Fireside Reflection

After setting ablaze 27 casks of biowaste from the Fakiegrind Cosmetic Surgery Institute, I sat me down in the staff lunch room to reflect on the twists and turns that life has taken of late for the internet's most established Devolutionary Skateboard/Sectret Agent blog.

The transplanting of our headquarters to a new, top-secret location has had the deisred effect of throwing our arch-foe, the Xister, and his ilk off our trail. Recent amendments to Australia's anti-time travel legislation, as well as the ongoing U.S. crack-down on rogue hypnotists also seems to have aided our cause.

Captain Canuck's dry cleaning bills continue to run Fakie expense accounts into the red, thus making impossible our securing a live internet connection at our new location. Also, geo-thermal drafts in the abandoned mine shaft currently housing our mainframe have made a wireless connection out of the question, and the cable company is still trying to find a drill that can cut through the adamantine-laced shell of our command centre's panic room.

Other than these few minor setbacks, Fakiegrind continues to stultify under the weight of its own lackluster legacy, and the staff soothsayer predicts that we will have completely repeated ourselves, verbatim, by the second fiscal quarter of the year 2019. This, however, will be a non-issue once our Context over Content promotional campain is implemented in early 2111.

Aside from our ongoing (and hitherto fruitless) search for the secret blog musings of the enigmatic Ms. Muffin, we here at Fakiegrind will continue to bide our time while waiting for the day foretold in the Book of Oldness when,

"The Heavens make an great clamour
like unto a riding lawnmower ready to expire
and discount vouchers for a major local vendor
of soft tacos will shower down upon the Earth

'Till then, Stay Old!

Walking the Dog

The kids at summer skateboard camp love the trick called "Walking the Dog". It's pretty easy but looks impressive, and it's not something many people learn nowadays. I have made it my private mission to revive this trick, and promote it as much as possible as Steeltown's mobile skateboard park moves from neighbourhood to neighbourhood every couple of weeks.

Last week, we were on the western edge of town, with the ramps set up inside of the local arena. For two days, no kids showed up (the park's presence doesn't seem to be advertised in any newspapers). My co-worker and I spent the time skateboarding and making posters to put up around the area. The floor of the arena is incredibly smooth, a lovely surface on which to ride. One push gets you all the way across the arena. It feels like skating on glass.

On the second day, there was a torrential rainstorm. Alex and I stood in the loading bay doorway of the arena and watched the water pour down out of the heavens. Within minutes, the eaves had backed up and water started spilling off the roof in thick cascades. When we returned to the interior of the arena, the drops falling on the arena roof made a deafening clatter.

By the third day, word started to spread and a few kids showed up to use the ramps. We have helmets that we lend out to them. They tear around the course, going off the ramps and landing on platforms -- stuff I no longer want to try to do for fear of falling. I largely stick to the flatground tricks. The vast expanse of the arena gives one lots of room to get a good line of three or four tricks in before having to turn around. The ramps only take up half of the area, so the other half is a flatlander's paradise.

For at least a half hour every day, I practice skating backwards. I can now do little ollies and a couple other tricks. It's like learning to skate all over again. Rodney Mullen still blows my mind.

Dyslexic Double Agent Fools Everyone (including himself)

I love working at the hotel. I have a badge and a ribbon, and, occasionally, I earn a little apple that I can pin to said ribbon. I meet all kinds of interesting people from all over the world, but only for a moment or two, so I get to construct stories about them in my head. It's a good gig, much better than the skid factory, where it was just me and the circular saw and a jigger full of planks. I quit that job after three weeks, though I should have stayed on longer.

Happily, I managed to swing a deal with the higher-ups as Dept. H, and they have given me a special assignment at the skatepark, a couple days a week. The secret there is: don't lend out your skateboard. Once you do, you won't see it until the end of the day, as it will pass from kid to kid like a head lice academic, or the cheat codes for H.A.L.O. (or whatever videe'r games they play these days). My problem is I can't say no. The upside to this is that not having my board handy means I won't skate as much, which means my back and knees will last that much longer. You see, one gets to a certain point as an aged 'boader that one must start to ration cartilage. I'm just thinking ahead, to, like, next week when it would be nice to be able to get out of bed without the ceiling-mounted winch that I'm thinking of installing.

Anyhow, thanks for all your comments, and sorry for the delay in postings, and the lack of visits to all my favourite blog-hoods. Though Fakiegrind's new headquarters is 99% up and running, we still don't have an internet connection. It's sure to come, eventually, once the proper paperwork has been filed, and Captain Canuck pays me back the money he borrowed to cover his dry cleaning tab.

Stay old!

Deep Cover

This summer, I was supposed to work at a mobile skateboard park, looking after the kids. I went through all the trouble of gettinga a police check and signing up for a first aid course. But the closer it got to the start date of my new job, the more I started to dread it. I knew there would be rewarding aspects to working with youth, and getting to know some kids from different parts of town, but the thought of skateboarding every day was weighing heavily on my mind. Also, the sun is so hot these days, and working outside would surely be exhausing.

The last time I went out skateboarding, I bruised my toe. It was swollen and blue for three days, and I was walking around with a limp. The accident happened just as I was leaving the park. I tried to do one last trick, to show off, and instead of the board doing what I expected, it whirled out of control and dinged me in the toe. I was pretty depressed after that. I had already given my notice at the hotel where I work, and it seemed to me too late to go back. I would have to skateboard with the kids for two months, even if it killed me.

My body has been sore lately. My joints ache and my back gives out when I've been sitting too long in a car or soft couch. Even though I swim and try to eat well, there's only so much battering a fellow can take. Skateboarding has kept me young up to this point, but I'm starting to feel my age. So, when someone at the hotel gave their notice, and my boss offered me increased hours if I came back to work for them, I thought about it for a day, then decided to bail on the skateboard camp position.

Call it self-preservation. I turned my back on what might have proven to be a rewarding, though strenuous and risky endeavour in favour for what I already know will be a tedious and predictable stint at the hotel front desk. But they pay ok, and the job doesn't wreck my knees or back. I'm partly relieved; I never have to skateboard again, if I don't feel like it. But a sort of quiet desparation has also set in, though maybe that's being a little over-dramatic. Actually, I'm not really all that desparate. Just happy to be alive, employed, intact (more or less) and old.

Greetings Bloggers

I, Walrusman, have stolen the Fakiegrind access codes. Flatlander is a chump. While he chases Ms. Muffin his blog is now mine. You will soon know the full extent of my collection of used scratch lotto cards!!!!!!!!!

Muffin Hunt

Something about the taunting tone of a comment left on the previous post has driven me to break off all other activities and devote the full resources of Fakiegrind Enterprises to finding the secret blog hideout of the mysterious Ms. Muffin.

However, after several weeks of searching the internet, the best our Agents have come up with is a series of Youtube postings featuring people's cats.

There's this one, for instance.

And this one.

And then there's this one.

But none of these felines bring us any closer to Ms. Muffin's blog, wherein, we have reason to believe, all the secrets of the universe are made clear.

Summer Hits the North

Yes, Fakiegrind Headquarters has moved, but our top secret ultra-new location is still within walking distance of Steeltown's ever-lovin', ever colourful north end. Just today, I was standing in the parking lot of the beer store, talking with an old acquantance whom I hadn't seen in a dog's age, when an overweight man approached on a mountain bike. He was wearing tight-fitting blue shorts and a matching tank-top, and had a large duffle bag slung over one shoulder. Approaching my friend and I, he slowed down.

Now, normally, a north end stranger weilding a large duffle bag and looking to make converstaion can mean only one thing: stolen merchandise available for resale at street-level prices. The only question in my mind was the particular nature of the hot goods being peddled (not that I was interested in procuring such items; my curiosity was purely academic). At any rate, the man was riding his (possibly stolen) mountain bike with one hand, and weilding a dinner fork in the other. Affixed to the end of the fork was a portentious chunk of what looked to be hamburger patty, it's pink innards gloriously exposed to the patchwork afternoon sunlight as it filtered through the overhead canopy of newly leafed trees.

The fellow did not keep my friend and I in suspense for long as to the nature of his wares, but, without dismounting his bike, inquired, his mouth half-full of beef patty,

"D'you guys wanna buy some meat?"

I should not have been surprised, but was, having never had meat solicited to me from a duffle bag in a beer store parking lot before. Though I had no desire to actually buy any of the fellow's product, I couldn't resist asking,

"Is it the same stuff you're currently eating?"

To which he replied, "Yeah!.." and there was a pause as the guy thought over my question, "...but raw".

And then the fellow was on his way, realizing from the tone of my inquiry, and with the sharpened senses of a street hawker to such things, that neither my friend nor I were seriously in the maket for discount street meat.

As he biked away, the guy's shorts revealed more of his posterior than modesty is generally wont to expose, and I quickly averted my gaze, wondering to myself at the colourful panorama of life that seems to burst into view with the first few warm days of summer. The whole encounter took less than twenty seconds, but the image of the short-shorted meat vendor is now burned in my mind: just another real-life Fakiegrind encounter unleashed upon the larger world via the magic of the internet.

More Setbacks

Movement, according to the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (not to be confused with 21st century discount DJ, Zeno of Steeltown), is impossible. His reasoning was that, in order to get from point A to point B, one must first pass through the mid-point (C). However, in order to reach mid-point C, one must first reach the half-way point between A and C (point D). Yet, in order to get to point D, one must first pass through the point mid-way between A and D (point E), and so on, to infinity. Because one must pass through infinite half-way points before even reaching the half-way point between A and B, and because all alphabets so far designed by humanity have less than infinite characters, a traveller setting out to make the A-B journey would, argues Zeno, never actually arrive.

In the history of the Fakiegrind Corp. this argument has never been accepted as reasonable grounds for Agents not showing up for work in the morning. However, there seems to be some kind of Zeno-esque effect hindering our recent efforts to move Fakie Central to a new and super-secret location. Try as we might to empty out the Vaults of Oldness, to disconnect and re-install our dated but reliable vacuum tube computer system, and to reach the bottom of Dr. Flavour's stockpile of reference material on the great Papal schism of 1550, we are still not up and running as the reliable purveyors of encoded misinformation and poetic perversions of perversity that we so strive to be. Try as we might to bend time and space to speed up the re-location process, we find ourselves, week by week, even further behind than we though we were when last we evaluated the situation.

And so, we have created a special research team to investigate Zeno's philosophical debate with common sense and see if there might not be some loophole in his logic that we could exploit to our own advantage. While this might seem like a further waste of valuable time and resources, we are confident that, in the final analysis, we will be no further behind or ahead of where we were before we started (which was, essentially, neither here nor there).

Go with the Floe

Much like the T.A.R.D.I.S. in the British sci-fi serial Dr. Who, Fakiegrind headquarters, while taking up very little geographical space, actually spreads out into so many other-dimensional nooks and crannies as to inhabit whole continents of what is known by some Philosophers of Flux as G-space. Crafted we know not how by the ingenious Dr. Flavour and his team of trained cybernetic marmosets, the old Fakiegrind Headquarters was installed piecemeal in those out of the way and unused corners of reality that nobody seems to miss, but which hold together the more high-profile and seemingly necessary space-time segments like so much ontological glue. A snip of the temporal fabric here, a tuck of gravitational fields there and pretso! you have a pan-dimensional, extra-temporal embassy of anarchy and retrograde motion woven so finely into the tapestry of impermanence as to be nearly undetectable to most major forms of divination, both modern and archaic.

Yes, we stuffed the old Headquarters (and underlying Vaults of Oldness) with so much cultural debris and cryptological detritus that even the in-house librarian and archivist, Sinbad the Sneezer, didn't know the full extent of our holdings. It's a tired truism that only when you go to move do you realize how much stuff you actually have, and we've been excavating each little treasure trove and spider hole, being careful not to set off any bedpans of mass instruction in the process. The endeavor has been taking a long time, and postings have been dwindling (you might have watched the Fox special last Saturday focusing on the fallout surrounding Fakiegrind's lapse — I had no idea the south Asian lychee nut crop was so intimately linked to our microcosmic publishing efforts!) Please bear with us. Disentangling Dr. Flavour's labyrinth of linked wormholes is a painstaking process requiring our utmost attention and concentration. It just wouldn't do to accidentally cave in a time-flux conduit and wipe out a whole era of geological time, for instance. Extinct dinosaurs are one thing, but think of how upset your kids would be if they never even existed!

The other reason for the lack of recent posts is our difficulties in getting the new headquarters wired for high-speed internet. Until we iron out some minor difficulties surrounding installing cable through the fourteen inch, reinforced steel walls of the Fakiegrind panic room — into which I have been forced to repair due to recent paranoia over the sudden disappearance of the Xister from our 5th-dimensional radar tracking system — I have been resorting to running the blog the old fashion way, that is, via courier.

The process goes like this: I dictate Fakiegrind transmissions to my secretary, Ms. Radixumpoid, who takes it all down in shorthand. She delivers her arcanely-inscribed sheets to Agent Fiss-Mastidon, who proceeds to translate Ms. Radixumpoids scribbles into a cursive those of us not trained in the secretarial arts but having received at least a rudimentary education in the public schooling system can understand. Fiss-Mastidon makes three copies: one goes to the Fakie proof reader, Sigmund Pillfree; the second is sent to the P.R. department to catch any embarrassing gaffs or perversions of truth which might otherwise tarnish the sheen of our exemplar reputation for delivering high grade nonsense at discount prices. The third copy is whisked away by the Fakie Marshal, and locked in a safety deposit box along with the proof of purchases from every box of cereal ever eaten by any of the staff here at Fakiegrind (you can often send them away for prizes).

Once the proof copy is properly screened and cross-referenced with the P.R. copy, we hold a staff meeting to determine how the particular post fits into the blog as a whole, and to discuss directions we might like to take the post in in terms of pictorial supplementation, type-font augmentation, lexicographical-cranial alimentation, and other technical matters. Then we do a test posting and run it through two or three focus groups, which, though picked at random from far-flung segments of the population, always seem to consist of the same four or five characters who are primarily interested in the free sandwiches and pop.

Finally, once the focus group feedback has been analyzed and the marketing team has had a run at it to screen for possible product placement and merchandise spin-offs, the finished text is sent to a buddy of ours with a high-speed internet connection, a fellow in the east end who types it in and posts it when he, like, gets around to it dude.

So, you see, what might appear at first glance like a casual blogging endeavor, done in idle hours for the sheer enjoyment of adding our voice to the multitudes of self-publishing enthusiast who populate the e-wires, is actually a quite involved process relying on the skills of a whole legion of highly-trained individuals to bring it to fruition. And, if it takes a little longer to bring you the time-wasting tidbits you have come to rely upon over the past two years that Fakiegrind has been live, then we hope that you will understand and come to relish those postings that do appear even more, and that you will wait with baited breath for them so that you can leave a comment or two and be part of the whole, glorious process — be immortalized, if only for an instant, in the annals of Fakiedom, until some higher power, perhaps from another, far-away galaxy, or even a whole other dimension, parallel to our own but different in a few crucial ways, thus giving its inhabitants what would seem to us to be incredible powers, comes and pulls the plug on this little festival of frenetic flippancy. 'Till that day comes, be sure to eat your Wheeties and, of course, stay old.

Still on the Move

Fakiegrind is still moving, though not anywhere fast. We are postponing further postings until post-National Postal Worker's Day (which falls sometime mid July or August, depending on the moon and seasonal fluctuations in the earwig population). If we do post a post before this date, it will be done post hoc, but not in a spirit of apostasy.

We now return to our regularly scheduled silence.

Instert Text Here

When I moved to the new version of blogger, all the contributors save two disappeared. I am glad to see they are now back in all their multifarious splendor. Fakie Central is still in a state of flux: neither here nor there, warm nor cold, sweet nor salty. We have embraced the galactic omphalos and defaced the plastic gastropod, to whose hideous visage the townsfolk had been sacrificing huge platters of Tex-Mex takeout for the past three generations. Yes, we've been around the bend and back, shaking our groove thing despite being nearly crushed to death by an unstable mountain of watermelons that some lackey stock boy had stacked too high in the produce aisle.

[insert picture here]

Scholars and prophets of the Fakie persuasion are still arguing about and pronouncing upon the subject of what this blog will look like in the New Dispensation. I suspect it will look much the same as it does now, with each pixel a galaxy containing billions of tiny planets, any one of which might be the hideout of the Xister and his ilk, or the home of some hitherto undiscovered race of disco-lovin' Frisbee-tossin' brethren. It's a veritable microverse, but quantum inertia may decree that it remain largely unexplored. All the better, for there must yet remain vast tracts of territory for which no salesperson or marketing team have been assigned, and were this not so the entire house of discarded hockey cards might very well collapse.

[insert provacative fakie-link here]

It's all I can to to keep from bursting into old world laments every time I think about the freedoms we once enjoyed, when every road was a thread of destiny upon which we could feel ourselves part of some great tapestry depicting the 13th annual Beasley Park Skateboard Jam (which, historians say, is the one precising following the 12th annual Beasley Park Skateboard Jam). But then somebody photocopied my television screen, collected the fifty or so snapshots of an old episode of Night Rider, and bound it into a collector's edition folio that sold for 12 dollars on ebay. And now all I have left are the memories of a time when those little prizes in the bottom of a box of pink elephant popcorn were enough to make one happy for five to ten minutes or so, even up to half an hour.

[insert recipe for staying old here]

Fakiegrind Is Moving

No, we're not re-vamping the blog or changing our web address or anything of that nature. But Fakiegrind Central Headquarters is in the process of moving our extensive collection of top-secret dossiers on hitherto suppressed, revolutionary new skateboard technologies, (not to mention the vast and largely uncatalogued Vaults of Oldness) and our complete battalion of 1940s office furniture and vacuum tube computer systems to a brand new location.


Now's the time to sell, before they turn it all into condos.

So as to better foil the nefarious plots of our numerous enemies and detractors, the exact location and date of the move must be kept strictly hush-hush, and we may have to maintain blog silence for an unspecified length of time, until we can get our systems up and running to normal capacity. Please note that during this period, the Antiballistic Missile Early Warning and Deployment systems will also be down, so please do not launch any ordinance (live or otherwise) our way in a friendly attempt to test our satellite shields (and this goes for you too, Roboshrub Inc.). Also, we don't anticipate having any difficulties when the time comes to move the bio-weapons research lab — Agent Rocksteady's pick-up truck has been specially equipped with an old refrigerator we found curbside the other day — but, just in case, we have advised all readers within a thousand mile radius to make sure they've had their flu shots.

If all goes well, we should be up and running again in a month or so. We're also looking for new homes for the hybrid dog-walrus sentries (the "walrogs"), as our new Headquarters has much less space for our kennel/genetic research facility. Anyone interested in acquiring one of these creatures (who love kids and make for great pets) can drop us a line.

Keep Your Eyes to the Event Horizon

Transmitted at 17:49 Standard Fakie Time from Central Headquarters, just before it was transformed into a herd of grazing water buffalo.

"It seems unbelievable but true! Dr. Flavour's experimental new portable Black Hole Generator for home and office use is showing off-the-chart levels of anti-matter flux generation..."

"But Flavour left expicit instructions (before dissappearing into the Borneo forest on an extreme golfing expidition) NEVER to turn that thing on...it's just too unpredictable and the black hole generated could spell the end of Fakiegrind as we know it!"

"Is it my fault he made the thing look so much like a coffee maker? I thought I was turning on the morning brew."

"Well it looks like you've started an irreversible process that will see Fakiegrind central at the epicentre of what will likely be the universe's first artificially generated black hole!"

"Does that mean?"

"Possibly"

"But then..."

"Unlikely."

"And..."

"Yes, almost certainly."

"And so..."

"And so this may be the very last posting to escape the event parimeter, the fabled post described in the Book of Oldness as the Last Transmission!"


Book of Oldness, archive photo

"Better make it count."

"We don't have long."

"We should set back the clocks."

"No time for that now!"

"But we'd gain an extra hour..."

"You need to study Paragraph 111.2-3356 of Subsection W of the Report on the Infalibility of Non-linear Synchonistic Dampening Protocols."

"Actually, I was just looking at that."

"And?"

"And there are several questionable inferences in the Third Argument. I was forced to fold it into an origami duck and set it alight."

"Under normal circumstances I'd nominate you for Agent of the Month, but right now we need to say something monumental and awe-inspiring to leave as a testament to the grandeur that was Fakiegrind."

"You know, we're running out of stir-sticks at the coffee station."

"Not that! Anything but that!"

"Captain! The event parimetre is unfolding at an exponential rate....we have only a few second left!"

"You know, this reminds me of the time..."

"Captain! If you have any profound words of wisdom to bestow before this blog impodes, now's the time..."

"Well, in that case, just let me say what a pleasure it has been to serve as Blog Commander of the digital anomoly hitherto known as Fakiegrind."

"Anything else?"

"Also, never carry an open can of sardines in your pocket. It will leak."

"But what about..."

"Oh yes, 0 is the new 4."

"Huh?"

"Wow, check out the colours!"



"Time/space is folding on itself! Any final comments?"

"yEs iNdeeD. oNe laSt tHiNg.....

sTaY oLd!

Model of Mystery

Many readers may be wondering, what will the coastline look like twenty years from now, given current global warming trends? Others may be asking themselves about the average shelf life of a tuna sandwich (five hours, according to Fakie researchers). Yet others might have burnt out a few synapses wondering what has become of Fakiegrind and it's once-prolific posting output.

Well, the fact is, I've been trying to track down models from old 1970s department store catalogues as part of a "where are they now" kind of article, but I've really been having no luck. Exhausting early on the obvious avenue of telephone inquiry (most marketing firms involved in the production of these catalogues – when they even still exist – flatly refuse to give out information about past or present models), I set about an arduous campaign of gluing fliers to streetposts in the major urban centres of the nation hoping to strike a note of remembrance from the citizenry. But hours turned into days turned into weeks of sitting next to the Modeltracker Hotline and 'nary a call came through, save a couple telemarketers and cranks.

And so, I am left with one last recourse: publishing pictures on the web in the hope that someone will come forward with information about these catalogue superstars of yesteryear and tell us how life has been for them. Perhaps some things best remain as mysteries, but the call is out. If you know anything about this man, his history or current whereabouts, Fakiegrinders want to know.

Reminds me of the time...

I was on assignment, writing copy for a ground beef mine in the hills outside of Yellowknife. It was a warm, glorious mid-summers day, one of two that the region saw that year. My assistant, Natasha Snipetree, a normally reserved and serious-minded typesetter from the Eastern Townships, momentarily overcome by the lushness of our surroundings (we had quit the company bivouac for a grassy knoll overlooking a peat bog) did an impromptu belly dance, waving a couple internal memos in the air as if they were scarves made of the finest Oriental silk. The memory comes back to me every time I inhale the fumes from an antique mimeograph machine.

Blog Hiatus Update

The 2007 Fakiegrind Blog Hiatus is going extremely well. Blog postings are down almost 500% from the last quarter, while readership remains at just below average levels. Comments are down 86%, while the comments-to-postings ratio is up 77%. The blog hiatus projections calls for benchmark levels of readership indifference by the third quarter of the present fiscal cycle.



A lateral shift in the header generation initiative may swing return visitor stats into the red zone during the peak meridians of the fourth quarter, but we will attempt to compensate for such fluctuations in market suffrage by re-vamping the sidebar hyperlink interface to better accord with current template idiosyncrasies.

All in all, we are looking at a better than expected success gradient for the current blog hiatus initiative, and expect to generate continued stats counter activity for no good reason well into the second tri-mester of the current incubatory timeframe.

Let the Fakiegrind blog hiatus begin!

'Twas the night before last
and all through Fakie Headquarters
the Agents were feasting on digital leftovers.
Flatlander was guarding the chimney with care
In case Maskatron should suddenly appear
And steal away all of the stockings and gifts
To sell on eBay, or at shops of thrift.
Overseer Q was lighting a stogie
And DJ Thing was playing Thomas Dolby.
The turntables were spinning by the fireside
Where Christmas carols and oldschool rappers collide.
And Captain Canuck was mending his cape
While his old flame Nelvanna peeled him a grape.
Rocksteady was working on guitar chords
And Em was browsing the comic book hoard.
The Vaults of Oldness were full of weird stuff
From Christmas past, all gathering dust.
But Kil Joy was nowhere to be seen
Until he arrived in Dr. Flavour's time machine.
The tofu was roasting in the old gas stove.
(Happy T. Fluke was hiding in a mango grove)
When out of the window all saw a strange sight.
The sky was filled with a flickering light.
And a spherical vessel was hovering there
Which seemed to appear right out of the air!
It lit up the yard with a powerful beam
Where the grass and the deck chairs started to gleam.
And an object was lowered of strange design.
It was a Christmas present from Nebula 9!
We brought it inside, that bizarre invention.
It shimmered and pulsed with extra dimensions.
But the instruction book was written in code
Or the language of some pan-galactic abode.
So we could only guess at its possible uses
Until someone suggested we try to make juices.
So we loaded it up with various fruit:
Some apples and pears and cassava root
And flipped what looked like the master switch
Then the whole house shaked at a fevered pitch.
And the air was filled with a beautiful sound
Like industrial jazz coming out of the ground.
We opened the tap and filled our cups
With a frothy liquid to warm our guts.
Sipping which, Dr. Flavour exclaimed with glee,
"Egads! The thing makes bubble tea!"

Fakiegrind Examines...

Last night, after the other Agents had all gone to bed, the android detection field had been activated and the cat fed, I was ruminating over a nice cup of 'nog and my mind wandered to the subject of the recent popularity of DJs and DJ culture. Nowadays, top DJs command as much, or more, for their services as rock stars. A guy (or girl) can be just as admired for playing records in public as trained musicians once were, and Technics turntables have replaced the electric guitar as the instrument of choice with which angst-ridden teens struggle express themselves.

This might be seen as just another fad in the endless series of spectacles popular culture generates in the tireless quest for novelty. It will surely pass, just like disco and pet rocks, only to be rediscovered and reinvented by future trendsetters in the great laundromat of popular culture. But perhaps there is a deeper significance to the adoption of two turntables and a mixer as the musical emblem of the moment. How come, I asked myself as nutmeg particles swirled chaotically in the yellow sea nog, that just now, to quote Tears for Fears' prophetic lyrics, "DJ's the man we love the most?".


Who doesn't love the Wolf Man?

DJs can be musical innovators, inventing new sounds from mixtures of musical styles, and the best spinners often move on to become producers in their own right. But, for the most part, a DJ's job is to play music that other people have created and recorded. They are a kind of middle man – a pusher, if you will – of sounds, and, whether at a dance club or on the radio, they can influence and mold culture by the very decisions they make about what songs to play or not. The editorial power held by the disk jockey is humourously acknowledged and criticized in the Smiths' song "Panic" with its chorus,

Burn down the disco
Hang the blasted DJ
Because the music they constantly play
Says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blasted DJ
Because the music they constantly play...

Hatred, jealousy and persecution of the DJ goes hand in hand with the power they yield as controllers of musical culture. Of course, it is music producers who actually determine what even gets recorded and distributed in the first place, but these largely behind-the-scenes figures are less easy to target by their very invisibility. However, while hatred for the DJ is easy to understand, we must still address the great love for DJing that currently permeates our culture. Why this complicated love/hate relationship with people who are just trying to play some records?

The answer lies, I suspect, with our position at the End of History. We are currently inundated with so much cultural information, with so many past and present artists, styles and landmarks of musical heritage, that the average listener hardly knows what to make of it all. Is it ok, for instance, to enjoy the Abba song "Take a Chance on Me" even though your parents might have grooved to the same track, likely before you were even conceived? Can a single soul enjoy both Rush and gangster rap and still maintain an intact and coherent sense of self? In high school, people tend to cling to a single musical genre, or a particular artist, as a means of maintaining a sense of personal identity. But, as we age, our tastes often mature and differentiate in manifold directions. This can be a painful and difficult process, but it is made easier by the DJ, whose very vocation consists in sifting through the popular musical heritage of the last fifty years and making some kind of statement as to what is valuable or meaningful in it.


Grandmaster Flash got class!

The DJ is like Theseus steering his way through the labyrinth of popular music and leaving behind a golden thread for others to follow, all the while evading the minotaur of massive "uncoolness"— the loss of face that comes with liking music that is clearly "whack". The DJ is like an archivist, constantly digging, searching out and sorting the musical influences that make up the cacophonous modern landscape. As our culture enters its twilight years it ceases to be vibrantly creative and becomes more philosophical and reflective. The DJ is the philosopher of music, telling us what it all means through the subliminal connections made between the tracks he chooses to play.

It's all been done, and there may be nothing new under the sun, but the DJ, through a tweak of the bass, a twinge of the treble, can make it all seem brand new. And in this ironic age of self-reflexivity and repetition this is the panacea offered to our fatigued souls. Within a single 50 minute set we can relive the thrill of disco, the utopian otherworldliness of prog rock, the cold calculations of techno, and the raw, liberating nihilism of punk. We can bop our heads to new wave and even steal a surreptitious thrill at the Motown beats of the fallen King of Pop. The DJ is the master pianist, playing each of these musical keys in turn, dropping his record needle into the very grooves of history.


The DJ as clown.

And that is why we love the DJ; because he or she reflects back to us who we are (or pretend to be), and who we have been (or thought we were). To borrow a phrase from the title of one of fantasy author Michael Moorcock's stranger trilogies, we are the "Dancers at the End of Time" and the DJ with his record collection supplies the sound track. But the age of the DJ, too, will pass. It's death knell has already been sounded with the advent of the Ipod and similar technologies. With the MP3 file, everyone can fashion his or her own personal music program, and an entire library of music can fit on a device the size of a pocket calculator. Perhaps this will be the true end of history, when each of us can create his or her own narrative out of the chaotic debris in the midst of which we find ourselves. And so the lyrics of Morissey's "Panic" will no longer hold true, but we can still listen to them and reminisce in the isolated splendor provided by the "earbuds" of our own electronic DJ device.