i forget what i was doing, but i was at the dining table, phx was at the laptop, and LB was in the hallway - from where we heard her say "I can't get off my fucking shit sock!"
we're like "whaat?" to which LB repeated the aforementioned obscenity. it was shocking, and we wanted to laugh, kinda, but i dont think we did. phx helped LB get her sock off, and we figured we really gotta curb my, er, our cursing again.
which brings me to asking again - what's wrong with cursing? what happened, somewhere along the line, that has made some words "Bad"? this seems to have occurred in most human cultures - but why? like - what the fuck?
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
what a strange fetish - science fiction - science-based fiction. watchin the animatrix, i couldnt help but notice how it made me feel. i only had time to be forced to notice it when i went to the washroom to take a leak. i felt like things were possible, a coolness. the only thing i can think of that took me to a place like that before science fiction, was probably "kung-fu movies", ok - "martial arts movies", like "Enter the Dragon". (i am NOT putting the period inside the quotation marks. or the parentheses. or the brackets. the parentheses and brackets usually are contained within a sentence, and therefore will not contain the period, but rather the period will follow them, concluding the sentence, goddammit.) (the exception being the "aside" parentheses, containing a whole sentence, or several, that might be a commentary rather than part of the story - hence the parentheses - and so the sentences behave "normally", but these "asides" are demarcated by the parentheses. whether the period should be inside the parentheses or outside, should not be a rigid rule, but rather be dictated by whether or not the parenthesized content was itself a whole, a unit - um, i think i'm typing out my ass and so should check this out on wikipedia before opening my big keyboard.
um, i found in wikipedia that i had no idea of what i was talking about. in american english there is a convention or standard of having the period at the end of a sentence always inside the quotation marks, if there is a quotation at the end of the sentence, regardless of whether the period was actually included in the original of what was quoted. unless we're talking scientific or technical writing - then no. ( hehe, awesome sentence.) this rule was developed as a result of the need to protect the small and fragile pieces of type like the period and the comma behind the bigger and stronger quotation marks in the printing press.
and apparently the british convention is to use logical quotation.
and all this time i thought it was about parentheses - silly me :)
but i did find out that the british dont say "period" but rather "full stop", which in turn dispells some of my confusion about some of what the dopefiend says.
apparently "full stop" is sometimes used in canada, but i havent noticed. yet another word fallen victim to americanization here. right after chesterfield.
back to the main body, omitting parentheses and all, for now - martial arts movies and many sci-fi movies have made me feel like maybe more in life is possible than i've been led to believe. i wonder if anybody's done a study on what kind of class of people, what kind of personality trait is necessary to go for this sort of entertainment. what causes some people to be completely enthralled by this sort of communication, as opposed to ppl who love wwe wrestling.
what is it that makes us geeks?
um, i found in wikipedia that i had no idea of what i was talking about. in american english there is a convention or standard of having the period at the end of a sentence always inside the quotation marks, if there is a quotation at the end of the sentence, regardless of whether the period was actually included in the original of what was quoted. unless we're talking scientific or technical writing - then no. ( hehe, awesome sentence.) this rule was developed as a result of the need to protect the small and fragile pieces of type like the period and the comma behind the bigger and stronger quotation marks in the printing press.
and apparently the british convention is to use logical quotation.
and all this time i thought it was about parentheses - silly me :)
but i did find out that the british dont say "period" but rather "full stop", which in turn dispells some of my confusion about some of what the dopefiend says.
apparently "full stop" is sometimes used in canada, but i havent noticed. yet another word fallen victim to americanization here. right after chesterfield.
back to the main body, omitting parentheses and all, for now - martial arts movies and many sci-fi movies have made me feel like maybe more in life is possible than i've been led to believe. i wonder if anybody's done a study on what kind of class of people, what kind of personality trait is necessary to go for this sort of entertainment. what causes some people to be completely enthralled by this sort of communication, as opposed to ppl who love wwe wrestling.
what is it that makes us geeks?
Thursday, June 18, 2009
sitting outside a starbucks
an obviously homeless and very fucked up looking guy is making his way up the sidewalk with a slow, shuffling walk. he's holding a can of turpentine. he stops to pour some more into a small rag he's holding in his other hand. takes a few more steps, the turpentine dripping from his hand. he then stops to inhale deeply from his rag a few times. turns around and walks into the starbucks. maybe for some paper napkins? stumbles out in a minute and slowly continues on up the hill.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
this 60-something persian concierge was getting flack from a 30-ish resident who'd just gotten in the front door for not going outside and telling people waiting for the bus to not stand in front of the entrance. but the people were standing in front of the entrance because thats where there was some cover from the rain. the concierge got more and more agitated. started speaking louder and louder, with increasingly bad english, culminating in saying "Fuck You!" to the resident a couple times.
it got to the concierge's supervisor that i witnessed that incident, so i kinda confirmed it for him, somehow trying to save the old guy, but he still got the axe. he told me he used to be a fighter plane mechanic back home. i thought he sounded a bit bitter about his "career change".
i saw the old guy back at the concierge desk at that building the other day :)
it got to the concierge's supervisor that i witnessed that incident, so i kinda confirmed it for him, somehow trying to save the old guy, but he still got the axe. he told me he used to be a fighter plane mechanic back home. i thought he sounded a bit bitter about his "career change".
i saw the old guy back at the concierge desk at that building the other day :)
2 guys put on balaclavas in the garage of a 2-tower apartment building. they make their way up the stairs to the ground floor. they enter the management office, get out their mace and demand all the money the ladies in the office have. the ladies answer they put all the money they get from residents into the safe through a slot, but they dont have the key. the manager has the key, but he's not at the building. so the boys try to pull out the safe, but cant. the lady in the leasing office right next door saw what was happening through the partly glass wall, dialed 911, and as she yelled into the phone "help! we're being robbed!" the would be robbers bolted out of there. i bet she dialed 911 and the operator went "police, fire, or ambulance?" and the lady just lost her nerve...
***
saw a video of a bike thief being tackled by 3 plain clothes security guys the other day. it felt so good. i wanted them to hurt him. bad. i hope they did. couldnt see - the camera looked too high up...
***
saw a video of a bike thief being tackled by 3 plain clothes security guys the other day. it felt so good. i wanted them to hurt him. bad. i hope they did. couldnt see - the camera looked too high up...
Monday, June 15, 2009
homie-cide
yet another brothel suite in another expensive downtown highrise. 2 asian guys enter just after midnight. about 15 minutes later the guys are back out with some laptops, this time hoodies up. a few minutes after they leave the building, police arrive. apparently the killing of the guy that was looking after the girls was quite noisy...
was it planned? simply a rip-off of an already illegal operation? thought no one would go to the police with it? was it to get the laptops, possibly containing the name of someone who really didnt wanna leave a trail? was it to get names of ppl for blackmail purposes? or was it just heat of the moment, hence hoodies on way out only? ... and laptops because they were repeat customers? or just thought theft wasnt gonna be as big a problem if they were caught?
was it planned? simply a rip-off of an already illegal operation? thought no one would go to the police with it? was it to get the laptops, possibly containing the name of someone who really didnt wanna leave a trail? was it to get names of ppl for blackmail purposes? or was it just heat of the moment, hence hoodies on way out only? ... and laptops because they were repeat customers? or just thought theft wasnt gonna be as big a problem if they were caught?
Saturday, June 06, 2009
things you hear at these expensive appartment buildings...
concierge: see that guy? he works for (local phone company). he keeps going to the brothel suite here all the time...
me: there's a brothel suite here???????
concierge: yeah, you didnt know? yeah, its a different girl every week. poor girls, they get a new customer like every half hour.
*note: i saw this guy show up at a different appartment building the other day. he's not a technician, in case anyone's wondering. i wonder if he spends most of his money on this.
***
maintenance guy: yeah, so we were doing fire alarm testing in all the suites at (1st brothel suite building), and we go in this one suite, and there's machine guns and ammo on the table in the living room. turns out there's some east indian guys passed out in the bedroom. we left right away and called the cops.
me: yeah i was working there once, and these 2 cops show up gesturing to the concierge to open the door, then asking to be let up to whatever floor. 30 seconds later 2 more cops show up. 30 seconds later 2 more - with shotguns! and then a paddy wagon parks just at the corner. found out later that it was just some domestic dispute between someone's girlfriend and mom, but now i know the reason for the overkill.
***
bike patrolman to concierge: there was this bum that kept hanging out in this parkade, and i kept telling him to leave, and he kept coming back, so i finally called the cops. so this big cop shows up, i take him to where the bum is. the cop said he's seen the bum before, and then just tells me to beat it. so i rode away just around the first corner, but stopped just to see what was going on, and the cop started to beat the shit out of the bum, and the bum was just squealing like a little girl...
***
maintenance guy: this lady came down to the front desk asking if we'd seen her husband. apparently he'd go for a bike ride every morning, then come back and go to work, but he never came back from his bike ride that morning. so we checked to make sure he'd gotten his bike out of the storage, and he just never came back. not long after we heard someone was hanging from a tree not far away. i went to see and yeah, that was the guy - he just hung himself. i told the concierge to help his wife with anything she might need...
me: there's a brothel suite here???????
concierge: yeah, you didnt know? yeah, its a different girl every week. poor girls, they get a new customer like every half hour.
*note: i saw this guy show up at a different appartment building the other day. he's not a technician, in case anyone's wondering. i wonder if he spends most of his money on this.
***
maintenance guy: yeah, so we were doing fire alarm testing in all the suites at (1st brothel suite building), and we go in this one suite, and there's machine guns and ammo on the table in the living room. turns out there's some east indian guys passed out in the bedroom. we left right away and called the cops.
me: yeah i was working there once, and these 2 cops show up gesturing to the concierge to open the door, then asking to be let up to whatever floor. 30 seconds later 2 more cops show up. 30 seconds later 2 more - with shotguns! and then a paddy wagon parks just at the corner. found out later that it was just some domestic dispute between someone's girlfriend and mom, but now i know the reason for the overkill.
***
bike patrolman to concierge: there was this bum that kept hanging out in this parkade, and i kept telling him to leave, and he kept coming back, so i finally called the cops. so this big cop shows up, i take him to where the bum is. the cop said he's seen the bum before, and then just tells me to beat it. so i rode away just around the first corner, but stopped just to see what was going on, and the cop started to beat the shit out of the bum, and the bum was just squealing like a little girl...
***
maintenance guy: this lady came down to the front desk asking if we'd seen her husband. apparently he'd go for a bike ride every morning, then come back and go to work, but he never came back from his bike ride that morning. so we checked to make sure he'd gotten his bike out of the storage, and he just never came back. not long after we heard someone was hanging from a tree not far away. i went to see and yeah, that was the guy - he just hung himself. i told the concierge to help his wife with anything she might need...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
move over Jefferson Starship...
the above is the result of a tag by the mez. the picture wasnt like that actually, i used picnik to put it all together and alter the original picture. i was amazed how the band name and the picture totally fit together, and the album name was somewhat related, too!
for now I TAG Shenry.
i have to see who else i still can tag, so bear with me.
but here's how you do it:
1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop, the gimp or similar to put it all together.
5. Post it to your blog with this text in the “caption” and TAG the friends you want to join in.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
was i right, once upon a time, when i thought it would be cruel to thrust a child into this life i seem to hate so often? maybe they should have a test to verify that one is ready to have a child, and then 2, and so on. maybe they do. i guess it wouldnt turn out too cruel if the child ends up dealing with it all quite well. it's been a while since i first heard terence mckenna utter the phrase "culture is not your friend". but it's been seeping in slowly. its hard to practice thinking and verifying for myself while immersed in it all. but my mind and body are my own. "dont knock it until you try it" is redneck wisdom. i'm gonna have a fucking headache tomorrow morning again. i should substitute alcohol with pot completely.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
finished listening to "Prey" by Michael Crichton. awesome, but quite a bit of a thriller. almost too much for me at times. times that i didnt need the additional "stress" of a thriller. but i totally recommend it.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
following the link from a recent post by meznor, phx and i just started the hundred push ups training program, and tomorrow we're starting the two hundred situps training program - so exciting! :D
Thursday, December 18, 2008
the path
the publisher recommends getting nicely toasted before enjoying this cd on a quality stereo at a relatively high volume, slightly heavy on the base. like for real - no ghetto-blasters or desktop pc speakers - you wont hear the whole range of sound of the tunes and they'll sound like crap.
1. Hello
this is where you hear the sound of my voice.
2. Hawrań - Hop Dana, Dana
about the tune: i like this fusion of the traditional polish highlander music and the admixture of the dance beat. the base barely comes thru on my pc's soundcard, but sounded good on my car stereo. i like the shift from the single female vocalist to the female chorus, which, to me, has an unpolished (no pun intended), "real" , young, beautiful sound. wish they had a younger sounding guy though.
pertinence to the path: i was born in poland.
3. Hallucinogen – Wacko
the tune: this is i believe the 3rd discernible track out of a live set Hallucinogen (simon posford) played at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on December 7th, 2001. most of Hallucinogen's music is meant to be listened to at high quality rather than just loud. i love the pumping base, the old school techno sounds, the fast left-right panning of some of the sounds, the cool, seamlessly blended samples, the lot of finely doctored sounds, the richness and fullness of the whole thing, its sci-fi, psychedelic feel. i've said it before and i'll say it again: friggin' simon posford rules.
the path: things were pretty crazy there.
4. Logic Bomb – Lodjik
the tune: same genre as the previous tune, plus wickedly modulated awesome samples. i love it.
the path: logically, many people were leaving.
5. Lisa Gerrard – Sacrifice
the tune: i've only heard this on the paul oakenfold album "Another World" which i bought in 2000. until i was collecting info for this cd swap, i'd thought this must have been a man singing in persian or something. turns out its an australian woman idioglossing. in this video this woman makes me think of a friggin' female version of the creepy, nosferatu-like "Strangers" of the movie "Dark City", which detracts from the song in my eyes, or ears, as the case may be. i liked how oakenfold used this track, contrasting it against a much faster tune, and i used it the same way.
the path: given the opportunity to leave the craziness, my parents viewed leaving poland for "the west" at least partly as a sacrifice, believing that they themselves might not reap much benefit from the move, but that at least their children can expect a better life.
6. Morcheeba – Public Displays of Affection
the tune: i was gonna use the unbelievably sensuous "Undress Me Now" - the best tune that i know by Morcheeba, but when i heard phx was thinking of using it too, i decided to use their song i like 2nd best. bittersweet, sung by the interesting, smooth, funky-accented voice of Morcheeba's original singer - Skye Edwards, this song always brings to my mind the images of couples in new, blossoming love, kissing just anywhere, slowly, sensuously, the girls' eyes half-shut, drunk with hormones, their faces glowing... every time i see these couples i melt. it's a beautiful sight. though the guys dont seem to have that drunk look about them.
the path: i've fallen in love once or twice, but i've also been the one who'd join in the fun if i had someone.
7. Superchick – One Girl Revolution
the tune: my little guilty pleasure - a christian rock tune. but i love the message. there's too many insecure young girls putting themselves thru too much shit. wish they got some of this song's attitude. and i like the beat of this tune. and the funkiness of it. and the singer's voice. the guitar sounds too much like christian rock though, but apparently the band is getting better.
the path: i've met a couple girls that could have used some brainwashing from this song.
8. Josh Abrahams – Totally Addicted to Bass
the tune: phx loves this tune. i love the vocals, the way they're distorted, too, and the beat. too bad there actually isnt that much of that bass they're all talking about in there. unless its deeper than my hardware can do. maybe some of you can juice their subs in their trunks and lemme know if there's something there that i'm missing.
the path: i got addicted to base.
9. Basement Jaxx – Rendez-Vu
the tune: awesome beat, love the guitar bits, nice base, cool vocals, overall sound.
the path: i got introduced to this tune cruising along a small highway packed with other tourists cruising to the same little summer party town - sunshine, nice looking car, windows rolled down, the couple inside decked out for clubbing, bopping to this tune blasting out, stuck on repeat :)
10. Kid Koala – Third World Lover
the tune: a smoothly developing, bollywood sample-based wicked driving tune by local born turntablist kid koala. for me it really kicks in around the 2.5 minute mark, when the jingly bells come in for good, and then the drum beat takes off.
the path: third world lover - c'est moi. also, this tune has etched paths in my brain during countless blazed 50 km drives home from work.
11. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Put a Lid On It
the tune + path: i was pleasantly shocked when i heard this tune first, on much music - the canadian version of mtv. people playing this kind of music nowadays??? awesome!!! until checking things out for this here blurb i'd thought this band was canadian, what with the whacky name and exposure on canadian tv and seemingly nowhere else. alas, they're from north carolina.
12. The Seatbelts – Tank!
the tune: this iconic opening song for the episodes of the anime series "Cowboy Bebop" rocks ass - the loose string guitar sound, the trumpets, the energy, down to the extended saxophone reef at the end - fucking awesome.
the path: i was exposed to cowboy bebop during my short stint in toronto, and it knocked me on my ass. a large part of the appeal of the series is the brilliant sound track - composed by Yoko Kanno. phx and I also got TanK(ed) in Spain once upon a time...
13. The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist
the tune: australian group's hilarious sample-mania. among other gems in this tune, i love the little kid's answers to the woman's questions at the end.
the path: this boy needs therapy
14. Compay Segundo – Pobre Corazon
the tune: i'd written about my odyssey to find this tune in this post.
the path: ... my poor heart was lonely.
15. Il Était Une Fois – Mescalino (English ver.)
the tune: sung by a 70's french group whose name means "Once upon a time...", i like this english version of the song better than the french one, even though the english is awkward. i'm not crazy about the twangy guitar throughout the tune, especially for the long stretch at the beginning. but i like the somewhat rough-around-the-edges voice of the main vocalist, even his lisp, and the backup female vocals are really cool. apparently normally their main vocalist was this very mixed heritage, multi-talented woman, who tragically died of a pulmonary edema at age 29, a few years after the group broke up.
the path: during an extended emotional hemorrhage period after the break-up with my "stupid bitch" ex, i came up with the idea that such suffering is basically withdrawal symptoms from a drug - the drug called love, consisting of whatever hormones, pheromones, endorphins or whatever it was that we stopped getting.
16. Estopa – Tu Calorro
the tune: i have a love/hate relationship with the somewhat badass sound/attitude of the vocalist, but i do like this slightly traditional spanish sound that totally takes off at about the 1 minute mark when the female flamenco singer joins in. the lyrics are pretty cool, too, especially the chorus:
"your perfume is the venom
that contaminates the air which your hair cuts
that even cuts my speech and understanding
because it's the drug that turns my head crazy.
later i fall asleep in a bed hard as a rock
dreaming that you havent gone yet
dreaming that you're still touching me..."
the path: the band is from Barcelona, which phx and i found to be a pretty cool city, quite different from the rest of spain. we'd like to go back and spend some decent time there.
17. Jimi Hendrix – Manic Depression
the tune: that reiterating, unrelenting drum sequence, with that heavy base guitar - this is a shockingly underrepresented song of Jimi's. it didnt hit me until only a few years ago that the jimi hendrix experience had a really good drummer.
the path: i give jimi hendrix' music a good chunk of the credit for helping me get my nose above the surface of the sea of teenage depression i was drowning in when listening to metallica and nirvana.
18. Kottonmouth Kings – Proud to Be a Stoner
the tune: this is a rap tune, i guess, but i like the guitar, and having a melody to a rap tune does wonders for me, my general dislike of crap music.
the path: umm, so, what is my current relationship with pot..? i dont know if i'm proud - no more than being proud of being a beer drinker. but i dont feel i should hide it from everyone. (maybe just my parents, for now - i think that'd be too much of a blow for them: first their firstborn becomes a friggin' heathen, and now he's doing drugs.) and i dont consider myself a stoner. more like a smot poking aficionado, a one hit wonder, someone who likes to get high rather than stoned. funny how pot smokers often get a sensibility for nature. i did start smoking at the age of 18. and i am proud of my daughter and my son :)
19. Cheech & Chong – Santa Claus and His Old Lady
this comedy bit is thematically appropriate for this swap, as well as effen hilarious! one of the things that got me the most was when the dude said he doesnt know who santa claus is because he's from pittsburg so he doesnt know too many local dudes...
so without knowing it, i ended up doing what shenry used to, with the defining of the playlist first, influenced only partly by the theme, and then justifying the songs' pertinence to said theme later. still, it's all true and will provide insight into me and my path for those who might be curious.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! :)
1. Hello
this is where you hear the sound of my voice.
2. Hawrań - Hop Dana, Dana
about the tune: i like this fusion of the traditional polish highlander music and the admixture of the dance beat. the base barely comes thru on my pc's soundcard, but sounded good on my car stereo. i like the shift from the single female vocalist to the female chorus, which, to me, has an unpolished (no pun intended), "real" , young, beautiful sound. wish they had a younger sounding guy though.
pertinence to the path: i was born in poland.
3. Hallucinogen – Wacko
the tune: this is i believe the 3rd discernible track out of a live set Hallucinogen (simon posford) played at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on December 7th, 2001. most of Hallucinogen's music is meant to be listened to at high quality rather than just loud. i love the pumping base, the old school techno sounds, the fast left-right panning of some of the sounds, the cool, seamlessly blended samples, the lot of finely doctored sounds, the richness and fullness of the whole thing, its sci-fi, psychedelic feel. i've said it before and i'll say it again: friggin' simon posford rules.
the path: things were pretty crazy there.
4. Logic Bomb – Lodjik
the tune: same genre as the previous tune, plus wickedly modulated awesome samples. i love it.
the path: logically, many people were leaving.
5. Lisa Gerrard – Sacrifice
the tune: i've only heard this on the paul oakenfold album "Another World" which i bought in 2000. until i was collecting info for this cd swap, i'd thought this must have been a man singing in persian or something. turns out its an australian woman idioglossing. in this video this woman makes me think of a friggin' female version of the creepy, nosferatu-like "Strangers" of the movie "Dark City", which detracts from the song in my eyes, or ears, as the case may be. i liked how oakenfold used this track, contrasting it against a much faster tune, and i used it the same way.
the path: given the opportunity to leave the craziness, my parents viewed leaving poland for "the west" at least partly as a sacrifice, believing that they themselves might not reap much benefit from the move, but that at least their children can expect a better life.
6. Morcheeba – Public Displays of Affection
the tune: i was gonna use the unbelievably sensuous "Undress Me Now" - the best tune that i know by Morcheeba, but when i heard phx was thinking of using it too, i decided to use their song i like 2nd best. bittersweet, sung by the interesting, smooth, funky-accented voice of Morcheeba's original singer - Skye Edwards, this song always brings to my mind the images of couples in new, blossoming love, kissing just anywhere, slowly, sensuously, the girls' eyes half-shut, drunk with hormones, their faces glowing... every time i see these couples i melt. it's a beautiful sight. though the guys dont seem to have that drunk look about them.
the path: i've fallen in love once or twice, but i've also been the one who'd join in the fun if i had someone.
7. Superchick – One Girl Revolution
the tune: my little guilty pleasure - a christian rock tune. but i love the message. there's too many insecure young girls putting themselves thru too much shit. wish they got some of this song's attitude. and i like the beat of this tune. and the funkiness of it. and the singer's voice. the guitar sounds too much like christian rock though, but apparently the band is getting better.
the path: i've met a couple girls that could have used some brainwashing from this song.
8. Josh Abrahams – Totally Addicted to Bass
the tune: phx loves this tune. i love the vocals, the way they're distorted, too, and the beat. too bad there actually isnt that much of that bass they're all talking about in there. unless its deeper than my hardware can do. maybe some of you can juice their subs in their trunks and lemme know if there's something there that i'm missing.
the path: i got addicted to base.
9. Basement Jaxx – Rendez-Vu
the tune: awesome beat, love the guitar bits, nice base, cool vocals, overall sound.
the path: i got introduced to this tune cruising along a small highway packed with other tourists cruising to the same little summer party town - sunshine, nice looking car, windows rolled down, the couple inside decked out for clubbing, bopping to this tune blasting out, stuck on repeat :)
10. Kid Koala – Third World Lover
the tune: a smoothly developing, bollywood sample-based wicked driving tune by local born turntablist kid koala. for me it really kicks in around the 2.5 minute mark, when the jingly bells come in for good, and then the drum beat takes off.
the path: third world lover - c'est moi. also, this tune has etched paths in my brain during countless blazed 50 km drives home from work.
11. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Put a Lid On It
the tune + path: i was pleasantly shocked when i heard this tune first, on much music - the canadian version of mtv. people playing this kind of music nowadays??? awesome!!! until checking things out for this here blurb i'd thought this band was canadian, what with the whacky name and exposure on canadian tv and seemingly nowhere else. alas, they're from north carolina.
12. The Seatbelts – Tank!
the tune: this iconic opening song for the episodes of the anime series "Cowboy Bebop" rocks ass - the loose string guitar sound, the trumpets, the energy, down to the extended saxophone reef at the end - fucking awesome.
the path: i was exposed to cowboy bebop during my short stint in toronto, and it knocked me on my ass. a large part of the appeal of the series is the brilliant sound track - composed by Yoko Kanno. phx and I also got TanK(ed) in Spain once upon a time...
13. The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist
the tune: australian group's hilarious sample-mania. among other gems in this tune, i love the little kid's answers to the woman's questions at the end.
the path: this boy needs therapy
14. Compay Segundo – Pobre Corazon
the tune: i'd written about my odyssey to find this tune in this post.
the path: ... my poor heart was lonely.
15. Il Était Une Fois – Mescalino (English ver.)
the tune: sung by a 70's french group whose name means "Once upon a time...", i like this english version of the song better than the french one, even though the english is awkward. i'm not crazy about the twangy guitar throughout the tune, especially for the long stretch at the beginning. but i like the somewhat rough-around-the-edges voice of the main vocalist, even his lisp, and the backup female vocals are really cool. apparently normally their main vocalist was this very mixed heritage, multi-talented woman, who tragically died of a pulmonary edema at age 29, a few years after the group broke up.
the path: during an extended emotional hemorrhage period after the break-up with my "stupid bitch" ex, i came up with the idea that such suffering is basically withdrawal symptoms from a drug - the drug called love, consisting of whatever hormones, pheromones, endorphins or whatever it was that we stopped getting.
16. Estopa – Tu Calorro
the tune: i have a love/hate relationship with the somewhat badass sound/attitude of the vocalist, but i do like this slightly traditional spanish sound that totally takes off at about the 1 minute mark when the female flamenco singer joins in. the lyrics are pretty cool, too, especially the chorus:
"your perfume is the venom
that contaminates the air which your hair cuts
that even cuts my speech and understanding
because it's the drug that turns my head crazy.
later i fall asleep in a bed hard as a rock
dreaming that you havent gone yet
dreaming that you're still touching me..."
the path: the band is from Barcelona, which phx and i found to be a pretty cool city, quite different from the rest of spain. we'd like to go back and spend some decent time there.
17. Jimi Hendrix – Manic Depression
the tune: that reiterating, unrelenting drum sequence, with that heavy base guitar - this is a shockingly underrepresented song of Jimi's. it didnt hit me until only a few years ago that the jimi hendrix experience had a really good drummer.
the path: i give jimi hendrix' music a good chunk of the credit for helping me get my nose above the surface of the sea of teenage depression i was drowning in when listening to metallica and nirvana.
18. Kottonmouth Kings – Proud to Be a Stoner
the tune: this is a rap tune, i guess, but i like the guitar, and having a melody to a rap tune does wonders for me, my general dislike of crap music.
the path: umm, so, what is my current relationship with pot..? i dont know if i'm proud - no more than being proud of being a beer drinker. but i dont feel i should hide it from everyone. (maybe just my parents, for now - i think that'd be too much of a blow for them: first their firstborn becomes a friggin' heathen, and now he's doing drugs.) and i dont consider myself a stoner. more like a smot poking aficionado, a one hit wonder, someone who likes to get high rather than stoned. funny how pot smokers often get a sensibility for nature. i did start smoking at the age of 18. and i am proud of my daughter and my son :)
19. Cheech & Chong – Santa Claus and His Old Lady
this comedy bit is thematically appropriate for this swap, as well as effen hilarious! one of the things that got me the most was when the dude said he doesnt know who santa claus is because he's from pittsburg so he doesnt know too many local dudes...
so without knowing it, i ended up doing what shenry used to, with the defining of the playlist first, influenced only partly by the theme, and then justifying the songs' pertinence to said theme later. still, it's all true and will provide insight into me and my path for those who might be curious.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! :)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
its been such a long time...
... thats gonna be on my next year's cd swap :)
so the cd's are in the mail as of last night. damn you shenry - this took sooooo effen long, dude. but i wanted it to be good. ppl who dont know me say i'm a bit of a perfectionist.
it's been so long since my last post. one thing that stands out hazily in my memory that i wanted to blog about, was that i attended a cheech & chong show recently. i told a friend of mine and he didnt know who they were. that was shocking. turns out not everybody in BC smokes pot.
apparently cheech and chong actually met in vancouver back in the day - cheech was on the run from the draft, delivering carpets, trying his hand at comedy. chong was on the run from calgary (just over the hill from here), having been kicked out of the town by the mayor for having an inordinately raukous show with his band, as well as wrestling with the problems of converting his brother's strip joint into a comedy club.
they met, and magic happened. but things went sour between them, and they werent talking for decades at a time. like two and a half. then chong's wife decided to meddle with their affairs and wrote an email or 2 in tommy's name, and got the ball rolling for another tour, which has been in the works about as long as the latest G'n'R album and tour. i thought that the tickets were way too steep, but as the show date neared, and i found the tickets werent actually "that" expensive, i started to wanna go. then actually trying to buy tickets online from goddam ticketmaster proved impossible. but the boss came thru and bought them at a ticketmaster outlet like 2 days before the show. just before the show i found out that the ticket was gonna be a little christmas present for me, so that was cool. he was sure there was gonna be an intermission when ppl are gonna flock onto the balconies and have a quick j, or maybe even smoke during the show, and we both thought ppl would smoke right before. i didnt think anybody would actually smoke during the show. i wondered what they were gonna be like - stupid stoner humour, or were they just gonna be talking about their history together..? i saw 2 blurbs online about the other shows (this was a tour) - one was quite positive, but the other was seriously disappointed and thought it was sad to see those 2 old men telling the same old jokes. well, they surpassed my lowered expectations, thats for sure. first of all - they did mostly skits, so that was cool, and some of them these 2 old guys were doing some funky shit, crawling around on all fours, pretending they were dogs, and then chong's wife crawled in, so then chong-dog started doggie-humping her, and then cheech-dog started humping him, it was funny. but there was some stand-up too - the opener was tommy chong's wife with a forgettable name doing some stand-up, setting the bar waaaay low - she was just embarassing herself. but at least some of it was fact based, so i got some details on how tommy's bust and court case went. overall, i thought the show was good, with some re-hashed greatest hit material, and some awrite new stuff, and they made it entertaining. people did smoke in front of the theater, and then as soon as the show started inside. first i thought they were gonna get told to leave by the ushers, then i feared they'd set off the smoke alarms and that was gonna be the end of the show. but apparently this must have been thought of and the appropriate policy set beforehand, because i didnt see anybody being hassled, and no fire alarm went off. soon the crowd had a smoke cloud emanating from it pretty evenly the whole time. and the boss' brother brought some pre-rolled j's, and started lighting those and passing them to us. but i was a responsible comedy show goer and made sure i didnt get stoned out of my tree, because i didnt wanna miss any of the jokes, etc. i just got nicely roasted :)
and towards the end we had a little sing-along - it was "up in smoke", karaoke style, with the lyrics on the screen and everything. i've sung this song lots of times, so it was such a treat to be able to sing it with the godfathers of stoner culture, and a theatre-full of heads. it was community :) and then a shitload of ppl lit their lighters and held them high, like a cool concert. one thing about a show like this, is there's no shortage of lighters :)
it was funny - when cheech first showed up on stage, doing a skit as he was walking on, he got a standing ovation right away. later, when tommy was walking on, he got a slightly longer standing ovation.
towards the end, people were throwing j's on stage, and cheech and tommy and his wife were dutifully picking them up, and as they were exiting after the last skit, somebody threw a big bag - like a few ounces, it was bigger than some women's purses, i mean, i've seen pillows on planes half that size! cheech took a double take, promptly came back for it, said thank you very much.
i'm really happy about having gone.
ok - playlist maybe next post.
so the cd's are in the mail as of last night. damn you shenry - this took sooooo effen long, dude. but i wanted it to be good. ppl who dont know me say i'm a bit of a perfectionist.
it's been so long since my last post. one thing that stands out hazily in my memory that i wanted to blog about, was that i attended a cheech & chong show recently. i told a friend of mine and he didnt know who they were. that was shocking. turns out not everybody in BC smokes pot.
apparently cheech and chong actually met in vancouver back in the day - cheech was on the run from the draft, delivering carpets, trying his hand at comedy. chong was on the run from calgary (just over the hill from here), having been kicked out of the town by the mayor for having an inordinately raukous show with his band, as well as wrestling with the problems of converting his brother's strip joint into a comedy club.
they met, and magic happened. but things went sour between them, and they werent talking for decades at a time. like two and a half. then chong's wife decided to meddle with their affairs and wrote an email or 2 in tommy's name, and got the ball rolling for another tour, which has been in the works about as long as the latest G'n'R album and tour. i thought that the tickets were way too steep, but as the show date neared, and i found the tickets werent actually "that" expensive, i started to wanna go. then actually trying to buy tickets online from goddam ticketmaster proved impossible. but the boss came thru and bought them at a ticketmaster outlet like 2 days before the show. just before the show i found out that the ticket was gonna be a little christmas present for me, so that was cool. he was sure there was gonna be an intermission when ppl are gonna flock onto the balconies and have a quick j, or maybe even smoke during the show, and we both thought ppl would smoke right before. i didnt think anybody would actually smoke during the show. i wondered what they were gonna be like - stupid stoner humour, or were they just gonna be talking about their history together..? i saw 2 blurbs online about the other shows (this was a tour) - one was quite positive, but the other was seriously disappointed and thought it was sad to see those 2 old men telling the same old jokes. well, they surpassed my lowered expectations, thats for sure. first of all - they did mostly skits, so that was cool, and some of them these 2 old guys were doing some funky shit, crawling around on all fours, pretending they were dogs, and then chong's wife crawled in, so then chong-dog started doggie-humping her, and then cheech-dog started humping him, it was funny. but there was some stand-up too - the opener was tommy chong's wife with a forgettable name doing some stand-up, setting the bar waaaay low - she was just embarassing herself. but at least some of it was fact based, so i got some details on how tommy's bust and court case went. overall, i thought the show was good, with some re-hashed greatest hit material, and some awrite new stuff, and they made it entertaining. people did smoke in front of the theater, and then as soon as the show started inside. first i thought they were gonna get told to leave by the ushers, then i feared they'd set off the smoke alarms and that was gonna be the end of the show. but apparently this must have been thought of and the appropriate policy set beforehand, because i didnt see anybody being hassled, and no fire alarm went off. soon the crowd had a smoke cloud emanating from it pretty evenly the whole time. and the boss' brother brought some pre-rolled j's, and started lighting those and passing them to us. but i was a responsible comedy show goer and made sure i didnt get stoned out of my tree, because i didnt wanna miss any of the jokes, etc. i just got nicely roasted :)
and towards the end we had a little sing-along - it was "up in smoke", karaoke style, with the lyrics on the screen and everything. i've sung this song lots of times, so it was such a treat to be able to sing it with the godfathers of stoner culture, and a theatre-full of heads. it was community :) and then a shitload of ppl lit their lighters and held them high, like a cool concert. one thing about a show like this, is there's no shortage of lighters :)
it was funny - when cheech first showed up on stage, doing a skit as he was walking on, he got a standing ovation right away. later, when tommy was walking on, he got a slightly longer standing ovation.
towards the end, people were throwing j's on stage, and cheech and tommy and his wife were dutifully picking them up, and as they were exiting after the last skit, somebody threw a big bag - like a few ounces, it was bigger than some women's purses, i mean, i've seen pillows on planes half that size! cheech took a double take, promptly came back for it, said thank you very much.
i'm really happy about having gone.
ok - playlist maybe next post.
Friday, November 14, 2008
i remember when they arrived from the east coast, from new brunswick. they had a little, shy, delicate son. i always thought the wife was a bit tall for the husband. i remember when we were camping one time, and my brother and i started building competing towers out of blocks of wood available at the campground for firewood, and the man made me sit on his shoulders and my brother sat on someone else's, so we could build higher. some years later the man's wife left him, and stayed with another man with the same first name (the man in the shades). he never gave her a divorce. he drank himself to death maybe two weeks ago.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
met a jewish dude named Ray the other day. asked him why he decided to come over here. he said he finally realized israel is going to collapse sooner or later, especially in light of apparently vast numbers of young ppl leaving there these days. this came as a shock to me. one way that it shocked me was the statement that so many young ppl are leaving there. the big shocker though, was a jewish guy saying he thinks israel is about to fall apart. i guess despite disagreeing with the way they occupied the land, and kept it under occupation, i'd sorta hoped they'd finally find a way to all get along, and things would start moving forward. together. i figure a nation needs a piece of real estate to belong to. and where better for jews than the israel area.
an interesting thing Ray said, was that hitler was a huge fan of the zionist movement. i guess that was before he became a fan of concentration camps.
another gem from Ray was something he was told by a non-jewish friend of his:
"Jews are like salt for the soup: a little gives it flavour, but too much spoils the soup."
i told him that i think thats how societies have felt about any visible minorities. and what really seems to sour the mix is when this visible minority is seen as having a degree of power over the rest of the society. maybe a melting pot society will safeguard against that.
an interesting thing Ray said, was that hitler was a huge fan of the zionist movement. i guess that was before he became a fan of concentration camps.
another gem from Ray was something he was told by a non-jewish friend of his:
"Jews are like salt for the soup: a little gives it flavour, but too much spoils the soup."
i told him that i think thats how societies have felt about any visible minorities. and what really seems to sour the mix is when this visible minority is seen as having a degree of power over the rest of the society. maybe a melting pot society will safeguard against that.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
currently listening to anne rice's "interview with the vampire"(mostly on the drive in to work and going back home). at first it was cool, then i started getting glimpses of some disturbing shit, until it became totally disturbing and a bit of a downer there for a while - almost an ordeal to get thru, and now its finally mostly back to interesting and exciting. i tried to think of the movie, which i had seen not long after it'd come out, and i realised that i actually dont really remember much at all from it, other than tome cruise, brad pitt, and kirsten dunst or whoever. and there was a fire. and lestat died. and they were in paris. and that's the part i'm just getting to now. maybe the disturbing shit was more disturbing to me because i kept thinking of Lily when they were talking about Claudia - it was just too close to home, when he nearly kills her. here's the excerpt:
"... And when I thought of this, I saw Babette's face contorted with
hatred when she had held the lantern waiting to light it, and I saw
Lestat in my mind and hated him, and I felt, yes, damned and this is
hell, and in that instant I had bent down and driven hard into her soft,
small neck and, hearing her tiny cry, whispered even as I felt the hot
blood on my lips, `It's only for a moment and there'll be no more
pain.' But she was locked to me, and I was soon incapable of saying
anything. For four years I had not savored a human; for four years I
hadn't really known; and now I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm,
and such a heart not the heart of a man or an animal, but the rapid, tenacious heart of the child, beating harder and harder, refusing to die, beating like a tiny fist beating on a door, crying, `I will not die, I will not die, I cannot die, I cannot die . . . .'
I think I rose to my feet still
locked to her, the heart pulling my heart faster with no hope of cease,
the rich blood rushing too fast for me, the room reeling, and then,
despite myself, I was staring over her bent head, her open mouth,
down through the gloom at the mother's face; and through the halfmast
lids. her eyes gleamed at me as if they were alive! I threw the
child down. She lay like a jointless doll."
the part in red probably hit me the hardest - almost made me cry. i was not expecting that.
it might not have had that effect on me had i read it. but the way the reader read it, embuing it with emotion... actually, that was probably a big part of it. it reminds me of the time we saw "moulin rouge", and somewhere along the line i accidentally turned on this option they had, which was something like an audio commentary of what was happening for the visually impaired. in the part when satine finally succumbs to her illness and falls to her doom - the way it was narrated, and then accompanying the cuts to the different characters from the show, watching in astonishment, and the big black dude's name was chocolat as it turned out, and it probably didnt help that i was on shrooms - the narrator was putting words to my feelings, crystallising them, making them explicit - i cried like i havent for a long time. and i've been afraid of watching the movie again, even though i thought it was deffinitely worth buying and bought it.
it seems almost banal or down right irreverent to go back to the vampire story, to their enchantment with paris, which immediately brought back memories of the movie "sabrina" (the remake) which we saw recently, and how many people seem to have fallen in love with Paris. and so now i wanna see it too. though for the longest time i thought it would be too stuffy, and sick of tourists.
i'm spent...
"... And when I thought of this, I saw Babette's face contorted with
hatred when she had held the lantern waiting to light it, and I saw
Lestat in my mind and hated him, and I felt, yes, damned and this is
hell, and in that instant I had bent down and driven hard into her soft,
small neck and, hearing her tiny cry, whispered even as I felt the hot
blood on my lips, `It's only for a moment and there'll be no more
pain.' But she was locked to me, and I was soon incapable of saying
anything. For four years I had not savored a human; for four years I
hadn't really known; and now I heard her heart in that terrible rhythm,
and such a heart not the heart of a man or an animal, but the rapid, tenacious heart of the child, beating harder and harder, refusing to die, beating like a tiny fist beating on a door, crying, `I will not die, I will not die, I cannot die, I cannot die . . . .'
I think I rose to my feet still
locked to her, the heart pulling my heart faster with no hope of cease,
the rich blood rushing too fast for me, the room reeling, and then,
despite myself, I was staring over her bent head, her open mouth,
down through the gloom at the mother's face; and through the halfmast
lids. her eyes gleamed at me as if they were alive! I threw the
child down. She lay like a jointless doll."
the part in red probably hit me the hardest - almost made me cry. i was not expecting that.
it might not have had that effect on me had i read it. but the way the reader read it, embuing it with emotion... actually, that was probably a big part of it. it reminds me of the time we saw "moulin rouge", and somewhere along the line i accidentally turned on this option they had, which was something like an audio commentary of what was happening for the visually impaired. in the part when satine finally succumbs to her illness and falls to her doom - the way it was narrated, and then accompanying the cuts to the different characters from the show, watching in astonishment, and the big black dude's name was chocolat as it turned out, and it probably didnt help that i was on shrooms - the narrator was putting words to my feelings, crystallising them, making them explicit - i cried like i havent for a long time. and i've been afraid of watching the movie again, even though i thought it was deffinitely worth buying and bought it.
it seems almost banal or down right irreverent to go back to the vampire story, to their enchantment with paris, which immediately brought back memories of the movie "sabrina" (the remake) which we saw recently, and how many people seem to have fallen in love with Paris. and so now i wanna see it too. though for the longest time i thought it would be too stuffy, and sick of tourists.
i'm spent...
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
maybe i should start a list of pot names i at least "kinda" like - in the spirit of positivity and such like.
i remember there was a period of time during my "honeymoon" phase of smot pokage, when i'd often say "i love weed" when on the way "up". so guess thats a fond memory associated with the word weed. i call it pot i guess because most pot smokers call it that here. and i guess i kinda like "cheeba" despite its obscureness - kinda funky that way. "whacky tobaccy" is too wordy, but colourful enough to keep it around for occasional use in one's repertoire. just looking at a list of synonims and strand names - i like "power plant" - hilarious :)
not as hilarious as falling asleep at the comp. gotta go beddy.
i remember there was a period of time during my "honeymoon" phase of smot pokage, when i'd often say "i love weed" when on the way "up". so guess thats a fond memory associated with the word weed. i call it pot i guess because most pot smokers call it that here. and i guess i kinda like "cheeba" despite its obscureness - kinda funky that way. "whacky tobaccy" is too wordy, but colourful enough to keep it around for occasional use in one's repertoire. just looking at a list of synonims and strand names - i like "power plant" - hilarious :)
not as hilarious as falling asleep at the comp. gotta go beddy.
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