the violence of the blog

the troops, the troops...

2006-07-19T17:37:00.000-04:00

the fucking troops!

i think i am going to start stealing those stupid support the troops bumper magnets.

because i have decided, today, inspired by this thoughtful piece, that i fully and one hundred percent do not support the fucking troops.

yes, these are poor, long-suffering folk, who are fighting for what they apparently believe in, and they are poor, have had hard-knock type lives, and are just looking for a way out. and the army seems like a great idea! and now they are out there fighting for our liberty. your grandpa was probably one, how could you possibly be against the troops!?! even michael damn moore is for the troops.

i don't care!

they are a bunch of - and i plagiarise bill hicks here lovingly - hired fucking killers. they are not your grandpa. and generally, when poor people escape poverty through violence, it is more or less frowned upon. and look at what the troops say when you see them on the telly-vision! "we're fighting for freedom!" yes, that entire family you shelled from miles above were posing an enormous threat to your freedom. i'm going out on a limb here, but i'm going to guess that when you're in a fighter jet, nothing without rockets can pose a threat to your personal freedom.

you don't get an exemption from having a conscience just because you were poor and signed up for something you didn't know enough about, and now you're 'just following orders.'

how can we bring about world peace? just stop fucking fighting. for fuck's sakes! stop! it doesn't matter who started it, how much they're paying you, or who told you to do it. you are killing people, and that is wrong. and if you - the troops! - quit doing it, who the fuck do you think is going to? look at the people in government - and in positions of leadership in general, really! once enough of the grunts quit, the draft-dodging fuckwads who run this meat-grinder we call a planet will have nobody left to shoot their guns (and rockets, artillery shells, smart-bombs, bunker-busters, etc. etc. etc.). and we all know that growing up a saudi billionaire or a texan one tends to make one averse to getting one's hands dirty.

da-dum! there it is. ali states the obvious, featuring lots of profanity.

things that piss me off.

2006-06-25T14:26:00.000-04:00

so, i haven't posted a thing, for quite a long time. because the seed of misanthropy which has always been present in my wee little congealed heart, has been flourishing under the summer light, and when not enjoying my time off in animalistic self-destruction, my more rational side has been rather hermit-y and sullen, particularly when it comes to the better part of this human race of ours. as every crusty old maid has opined at one time or another, if you haven't got something nice to say, don't say anything at all.

however! i have elected to channel a tidge of this bitterness into some prose for you-all's delectation. 'you-all' being the hypothetical audience of this blog, which has likely dwindled into nothingness by now. if i haven't got something nice to say, i shall at least state my disheartening grievances in a pleasing fashion.

i am at work right now. this is one of the prime things which piss me off. see, for one thing, i hate the fact that i have to engage in this sort of soul-crushing robotic parrot-work in order to support myself and my vices. i hate corporations; all of their doublespeak and euphemism, their blindness and amorality, and most of all the pitiful drones that are my co-workers, who plod through their daily lives unaware of the fact that life could be better in so many ways, if only they were to collectively realize it. quite frankly, there is no reason for my job to exist.

which is one of the many reasons which i hate conservatives. because they are endlessly harping on about how corporations are ever-so efficient, and how all of our problems will be solved by the miracle-working of our brave CEOs. however, the private sector is predominantly composed, like every other 'sector,' of enormous idiots. every corporation with which i have ever dealt has made decisions the likes of which the most inbred retard would be ashamed to have even thought. my employer, for one, has pissed away 100 dollars just today by paying me to be at work for eight hours, doing nothing, posting inflammatory remarks about their idiotic policy choices. even the wacko liberals who deride corporations for being pathological and immoral, completely miss the point. companies don't care only about profit; in fact, they don't care about much of anything. they are fictitious entities, amorphous clouds of silly people bound together only by their suckling at the withered teat of the company payroll.

and obviously, if i hate conservatives and liberals in equal measure, i must have a healthy cupful of loathing for the united states, that wonderful case study which shows the rest of the world how easy it is to be disgusted with both sides of an argument, when its premises are sufficiently idiotic. and while i am sure i will hate china when it holds the balance of world power (not, of course, to say that it doesn't already), i will much prefer hating a real authoritarian regime than one which is too pussified to reveal its true nature. america is basically a huge corporation whose board of directors are presently engaged in a process of massive responsibility-liquidation before they get the fuck out of Dodge. and while i'm on about the Great Satan, and different reasons why it and its culture suck bloated testes, how about advertising? everyone who is in involved in advertising: you serve no useful purpose. you are sucking the joy out of being a human being, and ruining everything good about life. your job is to create a desire which only you can fulfil (for a price, of course), and then to endlessly withold the satisfaction of fulfilment. fucking kill yourself, advertisers, you are the scum of the scum of the earth.

so, as these different phenomena which have me bothered are all human concerns and/or constructions, i feel that i should delve deeper, and consider those human traits which are responsible for our society's paucity of redeeming characteristics. foremost, i would say, is confidence. i fucking hate confidence, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that i have little of it. but, i am proud of my lack of confidence! for you confident folk, with your self-assured grins and swaggering gaits, will be the ruin of us all. see, confidence is more or less the supreme arbiter of cultural recognition and social mobility in our society. the determining characteristic of a leader, in particular, is his or her (but most likely his) level of confidence. and with the greatly exaggerated importance of 'leadership' in this herdlike social hierarchy of ours, we are compelled to obey the will of ranks upon ranks of people chosen to command us based solely on how forcefully they can do so. we are social beings, and thus i think it not inappropriate to assert that every shitty decision ever made is because an overconfident idiot drowned out someone with a better idea.

so, i'm sure you're all thinking, gosh, ali. from your privileged and lofty post as some douchebag with a computer, you certainly have ripped into the flawed institutions of our society with equal measures of cleverness and insight! but are there any naturally-occurring phenomena that really piss you off??

of course! how about physics, for one? ever dropped something? tripped over something? gotten tangled up in some wires? it's all the fault of fucking physics! i call for a boycott.

not to mention electricity; how the fuck does that shit work, anyways??

but that's enough heated vitriol for the time being.

in case you're really feeling down and out after reading this, and need to have your faith in humanity restored by something astonishingly hilarious, head on down and give wigu a read. start from the beginning, and read it all - it's even better if you're at work, and you're effectively stealing back some of your surplus labour from the Man!

violent derby crusades!

2006-06-06T15:13:00.000-04:00

blogging is dead.....

things are so exciting in the world of bumbleberries and catnip most people refer to as my mind...

such a busy/productive summer on the horizon...

i've begun recording songs for a couple music projects i have on the go....some spacey....some poppy.....mostly just tunes....not much muck-raking

i'm playing with my friend Matt's band Observatory for the summer. We just played a beach show on Saturday at Erie Beach....we burned the stage at the end of the night....

i'm also in the process of writing a script with my friend rob feetham about the lives of cannabil hermits....it will most likely be a film made with the help of roomie Brit Cruise

i also live with a vagina.......her name is alex.

LIVE SHOWS !!!! JUST ANNOUNCED

JULY 1, 2006 - THE HIPBONES at the GRIMSBY CANADA DAY PARTY
JULY 14 and 15, 2006 - Observatory and Hey! Death? opening for SQUARE ROOT OF MARGARET

AUGUST, 2006 - The HIpbones at The Alex P. Keaton

Hopefully more shows to be announced shortly

currently listening to:

Thom Yorke - The Eraser

The Violent Femmes - "Please Don't Go" (Track from their S/T Album)

Kid Koala - Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Brent Peltier's Electro-pop record....

Currently Watching:

Star Trek TNG

Entertainment Tonight Canada

Currently Reading:

Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut

racket balls and rough gems.

2006-04-30T05:48:00.000-04:00

it's 5:45 am

i am unable to fall into a sweet slumbering embrace...........(that is such a gay line....)

islands is playing again.........i think i love this album........it's frightening....i never thought i'd actually like an album like this ever again.........thought i was a bit too "senile", "confused" or "jaded"............how often has the word jaded been used in pop-punk songs? (too many)

tickled pink......

i feel like i should say congratulations to all my "colleagues" who have recently "graduated"..............i think i like you guys....

is it bad to "always" be an ironic jerk?

i really do love you pumpkins!

eano and i had "a chat" and decided maybe you all need a change in direction..........JOIN US!.....JOIN US!!!!!!!!!!!!!................we're not bad leaders, and we think you'd appreciate the selection of pastries.

sugar cane.

get it mimi?

i will find out this month if grad school is a conceivable option........WHO KNOWS!.........marks mean too much............

i'm still unemployed........can anybody help fix that?

examinGAYtion

2006-04-18T17:57:00.000-04:00

eeeek.....textual stimulation, verbal alienation, and scrotal burn!

this is not a test .........

there is a new breed of punk rock patriots brewing in the depths of Effortless Records......

My brother and fellow sound (child) molestor Liam have started a new rock combo called
Raider Pride......we have no songs, no lyrics and no talent.......but we do have the album and song titles officially figured out..

The album will be called "Who's Got Raider Pride?....WE'VE GOT RAIDER PRIDE!!!!!'

potential song titles include:

1.) Communists Want Your Stuff...And They Want You Dead!
2.) Death to The Plenum Theorists
3.) I Think All Apples Are Stupid
4.) Stop Diddling Each Other...We Need More Children!
5.) A Naive Moment in Human History
6.) I Know I'll Have a Job....I Have No Talent!
7.) The Cow Gums Somebody To Death
8.) Annexation Dragon
9.) That Foreign Guy Looks Like Bert
10.) Channelling is Just Yuppie Possession
11.) From Hamburgers to Ancient Philosophy
12.) Vague Continent
13.) Out of The sidewalk Jungle
14.) A Fire Looks Good on Colour TV

pitchfork finally got it right.

2006-04-13T15:19:00.000-04:00

i'm fucking loving the islands record.

2 and a half years ago i had myself convinced that nothing could ever top the unicorns......and although i think that it's still a far superior album i'm pretty impressed with the latest from n.d and j.t.

i'm going into the studio this weekend for a little pre-session for this new project i'm working on. think of it as cam and friends.......i want to basically get everyone i know with a musical spirit in and just see what happens..........

......IM ONLY ONE MAN/MACHINE!!

looking forward to:

-the death of professor stainton
-summer
-true friends
-baked goods

not looking forward to:

- finding employment
- my own death
- soy mutton (it's TERRIBLE)

.......some people are so sad and pathetic it makes me ticklish......it's entertaining......in a really icky way.

cam.

AN AMAZING OFFER!

2006-04-04T12:50:00.000-04:00

tired of only getting one oppurtunity to celebrate the day I squeezed myself out of my mom's warm, moist, slightly pugent vagina?

WELL STAND UP AND REJOICE!!

your prayer's have been answered.

due to the intensely busy time of the year I am offering you all not one...but two fantastic chances to catch me in drunken, debaucherous, potentially naked action!

My real birthday is tomorrow, Wednesday, April 5!

1.) Join me, and probably ali and sean for an evening at Alex P, Keaton, or potentially Call The Office tomorrow April 5!

2.) Join me on saturday, april 8 at the Forest City Art Gallery where I will be attending a performance by the Barmitzvah Brothers

and don't forget that on April 10, 2006 I will be playing at the Alex P. Keaton first with a solo band....and then as drummer for The Hipbones............

im shameless.......AND NAKED!

freudian SWIRL!

2006-03-23T18:00:00.000-05:00

im in between classes in the library.......dark days cometh!

so, some asshole in my masculinity class brings up Freud (incorrectly) in an analysis of Vincent Minnelli's 1958 film Some Come Running, starring Frank Sinatra. He brought up the Beyond Pleasure principle, using his OH SO ARROGANT "i read a book once" voice.

People, stop fucking using Freud in academic discourse....just fucking STOP.....it's not relevant, it's not interesting, it's fucking obvious and nobody cares.........it's especially bad if you get it wrong...kill yourself

good day.

eek.

2006-03-09T16:50:00.000-05:00

not that i was much of a fan of their first album, but i just heard the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs track "Gold Lion" and was especially disturbed by how boring it is.

it's called "growth" people....do it or get out.

they should probably just write commercial jingles from now on....

just thought i'd share.

tempered.

2006-02-16T18:07:00.000-05:00

stuck in the library .........eating air.

i'm never sure if i should tell you my pheelings.....

spirits are high

honey oiled bail bonds

my back is aching because my bed is fucked and i need aspirin

and i need some ginger beer...

but enough about me...how are you?

fuck off.

2006-02-01T16:52:00.000-05:00

what the fuck is facebook?

i still have yet to look into what the hell everyone is talking about...and i probably never will.

can't people get over these silly trends?

what service does facebook provide?

tell me what i'm missing and i might join....but probably not..........

it's the same reason i hate franz ferdinand, coldplay and bloc party.....

they come......they go...and nobody is any more evolved having been involved............

i'm moving to africa.

thick cola gurgle.

2006-01-29T02:57:00.000-05:00

I'm wondering about a lot of things lately..........

people lie.......i won't state any names.

i keep eating too much candy......

why did i just buy a cake?......

coca-cola makes my body ache.

my dog has maggots.............and i don't even have a dog.

i know how to play 4 chords..............duh.

i met a walrus......................that was stupid.

chet.

or........

cam.

aka

lazer thunder..............no............definitely just cam.

sabzi.

2006-01-23T02:15:00.000-05:00

election day cometh........meh.

the greatest movie moment of all time is when hitler autographs dr. jones' father's diary in the third Indiana Jones film..........hell.....yeah?

i have some new fetishes:

Geoff Berner - Whiskey Rabbi

Zapoleon and The Bluemilkstars - random tracks from the next album

Observatory - song called "Polymorphisms Today"

i need a bath.........i need a shave......i need some cinnamon

film commencement................prepared?

tuning out.

2006-01-16T02:31:00.000-05:00

HOLY COW!!!!!!!!

a new beginning for our beloved hero.......

i'm finding it hard to be ambitious AND lazy.........fuck!!

I think this little blabfest is similar to the concerns of Lord Ali in his latest post.......

is it wrong that i am finding it difficult to give a ham sandwich about the upcoming elections?

partisan politics makes me want to stab little children.......

why don't more people question the fact that our money goes toward million dollar ad campaigns for politicians..........and not a damn one of us is any more knowledgable about the actual beliefs or platforms of the various party leaders having consumed the 30 second blips.............

i know this is treading on all too familiar critical territory....but it's a real fucking concern..........people always pretend as if they are savvy ( "of course i know it's all bullshit")......but they still fucking buy in...........campaigns are based on hiding the issues.....on tricking the citizenry......and on pissing me OFF!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HONESTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

how the fuck can a person be THAT dedicated to one fucking party?......how can someone stand behind some naive notion that EVERYTHING they say is CORRECT...and ALL of their beliefs are the best for a nation...................

Jack Layton is a fucking car salesman.........i'll probably vote NDP.....but fucking hell..........he's such a douche bag.........yet.........he's the best we've got.........isn't that sad?

......just saying you believe in one particular party makes a politician's job so fucking easy.........they merely need to say "YAY-HORSE FUCKER" without really debating the issues........it's sad........it's fucking pathetic.........and i can't stand it..............dbfnj;obdfjkn;gbnj;kgfnbkmjlgfkmgfkm/lhgnkmlkj;l'jh;lhg;,fmnj;lgmhl;gmjl;gdkhlglkhmfsdl;gmfdnhgmhkflhmklgnhklghmkgnmhlkgnhklgnhkghgf

i can't talk right now.....im just getting so pissed off.........i can't write coherently........

..........i fear for our future..............

cam..........

apologize, america!

2006-01-14T23:25:00.000-05:00

please, don't regard this as an overly partisan jab at a particular swath of the Political Spectrum, though that is what this will surely constitute.

but rather, view it as a clever, if somewhat naif suggestion in the realm of Foreign Policy, and Public Relations, and all that manner of bureaucratese.

when, say, you kill at least 18 civilians on foreign soil with goddamn fucking ROBOT PLANES, maybe you could think about - and we're going back to, roughly kindergarten here - maybe the first thing you should do, as a collective entity, is apologize.

and the Official Response, as reported thus far in the press, is - and i quote - that the CIA felt they ordered this attack based upon "good reporting." not, "perhaps that was unwise." not a, "sorry for your loss." not even an insouciant, "sheeeyit, well it looks like that reporting wa'rn't so good after all." but instead, a guarded non-statement that could easily have been, and likely was gathered from some kind of standard Template. thereby, equating the deaths of 18 people with, say, a résumé or party invitation.

there you have it. i'd say that's pretty much the archetypal conservative response. instant damage-control, calculating soulless fuck cover-your-ass bullshit.

and you know what else is archetypally conservative? the response of every reasonably-right conservative who reads this. "well, they were probably harboring terrorists." "the agency can't be blamed for their unreliable information!" or perhaps they'd even call up a time when - gasp! - a LIBERAL caused something similar to happen.

not that i'd expect a conventionally liberal (read: "mainstream") government to behave much differently. nevertheless, america in particular just desperately needs to inject some humanity into their international image. so all i can say is just maybe - it'd be a good idea to apologize first, and ask questions later. even a noncommital, "we regret that such and such has occurred etc. etc. and will do our best to uncover the reasons behind the deaths of etc. etc." would be a better choice than having the first statement that is leaked to the Arab World - and i'm having faint recollections of a conservative bonerfest concerning Newsweek here - is that you attacked some of their citizens sans diplomacy or any such thing because you were pretty sure they deserved it.

fuck sakes! world war I started because some duke nobody even REMEMBERS (except for that lame band) got shot in a country that was barely even involved! and the country you attacked has nukes, for fuck's sakes!

but of course, never will a businessperson understand that sometimes the best response might not be to cover your ass.

gawrsh.

2006-01-12T18:53:00.000-05:00

i haven't posted a thing in a loooooong time. i've mostly been reading over the break, really. got through the baroque cycle, the new marquez.... and after i typed that, i spent like an hour looking at wikipedia and completely forgot about this post.

but i'd just like to say that, in light of recent climate-related events, i am fully in favour of global warming. while once upon a time, i too cringed at the prospect of our impending doom beneath the ever-growing oceans. but it's just so nice out! it's almost like winter has called in sick for the year. so now that i've seen the light, you hippie granola fags can shut up, because i think canada, as a nation, needs to stand behind our brave fossil fuel and petrochemical industries and say, with one proud voice - fuck you, polar ice caps!

if anyone has a refrigerator or car radiator that they'd like disposed of inappropriately, or maybe some aerosol cans that still contain CFCs, please, let me know. i'll be happy to contribute to my pal, the greenhouse effect.

that'll be all.

Minstrel Singer Anew...

2006-01-06T10:26:00.000-05:00

i return...you've waited with bated breath...let it out!

the holidays were an interesting time... full of confusion, music making and decisions which may or may not have major implications on my near/distant and uncertain future. But what the hell do you care?

Anyways...

my mom continued her history of getting my brother and i completely random and totally amazing christmas gifts this year. I received a lute...it's an old school guitar/mandolin style instrument...it sounds fucking awesome and i can't wait to piss a live audience off with it ("what the fuck is that guy playing...that self-indulgent cock tease").....it really is awesome to play......but i can't find out exactly how to tune it....so i currently have it tuned to a standard acoustic guitar.....but i sort of think it's supposed to be tuned more like a mandolin.......i guess i'll have to search the internet to find out such information.....i wonder if www.lutefucker.com exists...probably not.

my brother and i began work on an epic album...and started a punk rock side project called Satin Finish...the band's only release is currently titled "Powerchord Rock" and features Liam on guitar and vocals and me on drums and vocals.......we have no songs, no recordings and have rehearsed once....maybe i'm getting ahead of myself.......i love radishes.

matt from effortless records gave liam his old 4-track and we randomly recorded a bunch of noisey little demos (that's right liam...DEMOS...you have to earn it slut)...they sound interesting....this time around it's going to be a big ol' collaboration with all the musician friends i can find and get involved.......oh baby boy!

on a completely different note....don't you folks think that Broken Social Scene are the most overrated band of all time?.........BORING!!!!!.....i've really tried over the last 2 years to figure out what i'm missing (WHY DON'T I LOVE THIS BAND?) but i've come to realize that i just can't stand them...i liked 3 songs off of their last album and never got through their latest s/t release in its entirety even once...i'm glad i didn't see them in Detroit....i would've wanted my 30 bucks back.......fuck them.....arts and crafts = blech.......

......now i just need to learn some Elizabethean ballads, travel to the 16th century and sonically fist fuck a queen with my lute-tastic musical rapings......

Priests in Labcoats.

2005-12-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/sciencespecial2/20cnd-evolution.html

A Supreme Court judge in Pennsylvania has just banned the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in high school biology classes in one school board. It was the most thorough analysis of the notion of "Intelligent Design" ever conducted and the judge concluded that the movement could not be considered that of scientific exploration. He also expressed (extremely obvious, "what the fuck, are you retarded?" obvious) concern that "Intelligent Design" is nothing more than the book of genesis retold in a modern scientific tone and in a manner which eliminates the name of God from it's explanaton as a way of passing it off as an all encompassing, equality based theory.

Proponents of the movement (yeah, people still buy this shit) have suggested that the theory is on par with and worthy of just as much consideration as more prominent, scientific theories (like the big bang! theory). The judge in this case said that the theory couldn't be taught in classes because it goes against the very nature and purpose of scientific inquiry.

It seems ridiculous that there's anyone out there who can even utter notions of creationism in the same bated breath as science...

the story itself is embedded in theological rhetoric and an insanely complicated number of biblical interpretations, historical and personal alterations, and translations which mean entirely different things to different cultures, races and Christian sects... hell... any two people who speak slightly different languages get two narrowly distorted versions of the original story. The story is, at best, a fucking parable...one which was conceived of thousands and thousands of years ago.

BUT!!! What I really don't get is how the ID book is even written...how do they mask a biblical fairytale as a credible scientific (let alone, biological) theory? I've just completed a Psychology course discussing theories and cases regarding ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. It was a scientific study of theoretical and cultural interpretations of social and physiological expressions of various phenomena which are far more complex and harder to swallow than this half-assed notion of "Intelligent Design". But, the one thing I took from this course was the simple fact that no theory can be accepted by the credible scientific community (and i'm not talking about priests in labcoats) without a fantastically large quantity of data to back up the claims....I wonder what research the proponents of this Intelligent Design theory have regarding the phenomena they describe in their "textbook". I don't think a scientist is allowed to say, "well when i was 6 the pastor at my church, we called him pastor ted...his name was ron... but he liked ted, told me that god talked to this old bearded man on a hill 3000 years ago and explained that he created earth in 6 days...and partied on the seventh". IT'S NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE...

PLUS! No university is going to accept a student if they come into REAL scientific studies with it planted in the back of their brain that "Intelligent Design" is an appropriate theory.

...also....in closing........i doubt that there was a single sober person writing the bible....Stropharia Cubensis (or SHROOMS) grows heavily in areas thought to be where Christianity originated...there are also theories (ones with more credibility than ID) that suggest that it wasn't bread that jesus was passing around at the last supper...it was magic mushrooms......

well played pennsylvania supreme court, well played!

just for the record...

2005-12-20T12:40:00.000-05:00

i think i'll post again later today.

but i've been reading kos and redstate today and feeling rather bitter about the state of the political discourse.

so i just thought i'd say, briefly, for the record - this goes out to you, osama bin laden and ayman al-zawahiri or whatever the fuck your name is, and you, george bush, and you, NSA computers who are likely reading this site along with everything else published on the internet.

I don't give a flying fuck about terrorism.

I've cared more about the contents of my stools than I care about terrorism. the question of who I'm going to buy buds from over the next two weeks is far more pressing than anything to do with dumbass brown fanatics who feel like blowing shit up.

now, all I ask is why politicians won't espouse this viewpoint. in the immortal words of bill hicks, where's my fucking commercial? apparently, my voice was not heard. let me repeat.

Terrorism does not fucking matter, in the least.

Got it?

all this crap that Bush is spewing about how he needs to violate your civil liberties in order to defend freedom yada yada and so on, is retarded. let me get this straight. America has managed to keep its civil liberties intact through:

- a Civil War (well; posse comitatus notwithstanding.)
- two World wars (except for that pesky internment camp thing)
- a Holocaust
- countless Presidential assassinations
- the threat of nuclear annihilation by a foreign state having several thousand warheads
- Joseph McCarthy
- and any number of other things I forgot

yet for some reason, a handful of brown guys with box cutters gives this stupid yahoo licence to piss all over your bill of rights?

9/11 was a tragedy, yeah. but it was a DROP IN THE FUCKING BUCKET compared to the vast array of avoidable deaths each year.

so, let it go. i hate the fact that the framework of political discourse won't allow anyone to CALL IT LIKE IT IS and out the Bush administration on the fact that terrorism DOES NOT MATTER and is nothing more than a CONTRIVED ENEMY so that the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX has a reason to sell their guns.

alright?

good. glad that's out there. oh yeah, and go see syriana.

Barking Dog Wandering Aimlessly into the Next Year.

2005-12-13T15:54:00.000-05:00

here's the toe-tapping, gravy train raping hotlist for the year of our lord (bill gates) 2005:

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

Everyone's favourite anti-drug addicted, Danielson Famile raping, god-stomping hotcake takes everyone's least favourite American state and turns it into a playground of disturbingly epic proportions. Stevens treats the albums included in his seemingly impossible 50 States Project like absurdly dense research papers, leaving us with a sense that America can still be a worthy cultural menace (in the most polite manner possible). You laugh, you cry, you cringe (one has to admit that some of the lyrics are a bit lazy and a bit contrived) but you'll never be able to separate yourself from the onslaught of this mini-composer's boundless ambition. Keep in mind, this is the second of fifty states Stevens intends to create albums on, he's got a lot of work ahead.

I remember buying this album in the summer, listening to it four times through before getting home, and i think i peed myself a little. When I showed Ali the record for the first time, he sat and listened to it straight-through, jaw-dropped (that never happens...ali hates me). It defines a year filled with confusion, arrogance and society's unrelenting interest in the fucking 1980s (don't you get it yet...the killers fucking suck), half-assed, trendy-cock rock (franz ferdinand are so boring) and bloc party ("awww honey look...a black man singing lame dance punk"). Stevens plays upwards of 30 instruments on the album, and has managed to develop one of the most intoxicatingly original blends of seminal folk, jazz, orchestral art rock and dirty rotten punk (see "The Man of Metropolis Steals our Hearts"). Who can listen to "James Wayne Gacy Jr." without quivering as the last line proves to be Stevens' admission that even he sometimes wants to brutally murder and decapitate (lovingly) 27 people, "look beneath the floorbloards for the secrets i have hid", that's some sick shit.

This album could truly prove to be one of the most important ever recorded, but my bet is that Mr. Stevens is going to further blow our minds on the next 47 states (i think he'll peak upon recording Texas).

Deerhoof - The Runners Four

One of the dirtiest, weirdest and loudest avant-dropout/disco/noisepop/punk/funk/jam bands of all time makes a further leap to the top of the crunk pile, and possibly the charts as well. On The Runners Four, da 'hoof get poppy, write some love songs and continue fading away into avant-treachery; their noisescapes have never sounded so appropriate. This is math rock for people who love the beach boys, and pop rock for people who like sonic youth. It's a fascinating display of what happens when an off-the-boat asian chick squeals about god-knows-what over the art rock of a few horny american motherfuckers.....it's brilliant, it's refreshing, and "O'Malley, Former Underdog" might be the best song of all-time ever.................might.

Observatory - S/T

Mathew Workman takes 9 years to do everything. Finally he spent 9 years on something interesting and worthwhile....FINALLY. It's noisy...it may make your eyes and ears bleed, and you'll surely only listen to it after killing a kitten........but goddam is it good.

Akron/Family - S/T

Former Devendra Banhart labelmates take their master's concept of playful and sloppy folk rock to its most epic conclusion. If Radiohead fucked Mutations era Beck in the asshole with the left hand of Sonic Youth, while eating a Modest Mouse and listening to The Weakerthans, this is probably what they'd create....the bastard son of everything you're supposed to hate about folk/rock......but for some reason......can't.

Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations

Dr. Mark Oliver Everett tries desperately to make further sense of his traumatic adult life. On Electro-Shock Blues E. dealt directly with suicides, cancer and other ailments which destroyed his family. On Blinking Lights, E. offers us 33 near perfect songs, all of which prove the point that there's still a fucking life to be lived (so get off the pot hippie!).

This dense, hauntingly beautiful album lingers in the heart, fucks with the head and chews on the soul. Don't tell me you didn't nearly choke on your cola the first time you heard the lead single "Trouble with Dreams" (which was made into one of the most original and confusing music videos ever). Much like Illinois, Blinking Lights is chockful of instrumentation and arrangements which take a few listens to wrap one's head around, but the moment it clicks is one of the most important moments of your young, pathetic life...mine included.

Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow

Another phenomenally long record to hit up this violent list. It's Dylan goes electric for a new generation, and was instantly more accepted. You don't feel like Banhart has alienated fans from the past, or did this in a sick bid to push more units. It's a natural progression, it's a refreshing progression. The album features 20 or 30 of Devendra's closest and most freak-folk friendliest chums, each of them contributing to the albums familial vibe (of course, instead of eating a dry turkey dinner and complaining about the abscence of drunk uncle earl, this family takes acid and aligns the stars). "Santa Maria de Feira" makes your beg for the sun, "Heard Somebody Say" makes you beg for more and "Ancor" makes you wish it would never end.

Stephen Malkmus - Face The Truth

It's true, the Malkman has yet to release a mediocre album...everything Pavement touched was pure fucking gold, and both prior solo releases were incessantly strong (did i want to use the word 'incessantly'?). Face The Truth is Stephen coming to grips with adulthood by acting as a child. It's deceptively simple title immediately rears you in...but surprises await. In making the album (which he did almost completely by himself in his basement) Stephen had a sign posted on his wall which read "KEEP IT STRANGE"....a notion he cleverly intermingled with some of his dreamiest/sunniest pop songs yet (see: "Post-Paint Boy...Pavement to the max!). Other songs, like "Kindling for The Master" and the album's opener "Pencil Rot" showcase the Malkster's (I get a nickel everytime i give him a new nickname...thanks matador) newfound knack for programming synthesizers and effectiphizing (i know...not a word) his slutty voice. It rocks, it talks, it EXPLODES! "Freeze the Saints" is the ballad of summer '05...it's the song that inspires you open up those old wounds...but instead of taking care of them...you fuck the crap out of them and leave them dead in a gutter (don't worry, i have no idea what that means either). And let's not forgot the grad school, self-obsessed genius of Stephen's lyrics...they haven't been dumbed down, you're just getting smarter.

Sample Lyric - "I'm here to sing a song/a song about privelege/the spikes you put on your feet when you were crawling and dancing/to the top of the human shit pile/shit pile!/ so now you've managed to elucidate something that was on all of their minds.

fucking buttah!

Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins

There is a song on this album called "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games"...enough said.

The Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers

From the moment the opening track "Punks in the Beerlight" kicks in one gets the sense that David Barman is finally ready to rock...biblical baby! ("ain't ya heard the news/adam and eve were jews/and i always loved ya to the max!"...what?). The Jews have always been the band that I credit for teaching Stephen Malkmus how to feel for the song, how to take it to the fucking head. Featuring a revolving door of distinct collaborators, including three members of Pavement (Malky, Steve West and Bob Nostanovich), Tanglewood sounds like Barman waking up from a winter hibernation, looking to fill an empty stomach (he of course filled it with sonic dynamite).

Iron and Wine - Woman King

Sam Beam knows he's probably going to become the biggest, most-pathetic waste of mainstream airwaves given a few years. This proclamation has been foreshadowed by the vile vomit he produced with Calexico subsequent to the release of Woman King. But here we find his potential reaching an artistic peak. This is delta blues baby, with a side of cornbread and sap. The percussion is sparse yet functions to suck you into the depths of hell...it's tribal, and it's genius. "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven" was exactly what a sad-sack country boy such as myself needed this summer, and is exactly what everyone needs. It's dense, it's fast and it's over before your Kraft Dinner...and tastes exponentially better, douche fuck.

Notables:

The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema

Disappointments:

Broken Social Scene

Weezer's Make Believe....boy did i get over this one fast...except the song 'Freak Me Out' is still gold.

how to talk to a conservative (if you must).

2005-12-09T21:30:00.000-05:00

well, now that school is winding down, i took a break from readings at work to bait some young conservative.

which made me realize something. although i may take it as a given that conservatism in our day is little more than a rhetorical fallacy with the intention of perpetuating the ongoing subjugation of the polis by de facto corporate rule .............. there's a lot of people who don't even understand what the fuck i just said, let alone what's wrong with conservativism. please, regardless of your political affiliations, read this. it's a fairly concise synopsis of the genesis of conservativism. if you read it openly and consider the nature of the neo/paleoconservative movement (and aren't in business), i think that you'll never give conservatism a second thought ever again.

rather than rehash agre's wonderful piece, i thought i'd compile a brief little glossary. see, conservatism functions by co-opting language (thank you 204!) and altering its connotations, or exploiting its pre-existing connotations for nefarious goals. so when a conservative ideologue talks, they're not necessarily lying. what's happening is that they're selectively citing statistics and engaging in doublespeak - that is to say, repurposing facts and languages for their own purposes. liberals do this too, and often in the same ways. but either way, the meanings they attribute to the words they use don't correlate with the meanings assumed by the general public to do so. thus, when one is voting conservative, one is voting based on one's own conception of the conservative platform, which is essentially false.

as Agre notes, "Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice." so, when a conservative says certain things, they actually mean different things to us. this is an attempt to translate some common conservative turns of phrase into the common vernacular.

freedom is the main one, so there'll be a few:
freedom: the freedom to internalize (on penalty of legal sanction) the values of the aristocracy.
freedom of the press: the freedom for my friends and associates in the business world to own all of the press.
free trade: the freedom of much larger corporations to get all the profit which might otherwise be accrued to smaller or foreign ones, and thereby consolidate the ranks of the aristocracy.
freedom of speech: the freedom to engage in blatant sophistry, misleading citation of facts, and ad hominem attacks, and then to pretend that you've made a logical argument. (sure, freedom of speech does entitle them to do this. it also entitles me to call those who do it rabid kitten-eating child-raping heroin-addicted cum-guzzling self-serving profit junkies without a soul or semblance of dignity. and please do note that i didn't claim that was a logical assertion.)
freedom in the Middle East: the freedom of the brown folks to submit wholeheartedly to the values of free trade, empty consumerism and American cultural hegemony.
freedom in school choice/health care/daycare/etc.: freedom for the aristocracy to develop their own, far better schools, hospitals, and daycare centres without having to benefit the proletarian masses and (god forbid!) maybe letting them get a share of the profits.

and here's some more grab-bag entries.

democracy: the ability of a populace to choose at will an elected dictator who will systematically institutionalize the interests of the corporate power structure.
traditional values: the rule of the common people by a quasi-hereditary aristocracy and the universal imposition of the economic, political, and moral values of that aristocracy by force of law.
economic growth: an increase in the amount of profit acquired by the aristocratic capitalist class (generally, the top 5% of all earners), regardless of the costs accrued to the working class and/or the vast majority of humanity.
culture of entitlement: the ridiculous claim that, perhaps by virtue of one's being born on this earth, one ought to be entitled at the very least to a free and equitable enjoyment of its resources, and the profit accrued from such. (digression: conservatives piqued at this claim, please note the Lockean proviso. 'as much and as good for others' ought to entitle people to a substistence-level stipend, regardless of your greed.)
Liberal waste: the usage of surplus income to benefit society as a whole, rather than the aristocracy.
Liberal corruption: cronyism and backdoor dealings which don't wholly benefit the aristocracy.
a strong military: a strong mercenary contingent to serve the global policy goals of the aristocracy where force is necessary, and not incidentally keep the global arms race running strongly and funding the military-industrial complex.
the war on terror: the perpetuation of a constant militaristic devotion to aristocratic rule and the ideological construction of an enemy to justify an authoritarian state.

....

alright, that's about all i could stomach for the moment. and hey; for equal opportunity's sake, i'll throw out a few bits of liberal doublespeak that are equally nauseating. but i think anybody rational person will agree with me that the conservative ones are a bit more worrisome. and also note how much more, and more complicated writing i had to do for the conservative ones. this, i think, is one of the great strengths of the conservative movement: a vast majority of the population is far too stupid to even comprehend the explanations of the real conservative agenda, or read the material necessary to do so. haha. anyways:

support for the arts: a nice fat grant for my pet project.
public broadcasting: TV and radio stations that'll play all the lame shit nobody would watch on an advertiser-funded network.

and of course...

the aristocracy: people that are a fuckin' hell of a lot richer than i'll ever be.

effortless.

2005-12-05T12:45:00.000-05:00

my buddy matt made the funniest/stupidest little flash promotion for "ze bastard synthetics" on the effortless records site. matt runs the little label and helped me produce the record too........check it out if you'd like:

http://www.effortlessrecords.com

give it a few seconds to load up.....

the bones of hips

2005-12-01T16:41:00.000-05:00

on criticism.

2005-11-29T13:03:00.000-05:00

note: this is a very slightly edited crosspost from my alternative media journal, since this is primarily to do with my MPI project. thought it might benefit from a bit of additional traffic though, so i stuck it up on here, too.

i've got something to write about today that relates to the inevitable (minor, meaningless, and laughable) stir caused in certain circles of lame people by my rude little zine article. i'm going to try and make this about how alternative media relates to its audience, and avoid making it about how little fratboy tools can't take criticism. if it veers off toward the latter, i apologize.

now, one of the main focuses of my project thus far has been the withdrawal of mainstream media. the corporate-run media is so isolated and separate from the polis as a whole that it's nearly impossible for it to function as a truly empowering outlet for civil discourse. alternative media might seem to be the solution to these ills, in that it offers citizens an unprecedented level of enfranchisement in producing media content and contributing to the discourse, rather than simply consuming it.

however, to say that alternative media is universally better than corporate is to create a false dichotomy of good/evil that really has no place in ethnographic research. and criticism is one thing that alternative media does really well, but also in a sense really poorly.

the independent nature of alternative media makes it easy to criticize establishment institutions, like i did in my first essay for the zine, without any problems. nobody minds if you diss the war on terror, 'cos it's a favourite punching bag of the quasi-intellectual wannabe media literate folks who constitute the greatest part of the zine's audience.

however, the insular nature of forms like the zine mean that it's a lot more difficult to be critical of those who might also be members of the incestuous little community that forms its audience. since people are bred and indoctrinated to see the corporate media as fundamentally Other, as separate from society as a whole, people tend to respect the right of criticism. growing up with a professional musician as a parent, i can say with some confidence that it's not exactly kosher to confront a reviewer about a review that one feels is unjustified. and especially not to decry them for criticising you "in this kind of environment," as i was. (note also: what is that supposed to mean?)

the band members that i wrote the terrible review of seem to have this expectation in a 'scene' zine that one won't be critical of members of that scene, that a reviewer has an obligation to be 'encouraging' or some such crap. certainly, i do feel some measure of obligtaion to encourage talent where i see it, especially locally - but i do not feel any obligation to encourage shit, anywhere. sorry, but being in the same faculty as me doesn't entitle you to the complete suspension of my critical faculties. i would have been happy to write some encouraging things, if there was a single thing i legitimately liked about the band.

certainly, the band members are entitled to their (incorrect) opinion of the quality of their music, based upon countless stoned mumblings in a frat-house basement. indeed, they are free to call my tastes misplaced, my verbosity pretentious, and my weight gargantuan. i ripped on them pretty bad in my article, and i'd be a pansy if i expected anything less from them in return. but for one of them to walk up to me in class and look me in the eye with disappointment and ask why i'd criticize them so harshly, as though i have some responsibility to cheerlead every bunch of jam-band wannabes that happens to be involved in MIT... well now that's just asking for propaganda.

and if anyone thinks that's gonna come from me before i've even committed myself to a job in the self-censored world of corporate-shill media... they're sadly (and hilariously) mistaken. not to mention completely out of place in this faculty.

oh. and let it be noted - if any interested parties happen to see this post - that my vitriol is owing not to the bass player approaching me in class, or giving me the finger. he was actually quite friendly, and took the whole thing in stride, as befits a respectable musician. any sincere rage he may have had was held back and/or muffled by sarcasm, at least to my face. thoughtful.

such mild irritation as may exist on my part is owing largely to the fact that the band members and their "manager" (stifles laughter) chose to pester my roommate for hours on end last night. also, i'm a pretentious little fucker, who bristles at the slightest suggestion that he restrain his critical apparatus (heh... apparatus). note also: a little college-rock band does not need a 'manager' to play bar shows with minuscule audiences. 'manager' is in fact euphemism for "guy without musical ability who still wants to feel cool due solely to his association with people that have talent."

alright, that's enough.

canada is a banana republic.

2005-11-23T17:18:00.000-05:00

we're becoming a puppet state of the US.

i just got done sending this email to Joe Fontana, the MP for London North Centre. please, anyone who reads this and is in London, do the same. copy and paste my letter if you so choose. leave a comment if you do, i'd like to see how many i can get sent. if you're not from London, but are Canadian, you can look up your MP here.

if you're not familiar with the details of the case, go here. if you'd like to do something more, go here.

----

Dear Mr. Fontana,

I'm writing you today to express my displeasure with decisions currently being made by the Liberal administration and Justice Minister Irwin Cotler. I'm one of your consitutuents, a student at the University of Western Ontario, and a permanent resident of the London North Centre district. Though I'm unaware to what extent you're familiar with the case, a Canadian citizen and former resident of London, Marc Emery, is currently going through the legal proceedings to be extradited to the United States for the cross-border sale of marijuana seeds over the Internet. Mr. Emery is a well-known political activist, and former owner of London's City Lights Bookstore.

As a Liberal voter, I feel that this decision is fundamentally opposed to the values of the Liberal party, and constitutes an unwarranted and unlawful intrusion into Canadian sovereignty by the United States government. Regardless of your opinions on the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana, the fact remains that Mr. Emery's supposed crime, if it is to be punished at all, ought to be punished fairly and justly according to the laws of our nation, not according to the draconian laws of another state.

The on-line sale of marijuana seeds, which contain no THC, and cannot be considered 'marijuana' in any true sense of the word, is an activity which has long been pursued by Mr. Emery and many other Canadian businesses. They provide a valuable service, particularly to medical users of cannabis - considering that several US states and the Canadian federal government have legalized the usage of medical marijuana, it would seem that Mr. Emery's business is growing ever-more legitimate.

The fact is, Mr. Emery is not being prosecuted for the sale of some seeds. Nor was he even arrested by our own RCMP, but rather with the supervision of American drug enforcement officers. This is, simply put, an attempt by the United States to undermine Canada's status as a sovereign nation. He is being prosecuted, by a foreign power, for exercising his right to political assembly and organization in our country. Karen Tandy, administrator of the DEA, said as much in an interview with the Seattle Sun-Times:

"Today's arrest of Mark (sic) Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement... Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."

Marc's arrest is not the result of trafficking in illegal drugs, but is rather an attempt by American interests to stifle the political discourse in Canada by imprisoning a Canadian political activist. I am by no means suggesting that you ought to be opposed to the prosecution of a criminal act, whatever the justness of the laws in question. All I ask is that you see this action for what it is - an unwanted and unjust intrusion into the Canadian political process by a foreign power. It is a well-known fact that the American government is firmly opposed to efforts by the Liberal Party to introduce legislation for the decriminalization of marijuana, and this is merely another mechanism by which their conservative government is attempting to stifle progressive legislation.

As a constituent, I would ask that you simply represent the interests of your riding, and demand that the administration and Irwin Cotler refuse to extradite Mr. Emery to the United States. Marijuana decriminalization is a controversial issue, and many are still opposed to legalization efforts; I respect their opinions. However, I know of no Canadian citizen who would approve of the fact that our justice system and indeed our very sovereignty is under attack by the United States. If Mr. Emery is to be prosecuted, let it be in a Canadian court, under Canadian laws, rather than in a foreign court, where he is apt to be sentenced to life imprisonment, even death, for an activity that would merit only minor sanctions under the Canadian judicial system.

Thank you for your time.

Cordially yours,

Alasdair McMillan

-----

burple.

2005-11-21T18:36:00.000-05:00

I can't feel the funk...but i do find myself in one (funk works as both an adjective, a verb and a noun...FASCINATING).

okay okay...so i've been talking about this teeny little project that i've been working on for a while now...you remember, that little EP of chaos known as "ze bastard synthetics"...i even started writing out the album's back story on this blog...but then i got nervous, thought that it was too self-indulgent (even i have moral limits...though they do exist in the stratusdiddsphere) and finished at part 1...

anyways, matt and i have finally finished it...and will be holding a packaging party on saturday at InTouch Studios to put together a bunch of the CDs (talk about DIY) so my friends and family can have a copy of it. I really don't plan on making more than 100 of them, i don't really see more than that many people really wanting the thing...but who knows.

I kind of like the idea of grassroots art...doing it for fun, no pressure...i know i'm no musical virtuoso...i'm merely a fan, and would love to share this bad boy with you...

tracks include pieces that were recorded starting in March of 2004 and ending in August of 2005...there are also like 20 songs that didn't make it (i believe in continuity, only 7 fit) which i will post on various websites for people to listen to or ignore...it really doesn't matter to me.

anyways...let me know if you're interested in getting a copy, i'm not here to force-feed anything down people's throats...i feel bad enough talking ad nauseum about the whole thing on a blog (self-promotion is icky)....i mean, the EP isn't anything revelatory, but it does seem to be a pretty strong (or at least interesting) first attempt at making a record....

you can hear two songs that didn't make it at:

www.myspace.com/heydeath

the CD will be released on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

bizong.

ick.

2005-11-21T01:55:00.000-05:00

the new weezer video is the most horrible thing i've ever seen.

more than one kind of frost.

2005-11-18T12:47:00.000-05:00

bum fuck dill pickles.

2005-11-16T01:07:00.000-05:00

i hate blogging.....why do i keep doing it?

i've become a typical 12 year old boy from the 1970's.........listening to symphonic rock (i'm lookin' at you flaming lips/sufjan stevens/eels) and playing RISK (one could substitute RISK for D&D...same diff)...........i still say i have more taste though.

photoshoots are for models, not mannequins.

everything is flashing before my eyes..........time to die..............oops...........still here.

suicide is silly..........people just need to eat more ju jubes..........it can't be THAT bad.

..........................a long pause occurred while The Flaming Lips' song "Sleeping on The Roof" tripped me the hell out.

how corny is it that i'm still blown away by songs.............

"it's not grade 12.....i'm not trying to find myself" - Brit.

what to do with this life of mine? i think i want to invent a new condiment.

one time there was a squirrel
it was a magic squirrel
but it had a terrible secret

...........what should was the squirrels secret?

kam.

your spiritual leader? probably.

2005-11-14T01:37:00.000-05:00

so another weekend comes to an abrupt end.

I found myself in the midst of a violent drink-a-thon with young mr. liam thomas murray, a male sibling of mine. We are a bit concerned because we have been unable to piece together the how/when/why/what/if we got home on friday night....we can only assume that a variety of animal and plant life were sacrificed in the process.

I got to see the classiest little indie/folk/generally mind-blowing band last night...

The Barmitzvah Brothers make me endlessly happy...and it's just ridiculous how much better they get each and every time i see them....we also realized last night that essentially all of their songs are waltzes............which is the most incredible thing ever/of all time.

i am currently obsessed with the back slash....

disney/fuck puppy

I also saw Noodles on friday night, with my mom and a priest who has been friends with my zany family since like the 1940s. It was a hilarious good time...............noodles tends to blow my mind in ways i would've never thought possible. The woman is just a complete genius....80 years old....she's all heart.....and she's possibly the most inappropriate human being alive.....in perhaps the most loving way possible. ALRIGHT! ENOUGH OF THE MUSH!

..........weird tingly feelings in my brain/heart..........

Eels are fascinating little musical outfit. their live record oh, what a beautiful morning is absolutely nvfkjhgfjlkhgklhjgkljhgkljhklgjhkjgh!!!@#$$#%$%$

that link leads nowhere.

one of alex's friends told me that i made a connection with him last night....one that will inspire the rest of his life..........he was drunk.......but i still believe that he will take my teachings and move forth, spreading the word......CAMISM IS COMING!!!!

rotflcoptorz!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-11-07T15:39:00.000-05:00

haha,

read this blog, it's friggin hilarious.

that's all. i've got a joint to roll!

spam is fun.

2005-11-04T16:32:00.000-05:00

so, i'm at work right now, and we just received this delightfully inscrutable spam email. i love how, in a last-ditch attempt to foil now-ubiquitous spam blocking software, spammers have resorted to just adding paragraphs of completely random text. here is an exact copy of the email, in all its unedited glory (except i edited out the product pitch... no way am i giving those satan-worshipping cock-manglers any free publicity)

----

Don't you regret eating about once a week?.
cheese burger and cheese fries .... mmmmm.
Luke is missing jumping today..
Those news announcers aren't practicing shaving next to the police station
right at this time..
Joseph doesn't dislike praying carelessly..
2.
Ashley disliked reading between the two buildings..
I am enjoying eating in the river..
5.
AUDIENCE: Yes..
The librarians don't remember skiing for more than an hour..
Betty Sue wasn't enjoying working..
tomorrow i will wash my hair and go to the salon.
But this is where you come in: Between now and November, you, the American
people, you can reject the tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the
past. And instead you can embrace the politics of hope, the politics of
what's possible because this is America, where everything is possible..
i need to get a pedicure. my feet smell and itch.
They are not missing shouting today..
I didn't love dancing for two hours..
The gardners regret skiing well..
Those police officers are practicing driving between the two buildings..
Is the scientist missing praying?.
Doesn't Suzanne like skiing among the trees?.
The science teachers practiced fighting..
Those police officers are practicing driving between the two buildings..
Until that day, he could not hear the language differences. He asked for
the computer every day by pointing to it. He was allowed to spend time each
day on the noun program. One year later he was talking in full sentences
and was staffed into normal preschool..
Doesn't Suzanne like skiing among the trees?.
Do those gardners regret walking carefully?.
14. Ninety six bottles of beer, three a's, three b's, one c, two d's,
twenty eight e's, seven f's, three g's, eight h's, thirteen i's, four l's,
sixteen n's, nine o's, nine r's, twenty six s's, twenty t's, four u's, four
v's, six w's, five x's, and five y's on the wall. .
I missed shouting carefully..
Did Roy love working on the top of the mountain?.
Haven't the journalists liked surfing?.
Were those farmers practicing shouting next to the police station?.

lacking.

2005-11-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

if the sparseness of my posts leave you feeling empty and hollow... read my other blog, which has been created for the purposes of fulfilling the 'journal' requirement for my MPI 391 project. not that i'm going to stop posting here, but the other one is going to get a good chunk of my attention til the project is due at the beginning of december.

brief moment of reflection followed by a dead cat.

2005-10-31T18:18:00.000-05:00

I am sitting here in the hall of books known as D.B. Weldon completely unsure of my own existence. What a cowardly little boy I can be sometimes, wondering where this stupid railway of mystery i call my early 20s is going to take me......being a conductor can be tough work sometimes, especially if you are conducting a metaphorical train travelling on a metaphorical railway......

shrouded in irony.

Pitchfork is overrated.......it's informative.....but it's overrated.....but i suppose so am i.

i really think i'm falling in love with garlic butter.

i would write parts 2 through 7 of "ze bastard synthetics" but i won't.

does anybody want to teach me how to play a horn instrument?.....i will accept trumpet, trombone or tuba lessons.

if anyone wants to hear some ridiculously odd hip hop music, as well as a live jam of an old band i was in please direct your attention to my brother's myspace account:

www.myspace.com/zenithmystery

ALL ABOARD!

ze cam.

blogging is for shazzies

2005-10-24T01:07:00.000-04:00

there's a dangerous world out thurr

i'm really getting scared for the future...disaster after disaster.

Brain Candy is one of the most fantastic movies of all time............

Raspberry vs. Strawberry.....................strawberries would definitely win....they have those convenient protective layers

do caterpillars ever wake up in the morning and think, "Jesus fucking Christ it's hot..and it sure sucks being a caterpillar"

listening to:

The Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers
Woody Guthrie - Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti
Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow
Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (this album is in competition with Illinois as the year's best)

Deerhoof - Milk Man (not up to their new one yet)
Iron & Wine and Colexico - In The Reins (lots of super corny songs, i ate a fly)
Zenith Mystery - some of the rap songs
Imperial Teen - seasick

thinking about:

-eating cheese
-destroying Matt Bacon (and his unborn children)
-the inappropriately fantastic act of teasing the mentally challenged
- a world without disney
- a world without Jason Eano vs. a world with Jason Eano (jury is still in heated deliberation)
- siamese cats, babies, and dreams

doing:

nothing

the inoffensivity effect.

2005-10-11T17:17:00.000-04:00

the statement "there's never anything good on tv" is simultaneously too strong and too weak a claim.

to be sure, there are some good things on tv. the daily show comes to mind as something that's hilarious almost every night that it's on. i wish it was an hour long. a good chunk of the adult swim lineup is awesome. aqua teen is probably the funniest show on television. south park is funny, even though matt and trey are apparently republicans. (less idiotic than it sounds. but that's a topic for another post) and of course, the simpsons and family guy are good - though the simpsons is more consistent, of late. i watch all of these shows pretty religiously. but with the exception of the daily show, i watch them all either on DVD or downloaded from bittorrents. (digression: myspleen is key if you like adult swim. and all other such dorkiness.)

but. in a much truer sense, there is nothing even remotely good on television. if, like the vast majority of decent people, television is a social thing for you - some flashing lights and sound to accompany your bong rips - it's becoming increasingly difficult to watch. it's not only hard to find something good to watch, it's hard to find something that doesn't make you want to scream over how fucking terrible it is. i spend a ton of time just rooting through the channels for something that i can leave on while i'm rolling a joint that i won't just get pissed off about. something, anything, that won't offend my senses too much. i'll call this.... the inoffensivity effect. even though, ironically, it's the least conventionally-'offensive' shows that i find the most offensive. this goes for 99% of the programming on all the major networks, and definitely what's on muchmusic these days. i don't know, and i welcome comments on the topic, but i'm personally of the opinion that nobody loves Raymond. because raymond sucks ass. i don't see how anyone can see that show and not realize that sitcoms are completely devoid of comedy. audiences are either such fucking sheep they laugh whenever they hear that laugh track, or networks just no longer give a shit about anything. i'm thinking it's a little of both, really.

and muchmusic just makes me want to gag. here's what i imagine the budget to be for every muchmusic show:

$10,000 - graphic design and digital effects
$200 and a few false hopes of ever having a career - on-air personalities
tray of sandwiches - writers, camera operators, anybody with a fucking clue about music or television

does anyone watch this shit anymore? the VJs are retarded. much on demand is a joke - i love when they offer like, three different good charlotte videos to choose from. bullshit like "video on trial" and "heat meter" are not even good enough to be considered shows. they might look like shows, but they sure as hell aren't. my roommates and i have said more insightful and/or humorous things than those troglodytes whilst sitting around the hookah in a daze (digression: the hookah's name is osama bin smokin'). and even yesteryear's bastion of decent music, the wedge, has gone soft. we've watched it a couple times and been unable to discern a single decent video from the whole show. i mean, franz ferdinand isn't as bad as say, nickelback. but they're not a hell of a lot better. it's like people who defend windsor. "hey, we're not as bad as detroit!" yeah, but your town is still a shithole. go lick some more diesel residue off your windows.

would anyone else be totally into a radio 3 music television network? radio 3 dj's have the most consistently good taste, and like most other things cbc, the most consistently good programming. and isn't music television like, stupid cheap to produce? if i'm not mistaken, the videos are free. screw the lame-ass shows, just have a few decent personalities with some inobtrusive commentary, maybe some guest artists, maybe even a current-affairs show like the Hour (but... better). have naomi klein and noam chomsky hot-oil wrestle, or something. make being blasé and disenchanted cool again!

oh, yeah, and the new music can be on this hypothetical channel, as well. it's the only half-decent music show on tv anymore.

c'est tout.

an open letter, concerning your pants.

2005-09-27T12:12:00.000-04:00

dear girls of western (and some guys),

i hate to keep bitching about your clothes. because it makes me seem petty, and entirely un-intellectual. not that i ever really seemed otherwise, but at least i don't need to rub it in every time i post. but you just keep asking for it!

let me tell you a story.

in 1872, Levi Strauss invented the 'blue jean,' and started a trend that everyone can live with. his sturdy riveted denim pants set the stage for a revolution in non-overall-type pants that can be worn by coal miners and trendy idiots alike. these pants tended to wear unevenly, lending the wearer a look of insouciant disheveledness, perfect for the beat generation. different sorts of washes, treatments, and colorations gave us an unprecedented variety in our pants-wearing options over the decades, from green-jeans to acid-wash, all of which had their own unique charm.

yet one thing bound together this otherwise diverse bunch of indigo pantaloons. they all had two front pockets at one's hips, and two back pockets, situated firmly upon one's butt cheeks. and they had seams which ran, quite logically, down the sides of the pants.

why, why must you tamper with this divinely-ordained blue-jean archetype? there's absolutely no call for it. if it's good enough for a coal miner trapped under thousands of tons of rock, it's good enough for you, ugg-wearing airhead girls.

when you wear jeans with no ass pockets, seams running down the front, or, god forbid, embroidered patterns, you fool with the will of god, as communicated by His bavarian-dry-goods-merchant servant. and why? do you enjoy looking as though you grew up in a trailer park? have you got some aversion to shopping at stores which don't suck? does your mom own a Stitches? or maybe you're engaged in some kind of bizarre make-work project in which your clothes are purchased for you by the handicapped.

and those aren't even all of the possible unholy abominations which have been executed by the fashion-challenged. you guys who wear carpenter jeans, you ought to just go and choke on a scrotum. do you really need that extra little denim doohickey, and the ugly pocket halfway down your leg? how often do you paint things? i'm going to guess never. eat shit. and then get new pants.

and finally, while cargo shorts are laudable for their shoplifting-friendly bagginess, anyone who has participated in the sick fetish which is the 'cargo jean' should, in the classic words of funkyzeit mit bruno be placed on a train and sent bye-bye to a camp somewhere. the same goes for anyone with a pair of jeans that features reflective material of any sort. randy river is basically a terrorist bombing, in clothing store form.

so, in closing; the canonical form of the jean offers you so many choices. colour, finish, wear patterns - the call is yours. even change the size of the pockets, or paint all over them.

but for god's sake, don't fuck with a good format.

sincerely yours,

the rationally-minded public at large

PART 1

2005-09-25T18:48:00.000-04:00

it was a terribly cold winter in Daisyland.

Welcome to a tail of mystery, vengence, and the pursuit of fat-free yogurt.

PART 1 - THE DAISYLAND MASSACRE (Alloyed Tyranny) - PART 1

a ghostly whisper was heard from the hilltops...

A BEAUTIFUL day in the land of the sun.

No one in the tiny republic of Daisyland was without a big, bold smile.

BUT WAIT!! WHAT ABOUT THE BLOODSHED?

Who would have thought that such a tyrannical, robotic beast would succumb to food poisoning and a few rusty stabs into his harddrive?

The sun rose, as it usually did in Daisyland, at precisely 6:13am. This would unfortunately be the last time the sun would show itself for quite some time...

Alice P. Juniper wasn't so much afraid of dying, she had learned quite early in life that she would eventually succumb to some horribly misguided disease which would cause her to bleed through her eyes while vomiting into a pool of her own sweat. What she really feared was what lurked in the shadows; an immortal machine, whose sole ambition was to enslave the organic humanity of Daisyland...

she wasn't afraid of dying, but she certainly wanted to live.

THE PLASTIC KING SHALL REIGN AGAIN
HE WILL SHRED YOUR SOUR FLESH
THE PLASTIC KING WILL RISE TO THE STARS
HE WILL SHRED YOUR BITTER FLESH

Under the sun she was safe, all followers of gundungavar were.

At night they were victims of the most terrible acts of malevolence.

On this particular night they would face their all consuming nightmare.

The tyrannical god of the forest would be victorious in his efforts to control the Daisyland Shores...the land of the sun, and the most delicious fat free yogurt...made from a special blend of FuFuberry Extracts and Catberry Juice (actually a combination of Earth's feline friend, and a strawberry...makes amazing pies!).

He slaughtered the baby swagollops (which he intended on turning into a totally fab pair of shoes) and destroyed the Gardens of Marigold...

he was here to set up another factory, another FUCKING factory.

ALICE WILL FIGHT THE ALLOYED KING

CAR PARTS...CAR PARTS!

DESTROY THE MAN AND MACHINE

blogging your inadequacies.

2005-09-14T17:05:00.000-04:00

it seems as though pithy criticisms of people's attire are a tradionally female and/or homosexual pastime, here in the blogorama and in the remainder of the 'world.' does anyone else think that the term blogosphere is awful? i mean, it's certainly useful. but it's just about the lamest term ever to say. it sounds like something that captain kirk would have to fight and/or sleep with on the barren moon of Tremulon Mector, or some such shit. i just realized, also, that i would love to be able to put footnotes in my blog entries.

but i digress. i too, demand to be able to mock and critique! what with school being back in session, people need to have their failings pointed out more than ever.

i've always been of the opinion that you can tell a great deal about a person by their shoes. so, let's see what broadly-drawn generalizations i can make about people based on some random pictures i dug up on google image search. see where you fit!

if you have a pair of shoes like this, you probably play basketball. and/or talk about basketball. clearly. you have a 'favourite' team, and when they're playing a game, you refer to them in the first person plural. i.e. "we gotta start hustling better out there," or whatever you sporty types play. you think that 2pac is still alive. you're probably wearing sweat pants. you drive a honda civic, and you think it would be "sweet," or even "bitchin,'" if you put some neon lights underneath it. you have never spoken to a girl without imagining how she looks naked. your courses are chosen based on the number of words there are which you can't pronounce in the calendar description.

if you have these shoes, you are not only unfazed by the fact that everyone else has them, you have them because everyone else has them. you don't leave the house without putting on makeup, unless you woke up next to a guy (perhaps wearing a pair of those air jordans), and it's not your house that you're leaving. your tank tops, for reasons unknown, extend well below your ass, covering a good chunk of your tennis skirt. you have never played tennis, of course. when you go to the bar, you get bitchy if you have to pay for a drink yourself. you also get bitchy if you feel the guys buying you drinks are not adequately greased/beetle-browed/grovelling. your low-cut outfits conveniently exempt you from such traditional requirements as speaking, having opinions, and more or less having to do anything yourself.

if you wear shoes like these, you go to business school, or wish you did. you also think that being a CEO is the highest calling to which a human being could ever aspire. somewhere between mother teresa and gandhi. but white, obviously. you drive a BMW on which you have never made a payment. you speak a foreign tongue of "appointments," "scheduling," and "networking." you pay three-digit-plus sums for bottles of liquor at the bar, in the hopes that you can find someone drunk enough to think you're interesting. you're in a fraternity because you hope to one day build your coke-addled roommates into strong corporate partners.

you better be on your way to or from the gym if you're wearing a pair of shoes like these. please tell me you're going to or have been engaging in some type of athletics if you've got a pair of these on. if you're wearing these regularly, then you just don't care about yourself, even a little bit. why do you cut your hair? or wash? or go out in public? you suck. you think that the term 'taste' can only be applied relative to a meal of some form. your pants fasten only slightly south of your bellybutton, and you have at least one sweater with a picture of a wild animal on it. most of your clothes were probably purchased by one of your parents - if they were, you can at least be grateful for that excuse.

if you thought i was going to conveniently omit my own demographic, you thought wrong. if you wear shoes like these, you think that Boathouse is a "skate shop." you skateboarded and/or dated a skateboarder for a few months in grade nine, and thus think that you now have official licence to wear this stuff for all eternity. your ability to criticize the 'corporateness' of others is unhampered by any consciousness of your addiction to branded clothing. you know of at least twenty different ways to refer to marijuana.

if you wear shoes like these, then, personality-wise you're basically the slippers girl, except you like to feel as though you've stuck your foot up a sheep's ass. the world may well have been a better place if you had died to keep the sheep's feet warm. you suck more than the new balance guy, because at least he doesn't think that his shoes look good.

if you're wearing these shoes, you are only marginally a human being. your feet have been eaten whole by rabid foxes. that little dog that you have didn't descend from a wolf, it ascended from a rat. and the fake-tan isn't fooling anybody. if anyone ever doubted that we're all being controlled by mind-rays from mars, here's your proof. i'm going to build myself a tin-foil hat before i start getting the urges to leash rodents and play with wildlife.

now, i'm sure that many of you who read this have found yourselves scathingly critiqued right here. but, as we all know, if you can't take a joke, then the martians have already won. does anyone know if there's foxes in london?

slippery slope (sleepy time joke)

2005-09-14T01:45:00.000-04:00

on the cutting block:

limp bizkit ( i saw they had a new album, it looked too horrible to ignore)
bloc party
the bloodhound gang
franz ferdinand

there's a dragon in my dream
there's a monster in my spleen
there's a ghost frying bacon on the sea

.......pop rock is fine, some of the best stuff i've ever heard.......just don't fuck with my sense of melody you fucking pricks.

time to ddddddance.??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the new SQUARE ROOT OF MARGARET EP is decent....but it's no Levitation Days

i have returned from a summer of random obscurity (and sometimes i existed textually)......here i am to save the day.......or at least myself from mass confusion.................

a dangerous daffodil defeats the day

ENZY!......my boy from kentucky!

2005-09-08T01:19:00.000-04:00

Lorenzo Lamas is a rainbow after a devastating thunderstorm
his mystical eyes penetrate my soul with ether
i hope to find the slow, sucking part of his inner self

If Lorenzo Lamas was an ice cream flavour my guess is that he would be BUBBLE GUM SURPRISE!!!!!!11

Lorenzo Lamas invented the eraser in 1658 after failing at an attempt to invent corduroy

In 1478, after his 68th birthday, Lorenzo Lamas discovered and patented ambivalence

Lorenzo Lamas hates pickles.......BUT LOVES CUCUMBERS!

Lorenzo Lamas' only weakness is the hopes and desires of small children

If Lorenzo lamas comes into contact with sarcasm he combusts into a liquid form of hyperbole

on anger.

2005-09-06T19:40:00.000-04:00

here's a page from my philosophy.

there's no point in getting pissed off.

ever.

why?

because it's a huge, ridiculous waste of time. and it's the cause of everything shitty in this world. let's put forth a very simple set of premises and we'll build a bit of a proof, because, well, i'm at work, bored as hell. and it's time to get back into thinking mode! sort of.

premise 1. a state of mind is useful if either:
p1a. it accomplishes or facilitates the accomplishment of some positive outcome.
p1b. or it facilitates the prevention of some negative outcome.

p2. a positive outcome is simply one which the hypothetical agent desires, whilst a negative one is an outcome which the agent does not desire.

p3. if a state of mind fulfils neither the conditions set forth in p1a or p1b, it does not operate for the attainment of an outcome agreeable to the agent in question, nor for the prevention of an outcome disagreeable to that agent.

p4. if an agent is not fulfilling a desirable outcome or preventing an undesirable one, that agent is either acting neutrally (ie not acting toward any outcome at all) or acting counter to their own interests.

conclusion. if a state of mind does not fulfil the conditions set forth in p1, the holder of that state of mind is at the very least not acting in their own interest, and at worst acting counter to their own interest.

now see, that was going to be a lot longer, and was actually going to prove something, but i just smoked a bomber before work and i'm kind of out of it. plus i haven't taken logic for like, five months. or some shit.

but let's work through this a little more intuitively, shall we? some cases in point?

when one has been affronted or perceives that they have been affronted, the instinctive reaction is anger. yet what does this accomplish? gratification, to be sure, but that gratification is fleeting. the respose of anger is, after all, an affront in itself. thus the recipient of that anger will in turn be affronted, and on and on ad infinitum. so, rather than simply getting angry, one must ask oneself what they truly want as a response to their affront.

if the affront in question is petty, one would rather likely be better off to ignore it, as in my personal experience, that which goes undiscussed is quickly forgotten.

if the affront in question is a serious one, then the question of goals becomes important. if the affront is serious enough or the affronty party random enough, that the intended goal is to cut off further contact with the affronting party, then anger is simply a waste of time and mental energy. apart from the visceral joy of getting royally pissed off, you're really only ruining your own moment. if the person was enough of a jackass to piss you off in the first place, they're not really going to be fazed that you're pissed off. indeed, that was likely the point. this goes for the "guy-spilled-a-drink-on-you" type of scenario, i suppose.

but when the affronting party is a friend, or some such, and one's desired outcome is penitence and apology, anger is unlikely to achieve it. instead, anger is counter to one's goals, since it is more likely to provoke indignation and bitterness.

but, in the end, this was a pretentious little exercise in futility, because you can't rationalize being a lazy-ass/pussy/milquetoast/laid-back type of fella who just doesn't get pissed off. anger doesn't have anything to do with rationality. indeed, the more of life i experience, the more that i feel people's actions as a whole have very little to do with reason or logic. instead, people just do what they want, and latch onto whatever reasons for doing so are close at hand. thus we have profiteering disguised as liberation, homophobia disguised as religion, and sourceless bitterness disguised as righteous indignation.

hurrah!

maybe i'll write something a bit less boring next time.

p.s. hello! internet. i'm back in action. alternately boring you/pissing you off/taking up space/being completely ignored by you, with each passing day. oh thank you, gods of information, for this fantastic gift, by which every hapless dullard can give themselves the delusions of grandeur that only exhibitionism can give!

p.p.s. i am the furthest possible thing from interested in hurricane katrina. it's only to be expected that the founders of america's capital of apartheid, boobie-flashing, and dirty-insect-eating would have been dumb enough to build it below sea level. oh good! let's build this coast town below sea level! we're a bunch of slaveowning idiots! thanks, end of story, we can all go back to talking about missing sluts in the caribbean or whatever the hell other diversions CNN has cooked up for next week.

sorry, that was callous. but when every damn website has to mention it... it gets old. flipping through the channels today, amidst concerned-looking news anchors and pre-rendered graphics, i was at least comforted to know that NASCAR coverage is still alive and well, despite the drowning of a good chunk of its fanbase.

fantastic possum feeder

2005-09-01T18:25:00.000-04:00

so last saturday five of my closest friends and I were on our way to CALL THE OFFICE (one of the few worthwhile drinking establishments in London, ON) to see an amazing local band called THE GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS (remember that name bandwagon jumper oners). I had expected to see a great show put on by the swimmers and was hoping that i could at least tolerate the opening acts (small indie shows are notorious for their horrendous bills). As the first band came and went I began to feel the familiar ambivalence to the notion of hearing another band before the fantastic four hit the stage, but i was patient, alert, and had heard surprisingly good things about the next band from a friend who is always "in the know". So we sat, patiently drinking our cheap jugs and feeding my underage brother alcohol (mom would hate me if i didn't share).

As the next band got on stage I was beginning to feel very nervous, i was looking for a revelation, a new band to take me away and leave me on a distant plain (made of coco and magic mushrooms apparently). AND THEN.................................BOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

akron/family might easily be one of the most amazing bands i have ever seen live (and their latest S/T album is nothing short of incredible). Their sound (like all worthwhile bands) is hard to describe, they don't really belong anywhere except in each of your record players. They are folky, artistic, ambient, electronic...they are basically everything to everyone and nothing to no one. You can find out more about them at www.younggodrecords.com (that's right people...devendra banhart's former label). These cats from brooklyn are going to be huge...so watch out.

.......JDHJKHJHFKHSKLJFKFKLG

......in other news i finished the artwork and layout for "ze bastard synthetics"....i don't usually boast....but even if you guys hate the music, the artwork will surely make up for it. it was done by myself, my mom pat and my brother Liam...and i must say......LIKE WHOA bitches...LIKE FUCKING WHOA!

no...i'd prefer the salmon.

2005-08-27T02:16:00.000-04:00

***cam - but they were not prepared for their interstellar prince.

EVERYBODY! - he was born into a family that owned a large number of carpet cleaners.
they were nice.....OH SO NICE!

Mark - he can't be stopped....HE WON'T BE STOPPED ***

----this is what happens when you sell your soul for a cola----

....i hope you all had a fantastic evening at the golden ranch.
will you be staying for dinner?

"don't have to ask permission
if i want to go out fishin'" (tom waits - "better off without a wife")

***an excerpt from the centre of the universe...boston.

irony is a funny thing.

the death of sincerity.

2005-08-24T15:43:00.000-04:00

so, what's there to do when you've been at the video store for an hour, and there's absolutely nothing in which you could possibly have any serious interest?

why... the answer is irony!

our summer roommate says that we MIT students do everything ironically. i believe he commented that we even smoke pot ironically. which is, sadly, true. but you can't blame us for slipping into self-referential mockery of spicoli types every time we spark a spliff, can you? it's the stigma that makes it happen.

so, irony. what are the most recent few movies we've watched? well, there was the classic alien 3000, apparently also known as "unseen evil 2." most memorable for the assorted stretches of clearly-reused footage of a guy in a rubber suit getting shot. and model helicopters!

then there was dream warrior, which looked promisingly awful. but though the actors were wretched, the production values were a little high, and it just wasn't quite as funny.

and our most recent selection was another entry in the thrilling vein of "movies with titles that feature big round numbers" - dracula 3000, which fulfilled my long-standing desire to see coolio smoke a bong in space. in general, it wasn't as awful as alien 3000, but the ending made it far, far, faaaar worse. we laughed for a good few minutes at the end. oh, lord.

so i guess what this goes to show you is.... when stoned people go to the video store, they pick terrible movies.

(pls. note that we owe our inspiration to brian... and boa vs. python.)

and if you're too poor and/or stoned to leave your house, why not check out "Doc," which is on show case far, far too often. billy ray cyrus is the least plausible doctor, ever. in the history of mankind.

speaking of summer albums....

2005-08-15T16:34:00.000-04:00

check out this mixtape.... blue eyes meets bed stuy byDJ Cappel & Smitty.

it's this summer's grey album, but (dare i say) better? it's more coherent, anyways, and biggie puts jay to shame. and, well, sinatra is the man. he's like the biggie of his generation, but white, and skinny, and italian.

you can buy it for 8 bucks at sandbox or download it from oink, if you're privileged enough to have a membership.

and yes, illinois is off the wall amazing and incredible, and you definitely need to get it.

the chronicles of sufjan.

2005-08-10T17:53:00.000-04:00

don't even attempt to tell me that there is a better album that has been released this year. There hasn't, and there won't be.

this man will be in your mind, hearts and record players for years to come. even if you don't think you like him, you will, and you will thank me.

hot pics of unproductive citizens.

2005-08-08T02:07:00.000-04:00

the show must go on

...i finally bought OF MONTREAL's satanic panic in the attic....

boucher's sweet tooth and other non-verbal threats?

2005-08-05T20:36:00.000-04:00

okay okay.........pot brownies and cheesecake

warning!

if you ever get into line at a movie theatre and you discover that WEDDING CRASHERS is sold out, do not under any circumstance choose instead to see THE ISLAND...........just pick up your things, walk out of line, slit your wrists, and bleed in a gutter.

i am enjoying all these drugged up riddles...the world is a friendly and evil place.......

recent purchases:

nick drake - pink moon

the shins- chutes too narrow (i'm late on this one...but at least i caught on)

kid koala - carpal tunnel syndrome (this man made the worst night of my life worthwhile)

iron and wine - woman king (ep) .......trendy...i know, but you can't deny brilliant songwriting

the fearless freaks (dvd) - the flaming lips come alive.........and cam comes.

goodnight...

ze cam.

popsicle lovers!

2005-07-17T18:54:00.000-04:00

i wish i wasn't such a snob when I am in london mode...

people aren't all that bad.

chocolate covered rejection.

2005-07-17T00:53:00.000-04:00

i am pulling an axl...a big fat thorn!!

re-recording two songs for my so called ep...this means the whole thing is going to be further delayed...not that it's of big concern to anybody...it just sucks to have to re-create magic! the potential for failure is daunting! *

ze cam.

p.s.

charlie + the choco factory = ???????

(were they making fun of the original? didn't they see the movie before they released it?)

* maybe not the best word.

lazy summer meltings

2005-07-14T22:20:00.000-04:00

as recently revealed by my lard ass companion (the undeniably gruesome, and often insatiably homosexual alasdair mcmillan) there will be a considerable slow down in the number of posts i as well shall be making over the course of the next couple months.

i will try to post once and a while (to keep you weary travellers from slitting your wrists), but for the most part i will be spending my summer drinking Patagonia (a surprisingly delicious brew) and eating disturbingly large quantities of lettuce.

i will be updating you all on the progress of my little musical project (which has seen a bit of production slow down recently), and i will also keep you posted on the number of small children who accidentally find their way into my stomach, oh! and also on all the donkeys who mysteriously appear (and subsequently disappear) without anyone else seeing them.

for more on effortless records and the local music scene check out: www.mnsi.net/~mattkw80/index2.htm

listen to:

neutral milk hotel

the moldy peaches

radiohead (i have recently rediscovered my obsession with Ok Computer and Kid A

jets to brazil

ikara colt (art punk bandits)

the olivia tremor control (it took me forever, but Dusk at Cubist Castle is a fucking brilliant album)

Observatory

Zapoleon and the Bluemilkstars

DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

godspeed...

ze cam.

intermission.

2005-07-11T15:26:00.000-04:00

as you may have noticed, i haven't posted anything for a while.

this is largely because it is the summer, and i am no longer in school, and since i try to avoid the whole what-i-did-today format, i'm out of ideas for awhile.

so i shan't be writing much this summer, til september brings around a fresh bout of pseudointellectualism. perhaps i'll post once or twice when the fancy strikes me, but on the whole, the summer is a time for drinking on the beach, and smoking joints, and cetera other things not related to sitting indoors in front of a computer.

in case you're desperate for things to do on the internet (go outside!!), there's a new issue of vice which came out yesterday.

or you could visit daily kos and get edumacated.

or if your tastes in news tend more toward gossip, try defamer, which has gotten me through many a long day. and if you're sick of hearing about tom cruise, why not learn all the secrets of his bullshit religion?

but... i recommend going outside.

that's all.

flaming shovel!

2005-07-01T21:17:00.000-04:00

... to make them sound more worthy of sexual molestation by the ears of small, mindless pawns in this unfathomable corporate wasteland...

check mate!

ze bastard promotion

2005-06-20T16:11:00.000-04:00

patriot! patriot! patriot!

word up!

ze bastard synthetics is nearing its final stages. i can now report that the final 7 tracks are ready to be mixed, mastered, and eaten alive. when the record and accompanying artwork are finalized the cd can be purchased through the Effortless Records website...or from me...actually....fuck it.....i'll just put them in a flea market.

oh...and here's the tasty camel tracklisting:

1.) The Daisyland Massacre (Alloyed Tyranny)
2.) Synthetic Mormon Minstrels
3.) Crooked Forest (Hunt for the Plastic King)
4.) Plastic Regicide
5.) Slow Motion Rejoice
6.) Stakes and Hammers
7.) The Return of the Sun to the Daisyland Shores

......time to find some beer and eat a kitten!!

crazy glue...and crazy girls.

2005-06-18T19:04:00.000-04:00

what the fuck is up with anti-depressants and why the hell is every single fucking girl i know on them? are all girls just totally tweaked out in the brain, or is it maybe (just maybe) that you're all just overexaggerating a little?

it seems a bit far fetched that such a large group of human beings have THAT much trouble dealing with daily life. Forgive me if this offends anybody out there in blogdonia, but how fucking difficult do you people think it actually is to get through a day? Wake up, feed yourself, poop (perhaps a couple times depending on your diet) talk to some people (mostly about a celebrity couple or two), eat again, talk to some more people (talking is simple...open your mouth and it magically communicates with other life forms). It really is a lot easier than people think to survive in this world...it's all about perspective, not mental or physical limitations.

Psychosis in any form always seems to be a diagnosis reserved for people who behave in ways that psychologists don't deem normal (this sounds like a pretty understandable definition...but let's think this through people). It seems petty, superficial, and completely baffling to me to think that people actually trust psychologists....i had the privilege of taking an introductory psychology course...and for the most part it all seemed like a bunch of exaggerated bullshit. Anytime people allow themselves to be pinned down by a label of any kind and completely embrace the expected behaviour which comes with their defined role it immediately stunts their ability to evolve. It's sad to think that people would trust anyone but themselves to get through a troubling time or situation. YOU CAN DO IT!! YOU CAN DO IT!!

i may have lost my point...and now i'm bored of typing...so i will leave you with this little piece of wisdom:

carnation instant breakfast
the finest in the land
always keep a can on hand
no tits to pull
no hay to pitch
just punch a hole in the son of a bitch

.......courtesy of Noodles and the wit and wisdom that comes with 80 years of AWESOME!!

sexy lick and the pigtailed railroad.

2005-06-13T11:25:00.000-04:00

"For that to happen I'd have to be such a fundamentally different person than I am now that I don't care what happens to THAT me...that's not who I am."
- alasdair mcmillan (June 12, 2005)

The world is collapsing beneath me...
i can feel the tentacles of relaxtion
swarming the banana belt!!!!

in these troubled times it is important to remember the carrots in your life.

musings.

2005-06-11T20:04:00.000-04:00

so it's 8pm on a saturday, and i've got three more hours to go at work. i went home and got baked on my lunch, so i'm okay. though being stoned at work is only moderately better than being not-stoned, because it's still mind-numbingly boring. plus, 90% of the activity i do here involves reading, and i find that bakedness isn't particularly conducive to reading. most other things, yes, but reading like, a novel or something involves a sort of concentration and fixation that i find hard to sustain when high. but i am reading the washingtonienne archive and getting all sorts of prurient satisfaction from the sex lives of the ruling class.

anyhow, this is just going to be a hell of a lot of pointless musings over the next three hours or so. interspersed with long breaks of me doing other things. yet thanks to the glory of the written word, you won't even know that i've been gone. it'll just look like this:

and then you'll know that i spent some portion of time doing something that was not writing. likely getting food, or a drink, or rolling a joint, or frittering my time away on the internet in some non-blogging fashion (though likely by reading blogs). oh, the beauty of the paragraph. time collapses and is finally made orderly by the text.

a lady just called me parce-qu'elle voulait dire qu'elle avait toujours eu du bonne service de toyota, and it was just so special. that, more than anything is what makes me hate my job. the mindless idiot losers who rant and foam at the mouth are the ones who et any attention and for whom anything happens. whilst when nice ol' granny lady calls in because she's really happy that everything is fine, i just say thanks, and she's completely forgotten. people like her should get a damn gift basket or something. thanks, lady, for brightening my otherwise-irritable day. the squeaky wheel gets the grease, i suppose.

that's always the way, and i think it's one of those sad unassailable facts about human nature. fearmongering trumps hope, sensationalism trumps substance, and the fear of the negative always seems to trump a desire for the positive. that's essentially the impetus behind the conservative shift in america and anywhere else that a conservative shift might occur. the meek pale liberal saying "here's how i can try to make your life better" is alot less telegenic than the fat ruddy conservative saying "we're all fucked unless you do whatever the fuck we tell you! be afraid, little weenies of the world, be fucking afraid!" and then even the weenie liberals give in and say, oh no, the world is a big scary place and we need to defend ourselves against it! shut the fuck up, all of you. the only reason you guys have anything to defend yourselves against, is because other people who think exactly the way you do, think they need to defend themselves against you. your defense is another's offense. the act of 'defending' by necessity creates the entity against which all must be defended. and now the bridge has been crossed, it's been burned. when everyone is pointing guns at each other, only an idiot would be the first one to put his or hers down.

i hate having to use the phrase "his or hers." i wish that english was still elegant like french, and we could just say ils without worrying about it. i mean i know, apa guidelines and all, and i believe that everyone should be entitled to equal linguistic enfranchisement, but it's such a damn hassle, and it's so inelegant. we need a neuter possessive pronoun. i think i'm going to have a protest. a pronoun protest. and you know what really pisses me off? profs who say that it's acceptable to use "hers" as gender-neutral. feminists like that are to chauvinists what fundamentalist christians are to fundamentalist muslims. identical in all but name. (and, yeah, picky things like car-bombings, but i say it's merely a question of their respective situations and political power) oppressed groups who don't demand enfranchisement but instead a reversal of the traditional oppression.... well, they just deserve to stay oppressed until they understand the real definition of equality.

this made me wonder... who actually waits in line for a bar for that long? 1 and a half hours? i mean, 10, 15 minutes is pushing it for me. and i mean, obviously some people have to be waiting that long, or else there wouldn't be a lineup that long. not the kind of people i'd want to hang out with, though. like, you're just going into a crowded room to get wasted with your friends. why wait to go into one, when you could not wait, and go into a different one?

ummm.

that's enough.

FLOWERS, LOLLIPOPS and PENIS PUSHERS!!!

2005-06-10T21:43:00.000-04:00

"DESTROY PARTISAN NATIONS AND I WILL SHOW YOU A WORLD WITHOUT SUFFERING"
(cam 4:15)

Dear gangsters of disaster,

I would like to announce the simple fact that partisan politics are the most mind numbingly irritating and unnecessarily useless form of politics ever created. I am fucking sick of this stupid and heartless institution. IT DOESN'T WORK!!! IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!! why would we ever support a system which seems to inspire such ignorance and misunderstanding. Do we really sit back believing that the constant and consistently counterproductive bickering between two seemingly different parties is going to aid in the direct benefit of the citizenry? (these so called differences exist on an imaginary level deep in the souls of small incorporated gap babies). I hate this fucking system...forcing me to sit back and watch two fuck-witted insomniacs argue about the "motivations" of the other's political endeavours. At what point do we look not at the motive for action but at the action itself? I am desperate to find the truth behind the supposed benefit of a partisan state. Waiting months and years for decisions on nonsense legislations (most of which don't belong on a legislative level).

if a dude wants to live with another dude and put his penis in that dude's asshole while shaving the cock of another dude who is working up a fart so he can pass gas in his face while he eats out the ass of a 67 year old Shaman, it doesn't bother me...and best of all...IT DOESN'T FUCKING CONCERN ME!!!!! Why are we wasting time crying about whether or not two guys are going to get a tax break every year because they are recognized by a bunch of old white men as a married couple?

WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE THINKING?...people are fucking dying...PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DYING PEOPLE!!....i'm just as selfish as the next modern male in the fast paced 21st century but let's get real, our world is fucking SICK!! We basically watch people die on television everyday...it's disturbing enough, why do we get so passionate about silly and useless domestic "problems" in the world of politics? WHY DOES IT MATTER? leave me out of your bedroom.

Watching politics unfold on television today is not unlike watching a schoolyard fight between two retarded 8 year olds after the sudden realization that all the swings have been taken over by bigger, tougher, less deformed children and that one of the kids has mistaken his yogurt for his companion's. It's enough to make a person join the growing number of canadians who seem less interested in politics and more interested in things that are real (on a metaphorical and literal level). The simple fact is that today's politics don't support or directly benefit any citizens (i'm not exaggerating...think about it...what government programs REALLY and CLEARLY aid you in any noticeable way?). This is not an argument about the wealth of politicians or the constant corporate stronghold on political ambitions and leanings...this is simply an argument against the existence of the current political system (or at least against the blue-collar North Americans' interest in said politics).

it's pointless banter, silly bullshit and annoying cock fighting...i can't go on like this...all of this methods of discursive politics do everything BUT provide and produce any real legislation which benefits the HEALTH, INDIVIDUALITY, SANITY or CREATIVITY of humanity.........it makes me want to cry (if it wasn't for the fact i am currently eating an ice cream cone...MMMMMMMM ICE CREAM!!!

hfgbvfhbhfdjljhksdkjsdjfkljbfl

BOOGA BOOGA!

cha cha cha

ze kam.

Plastic Regicide

2005-06-07T13:38:00.000-04:00

I am here...here for your tasty plastic pleasure.

okay...taking a break from critiquing the political and cultural blandscape to offer you (the consumers of said blandscape) a news flash!!!

Local Psycho-Indie Warriors SQUARE ROOT OF MARGARET are gearing up for their biggest show yet. Po and the gang are preparing for a huge performance in Hamilton opening for Elephant Six pioneers OF MONTREAL...this is going to be an insane show, and it all goes down August 30!

...in other, less interesting news:

I (cameron michael murray) have been working on a silly little recording project under the name HEY! DEATH?...

as of sunday I finished the initial recording at InTouch studio with the assistance of my brother Liam and Matt Workman from Effortless records. The CD will be out at the end of the month as a five song EP, with a single to be released a week or so earlier.

check out www.mnsi.net/~mattkw80/index2.htm for more in depth details, and some hot pictures of the man in pink.

the record is a concept EP about eating paste, killing synthetic kings, and chilling out with a mormon minstrel show...it has good songs, shitty songs, and dirty songs....mostly a combination of the last two.

Ze Bastard Synthetics is just the first of many releases I will create and put out...this one was my first chance in a studio environment so there are still many things I need to learn before I can guarantee anything brilliant.............but i will guarantee that this record has the potential to make people vomit in awe, confusion, and sexual anxiety!!

anyways.....i need to eat a cucumber and read up on HOW TO EAT A CUCUMBER

toodles

ze cam

delusional old man rambles a bit, is ignored.

2005-06-06T16:58:00.000-04:00

today in the vatican, a silly old man in a dress gave a long, boring speech. in a move closely followed by the world's elderly and/or foolish, he confirmed once again that the growing community of religious idiots thinks birth control, same-sex marriage, and freedom are all serious dangers to the moral fiber of humanity. furthermore, he advised the applauding throng of dimwits that sex itself was pretty questionable, and that every time two adult heterosexual partners engage in it, they had damn well better be married, and in the mood to raise another irritating child.

idiots of the world on hand to listen to this geezer prattle on gave his words a few moments' thought, and then promptly forgot them. after a few hours of smug self-satisfaction and fingerpointing, they happily went on with their lives, as before, engaging in adultery, fornication, sodomy, bestiality, licentiousness, contraception, bawdy talk, cunnilingus, fellatio, masturbation, on-line viewing of pornography, titillation, dominoes, the "charleston," and the lending of money at interest.

on ethics, the law, and SWAT 4.

2005-06-05T02:14:00.000-04:00

so, i've been playing a hell of a lot of swat 4 lately. it's pretty addictive. and kinda weird. a simulation of being a cop is just so interesting. it's even more interesting when i'm smoking a bowl whilst i order my squad to thunk some old lady with a beanbag fired out of a shotgun.

while i'm playing, it raises some interesting ethical issues. (yes, i CAN and DO apply critical theory in a lame, baked way to every damn thing in the world. buzzkill, i know.) so according to this game, everyone that's on the scene, no matter who they are, has to be zipped up in these little zippy plastic cuffs, cos, like, you never know who's gonna whip out a gun and blow your brains out. but this puts you in the interesting predicament of sometimes having to put the taser to a nurse just because she doesn't want you to tie her up and leave her there on the floor. which is pretty idiotic. like, you could obviously just cuff her whether she wanted you to or not. but still, say it's a burly guy who you don't want to wrestle to the ground? i mean are you really justified in dealing these people a hell of a lot of pain just cos you're afraid they might cap you in the back? cos i mean, it's a legitimate concern.

like, one girl who was dressed all nicely and was entirely not "Suspect" looking material whatnot was not "complying" (aka putting her hands up) , so i pulled out the taser thinking, god, i have to electrocute another innocent bystander. and while i'm about to hit her with it, she pulls out a gun, and i zap her before she can shoot me. and it's like, wow. good thing i didn't just leave her there. (at this point you are thinking, what a fucking nerd. how long can he go on about this for? a long fucking time, lemme tell you.) not only could i have tasered her without receiving a penalty for "unauthorized use of force," but i could have capped her in the knee and yelled at her, and still been within the bounds of my rights as a simulated officer of the law. so i mean, i'm as ACLU as the next guy, but maybe people who won't just shut up and let themselves get cuffed when there's heavily-armed maniacs running around deserve a few thousand volts. unless they've got a pacemaker and they die. so cops should just say, hey, you got a pacemaker? with the taser out, and then hopefully the implied threat will be enough to shut them up.

and the whole 'unauthorized use of force' thing also got me to thinking as well! every damn thing gets me to thinking. and that's why i'm up at 2:30 in the damn morning.

in the one instance i was thinking about, i used my magical sniper control feature (which is so fuck'n cool. oh shit.) to cap three militia-type dudes that were walking around in the room of a building with AK-47s. and i got deducted 30 points, for unauthorized use of force. but come on. these people are not just casually exercising their constitutionally-protected right to bear arms. they're in a building that's been occupied by terrorists, they're dressed like terrorists, they're armed like terrorists ... i think that anyone would be justified in leaping to the conclusion that they're probably terrorists. i don't know what real-world limits on usage of force would say about something like that. but i say, from the perspective of a nerd wanting to get more points and a citizen wanting to save the lives of police, rather than terrorists - if these obvious terrorists can be picked out of thin air by a sniper on top of a building and have no chance to fuck with anything, they oughta go for it.

a different unauthorized use of force penalty got deducted when i emptied half a clip into the back of another cop, who happened to be standing between me and a criminal type. now ... that seems pretty justified i guess.

haha. if you read to the end of this post, then congratulations, you're probably a nerd like me! talk about video games for that fucking long; who do i think i am?

This is NOT the slow, sick, sucking part of me!

2005-06-02T14:13:00.000-04:00

Rise patrons of sexuality! Your slave master has returned from beyond the grave.

Did you miss me?

It has been a death defying two week break from the confines of blogdom for myself, my girlfriend (note: girlfriend may not exist) and my care takers (I visited the future last Friday and apparently I am put into a home quite a few years earlier than the average person). I return to you with added wit, wisdom, and a bonus sun tan!

Alright alright!!...On to the task at hand!!

So after my last blog...the one about Lord Rivers and his crew of weez, I was hoping to rest a bit, absorb that one album over the course of a few weeks and eat a lot of salad (I'm new to the vegetarian game, and I'm lovin' it!)...this was all before I remembered that Stephen Malkmus was releasing a new album just one week later...Ali got behind Satan last week, so here I am to offer the truth about "Face the Truth", the new record by one of the most mind blowingly interesting songwriters on the planet, the one and only MALK!

Stephen Malkmus was the principle songwriter of the most important band from the nineties (I love Nirvana, but record sales don't matter in the world of the cam, and Slanted and Enchanted was a more articulate, more indirectly melodic record, without the Butch Vig polish). Pavement was a quiet band (not musically, but socially), they existed for those who had taste, and were lazy enough that the mere thought of being on a major label was too daunting (and for Bob Nostanovich, Pavement's percussion, keyboard player, utterly impossible to fathom). Pavement was essentially the intestinal fluid of the modern rock revolution,you didn't always notice it was there, but everytime it leaked you could sense its importance. I don't think a week passes where I don't listen to one of the five pavement albums, or one of Stephen's two previous solo records, S/T and Pig Lib. The lazy pop that Stephen has created has been embraced by the anti-pop kings of Radiohead (Pavement's last record was produced by long time radiohead collaborator Nigel Goderich), and fellow lazy haze noise popsters Sonic Youth.

Basically Face the Truth picks up where Pig Lib left off and the second track "It Kills" sounds like it was taken from Pig Lib's cutting room floor. The album weaves in and out of two distinct styles, every odd numbered track is an experimentation in Malkmus' sonic limits, while all even numbered tracks are essentially recognizable Malk tunes, beefed up with a little more ambitious guitar work and a more direct melodic tone.

The album opens with "Pencil Rot", which immediately grabs the listeners attention with its over the top introductory drum machine loops and dirty distortion. The song wanders before finding its place (pavement fans will notice an immediate feeling of nostalgia, this song has a slight Wowee Zowee feel to it with its loose arrangement and utterly obscure lyrical references). We can see Stephen searching for his lost youth, this song is his first since Wowee where the singer/songwriter has allowed his early nineties snark to slip through the cracks of adulterated responsibility. On "Freeze the Saints" (undeniably Stephen's most beautiful song to date), we see the return of the softer side of team Malk, not unlike "Church on White" from his solo debut, only with a much more adorable vocal charge and, for the first time on any Stephen song, seemingly accessible lyrics (although I'm sure the song isn't merely about Stephen's romantic interest in a female...unless it's a female walrus). "Kindling for the Master" sounds like a song off of Radiohead's Amnesiac if Thom Yorke liked camping as much as he likes surfing the internet. The best song on the album is also the most "Pavement" of all the songs on the record. "Post-Paint Boy" sounds like the daughter of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain's "Gold Soundz", a song perfect for summer drinking, love making, and drug taking. The bubbly guitars and simplistic arrangement lets the lyrics flow and take centre stage, this is a song Stephen wants you to take notice of, musically and linguistically.

The rest of the album is full of experimentation, justification and sonic suffocation. Stephen doesn't want you to call him, email him, or take his photograph; he wants you to rest, relax, smoke a joint and drink a Guinness in the August sun.

Face The Truth

Lyrical gems:

"Let me out of my head, in my bed; there's a lovely leather brown poison"

"Please deform me, Please deform me"

"Rationalized confusion, memento morial"

"spare me your contrarian thaw"

"In shocking White, too light for light."

" More like heaven, angel food rot"

"Belarus Biennial, you surely surely made them 'wow'"

politics are sport.

2005-05-29T19:28:00.000-04:00

the more time i spend (waste) perusing the political blogosphere, the more strongly i feel that politics are, in the end, little more than sport. or, at the very least, my interest in politics amounts to nothing much different than the average person's interest in sports.

i think it's pretty hilarious to watch a bunch of corporate shills whack at each other in terms of policy and morality. i mean, the right wing is a joke; they're obviously just playing for the benefit of any number of diverse corporations and profits. and for some reason, they think that there exists a sort of natural association between profit-hungry corporations and hatemongering religious fanatics. now take note, that whole sentence there was hyperbole. there's no backroom conspiracy featuring james dobson and the halliburton oil board of directors. it's a bunch of hawkish idiot corporate types who think they're achieving their ends by stringing along a bunch of hawkish idiot evangelical types who think they're achieving their ends by stringing along a bunch of hawkish idiot corporate types. to think that there's any kind of well-thought-out cabal of power-mad villains is to grant these people a hell of a lot more credit than they deserve. i mean, if there was a focused, determined cabal, maybe i'd be more supportive of the right wing. cabals are probably a tricky business, i bet there'd be some intelligent types involved there.

but there's no focus, no rhyme nor reason, they're just a bunch of fools. conservativism makes sense in a lot of ways, but modern conservatives are like the three stooges of politics, and the citizenry is the one that keeps getting poked in the eye. if i was an american liberal, i'd say "go for it, guys!" and get the hell out of dodge as soon as possible, laughing all the way. because everyone's laughing at your country, folks. aside from a bunch of islamic idiots, who are even stupider than republicans for taking them seriously, we all know that all the republican party is doing is digging a big ol' grave for themselves and america. and since i'm a canadian social democrat, i can sit here laughing at stephen harper's belligerent fuming, and digging the gains that the NDP are inevitably going to make in our next election. because canadians are creeped out by you, stephen, and even if they elect you, you're not going to be able to do half the shit you'd like to do. and once you're elected, you're going to prove what a shitty person you are, what a shitty party you have, and we'll all go back to voting liberal.

not that the left wing establishment is a hell of a lot better, of course. a 'liberal' prime minister should not, in my books, be the head of a massive corporate empire. he's just as much of a corporate shill as harper; his only saving grace is that he arbitrarily chose to ally himself with people who don't want to dictate their morality to others via the law. and please tell me i'm not the only one who doesn't give even half a shit about the sponsorship scandal? the only reason it even exists as a scandal is because the canadian media are so friggen desperate for something canadian to sensationalize and blow way out of proprotion.

the ndp, for all their failings (remember bob rae?), are a decent party, and they've got my vote anytime an election comes around. things i like about them:

- jack layton (doesn't own a car, is married to someone ethnic, has a bitchin' mustache)
- socially-minded policy (rehabilitation vs. punishment, improved social programs, workers' rights, etc.)
- support legalization of marijuana
- biased against corporations (i think anti-corporate bias is like 'liberal bias' in the media. it's less a 'bias' in the traditional sense than a 'truth bias.' yeah, maybe (VERY maybe) the news media writes alot of things that reflect negatively on conservatives. why is this a bias, and not simply the result of what we academics tend to call 'accuracy'?)

but in the end, it's all just a game. all the hot-button issues don't matter to me, personally, in the least. same-sex marriage; i'm not gay, and even if i was, i wouldn't be one of those faux-hetero queers who just wants to be domestic like mom and dad. sponsorship scandal; already said, i don't care - i'd rather they didn't waste my money, but hey, at least that wasted money can't be spent on say, the military. and i'm having trouble thinking of any other issues. i guess that's why politics are a game to me, because canadian politics are so low-stakes.

i'd love to see a better world for everyone, but my world is just fine as it is, so i've got no reason to bitch. i wish marijuana was legal, but i don't have any trouble buying and smoking it, so i can't say i really care. i wish any number of different laws were reformed, but i don't have any trouble flaunting the ones i don't like, so again - don't really care. in the end i guess, armchair politics are a way for people to feel important, like they're part of something. just like sports fandom, i suppose. but no matter what the political, social, or legal environment, you're going to carve out your little life however you choose to live it, so i think that you may as well get over it.

c'est tout.

music nerdery, part two

2005-05-24T14:27:00.000-04:00

so, i just finished listening to the new white stripes album, get behind me satan, and had some thoughts, pursuant to cam's wonderful post about weezer. because the stripes are a particularly interesting counterpoint to weezer. where weezer spends years cranking out tune after tune after tune, and rivers discards 90% of them as inadequate, the stripes spend a week in the studio cranking out an album. in essence, i think weezer represents the craft of songwriting, whilst the stripes represent the soul of songwriting.

the difference between the two groups, i think, is exemplified by the differences in guitar style on the part of rivers and jack. anyone who's seen both groups live will know what i mean. rivers' guitar is always under his thumb. his distortion is measured, his chord progressions are spot-on, and his rhythms are always perfect. when one of his band members fucks up, he notices immediately (and sometimes bitches at them). he is the eminent craftsman of pop - he knows exactly what he wants his songs to sound like, and his band is a tool to make them sound that way. with jack, though, it seems more like his songs know exactly what they want to sound like, and jack is the tool by which they make themselves sound that way. it seems less like he's in control of his guitar than he's desperately trying to keep it in line. if rivers' guitar is a well-trained, well-groomed puppy, jack's is a timber wolf that hasn't eaten in a week.

and from those two contrasting approaches, you have the groups' comparative strengths and weaknesses. weezer can create a perfect, incredible, and unforgettably singable pop song like buddy holly. but they can also create an entirely forgettable piece of kitsch like the green album. for all of its pop perfection, to me it was worth a listen or two then a permanent spot on the shelf. the difference, i suppose, is that the blue album and pinkerton were balanced between soul and craft; that for all of the intricacy with which the arrangements were worked out, there was still a ton of spirit behind it; a spirit of longing, of loss, and of heartbreak. and since the whole pinkerton debacle, now there's more or less just the craft. it's pretty for what it is, but ultimately forgettable. it's not that i don't like the new weezer albums, or don't think that they're good pieces of music... it's more that they just don't have any spirit in them that drives me to pick them back up off the shelf and actually listen to them more than once or twice.

the opposite is true with the white stripes. they can create a song that's both powerful and poppy, like dead leaves, or any of their other singles. but at the same time, their album tracks are sometimes unpredictable, and sometimes nearly unlistenable. the second song on the new album, for example (the name of which eludes me at the moment), has a ton of soul, but, to be honest, it sounds like shit. it had an interesting vibraphone part, supplemented by some nice pianos, but then every once in a while it featured some random and completely inappropriate amplified guitar hits, that didn't belong in the song at all. it's like jack temporarily lost control of the beast that speaks through his guitar. while weezer stays on the shelf because they're poppy to the point of kitsch, when the stripes stay on the shelf it's because they're all raw energy, and no polish. i'd say, on the whole, the stripes are better these days at striking a balance between the craft and the soul of songwriting. but when they err, they always err on the side of soul. which for me, is a lot more appealing than the side of craft ... craft without soul is merely kitsch.

so, there's my thoughts. check out the new stripes album, it's available on torrentspy and it's certainly worth a listen. it's quite a departure from their previous albums. and has anyone else noticed that blue orchid (the single) sounds almost exactly like the eagles of death metal, and nothing like the rest of the album? weird.

c'est tout.

musings.

2005-05-20T19:53:00.000-04:00

from this month's harper's index.

percentage of U.S. high school students who believe news stories should require "government approval" before publication: 36

percentage of americans who say Bush is a "uniter": 49
percentage of americans who say Bush is a "divider": 49

americans: what's wrong with your damn country, guys? how can half of it lay with its mouth open underneath a fat old cow's ass, while the other half sees, to a greater or lesser extent, the truth? maybe they're not all the way there, but at least that half knows to get the fuck out from under the cow's asshole.

and maybe take a look at who's feeding the cow.

(how's that for an analogy sticking around past its time?)

only an absolutely confident person can succeed in the world of today. only an idiot could be absolutely confident. what does that say about the world of today? people in power need to stop questioning each other so much and question themselves a bit more.

rivers vs. the world

2005-05-19T13:19:00.000-04:00

Without getting too emotional, hysterical or otherwise out of my mind on this post I would just like to say that the last 6 days have been an eye-opening and jaw-dropping period for myself as a human being, as a constant cultural observer and as an obsessed fan.

Weezer have returned with one of the most anticipated and highly volatile albums of the year. Make Believe is on the brink of brilliance, the cusp of influential, and the edge of paranoia. This album breathes sorrow, bleeds beauty, vomits pop enthusiasm, and essentially eats away at the flesh of the current pop landscape. Rivers Cuomo takes some seemingly direct stabs at the current and most fashionable genres and artists of the past three years (the time, almost to the day, which has elapsed between Make Believe and the riff-savvy Maladroit) including my arch nemesis The Killers, and the pop punk turned kings of cultural and political hypocrisy Green Day. While the latter seems to be a band Cuomo has always looked up to he also seems to find a certain joy in taking a musical stab at Billy Joe and company on the track "Peace" (which isn't so much 'similar' to Green Day's "Blvd of Broken Dreams" as it is exactly what "Blvd" should have sounded like). Unlike Green Day, Weezer doesn't have to rely on slick production in order to achieve their sonic potential, they interact with the studio equipment in order to articulate their wants, wishes and innermost audible yearnings. Cuomo's natural talent (the vocals on this album are nothing if not brilliant), his undying attention to detail and his incessant need to pre-script and perfect every note before he lays it down are traits which if not admired have to be respected.

What often happens when people critique a Weezer recording, especially all the works which have followed the five year split after Pinkerton is that the people laying down their critical views seem to always miss the essential points, most importantly the true nature of the band, not their perceived identity in the popular press. Rivers has never been an "indie rock" icon, nor does he know or understand what the fuck "emo" is (not that anyone else in this goddamn world does either). These labels have been placed on him after the release of the Blue Album and Pinkerton, in the case of the latter, some five years following the release of the album and the consequential demise of the band for five (tortuous) years. Weezer to me, ever since my brother and I first purchased the cassette release of Blue in 1994, have always been a arena rock band, not some elitist indie rock institution.

In studying Make Believe, I've decided to look at it, not from the perspective of some deranged emo cry-baby, someone who listens to records for familiarity instead of innovation (this is often the perspective taken by most current weezer fans, who look at the Green Album and Maladroit as being against everything weezer used to stand for...a completely false and undeniably stupid assumption). I have chosen to look at this new release with the understanding that Rivers grew up on nothing but 80's power pop and heavy metal, two styles which are becoming increasingly prevalent in his stylistic ambitions, and that he is someone who has always wanted to be a rock star in the most musical ways possible, while being completely unique and innovative in the process. Rivers is redefining and evolving the world of rock music for the 21st century and beyond.

Now onto what matters...The actual songs.

The album opens with "Beverly Hills", a song I must admit angered me to the core upon first listening to it in mid-march. I have since grown to love and appreciate this track as one of the most pure pop singles perhaps ever released, an anthem for everyone's inner-geek (in my case, my outer geek as well). This song is an obvious Rick Rubin production, with the simplistic hip-hop beats and the hidden doo-wop and noise samples, added for effect (most weezer records have a plethora of hidden sounds, have your surround sound ready) and subliminal mind-control (may or may not be true).

"Perfect Situation" opens with a throwback to the pop-bliss of the Blue Album, building up into a shocking sonic realization (OH MY FUCKING GOD...THAT'S A PIANO...ON A FUCKING WEEZER RECORD). The keyboard gives this song its over-the-top pop wings, and sends it soaring into an epic chorus, which makes everything seem fine. Rivers is just showing off his natural vocal ability, another thing lacking in BJ Armstrong's bag of cheap tricks. Suffice it to say this song makes up for the lack of transition of Beverly Hills.

here we go...The kick in the face for all of the pseudo-eighties wannabe throwback bands:

The third track on Make Believe is the synth heavy "This is Such a Pity" which takes all you Killers and Bravery fans by the nipples and throws you into a seat of utter shame. This song doesn't just ooze nostalgia, it bleeds authenticity. While the song itself is a hilariously out this world cheese fest (I'm going to guess 12 Year Old Cheddar on a burnt piece of lamb). Rivers seems to be mocking The Killers for their need to look cool with their synths, and their lackluster guitar chops (the solo on this song is brilliantly corny and deliciously goofy, without a hint of irony).

I'm realizing that none of you have probably read up to this point...so i suppose i will stop my track-by-track review and just leave you with a few other stand out tracks.

"We Are All on Drugs" is a song Black Sabbath couldn't handle, with a guitar line that Iron Maiden would've been proud to write.

The best song on this record is "Freak Me Out". I can't describe it...incredible harmonics, vocals...fuck it...I'm speechless everytime I hear it. This song also features the return of the harmonica to a weezer record (not heard since the Blue Album).

You know what? Screw this...nobody is reading this anymore...my apologies for my ambitious and utterly ridiculous discussion on an album nobody will give a chance to. Rivers is the best songwriter of our generation...and i love kittens.

KITTENS KITTENS KITTENS!!

cam.

p.s. if you did read this whole post and ended up hating it...then fist fuck yourself to Kalamazoo!!

customer service whoredom.

2005-05-18T15:35:00.000-04:00

i haven't really been posting much here, for a variety of reasons. mainly is that i now spend 8 hours of nearly every day sitting at this shitty desk and farting around on the internet; as a result, i'm not too keen to do so any further when i get home. and i mean i could and often do post from work, but when i'm working the day shifts that's a sure-fire recipe for some extremely bitchy postings. like this one. about how my job saps me of my humanity.

people complain that prostitution robs people of their individuality, that it turns them into objects. this is an eloquent way to avoid seeming like a moralist thug of an idiot.

but people who make points like these don't really mean them. they only object to prostitution because sex is involved. how do i know this? because it's essentially no different from what i do. i'm reminded of this constantly by the reek of disgusting fat snatch that emanates from these chairs. no word of a lie, there's people who sit on these chairs that basically pour out over the armrests cos they're so damn huge. and from the dank recesses beneath their rolls and between their cracks emanates an odor so wretched... it makes me want to die. and this wonderful odor has thoroughly permeated every damn chair in this place. so it's not just like being a prostitute, because as vicemag has educated me, no self-respecting lady of the evening would go without a stack of wet ones to fight vagina-funk. odor-wise, it's like being a dirty crack-slut who can't afford to stay clean. but i digress.

anyways. why is my job like prostitution? because every time i get that dreaded beep signaling that i've got a call, there's going to be someone on the line who expects me to give him or her my full, undivided attention and empathy. and nerdy though i am, i can be charming in my own way. if nothing else, i'm a very friendly person. yet to each person that phones, i am expected to be selflessly caring, empathetically concerned, and oh-so-very polite and friendly. without, of course, them giving even half a shit about being civil to me. so, essentially, like a prostitute, i am paid to give of myself without asking anything in return. just as the traditional price of sexual gratification is reciprocity, such is the traditional price of civility and kindness. and my pay, like a prostitute's, is intended to compensate me for the fact that i'm not allowed to expect that classic reciprocity. and just like the john wants to feel like the sex for which he has paid is wonderful, special, and unique, the customers that call me want me to act like they alone are on the receiving end of my wonderful empathy and thoughtfulness and caring. etc. etc.

so, to johns, think about the fact that the woman you've paid for had banged ten other guys already today, and that you're the furthest possible thing from special.

and to the dumb fucks who call me and expect me to give a damn about your dumbfuck problems, think about the fact that you're one of about 50 other people who have expected the exact same friggen thing. and you're even further from special than the johns.

and to the moralist thugs who think there's something wrong with prostitution, get over it. the reason it's one of the oldest professions is that it's the archetype of customer service. when humans serve others, they naturally expect to be served in return. prostitution and every other breed of service industry is simply a diversion of that natural desire for reciprocity onto a desire for monetary income. classic marxist alienation. it creeps me out when sex ventures into the territory of alienation, and i'd never get into that kind of weirdness myself... but it's functionally not much different from any other sort of service.

at least the prostitute gets some play and a decent wad of cash out of it. i get 11 bucks an hour, minus deductions, and a headache, and a serious contempt for the state of humanity. that's not to say that the hypothetical prostitute doesn't also get headaches and contempt; i'm suuuuuure that he or she does.

my favourite thing about this job during the week though is how i flaunt the panopticon. like, i'm not supposed to be using the internet for personal usage at all. yet i subvert the internet filters, and cover my electronic tracks. and i'm sitting a foot and a half away from my boss. yet through his little cubicle windows he can't see my screen. and through those very same windows i can see him and his screen, so i can tell when he's coming over here, and i can tell when he's monitoring my computer. and he's computer-stupid enough that i can just minimize my taskbar so he can't see what windows i've got open. and he doesn't even notice.

i feel like a carpenter in this damn place...

surrounded by tools.

the war on sand nig.... uhh, terror

2005-05-11T11:56:00.000-04:00

so i've been frittering away my eight-hour workdays largely by surveying the blogging scene, particularly when it comes to politics. i especially like daily kos, for its quasi-antipartisanism. any number of other assorted dem-type blogs are certainly worthwhile, like myDD and the Agonist, though kos is my favourite, if only for the sheer volume of stuff that gets posted everyday. there's always something new to look at, at least.

but one thing that's starting to piss me off quite a bit is how often the stupid, inane phrase "war on terror" gets thrown around by both sides of the debate in american politics. the democrat vs. republican debate essentially precludes any sort of free critical thought. the GOP shouts, "you bleeding-heart liberal faggots, you don't give a shit about the war on terror!" and the dems shout back, "yeah, well you're just pursuing the war on terror to support halliburton oil and you don't give a shit about real terrorism!" so instead of any kind of reasoned debate about terrorism, its roots, its spirit, and even its existence, we get impassioned name-calling about who's fighting it better.

to start, the very idea of a "war on terror" is a complete and utter misnomer. terrorism, we can see by its rather obvious name, has the goal of promoting, (you guessed it) terror. thus a 'war on terror' would, one might hope, have the goal of preventing ... guess ... terror! hot damn, we're getting somewhere. but wait. what does tom ridge's homeland security color-level bullshit do? oh, fuck, looks like it promotes terror! how about channel 7 action news spewing bullshit about the latest cooked-up CIA intelligence and WHY YOU SHOULD BE SCARED SHITLESS RIGHT NOW! how are they contributing to the war on terror? by terrifying their audience! how does every damn thing that the government does in the war on terror affect society? by increasing the level of terror amongst the populace. wow, what useful contributions. it's like the DEA trying to win a war on drugs by sniffing them all up themselves. (not to say that the DEA doesn't do that already, of course.)

one of the most interesting bits of thought that i've come across recently was in a BBC documentary about terrorism that i saw on the fifth estate a while back. essentially it proposed that al-qaeda and the idea of a worldwide terrorist network is a myth, nothing more than a useful fiction. osama bin laden may well be a convenient figurehead, kind of like the queen, or jesus, or george bush. but when it comes down to it, there's no tightly-woven network of international terrorists, there's just a bunch of pissed-off brown guys with a variety of bones to pick with america. and sure, the CIA says that there's tons of evidence supporting the existence of al-qaeda, but it's always easy to find evidence for what you already know is there. when you already "know" that a terrorist network exists, it's not hard to construct plausible explanations for its existence.

and it's a useful fiction for all of the parties involved. neither the republicans or the democrats want to challenge the conceptualization of al-qaeda, because hell, it gives them something to bitch at the opposition about, plus it gives them an excuse to tramp all over civil liberties and inflate the state apparatus like a big ugly deficit-laden balloon. neither the republicans nor the democrats have any interest in winning the war on terror, or even pursuing it, because the maintenance of a terror-stricken populace has become one of the pillars of the postmodern state. and the terrorists sure as hell aren't interested in debunking any myths which might spring up about them. can you picture osama releasing a newscast saying "you idiots, we're not a huge well-connected international organization, we're just a bunch of pissed-off retards with box cutters and a disregard for our own lives!" doesn't exactly strike fear into the hearts of the infidels, does it?

thus my irritation at the state of the political discourse, even in the blogosphere. markos at dailykos does a great job, and he's more than sufficiently distrustful of democratic establishment. but nevertheless, blogs on the left and right alike are a bit too fond of slinging memes at each other, and not quite fond enough of deconstructing the inaccurate and flawed structures of those memes themselves.

2005-05-10T02:46:00.000-04:00

hot lipped sour gummies
tingling earth quake baby
i need some CINNAMON!!

i am here with gummie

HOT POP PUPPY!

is you there turkey?
do you need some hasistance?

let's get chemicals
KILL THE PLASTIC RULER///////////////the system littered (check spelling)

we can find help in semen

ICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

no more turkeys

FUNGUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

humungous fungus...................fun guy

cam is a fungi
fun guy
get it?

oh yeah...this is *gurgle* genius

show me the way to fun guy!!!

zapoleon and the blue milkstars are a good band...............man..............band too!

goodnight.

the cam

rivers puppy fucking hot streak.....what's poppin'?!

2005-05-09T15:25:00.000-04:00

oh boy! oh boy! oh fucking boy!

happy new weezer week to one and all!!

in 24 hours i will be locked up in my den absorbing the latest release by the ultra hot slut fuckers Weezer!......"Make Believe" has been far too long in the making and i'm expecting big things from my boys in da weez....i will return tomorrow to let you know how i took to the new rivers fodder. then you can all holla back reasons why you hate/love my opinion....or just to tell me that you don't like weezer and you think i'm a fag!

in other news....

it was alex's birthday on the weekend...alex is a girl!..i think we all had fun.......there was a prick bar-bitch at Jack's (a shitty enough bar as it is) who wouldn't let us play spin the bottle on the table......what a rip off....but we kept trying to play anyway. love is in the air! ....apologies to any ladies/gentlemen who had to kiss me....i can't help the breath of the texture of my tongue...but i appreciate you loving me no matter what!

saturday was also the first day in 7 that i had smoked marijuana.....i took time off due to financial and mental circumstances.....basically i was too poor to afford it and too crazy to care. going without pot isn't much different than going with it...it was just nice to know i could go an extended period sober and still have fun......

last night my old time chum Brent and I had a session in his garage after we watched the latest episode of family guy (one of the best yet)....he had some of the best looking, smelling, and tasting pot i've ever had (not to mention the fact that it made me go coocoo for toothpaste)....then we had a fantastical discussion about how much we kick ass.....

CULTURE UPDATE!!!

currently reading : profit over people by noam chomsky and the 5th book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.....douglas adams is fast becoming my lord and saviour....people need to understand that the hitchhiker's guide is just as credible a source for how the world works as the bible.....it's just a guy making up crazy stories about things that didn't happen but could have (just like the bible....only that was created by a bunch of crazy guys who were fucked up on rancid goat meat)

summer listening list # 1:

Frank Zappa - Absolutely Free
Shearwater - Everybody Makes Mistakes
Phish - Round Room (i finally found my copy of this again)
The Apples in Stereo - Fun Trick Noisemaker
Sloan - One Chord to Another (so many hot puppy pop hooks)

anyways..check these records out if you have a chance or give a shit...don't check them out if you are a boring fist fucker........also.........please send me a list of your hot trip summer record suggestions (i'm always in need of new ways to enjoy a summer afternoon...and i cherish the input from outside sources)

i love you all....

cam.amon.

p.s. congratulations on getting to the end of this pointless blog .....your reward will come to you in the form of a selection of cheeses from the outer most regions of the universe.

warm fuzzy.

2005-05-07T20:14:00.000-04:00

i thought, since i bitch so much about my job, this would be a warm breath of fresh air, cos i just had one of the calls that i really don't mind getting at all. i'm gonna bet this is largely because i'm a little baked, and it's saturday night, and i'm almost done my shift... but anyways.

this guy calls, and all he wants to know is whether he was gonna be ok to drive his car, because the engine light came on, and he's off in the country, and it's night time and there's no place to get his car fixed. so, i tell him that so long as the light stays yellow, and the car drives okay, he'll be fine. (but if it goes red or the handling changes in any way, get it towed. that's like, sum total of my car knowledge right there.) and this guy, mr. richard belford of saskatchewan, is stoked, because he was driving in the middle of nowhere and thought that his saturday night was gonna get fucked over, and he was gonna crash his car up and all manner of bad things.

so for a few moments, all the luddite marxist crap about alienation and suchlike is forgotten. because me, pseudo-intellectual little stoner half a country away, was able to give some fellow human being a little bit of peace of mind. peace of mind that he could have found himself by opening his glove box and opening his owner's manual, but hey. peace is peace is peace.

c'est tout.

advertising, you say?

2005-05-07T02:20:00.000-04:00

okay, i'm not really advertising. nobody paid me or anything. but seriously, buy something from neighborhoodies. they are awesome. just, spectacular. i ordered a sweater from them, and got it in like, eight days. and i'm in the mystical northlands that are canada, god knows it usually takes forever for stuff to come here from the states. they put whatever you want on various articles of clothing. love it.

i got a blue sweater with a little fragment of a line from a biggie song that sticks in my head. can't say enough good things about this site. they even included some pixie sticks in the box. i hope against hope that it's not something they just do all the time, and that in fact they picked up on the reference from the biggie song and were making a subtle reference of their own. but we shall never know, shall we?

in any case. go forth and purchase! or at least look at the site. every time that i put this sweater on i want to buy something else from them. ah, the miracles of the internet.

powerful stuff.

2005-05-04T18:14:00.000-04:00

garlic is responsible for the downfall of goliath.....david was merely the acting victor in order to take the attention off of garlic, who is a notoriously shy entity.

hey! death! will release a cd this summer entitled "ze bastard synthetics" on Effortless records.....it will be a commercial and critical flop.

i've been home for a few days and have been noticing that i get along way to well with said voices.....they seem to make constant sense....and when i come to i notice all the dead cats.

so many dead cats.

i absolutely love being home though. everyone here is so uncompromisingly incredible. bruce, jenna, aaron, rob, geoff, jeff, adam, mike (he kills cats too) ....the list goes on and on. We had a reunion party on the weekend and got away with but one suicide attempt. I spent a good deal of my time on kassya's vehicles plotting desperately to get onto the roof of her garage. Bruce and I decided we were better than everyone and collaborated (unsuccessfully) on bringing everyone else's attention to this fact...apparently we came off as cocky and arrogant (but they were all drinking and didn't know what they were saying) then liam and i attempted (unsuccessfully) to buy mushrooms...no mushrooms meant more rum and bambino........

i don't want to go back to london....but i have to for stupid work. ARG!!!!

time for some beer and pudding.......maybe some hot hedrick love.

toodles....

p.s. if anyone is aware of the existence of my grandmother (the now infamous Noodles) and would like to have a better idea of my relationship with her or just need to see an absolutely incredible film
then rent HAROLD AND MAUDE.....it's noodles and i in a nutshell (minus the sex and romantic overtones)...plus the movie is fucking incredible....so dark, funny, weird, and sassy!!!

cinnamon sticks.

something that hurts to think about.

2005-05-04T02:00:00.000-04:00

i'm entirely skeptical on the notion of god. maybe there is one, maybe there isn't. if anything, one thing that i'm sure about is that humans probably haven't gotten it right, when it comes to god, and what he, she, or it is.

but as i was sitting at work tonight, i was musing about evolution. and i think that evolution has to be true. i love the theory of evolution because of the really interesting things that it brings up about humanity and who we are. whether or not it's true in its entirety, it seems like the best possible alternative.

but evolution doesn't really work when you go really, really far back.

like, really far back.

sure, maybe bacteria evolved into multicellular organisms which evolved into blah blah blah which eventually became humans. i think there's plausible evidence to support this. which i'm too baked to get into. interesting site though.

and maybe the fact that those bacteria came into being has to do with the peculiar physics of atmospheres and objects in motion and all that crazy astrophysics stuff. light + heat + warmth + oxygen + water = life. whatever.

and maybe the fact that the planets and stars and everything came from a big ol' bang of matter, or who knows what. but in any case, what is there outside that?

is the universe everything? is it possible that there exists a 'thingness' beyond the physical universe? forget about why organic matter might have turned into life... why does matter itself exist? if there is indeed something beyond the universe as we (in a very limited way) know it, what could it be? or if there is not... well, i don't see how there could not be something. not in the slightest idea what it could be, but i feel like there has to be something. here's my quasi-logical proof. (i'm such a nerd.)

P1. anything that is oblivion, has no thing in it; a thing being matter of any sort.
P2. if beyond the universe is simply oblivion, then some thing would have had to come out of that oblivion to spawn said universe.
P3. the oblivion had, and could conceivably still have or have again something in it.
C1. thus, the oblivion could contain some thing.
C2. therefore it is not oblivion.

i'm sure that would be a really interesting proof to work out much more correctly than i did. i'm sure there's all kinds of abstract metatheory about infinite sets and their relation to empty sets and whatnot. i'd suppose that would be a proof that could not be worked out in predicate logic, since it involves an empty set, and no empty set can be specified in PL.

i'm a huge fucking nerd. like uber-dork to the max. love it. i read the hitchhikers' guide to the galaxy five times as a kid, and now i get baked and ponder the spawning of the universe.

on the tragic villain.

2005-05-01T12:55:00.000-04:00

so in a fit of haute culture fetishism, i decided to download the latest remake of the merchant of venice yesterday and give it the ol' viddying whilst i was smoking joints all afternoon. i didn't have high hopes really, and to be honest i expected old will would bore me to tears and i'd be back playing halflife2 before shylock would even get close to his pound of flesh. i read the play in grade 10, i think it was, so it's not like i was entirely in suspense as to what would happen, but i was really pleasantly surprised by the execution.

the definite high point of the entire deal was pacino as shylock... one of the most perfect casting choices i can even imagine, really. think 16th-century scarface. and really pacino's playing of the role reminded me of no-one more than scarface, oddly enough. which made me think of the extremely underrated role of the tragic villain. i mean, no matter how many times we see scarface gun people down and snort up slopes of snow, we can't help but root for him. cos he's just doing what he can in a corrupt world, right?

which i think was one of the most interesting ways to handle the anti-Semitism of the original text. because shylock is one hell of a nasty jewish motherfucker... but what else does he have to do? pacino's interpretations of shylock's monologues really brought out the fact that shakespeare never really intended his play to be an anti-Semitic one. shylock gets screwed over, time and again ... his people are forced to live in a locked-up little ghetto guarded by christians, he has to wear a little red hat when he leaves the ghetto to show he's a jew ... he gets spat upon and mocked and on and on and on ... and yet he even seems sincere when he offers gentleman antonio a loan without interest, on pain of losing a big ol' chunk of flesh. but then his daughter gets stolen by one of antonio's homeboys, and his money gets stolen with her, and generally he gets pissed off, and decides he's gonna kill poor antonio cos he ain't got the money.

the merchant of venice is no more anti-semitic than scarface is anti-cuban. tony montana doesn't murder people cos he's cuban... he murders people because he's human, and wants what humans want... success, fulfilment, happiness, all of the above. yet he can't get them because he's an unwashed and unwanted cuban refugee. same with shylock ... shylock isn't a mean motherfucker because he's jewish... he's a mean motherfucker because although he's human, his essential humanity is denied because he's jewish. and since neither scarface nor shylock are able to achieve success in nice socially-acceptable ways, they have to resort to shady business... being cocaine and usury, respectively. and the same society that thrives on the commodities they provide seeks to condemn them both. thus, they are tragic villains.

so yeah, suffice to say it was an awesome movie, and i'd recommend it, whether or not you like old will. which also got me thinking to why i hated shakespeare in high school... it's because it's not a book, it's not supposed to be read, it's supposed to be interpreted, by talented actors. and whether it's a film version, or a staged version, that's the only way you can really grok the text in its fullness. so instead of reading plays in english classes in high school, i think that each english class in high school should mount low-budget community theatre productions. haha. and look like idiots! yes. so.... the moral of today's story is: idiots are sweet.

c'est tout.

marajoowanna. and summer!

2005-04-28T16:55:00.000-04:00

would there be any market for king-size papers if it weren't for us stoners? i mean, how many people buy bags of rolling tobacco and smoke huge fucking long cigarettes? what the fuck. i think in my total life experience, i have met one person who smokes rollies, and they used regular-sized papers. (in north america, i mean... everyone's all about the rollies in europe it seems. at least you can buy king-size papers everywhere there, instead of just at head shops.) stoners have clout in the marketplace! ha, the invisible hand of the market does not discriminate against us bakers.

last night was a hell of a drunkfest. haha. me and cam split a 3-litre jug of some of the shittiest white wine you can possibly imagine. it was wretched. and then we were totally wasted, and went to dewaard's bonfire. phew! i woke up in a daze today and booted ass to work... my pants are grass stained because, apparently, i was trying to break a giant board by jumping on it. and was unsuccessful. or rather, i think that i broke the board, but also broke myself in the process. i was told that i was "so drunk" that i fell down and didn't even move to protect my face. just boom like a ton of bricks. har! then i started fighting with my dear friend matt bacon for some reason, as we frequently tend to do at parties... it's all kind of a blur, but i definitely remember that he bit my pinky finger really hard, and it hurts like hell. i'm going to have one of those big black marks under my fingernail, i just know it. i'll never understand why we always fight. it's not even like we get pissed at each other, we laugh the whole time... yet we get drunk and feel like fighting, thus we do. really wussfully, and cheaply. there's usually alot of slapping and kicking involved.

phewweee. and then to cap things off i had the wonderful idea that i would jump over the bonfire that was going... which was successful. but then cam decided that i was "a pussy" for jumping so fast, and then he proceeded to jump onto the fire and dance around on top of it. cam was seriously intoxicated. and then this morning he says to me "why did i wake up with burn holes in my shoes?"

ahh, the joys of cheap wine. i'm trying a different kind tonight, the old standby of classless idiots and middle-aged women, spumante bambino! mmmm... carbonated alcoholic grape juice. i'm gonna get tanked yet again tonight. hooray for summer! then tomorrow i am going to feel like shit, and sleep all day and smoke pot and play video games.

i love the summer.

blip.

2005-04-27T17:30:00.000-04:00

the new system of a down is incredible.

cry baby hot sauce.

2005-04-26T16:06:00.000-04:00

le tigre has announced that they are collaborating with Paris Hilton on her upcoming record.
the announcement was made to me through bill wahcheechzzka of muchmore music. He mistakenly noted that le tigre was part of the mid-90's riot grrl movement. Le tigre were actually born out of the late 80's, early 90's riot grrl movement when Kathleen Hanna was in a band called Bikini Kill. Le tigre aren't technically a riot grrl band at all (thanks a lot you uninformed pervert).

i am hereby boycotting le tigre, a band i once considered one of the most underestimated and underappreciated groups of the 90's and beyond. fuck you kathleen hanna.....FUCK YOU!
i am absolutely speechless...there is no way i can describe to anyone just how big a blow this is to the face of credible art and political rock.

i understand that rock music has always been in one way or another linked to the world of commerce...and i understand the need for human beings to make a living doing what they love. there is however no way that i can respect a decision that is so blatantly self-indulged......

kathleen hanna was supposed to represent the subversive, alternative underground...a world of equality, social consciousness, and feminists rights. working with paris hilton makes kathleen hanna look about as politically relevant as green day. is anyone a little worried or concerned that the bands who have put up the most seemingly political messages in their songs have also been the ones exploiting the markets the most? This isn't a case of "working within the system to create change" this is a case of misleading and exploiting the youth demographic in order to make some extra coin. it seems a bit confused...and i refuse to stand here and take it in the ass one more time for these lying dirtbags .

"but in the current economic climate, the only way for artists to get noticed is to conform to the corporate structures"......this is a rich sentiment......it is of course completely invalid. bands have the one option they don't seem to be using anymore.......the option to say 'no'.......there is no longer any message in popular music that isn't connected with a commercially viable ambition. It's not a matter of me fighting against mainstream rock.....there are lots of bands connected with major labels that i am more than happy to support. the line is drawn when bands effectively lie about their motivations in order to cash in on a current fad of revolt.

who knows if this makes any sense.....i'm sure you're all saying "well, cam is just a whiney little bitch trying desperately to hold onto his moral and aesthetic beliefs in order to be perceived as unique, different, or 'intelligent'"....of course i am....the question you need to ask yourself is "why aren't i questioning the current cultural landscape?" just because a hip magazine or trendy internet radio station says a band or an artist is worthwhile doesn't mean they are. listen to what you want....but think about why it is you're listening to it in the first placel.

MY SWEET BABY KATHLEEN HAS GONE FOREVER

today the music died
my sweet, hot milk baby lost her way
kind hearted butt fuck
timid lesbian romance
cornbread disasters
and goodbye french kisses

in other news.......

i must be getting old.

2005-04-26T01:35:00.000-04:00

i am hungry.......

every new band is considerably less original and more horrible than the last.

old bands and artists who truly made a differance are consistenly releasing mediocre records so far this year (beck...i'm looking in your direction).

i am now forced to choke down the derivative and absolutely wretched likes of the Bloc Party, The Killers, Lous XIV, the bravery, pilate, boy, and hot hot heat.

i have a rash.

i need a band-aid.

i love tennis...but i love golf more.

fuck this........

2005-04-25T01:24:00.000-04:00

i am here my little kittens.

springsteen sucks.

charlie sheen is officially the greatest actor of all time.

bam is a douche bag.

HOW MANY ORCHIDS?

8

i want to be a wizard............

dancing in the dark is a very bad song.

i wish descartes was a woman

i don't eat enough vegetables.

on the money.

2005-04-24T01:13:00.000-04:00

i was looking at a twenty dollar bill just now and noticed something. the new canadian 20 has a quote by gabrielle roy which says "nous connaîtrions nous seulement un peu nous-mêmes sans les arts?" which is translated as "could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?"

now, anybody who's more knowledgeable in french than me correct me here but isn't that a mistranslation? shouldn't it be "wouldn't we only know ourselves a little without the arts?"

now, nitpicky that might be, but that's a totally different meaning.

and holding that piece of paper in my hand reading that little text really reminded me of what fictions we base our lives upon. i mean, i've got this little piece of paper in my hand. to get it, i pushed a few buttons on a machine. conceivably it has some connection to the job that i work frequently, but it's sure not a very obvious connection when you think about it. i mean i go into a building, sit in a chair, talk to people and click buttons alot and then every friday the little website that shows me my 'account balance' spits a higher number at me. then i go around doing my thing by pushing series of buttons on atms around the city and painting the town red. all because of these little pieces of paper, with no real meaning. and half the time i don't even see the papers, i just walk around with a little plastic card and push buttons on smaller little machines and suddenly i am the owner of some products!

money is the basic simulacrum of the capitalist state. it means nothing, yet it is everything. everything that surrounds us, even we ourselves are keyed to a specific money value, whether we want to be or not. yet money is nothing in and of itself, but exists only with reference to those things. you can't walk into a bank anywhere and say, hey, here's my piece of paper, now give me twenty bucks worth of gold! and even if you did get the gold, what the fuck is gold but metal out of the ground that for some reason is valuable cos there's not much of it.

the sheer nothingness of the capitalist mode leaves me feeling like a fish on top of a sand dune in the middle of the sahara.

which leads rather nicely into cam's post....

at least our hot air has some substance.

2005-04-23T23:49:00.000-04:00

okay okay! so we finally saw "the corporation". we would've seen it sooner, but we've been really busy for the last year and a half (all those hookers and crank weren't going to do themselves). fortunately, the film itself was really well done; a truly inspired look at the basic structures of capitalism and democracy.

the movie is constructed from a really interesting perspective; it seems to advocate the restructuring of the current capitalist system, but it allows the players in that system to defend themselves and their principles. the discursive nature of the film allowed me to get a good idea of how the corporations view themselves, and how they defend themselves against accusations of inhumane practices and environmental destruction.

what struck me was the definitive differance between the authority of the accusers and the lack of authority of the corporations themselves. everytime a corporate representative was questioned or confronted about an alledged illegal practice they would simply shake it off or advoid the issue; in most situations the corporations would outwardly deny the claims, or spin the facts in order to better appeal to their public image. now for me, flatly denying a claim would require that denial to be backed up with some hard evidence, which was almost never provided by the corporations. the accusers however, had taken the time to research (in most cases thoroughly) the issue at hand, and could at least show statistic, photographic or textual evidence to support the accusation and essentially prove the guilt of the corporation. how the fuck can the corporations deny hard evidence without providing their own?

this has all lead to me finally figuring out what it is i distrust most about the capitalist right; their inability in all social forums to provide evidence for claims. i'd get horrible marks on papers if i merely stated tons of claims but offered no evidence to support them. spinsters are fine for making the situation seem more positive than it is and altering the collective social perception of a given circumstance but where the fuck is the evidence? not once in "the corporation" did a corporate representative convince me that even a single word that came out of their mouth had any inherent truth to them. they never offered any insight or factual evidence to prove they weren't committing social and environmental injustices. fuck that, and fuck every asshole in the world who still has the nerve to support these greedy cock cunts. claims and evidence! it's that fucking simple...if you say something... PROVE IT....don't treat me like another fucking pawn in your misrepresented game of corporate chess. i don't even like chess godammit.

i'm too angry to make this posting pretty, or to even make sense of it. this is too complicated an issue to get through in one sitting, and i have the attention span of a retarded mule (from what i'm told they have pretty short attention spans).........

SEE....i made a claim about retarded mules...and backed it up! it's wonderful when one can practice what he preaches, especially if one is practicing and preaching total nonsense.

i would like to close with a poem.

DANGEROUS DELIGHTS AND DELICIOUS DELI MEAT!

hot springs eat my humid heart
simple glowing mermaids
wink from the bottom of the sea
CATTLE!
CATTLE!
and all is well in tupperville

cam.

distrust of liberals.

2005-04-22T23:13:00.000-04:00

in studying for my communications history course, one of the readings that we had to do concerned the formulation of a communications and computing policy on the part of the canadian government in the early 1970s. and it was all that i could do to get myself through the reading without slashing important arteries, because it was just the most painful shit that anyone could ever have dreamed up. basically the government thought that it would be a good idea to have a national "computer utility" along the lines of power, phone, water, gas, and the like. so businesses could purchase their computing power just like they purchase their hydro! what a good idea!

no, what a terrible idea. the people who thought it up are a bunch of (for lack of a better word) retards. it could never work in a million years, and the debate that surrounded the issue was about as big a waste of time as a government could ever dream up ... and governments waste a lot of time. the real problem was that government bureaucrat types couldn't see past computing technology ever evolving out of the "room full of vacuum tubes" era. and if every government was as idiotic as that particular canadian government, it never would have evolved out of that era.

let's say that the canadian government wasn't presiding over a backwater republic, and that our industries actually had some real influence when it came to computing technology. let's say that for god-knows-what reason, canada was the world's leader in computing technology. and that once computers turned into big hot shit, our government stepped in and nationalized the computer industry and got us a national computer utility. thus we would have big'ol computing plants full of room-sized contraptions of vacuum tubes, and businesses would pay to have those computers do their computing. now what incentive would our good old Computer Utility have to do the kind of research that was necessary to develop microprocessors and personal computers and the internet all that fun stuff? none! none whatsoever. in fact it would be counterproductive to the utility's functioning, because when businesses got microprocessor technology, they wouldn't need to have their computing power piped in from who knows where... instead they could do it in-house, like they do now. plus the whole fact that a computer utility could never, ever work, and is completely retarded. this whole policy debate is a bunch of politicians with absolutely no comprehension of the technologies involved trying to butt into legitimate business like a really drunk guy trying to get into a bar.

so there's my distrust of liberals in a nutshell. i mean, i've got some very liberal points of view in terms of socialized medicine and public broadcasting and monopoly restrictions and that sort of thing ... but when it comes to industry, the invisible hand of the market really is where it's at. it's really kind of a dilemma, after all. public services mean that they don't seek to make a profit from us, which keeps prices down in the short run, keeps distribution egalitarian, and avoids all the troublesome dangers of corporate monopolies like price fixing and the like. yet in the long run, bureaucracies tend to look out for their own interests, and if we're not careful, those same public utilities have no incentive to innovate and to bring prices down in the long run. corporate services seek to profit from us, with all the attendant worries to that fact, but their profit-seeking nature drives them to seek economy and efficiency and avoid wastefulness - those that don't avoid wastefulness just end up going out of business. i suppose after all it's just a question of what services we care most about and what we care most about in each of those services.

i really wish i knew more about economics. hmmm.... one day perhaps.

the cartesian saviour.

2005-04-22T01:05:00.000-04:00

howdy.

i guess i should begin by introducing myself...

my name is cam but everyone calls me cinnamon sticks. i was born in a hospital to a mom and a dad. i have 2 hands, 2 feet, a couple eyes, and hair. i have been known to enjoy both sleep and wakefulness, you will often find me altering between the two during the course of a day. i love eating so much that i do it 3 times a day. sometimes this eating causes oddly textured solids and liquids to escape from my body's orifices (this is preceded by some pretty uncomfortable pain).

my roommate (and partner in all worthwhile crimes) has been so kind as to ask me to join him on this blog in an effort to save you all from your most potent enemy...yourselves.

i have tried to resist the urge to start a blog, mostly due to the fact that i thought i hated them. i have since re-evaluated my position and am here to offer myself to you all....

judge me...PLEASE JUDGE ME!

this calls for a poem...

TIMID CHARLIE AND THE EVAPORATED HEAVEN

hot liquid sugar daddy
dancing on my bear trap
leave me with this robot romance
and disguise her as a crab.

go forth and eat the hand that feeds you.

a broadening of horizons.

2005-04-21T17:14:00.000-04:00

so today i stepped in to the room of my oft-referred-to roommate to discover that he was setting up an account on ye olde blogger.com. thus we decided that since i'm always talking about the stupid shit that we do, perhaps we should become collaborators! so we're gonna try a little multi-contributor action and this shit is gonna be flyin' off the heezy like a flock of seagulls in heat. or.... something.

who knows what he'll write about? i sure don't. but the dialectic possibilities are endless. endless i'm telling you! but i can guarantee that he'll rip whatever trend-riding bands stupid people are into these days, because he likes music alot more than i do. plus he's got taste like.... i dunno, somebody tasteful. mr. osmond? no, that reference is just too obscure. ah, well.

c'est tout.

fo'twenny.

2005-04-21T12:57:00.000-04:00

so, my site bumped up over 2000 hits in the wee hours of the morning on 4/20. it's karma, i think. impressive! i'm sure that my own visits aren't much more than.... a quarter of that? god, i'm lame.

so much weed got smoked last night. so, so, sooooo much. rolled one joint that required three king-size papers, and a blunt that just straight up pwned my lungs. like whoa. i decided to skimp and not spend friggen 5 bucks on a dutch (because stores here are lame) and i got a dollar-fifty century sam from 7-11 instead; century sam as it turns out tastes like asshole once you get down to the bottom because it's all chemicals and lame shit.

sum total of smokeage is looking like it's in the vicinity of 8 grams, ish? entirely respectable if you ask me. my lungs were hurting though. we were driving and my roommate started all gagging and freaking out because he said that he couldn't breathe. for a minute there i thought i was gonna have to deal with hospital types whilst baked outta my skull, but as it turns out he made it ok sans hospital. phew.

now to study for my three upcoming exams. ralph.

file under: dumbasses, foreign

2005-04-20T15:50:00.000-04:00

a dialogue between me and a customer today. just about flipped out.

customer: "hi… could i have hours for… yonge and sixtee office?"
me. "you want the number for what?"
c. "office… yonge and sixtee."
m. "yonge and what?"
"yonge and sixtee."
"yonge street and sixteenth street you mean?"
"yah, yonge and sixtee."
"are you talking about a dealership ma’am?"
"what?"
"a dealership, ma'am... where they sell cars."
"dealer... ship??"
"a toyota dealership… is that what you’re talking about?"
"oh yah, toyota."
"which dealership are you talking about?"
"what?"
"which…dealership… do…you…want…to…call??"
"ummmm… c-e-d-r-i-c."
"what?!"
"c-e-d-r-i-c."
"i don’t understand what you mean ma’am. is that the name of the dealership?"
"ummm… could I have number for yonge and sixtee office?"
"no ma’am, i need to know which dealership you’re talking about."
"um… wilson? i think?"
"ma’am there’s no dealership called wilson. what do you mean??"
"uhh.. yonge and sixtee."
"there’s a lot of dealerships on yonge street, ma’am, i really don’t know which one you mean."
"uhhhh…. is yonge street."
"yeah ma’am, i got that. which one is it!?!?"
"oh… uhh.. it no matter."
"well ma’am, yonge street is pretty long."
"uhhhhhhh.. I service my vehicle!"
"………."

i proceed to give her the address and phone number of a dealership on yonge street, in aurora. if the world works as it should and she remains that ignorant of the english language, hopefully when she makes the appointment she won’t realize that she’ll have to drive for at least an hour through traffic. i love diversity, but if people want to function in this country they should learn the damn language. or get their kids to call places for them. and i mean i'm not complaining about accents... people can't get rid of that shit, and it's fine. i got another asian lady who called right afterwards and she had a little bit of an accent but was entirely polite, and knew what she was asking for at least. accents are one thing... i'm talking about total and absolute incomprehension of the english language. fuck!

facts about beavers.

2005-04-19T22:57:00.000-04:00

well i found out something today! in the woods behind my house, there are beavers! i didn't even think we had beavers around here. i thought they were northern types, what with all their fur and suchlike. but we know that there are beavers, because there are trees that are all chewed up and fallen over as a result and also there is a beaver dam. but we did not see any beavers, that was sad. in any case, using the powerful method of scientific inquiry known as making shit up, me and my roommate came to some conclusions about beavers. so here are some fun facts about beavers which you may not have already known! imagine it as a childrens' book about beavers, with illustrations and such, and it'll be a lot more fun. maybe i'll go take some pictures documenting all these facts and you will have no choice but to believe me.

- beavers are space rats, marooned here from another world. by slapping their tails on the water, they think that they can communicate with their home planet. but really, they're beavers, do you really think their tails have that power? fuck no, they live in dams for chrissakes and are fuckups. we know this because we are fuckups. thank god we don't live in a dam.
- beavers love beer. especially lakeport beer, because they don't have a lot of money. sometimes when they get drunk they try to order takeout with their phones, which are made of sticks and mud. this is unsuccessful because a) sticks and mud can't call shit, and b) they have nothing to pay the delivery man with, nor do they have an address. we know this because there was beer and a styrofoam container on the ground near one of their dams.
- when beavers get drunk, sometimes they try to build dams full of stupid shit like garbage and used condoms and lameness. also they forget that they have already got dams, and thus there is three dams in our friggin crick. each one is progressively more poorly built. that is how we know that they are drunkass fools. we think that maybe they got into a fight and decided to go build their own individual dams.
- beavers eat foods such as: corn on the cob, shish kabob, and celery. also anything else that they can chew around, such as a human leg, or a dick. we know this because beavers like to chew.
- the problem with the show Spin City was that michael j. fox didn't do enough werewolf stuff. the plot would have been much better if he was a werewolf working in a mayor's office and he had an insatiable lust for flesh. we think that he could solve the city's homeless problem by eating them! also his show should feature such characters as: Voltron, Super Mario, and Donald Duck.that didn't have anything to do with beavers.
- beavers live in filth and excrement. we know this because their crick smelled like pee. they probably just pee in there all the time and don't even care. beavers suck.
- AIDS came into the country from a hunter who had sex with a beaver. all that bullshit about africa and monkeys is just a scam by the africans to promote tourism.
- beavers obviously aren't very hard workers, because their dams just look like a big pile of shit. they should probably go to jail because you know damn well they're behind on property taxes for their dams. because we all know beavers don't have any money.

in summation, beavers are probably the highest form of intelligence on the planet earth. we should all bow down before our beaver overlords. and let them eat our legs if we have to. if we're lucky, in our next lives we can be reborn as beavers.

honey pot?

2005-04-18T13:35:00.000-04:00

if you put a bunch of beehives in the middle of a field of reefer, would the honey that they make have THC in it?? because like, if you put a bunch of bees next to a clover field, you get clover honey, etc... so if you put a bunch of bees in a pot field, you'd have pot honey. they'd go around pollinating all of the weed plants and then carry the (thc-laden) pollen back to the beehive and make honey out of it. and then if you cooked with it you'd just get ripped!

hmmm...

i thought of this while i was standing outside smoking a joint and blowing the smoke onto a bee. it started flying all erratically, it was funny.

mmmm, i wish i had a field of reefer. i remember when they were growing industrial hemp near my hometown... driving by those fields just made me so happy. so what if you'd have to smoke a kilo of it to get high, it's still a whole field of pot plants! just warms the heart, really.

day of rest.

2005-04-17T11:29:00.000-04:00

the only days that i don't really mind coming to work are saturday and sunday. especially at 7 am. last night i passed out on my friend's couch and woke to the delightful strains of my cell phone alarm at 6:30 am. hurl.

last night i shotgunned a beer for the first time. tall can no less. ouch. i'm such a pussy; i can't believe that i haven't done that til now. shame!

in any case i was pretty in the bag. and although i was loath to leave the comfort of that shitty old couch this morning, i knew that it was just a few short blocks to work, where i could go and sleep of the rest of my drunk in an uncomfortable office chair. it's definitely a shitty way to sleep and my neck is all fucked now from it. but it's so nice to get paid to sleep. this morning's sleep netted me approximately 44 dollars, less taxes and EI. thank you workplace!

littering is good.

2005-04-14T00:15:00.000-04:00

so i was all driving along the highway with mon cher papa ce soir, and talking about contractarianism. and he was all, "oh, those people who litter on the side of the highway" blah blah, littering is bad because they think oh they'll just do it themselves and nobody else will do it.

but i've always been of the opinion that littering doesn't really matter for shit. i mean, humanity is basically a cancerous growth on the surface of the earth. we fucking eat up all its resources and kill it and we're completely unsustainable. that doesn't mean that i hate humanity. i mean, fuck, i'm human. i bet that each individual cancerous cell probably roots for the tumor, don't you think? it's not like cancer is all self-hating like "oh, finally, chemotherapy, come to wipe us dirty shameful fuckers out of existence." no, they're all, "shit, this blows!"

but that doesn't mean we need to cover up our cancerousness by sending all of our waste off to landfills. i mean i can understand wanting to minimize impact by not throwing six-pack rings into the lake where they're gonna kill helpless little precious birdies. but there's no helpless little precious birdies playing in the filth alongside the freeway, so i'm damn well gonna throw my garbage wherever the hell i want. i don't think that we really accomplish much of anything by covering up how utterly and gluttonously consumerist we all essentially are.

hell, maybe if we live in our own filth we'll be a little more enthusiastic about actually limiting the amount of filth we spew out.

on blind, backward, deist fucks.

2005-04-11T11:42:00.000-04:00

so i'm sitting here reading this salon article about the religious right and all their fun stuff, and it's gotten me to thinking about one of my earliest 'favourite' web sites, operated by one libertarian nerdalike type called mr. lizard who is apparently categorized as a "Militant / Extremist" according to the filter on my internet here at work.

in any case, he holds some particularly radical views, one of my favourite being that the American constitutional right to bear arms exists so that the populace has the means for revolution in any situation where the government has stepped over the line. that little gem in itself was enough for my views on gun control to swing way the fuck to the right. and besides, i think that anyone lefty-minded who's against restrictions on drugs, abortion, or any of those "look what happens when it's illegal" type issues should think hard about gun control. personally, i'd rather have guns being sold in shops than in back alleys. america's problem with gun violence isn't because they have easy access to guns, and canada's lack of a problem isn't because we don't. it's because the entire american culture is bowed at the altar of the easy fix. and what fix is easier than a firearm? no more debate, no more discussion, no more pesky bleeding-heart fucker, cos he's dead on the pavement. whether it's assault weapons, xanax, diet pills, or fanaticism, american culture is constantly looking for the way out that requires the least effort, responsibility, or critical thought.

and reading the distinctly liberal slantings of salon.com's republican quotes got me to thinking about that defunct beast of a parchment scrap, the US constitution. basically the republicans are trying to rein in what they see as an 'out-of-control' judicial branch of the government. and, as salon's incisive commentators have noted, what they really mean is out of their control.

and that's why they object. they're pissed because they can't get the judicial wing to be blind and stupid like they are, and get its ass into gear legislating private morality. so in a classic example of a total non sequitur, they're painting this reluctance to play mommy as an 'assault on the constitution.'

but that's the point of a constitution. a constitutional democracy isn't better than a plain-jane democracy because it gives the masses more lawmaking power, it's better because it gives them less. democracy in its purest, sickest form, is nothing more than unrestrained mob rule. and it's reared its ugly head throughout the history of democracy. in canada and the us during world war two, the masses decided that it'd be a good idea to round up all those pesky asians and stick'em in camps, cos it meant that they'd be a bit safer. in argentina, the masses decided that peron was somehow desirable, and essentially chose for themselves an authoritarian regime. in islamic states, the masses think it's good for adulterous women to have big friggin rocks hucked at them.

do we want any of those things? would our countries be decent places to live if they were the rule rather than the exception? no!

thus, the founding fathers of the grand u.s. of a, and those involved in the creations of constitutions for all the various democratic states that have them, created those documents with the goal of limiting the power of the masses to make laws. because they understood human idiocy. they understood that for some people, regulating their own personal morality isn't enough, and they have to stick their bulbous, cocky little noses into everyone else's business as well. and they created a set of restrictions on what exactly people could make laws about. they couldn't make them restricting what people could say, they couldn't make them restricting peoples' rights to fair judicial process, they couldn't make them restricting a hell of a lot of things.

but dammit, this growing community of blind, backward, deist fucks has decided that those restrictions are getting in the way of the nation they want to build! it's like they want to invade Iran not because of any moral objection, but because they're damn well jealous. these people believe that homosexuality should be punishable by death, along with adultery, and the practice of abortion. (irony? no.) they honestly think that amurrica would be better off as a friggin caliphate and that the president should take his directives from jaysus himself, not any bleeding-heart fucks who believe in some heathen 'liberty.'

am i the only person who thinks it's kind of ironic that there's never been two enemies with more inflammatory rhetoric than fundamentalist christians and fundamentalist muslims, yet there's almost no perceptible difference between the ideology of the two groups? the only thing keeping those focus on the family types from blowing shit up is the fact that they basically run the current government. i swear, they get that power taken away, and it'll be focus on the christian holy war featuring jerry bin falwell and james al-dobson.

file under: institutions, outdated.

2005-04-09T13:51:00.000-04:00

so the pope's been laid to rest. and with him a rather unfortunate legacy. or at least what seems to be, if we accept the propaganda puked up by the religious right.

johnny p. was indeed quite the social conservative, but we also shouldn't forget that for all the religious right's appropriation of all things religious for devious neocon ends, the catholic church is still a surprisingly liberal institution.

i read an interesting article in the NYT last week about how GWB has appropriated the pope's "culture of life" terminology from his last encyclical in order to resonate with catholic voters. and while the pope is indeed a hardliner on contentious issues like abortion, women in the clergy, and same-sex marriage, one shouldn't accept this neocon appropriation at face value. the 'culture of life' is a lot more than just not having abortions - it's distinctly focused on workers' rights and living conditions, pacifism, distribution of wealth, preservation of natural resources, and many many other things. not least of which is an absolute opposition to the death penalty. reconcile your policies with that, neocons. which is why it made me sick when american councils of priests told their congregations that they were obligated to vote for GWB because he was the 'pro-life' candidate. gosh, 17355 dead iraqis... is that pro-life? 152 executed prison inmates in texas... is that pro-life? blatant profiteering, corporate cronyism, and union-busting... are any of these things pro-life? just because you don't think that people should be allowed to kill babies doesn't instantly make you "pro-life."

anyways, back to the church. i support reproductive rights. but the idea of women in the clergy is kind of troublesome to me, kind of for the same reason that it troubles me when women stay in unfulfilling relationships. why do women want to enter the clergy so badly when the central authorities of the church don't want them to? i think that the church's banning of female priests is emblematic of a much larger problem in its worldview that's not simply going to be fixed by letting women into the clergy. even the gospels that the church chooses as canonical are carefully chosen and edited to minimize the role of women in the life of Jesus. the catholic church is an essentially patriarchal institution, and i don't think that it will ever be truly reformed.

maybe i just don't really understand what it's like, but it seems to me like the efforts put into lobbying for the vatican to ordain women could be more usefully spent in the creation of a church with a doctrine that was egalitarian right from the get-go. quit pining for the acceptance of an institution that's not interested, and get one that is.

minds that work too much.

2005-04-07T00:43:00.000-04:00

when i lay in bed at night, my brain just goes.

i have the worst kind of insomnia. i can't sleep for shit at night. but i sure as hell don't have any trouble staying asleep. when i wake up all i want to do is go back to sleep. and often i just do, of my body's own will, whether i'm at work or in class or whatever.

i don't necessarily think bad thoughts, though i do occasionally. really i just think. i have so much trouble with the suspension of thought, like, from the moment i lay in bed. it's like my rebellious little neurons say whee! time to pick away at the mysteries of the universe, you stonebag.

if only my mind would race whilst i was awake, and i could set it to some task or something. but during the day i just want to lay around and smoke weed. it's like i'm not fully awake until it's time to go to bed again. then i can't sleep for shit so i'm tired as hell all day and i'm not really awake until it's time to go to bed again. and so on ad infinitum til my little brain wears out and i sleep for 12 fuckin hours like i did last night.

and the fact that i slept til 2pm today is not gonna help me sleep tonight in time to not sleep through logic tomorrow morning. so i smoked a joint, which i chased with a shot of southern comfort, which i chased with an ativan.

and i think i'll sleep alright soon. through til tomorrow night perhaps.

don't fill up on words.

2005-04-06T20:20:00.000-04:00

if anyone doesn't know fischerspooner then they should. the new album, odyssey is just fucking unbelievable. it's the first album i can remember hearing in a long time where every song is just spot-on. there's not a weak track on the thing. all these 80's wannabe killers type bands really start to annoy me when there's music out there like this. fischerspooner is like, the 80s mentality reintepreted for contemporary purposes in a contemporary medium. while these other bands are like... faux 80's kitsch glorification. in any case, it's a wicked album. get it.

i had a hell of a time finding the thing... it's not on any of the torrent sites. i ended up using bincrawler to get it. i really had no idea how much stuff there was on usenet, file-sharing wise. impressive. it's kind of a bitch to get used to, and torrents are faster, but there's alot of obscure stuff. xnews is a good freeware newsreader.

.../...

on ephemerality.

2005-04-04T21:32:00.000-04:00

i had a really deep thought earlier today, and i said to myself. shit, i'm gonna write that fucker down.

but you know what, i was stoned as shit and i totally forgot. so this here post is gonna just sorta ramble its way into a coherent thought. coincidence: i am also stoned as shit right now. i almost typed "slow" just there instead of "also", but that would have been equally true.

thoughts really just come and go for me. i swear there's been times when i've been lying in bed at night insomniacking and i've come up with the solutions to every philosophical dilemma that ever was. but i'm too lazy to get up and write it down and the next morning i can't remember a damn thing. note that this could probably only happen if all of the world's philosophical dilemmas could somehow be solved by chee-tos.

i went and smoked a joint in an indian village next to my house today. yes, there is an indian village! when my dog dies i'm gonna bury it there and see if we can't raise us up some dead shit like in that movie. then i'll have to put the satanic dog in the food processor or something, and like maybe knives will start flying around my house and it'll all just be crazy. and then like the whole house will start spewing blood out of like power sockets and shit and probably there'll be demons and whatnot. then linda blair will start pleasuring herself with a crucifix. who even fuckin knows. like when you live in a house thats fuckin seconds literally seconds from some ancient crazy mystical shit, you gotta be prepared for these things.

but i've got the feeling that they prolly just hit up the ol' sweat lodge and smoked some green tobacco and told each other crazy stories. that's my kind of religion; you get high on drugs and talk about shit with your friends. well fuck me, suddenly getting to church just isn't a problem! did you know that, for all the shit surrounding the tobacco companies "adding" nicotine to their cigarettes, the entire process by which tobacco is cured is a process to remove nicotine. cured tobacco has a fraction of the nicotine of green tobacco. the peace pipe deal? shamans would pack a bowl of this green tobacco and come within a hairs' breadth of a nicotine overdose and pass out. then they would tell what they saw. and peyote... well, i can't help but believe that those indians were on to something. i took mescaline and acid one time and could feel all human life as though it was a part of my own body. it was like i was physically joined to every other person by way of these like, bony outcroppings on my back. like a human internet. no shit. note also that i was alone in the room at that time.

i just got done reading this book, skinny legs and all by tom robbins... good one i thought. he's not my favourite weirdo pomo type, but i think he's the one that i'd most resemble were i to write such a book. he's alot more insightful. but one would hope that i would get alot more insightful before i'd subject people to reading something i wrote. so many really really interesting passages and an excellent plot ... but with this faint feeling like maybe he was trying a little hard. he's no foster wallace, but he's not really trying to be. liked it ... here's one of the passages that just stuck with me:

"she was just thinking about how no amount of money could buy security, and if it could, it would be a bad bargain at any price, since security was a form of paralysis, just as satisfaction was a form of death... abruptly her mind was occupied with notions of time, history, and the afterlife. She saw that the past was a recent invention, that people sacrificed the present to a future that never really came, that those who tied all of their dreams to an afterlife had no life for there to be an 'after' of; saw that time was a meadow not a highway; that the psyche was an all-night restaurant, not a museum or a church; and that on every conceivable level, belief in a hereafter was hazardous to health."

i feel like whatsisname, levar burton, on reading rainbow. i just need some stock footage of a bunch of retards mumbling about wizards.

sorry, i should be more politically correct. i meant stock footage of a bunch of retards mumbling about thaumaturgical engineers.

ummm so i think that's about all. to sum up :

1. my memory sucks cos i'm a stonebag.
2. indians are fuckin crazy, sometimes they smoke green tobacco and pass out. other times they resurrect your dog or even your wife and make all kinds of fucked up shit happen, then you have to put the dog in the food processor. you'd need a big food processor for your wife, your best bet is to feed her to the dog before you put it in the food processor.
3. i read books sometimes
4. star trek the next generation was fuckin wicked. geordi laforge is original gangsta!

"peace out, homie!"

file under, did not see THAT coming.

2005-04-04T00:42:00.000-04:00

so, tonight i find out that my parents are splitting up, apparently.

um, what the fuck?! i mean, i'm not even sure how long they've been married, but i'm thinking easily 20ish years. seeing as i'm 19.

without airing too much of my peculiar family's dirty laundry, let me state that one parent (who shall remain nameless) has been historically the one to 'stray' from the confines of ye olde marital bliss. and has brought no small amount of discontent to parent #2 in so doing. and i find out tonight, that parent #2 would seem to have learned from example, and is pursuing their own particular brand of extracurricular activity. well ain't that poetic justice.

as you may have guessed, i'm not exactly rah-rah on the matrimony thing. and if they want to break up, let 'em go. i couldn't really care either way. i'm a long way past the whole, i need my parents to be a perfect happy little unit, mostly cos they never really were. and maybe if they both find a little more satisfaction in their own lives they'll stop living vicariously through mine so much.

like the selfish asswad that i am, though, i've come to question the implications of this discovery for my own life and extracurricular activities. and i'm sarcastically saying that i'm a selfish ass, cos i sincerely think that my own life is the only part of this debate that i want to or should get into. the politics of matrimony don't even come close to interesting me. remind me not to ever pull that bullshit.

so i'm thinking, this means that i'm going to be living with my dear old pops 24/7. since after all, the only thing sending him back to cha-damn on the weekends was my ol' mam. and i was perfectly happy with the arrangement that we had. i got parental supervision four nights a week to keep me from turning into an utter doped-up moron, plus use of his car, plus weekends of freedom. plus i pay no rent. all was well. but i didn't friggin sign on to be living with a parental unit seven days a week. thus i am put in the most awkward position of all time. i mean, i love both my parents to bits, but i'm not big on the idea of constant parental supervision anymore. so what the fuck am i to do? do i hit my poor old dad while he's down from a pretty traumatizing experience, and tell him that i really don't want to live here anymore? or do i shut up and live another two years under the sad spectre of parental influence? jesus, if that ain't the million dollar question.

*sigh*

if i've ever had a week of friggin drama, this has been it. my laid-back stonerdom has been taxed to its limits. i wouldn't say that i'm exactly 'stressed,' more just concerned for the continued enjoyability of my living conditions.

ah well. it is what it is.

to myself, and to anyone looking for some peace of mind, here's this. my most beloved passage from any book ever, the final rolling cadenza of on the road. the first time i finished reading this book i was shaking by the last chapter, and i broke down and wept for a good five minutes as i read the last sentence.

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

sometimes there's so much beauty in the world.

hey, now.

2005-04-03T14:08:00.000-04:00

it's nice to know that not all conservatives have been brainwashed into believing GWB's neo-fascist doctrine or its overthetop idiotic populist rhetoric.

alright freedom!

oh, and another good one.

da freakin' pope, part two.

2005-04-03T01:57:00.000-05:00

so he's gone.

i'd like to announce my candidacy......

haha. seriously though. he was... the pope. and my feelings toward him are... ambivalent. it's sad when people die though. poor lil fella.

in any case here's an interesting article about that freakin' pope and our favourite coke-addled redneck. check it out, it's a good read. you have to watch like some lame ad or something, stupid corporate salon.com. they're still good though. good stuff.

c'est tout.