Ceiling Abstractions

Tuesday!

I think that will be the big day. I'm busy in the early evening but I should be back by 7:30 or 8. I think we'll barbecue for a bit and drink later on. I'm hoping we can find a window between Alf's arrival and Christ's depature. That should be around ten-ish.

Of course, if the ale is behind schedule, all bets may be off. But we'll see.

It's best to just say how you feel. Be dignified and artful about it, but try and be unambiguous at the same time. There's everything to gain and very little to lose.

Now, you have the knowledge. But do you want to put it to use?

I wish I knew. Then things would be easier.

Pumkpin Ale Tasting Party

It will happen early next week. Maybe at Beardo's place, maybe here. Barbecuing may occur, but it won't be the main event.

The brewery told me it should be ready by Monday. It would likely be growler-only that day, since bottling takes time. Only a few hundred litres have been made, so we've got to get on this.

I don't want to plan a party for Monday, in case the product is not ready. But I will visit the store after work on that day, and hopefully fill up the growler. Once I have evidence of the brew's existence, 24 hours' notice shall be given for the party (if it's at my place). Anyone who wants some should get to the store during that time.

What I Picture For The Party:

I think we ought to barbecue, socialize and/or drink other beverages until a certain hour, say, 9pm (or later, depending on how many people have conflicts). At that time, I think everyone who's been waiting to try it should all take a drink at once. That is, after an awesome toast.

This is a lot of hype. I think the beer will live up to it, but even if it does not, getting super-hyped up about something is kind of fun in and of itself.

Updates to follow.

More Romance

Today I noticed a girl sitting on a park bench. It was a bench where people normally smoke, but she was not. Then, a motorcycle pulled up. It was driven by a guy. He wore big thick gloves and a padded jacket that looked like it was meant for motorcycle riders. He had a backpack on.

The guy and girl greeted each other, but I could not hear what they were saying. I got the sense that they were a couple.

The guy opened his backpack and produced a second helmet, which the girl put on. He held the backpack open while she put her handbag inside, and zipped it up. Then, he took off his jacket and gave it to her to put on. He was just wearing a t-shirt underneath. Next he gave her his gloves, but she had put them on before she could zip up the protective jacket. So he zipped it up for her. She got on the back of the bike and they drove away.

I like chivalry. The whole exchange left me with a happy feeling.

I think it would be cool to be described as a "bon vivant".

Quote

A couple of quotes come to mind when I look back on last week's GS show:

"We hear your one hand clapping.
It's music to our ears.
You don't like the way we sound.
We don't like the way you hear."

- Ja wbr eak er

"We gotta tune up. We pound these fuckin' guitars like jackhammers. Whattya think, we're lightweights?"

- the Mi sfi ts

I want to do something, but I don't know what. I think I'm getting a cold. I've got to take the garbage out tonight.

What a bad evening. I wish I had some mindless, 800-question survey to fill out. It's either feast or famine with me, too much to do or not enough. When I'm overloaded I'll wish I felt like this instead. Kind of like wishing for snow on a very hot day. You don't really want snow, do you?

Some Advice For The Young People Of Today

- making out is the new sexual intercourse

- protect your hearing; otherwise you'll be 34 years old, lying awake in bed listening to BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP until you're too exhausted to take anymore

Figth Illiteraracy.

Photo by белорус Рикк.

I'm not sure what to do. Give me a sign.

My hat goes off to middle-aged Quebecers; thank you for still caring about your appearance. It makes me feel less gloomy about the future. And more gloomy about being Nova Scotian.

I bought several kinds of exotic beer on my trip. See below, and then some.

This was a great Day Off.

I'm not sure what to do. Give me a sign.

Never There When You Want It, Always There When You Don't

The title refers to the urge to abstain from alcohol.

I'm going to Quebec later this week. It's been planned for a while, and over the summer I've thought a lot about bringing back all sorts of microbrews I can't find around here. Like this one, or this one (which is not from Quebec, but I've never seen it anywhere else).

In an unprecendented turn, however, I've had no desire to drink over the past week or so. Sheesh, I only get to Quebec every so often. What to do?

I think I'm going to bring back all the beer I planned to and see what happens. Last time I did this, I went on a colossal bender, but I don't see that happening in my current mood.

Maybe I'm suffering from "pumpkin ale letdown". I just got too damn worked up about the stuff. It's not going to be out for at least a couple of weeks.

I dunno. Some temporary sobriety might do me good. I hear it's, like, healthy and stuff.

Hangin out all by myself
I don't wanna be with anybody else
I just wanna be with you
I just wanna have something to do

Tonight.

- the R amone s

Just A Pilot? I Got TWO JOBS.

And it's hard sometimes. But not when each band practice generates righteous rock n roll blasts on consecutive evenings.

I Don't Really Hate Your Band. It's Just The Introduction To The Opposite Sketches.

Soon...

Classic Rock Radio

I can hear it coming in my window. It's that reggae-ish LZ song, you know the one. I used to like it, but classic rock radio has beaten the goodness out of that song, and now it just sucks.

I listen to old music (like, pre-2000) all the time - it's probably well over half of what I listen to. But it's ever-changing. I'm always digging up old music I've never heard before, listening to it to death, then moving on to something else. Old favorites will always get a spin, but they are subject to the law of diminishing returns, to one degree or another.

I feel the same about music I play. It's got to be constantly moving for me, filtering the old through the new in gradually decreasing amounts (though never zero). This is what makes me happiest.

Eb and I have been talking about our old bands and I explained to him that in the "old days" I'd typically form a band dedicated to one style of music and one only. I'd crank out as many songs as I could in that formula, then get bored of it and throw the band away.

I don't want to operate that way anymore because I think you can wring a lot more out of a band if you let it do many different things and evolve over time. Old Band was like this, on a less ambitious scale than what I'd prefer today. I like a band that's reliable, but reliable doesn't mean "able to reproduce their first album exactly again and again". It just means the band needs to consistently be able to impress me with whatever new tricks they're coming up with.

When people like bands/musical styles that never change at all over time, I find that depressing. Take the blues; to a purist, it never changes. But I'm not interested in hearing someone trying to ape Robert Johnson in 2006. Certainly, I'll always give full props to RJ but in this day and age, the skills he pioneered need to be applied in different ways in order to hold my attention.

I think some people see music the way they see a cup of coffee. They need it to get through each day. The ritual and routine of it. Same time of day, same contents. Maybe they drink it in the same place. Submarine sandwiches can also be like this. I have good friends who've worked in that industry, and it's clear that many people are focused on total regularity of their bread and ingredients, to the point that any deviation leads to disappointment. And hey, I'm no different with sandwiches. If a cucumber ever found its way on there, it has the potential to throw my whole day off, seriously.

I don't view music in those terms. I get bored too easily now, not like when I was younger. When I see people demanding the same "product" time and again, I just want to give them something different that they'll hate, just to insult their need for sameness. Punk rock comes to mind here. Punk to me is supposed to be about youth, excitement and irreverence. Playing the exact same music for years, or trying to a copy an old style while adding nothing new at all is the exact opposite of what punk is all about to me. I feel like that sort of band/scene is living in a dream world. Punk is just a cup of coffee to them, a little shot of caffeine and sugar to get through the day. It's absolute and unchanging, so don't fuck with it.

My idea of a punk band does everything it can to mock, belittle and destroy this way of thinking. Punk was a fad, just like every kind of music is a fad. Some fads leave lasting impressions that turn up in future fads. That's good! I agree! But believing your own-personal-favorite fad is somehow supposed to stay the same forever is just stupid. Ultimately, fads-in-stasis will cease to affect fads of the future, thereby becoming culturally useless.

Actually, I take that back. The total lameness of the fad-in-stasis could well inspire others to not be that way. I guess it is good for something.

Caroline, No

.

BBQ Night In Canada

I got most of the way through the week without coming up with any kind of theme for a weekend barbecue. Yet, we will once again worship at the alter of St-Shean tomorrow (Friday) night. Since I have no formula in mind, I'm suggesting that folks just bring their own stuff and just slap it on there. Sharing is cool too, but I'm gonna more or less fend for myself this time. Maybe I'll chip in some... well... chips!

I have band practice until 9pm, so I will be the second-string QB for the evening.

Who will step up and carry the sacred torch??

Edit - If I didn't invite you it's for one of three reasons:

1) I don't want you there

2) I want you there but forgot

3) I'd rather it be just you and me for the moment

High School

High school was actually not that bad, especially considering how weird I looked in an overwhelmingly non-weird school - PAH. I think it's funny that three of my past five roommates have been PA guys, probably just the sort I would have hung out with back in the old days.

I was not part of any clique or group in high school. I felt like I had very few common interests with anyone around me. That said, I had a small group of friends with whom I was very close, but even this group had little in common. I think we were brought together based on our weird senses of humour alone. Despite the fact that we've all grown apart, I wouldn't have traded those friendships for anything.

I could (but won't) whine about elementary school and early junior high being shitty but I have to say, high school was pretty unremarkable for me. One weird thing about our group was that there were no girls. This was by no means deliberate. I don't know why it worked out that way. I think I was really intimidated by women for a long time. Friendships with girls were severely punished by boys at my elementary school, which probably had something to do with it. That + hormones = fucked up situation.

With no females in my small group of friends and next to no strange-looking, punk-rock-listening girls at my school, period, I was left without a lot of options for teenage crushes. In grade ten and part of grade eleven I liked this girl who seemed down with metal. She mentioned an AC/DC song in her yearbook write-up. I was super-into her, but of course I'd never have the nerve to go up and introduce myself. One time one of my friends put some sort of love-note on her locker and signed my name to it, which really made me lose it. I was seriously beside myself, and I didn't even drink back then. I think that ultimately killed my crush on that girl.

Then I got a crush on this other girl. It was so bad I could barely speak her name. I wouldn't make the mistake of letting it slip to my friends this time. As prom approached though, I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. It was sooo bad. This girl had much less in common with me than the last one. She was really preppy, hung with the honours-class crowd, etc. We had NOTHING in common, but that could be said of basically every girl in the school. One good thing, though, was that I had an "in" with her, being in a bunch of the same classes. We e-mailed each other a bit (hey, I'm not that old), and were on a semi-conversational basis. It was not easy keeping it together when I talked to her, to put it mildly.

I remember in one of her e-mails she mentioned liking the band the Grapes Of Wrath. Of course, I was into punk and metal, and wanted nothing to do with that sort of weak indie rock. But when I heard the band was doing a free show at a local record store, I was all over it - thinking she'd be there. Asking her to go with me was out of the question. It was so hard to let her know I liked her, even though it must have been blatantly obvious. I just assumed she'd be there, since she'd spoken of the band in such glowing terms.

Of course, she never showed. And in a bizarre twist, I ended up really liking the Grapes Of Wrath for a long time.

Finally, prom time was at hand. Asking her to go with me was absolutely BRUTAL. I don't know how I managed to do it. I asked her via e-mail, which I'm sure had only existed for about a year. Thank god, because I could never have done it in person. As it turns out, she had agreed to go with a platonic friend just days earlier. I was crushed, and he was my new worst enemy. I'd never met the guy and knew nothing else about him.

Unable to just come out and declare my feelings, I sought yet another obvious hint to drop. I would have to go to the prom and ask her to dance.

So I'm at the prom, putting off the special dance for as long as possible. The end of the night is drawing near and finally, I work up the nerve. I ask her to (slow-...duh) dance, and we dance. To track five of this album.

After the prom, a bunch of us went to a party. It was pretty much all of my close friends, plus some... wait for it... girls. And guess who was among them.

I'd had enough of this emotional roller coaster. I was worn out, and just wanted to get it all off my chest with her. I decided that at the end of the night I would offer her a lift home, whereupon I would spill my guts.

I watched the clock... counted her yawns... waiting for the moment of having to go home... at last, it arrived. And just at that moment, one of my friends looks at her and goes "hey, ya want a lift home on my motorbike?"

How could I compete with that? It's a damn motorbike.

It took me another two years to get over that girl, and I never did tell her how I felt (as if she couldn't figure it out). I thought I'd get a chance to; when yearbooks were being signed, she gave me her phone number. I called her a total of maybe three times. Each time she was about to go out or meet someone somewhere. Ok, I get the picture.

Years later, I attempted to sum up the high school experience in a song with Pop Band 3. I wrote it at the age of 24, so there was definite nostalgia there. As Gary F once wrote, "...memory is never accurate, what was dim can now seem bright..." I tried to highlight aspects I felt especially nostaligic about; the PA Quad (which could still be accessed when I was in grade ten, but had been closed off by the time I'd graduated) and roller rinks (which had become extinct before I even got to high school) to name two.

There was a fair bit of revisionist history in there, actually. For example, I very rarely cut class, and never huffed cooking spray or "wrecked" shit. Although I never reached the point of being shot down by popular girls, I feel the song highlights the absurdity of having liked them in the first place.

*********************************************************************************

Girls At My High School

Written by me, early 1997. Recorded by "Pop Band 3", spring 1998.

Sitting in the Quad, she looks so fine
I see that girl, I wanna make her mine
But everybody knows that she thinks I'm a creep
And her boyfriend wants to pound my face into next week

So I'm going straight to Wheelies when I get home from school
Cause the roller skater girls always look so cool

I'm gonna walk - I'm cuttin' history
I'm gonna walk - that's how it's gonna be
I'm just hangin' out checkin' out all the girls at my high school

I got my No-Stick Pam and a brown paper bag
'Cause economics class is really a drag
I wanna hang around where the prom queens go
But all they do is laugh at me, oh no no

So I'm gonna get a car and when the top comes down
I'm gonna have fun, gonna wreck this town.

***********************************************************************************

So yeah, that's 34-year-old-me quoting 24-year-old-me singing about being 17-year-old-me. I kind of want people to hear that band, but I don't want to make a __space for them, hence their sporadic appearances in this blog.

But yeah. High school.

Lyrics

When a song reminds me of somebody, it's usually not because of the lyrics. I hate to say it, but apart from recognizing them as "good", good lyrics seldom make a deep impression on me. I can tell the difference between "good", "bad" and "meh", however. Bands who fall consistenly in the "meh" category leave me thinking that lyrics are just an inconvenience to them, something necessary to avoid being an instrumental band. Bad lyrics are often very earnest, but horribly executed; conversely, they may just be a stupid joke, or ironic without cleverness.

There are lots of "good" lyrics out there. I was going to post one example that particularly impresses me, but they seem to have been deleted just about everywhere at the request of the artist. Plus, the allmusic review for this song is particularly harsh on the lyrics. The reviewer has a very different take on the song than I do. Maybe the band doesn't even like them.

So if I say the song "Cheeseburger" reminds me of you, it's not because I think you're a slob or something. It's because chorus effect is an express ticket to my heart.

I Have An Overactive Imagination

Today, I had this imaginary funk-soul tune stuck in my mind non-stop. It was kind of fluid and abstract, but involved rhyming of the lines "makin' love" and "bacon love".

Full Disclosure

There are many situations where being completely up-front and honest are counterproductive to one's goals. Business is an obvious one, but romance also falls into this category. I'm not talking about strategic lying, here - just holding back some of one's thoughts about certain things, at certain times.

This was/is a difficult thing for me to got used to. You'd think it would be endearing to have a "nothing to hide" attitude about everything, but I think you're more than likely to ruin everything if you take this approach.

Mystique is part of the game. It's what makes people curious about you in a potentially romantic setting. If being mysterious and playfully evasive is hard for you, that's a very important implement missing from the toolbox of love.

Ineffective Flirtation...

...is high comedy.

Sport vs The Arts

Maybe this won't be the profound entry I'd envisioned. It's pretty simple, actually - most people like one or the other, but not both. The Arts appeal to one's intellect and sense of freedom. Sport is obviously very visceral, and not that intellectual. For me, the appeal of sports I enjoy is in how they bring order (your team scoring) to chaos (the other team trying to stop them) through physical strength and force of will. I like Sport and The Arts because I crave a balance of Order and Chaos.

In a way, watching a sporting event is like playing a slot machine. You pay money (or watch commercials), then sit back and see who wins. This may sound dumb, but look how many people enjoy sitting in front of slot machines waiting to see if sevens or cherries come up. I think the appeal of the two is very similar, and they are both addictive. Gambling can rob you of a lot of money, but watching sports really just costs spare time, and seems less likely to divert one's attention and resources from critical things. I won't win any money by watching sports, but I enjoy seeing impressive displays of athletic skill. That's the other part of the payback I guess.

"The Arts" is a broad concept. I'm talking primarily about music. Unlike sports, this is something I know how to do, and am good at - whether it be playing or simply appreciating. It's not so much a diversion to give me kicks in my spare time. As I've said before, it's like building forts in the woods when you're a little kid. I built quite a few in my day, and the appeal for me was identical to that of being in a band. When you go to someone else's show you're hanging out in their shitty homemade fort, which is almost as cool as having them over to yours. We like to look at each other's forts and absorb pointers on how to make the our next one. We're not architects. We're kids with vision and axes.

I wanted to say more, but those last two sentences sounded too cool not to end with.

BBQ Tonight

For all of our hard-working, furniture-moving, wine-brewing pals.

What Does It Mean?

Ok, so Ube's been listening to this and I've been listening to that.

I think we may have finally out-metalled Poison.