So K. called me a brat, and rightly so. Now I could go on about the bizarre dysfunctional ways A. and M. keep trying to drag me into their extramarital insanity, but that would be overuse of initials. I could tell you about Fatslaps and his plans to splatter Harry with onions, but Harry is whimpering just about the right amount. I'm talking about Harry, not Harry. I could do a Marxist literary criticism of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, but something disturbing happened to me, indirectly leading me to have a flashback.

It was another century, though not more than a couple miles away. As with all “progress”, some things are better now, and some things are worse. Maybe that's just how I see it. It's stereotypically geriatric to reminisce about the past, accentuating the positive, but it's stereotypically me to only comment on the negative. So in the interest of stalling, here comes a mélange of the two. Value judgments are left as an exercise for the reader, assuming the prostitute/lover question isn't still getting top billing.

Warren Zevon was still alive. Nouvelle Vague hadn't released any albums yet. I only knew one person who spoke Brazilian Portuguese. I hadn't seen Rent yet. I used to eat a lot more Colombian food. I refused to eat tomatoes. Actually, I ate quite a few things then that I don't now, and quite a few things now that I didn't then. I don't remember what I ate that night, but it wasn't “Kraft dinner”; I'm sure of that.

I know because I went to see a free concert as performed by the Barenaked Ladies. The concert was free because they were almost completely unknown. I was introduced to them a while before, by a dirty, dirty slut who squealed with delight because the lyrics featured words such as “erection”. It took me years of recovery to be able to appreciate that song. Years. If she hadn't, I would have found out about them through Minna Bromberg because she does a cover.

One of the people I was with shouted out to Steven Page, calling him by the wrong name. If being a starstruck poseur weren't enough cause, I think the error would have made me implode from embarrassment. He took it on the chin.

I know this Canadian who keeps telling the same tired old story that the Barenaked Ladies is the only Canadian band to ever become famous outside of Canada. He uses this dubious claim to segue into his bit about how The Tragically Hip is really popular in Canada, but unknown everywhere else. I tell him that I've heard of The Tragically Hip. He doesn't believe me. I try telling him that I've never heard of Moxy Früvous or Rush, at which point he breaks down and admits that everyone has heard of Rush. Then we repeat the conversation a month later.

So BNL did get all famous and mainstream and STUFF. That night, they urged everyone in the audience to promote them so they could GET PAID and sell out to The Man. I must confess not comprehending their earnestness and the gravity of the situation. I also never expected them to be played on Z100. Boycott ClearChannel. They're sellouts now, but they weren't then, and a good time was had by all.

At the time, If I Had $1000000 might've been their most popular song. AS SUCH, the more rabid fans in the audience had brought boxes and boxes of macaroni & cheese, as well as a stuffed monkey or two. These items were flung at the stage, at appropriate times, frightening the band. I don't believe that anyone threw a green dress.

Now, Canadians are funny people. They like to flap their heads and do medleys and covers and rap gratuitously in the middle of concerts. Well, Rush doesn't, but Moxy Früvous and BNL do, and that's enough for me to make a sweeping generalization, because Rush can be disqualified purely on the mullet factor.

You probably don't know this, but If I Had $1000000 is a song which gets a lot of variation and perhaps improv. For example, the owner of the “remains” will vary, and they'll vamp the introduction with the lyrics of some other song. You can hear it on the Rock Spectacle album, where they lead in with Grade 9. That night they did Prince's Raspberry Beret. We swooned.

We swooned.

We were occupying the entire park bench when the strange girl approached. She was strange in the sense that we had never seen her before; in the grand scheme of things she was not all that strange. I mean, she was wearing bellbottoms, which was not the norm, and her feet were caked with mud, which might have indicated inclinations toward being a neo-hippie, and while that might be pretentious and lame, it's not all that strange, considering.

Eying the occupants of the bench, she asked if any of our laps were free. The art of sitting on someone's lap is largely a lost one; I don't know where people learn the proper technique, but I do know that most people don't even know it exists to be learned. I know that I was surprised when it was revealed to me.

Anyway, I never discovered whether or not she knew how to properly sit on a lap, because we all kinda glanced at each other and told her to fuck off. Two days later, she was screwing the guy to my right.

That didn't last long. Neither did her mode of dress or her behavior. She lopped off her long, brown hair, bleached it blond, and got a few facial piercings. She started doing heroin and boasting that she gave the best blowjobs in a certain geographical region. She shacked up with a girl named after an invertebrate. I'm guessing that she didn't continue on to greatness.

Then there was another strange girl. She was strange because she was stuck in the 50's. She was also as dumb as a rock, so the only two interesting things about her were her 50's fetish and her profoundly deep bass voice. When I say she was stuck in the 50's, I don't mean that she lived through them and failed to move on. I mean that she wore saddle shoes, sported memorabilia from the golden age of rock and roll, and became very hostile when anyone challenged her adamant insistence that no good music was ever produced after 1959.

Her sister was a model, also as dumb as a rock, and with the same freakishly low voice. Her sister was also a giant slut. In contrast, 50's Girl publicly had sex with a 50-year-old guy while his wife and kids were in Virginia. Having sex in public is generally bad form. I know this because the last time I tried to have sex in a moving vehicle, the driver forbade it. Actually what she said was that we weren't allowed to have sex in her car until she had done so first. Then she proceeded to never have sex in that car, which I thought was a rather rude and deceptive practice.

Anyway, 50's Girl met this schmuck with spiky hair, piercings and tattoos galore, combat boots, and a penchant for crashing motorcycles. Really, you didn't need to look far below the surface to know that he was a festering douchebag, but if you did, you would find out that he was a pathological liar and backstabbing snake.

They hit it off, and just like that, the 50's persona was cast to the wind. She dyed her hair some sickly color, started dressing in leather and listening to hardcore. Her elderly friend, who had little trouble relating to clinging to the 50's, now suddenly found herself in the position of possibly needing to get herself a subscription to some kind of magazine.

Not too far away, a lollergirl took a break from plumping up and spotted a ticket. If you were lucky, she told you about it.

After consulting with my business manager, my publicist, and my wiccan stormtrooper brigade, I have unilaterally decided to make this limited-time offer. For US$15,000, a lucky donor can request stylesheet changes for arch.debian.org. For US$25,000, an enterprising young individual can get the default ArchZoom theme changed. For a moderate surcharge, the donor may secure anonymity, and I will claim that I am acting randomly in Debian's best interests.

Any commissioned changes will be locked in for 3 months or until someone else pays more money. Obviously I have to milk the revenue stream here or this won't be a viable business model and I really don't want to have to call this a failed experiment.

To anyone who might be calling this idea the height of corruption, I say this: anyone is welcome to do the same thing. If you care enough, just secure your own contracts and go ahead and change the stylesheet yourself. Of course, if you request access to do so, I will have to oppose it for completely-unrelated reasons, and possibly apply for an injunction to prevent the Alioth admins from making any foolish access changes. After all, interfering with my profit potential is a crime here in America.

Get your payments in fast!