Although he's an engineer he currently subsidizes his life by playing on-line poker. This may seem like a strange way to make a living, but he's not the first person I've met who does this. I've met one other person who does this –who, in fact, paid his way through College playing multiple games at the same time – but he is a tool, and won't be mentioned again.
With a society that seems based on going outdoors and looking at trees, or shooting at animals, staying in-doors and playing online poker seems a bit incongruous. But count on me to befriend the most incongruous people you can find.
I'm speaking to you Andy-Oxide, and you Carl Warwick, and you Phil Warren.
Anyway, the person that I met here who does this recently broke his wrist playing volleyball. Which makes me think he should play less poker and drink more milk.
Many of you have commented that I should ditch the whole radio thing and get into writing full-time.
I really, really, appreciate the sentiment. I'm glad you enjoy what I write, and I assure you that I aim to please.
But I assure you that I am, in fact, putting my writing to good use. The kind of use that is involved with monetary compensation.
That is, when I'm not responding to American Nazis who email me their crap:
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 12:56:02 -0800
From: onair@957sunfm.ca
To: tiaorg@comcast.net; jmattbarber@comcast.net
Subject: Re: “Gay” Activists Mull “Organized Terrorism” Against Christians (Press Release)
Hey paranoid Neo-Con twits. Stop clogging up our inbox with your hack-journalism, fear mongering, and fascist garbage. We are trying to have an actual business here. Your point of view(s) is ignorant, dull, and pointless.
Also, we are based in Canada, which makes you and your people more redundant than you already are. We get enough of this idiocy in the form of Fox News. If I suddenly turned into a brainless sycophant I would tune in to Fox for this same info, I wouldn't bother reading your pathetic drivel. Chances are most of your demographic can't read, so they are as well.
Which raises the question: why put it in print in the first place?
Don't answer that. I don't care.
It's simple. DO NOT SEND YOUR CRAP HERE.
Thanks.
I've started the habit of writing out my breaks before I announce them. This is something I've been told a number of times to overcome my brain/mouth neuron misfires. It took a while for me to get into the habit, and now that I have it's tweaked my performance tenfold. I'm not even sure why I didn't start doing it right away. The hump, I think, was trying to write for speech, rather than my usual meandering blatherings designed for more literary purposes. And I mean "literary" in the most lax sense of the word. I'm me, I have no illusions.
Anyway, as many of you know when I write I aim to amuse. I hope that's not coming as a surprise. If it is, I've been doing it wrong. Or you are, more likely.
Anyway, that being said, I've been trying to script in my own brand of humour into everything I say on-air. I'm getting better at it. The trick is being funny, while staying relevant, and not offending people that either should, or do, work at the CRTC. Ultimately the goal is to cause someone's death by how hilarious I am.
I'm imagining the listener driving down a rural road who hears me say something so funny they are attacked by a frenzy of belly-killing laughter which causes them to lose control of their car and drive into a tree, or, even better, another person who is unaware of the wildly swerving car because they are listening to me on their am/fm transistor radio.
Perhaps they are eating dinner and they overhear me. Boom, the steak bone is stuck in the trachea, the face becomes blue, the sphincter has its last parlay with the brain.
Perhaps they are doing nothing, but because they are helplessly gripped in laughter, they cough up a spleen or other major organ.
Causing multiple deaths with my humour would be the pinnacle of my radio career, I think. It would only be bested by someone actually listening to me on an am/fm transistor radio.
It takes a real commitment to radio to look like a jack-ass in headphones not attached to an iPod.
Besides, there's not a lot of other things a radio jock has control of anymore. We can't touch the music, we can't choose the demographic, we can't choose the ads. All we can do is choose what we say, and for me, hope that it kills somebody.
And, as it turns out, the less satisfied I am the funnier I can be. Might as well put those negative emotions to good use.
This may seem like crazy-talk, but it's not. The urge to kill someone with humour has been around for as long as stand-up has. So, really, since Plato. Among comedians "to kill them" indicates that they had the room in stitches: it was a successful show.
Of course, for comedians the expression is just an expression. I seek carnage. A gigglecide, if you will.
I realize that setting a goal that high may be unrealistic. It will take years of honing the timing, and focusing the vernacular to be at the stage where I am comfortably causing death at will.
That's why, for the time-being, I'll be satisfied if the occasional person just pisses themselves.
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