOR, when, on coming to Rideau and Dalhousie, and, stopping at the crosswalk with the hopes of a quick light-change, I saw on the opposing side a pair of browbeater youths in parkas and wielding the omnifrightful COLOURED TOME OF CARITAS, aka the charity Begging Binder Bonobos of Borneo.

"O wretch, o foulest hellspitoon, I, born on this day!" I hollered to the smiling south asian octogenerian at my side. Nor was my reaction over the bounds of common decency. Has anyone ever made it unscathed past the Sphincter's riddle that is the Binder Boys? Hast heard their cutting, incisor like comments on one's own person ? Hast not been arrested by their commanding, alpha level, frat boy calls to stand and deliver the excuse for one's own selfish, ungiving, scrooge-like passage through life?

What is charity? Is it, as the apostle saith, that which thinketh no evil?

No. For, as my tale will reveal, much evil it thoughteth then, and good whatfor...

And now the Kuten Rag Peasant and Pea-Munching Players present:

THE LORD OF THE MANOR IN DIRE STRAITS

a cosmic ballet in a single act, in which an unwitting and selfish miser encounters a pair of grift men with an eye on his fortune.

(Lord Abdelhadishire enters the scene with his head lowered and his parka hood set to monkish "Umberto Eco". He grits his teeth and proceeds forward. He is not prepared for the zen koan-type ass kicking he is about to receive).

Binder boy: Hey! I like your, uh ... POCKET MUG!

(The Lord looks at his right parka pocket, in which he seemingly stuffed a coffee thermos in his haste to hustle.)

Lord Abdelhadishire: uh, thanks. *mumble mumble*

Binder Boy (getting excited): How about we TALK ABOUT IT!!!

Lord Abdelhadishire: i cant its cold and im late for *mumblemumble* and tottenam hotspur *mumblemubmble* carpark and ya...

Binder Boys (x2): BOOO. We're cold too! It'll be fine.

Lord Abdelhadishire: Well, I...

Binder Boy: "Well you..."? Well you what? Have you ever thought about "well anyone else"?

Lord Abdelhadishire: It's not that, it's...

Binder Boy: Oh it isn't is it? Isn't it that? What is it then? I tell you what it is. Did you know that in Africa there are over twelve children who are hungry? You know how much it costs to feed a child? Less than a cup of coffee. *points to pocket mug* About the same amount as a coffee for abused children. They cost more to feed. Abuse is taxing. And talk about tragedy! Have you ever bought a slave? Over twelve slaves have been purchased in this very century. You know how much it costs to purchase a slave? More than a cup of Starbucks. *points to pocket mug* Who's playing Stars and Stripes now, buster? Speaking of stripes, what about the Zebras? Did you know there are over twelve herds of stampeding zebras? Starving zebras! Do you know how much it costs to stop a Zebra from stampeding?

(Lord Abdelhadishire meekly lifts up his coffee thermos)

Binder Boy: That's right! Just fifteen thousand cups of coffee! Now I'm not here to ask you for money today. I don't even want to bring up money. I'm not even going to mention it, right bro?

Binder Boy 2: He never mentions it.

Binder Boy: I never even dream of mentioning money, ever, ever, never and not once more. But IF you felt that this might be something you could support, we could start the donations at say twelve cups of coffee per child/zebra combo, and this is just for you, I can give you a pen to seal the deal...

Lord Abdelhadishire: I must protest...

Binder Boy: Oh? Methinks thou dost protest too much!

Binder Boy 2: I was gonna just say that lol.

Binder Boy: Lol. But seriously, if you'll just sign...

Lord Abdelhadishire: Oh fine! Take it! Take it all!

Binder Boys: GRAB IT!!!

(Lord Abdelhadishire throws his wallet, containing his entire fortune of thirteen cups of coffee's worth of various currencies plus two coffee-type gift cards, redeemable at all good charities)

Lord Abdelhadishire: Well then. Now that we're all chummy, I just have one question. What do you keep in those binder anyway?

Binder Boy:Well, I suppose I can tell him now, right bro? You see, we're not your average bros. We're actually lost soul bros. All of us binder-folk are. We are the ectoplasmic remains of every frat boy who chugged too much a-lug. In order to get into Heaven, St. Peter (a real awesome bro btw) assigned us each a mission, to collect ten thousand cups of coffee (Starbucks) for charity. Once our duty is complete, we can ascend on high the Empyrean where we can delight in the splendour of Our Lord and Saviour, the Bro of Bros.

(A golden light appears from the heaven. A chorus of men starts to sing, something like "Up In Here" accompanied by harps cymbals. The two Binder Boys smile knowingly at each other and start to ascend to heaven in the golden beam)

Binder Boy: It's time.

Binder Boy 2: Never forget us.

Binder Boy: Be cool!

(Awestruck freeze).

FIN

Neo-Canadian Heritage Minute - Apes in Medicine

University of Toronto, 2871.

[A medical lecture hall. A full class filled with side-burned human students banging on the desks screaming "Send em home! Get rid of them!"]

Professor: Gentlewomyn, gentlewomyn, please! And so, THIS fruit, which I regret I cannot name because of the presence of these members of the INFERIOR SPECIES, who could not possibly endure-"

[Human students smirk jauntily and twirl their burns]

Monkey 1: Patience Bongo!

[Human students keep screaming, banging on desks]

Monkey 1: PATIENCE Bongo...

[Bongo stands up dramatically]

Bongo: DOCTOR MACFARLANE

Professor: Bongo??

Bongo: If you don't keep this classroom under control, I am going to repeat every word of this disgusting lecture to your charming monkey wife!

[Bongo hobbles over to diagram of a banana tree, rips off the piece of paper covering the banana and storms off]

Narrator: Bongo would become the first monkey to practice medicine in Canada.

PART OF OUR NEO-HERITAGE

The Ride of the Gribbichungs - An Einzelskizzen

Sketch for a Drama:

Deep, deep, in the depths of the river Groin, a bunch of water swirls to and fro. A mighty rock protrudes from the surface of the water. The water, swirling, swirls it's way around the mighty rock. The sun glistens on the water and the rock. Deep in the depths, a swirly bit of foam makes it's way to the base of the rock.

E flat major.

A flatulent sea lion throws himself against the rock.

The swirling waters are disturbed. Three beautiful nymphs emerge from the depths. These are the Groin Maidens, the incarnations of nature and bumblebees and happy sea horses. You notice, at the top of the rock around which these nymphs are noodling, a shiny, golden, rock like substance. It is the Groin-Cabbage.

Major triad in E Marmite and Melba.

The Groin Maidens continue the cotillion. A cavern, heretofore unnoticed (though no faults of its own, it is a perfectly fine cavern as far as caverns go) produces an unsightly dwarfish creature: a dwarf.

His name is Badmintonerich. He makes for the groin maidens. He isn't all that lucky. He steals their Groin-Cabbage. The Cabbage is cursed. Well, not cursed per se. But certainly cursed if fashioned into  jewelry. Certainly cursed if fashioned into a RING.

Minor chord. The broth thickens.

Cue the apocalypse.