Build Date: Tue Jan 21 07:20:13 2025 UTC
Mississippi should teach their high school kids not to get in cars piloted by huge, sweaty, satan-worshipping freaks on mescaline.
-- Ratsnatcher
Goths vs. Dieters in the Streets of Montréal
2002-05-25 07:34:06
Fucking hell. It's like the mind-bending last-war apocalypse in "The Prophecy" movies or something. I dunno what I'm gonna do here. I'm trapped in the street between Goths and Dieters and fucken Christopher Walken is going to bite off my head like a radish. I should just give up and get washed away in the tide of blood.
So, here's the deal: next weekend, May 31st-Jun 2, is the big MUTEK festival in Montréal, My Home Town. OK, so, it's not really My Home Town, but it's where I live for the moment, and, hell, I haven't had a home town for a while, so this is gonna have to do. And, yeah, I am constantly afraid and fearful that some mob of potbellied Sale and Pelletier fans are going to find my address and come kidnap me and burn me on one of those big X cross things. I think about this shit.
Anyways, MUTEK is this gigantic dieterfest of epic proportions. Men with Dutch accents and tiny octagonal wire-frame glasses will be descending from all corners of the globe onto this Kerbecky village to make disturbingly atonal 100-megawatt musical arrangements with a pair of tweezers and a faulty capacitor for the express purpose of removing all the fun from electronic culture. There will be tweaky burble-and-squeak music booming from every open window and sewer grate, and bizarre non-dancing by those unable to make digital Photoshop laser-show filters on their own.
But meanwhile, ACROSS TOWN, is Convergence VIII, the biggest Goth Festival in the world, which has cruelly chosen the SAME WEEKEND in the SAME TOWN for their Mystick Aggregationne. You can tell it's a goth festival, of course, because of the Roman numerals. So there's ALSO going to be a lot of unpleasant stoop-shouldered tousle-haired boys in trenchcoats and ruffled shirts, and maudlin speed-freak girls in velvet gowns and leather collars, all clumping into little bitch circles to shoot evil-eye glances at each other and worship Satan to the soundtrack of "Valley Girl."
I am DEEPLY TROUBLED by this course of events. Montréal is a strong town, and could probably weather an invasion of either one of these groups on its own, and given a few years to recuperate, might even be able to survive the next wave. But having both on the same weekend, in a not-really-that-big area -- could any city stand it? Is there a town so strong? I think not.
What's going to happen when the DARKE POWYRS of the goth infestation starts conflicting with the TECHNICAL MAYHEM of the Dieter critical mass? When the first pomo TECHHEAD accidentally bumps into a bondage-geared CRYPTIE and refuses to give a flowery apology in Medieval Provencal, instead delivering a footnoted lecture deconstructing the semiotics of remorse? With this kind of CONFLICT of PARADIGMS, how can a BEIRUT-STYLE COMBAT ZONE of quadrophrenic Rocker-Mod street combat fail to erupt?
Of course, both camps will be HEAVILY ARMED, which is the greatest danger. The dieters are bound to unleash their arsenal of X-ray LASER-CANNONS and ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE cluster bombs, while the SPOOKY PEOPLE will of course make PENTAGRAMS out of INFANT BRAIN MATTER and invoke DAEMONS and CREATYRES of the NYGHT to strike down their ennymies. The skies over Mont Royal will be LIT by EPIC PROXY BATTLES of battle drones and WYNGED DRAGUNS while on the ground skinny people in strange garb throw LONG-ISLAND ICED TEAS in each other's pasty mugs.
And me! I'll be stuck in the middle, just trying to make it past the SMOKING BARRICADES and CRATERS filled with of OPALESCENT BLOOD to get to the corner depanneur and buy a 40 of Labatt's Extra-Fort 10% before 11PM. Dodging enraged MINIMALISTS in cargo pants and bile-flinging WYTCHES to try to get to the so-called safety of the little hole I call home. When an ACID-SPITTING ROBOT meets a BALROG, who will win? Who can say that anyone will be the victor -- that we will not all, somehow, lose?
I have given up hope and started stockpiling water and poutine against the coming destruction. I know it will do no good, but what does it matter? We all must find a way to fiddle while the city descends into madness. Good luck to you and may the gods preserve you all.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Johnny Royale loves his Trackman ultra pointer thingy. It's coolio! Read all about it! (More...)
Songs Of Love And Special Things
Well, dear reader, there's no denying it: Spring has sprung. The air is pungent with the fertile aroma of Romance. And you know what goes with Romance, don't you? That's right, Lover, porn. And not just any porn, but the kind you can sing along to. (More...)
Paranoid Strippers & Psychotic Crack Dealers (Tales of Christmas Eve)
Christmas day, for the last 17 or so years has bored me. I find that the real fun and excitement always takes place on Christmas Eve. Every other year, it's the excitement of the metaphorical hunt instead of the kill. Otherwise, it's just plain bad craziness. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
The Ancient and Correct Sake Ceremony
Many Americans have learned to appreciate the delicate, sophisticated flavors of Japanese food and drink, along with the beautifully refined rituals of Japanese dining. San Francisco, as a gateway between East and West, has especially benefited from the flowering of Eastern consciousness in America. It is hardly possible to walk down the street without stepping on somebody's sushi. (More...)
Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
