While I am usually not supportive at all of my friend's creative ventures (because I'm a shitty friend), Arch's current band is awesome and playing at the Railway Club Feb 16th.

Breaking News!

4 towels, ashtray taken from Motel 6

On top of having the joy of eating haggis for the first time in nearly twenty years (yes they did serve egg rolls), our table also cleaned house with door prizes with half of our eligible party taking home some pretty incredible gear.

These included 1 famous grouse golf style umbrella (red), one Drambuie vest (medium), a Drambuie toque (black) and one Drambuie mock turtleneck (extra large). I assumed that our sarcastic hollering and whooping could be mistaken for drunken enthusiasm so we seemed not to have ruffled any feathers.

Even better though was when I went to cash in my scotch tasting voucher and the young lass behind the stand informed me that she was out of ice. "Pour it really hefty and we'll call it even" said I and oddly enough she obeyed, filling that plastic cup almost half way up. Since I'm not huge on the taste of spilt booze that's been sitting in an ashtray, I handed off this monstrous pour to dana and wished him well.

I also had the pleasure of running into dave again who told the story of how from the stories he had heard of me, he was expecting me to look like carrot top. While I thought to ask if he meant old school skinny carrot top or new freakishly buff carrot top, I also realized that neither one was likely to get laid ever so the point was moot.

For those who felt nauseous at the mere suggestion of a Robbie Burns Day dinner, don't forget that half the fun is just getting drunk with your friends. The haggis is just the oatmealy meaty icing on the cake.

Truth be told, I haven't had haggis since grade 4. My teacher handed everybody in the class a plastic fork and walked around the room with a brown paper bag and let everyone stick their fork into it for a bite of mystery. I remembered the grey mass that I pulled out of the bag tasting rather unoffensive and much like underseasoned sausage. Despite her not telling anybody what it was, it was a fine example of a better time when kids would put whatever you told them into their mouths.

She revealed to us soon afterward that it was Robbie Burns day and that what we had just eaten was a haggis (free range I'm sure) that traditionally consisted of all the parts of an sheep that only frenchmen would normally eat. That is to say it was to be made of the sheep's pluck which can best be described as the all parts you might get it you rammed your fist down a sheep's throat and pulled really really hard and added a handful of oatmeal.

While I've since learned that North American haggis is about as scottish as McDonald's is, it's still been a plan for me to eat haggis on robbie burns day for years. While I've usually found myself too wrapped up in bullshit to make it happen, this year I've rounded up some cohorts willing to go down on just about anything. We're headed to Doolin's (an irish pub) where they'll have a scotch tasting, scottish beers, scottish appies (I'm assuming egg rolls, mini quiche and nachos), a scottish fold, and finally the piping in the haggis.

Much to Dana's disappointment it seems that by piping in the haggis, they mean they play the bagpipes while some dude marches the haggis into the room and righteously stabs it after reciting the burns poem "To a Haggis" which pretty much sounds like what Mel Gibson's character says in Braveheart but about haggis instead of freedom. They've sadly assured me that there will not be any clear pipes leading from the kitchen to the dining room that haggis will be pumped though.

Since most of you come here to laugh about the skeletons in my closet and not to be lectured by them, it's only fair that I lighten things up with a story.

After starting at a new school in grade 11 (as was the norm in Richmond at the time), I made the acquaintance of a fellow named james who I met through my friends from my previous school. For reasons not entirely clear, there was a certain animosity between us; we'd push each other into lockers and generally be dicks to each other but in a way that was still mildly friendly.

One particular weekend a group of us headed out to a friend's "cabin" out in either mission or maple ridge; I frankly couldn't be bothered to remember which podunk suburb we happened into with our booze and shitty attitudes. The first night set the tone as my friends hurled a molotov cocktail at a train engine from the backyard as it passed by, seeming not to care that we wouldn't be particularly hard to track down had the conductor decided to call the authorities.

On the second day, full of bravado and alcohol james and I started fighting as kids do. Wrestling like ancient greeks but less gay, james managed to gain the upper hand at some point and ended up sitting on my chest while beating the living shit out of my legs, applying a technique well known at the time as the "charlie horse". He had gained quite an advantage it seemed; my hands were pinned and the whoopass he was applying to me seemed endless so I realized that I needed a new strategy. I shifted my weight slightly, leaned forward and bit him in the ass.

The rain of fists came to a halt as he drunkenly processed what had just happened. Best I can recall he shouted "You bit me in the ass!", at which point he turned around, raised his hand up high in the air and brought it down into my eye in a move that shook my brain in my skull and told my body that I should vomit if possible.

My friends who up until that point had been perfectly satisfied drinking beer around us decided that the drunken horseplay had reached a fever pitch and lept into the fray to prevent james from turning my face into a plate of corned beef hash. The guys wrestled vigorously, barely managing to keep their bodies off of the cast iron wood stove that burned only inches away from them at times, threatening to peel patches of skin off and fill the room with the smell of cheap bacon.

When they finally managed to calm him down, james stumbled out the door and down the street to the pond to puke, having overexerted himself in his punchdrunk struggles. I was given a bag of ice to keep my head from swelling and soon I even lost my desire to vomit.

The next weekend james and I found ourselves hanging out by the fraser river with our friends again. We were drunk but declined to start beating on each other and instead took a walk together where he apologized for smashing my face in and I apologized for biting him in the ass. He also managed to piss on his own leg during a drunken attempt to piss off of the pier we stood on, but that's another story for another time.

Somehow through those specific and particularly stupid events, james and I managed to become very good friends. We never looked back on that fight with anything other than a sense of humor, realizing that anyone who can go let an incident like that go with a handshake couldn't be all that bad to be friends with.

As much as I love meat, the undeniable truth is that modern livestock farming is both inhumane and ecologically unsound.

Factory farms raise their animals on drug cocktails and the flesh of their dead in shoeboxes. Even the concept of a farmer is horribly twisted from the picturesque images in our books growing up.

It's hard to make the argument for the continued existance of this culture; in a world already being beaten into submission, our greed and selfishness continues to be the driver for these practices. Beyond the ecological damage being caused by expelling millions of tons of animal shit in waterways is the social damage suffered when factory farming destroys the livelihoods of independant farmers.

While vegetarianism is an extreme step in moving away from the immorality of the situation, another is to consume free range and organic meat. Eat less meat, but eat more of the animal. North American culture is so spoiled on steaks and chops and boneless, skinless chicken that we waste so much of the animals we slaughter. Old world recipes evolved from the poor making the scraps of the rich not only edible but delicious.

Even if you don't intend to take any steps towards more responsible living, at least make your decision an educated one.

Don't worry, I'm just as disappointed at the state of this blog as you are.

If anyone knows where to find a haggis filled robbie burns day dinner in vancouver this year, please let me know.

I'd rather not dip into my can of vegetarian haggis if I can help it.