July 2003

I did something this week I swore I would never do. I paid for access to a website. In this case, it’s Salon. They had a pretty good deal for access, including 3 magazine subscriptions, PDA availability, audio books and more. I thought it was pretty sweet for $20 for one year. So far it’s great, they have some pretty interesting articles on there. I know that when Salon first started this idea, I didn’t see why people would want to pay for access. I guess I’m one of the converted, at least for this one case.

I just watched a man die. NB: Not in real life.

The Webster’s Dictionary definition is fine, accurate, succinct, but it doesn’t portray what it really means to be melodramatic. To be melodramatic, as a human being, is to be a sensitive, emotional, creative, eccentric person.

Last night Marcy and I went to Guelph to visit Lisa and Dave. We watched a bunch of movies. First up was Mean Machine. This has a lot of the same characters as Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. It was pretty funny, but the story is basically the same as The Longest Yard with football instead of football (yes that sentence does make sense). Next up was the final game in Shaolin Soccer. This movie came out in 2001 but it honestly looks like it was made in the late 80’s. The subtitles are ridiculously funny and the movie ranks very high on the Unintentional Comedy Rating system. Then we went to the theatre to go see the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or LXG as the promotional vehicles describe it. I was sorely disappointed in the movie, which is remarkable because my expectations were already pretty low. Marcy and Dave both fell asleep several times and the movie wasn’t terribly long either. Mr. Cranky’s review of the movie pretty much sums up my feelings plus he puts in a nice dig on Roger Ebert.

I usually get a regular assorted sub when I go to Mr. Sub. Looking at the nutritional information though, it seems that perhaps I should choose a different lunch.

Another QKM at lunch today – some people had a sign set up where The Lyric used to be and it said:

Are you a good person? Pass our personality test and you could win $20!

They were handing out very large papers with a U.S. $20 bill (this is Canada – we have our own bills) imprinted on the back. I didn’t pick one up, though perhaps I should have for the comedic value.

I wish there were more flower shops downtown so I could give my sweetie a nice surprise. It’s not much of a surprise if she reads this, but still.

Fortunately I have other plans. ***maniacal laughter***

i sail to the moon
i spoke too soon
and how much did it cost
i was dropped from
the moonbeam
and sailed on shooting stars

and sail us to the moon
sail us to the moon
sail us to the moon
sail us to the moon

Pyramid Song

I jumped in the river, what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
All the things I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

I jumped into the river
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
And all the things I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

How To Disappear Completely
That there, that’s not me
I go where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey

I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here, I’m not here….

I love you.

There comes a time in everybody’s life when they feel truly at peace. For some, it may be in their lovers’ arms. For others, it may be as they attain a life goal. And yet, there are those lucky few who feel at peace daily when they turn on their favorite piece of music. Bonobo’s “Dial M For Monkey” is that kind of LP. It’s funky, it’s soothing, and it is a journey through sexy jazz tendencies.

When I read this, I realized that I’ve been blessed with all 3 of those feelings of peace. This reviewer is right – Bonobo’s album is really quite the masterpiece. I haven’t felt this peaceful while listening to a new album in a long time. I’m relishing this (with mustard on the side).

Looking at the May 4th site, it appears that we did not actually see the May 4th Memorial. I guess I’ll have to see it the next time I’m down.

It was a good weekend. Marcy and I went to Ohio to visit my parents. It was the first time that I had seen the new house. It’s very nice, though they already have plans to change it. This is hardly unexpected, that’s just the way they are about decorating. Saturday we drove around the area. I got to see where Ian will be going to school next year – Kent State. Yes, that Kent State. We saw the memorial and to be honest I was a little disappointed but having a memorial is better than not having one. We then went to see Monroe Falls, which is an extremely fast-moving body of water. This might be due to the fact that the area had a ton of rain last week and there were some floods. The water wasn’t very clean, but it was still neat to see. After this we went to the Summit County Fair. That was definitely an experience. I’d never been to an American county fair before. In many ways it’s similar to a Canadian fair, but in other ways it’s definitely a different beast. Seeing little kids holding balloons that say “I Love Life” and “Choose Life – Your Mom Did” was a bit disturbing. Also the level of obesity is more than a little alarming. I went on a ride with Marcy – The Scrambler which brings back a lot of memories from the Burford Fair. I really miss going to that fair, but in a way it’s good that we don’t go anymore. Saturday night we watched The Gangs Of New York. It was pretty good. The bonus Discovery Channel show on the real gangs of New York at the time was equally interesting. We also talked to Ian for a bit. He’s working at a camp in Michigan making pretty good money too. He’s having a lot of fun. Saturday night he was going to see How To Deal. Tee hee, Ian must have a very good reason for going to see that movie. Yesterday we did some shopping – my parents bought me some stuff for our apartment (yay, now we can vacuum!). Marcy made us a wonderful meal before we left. I was so full! Then we drove the 6 hours back to Kitchener. It was more than a little tense at times, but we made it. It’s now a new week. Who knows what’s in store for our hero? Only time will tell…

I’ve been feeling pretty bleh today. I woke up with a sore throat and my stomach has been kind of finnicky. I think I’ll be taking a nap when I go home. It’s definitely going to be a low-key night tonight.

I want to tell you that I love you and that I want to come home.

Ok there’s good news – my music drive is not broken. I switched the power cables like Mark suggested and it seems to be working fine now. Awesome! Just in case of future disasters, I’ve made a listing of all of the music I have on that drive so at least I’ll know what I lost. Most of it I can recover I’m sure, it’d just be a ton of work.

Other good news – I’m finished with my first book (of 96) CDs. The pace has sped up tremendously since I started using MusicBrainz. The limiting factor now will be hard drive space. I think I’ll have enough, but I’m really not sure. I guess I can always buy more, bigger hard drives.

Another mystery solved

I was teaching (badly) Marcy how to play chess yesterday outside of Williams. They have chess pieces set up at the tables and they’ve always intrigued me. They’re never stolen or broken. Anyway, I found out who’s responsible for the chess pieces. It’s a man who’s job title is simply “Chess Coordinator”. He seems like a very nice man, but I wonder if he does this purely as a volunteer or if there’s a budget for the community chess program. It definitely made me think.

OK, so I’ve listened to the new album – Never Never Land. It’s really quite good, but very different from Psyence Fiction. The first track reminds me tremendously of one of the slow tracks off of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Even though DJ Shadow has no influence on this project, his sound is everywhere. James Lavelle even uses one of the samples from What Does Your Soul Look Like, Part 4 on one of the tracks (I Need Something Stronger). There are some good guest vocals on the disc. This is less of a electronica disc than a crossover rock-hiphop-electronica album the way DJ Shadow is sometimes described as.

I love these lyrics:

what’s it like to be back?

you see things in life and you’d be surprised at what you see.
life – your whole life – is changes.
you go through changes in your life.
one second you’ve got it made,
next second you’re down in the dumps.
and it goes back and forth
throughout your whole life.
one second you’ve got the most beautiful girl in the world,
next second you don’t even have a girlfriend no more.
and it goes back and forth, back and forth, you know?
and this is life, man, it’s changes.
this is what you’ve got to go through throughout your whole lifetime.

i’m going through changes
i’m going through changes
i’m going through changes

and it goes back and forth, back and forth, you know?
never, never, land.

That describes life rather succinctly to me. I’m sure this is supposed to be representative of James Lavelle’s own life and I hope that he sees more up days than down.

So last night the drive I’m storing half of my music on stops responding. The computer doesn’t even think it’s there anymore, but I do because I can physically see it. I had this problem before and I thought I had it fixed but apparently I don’t. I’m sure I’ll figure something out because I don’t even want to think of the consequences of me losing that information permanently. It just won’t happen.

Unrelated, like Mark I have become enamoured with b. (bee-dot). It’s a pretty cool set of Perl scripts to manage your bookmarks so that when you use multiple computers (like I do), you won’t have multiple different sets of bookmarks lying around. The interface could be a bit cleaner, but overall it’s pretty slick.

New albums this week – Ulrich Schnauss: A Strangely Isolated Place, Ugly Duckling: Taste The Secret, U.N.K.L.E. – Never Never Land. I’m in a “U” kind of mood I guess.

I just learned that there are two more Solid Steel albums in the works – The Herbaliser and Mr. Scruff. Hopefully they’ll both be out in the fall. It’s ridiculous how many of these compilation albums are out there, but the Solid Steel one is a series that I’ll definitely pick up.

Apparently when we were in Venice in May, we were extremely lucky because St. Mark’s Square (the famous one with all of the pigeons) spent a record 108 days underwater last year. That’s crazy! As this article discusses, they’re trying to do something about the problem. I noticed when I was there that they have meters monitoring the tide levels but I had no idea that it flooded that easily. It’s not particularly surprising though, considering how close the streets are to the water.

Ok, this will only interest me, but last night I upgraded Shadow from being a Red Hat machine to a Debian machine. This was no easy feat either, because the machine has 16 MB of RAM and a Pentium 150 with Overdrive. It took a very long time to install all of the packages. Since I put Stable on there it shouldn’t be changing all that much, so it won’t be too much of a problem to install or upgrade packages. I’ve wanted to do this for quite a while, but never really bothered to go ahead and do it. The old configuration was pretty weak – I couldn’t compile anything or really install any new packages because all of the dependencies were screwed up. Also I was very low on extra space, so I figured enough is enough. I think this solution will work out better for me in the long run.

I think I’ll be doing this come September. I’m already used to taking “mundane” pictures, so it shouldn’t be too hard to photograph my day.

ARE YOU CHRONICALLY DISSATISFIED?

Check all that apply.

1. You’re pretty good-looking, but you wish you were even better looking.

2. Your girlfriend loves you, but you wish she loved you a lot more.

3. Your job is fine, but you wish you had a better one. It would be nice to have a job you really loved, that didn’t feel like work at all.

4. You’re making OK money, but you’d really like to make more. You’d really like to be stinking fucking rich, to tell the truth.

5. Your friends are great, but you wish you could have the kinds of friends that are just easy to be around, no matter what, and really smart and understanding. You have a few friends like that, but it would be nice if they lived down the block so you wouldn’t have to drive too far to see them.

6. You feel pretty good today, but it’s way too hot outside and you need to lose about 5 lbs.

7. OK, maybe more like 10.

8. You feel good about yourself and your life on the whole, you have a lot going for you, things are great. You just need a few things to change in order to be truly happy. Just one or two things, nothing too big. With just a few changes, you’d be happy all the time. No more griping. No complaints at all. Any day now. Any day.

I really love this song. I was so excited when St Germain played it live in Toronto.

Unrelated – I’m becoming quite proficient at Photoshop. I’ve been kind of forced to learn it over the past couple of weeks and I’m fairly adept at manipulating images now.

Wait—it’s late
We’ve missed the date
Gone, I guess
With the rest, the rest

They’ll never wake us in time
They’ll never wake us in time
Maybe we’ll wait ‘til July

Now—at last
I hear them pass
Gone, I guess
With the rest, the rest

They’ll never wake us in time
They’ll never wake us in time
Maybe we’ll wait ‘til July
Then August, September
October, November or December

La la, la la la

I forgot to bring my wallet today. I officially do not exist if stopped by the police. I relish that thought. Mischief is definitely in order!

An album that definitely does not need a second listening is Gilles Peterson’s Worlwide Volume 3. Just by looking at the tracklisting I was excited:

• Detroit Experiment / Space Odyssey


• Banks Of 4 / One Day


• The Rh Factor / Poetry


• Henry Mancini & His Concert Orchestra / Butterfly


• Amy Winehouse / Take The Box


• Jermaine Jackson / You Like Me Don’t You


• Marvin Gaye / Heavy Love Affair


• Raphael Saadiq / Skyy, Can You Feel Me


• Kelis / Little Suzie


• Koop / Koop Interlude


• RSL / Wesley Music


• James Brown / Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose – Fantasista Re-Formation


• Spanish Harlem Orchestra / La Banda


• DJ Gregory / Elle


• Terri Walker Featuring Mos Def / Guess You Didn’t Love Me

Last night I bought Honku. There have been times when I’ve been frustrated or angry while in the car. That’s part of the reason I don’t drive that much anymore. I saw a post about this “phenomenon” on Metafilter yesterday and decided to pick up the book at Chapters. I haven’t ready any of the “honkus” in the book, but they have samples on the website.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the new Naked Music CD – Lost on Arrival. It’s pretty funky, but on first listen I was decidely unimpressed. Maybe all it needs is another listen.

I love Musicbrainz. It’s by far the coolest program to use to organize one’s music. Basically it calculates a signature of each music file and then verifies with its own database and makes an educated guess as to what it could be. If it finds the track, it will know the artist, album, and track number. It will tell you how certain it is about each track and you can say that it made a mistake. Also, if it can’t identify some of the tracks, they’re placed in an “unidentified” tab. You can look up an album and then “tag” a track as what you think it should be. So basically for me there’s far less manual work and with the use of Flexible Renamer you can reduce that work almost down to zero. Things get kind of messy for various artists’ discs, but there’s probably a way around that. The only other problem that I’ve found is that it doesn’t like adding apostrophes (‘) or periods (.) into the track titles. Sometimes I can be too stubborn to try something new and this time I’m really glad that I listened to Mark, albeit the second time he told me about this process.

As I was walking home yesterday, I noticed that the construction site I walk by everyday had its facade taken away. All I have to say is wow, that’s going to be a very nice apartment complex. The only disadvantage I see is that there are some ground-floor apartments that have their windows facing the alley. I’m not sure that’s the safest thing in the world, but it won’t be me living there.

Last night was pretty low-key – watched some TV, did some music organization and watched the third episode of Cowboy Bebop.

As I said, I did more music organization last night. I’m basically done with the prog rock section of my collection, including Gentle Giant, Camel, Yes and Genesis. I keep forgetting how much that I have and actually almost everyday I’m surprised to find that I own a particular album or artist’s works. Pleasantly surprised! I was looking over the amount of music that I still need to organize and it’s pretty daunting. I’m determined though, and determination will keep me focused.

Half day of work tomorrow, it’s wedding time! No, not mine, it’s Thomas and Christal’s wedding in Orangeville. Should be loads of fun. I can’t wait.

I’m not sure why but this song makes me feel extremely nostalgic.

For what? Nothing in particular, just an unspecified time in the past.

Is this a recent thing? No, I felt this way the first time I heard this song.

How can you feel vaguely nostalgic? It’s not difficult a concept really, it’s not like this song is attached to some memory or event in my past. It has an ethereal quality to it, it’s a very layered song with guitars, vocals, and piano. It has a very moody feel to it and it just makes me think.

Yes, but think of what? A time that never existed.

Are you kidding me? I don’t think so.

Fine, well I don’t believe you. I’m not asking you to, that’s just how I feel.

I mean to mention this in my post about A Mighty Wind. I really love the sound of the autoharp. It’s a very crisp and airy sound, very different from the harp. I’m pretty sure Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet) uses one on some of the songs from Pause. This is such a great album in many ways. I remember the first time I heard it – I was blown out of my socks (fortunately not literally). I yearn to discover music like that. I wonder who will be next.

I had a nap. My headache was much better after that. I describe the process I used as “pushing my brain inside-out”. That’s exactly what it felt like and I was much clearer afterwards.

I won at Jeopardy. As usual. It’s so much easier when you’re at home. I wonder if I could even score in the positive were I to appear.

I watched While You Were Sleeping. Well I tried not to watch too much of it, but the tv is so close to the computer. I was renaming music and I’m now basically halfway through. Alright!

I watched the first two sessions of Cowboy Bebop. I got these last summer for my brother but never bothered to watch them (though I was always intending to do so). It’s a very good show, well-written and nicely animated. I especially like the jazz music they use a soundtrack. It adds a little bit of class. Hopefully I’ll be able to get through the rest of the episodes (and the movie) before long. That’ll be one more thing crossed off of my list.

I’ve been reading Generation X – Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland. Quite a fine book. I’m loving the little definitions at the sides of pages, the one I posted last night almost describes me perfectly. I have so many books that I want to read and I’m not even talking about books I want to buy and read but books that I have lying around the apartment that I want to read. Next on the list is going to be Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf, which just sounds interesting on principle. I love books like this and I’m looking forward to reading about the food business. When I go home next I’m planning on bringing back a bunch of books, though I’m not entirely sure when I’ll have time to read them. I guess I’ll have to do my best to make time.

Musical hairsplitting: The act of classifying music and musicians into pathologically picayune categories: “The Vienna Franks are a good example of urban white acid folk revivalism crossed with ska.”

I’ve had a pretty bad headache over the past couple of days. It’s a headache unlike any other that I’ve had. I don’t usually get them very often, in fact it’s usually either a migraine or nothing. This one is unique because I can make the pain go away by making my brain unfocus. I can do this while listening to music or reading a book. I think I need a nap when I get home.

Last night Marcy and I went to see A Mighty Wind at the Princess. It was a very funny film, by the same director as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. I was very surprised at the quality of the music and musical abilities of the cast; I think for the most part they were really playing all of those guitars and ukeleles and banjos. Impressive! I think I might try and find the soundtrack, it looks like there are some nice songs on it.

There was a very impressive moon last night, it was really huge and quite beautiful. We went into the courtyard behind my apartment and watched the moon rise. It was a very calm moment. We also watched as a skunk scurried along the ground near the warehouse and the (now) empty lot beside it. There were a couple of times when I thought we might end up sprayed but luckily we managed to escape that.

I’ve started adding comments to my pictures, in the hope that they won’t appear so random at times.

We don’t have to worry
Life goes where it does
Faster than a bullet
From an empty gun

Turn yourself over
Loose change we could spend
Grinding down diamonds
Round, round, round the bend

People pushing harder
Up against themselves
Make their daggers sharper
Than their faces tell

Babe, its your time now
Loose change we could spend
Where we are going
Round, round, round the bend

This weekend was much more subdued than last weekend. Friday we went to Ancaster (I guess it’s technically Copetown) for Thomas and Christal’s pig roast to celebrate their wedding this Friday. Yeah I took pictures, they’re here. Saturday I rented a couple of movies for Marcy, because she’s still feeling ill – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. This was the 3rd time I saw Harry Potter and the 1.5th time I’d seen the other movie. It was playing on the flight home from London and I watched a bit of it. It’s a pretty formulaic movie, but I wasn’t really expecting anything different. There was an amazing sunset on Saturday night with the sun reflecting up some beautiful colours on the clouds. I got a lot of Polyphony-related work done (well just the organizing part) and I’m nearing the halfway mark, which makes me very happy. I’m running out of space though, and that’s something I’m going to have to fix soon. I think it’s the coolest thing to have so much music on-demand. It will be far cooler once we have this system built. Hopefully Mark and I can meet sometime in the next little while and start coding/designing/etc. Yesterday I went on another exploration adventure (pictures here), this time up Joseph Street. It was far more commercial/industrial than the other walks I’ve been on. I found a spot basically right next to Victoria where kids go to smoke up and even though it’s so close to the street, I doubt anyone would pay it much attention because it’s so well covered. I saw some really fascinating things, especially as you get closer to the railway tracks. I’m thinking of making this into an ongoing series – My Neighbourhood. Basically I’ll go exploring anything within a reasonable walking distance. That should make up most of the downtown area. I’m looking forward to my next expedition.

Easily one of my favourite 4 Hero tracks. The strings and choir just melt over me. Even though I’ve had this track for more than 3 years now, I still return to it. It’s nice to have songs like that. It comforts me in a way. I’m not really sure what connotations I have with this song, I guess the clearest one is the house we had on Erb St. I remember playing this song, recording it to tape because I was going to drive home that weekend and I didn’t have a CD player. Justin was studying intensely like he usually did and asked me to turn my music down. I guess it’s not a great memory and that’s hardly why I keep listening to it. It really is a good song.

I commute to work by foot. So far this hasn’t been a problem until today. There was a torrential downpour that started as soon as I left my building. I had enough foresight to bring my jacket, but it was soaked through within a couple of minutes. The alley that I usually walk through was basically a river and I had to spend a couple of minutes huddled under an awning when the really hard rain was coming down. My pants are only quasi-dry now and I’ve been at work for an hour and a half. I’m not complaining though, I love that I live so close.

You saw me crying but you didn’t want to look
You heard me hurting but you didn’t want to listen

This could have been something
This could have been really something
Tell me something more
Tell me something more worth living for

You felt me wanting but you didn’t want to give
You sensed me sinking but you really couldn’t save me

This could have been something
This could have been really something
Tell me something more
Tell me something more worth living for

People come and go it’s just the way of the world
Love just ebbs and flows what’s left for us to rely on

This could have been something
This could have been really something
Tell me something more
Tell me something more worth living for

This page is always interesting to look at on two levels:

Favourites from today are the forked-tongue, the baby with 4 legs, and the fork in the stomach.

I watched part of the new CBS “reality” show Cupid last night. Easily one of the most ridiculous shows I’ve ever seen. To think that this girl is serious about finding long-term (OK, max a year) happiness is unfathomable. The guys they show are beyond lame. The one thing I was thinking though is that there’s no way this kind of show would fly if it were a guy looking for a wife. That’s just my impression.

I’ve always enjoyed this song, especially the excerpt of a Bill Hick show in the UK. Here’s his rant:

“By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself. No, no, no it’s just a little thought. I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself – seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you’re going, ‘there’s going to be a joke coming,’ there’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, ‘he’s doing a joke… there’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking makinations. Machi… Whatever, you know what I mean.

“I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, ‘Oh, you know what Bill’s doing, he’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market, he’s very smart.’ Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! ‘Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now, he’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.’ Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! ‘Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill’s very bright to do that.’ God, I’m just caught in a fucking web. ‘Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market – look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar…’

“How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you?’ ‘What didya do today honey?’ ‘Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight.’ [snores] ‘Yeah we just said you know is your baby really too loud? You know,’ [snores] ‘Yeah, you know the mums will love it.’ [snores] Sleep like fucking children, don’t ya, this is your world isn’t it?”

I’ve put the pictures from Marcy’s party on Saturday online. They’re available here. Most of them are pretty candid and actually a lot of them were taken by Ed. He was going camera-crazy.

Poor Marcy, she’s been very sick since last night. My suspicion is that it might be food poisoning, but she’s gone to Health Services to see the doctor. Hopefully she gets over this soon.

It seems that the entire uwaterloo.ca domain is not operational this morning. Fortunately I could still use Google’s cache to look stuff up.

Oh my, how can anyone eat a whole bag of these at a time? I needed to get a glass of water to counteract the force of the sour. It’s ok though, these babies will do me for a while and they definitely got me out of my lull that’s so commonly a symptom of PLFS.

http://taat.fi/taat/porrasturvat/

Lots of fun!

I’ve figured out why my elbows have been hurting like madmen – it’s my chair at work. I’ve been resting them on the armrests (I know – bad ergonomics). I’m going to have to improve my typing posture otherwise I’ll be permanently arms akimbo.

Well I’ll tell you – I ended up staying inside, working on my Polyphony-related activities. I got quite a lot done, which pleased me greatly. Of course I shouldn’t be spending all of my time with my music, I know, but once I start it’s hard to stop. I’ll try and restrain myself in the evenings though and not be so zoned out.

Instant Vintage interruption:

Come with me,
You’ve got me wide open,
And I’m digging you
So baby keep it coming.

Truly indeed,
From your majesty,
Tell me can you feel me?

There’s no describing how much this song means to me. I read today that Raphael Saadiq wrote this song the night Aaliyah died. I don’t really have the same connotations when I hear it, but it really does describe how I feel.

It’s strange hearing a song way before it becomes part of an album. This is one of my favourite songs from OK Computer and Radiohead were playing it in concert 2 years before the album was released. It sounds pretty similar too, which doesn’t surprise me that much.

It’s going to be a glorious day.

At least today my contacts weren’t driving me crazy. I don’t know if my eyes have changed shape slightly or whether I just haven’t been cleaning/putting them in properly. Today I was very careful and it was much more comfortable than days past. I have an urge to do some urban exploration, there are some very curious warehouse properties downtown that are calling my name. I know there are safety issues, but still. I was reading some interesting pieces on Kitchener today, apparently the area I’m living in used to be a huge drug area. I guess the question of the night is whether I want to go for another walk around the area or whether I should stay indoors. Either one would be fun. I’ll let you know what I end up doing, because I know you’re dying to know.

Why yes you did. They’re available here. By far the biggest gallery is Europe because it was the longest trip I’ve ever taken. I hope the server stays stable enough for people to see the pics.

It was a good weekend. Friday Marcy and I went to see Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. It was pretty silly, but Marcy really wanted to see it. There was supposed to be a huge storm on Friday night but it never materialized. There was a classic car show on King Street as well, so it would have been really interesting to see all of these classic car owners scramble around when it started to rain. Odd occurrence – when we were walking to the theatre a bunch of cop cars (one almost hitting a stroller carrying a baby) screamed by us and stopped at Ontario and King (by the Mr. Sub). The cops ran out and went over to some disturbance that was taking place. I don’t really know what happened, but it was really strange seeing all of these cops come out of nowhere.

Saturday was Marcy’s birthday party. We went grocery shopping in the morning to get some snacks for the people coming over in the afternoon. Some people went swimming (in the rain) but were kicked out when it was discovered that someone broke the rope dividing the shallow and deep ends. We went to Thai Viet for dinner, which was pretty good though it took forever for everyone to get their food. We (meaning Ed and I) bet Andy to eat a spoonful of super-hot sauce. He did it but his heart was racing and his mouth was on fire for a good 20 minutes. After dinner we went to Marcy’s house for cake and drinks. My cake seemed to go over well, at least I haven’t heard of any deaths so far. After this it was Spur time. Marcy sang (very well) and some other crazy stuff happened. Ed tried running home instead of getting in our cab and got pretty far before we caught up with him. Marcy was very drunk, she drank way more than anyone expected.

Sunday was pretty lazy. Marcy was quite hungover (surprise). The Good Sir (Yaks-a-lot) made an appearance – Ed was sick over the balcony (I’m 15 floors up) and also the regular route. He also managed to clog my toilet so we had to go get a plunger. Stubbornly though, it didn’t do much help. One of the reasons Andy came down this weekend was to pick up his stuff in storage but the guy keeps weird hours which made Andy quite mad. He decided to stay an extra day because he already drove all this way with a big car (Taurus station wagon). We had lunch with Jeff and then went to see The Italian Job. It was probably the most enjoyable of the 3 I saw this week (the other being Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde), though it was admittedly a glorified commercial for BMW/Rover. I hear it’s a remake of a 60’s movie, which makes sense. The driver from The Transporter was in the movie, though he didn’t do much crazy driving (besides with a boat at the beginning). Last night we just relaxed and watched movies on TV.

I’m slowly but surely organizing my music collection – I’m on CD 22 out of 134 right now. It’s taking a while, but as long as I encounter no hardware problems, it should be finished soon enough. I’m itching to get started on the programming side of things though, this week I’m going to look into the stuff that Mark has been working on.

I also have all of my pictures available, but the server where they’re residing is being very stubborn right now. It keeps on crashing and I can’t figure out why. I’m using Gallery as my album organizer now, which has some very cool features including slideshow capabilities and public commenting. I’ll post the location when I get the server problem fixed.

Last night I helped make a cake. Yes I know to some people this may not seem like a big thing but it is to me. It’s even for a birthday party tomorrow, which made it more important to get it right. It’s a raspberry/strawberry cheesecake. It sure looks and smells good, I’ll tell you after tomorrow whether it actually tastes good. If people start throwing up and/or dying then I might choose not to mention it, but I think the odds on that happening are only 3-1.

Lisa’s been praising this band (The Mars Volta) for a while now and I finally got around to listening to their album – Deloused in the Comatorium. Although Pitchfork’s review isn’t exactly favourable, I find this to be an enjoyable listen, and I think it might be a good antidote to PLFS (Post-Lunch Fatigue Syndrome).

Good news – one of my favourite radio shows, The Higher Ground show, which appears every Thursday from 8-10 PM on CIUT is now online! Hooray! They have archived shows. I couldn’t be happier right now. I’ve been waiting and hoping that they would offer archived shows for 2 years now and it’s finally a reality.

Bad news – Creative now has a 60 GB version of the Nomad Zen. Mine can only carry a meagre 20 GB. I guess that’s progress for you.

I should probably come up with a new picture soon. The one I have now needs updating.

The Sea to Sky games are on! Congrats to the bid and with any luck I’ll be able to see the games in 2010. This is definitely exciting.