This potentially being my last post ever before I end up like Jack Nicholson at the end of the Shining or James Caan midway through Misery, here's the one thing I want to be remembered for...

(the punchline to this joke always being "Wouldn't it be awesome if this was my last post ever??")

Ewoks, Run For Your Lives!

aka
Montreal Return Road Trip '06

It's a good thing Library Girl and I are still friends. Cause frankly my life will be in her hands for 28 of the next 72 hours. Which still makes me feel much safer than if I were behind the wheel for even thirty seconds. Just ask that Ewok I killed last time we took a road trip to Montreal. The innocent gleam in the little guy's eyes that was actually the reflection of the front grill of the Volkswagen moments before I made a mashed potatoe of his face still haunts me to this day. Often I wake up in a cold sweat screaming "Wicket! Look out! Noooo!" I still can't bear to eat Presidents Choice Frozen Ewok Burgers. No matter how "organic" they may be.

I really wouldn't want to be stuck in a car on the Transcanada Highway in the middle of winter for anything other than a Low concert. They helped me survive many a 5am freezing bus ride to a shitty cafe job during my undergrad years. Their gig during the Pop Explosion a depressing number of years ago is still a top five moment in my life.

So wish us luck. Do us a rain dance so it doesn't snow. And watch the news reports for the trail of dead 80's film puppets left in our wake. The point scoring for each road kill is as follows:


E.T: 150 Pts.



Chewbacca: 250 Pts.



Gizmo: 500 Pts



Alf: 5000 Pts.

Crack Addicts, Power Ballads,
and
The Guy That Nobody Knows

Just how it was I ended up extremely drunk and surrounded by people I barely knew at a seedy karaoke bar nestled deep in Halifax's North End last night is a long, complicated story...

I guess it all started earlier in the day when this feeling of general malaise that had been oncoming for days finally arrived and settled itself comfortably amongst the folds of my frontal lobes. While I spent the evening doing my best to drown it in alcohol, I faced insurmountable odds. Between Hank Williams and Captain Beefhart, dancing wheelchair bound recovering crack addicts and off key renditions of classic 1970s power ballads, frankly I didn't stand a chance.

After being denied access to the show not once, oh no, but twice due to overcrowding (and apparently my lack of breasts), I choose one of my best wall leans (Lean #7: side lean with hands in pockets, left foot crossing right foot, knees at 35 degree angle and head tilted up) and waited outside. I made eyes with familiar faces and answered a question or two about my hat.

After 30 minutes of overthinking about three separate issues all falling under the same topic, and still no word from my compatriot that got inside (see: breasts), I finally realize that I had been left to my own devices. So my devices and I made a 180 and headed back from whence we came. Sometimes disappointment can be a warm blanket. And when it's not, there's always my hot water bottle.

But Lucy (yes, my hot water bottle has a name, so what?) would have to wait. I ran into a roving street gang of local celebs and convinced them or am convinced by them (things are rather hazy at this point) to head to the North End Pub.

Which takes us back to the crack addicts and power ballads.

Last evening I was called "the guy that nobody knows" by this guy that I didn't know. Today I've come to realize that it's time to disappear again.

This city is too small for the one of us.

- The Barmitzvah Brothers

You should jet ta Gus's tonight fo' da show cuz it will be really pimp-tight. Don't make me come ovah there bitch...

or
You should go to Gus's tonight for the show because it will be really good.

(translation courtesy of the Ebonics Translator)

It's been an odd few days for music to say the least. Last night it was a "Tom Waitsy" "Dutch" "jazz ensemble" playing Frank "Zappa covers" (all direct quotes). If you think that sounds good, you should have heard how it actually sounded. It was pimp tight to be sure.

Tonight at Gus's promises to be tight as a pimp as well. I will be the heavy lidded chap leaning against something solid and furrowing his brow like he has a chip on his shoulder. I'll be in some sort of fraying sweater probably. I haven't decided on which color slacks yet. Chances are that between nursing a beer and scowling I'll occasionally nod off from lack of sleep. So if you see me slipping, just let me fall. Whatever you do, don't try to speak to me.

Gus's Pub
Sat, Jan 28

• Geoff Berner + The Barmitzvah Brothers + Ruth Minnikin @ Gus's Pub. $5/9pm

I see a resemblance

The Simpsomaker

Art School Confidential

"More Smiths than Loverboy"

Alright, so I don't have jerry curls and a leather jacket. And when I try to look mean I just end up resembling a pouting puppy. My hips might be girlish, my eyelashes long enough to keep my eye glasses clean and when I run my wrists tend to swing limply at roughly rib level. I may wrap my book dust jackets in clear plastic to preserve them and, I'll admit it, my pinky sticks out when I sip tea. Sure, violence might make me pee and my toolbox is full of tools still in their original packaging. But... but...

What was my point again?

Today's title is a direct quote taken last night from someone I've been having a pleasant time getting to know lately. A documentary on 1930s sexploitation films was put off to another day in exchange for story telling and beer. I did my best to project a Loverboy mystique, but apparently came across as a celibate gladioli tosser with a lispy way of speaking.

I apologize for never taking these things more seriously...

Which File Extension are You?

Just in case you've been missing it..

The Perry Bible Fellowship

is still the
funniest thing on the web

Guess who's new printer has a built in scanner?
Part II.

Pizza Diarist in happier times
circa 1982

London may have had Jack the Ripper, but Pizza Corner has Peter the Clipper. Unlike London Jack, who stalked prostitutes in the fog shrouded side streets with a medical bag full of hidden torture instruments, Pizza Pete waves his sharpened blades freely through the air as he accosts you through the wafting cigarette smoke from the propped open door of his streetfront barber shop.

Longtime readers know of the peculiar relationship I have with my Greek barber. I'm a delicate soul. Alright, hell, I think I'm suffering from that same disease that Samuel L. Jackson had in Unbreakable. Not only that, but I've come to realize that phrases in English such as "that smell of cooking flesh is my scalp so could you please make the water a little cooler," "I think I can see bone now so could you please stop cutting" and "could you please stop twisting my neck because those popping sounds indicate that it won't go much farther" apparently don't translate well into Greek.

So why do I continue to visit him for my once a month scalping? Other than a few of the women I've dated, I don't think I have much of a masochistic streak in me. Sure, his shop might be 15 steps from my front door, but so is that guy that sells meat on a stick and you don't see me doing that to my body on a regular basis.

I guess I'll just chalk it up to this old-fashioned streak of mine. For example, I like how the fact that he doesn't know my name doesn't keep him from trying to use it (today I was "Paul"). I like the peeling wallpaper and yellowing clippings from a 1986 newspaper travel section about Greece scotch taped in random places around the shop. And I like the fact that while he scrapes the top layer of skin off the back of my neck with his dull rusty straight razor I can focus through the pain on the ever increasing smorgesboard of his family photos pasted to the mirror in front of me. With the amount of blood, hair and flesh I've left in his shop, I sometimes feel almost part of the family.

So, yeah, I'm supposed to be at class right now. But I decided to take the night off and dive head first into my accounting assignment in an attempt to survive this post traumatic stress syndrome while awaiting the feeling to return in my neck and make a big pot of spaghetti to replenish my red blood cell count.

Guess who's new printer has a built in scanner?

Pizza Diarist proving he's not a racist
circa 1981

(editor's note: So I was going to write this big thing about today's election, but frankly I think I said it best in this classic Pizza Diaries post from back in January of 2005. It's amazing how times don't change. Enjoy...>

What a queer country we are...

"Debate on the gay marriage issue
had been low-key and polite."
- Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada
(like "President of the United States" but more low-key and polite)

Name: Paul Martin.
Goldilocks and the 3 Bears character: Papa Bear.
Opinion on gay marriage: "Pro gay marriage. But not gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But not gay. Honestly. Watch me bang my wife. See. Not gay!"

I googled for over 3 minutes and this is the funniest picture that I could find. (But if you think he looks funny, you should see our previous Prime Minister). Paul is CEO of the Liberal Party. And boy was it a party. For about 2 months, that is. Before a big fat scandal wiped that smirk from his face faster than you can say "I just spent 100 million of your tax dollars on advertising with nothing to advertise about or advertisements to show for it." Was his successful attempt to pass this same-sex marriage bill a means to avoid controversy? Yeesh, I sure hope not.

Name: Stephen Harper.
Goldilocks and the 3 Bears character: The Porridge.
Opinion on gay marriage: "You know what gay love is? Gay love is an illusion created by gay lawyers to perpetuate another illusion called gay marriage to create the reality of gay divorce and the illusionary need for gay divorce lawyers." (bonus points if you know the reference)

Stephen is the fuhrer... err leader, sorry, of the Naz... err Conservative Party, sorry. There's something I've always found rather terrifying about him. Perhaps it's the lack of color in his hair. And his skin. And his lips. And his eyes. He says he will do everything in his power to block same sex marriage. Methinks thou protests to much.

Name: Jack Layton.
Goldilocks and the 3 Bears character: The Chair.
Opinion on gay marriage: Sorry but I didn't bother to look it up. Probably pro though. I mean, look at those arms!

Jack heads up the New Democratic Party AKA "NDP" AKA "NDippers" AKA "Communists". He's there by the people, for the people... oh wait. The people never vote for him. Oh well, he's there anyway. And he's not taking it anymore. Just what "it" is, no one is quite sure. All I know is that orange is not my colour. So I'll probably never vote for him. But look at those arms!

Name: Gilles Duceppe.
Goldilocks and the 3 Bears character: Goldilocks.
Opinion on gay marriage: He's French. What do you think?

By far the most attractive of our potential leaders, Duce, as he likes for me to call him, runs a tiny convenience store... err, political party, in Montreal called the Bloc Quebecois. A lot of Quebecers don't really like being a part of Canada and the tectonic plates just aren't moving fast enough for them. So every once in awhile they get a couple dozen signatures on a petition to separate from Canada. They complain about how they are losing their culture, language and national identity. But since no one outside of Quebec can speak French, we really have no idea what they're talking about.

----------------------

Of course like any other democracy, we've got our fair share of loonies (if you were Canadian you would have thought that was quite the pun!). So here's a quick list of parties that tend to get 5 votes or less (mostly less).

The Rhinoceros Party of Canada - "The party's main campaign promise was to promise nothing. " My guess is pro gay.

Christian Heritage Party - "Canada was founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law." Hmmm, tough one. I would guess... anti gay. Ding! Ding! Ding! Correct!

Marijuana Party of Canada - "Here I was," [party founder Marc-Boris St-Maurice] laughs, "in the joint for possessing joint making material - all of a sudden, I'm smoking a joint!" Pro gay? Anti gay? See if you can wake them up and find out.

Winner of the Best Political Party Slogan Award:

"When no choice is a good choice,
and the best choice is no choice,
the only real choice is the new choice."

Happy Couples

and other things that
make me want to puke

War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Little do people know but there was in fact a fifth Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Well, I guess technically it's a fifth and six horsemen, since this little known miniature horse was given the unfortunate job of carrying on it's nearly broken back that most hideous of all the signs of our impending doom: a couple newly in love.

Picture it: Her seated in his lap, side saddle, with windswept hair and bright white teeth. His hands encircle her to keep her safe, fingers clasped in a sex grip around her waste. Gazing into each other's eyes as though the button on their morphine drip is stuck, they bring something almost worse than the other horsemen combined: the feeling that true love really does exist out there and that your problem is that you just keep missing the boat.

War? pfft. I can hide good. Famine? Hey, I'm a student. Famine is my middle name. Pestilence? Does that mean I can take some time off work with pay? And death? Bring it on. But the feeling that I'm lacking something that keeps me from being truly happy when in the arms of another? Force me over the trench wall while starving and suffering from bubonic plague to put me out of my misery. Please. Anything but that.

The Adventures of a
Chili Competition Judge

I'll admit that many mistakes were made last evening. The critical one, however, was made last week when I thought that being a judge for my class's chili cook-off was something that sounded "like fun." Boy, am I regretting that decision today. I'm sorry, body. It was wrong of me to do that to you. So very, very wrong. Now please... just shut up about it.

The first of my many mistakes last night was to eat half a medium pizza before the competition. Sure, that may seem obvious now, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Which brings me to my second mistake: Pacing. When faced with 6 chilis vying for the Golden Chili (and yes, there was a gold spray painted chili) it's best to not inhale the first two and nibble on the last four. It's grossly unfair to the contestants. I'm a terrible judge.

Many of you will be pleased to hear that the winning chili was vegetarian. Of course, it being the last competitor, after so much meat before it I pretty much would have given high marks to a bowel of air at that point.

With the competition over I was free to drink copious amounts of beer and generally make an ass of myself. What better way to accomplish this than to attempt to impress a table of ladies by taking a bite out of a real live chili pepper. The admiration in their eyes at my obvious manly virility quickly changed to concern at my reddening face before ending at disgust as the sweat pouring from my forehead merged with the gushing tears from my eyes and the rivers of snot from my nose. You'd think they would have at least been impressed with my ability to speak in tongues at such a high pitch. I think one of them even kicked my body as it lay shuddering in the fetal position on the floor while they stepped over me to talk to the guy who was crushing beer cans on his forehead in the living room.

It was around this point that I blacked out.

When I came to I was seated in Tom's Little Havana with a Winston Churchill sized stogey in my mouth debating the existence of God with Harry Potter.

Today, for reasons I'd rather not get into, there is a legal limit of 15 feet in terms of how close you may stand next to me.

Migrane Boy

The smeared words handwritten in black marker on B.A.'s fat, sweaty, hairy belly last night pretty much sums up how I feel today.

Kill Me

Last evening began with oven baked steak marinated in herb and garlic chimichurri sauce with sides of rice and steamed green beans in olive oil and pepper. Unfortunately, my choice in film to accompany my meal was a documentary on the high levels of fecal coliform in India's Ganges River (editor's note: don't ask). The quick cuts to images of what looked just like my steak floating by the wrinkled breasts of elderly Indian woman bathing in sewage water made for a quick meal indeed.

Library Girl was the first to arrive. After making herself a quick salad in what was once her old kitchen with what are now my new utensils we gulp wine. I let her beat me in electronic darts a few times as we discuss all of the excitement in her life and the lack of it in my own. Shortly thereafter the rest of the posse arrives. With each passing hour and empty beer can I forget the fact that I have to work in 8 hours.... 7 hours... 6 hours...

While Library Girl heads to cloud nine the rest of us make our way to Stage Nine. Blandy and I squeeze up front. Being that close to a shirtless B.A. you feel much like those gorillas faced with the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. You kind of want to touch it, but the fear of just what it will do to your conception of reality holds you back.

My posse leaves early so I get my "one beer too many" and pull out of my repertoire a few choice wall leans and furrowed brows. With only four hours until my shift starts and the spins, I cut out on the Minks set early and head home to my hot water bottle and new comforter. After a late night phone discussion in which my general pessimistic views on life are made all the more hilarious by my high level of intoxication I pass out for a moment before it's up and off to work.

Actual conversation:

Supervisor: You smell like beer and you look terrible, Pizza Diarist.
Pizza Diarist: That's because I slept in these clothes last night. And I think I'm still drunk.
S: Ha ha. You're so funny, Pizza Diarist.
PD: Yeah, I've been told I'm funny when I'm drunk.
S: ...
PD: ...
S: Get to work.

Weekend in Preview

The fun starts this evening with a pre-Stage Nine "party" (a term I've learnt to use very loosely, especially if I'm the host). Watch out that you don't trip over the pole. Then it's off to Stage Nine for BA's Birthday Bash at which I've been told there will be free cheezies. If all goes according to plan, which based on experience it tends to, I'll stumble home, alone, at approximately 3am and grab 3 hours of sleep before heading to work where more than likely I'll learn untold heretowith unknown orifices in which to shove our newspaper. After that it's home and nap time. The rest of Saturday will be spent starving myself in anticipation of my being a judge for a chili cookoff at which I will more than likely drink until I puke up said chili. I was told that people my age no longer drink until they puke. I'll prove that wrong. Look forward to my recap post. Then Sunday, should I not be suffering from the chills and the shakes from ingesting bowls of undercooked meat byproducts, it's off to work for a badly thought out extra shift I signed up for. Sunday night may hopefully lead me to Bayer's Lake for the new Terrence Mallick film, though I guess that depends on if someone may want to go that has a car. Hint. Hint.

The only explanation for all of this is that my life was car jacked and I'm being dragged behind by my leg caught in the seatbelt. Hey... it's been known to happen!

Time to Reinstall the Pole

So that's that then. She's gone. And I'm still here. And I know what you're thinking: "That feeling you're experiencing is sadness, Pizza Diarist."

Well, one person's sadness is another's Deju Vu.

So these last few weeks have been absolutely fascinating ones from a purely psychological perspective. I've seen myself behave in ways I would have never imagined. Yet on the other hand I have a whole new respect for my ability to chew on my anger until it forms into a tiny little ball and swallow it deep down inside never to be seen again. And I know what you're thinking: "That doesn't sound very healthy, Pizza Diarist."

Well, neither does a colonoscopy.

So between going to see overweight 30 year olds singing about living in their mother's basement and guzzling Pepto Bismal while judging chili cooking competitions, this weekend is all about getting my life back to its original seated position.

Current Addictions

Healing Hands

(an online comic updated daily)

Zuma

(warning:
will cause you to get
a B+ on an assignment
you should have got an
A- on)

Ceasar Salad

(With chicken!)

What Food Condiment Are You?

Since I'm so too cool to do one of those lame online quizzes that tell you incorrect facts about yourself based on too little information (see here, here, here, here... etc etc), or at least far too hip to post the results, I've decided to create one of my own.

Here's how it works: post your answers to the following three questions as a comment to this post and I'll tell you what table condiment you are. Not only that, but I'll tell you how long before you go bad and have to be thrown in the trash.

1) You drop by a smoky tavern for a pint. You notice Kurt Vonnegut smoking in the corner and he motions for you to come over so he can sketch your portrait. Coincidently, The Smiths had decided to rehearse for their surprise reunion tour on the tiny stage next to the bar and they take the stage. Just then the doors opens and in walks Woody Allen looking for extras for his new film shooting outside. Last but certainly not least, a tractor trailer covered in graham crackers, a cement mixer full of melted chocolate and a dump truck of marshmallows collide, igniting the gas station next door, shooting perfectly melted smores in all directions. Do you:

a) Request a "Vonnegut asshole" next to your right shoulder.
b) Rip the fake Gladiola from the plastic vase on the table and run weeping to the stage.
c) Straighten your black rimmed glasses and shuffle awkwardly to the door.
d) Tear off your clothes, open your mouth, spread your arms, dive out the door and slide face first towards the delicious burning inferno.


2) I would rather date:

a) Someone with a permanent pubescent mustache and other rat-like features such as buck teeth, pointy noise and twitchy mouth, but a "hot bod" and hung like horse (or the equivalent in a girl... I can't say it!). Oh, and they're really rich.
b) Michelangelo's David. Right down to skin colour, rock hard abs and the coldness of his heart.
c) An artist type, so obsessed with their own art that he rarely has time for you. Oh and his art sucks. I mean it really sucks. But people seem to like it. Even though it sucks. Baaaad.

3) Generally, the happiest that I am is when I am:

a) By myself.
b) With my family.
c) With my friends.
e) With strangers.
f) Drunk by myself.
g) Drunk with my family.
h) Drunk with my friends.
i) Drunk with strangers.
j) Eating smores. It doesn't matter who with.

Time to Update the Chart

Subject	Time Elapsed between Relationships	Years of Partnership	Expiration Date	Current Distance from Pizza Corner	Time Before Marriage
Ex #1	3 Years	4 Years	2000	50 Kms	1 Year
Ex #2	1 Year	1.5 Years	2002	6182 Kms	1 Year (now divorced)
Ex #3	13 Days	1 Year	2004	20,000 Kms	Pending
Ex #4	1.5 Years	10 Months	2006	4 Kms	Pending

So for the three of you that have been following these Diaries since their inception in July of 2004, (bravo to you!) this may look a little familiar. For those of you unfamiliar with the numerous ways in which I keep track of all my faults in order to remind myself of what a dud I am, this is one of my favourites. I don't know about you, but I find charts like this are the easiest way in which to record, interpret and display heartbreak and sadness. I just wish I knew how to change the font.

When this was originally posted back in August of 2004, I only had three subjects. Let's hear it for progress!

I'm posting my original results for the purposes of self deprecation only.

1. Both the time between my relationships and the duration of my relationships decreases as my age increases.
2. The distance an ex moves from me is inversely proportional to the amount of time we spend together.
3. The amount of time that passes before an ex marries is consistently short.

Results of my research:
If you have a desire to flee the country and marry quickly after a short rebound relationship.... call me.

So generally I try not to be too obvious when I steal links from other sites, but this just seemed far to interesting to not pass along to the few of you that might not frequent the sites I have linked to your left.

From BoingBoing:

Walt Disney's
The Story Of Menstruation

Download here (though you'll need bittorrent to do so)

The nice thing about having lazy friends is that you end up getting Christmas gifts months after Christmas came and went. Last night's visit with Blandy brought about just such an occurrence. And what a gift! A framed embroidered (?) screenshot from my most favourite computer game growing up. Fuck iMacs, embroidered screenshots from 1980s computer games is where it's at.

But it got me to thinking. Having pretty much given in to the fact that I'm a geek through and through, I thought back to all the things that played huge influences on me that most others would see as completely inconsequential. In other words, the things that led me to become the adult you see before you, but also got me beat up often as a kid.

Everything I Know
About Life and Death
I Learned From
The Oregon Trail

So other than, say, The Game of Life, The Oregon Trail showed me how difficult it is to successfully pro-create and maintain a happy, well functioning family. Well before my mid to late teenage years and the advent of 16-color internet porn, this was the shit.

Lesson #1: Lower the criteria you use to define "success"

It was such a deceptively simple idea: You create a pioneer family and you're faced with the task of bringing them all safe and sound to the end of the Oregon Trail. Or, at least as many of them as you can. Well, I guess it's ok if you lose a couple kids. Maybe even the wife. And oops there go a couple oxen. Foods gone, and you had to sell your wagon for shoes. But as long as you can still crawl across the finish line alone, suffering from malnutrition, hypothermia and dysentery, while still breathing with a bare minimum of a pulse, you win!

Lesson #2: Shit happens. Get used to it.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about that time in your life when you kept your most cherished belongings in an unlocked opening in your desk. (editor's note: do kids still experience that?) So losing my first born before I could even ejaculate taught me more about this cruel world than all the Robotech episodes and Mini Pops records put together.

Lesson #3 Only kill what you can eat. Or is it only eat what you can kill? Whatever.

"Unfortunately, in real life it was all too easy to kill a buffalo with a rifle. In later decades hunters would kill vast numbers of buffalos and take only the tongues. So I wanted kids to feel a sense of shame for killing too much and then wasting the kill. That was one of the reasons for allowing the player to carry back no more than 200 pounds of meat. I wanted the kids to develop a sense of conservation while playing the game - to say "We should not shoot more meat than we can carry". Our field testing showed that this lesson was indeed effective."
- Philip Bouchard, creator of The Oregon Trail

Lesson #4: It happens to the best of us

Perhaps my general pessimism all stems from the amount of times I died on the Trail as a kid. And frankly, calling myself Penis all the time probably caused some psychological damage that I'm only now beginning to come to terms with.

Next Installment:

Everything I Know
About Heterosexuality
I Learned from
Morrissey

aka
Where's my girlfriend?

Exploitation Film Posters

Rearranging Deck Chairs
on the Titantic

It's pretty much inevitable. At some point I always get asked, "So what in the hell do you do with a Philosophy degree?" It's tough to answer, really. When I still had my ping pong table it was:

"If you bounce the ball off the degree hanging on the wall and then get it back onto the table while keeping it in play you get a bonus five points added to your score."

Shortly thereafter it was:

"A tie rack."

But now that I've sold my table and hang my ties off of the rubber bumper on the back of my closet door, what more can I say than:

"Overthink things. "

Pizza Corner has morphed into Bizarro Pizza Corner these days. Life as I knew it is no longer as it was known. After making the jump from PC to Mac, Cntrl+C no longer cuts and Cntrl+V no longer pastes. Existence is highly suspect. Things that used to happen to everyone else but me seem to be happening to me. I'm like George in that episode of Seinfeld when he does everything the opposite and good things start happening to him. Except I'm doing all the same things and getting the same results. Go figure.

The title of this post comes from a guest lecturer I sat through last week. I don't remember his name and don't ask me what the topic was about, because I don't remember that either. What I do remember is that he started the lecture off with a list of things that he hoped we would remember. The only thing off the list that I actually remember was this: "Take away one thing that I say that you will remember for the rest of your life."

Looking back at my notes, the line about the deck chairs sticks out, perhaps due to its heavy underling, circling and highlighting with the firebolts shooting out from the flames I doodled around it.

So why did I pick that line? Why was that the only thing he said that didn't sound like Charlie Brown's mother's voice to me? Why the hell couldn't I have picked something a little more optimistic?!

I guess because lately I feel like I've been rearranging a couple deck chairs of my own. And I'm trying harder to not notice the ever increasing tilt of the ship.

The Maynards - "a musical deconstructionist movement masquerading as a dance/rock band."

Ninja High School - "a positive hardcore dance-rap band from Toronto."

Jon Rae and the River - "He morphs from a fire-spitting Nick Cave-style street preacher to a full-on soulful gospel artist; and Ann, his backup singer/gal pal, might be plucked away to sing for the Rolling Stones any day now. "

Honestly. How could you not go.

Gay cowboys?
Who could have ever imagined it?

I feel bad for the gay movie going public. They have had to sit through so many of our sappy "boy meets girl, boy takes girl for granted, boy loses girl, boy does 160-degree personality change and gets girl back and lives happily ever after" films that it's really no surprise that they're gay in the first place.

So I accompanied Blandy to Brokeback Mountain last evening purely for scientific reasons. I was interested in finding out whether a minority culture, raised on the drivel produced by the majority, would see through it and demand more from the creators of their entertainment than over used cliches, predictable patterns and tacked on wrap up endings.

Unfortunately it was just Serendipity with butt sex. It told me nothing about what it must have been like to be gay at that time and in that place. Other than it apparently feels like what I feel like when at a Mooseheads hockey game.

My only hope is that the film breaks down a few barriers to allow other gay themed films through that have subtler plot twists with deeper meanings and characters thicker than cardboard. And if that's not going to be the case, at least toss in a decent sex scene or two. A drunken quickie in a tent followed by a little tustling in the grass? I was more turned on by the sheep.

And to those who were afraid I would somehow "become gay" after it was over, I totally did.**


** gay
adj., gay·er, gay·est.

1. Showing or characterized by cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement; merry. As in: "He had never felt gayer then when the crappy movie was over."
   

Procrastination Station

"I'm a Naughty Girl"
Miss Beatrice Hart and Chorus from Daly's.
Recorded in London, 18 January 1899

I'm an imp on mischief bent,
Only feeling quite content
When doing wrong!

Sometimes when I've had the fun —
I repent of what I've done
But not for long!

(complete lyrics here)





Play Guitar

My new favourite local band that I haven't actually seen yet.




From boingboing:


Tom Verlaine, guitarist extraordinaire of NYC art-proto-punk band Television, guest DJed on the WFMU Gaylord Fileds show Sunday, and played weird mod organ and guitar music from the 50s and 60s, spy music, outer space sounds, tribal drumming from New Guinea and orchestral favorites. Anyone familiar with Verlaine's career and oeuvre will not want to miss this.

Link to RealAudio

(if the tribal drums get old skip ahead to around the 6 minute mark)




From Sonic Pollutions:

The Kinks - "Autumn Almanac"
1967, Top of the Pops
(scroll to the bottom and click almnc.mpg)

Who else but Ray Davies could have written a hit single featuring the word "Almanac"? This for me is one of his very best compositions in that its both funny and sad... its also eerily relevant to many in that it depicts how people like to stick to their habits and habitats.