David Barker Podcasts

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Short shorts and tall tales that document the terror of 21st century North American suburbia. Primary Format : Arts Language : Unknown Also Listed as: City : Toronto State/Province : Ontario User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of David Barker Podcasts Methings.com listings of David Barker Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

View the full archive of David Barker Meat There’s a street party in the neighbourhood and Squiggy’s in charge of the barbeque because he scored a gross of ground chuck. But Lenny, his next door neighbour and best friend, can’t make it for the party. Too bad, because this year’s burgers are the best ever. h/t to the Stinky Meat Project Stinky Meat Project :: File Download (17:08 min / 7 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Federal Communications Commission To celebrate the recent US Supreme Court Decision upholding the “fleeting expletive” rule (allowing the FCC to fine broadcasters for even a single instance of a word like fuck, shit, cunt, cocksucker, asshole, motherfucker, dickweed, shithead … you get the idea), I decided to do a podcast imagining a knock at the door early one morning. My podcast has an incidental cross-border issue – i.e. since I’m Canadian, the FCC can’t really fine me. Nevertheless ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marking Boundaries Good nannies are hard to come by, but it’s important to give them some space of their own, as one dog-walking suburbanite learns the hard way.File Download (21:52 min / 10 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Zombie & GriefBot Inc. This podcast features two stories: the first concerns a mental health patient who starts to worry when the patient in the next room suddenly disappears and housekeeping whisks away some bloodied sheets; the second speculates about what might happen when a software giant gets into the funeral business.File Download (22:04 min / 12 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lessons from an Aphasic Priest What kind of a conversation do you get when you force a paranoid schizophrenic to talk to an aphasic? Does it make any sense at all? This is the story of a psychotic – but harmless – man who has been convicted of being a nuisance and is sentenced to do community service at the Centre for Incurable Aphasia (CIA). He’s assigned to a priest who was in a cycling accident and has suffered a brain injury. The priest’s gibberish makes perfect sense!File Download (22:33 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation on an Earlobe Listen to three poems. The first is titled “Improvisation on an Earlobe” and the text appears on the corresponding post at lifeinthemargins.com. The other two poems first appeared as the November and December 2008 poems for my poem-a-month newsletter which you can subscribe to at davidbarker.ca. They are titled “There Is No Sky” and “Prudence.” File Download (6:06 min / 3 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Seventy-Two Mohammed and Youssef are brothers who blew themselves up and have collected their reward– eternity with seventy-two virgins– only it’s not quite as idyllic as they had hoped. What’s more, they aren’t alone. One of their neighbours is the reverend Jerry who is also trying to collect on his reward, but as with Mohammed and Youssef, things aren’t turning out just as the good reverend had expected.File Download (9:49 min / 5 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beautiful Losers As the title suggests, this installment of Life In The Margins concerns an encounter with Leonard Cohen. The story is told by a neurotic husband who is worried that one day Leonard Cohen will seduce his wife. He arrives home from work one day to find that Leonard Cohen really is sitting in his living room sharing G& T’s with Suzanne, his wife. But seduction is the last thing on the man’s mind.File Download (16:28 min / 8 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Give Peace a Chance It was the best of busts; it was the worst of busts, the day I took down Tony Sarducci. There was once a time when we had such hopes for the man. It was nearly ten years ago now that he made the announcement. “I'm goin' clean,” he said. Even the papers picked it up. Front page news: “Sarducci runs a new game.” He gave us the feeling that anything was possible. Give Peace a Chance :: File Download (14:51 min / 7 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Couch Surfing and The Desiccator This episode features two short shorts. The first is Couch Surfing, about a guy who stays home from work to lie on his favourite sofa and click his remote between the Maury Show and Jerry Springer. But his Karma is off, given that he stole the sofa. He falls asleep, then wakes up all of a sudden facing something a little unexpected. The second story is The Desiccator, about a couple who come home from vacation and notice that their neighbour has left a D27 Desiccator at the end of the d ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Public Works Why is the grass always greener … ? Why do we always feel compelled to keep up with the Joneses? And who the hell are the Joneses that we’d feel such a compulsion in the first place? Of course, when you dig a little deeper, you find that things aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes, it’s better if you don’t get what you want – especially when what you want comes from envy.File Download (12:54 min / 6 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Yeskia 9mm Think dufferent! That’s the motto of Yeskia, the Swedish cell phone manufacturing giant. (It could’ve been “Think different!” but then they’d be just like everybody else.) To break into the American market with their latest product line, they decide to incorporate all their electronic devices (digicam, camcorder, mp3 player, browser, etc.) not into a conventional cell phone, but into something more widespread – the handgun. The result is the Yeskia 9m ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jack the Giant Killer Doctor Horvath motioned for Jack to take a seat by the round, low coffee table while he settled himself in a swiveling chair in front of the bare desk, and then he turned to face Jack while resting his right elbow on the desk. He tore a marked page from his pad (with the logo of a pharmaceutical company in the lower right corner) and dated a fresh page. Jack’s file lay close at hand.File Download (12:09 min / 6 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Everlasting Gobstoppers Willy Wonka loves the Oompa-Loompas and they love him back. You see, they're funny looking: they're short and have orange skin, with rotten teeth and bad breath, and they sing the damnedest song. The first time he ever saw them, Willy's heart brimmed with compassion. It was a sordid business, off-loading kegs from the local brewery and finding themselves (there in the alley behind the Detroit Eatery) the unwilling participants in an impromptu dwarf-throwing contest.File Download (2:29 m ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The 7th Commandment sometimes we desire what we cannot have but unable to extinguish the desire we fan ourselves into a roaring flame and so we rage and we flare but consume nothing from this god utters forth the usual useless shit then obedience comes not from love but from its failure we draw on god's teat like sucklings on an ashen nub The 7th Commandment :: File Download (0:35 min / 0 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website columbines columbines betray last year's scattering of seed by straying from the well-kept bed and springing unruly from the lawn i want to tear them out and bring order to my jealous yard maybe I should collect crystals and arrange them neatly on a shelf but the suggestion prompts your laughter bursting through the spring air the columbines are beautiful with downcast gaze and slender neck they have their infidelities but i will tend them still columbine :: File Download (0:35 ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shitting Whitman My standard poodle ate Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass in ropey coils on the lawn) I stoop and wrap my fingers around warm Song-Of-My-Self turds. She winces at the stanza that she squeezes from her anus. Do I constipate myself? Very well then I constipate myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. And I wonder if Whitman had to work so hard to get his words out in the first place. Shitting Whitman :: File Download (0:34 min / 0 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Do Not Speak Do not speak I cannot listen Do not beckon I cannot watch Do not summon I cannot answer Do not rail I cannot wince I want only to curl myself on the floor and feel my ribs pressed to the tiles. I wish I had their hardness. I wish I were ceramic. Do Not Speak :: File Download (0:31 min / 0 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Pike The thing about a pike that makes it doubly cruel is the way its shaft can sway when it's blown by ridicule. ... (listen to the whole poem) The Pike :: File Download (1:08 min / 1 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Age of Radicals When I was a teen it was inconceivable that I might find radical tucked in the folds of an old man's face. Now in my forties (though with a boy's libido) I see in the mirror how the first lines crack my youthful veneer. From mid-day the dawn light looks the same as the dusk. Which explains why old fogies spend so much time counting change at the check out: they're protesting something. Age of Radicals :: File Download (0:32 min / 0 MB) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website