THTR&FLM 4A06: Honours Performance Project
This class is a big deal. In some ways it counts as a thesis project, I guess. I had some ideas going in, they have been altered, but I’m pretty excited about what we’re doing now. Traditionally the course has been an every-man-or-woman- for-him-or-her-self- gets-to-direct-a-50-minute-play- of-their-choosing type of affair. Now we have to work in groups, which led to nervousness going in, but worked out very well for me. I’m working now with already friends Kristen and Marco on a piece of interactive theatre that will explore Hamilton’s relation to the steel mills. Steelcity, Hammertown, the smell, all that good stuff. It will be a lot of work, but the kind of work that I welcome doing (creative and fulfilling). Cockett is teaching it, of course. He is british and cockettish, which is more often than not a good thing. We get a week in the theatre for our play without having to share it with another production, and it can be as long as it needs to be. Look for its performance coming up probably late February or early March kind of a deal. Maybe. Also track its progress and find out more (eventually) on the production blog. It will probably be one of those pretty gruelling at times but ultimately awesome kind of experiences.

ENGLISH 2I06: Modern British Literature
Wow. Second year classes all of a sudden seem so.. straightforward. So we read a bunch of books, right an essay, do some minor group work and do an exam. The prof, one Monsieur Granofsky, seems pretty… straightforward. I can see it maybe getting boring, or too by-the-books, but, I bought the books and they look pretty cool in general. I love Heart of Darkness. Well, not super worried about this one, like I said. Seems straightforward enough, but I do want to actually read the books for it; hopefully I can manage that. We’re going to get a new professor in January, and it’s hard to know yet if that’s a good thing

MUSIC 2II3: Popular Music In North America and the United Kingdom: Post-World War II
Whoo baby. This one is right up my alley? Or is it? Right now it looks like one of those put minimal effort in and hopefully come away with a good mark deals. I’ll probably learn some stuff about older music, which I tend to not end up listening to. The prof however is largely uninspiring. A rather bland lecture style, with some very occasional signs that she does know what humour might be. One thing that bugs me is that she won’t put up her power point presentations online, which I feel is an outdated practice. Most teachers have realized now that it’s easier for the students to pay attention when they aren’t frantically trying to copy things down from the board. But this is one of them regurgitation courses (whatever Dr Fast claims) and there isn’t much that she says that isn’t on the slides, so if they were online maybe attendance would drop significantly. I also disagree with some of the things she’s said, mostly that you need completely different criteria to evaluate every genre of music, and that electronic music is all about dancing. Oh well. Should be pretty easy, if boring. Though tests are on Saturdays which is silly.

ENGLISH 4FW3: Forms of Creative Writing
The Course Calendar says that English seminars are supposed to be limited to 15 people. This one has 48. So a computer has divided the class into groups of 7 with whom we will primarily collaborate. The course is almost exactly the same idea (and same prof) as the creative writing course I took in second year. We have to do a rough draft of an assignment each week, as well as hand in a final draft of the one from the previous week. So it will force me to write, which is always a welcome thing, and a thing that I definitely do appreciate. The result I guess, is that if my group-members are talented and dedicated, I could learn a lot. If not, it’s basically a teach-yourself type deal, and maybe trying to share titbits of wisdom with others.

ENGLISH 4CJ3: Crusade and Jihad
This was possibly my first seminar, because as much as it wants to I’m not sure whether 4FW3 counts as one, and as an introduction to seminars, this one kinda scared the shit out of me. I didn’t choose it, because in this lovely department of English, that’s really not done. You give them a list of your top 3 seminars in each term and they try and slot you in one in each. The one they gave me for second term conflicted with Thtr&Flm 4a06 so they put me in the only one they had room in. That’s okay, though, it seems like an interesting enough topic. However, the prof, one Dr Savage (scared yet?) scolded us on the first day of class for not having much to say on the topic. “This isn’t that kind of class, if this continues we’re not going to get much out of it” well, something to that effect. Err. I don’t know anything about the subject. But I guess we were supposed to be researching it over the summer or something? Also the course outline stipulates that late assignments will not be accepted and gives unclear descriptions of the duedates rather than actual dates. And so after 2 hours I went to buy the courseware because I felt like I really had to read something from it to feel a little less frightened. And they were sold out! How that happens in a class with a strict number of students enrolled, I couldn’t tell ya (they got me one printed up in 2 days though at least). We have an assignment due on Friday already (or the last day of the third week of classes, which I understand to be Friday): we have to decide on a theme related to the topics in the course to pursue and create an annotated bibliography. A good idea for an assignment, but at this point I really don’t know what the fuck. So. Ahh. The topic of the course is basically analysis of conflicts over the holy land with a focus on the rhetoric, specifically the words crusade and jihad which might not actually be all that different. This will be stressful, hard, and scary.

THTR&FLM 1A03: Introduction to Performance Analysis
I’m not actually taking this class. I am, however, being paid $18.25 for each lecture I attend, so even though it’s 8:30 in the morning, I can deal. I’m a Teaching Assistant for the class. I have 2 tutorials to lead, which both go down on Fridays. My first ones went down pretty well. The 12:30 kids were much more chatty than the 9:30 kids, understandably. And for some reason I can’t not refer to them as kids. teehee. I enjoy the whole teaching thing, I think. It’s pretty straightforward, though will be a fair amount of work.. cause I’m not going to just look the plays up on Sparknotes like my TA for this course did. I have an office hour every week, and will get to mark essays and exams, etc. It’s rewarding and important seeming work, though; a cut above doing phone surveys with Americans for sure! It’s probably the second most exciting class I’m involved in this term (next to 4a06, of course). And it will cover rent. But despite the fact that I feel I should, I can’t really think of anything else to say about it.

Yesterday at a bit before four, I went out to play Tennis with Brian, Ian, Matt and later Casey. My room here locks. So I leave to play tennis, without my keys, and I lock the door behind me without really even thinking about it. Why? I never locked it when leaving before, or maybe just once. But still. Illogical. So thankfully now that I have a cell phone, I call the landlord and leave a message asking him to come unlock it if he had a chance, then go and play tennis. We can’t really find any good courts in Hamilton at all nearby, the ones we thought were good are a bit overgrown and extremely netless. I hit a car windshield with a tennis ball and got it back, though, so in one way it’s all worthwhile. There could be a lot of better ways, however. Afterwards I hang out for what I deem will be an appropriate amount of time. Happen to get the landlord’s cell number, and so give him a call. He has unlocked my room. Oh Happy day.

On the walk home I pick up a beef shawerma with some rice salad for 5.95 at Cedar’s something or other (it used to be called, unpronounceably, Gjahzi’s, spelled in a fairly incomprehensible font). I go home, and realize that while my room is unlocked, (with the light on and looking oh so cozy) there is no one else home and the door is locked. You may recall that I am not in possession of my keys. They are sitting inside my room. I can see them through the window. So I sit on an unupholstered lawn chair on the gravel patch behind the old house and eat my dinner. The shawerma is pretty good, it has nothing on Barakat, but how could it be? The rice doesn’t come with a fork, and since I can’t get inside to find a utensil, I eat it using the lid for the sauce that I eventually find buried in the rice after eating the first chunk with my hands. I think the sauce is rancid, but I’m not sure. I don’t even know what it is supposed to be so it’s hard to judge. It tastes halfway between extremely delicious and sour milk. I don’t finish it.

I call Brian, who is at SWHAT, and discover that he will be back probably around 8:30. Well. I have no food of my own in the house yet, so I may as well take this opportunity to go shopping. So, I stash my tennis racquet and balls in the old shed behind our neighbour’s house to have more room in my backpack for edibles and head out shopping. 12 cobs of fresh corn for $1.99. Who could resist? I buy a lot of stuff, cause food is good, and I currently have none. At the checkout, Brian calls to tell me he’s home. Excellent. It turns out I have bought rather a lot.. considering especially that I have to carry it all home by myself. I have to rest periodically on the way home, and nearing the house a bag breaks and the jam-jar heads face down into the sidewalk. It’s ok, though. And I arrive home. I’m not super ok, though. The red, bloodshot hands from carrying heavy plastic bags is all well and good, but 26 hours later and my shoulders remain really fucking sore. It was pretty lucky I have a cell phone now, though that doesn’t quite go far enough to qualify as that cherished silver lining that can reportedly be found where it’s least expected.

So that brings us to today. I had 11:30 class, went home after because I’d forgot to bring a void cheque for the meeting of the theatre TAs at 14:30. So I go to that and afterwards i head home. More than halfway back and I remember that I needed to buy test strips at the pharmacy while on campus. I’d tried to do it on Wednesday, but they didn’t have the correct info for my mom’s drug plan on file, so I had to get that first. I think I have the info on me, so I rifle through my pockets and my backpack. No dice. So I go all the way home, look in my room, don’t find it. Look in my pockets. There it is.. it’s been there all along. I am an idiot. So I head back towards campus for the third time. I’ve just about had enough of walking. I arrive at the drugstore at 16:36, which should be all well and good. But wait. On Fridays they close at 16:30 and are buttoned up tight. That’s ok, test strips are only like 80 dollars for a box of 50 or something ridiculous like that. By this time I’m a tiny bit tired and agitated, so I have a fruit smoothie to cool off. The fruit smoothie does not have unwanted dead things or rancidness involved. It’s actually quite good. And I run into an old acquaintance at the smoothie stand which helps with the cooling off process. When I get home I see my keys on my desk, even though I thought I had them with me, even though I felt them in my pocket. But, you see, the doors were all unlocked this time, so there is a silver lining! Except that once again it didn’t really change anything.

Lessons learned? Pharmacy closes at 4:30 on Fridays. Remember your keys and Things in general. So now I am a better person, right?

But when I said this has been a good couple of days before, I actually wasn’t being sarcastic (shock, shock, horror). Yeah some kinda bad stuff happened, but it was humourously bad, and hopefully was entertaining in story form. As an aspiring writer that’s all I can hope for, right?
There are a few things that counterbalanced the clownly buffoonery that I described above:
My new digs, next door from my old digs but with four strange boys added into the mix to make things more interesting, are actually very good. My new bed is pretty sweet, my room set-up is spacious and neat. The four boys are very amiable, and no sign of Haye Jiggerty or similar personalities are in evidence.
Teaching Assistanceship is exciting. It will be a fair bit of work. I have fifty kids to mark the work of and answer questions from, but I think I will definitely enjoy doing so. It’s even very beneficial from a practical standpoint.
And the last of the big three (maybe the best) is that re-done fourth year theatre class. The one where instead of letting you direct whatever play you want, like in the past, they throw people into groups and force them to collaborate. As it turned out, Kristen and Marco are my collaborators and I couldn’t be happier about that. We are going to be creating some manner of dramatic performance about Hamilton, the industry, the steelworkers and steelmills and the environment. We have a lot of ideas, and a lot of excitement. So I think this will, if not awesome, at least be good. So at least in our case, the prof didn’t cock it up.

Great!

That’s all, folks.

So right now I feel a tad apprehensive and a bit lonely. Or maybe it’s just that it’s 4am and I’m the only person awake in my empty basement and I’m on a two week road to getting a cold that just can’t decide if it’s coming or going. Logically, I should be pretty excited to be going back to Hamilton. I guess. The problem is that I have two lives going on between London and Hamilton with mostly different friends and different lifestyles from one to the other, and they both have a lot of benefits, and then some drawbacks. The most concise way to describe the difference is that Hamilton is just more of most things, primarily responsibility; it’s more hectic for sure, and there are also more opportunities there I think. It lacks security in that I don’t get hot meals cooked for me, I have to look after myself more, and I don’t get to have Val even in the same city as me, let alone in my arms on a regular basis.

So Hamilton is me, and some good friends, against the world. Whereas London is more like everything handed to me on a silver platter. I’m gonna have to learn how to shop for myself and cook again. To haul my ass to class. To not have access to my parent’s van. To be in a long distance relationship. And I’ve done it before, so I know I can do it again. So I’m cool. I can deal. It will just take some time to adjust. And there are definitely some exciting things to look forward to, too. So here’s to the future:

-This is my last year at Mac and I have no clue what I will do after. But whatever it is, it will be AWESOME.
-My radio show (god knows I obsess over that baby) is moving up by two hours to a significantly better timeslot. 12-2 am on Monday nights (technically Tuesday morning). Also I’ll be doing some live broadcast from the atrium at the Student Centre 6-9am this Wednesday, so if you’re around do come by and give a yell. I’ll just be throwing down the maddest of hot tracks I played on the summer slipstream (already selected of course. (what? me packing? maybe in a bit).).).).>
-I have an amazingly nicer bed now. So I’ll hopefully be getting much more out of the time I spend there. We got it at the Sleep Factory for a pretty nice price (parents footed the bill for that one god bless them)
-I’m going cellphone. Gasp, horror. I know not the first thing people who know me would expect. But if life neatly filled all your expectation boxes and closed the lids behind it, it wouldn’t really be worth living, would it? I will share the number when I get it switched to a Hamilton phonicese (it’s Colin’s old one, just picking up the last year of his 3 yr contract).
-This that and the other thing. The sky’s the limit as they say.
-Maybe most exciting, though, is that I have a job during the first term of the school year, and a pretty wicked job, too. I am a Teaching Assistant for Catherine Graham’s 1st year theatre class. It’s ten hours a week at a nice dollarly figure (though I don’t know exactly what yet, somewhere from 18-20, they say) so it should pretty much pay my living expenses and save me from some of that serious debt at the end of university ave. Also, I get to subvert and possibly help those tiny little froshers on their way to inevitably majoring in theatre and film. Hopefully I can do a good job of it because I really hated my TA in first year; so my goal is to do one… no, eleven better than was done to me.

Much more I could say, if my fingers had it in them, but for now I’m gonna pack it in, or maybe up.
I’m going to try and give this little url more attention this year.

Here’s a brief summary of what’s been going on. I shall sort it by appropriate topics, and some of them may be expanded upon at a later date.

Summer is for relaxing. Actually it isn’t. You realize you’re going to have to start paying back that 35 thousand dollars you owe the government sometime, right?

Summer is for working. Summer jobs. That is the ticket. My ticket to ride the wealth train is MSI. I’ve been working there for ten weeks. I call Americans and try to make them do surveys. It is very easy and pays very slightly more than it legally has to. I’m also acting as ocasional chaperone – or whatever one would call it – for Chris again this year (a classmate from elementary school who has some kind of developmental disability). It’s weird being paid to hang out with someone. But I guess I’m not complaining.

Summer is for writing that novel you always say you’re going to write. Actually, no it isn’t. As of last week though I finally got a bit of a start on writing a play that, if finished, will have a chance at being put on at Mac next year. I took a few mime classes with an extremely kind man who once trained under Marcel Marceau and thereby met a fellow my age with quite similar seeming interests. Earlier in the summer (mine, not theirs) I directed my mother’s anthroposophic grade 3-4 class in The Fate of Baldur and found just how impossible it can be for 10 year olds to stand in a circle.
Also my GURPS Game is going extremely well, and that’s almost like writing a novel in an odd way, since the plot is based on a novel I was going to write back in grade 10; it has even garnered upwards of 2 fans in foreign countries who think it’s pretty cool, but not as cool as I think it is. I also think I’m going to try and get a topical article published in Pyramid. I think I can do it, and they pay real dollars. That would make me a professional writer, if a freelance geeky one (and this lance is reeaally free).

Summer is for music. The new Bonnie “Prince” Billy album is stunning. I’m swaying more toward housey and trip-hoppish vibes these days. The new Junior Boys album is utterly great. And they from Hamilton. In fact and deed, I saw them live last weekend.
The radio show continueth. Sort of. I make the shows in the basement, upload them, and listen in eagerly each monday night to find out that they don’t get played because the guys who have the show before mine are… well I’ll save personal attacks for the much longer rant they’ve earned themselves. This is fucking frustrating as all hell. But on some kind of bright side I’m quite proud of the quality of the shows over the summer. I seriously have the best taste in music ever. Green Day!

Summer is for love. I met Val 367 days ago. Now+9 days=1 year of being an item. A magical one at that (which we still haven’t statted out in roleplaying terms.. what gives?).

Summer is for growing. On June 1, my brother Kevin finally left me with the basement to myself. He’s got an apartment on Highview with a home theatre deal. And his work (honeywell) very recently sent him to New Zealand and Singapore to test and fix software. Also Phil, who I’ve known quite well since Kindergarten.. bought a house! A house.. Craziness.

Summer is for vacationing. That’s why they call it summer vacation, I guess. One weekend I went to Val’s cottage and it was a completely awesome (and liberating) experience. Last weekend I went to Hamilton, saw some plays, saw a concert, ate real good food, and experienced my stolen bike quote for the summer rising to 2 (from, not by.. as if you wouldn’t know). 2 weekends from now is the Goderich Celtic Fest, which conveniently coincides with me and Valerie’s 1 year, so we’re going camping and getting bagpipes blown in our faces for a few days. I’ve been playing some tennis with Brian R the past month or so which has been really fun. Seen some movies, been to a bar or two, shot the shit, met cool dudes and dudettes, earned some cash.

Summer is for sun. Ow. Hot.

So amongst all that I’ve been extremely busy. I don’t have the time to do half the things I want, and barely enough to do what I must (well not really.. depending on what you count). But between all the busy busy, and even right on top of it and drowning in the middle of it, I think.. though I don’t want to jinx it.. but I don’t believe in jinxes so fuck it. I think that this is probably turning out to be my best summer ever. Not to say it couldn’t be better, but I am in very fine spirits. I hope you are, too.

So. I’ve lost the plot and not really just scholastically. I’m recently sort of like a lump of stale playdough sitting on the shelf not doing much of anything. It’s because I thought spring was here and then it fucking wasn’t. Fuck. I think it might finally be around to stay, though. The night walking to the station tonight felt like good old night is supposed to, in two words: invigorating and inspiring. Gimme some more of that sweet stuff.

The essay that I thought was due next Monday is actually due this Thursday. That leaves less time to work on it than would be ideal.

On Friday is the Theatre and Film semi-formal. Fellow Theatre CFMUer Marco and I are gonna be providing the jams because I hate hearing shitty music at events like that. You think Top 40 is good dancing music? what about the music that’s actually written to dance to instead of sell records? Euge! The fact that I don’t know how to DJ, or have time to plan out some sweet tunes (which won’t stop me from doing it anyway) wouldn’t stop me. I still have to pay 30 bucks to go, though. Is that a good deal? No, not really. Oh well, the society needs to break even on this I guess.. but we’re already saving them about 300 dollars they’d have to spend on a real DJ. And of course a lot of people are going to prefer hearing (what I consider) fairly shitty music. So because a central part of my personality is the desire for other people to be happy or at least like me (I’m not sure exactly how self centred I am in the long run), I’m a little anxious about the event. Mike A graciously said we could use his laptop for the proceedings, which will at least make things more straightforward.

In world news, the Ontario government has devoted some odd billion dollars to pay for getting insulin pumps and supplies for diabetic children. Shit. As a diabetic adult, that doesn’t help me at all. There seems to be a misconception that juvenile onset Diabetes goes away when you grow up, and that adults with diabetes aren’t as bad off and they brought it on themselves through overeating anyway; this little action is going to do nothing but further said misconception. They don’t really say if a child is anyone less than 18 or what, but what about the 20 year old struggling through university who suddenly gets diagnosed with type I diabetes? That’s gotta be way harder than people like me.. I was diagnosed at 2 and to me it’s just a part of life that I learned from the git-go. I guess the thinking behind it is twofold: a) kids need more help looking after themselves, and insulin pumps do that. b) kids are cute and bad things happening to kids is worse than bad things happening to grown-ups anyway, especially in the eyes of ze public.. opinion polls. Gosh I’m young to be so crotchety. It’s definitely a step in the right direction. But it’s just a step, and I don’t want anyone treating it as the solution to the problem. The problem being that insulin pumps are hugely expensive and rarely covered by health insurance because they aren’t necessary to survival. What they do do is reduce the risks of related (expensive) complications (blindness, missing feet).

Next year Ian is moving in with good chaps Casey, Michael and Matt. That left me and Brian to a new roomie or new digs, and because of both of our propensities for not doing much work in that area not much got done and we took the first easy solution that offered itself. So Brian and I are moving into the half-basement next door with four strangers. It has potential to be alright, and has potential to end up being really shitty. At least the two guys who we met seemed docile, amicable, pretty cool and most importantly as far as I could tell, not Haye Jiggerty (that’s Jaye’s twin of weirdly awkward doominess). But at least it’s cheaper and the stove has knobs. So that’s up in the air. As is the summer and that whole job thing. Too much uncertain floating right now. I’ll just shut up and write my essay. Yeah right.

So, spring is here. The heavy coats can get left at home, making the rest of the world just a little bit closer. The windows are open and the air is ten levels more vibrant and animated and fresh. There aren’t any tips of green anywhere yet, nor even birdsong.. but still everything around here seems so much more alive. What wonders that does for the body and soul. In some ways it’s like travelling without moving. Thank you, wind. Thind.

This weekend there’s friday, which brings the CFMU fundraiser rock show at the Underground, (9:30, $5) which will find myself present at it. There’s also Saturday, during which the last couple director’s series plays will wind up and climax with an all-inclusive theatre party. Thursday is also basically part of the weekend for me, and on it I will be going to a little student film festival type deal. On sunday I will read a novel, write a novel, invent a better way of caring, and visit Lithuania.

The director’s series next year at Mac is going to be rather different. Instead of 12 students each directing a one act play on the Robinson Memorial Stage, they’ll be letting in 20 or so folks, and we can propose to do anything that is performance related. The pressure’s on to come up with a good proposal (due late April) and get the marks necessary to get my foot in the door. Last night I had an idea. And having ideas is something that makes me quite happy. It’s an idea for something pretty standard.. (ie a one act play on the Robinson Memorial Stage). Hopefully this germ of a spectacular will continue to grow and if all is well then I’ll be writing a brilliant play. I don’t have characters or a plot, but I almost have a theme and I have one hell of an ending. And I have a really good feeling about it. Don’t make a sound.

Goals for the future include:
i- finding a (preferably friendly) rent-payer to fill the Ian-shaped hole at one four three emerson next year, or else finding somewhere else to live (if you can help with this in any way, do please get in touch.
ii- spending less time frittering away my life reading stupid shit on the internet and doing stupid shit on the computer; I know it’s possible. When I was in grade 6 I woke up at 5:30 every morning to write a novel. But I’ve been trying to do this for what seems like goddamn ever, so.. who knows. Why isn’t it easier to do fairly straightforward things that would vastly improve my quality of life? And would the answer just be something really depressing? Je shrug, au jour d’hui.. as little as shrugging ever accomplishes.

I hope you’re doing well.

Last term was the best yet at McMaster. I had class that was fun, class that was absurdly easy, class that was practical experience, some classes mostly full of friends. Marks were decent, probably enough to put me on a good path toward maintaining my scholarship which is all that matters in that department. The production of Henry was the best I have been involved in, personal performance-wise, overall production quality-wise, cast chumminess-wise, etc. It was thrilling, and rather an honour to be part of. But really is there any point in all this looking back?

Tonight I have Critical Thinking, which is a very boring seeming course, but one I feel I’ll be able to get a high mark in without too much effort. But a 2 hour night class where it takes the prof 8 minutes to make a point you figured out in 1 doesn’t do much to keep one like me awake. The solution I have discovered to this problem is to use the time creatively. I am getting a blank notebook and using the time to write (not illustrate! heh. no) my first comic book. The topic of the comic book will be the stirring narratives of BUSF#CKER!!! … what else? I have a whole wealth of ideas for this little project and though I shouldn’t jinx it, I feel this has a chance of potentially earning me some pocket money if I work hard enough at it (here’s hoping!). Thanks to the four people who have already drawn the dude in various media (though I haven’t seen them all), it’s nice to have support! and the nature of this cracker means that all of you are right! But if anyone likes to draw and wants specific things to draw, let me know and I will hook you up.

Stagemanaging Problem Child is taking up almost all of my unwasted time these days. It’s gruelling, busy, occasionally frustrating, but ultimately rewarding (here’s hoping!) work. It was a bit rough at the beginning of the term getting flung into that right off the bat, right off of leaving London under unfortunate circumstances (not only is leaving London generally unfortunate thanks to a certain female, the holiday was bloody brilliant save the last two rather literally and figuratively painful days and that all took some dealing with). Hey Valerie, five fucking months! You better not just be after my money…

Today it is like spring. The sun shone and it was actually warm light, not that pale thin winter sunshine that multiplies off the snow and blinds you. I was wandering down Broadway near the Ginos and noticed the most peculiar house… it had curvy wooden lattice type furnishings. There was a delapidated raised porch on the front, but instead of steps, there was a mailbox. I can’t believe I never noticed it before, but it was quite interesting.

This afternoon Ryan drove Ashleigh and me all around Hamilton with an emphasis on the seedier neighbourhoods… most of which I’ve never seen because my travel in Hamilton is basically limited to in between my house and school and the grocery store with occasional jaunts downtown. Nice to get a feel for what the rest of the city has to offer and it’s always interesting to see new things.

What else? On Saturday we conducted the first live roleplaying session that I have been involved with in Hamilton. Mike was GMing and I and Brian were in charge of two ISWAT agents tracking vampires through the streets of Johnson’s Rome. It was an absolute blast and I’m looking forward to more.

That, for now, is all.

Henry V
written by Shakespeare
directed and reinterpreted by Peter Cockett
starring an ensemble cast of high talent including two South Alumni! (those being Damon [that's me] as well as my good friend [and hopefully your good friend as well] Ciara Murphy)

This has been eating up a fair amount of my time in the last little while, but I think it will be well worth it. Moreso than any other show I’ve been in in the past, I really feel kinda priveleged to be a part of this one. This is a real personal thing for the director, who told us that this is the one thing he’s done in his career that he truly cares about. And I think it’s probably worth caring about. It’s not your typical Shakespeare play… there’s a lot of added stuff, new scenes with no dialogue, a much pared down script, the ‘hero’ of the play is looked at a leeeetle bit more critically than is traditional, there’s guns, explosions, a lot of intensity, live and recorded video footage, and a Nick Cave song for good measure. It’s probably a little disturbing, so if you’re not up for that kind of thing be warned (still come, of course, but you might want to leave the kids at home)

I understand plans are in order for a bunch of people to trek on up from London this coming Saturday and that is awesome! I look forward to seeing you all and thank you profusely, but the more the merrier! The website above has infos on the showtimes etc (and a trailer!). Now for those of my comrades who aren’t in school (therefore technically not students) and still want to get the student rate (thereby saving ten bucks) because you’re poor like a student, my stage manager has advised me that if you purchase tickets over the phone in a situation where you can’t be asked to show a student card and just ask for student tickets you should be fine. She also said that if there’s a problem with that to yell at the people at the door to go get her. It should not be an issue though. And no complaining that ten bucks is too much, because it isn’t. (20 might be, though). Now I’m not trying to imply that if you don’t come I’ll kill you or anything like that, but I’m not ruling it out either. Also, feel free to recommend it to any parent or acquaintance or familymember etc that might happen to be vaguely interested in political theatre.

And while I’m making plans for you, I might as well get this one out of the way:
you are all also coming to see:

Problem Child
writer: George F Walker
director: Ashleigh Gillan
stagemanager: Damon Muma

Auditions: Nov 22, 23 and 25 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm in Com Base 10-8

Performance: January 26-28 in Robinson Memorial Theatre, Admission: Free.

Those of you who know me well (or have read my profile), probably know that George F Walker is my favourite playwright and possibly my favourite author altogether. Therefore, the opportunity to work on this production (and get scholastic credit for it, no less) is pretty freaking awesome! Working on this with Ashleigh and whoever ends up getting cast is going to be such a blast. Heck it would be awesome even if it wasn’t George F. The cake has so much icing it’s dripping on the floor, guys!

The interior is coloured by the late afternoon sky. Or is it early evening already? The sun is bowing out after another day with a fluorish of royal gold. Plazas and spiring highrises reflect the warmth of the sky. The Don Valley is resplendant in orange and yellow and red on its own autumn terms. The clouds are piled in an uneven net. Above the metal shield of ceiling probably there are snatches of midday blue, but they won’t be seen through the dirty picture windows butted by rows of passengers. Snug rows or mashed rows is entirely a matter of opinion.

After several stops, with nothing else to do, we are gradually introduced to the characters. With such an expansive cast there’s certainly something of note, just keep your nose shut tight–evidently not everyone had a chance to shower before ariving at the set.

We don’t openly stare or acknowledge our companions, except for the lady in a checkered coat three seats down, but we are all aware. We can all hear the 11 year old japanese boy excitedly talking about Magic: The Gathering, explaining new cards and wondering at terrifying combos. I can’t help but be tempted to try a game, if only in my head. Certainly it’s been a long time. I don’t imagine many of the other thirty odd witnesses have any idea what the fuck, though. They can instead wonder at the boy’s company. Is that very much older fellow with him a brother, or a remarkably older friend, or even a young father? There could be a story there.

At the next stop, two new guys barrel onto the bus. 16 years, maybe less. One is impressively large and has a light, patchy goatee on the front of his ball-capped head. The other is of a similar feather, but regular size. His baggy jeans have metal dangling from them. Together this pair steals the frame. Their looming is probably partially unintentional, but it’s all part of the show. There’s something about a strike, it might relate to work or school, there’s something about not doing a paper, instead some other kind of paper, something about a girl. And then there’s something about wanting beer. At that age, who doesn’t? If this was ten years ago, Kurt Cobain would give these fellas direction. Grunge. “Yeah. It’s the next stop.”

As our public metal chariot pulls to the side and comes to rest, the loomers head toward the doors, but much to their chagrin no amount of shoving against them results in a way out. We discover, if we’d forgotten, the female voice of our busdriver as she explains them through the process of simply standing on the step and allowing the doors to open of their own accord.

“Bitch!” One of the grunge kids mutters on his way out. The kind-looking black man sitting right next to the doors with a small cardboard box package on his lap winces and slowly shakes his head. You, and others nearby register agreement with his sentiment–silently or with a quirked lip. The 23 year old university student at the very rear doesn’t notice. He has other things to think about, and his white headphones help take him away from them for a little while, or at least dull their edges.

Round a corner and into Pape station. With a surge of motion the tenuous connections made in this most momentary of communities fall away as quietly as they were formed. The subtle dynamic that had only just begun to unwittingly form becomes an empty line of almost comfortable red seats and a scuffed black floor; but soon to be replaced. We funnel easily across the platform, down the escalators and onto the waiting subway.

…then we thank the Gods that BUSF#CKER!!! evidently had other things to be doing on that particular afternoon.

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week I had an excellent little vacation to Toronto, managing to only miss one class as a direct* result. Tuesday night was Spoon (with Mary Timony) at Phoenix Nazi Concert Theatre and Matt snagged a drumstick. Stayed the night on Laura’s futon. Wednesday, Brian and I spent a day at the science centre with a primary focus on the Bodyworlds exhibition of plastinated bodies. It was close to being mindblowing. Very highly recommended. Then we went to Brian’s brother’s for porkchops and guillotines (dinner and a card game) and general relaxing. Then on to The Opera House where we met up with Ian, Monique, Matt and a friend of Ian’s named Josina and witnessed The Hold Steady and The Constantines. Both were excellent. Monique vehicled Matt and I to Union Station in plenty of time to catch the last bus back to Steeltown. All was good, all was bright.

*I missed a few others. I mean, I needed to sleep in Thursday morning, it was necessary for necessity’s sake.

Continuing the tradition it started last year, the slipstream will deliver quality, carefully selected songs on a weekly basis. The journey will, as always, be narrated, produced and programmed by host “Damon Muma,” who has this to say about the program: “the slipstream flows under, above and within the mainstream. (It is) a nongenrelist blend of quality music and sound and song specially prepared for your own personal enjoyment. join us.”

A new website for the show is currently under development but has no particular ETA. The old website is viewable here. If you live beyond the station’s limited broadcast range, the CFMU website provides a web-stream which you can listen to live.

If you miss a show, or don’t want to miss sleep over some pretentious college kid’s live masturbatory ego-trip, the new episodes will be archived here (or thereabouts) so you can skip past his guileless, mind-numbing banter.

Come to think of it, the slipstream sounds more like a late-night phenomenon than any other type.

Don’t get too excited, we won’t know for certain for a week or so. So you might still have to be incensed at the loss of such a paperclip of community radio (after only 4 months I’d hardly call it a staple).

James”

Well f. My fears are confirmed. We’ll see, I guess. Due to the 80+ odd hours I’ve spent over the summer and fall plus the constant random brainroom planning and sequencing songs for the radio show, building a new website for it, getting the renewal form in 4 months early when half the people reportedly didn’t get them in at all, checking the station excessively etc, I’m a little bit unhappy, though it’s no one’s fault really. I guess that’s what I get for being overenthusiastic. What’s that they say about assuming?

So now I have to decide whether to just throw in the towel (and have potentially more spare time), move into the annoyingly buzzworded podcastsphere (that way having all the time not entirely go to waste), or what. So much for my top 111 albums of 2005 countdown!!! it was going to be so cool, too.

- I am owed, by various people for various reasons, close to $350. The Bank of Damon is considering implementing of interest charges.
- Decemberists show was completely awesome. You could have read a really long, involved description. Blame technology.
- In Toronto ran into Dr Peter Cockett and he asked me to give him some music to use before and after Henry V. I love shit like that. Stephanie is letting me get my musical paws all over the Macthespian production for the third year streaight, too, which is sweet.
- The sun shone today, for the first time in a while. I really like the sun. It’s been grey and rainy since the weekend.
- And what a great weekend it was!
- Speaking of which, Val is going to be less than two feet away from me in less than a week. This is a cause for great celebration.
- My two month Ipod ordeal might be done finally.. I’d write details, but.. yeah. I don’t want to spend anymore time with all that shit.
- It would be cool if there was a pub called ‘the Shit and Giggle’
- Cyberpunk should be a musical genre. I wonder what it would sound like.
- My theory about all the artists I like coming to Toronto this fall is officially wrong. Why oh why did Iron and Wine and Calexico not schedule a tourdate in Toronto? Argh. And they’re my favourite, too.
- Having a “little nap” at 1am to get back some awake, and then “getting up” after an hour or two to “study” is not really smart thing to try. Especially Twice. Oops.
- You can get rid of those annoying, stupid tabs on MSN that nobody likes. You just have to look under ‘security’ instead of ‘tabs’. Obviously the programmers were trying to make it easy for people.
- That guy sure hates buses.
- Imagine if there was a really bitter diabetic who went around cutting out peoples’ pancreases.
- There should be a band called Fat Chicks with Dicks.
- Tonight I’m going to see Controller.Controller. I’ve seen them before and they were really good.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring a funner fact that I thought I’d be able to reveal today, though I’m worried it might bring a completely un-fun fact. Hopefully the news will be good. You’ll know more soon.

I got a role in the McMaster School of the Arts Fall Major Production of Shakespeare’s Henry V this year. I play two bit-characters (Sir Thomas Grey of Northumberland and the Duke of Bourbon), which is cool cause I almost have my lines learned already. And Grey gets shot in the back of the head execution style which is totally sweet and all I can really ask of a role. The play is very modernized and significantly cut down and altered to be about the Iraq War and also war in general and the media and how people are convinced that war is good, but it’s not meant to be preachy at all.. just a bit kablam! and a lot of multimedia images, music and video etc. A lot of it reminds me of Babylon 5 in various ways.. the whole political/war aspect, which is tres cool. I will also be involved in the production aspect through my stage managing class, and it seems like it will be a really wicked production, so the tres coolness continues. The only sticky bit is that rehearsal means I’ll have to be here pretty much every Sunday until then, except we’re not currently scheduled for one on Thanksgiving. And if we end up having one, I’m not going to go, because I’m going to London for Thanksgiving and no one can stop me.

Just so you can all make plans to come see it:
-November 18, 19*, 20*, 23, 24, 25, 26*, 27-
-at 8:00 (*2:00 p.m. matinee also)-
-Robinson Memorial Theatre in Chester New Hall, McMaster Unviersity-
-Tickets: (905) 525-9140 x 23333 to reserve-

Additionally, last night I went up to Toronto on a MACSTFPA (mcmaster society for theatre and film and the performing arts) trip to see Family Stories: Belgrade which was directed by Sasha, my acting prof two years running. It’s termed a ‘slapstick tragedy’ and is about 4 kids (played by adults) playing ‘house’ during the NATO bombing of Belgrade. And yeah. It was the best piece of theatre I’ve seen in my entire life. And I’m not saying that because I know the guy who directed and he’s such a cool dude. It just was. Hilarious, touching, tragic, ridiculous, haunting, important, challenging, affecting, resonating, enlightening, even perhaps potentially offending. Really everything I would ever want in a play. perfect set, amazing actually probably flawless acting, awesome music and multimedia, and a killer script. No one that went on our bus could even pretend not to like it. Wow. So, if there’s anyway you can go, go. The theatre would have had 4 people in the audience if not for our class trip, and this is one of those things that everyone should see, it deserves to be seen. It runs until Oct 8.

This past weekend a girl I know named Val came up from London to see me. It was completely, and completely unsurprisingly, awesome.

My Ipod broke last week, I finally got my new replacement and guess what? It broke within 2 days. At this point it’s hard to even bother being ticked off about it, so yeah. Except, from what I understand, it appears that my replacement this time might be a new colour one (unf still 20 gigs, not 60) so apple can get a few DCPs for that, but probably not enough to get them out of the deep hole they’ve fallen into.

This weekend.. Ted Leo on Friday and Dead Can Dance on Saturday!

There’s a great deal of other interesting things probably but I’m not saying what because you smell a bit funny.

pepperjack (vb): to perform an act which results in someone (male) being kicked with excessive force in the testicles and up the ass simultaneously. Usu passive. hopefully used in a figurative context i.e. “this school work’s got me pepperjacked!”. can also be used as a separable prefix verb i.e. “that shit jacked my pepper!”
Variants: peckerjack – usu used by Mexican immigrant workers.
Sometimes seen as the masculine equivalent of being “fucked sideways by a cactus” (or “cacti”, in extreme circumstances)

mumareuther (vb): to cause a situation, person, item or location to become unavoidably awesome

William Trotterburg Fuck (1852-1894)
An angry poet who wrote trite imitations of the romantic masters such as Blake and Shelley. His best known work is probably “Reflections on Dicking Around in the Pantry After Work on Thursday”. Some scholars believe his works were intended to be satirical, though most agree they’re just terrible. His name is often used as an expression of anger or confusion (usu both concurrently) in an attempt to invoke his indignant and foul-tongued spirit. The most common form of this practice involves the spelling or speaking of his three initials– W.T.F. A much better method, however, is to say his first two initials and then exclaim his surname vigorously-– doubleyoutee-FUCK!
If you want to really impress your relatives, use his full name and mention that he’s from Essex and preferred the back of the carriage to the hayloft. Especially if your relatives are also from Essex and prefer the back of the carriage to the hayloft, if you know what I mean.

biblethump (vb): colloquial. dryhumping, if you know what I mean. Cause it’s funnier and better. Also more tactful, and confusing. And confusion is sexy.

pomosexual (adj): Postmodernism is sometimes rather oddly shortened into “pomo.” I think we all know what sexual means. Postmodernism is of course rather difficult to fully and briefly define, but one of the big tenants of postmodernism is Self-Referentiality (who lives in number seven and has a door that’s a mirror). So then pomosexuality would logically be self-referential sex, ie masturbation. Pronounced po-mo-secks-you-uhl, and with a lot of tongue.

That’s it for now.

As an addendum, 143 Emerson Attic finally has l’internet.

The internet man did come out of his van, despite the rain. Nonetheless, Cogeco still has a nice big stack of “hey you, yeah you, fuck you!” coming to them. They discovered that Ian had an account with them two years ago that he then cancelled, so they gave him the same name and password required to activate the internet that he obviously would have no reason to keep record of, and then kept him on hold for about half an hour trying to figure out what it was. And then some more tedious ‘your call is important to us’ bullshit which I won’t bother sharing the details of. I was so excited, too. When the internet man came out of his van it was almost like Christmas. Oh well. Way to go, guys.

I know some of you were trying to leave comments here about how you couldn’t leave comments, but now I’ve reversed the situation and you should be able to leave comments about how you can! And soon the pictures will actually work.

All my classes seem awesome, every single one of my profs seems really cool. American Lit is the best first impression from a lit course yet. Myth is going to be easy, entertaining, and funny, and interesting.

The biggest news for me though is that my nine thousand dollar dream is crushed. however, its shell left behind a five thousand dollar dream that’s as much as I could hope for anyway. I now get 2000 big ones from the government for being disabled, and I have officially got permission from the dean of humanities to contact Sasha about raising my mark therefore getting my non-re-renweable 3000 buck scholarship that I missed by one measley mark. The prospect of “scheduling an appointment with the dean of the school of the arts” that was put on me by the fine folks of the humanities was going to be very daunting, and I was worried I’d have to beg, or maybe cry. But it turns out the dean is just about the nicest, friendliest, coolest, easy-going dude I could imagine. So he’s gonna email me when the mark is changed and then I just email the financial aid types and I’m suddenly three thousand dollars richer. Or as Brian correctly corrected me, three thousand dollars less poor.

Tonight I’m allegedly going to some sort of mutated martini party at Russ’ house to celebrate. I don’t know for sure if the plan for a big party will fly since it was related to me by a rather inebriated Russel and might be downscaled (ie not upscaled in the first place) will find out soon. But I’d be content enough just to go home and read… I only got 4 hours of sleep last night after a rollicking good time at the west-end and then some exploitation of our upstairs and brendan making sweet musical love to my (er.. my dad’s, technically) guitar.

Weekend plans seem to have mostly solidified. Ear to the Ground fest looks a mite too expensive, so it’ll just be to and froing from TO for U2, Sigur Ros and Royksopp. The CFMU general meeting is on sunday evening, so that’s more incentive not to skip my classes and just stay in toronto until Tuesday evening. Hopefully I’ll get a better idea of when the slipstream radio show will be and when I can start… I’m quite chomping at the bit, in a horselike fashion.

And now off to eat some grass.

Despite the steel-mills, one way streets, school, paying out of my own pocket to live and the lacking of company I’d much like to be sharing, things are generally turning out quite well. When I tromped up the stairs to our new pad (directly across the street from the old one) I actually felt a great deal of rather unexpected excitement, yay, even giddiness.

I really love the new place. My room is pretty small, but with a little ingenuity I managed to make efficient use of space and get it set up very much to my liking. Our kitchen is wonderful; though we originally had enough utensils/pots/spatulas etc for 3 households of the same size, the extras are all packed away now and it’s basically in working order. It works as a living room, too, complete with a small sofa that we couldn’t fit upstairs. Turns out we barely even need the top floor, as all our day-to-day needs and adequate hangout space exist upon the main (though still upper) level.

But the top floor represents a great deal of potential. For those that don’t know, it’s slightly atticky and just one big long room. The ideal party/rec room.. and we even have a bar-fridge up there. The only slightly tricky part is that the stairwell is really too narrow to bring up, well, much of anything that’s wider than a person. Ian hit upon a brilliant solution, though. The plan now (we’ll just hope it’s ever realized) is to make it a sort of Oriental style lounge with low furniture. Maybe lots of cushions and pillows. Beaded curtains even? We don’t want to go so over the top it ends up looking like a harem, because then we’d need to find harem girls. If anyone has anything lying around that could maybe help furnish this little room, or a cheap (but good) old speaker set or tv, several friendly young adults might be interested in acquiring it.

One of the notably best parts of the living arrangement this year is that I actually want to be living with both of the other dudes living across the hall from me, which is a brilliant change from last year. We even have a happy shared phoneline, which is both fiscally excellent, but also good for the third year university student’s soul. It makes it seem like it’s a home, not just a house. *sniff. *tear. *wheeze. *vamoosh.

Also good for the soul is seeing lots of people after the long summer sojourn and finding that they often seem to vaguely like me or at least tolerate me, and I often seem to hold similar opinion of them. Thanks guys.

All my classes seem really good, most of them also seem like I’ll be able to pull out a high grade without too much difficulty. I’ll post some sort of round-up at a later occasion.

Beautiful weather, wonderful strolls, paper airplanes, GURPS out the wazooo, firefly marathon, substitute marathon, the ride of funkmaster festus (i will always be the left hand of funk), trampolines, stratford, almost the best concert evar (con stan teeeens!), top floors of parking structures, the grimm return of gilliam, sprinklers watering roads, cuckoo’s nest, chowder, the best ever foosball championship that never happened, the second annual national rum appreciation day, tulips, self-discovery, mumareuthering, rabbits, nevada devil-cake, music, many gigantic subs, awesome friends new and old. And a girl named Val.

August 2005 earns 10/10, making it rather a hard act to follow. And quite frankly, I had no desire to leave London. But since I’m feeling generally positive these days, with any luck that’ll be enough to crush the suck and prod the superfantastic into being vaguely present, even if only on Tuesdays while wearing an oddly pinstriped green coat.

Thar she blows.

Hide the women and children.

What you’re looking at right now is the new version of the slipstream. Gone is the rudimentary html (complete with lack of stylesheets) and Come is this high technological wonder you see gyrating before you at seventeen and a half revolutions per second. I hope you’re as veritably gobsmacked as I.

It might be apparent that I have joined the almost unavoidable rank and file of pale, blue-themed webpages. Naturally so. There must be some reason that 80% of websites now share the same colour scheme. I’m not about to try and stand in the way of history by having a site that’s all “oh look at me I have light text on a dark background” or “hello, i’m purple and green and Grey and very pleased to make your acquaintance”. I have been told by several that this here sort of short-lined, drab design is easy on the eyes and easier to read. I have also been told the opposite by others, and yet here we are. Here we are, sitting at our computers, looking at pale, bluishly hued sites from all over the world. It must mean something.

I’d love to hear what y’all think of my new home on Al Gore’s interweb. Even if you don’t think highly. All suggestions will be executed (either by implementation, or by six-gun). Ian, I know you think the title is purple, but it isn’t, nor is the font emo. Next?

If there are any who should be listed in the links, or any who would rather not be listed there, or perhaps would rather not have their real name used, let me know either here or privately. I live to serve.

Also, bear with whatever stupid little problems result from the newness of this here site. With any luck they shan’t persist much long.

Oh. And it looks better in firefox. On purpose.

Huge thanks to my man Kevin for getting it online during the week where I struggle without internet save that I steal from spare moments on the campus. (we should be getting it near the 14th, which is a wednesday, at our pleasant house on Emerson)

It’s almost enough to make my pants blue.

So now that I’ve written an entry about not writing entries, allow me to smack my head ‘gainst nearest wall repeatedly. Or at least until the world stops spinning. I jest though. I’m not one to do those sorts of rash things. Wallheadsmacking is right out. All I mean to say is that I won’t (ie shouldn’t) have the opportunity to spend much time with this site (especially because I spend all my time choosing and arranging songs to play on my radio show, if by all I mean far more than is probably even necessary or useful). Though I might end up ramping up the updates anyway, so maybe I shouldn’t go around making bold claims about it. As you can see, I am rambling. Rambling about ramping… STOP.

So I will stop jabbering about useless stuff and cover the more important and interesting things in painstaking brevity, like so: 1. Being part of an elite student force brainstorming to create a government webpage at the home of a Colombian doctor with meals and pay provided complimentarily = wickedcool, yo. 2. Cuff the duke = good show, man, pass me another cold one. 3. Jaye’s croutons = sensational, second-to-none, a must-see, with some lip-smacking goodness for good measure. 4. John O’Groats to Land’s End May 2005 = the dream is coming ever closer to reality 5. When I’m late for a class it’s either because my trusted, true shoes that lasted me since grade 10 now have a penchant for letting the water in, and now I am of course forced with great remorse to use my hiking boots that accompanied me on the Bruce, for they take a great effort and considerably more time for to tie up tightly ‘fore I set off down the line. Or mayhap it might be something different entirely.. some simpering student has had his or her way and announced an “International Walk Real Slow in Front of Damon” Day. In other situations different reasons could well fit, but it’s certainly never just because I’m a lazy sack of shit.

Well, that was fun. Maybe we can do it again sometime.

Seeing that this here (pathetically) is the first entry of the new year, I knew I had to do something special (did you see my gently touching, hopeful but only-to-the-pont-of-being-cautiously-optimistic one from last year? oh wow.. it was a keeper.. *tear) to make it worth the wait (actually I don’t remember if the one last year was good at
all, I think it had words in it, though). And seeing as I don’t like to disappoint, I’ve pulled out all the stops, and am prepared to present to you the brand new, all improved, completely spectacularly awesometastic new version of this website where everything is better, brighter, happier, funnier, more meaningful and yay, even godlike!

!!

!!!!!!!!!!! !!!

See? I knew y’all’d love’t!

Before you can enjoy the new features here however, you must complete one of the following steps:
1. Lower your expectations drastically.
or
2. Erase any memory you retain that concerns this website in its previous state.
Having completed either of said operations you are free to enjoy the unbearable awesomeness contained herein! Thank you.

And I also have a small (meaning big) announcement to make concerning the existence of my own exclusive radio engagement on CFMU (!!!). Yup. I have my own show, and what a sweet timeslot it is: Wednesday Mornings from 6 to 9! I’m sure most of you know how much of a morning person I am, so this will be interesting. But still pretty freaking exciting! (the fateful email went something like:
“Hey man. You’re actually capable of being awake in the morning…any interest in doing your own morning show? As of this week, Alexis (Lexcellent, Wednesday am) is gone away to school in Waterloo and the slot’s open. If a weekly morning show sounds too intense you could just take it until the summer. Or you could just fill in a few weeks until I can find someone else. But it’s yours to grab first if you like.”)

The first show is soon, so do tune in if you get a chance. I would really appreciate it. I don’t know for sure the name of the show or the details surrounding it quiiite yet because the focus groups are still examining such things from all possible angles and varying levels of light intensity, but when I find out, you (and you and you) will be the first to know.

Just to not totally kill the spirit of Christmas, I should probably mention it. Christmas at the Muma household this year was awesomely split into 2 teams: Kids vs Parents.. with each group collaborating on snazzy gifts for the respective other. Kinda like a reality show or something. (You reading this big-time network producers?… What a stupid, obvious question. Sorry). Luckily we children were brought up to value creativity and delightful touches like printing out the 2005 video guide cover, taping it to the 2002 guide’s cover and wrapping it up, or labelling a present “to: dad, from: aliens (thank you for letting us impersonate your children for the last 6 years)” really added to the holiday cheer. The parent team countered by having 3 presents, the first 2 of which were socks and sheets, and the last one was the lonely trepidation-defying bag packed to brimming with awesomeness. Overall, the parents won hands down, I mean a freaking Ipod, man! Not to mention the loan of a loaned frying pan = Sweet! No, really… this mother is teflon, baby, and so no stick it’s practically repellent! If God had a frying pan that cost less than $100 this would be it! (just see those pics in the ham challenge for some evidence o the unpleasant frying pan predicament that up until recently tormented us). It was a little disappointing that Vern didn’t show up this Christmas; it’s almost become a tradition for second cousin Vern to drive in through the snow in his remodelled old auto and spend some time chatting quietly with the family over some tea. He’s one of those pious Christians who can really make you believe it actually is all about peace, love and understanding. But he was busy getting ready to be married probably, so no Vern this year. Anyways that’s enough about Christmas, time to dive back into the present.

School this term is looking like it might be a bit on the tricky side, what with the 2 courses more than last year situation, rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet for 7 hours every Saturday, 3 hours of SWHAT and 3 hours of radio.. = 13 hours I could maybe intsead put into a job or something, that might have an interesting effect, but yeah… me and jobs, well we all know that don’t mix! So things are looking slightly bleak for this term and I was getting a little depressed, but then Ian used his economics to cheer me up. Maybe it’s useful after all. Wait, that’s ALL it is.

Fun fact: “Triple dipped” makes triple look spelled incorrectly. Or maybe it does it on its own.

Philosophy exam (tomorrow at 4, creepin’ up slowly) looking kiiiiinda brutal as all hell at this point in time. Today I cracked open my binder to study for it (yes this should have happened sooner.. feeling ratherridiculous, but also keep in mind other books had been cracked open previously) and out fell the ticketto the DFA1979 concert I had thought completely vanished (see previous post). I had thought itbest to do the radio and not go to the concert (which was probably ridiculously awesome) so i could spend sometime studying (which i didn’t really end up doing anyway). The irony(or maybe it was a feeling of profound stupidity) almost made mystomach turn. It was a bit of a moment of truth or something though.. primarily indicating the need to get my act together considerably (violently, if necessary). So I decided to talk about it here (idiot!). But I will return to studiousness shortly I promise.

     Monday, December 6th:

A message from our sponsor: I will be appearing once more on CFMU on Tuesday evening from 11pm until Midnight. Invite your friends, make a pot of tea and relax with the festidious and gruelling sounds of Damon^TM spinning some wild and crazy cuts from the highest reaches of his musical esteem. Please stay tuned. (I was going to go to the DeathFromAbove1979 concert, and had even bought a ticket. However it was the sort of ticket that goes completely and entirely missing so soon after its purchase that I do not even remember its physical appearance. I was going to shell out even more money to attend the concert anyway, but when the fill-in notice was posted, I took it as a sign.

And now ladies and Gentlemen, I am awfully proud to present:

The Great Ham Challenge of 2004!!!
What’s all this about? Well, there is a full packet of pillars sliced blackforest ham unopened in the fridge. Well and good. But oh my look at that! (close up) the expiration date is listed as December 3rd! (shock and horror ensue vigorously) Now we don’t want our meat going bad now, do we? And, furthermore, even though it was sealed in an airtight plastic sort of situation we still don’t want to be taking any chances now do we? (I am very careful about these sorts of things when it comes to food, as you will soon discover). So clearly this package of ham must be used up before the third rolls around!
So the ham challenge is to use up each slice of ham in a day (or so) so it doesn’t go bad. But here’s the TWIST (what’s that you say?): every slice must be used differently (oh my! Sounds exciting!).

So here we are ready to kick this all off. The crowd has become hushed with anticipation (or maybe there just isn’t one…). And he’s off! (that “he” is me. I’m talking about myself in the third person now, isn’t that great? Lol!)

Slice one: a nice slice of ham tastes good by itself! Mmmmm

Slice two: and since it tastes good by itself. What if we slap on some Heinz^TM mustard! Mmmm ham and mustard. That tastes good, too. It’s like they were born to be together. Awww. Though it leaves a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. Is ham supposed to have an aftertaste? It might be the mustard. I mean, it was here when I moved in in September and probably about half a year before that. But since it doesn’t have any ‘best before date’ on it anywhere ,it’s gotta be perfectly fine! Where the aftertaste came from I will never know… one of life’s little mysteries.

Slice three: sandwich. Another slice of ham would have been really nice on this lovely sandwich. I was starting to wish that I hadn’t given myself this terrible limitation, and was thinking of calling this whole thing off entirely. But I put faith in the glory of God and stuck it out. And added some salami and cheese. And some miracle whip, honey mustard sauce, and a bit of tomato. Mmmmm!

Slice four: omelette. Some eggs, onion, cheese, and of course a finely chopped slice of the olde black forest hamme. This is delicious, and there’s enough yield to make a pseudo western sandwich (throw the omelette in some nicely toasted bread!). The fact that there was only one slice of ham in this is almost tragic… I could barely taste it! But damn that was a fine tasting meal. This should really count for two! Oh wait, I make all the rules! So… … No! We must maintain the integrity of this esteemed competition and resist temptation.

Slice five: sandwich with cracker and cheese. Mmmm what a nice snack. Like a ham and cheese sandwich but on a cracker! And really quite tasty. I bet it would have been even better with real honest to god Ritz crackers instead of the flaky no-name imitations I’m stuck with. Unfortunately the cucumber was in the fridge for a month and went soft. So I sliced it up and fed it to the worms… I hate wusses (get it? It got soft? Oh man, I kill myself).

Slice six: Fried ham! Of course I’m not running out of workable ideas. Shut up! I was going to get all fancy and marinade it in some orange juice.. but there isn’t any. Maybe for the best. And that was some good fried ham! kinda like bacon, but not!

Slice seven: give to Ian. Oh so he says he doesn’t like ham. Eat the damn ham, Ian! Thank you.

Slice eight: Grilled cheese…. With ham! Now that’s an idea and a half. Now you might think, or even say “Damon! You’re just taking things that normally have cheese and adding ham!” and to that I say, “Yeah, what’s your point? I’m winning this damn competition and you aren’t! So get outta my face!” Ham and cheese really do go together. The final verdict on this baby is good, but probably better without the ham. Oh well, all in all a success.

Slice nine: What? I swear there was only eight the first time I counted. Aw fuck. Well I guess I might as well donate it to charity! But since I don’t feel like leaving the house… Maybe if I use it to clean the counter that would count as a different use? It can get into all those hard to reach places! Well I make the rules, so I say go for it! (idiot). Alright! Mmmmmm hamrag. Tasty!

And that does it! Damon is the worldwide winner of the ham challenge for the first consecutive year! And here he comes now; let’s see what he has to say! I’d just like to thank myself for having the strength to go out and represent hammanity in this wonderful event. I know a lot of you thought it couldn’t be done. And there were those of you who thought it shouldn’t be done. To them I say “naanananaaaana!”

Wow guys! Wasn’t that great?

UPDATE!! (Saturday, Novermber 27thst)

U2 vs Lyrics Born – Callin’ On Sunday
Moloko – Fun For Me
..
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Babe, You Turn Me On
Dresden Dolls – Jeep Song
The Decemberists – Los Angeles, I’m Yours
..
Ted Leo/Pharmacists – Me and Mia
Ted Leo/Pharmacists – Under Your Hedge
Doves – Pounding
..
The Wrens – Ex-Girl Collection
John Vanderslice – Coming and Going on Easy Terms
..
U2 – Mercy
Augie March – Little Wonder
Feist – Mushaboom
..
Annie – Heartbeat
Espers – Voices
Orbital – The Box
..
Primal Scream – Kill All Hippies
Pulp – Disco 2000
The Pogues – Turkish Song of the Damned
..
Underworld – Dirty Epic
.
Massive Attack – Risingson
The Notwist – Consequence
The Shins – Saint Simon
..
Ted Leo/Pharmacists – Walking to Do

Embarassing moment of the show.. accidentally playing the beginning of an ad overtop of ‘Heartbeat’. And realizing that the version of the Meadowlands by the Wrens that I had downloaded, and have proclaimed to be one of the best albums of the year is an unmastered version.. Ex-Girl Collection sounded rather different than I’m used to.. and dare I say, better~!~ Well, that’s what I get for being a pirate. yarr.

Damon is excited.

It’s a little bit scary cause I’ve never done it before and I’ll have to remember how to work all the CD players and mixers and faders and microphones and computers… but hopefully I can manage, or at least fail in an entertaining sort of way. Naturally I’m now spending all my essay-due-monday-time trying to find all the right tracks to play tomorrow and wow the pants off Hamilton with.

This merry affair will of course be broadcast. In the Hamilton area at 93.3 FM CFMU, and on the internet at the CFMU website(look for the ‘listen now’ link).

No wonder I feel like I’ve seen the Constantines constantly bandied about by Call the Office, or at least the marquee outside, long before they were preening in the glow of indie-cred and continent wide praise. It turns out they’ve played there no less than 20 times in the last 5 years. And I was dumb enough not to go to any of them. But wait, the website tells me they played with Sanseiru (my oldest friend phil’s teacher’s old band for those who don’t know) three years ago. So I may have been there. I can’t quite remember, but back then I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t like them. As it turns out, last night I saw them for either the first or second time. It turned out to be a very agreeable experience. Theirs is the kind of music that when you hear you kinda just know it’ll be better live.

Raspy voice, vocals brazenly pleading with the mic. Lead singer bears uncanny resemblance to someone and eventually I realize it’s Terry Jones. Or maybe I have seen them before. Music is dark, grungy, and heavy. Layers of sound flit in and out. It’s messy but focused. The beats hit hard, and the drummer’s grinning like he really really knows it. All the musicians are wowzers. They even bring out the cowbell! The melodies aren’t upfront, they’re buried beneath the squelching music, but it’s got a raw driving intensity that’s rather undeniable. I love the raspy almost slurred spoken quality of the lyrics. Like a pounding haze. There’s plenty of old school rock n roll bravado and posing, but during Shine a Light when he raises his fist and tells us to think of our families (can’t anymore remember the exact words), I’m genuinely moved. Heck I have a really awesome family. The concert is dedicated to hating the thieves who busted into their van last night in London. Everyone breaks at least one string. They turn to taking various shots of liquor on stage; perhaps they’re alcoholics, or perhaps they need to de-stress after the robbery. By the time the end of the show comes around not everyone is quite standing up straight. But what an ending it is! They bring the Seasnakes back onstage, and with 6 or 7 guitars, a bass guitar or 2 (who can keep track exactly), drumming, and a sax, they bust out a rather incredible version of Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The instrumental ‘choruses’ of guitar bombast between verses are monumental. MMmmmm.

Also last night, on television, which I do not have, U2 completely asserted dominance over Saturday Night Live. It’s been tricky for me as an elitist indie music type hearing that what U2 really cares about is gaining a huge audience and being very popular, and I was really starting to question their motives. But their escapades on SNL showed at least me that there’s still no pop music artificiality behind it and they and their music are coming from a genuine place. It was thrilling to see the entire cast and audience and crew in awe of the band, and kinda know that the band could tell. But they’re the types that when they get acceptance and praise, they don’t settle for it, they take it as bait and push harder. Supposedly after the broadcast ended they just hung around and played 3 more songs. That’s some folks who love what they do, right there, and for all the people who might think U2 has descended into no better than meaningless corporate rock trying to make a quick buck, that really sets them apart. So you can expect me to bring them up fairly commonly here, because they excite me. Ooh la la. This one is looking forward to the tour.

And also, the new CDmp3 player that I got (just a month ago) to replace my old one (which, sadly, broke, and was probably my most happily used possession) seems to have completely crapped out. I should be throwing things and kicking stuff, but I have learned that stubbed toes are no fun. Instead I’m all about the controlled, seething burn. I’m not really super mad, but I feel that if I chose to be, I would be fully justified in it.

In other news, both the new U2 album and the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album are being hailed by critics as being exemplary specimens of the artists’ work and perhaps career defining pieces of work (the latter in particular). Quite a lot of the fans on the nick cave forums seem to dislike the album(s) however, while the U2 fan community is gobbling up the new album so delightedly they barely have space to in their mouths to fit the copious drool. From this, I draw the conclusion that a) most Nick Cave fans are pessimists, and b) most U2 fans are optimists. And for some reason I’m not surprised.

If anything it is their most direct, accessible release ever. Is that good? Hard to say for sure. But it succeeds in doing everything that All That You Can’t Leave Behind didn’t quite manage. When Bono talked about Beautiful Day as a profound expression of pure joy, he would have been put to shame if he heard Original of the Species. The album is not a return to what the band does best, so much as it is what the band does best. The melodies are tight and elegant and catchy; it’s loud, it’s joyful, it’s triumphant, moving, and it’s uncompromised. It’s not a hugely rocking album, but it is huge, and it’s quite loud. Every note is in its place and it sounds very well constructed, but at the same time it’s more than that the voices and the instruments leap off of the record with vibrancy and vigour. They have a life of their own, and the harmony between the brilliant performances and the transcendence of the songs themselves seem to drive the album into the stratosphere. I think it’s going to be huge, because the power of this album is undeniable.

Yes, I am excited, and potentially overreacting and blinded by my gigantic slobbering fandom, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. Cause I feel Grrrrreat! And it’s all thanks to a little band from the Northside of Dublin called U2. If anything, this experience has cemented the fact that no matter how I manage to look at it, U2 is still unquestionably my favourite band, because a new release by anyone else could definitely not have this lurvely effect on me. I can only hope the album stands up to time and I’m still this in love with it in three weeks, and three months, and three years.

The complete rough draft of my creative writing project is now available for perusal. I invite and encourage such action.

Oh, and remember (of course you don’t) that creative writing essay that I did at the last minute, and researched through 5 books the same night I wrote it? I was summarily rewarded with an A for my efforts (right after being told that the prof was the hardest marker in the English dept, too). School is a strange, strange beast. But at least this time it’s a friendly one.

I had a thought about music. And I suppose it could be extended to encompass many forms of art, but it’s most at home defining music. You see on several occasions people (often myself) have asked me what it is that I think makes one song, one album, better than another. What is it that I look for in music? At the essence, it’s all about emotion, and I established that to myself a long time ago. If a song doesn’t make me feel, it’s probably crap. I don’t tend to mind how a song makes me feel when judging it, but rather how much. If it scares me, saddens me, energizes me etc. It’s all one and the same. All are even, and many can be combined. Though some suit certain moods much better. I suppose if my emotions were very unbalanced I might prefer a certain mood exclusively over another. I will say that most of my favourite songs are “slow” songs, because it’s harder for a simply loud, catchy song to be intense enough to have a lot of power. Kill All Hippies (Primal Scream) is an example of a very upbeat dancefloor pounding song that still stays sounding really important because listening to it is like having your head pounded by a bucket of bricks. Simply happy songs face a bit of a hardship gaining impressive power. Well.. maybe I do favour certain moods, then. But I would rather like to think that it’s harder to make an accomplished, deeply affecting light, happy song, so there just aren’t as many… and it isn’t that I enjoy them less. I will probably never know for certain though, will I? I’m getting sidetracked though, the gauge to consider music by that I thought of was “is this song important?” and not just in the general all-encompassing nature of importance, but more specifically “does this song sound like it’s the soundtrack to something really important happening?” the more important the better and it can be important for a whole host of different reasons. But a song needs to bring you somewhere that changes something, or if it leaves things the way they started, it needs to shake them, punch them, cry out to the outside, or beg them to change, or quietly accept fate. It just has to do something, feel something, make some sort of statement. It can be subtle, whatever, but I feel that almost all of the music I really like could be made to fall under the category of appearing to chronicle important dynamics or situations. And that, my friends, is why Party for 2 by Shania Twain is the most asstastic song in the history of music. It means less than the hokey pokey song and it communicates less than a dead mime. (Now that I think about it, dead mimes could be used in a variety of profound and interesting ways.) That song however, is completely and utterly hopeless.
(and just for the record, when I had it up there as song of the day, that was not done in seriousness. I don’t know if anyone noticed, or cared, but I should hope that if any of you thought it wasn’t a joke you at least had the decency to lower your opinion of me considerably.)

My CD reviewing for the Silhouette is facing a problem. Largely that I gave Josh Ritter’s album 4 stars, and Flogging Molly’s 3.5 stars. Probably should have been 4.5 and 3, because every CD I have tried to review since then has been better than Flogging Molly, but not better than Josh Ritter therefore stuck at 4 stars. Admittedly this has only been 2 albums so far, but I can see it happening a lot more. So I am faced with a dilemma and my journalistic integrity is on the line! Maybe I should just throw in the towel and quit while I’m ahead. It’s not like they’re paying me. Plus the winning mix CD had all sorts of artists that the average person has heard of.. what’s with that? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Tomorrow (that being Friday) I go to see Controller.Controller and The Organ at The Underground, which should prove to be a rollicking good time, but will surely not match the rollicking inherent in the first rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet which is set to take place the following day.

That felt a little too self-referential and pretentious, I’m going to get some water.

It really feels like a Monday today, even though usually Mondays haven’t been a terrible thing for me. But the dulldrums and the tedium and the grinding are setting in. I’m needing to get a topic for my essay due Thursday for my Creative Writing class, and I’m hedging back and forth on several things and not entirely sure what I should focus on, and especially what is expected of us in this assignment. Yesterday I went to the library and got 10 vaguely related books and I still don’t have a too much of a clue. Ideas, oh lots of ideas. They’re just not doing so much of the coming together thing. Maybe I’ll make a flowchart. Maybe I’ll pound my head against the wall. Maybe the ships will come sailing in.

If you happen to be up at 8:00 am tomorrow (Tuesday) tune in to CFMU (online or at 93.3 FM in the Hamilton area) and you can listen to me hopefully not make a fool of myself (assuming I succeed in dragging myself out of bed). It would be nice if no one else made me into a fool, either. Time will tell.

-I signed the volunteer agreement with CFMU (so -I’m now a real-life honest-to-god member of the radio station and I have the door codes and everything!)
-I got my CompLit essay returned to me (I scored an 80, which is better than I feel I deserved, but I really did have a great title page)
-Adam invited me to come onto his radio show again (next Tuesday at 8am. Very exciting, and you can listen online!)
-I auditioned for Romeo and Juliet (waited in line for 3ish hours, did the monologue, managed to not screw it up, got the call today saying I’m in, playing a fella named Peter, and I’m reprising my role of thespian society musical consultant which will also be a thrill. ’twill be fabulous, so around March or something you all now have plans.)
-I stayed up much of the night writing my aesthetics essay (the first essay I think I’m actually pleased with, which doesn’t bode well for the mark which will pretty much have to be a disappointment, and if not another example of me doing better in my damn electives than my majors. The essay is entitled ‘My Taste Is Better Than Yours’.)
-I’m going to submit one of my mix CDs to the Silhouette for their monthly mixtape contest. (The prize is a gift certificate of some sort. Wish me luck.)
-Today I workshopped the next bit in my creative writing assignment and it was received well. (This is an ongoing thing, you can expect a new instalment to appear here each and every week. It’s like a serial or something similarly very exciting!)
-I found out my exam schedule today. (It ain’t so bad. One on Dec 9th, and one on the 15th, and none in the morning or early afternoon)
-Yesterday I also paid the first cable internet bill (ah the joys of living by oneself), and today I had a little quiz in Comp Lit. Not to mention that I’m getting several free-so-long-as-I-review-them CDs through blogcritics, which is kinda exciting.

And that’s just the last two days, and that’s probably skipping over some pretty important stuff. Not to mention the Adem/Explosions In The Sky concert on Monday, whose pictures, and perhaps a brief review, will perhaps eventually appear on here, as well as the whole wonder of Thanksgiving Weekend. My life is busy, but pleasantly. It was pretty awesome that staying up late to do my aesthetics paper, doing my creative writing instalment at the last minute, and writing a quiz all after spending three hours in line at an audition didn’t manage to make me particuarly stressed, and was by and large actually quite enjoyable. Life is good.

You know, now that I think about it, some sort of point form type of thing would be much easier to comprehend, so I’m gonna go back and change it, but I’m gonna leave the part where I say that I’m not, just to confuse people. Wankers.

Last night I played a bit of intramural soccer with Ian and some of his friends who have a team set up. We won! That was good. I was about the only one there without shin-guards, soccer shoes, and shorts. I was definitely the only one who hadn’t been in anything resembling a soccer game since elementary school. So I was fairly outclassed. But luckily I only touched the ball twice, only once with negative results, and neither time proved particularly disastrous. Now my legs are pretty sore. Maybe there’s a connection there. Anyway, I miss the good old days soccer. It would be nice to play sometime with people who also suck brutally.

Radio station On-Air training was today. It wasn’t particularly outstanding, but informative. Just another step in the long trudge to achieving my dream. I look forward to having access to that huge room with more than thirty thousand CDs.

In creative writing class, I had a nice little eureka moment about my project.. in the form of realizing that disconnected vignettes aren’t all they’re made out to be, and it would be much more amusing if all the horrible bad things happened to one person over the course of the night, instead of many. And what the hell, since the creative writing class is all getting a chance to critique it and make suggestions, I might as well give y’all that same chance.

I’m back in London for Thanksgiving this weekend. I’ll be seeing Explosions in the Sky a day later in Toronto instead of Sunday in Hamilton at a reportedly sub par venue. More complication and expense as far as travel is concerned, but it’s worth it to get some homecooked Thanksgiving feasting and see ye olde family. Speaking of travelling and expenses, I randomly discovered that R.E.M. is playing in, of all places, London Ontario on their next tour. This excited Kevin, and for some reason there were 5th row tickets left, which are no longer left. Wink wink. Nudge Nudge. Unfortunately the show is on a Tuesday evening, which is particularly inconvenient. But this might be my last chance to see this, one of my favourite bands. So we shall see what we shall see.

Oh yeah, and my phone finally, actually, honest to god really works. Same 5283368 business it was always supposed to be. And with that, my rambling endeth.

So today after my afternoon class, in awe of the lovely weather we have been having, I thought it might be fun to go on a bike ride, but I didn’t know much about the bunches of bike trails that allegedly fill Hamilton to bursting, so I had to weasel IanD into coming with me. We brought some paper and reading to maybe get some work done (boy, did we ignore all of that or what!) and then decided to bring IanH as well. So the three of us travelled down toward the harbour, and along the park-like trails. It was a good example of a fairly unattractive area trying pretty hard to look beautiful and for the most part not really succeeding. Then we got toward the end of the trail, saw a map of all the waterfront trails and decided unanimously that we might as well go up to Lake Ontario, and follow near the skyway over to Burlington. And before we know it we’re riding along Burling St E, in the heart of Hamilton’s seemingly unending steel producing industries. Now this is the part of Hamilton people refer to when they’re thinking about the smelly, pollutionating, ugly part of it. Regardless, I thought it was neat. Then the road started getting more and more unsuitable for bicyclists. There were big trucks, awkward intersections, and the whole bit, but no real obvious way to get anywhere else. So we kept going. Eventually it became evident, as we were riding along the grassy hump beside the street, that the busy, truck-infested road we were on was leading toward the QEW and there wasn’t much of a way of getting off it. But we found a fenced off residential area and passed our bikes over the fence and then hopped it. I really wish I’d thought to bring my camera with me, though. Well there’s always next time! It gets a bit less exciting from there on in, we eventually found the lakefront trail (had some food at a little hot dog stand) and followed it into Burlington (over a little lift bridge that was dwarfed by the gigantic skyway), and then back through Burlington and back home. Now that was fun! Definitely something I feel should become a regular occurence down in the Emerson continuum.

Back this past weekend I was back in London, and I recall that I probably did something. Those things included James’ birthday party, and the second Sadies concert in two weeks (which was unsurprisingly very great) and this time I managed to get some pictures of it! We were talking about how my digital camera thingie was broken, and then my dad randomly plopped the thing I needed to fix it on my desk and now it’s even better than before! (how’s that for skimping on the techno-geek talk?) My dad’s the best. It was also particularly awesome to have a delicious homecooked meal. My mom’s the best. I had to wake up absurdly early on Sunday to get back to Hamilton for primary orientation at CFMU (the campus radiostation). I have On-Air Training on Wednesday, at which point I can be put on the fill-in list! In related news, I was on ‘Early Morning Rebel’ on Tuesday morning because the host, Adam, is awesome and invited me to come on. It was pretty cool, and I suggested that I’d be happy to do it any time, and he said that might be cool, but, since there’s a chance he was just being polite, I’m leaving the ball in his court on that one.

I finished my first essay last night (comparative literature, Gulliver’s Travels.. which really was a great book), skipped my first two classes today. I really need to get back into the essay writing frame of mind, it just wasn’t coming. Less procrastination might help as well. I’m doing a very, very slender version of my favourite monologue ever in Acting class, which is quite exciting. And now I reaaally need to think of an idea for my Creative Writing class major project, since the first installment is due Tuesday! (the postcard story I wrote for that class is now available of public consumption as well). A lot of other things have also changed in this town recently, and you can be brought up to speed on all of it by checking the newly updated update page!

And most importantly, The Arcade Fire on Saturday!! Sweet Jesus.

* Yeah right, suckers!

They’ve been grinding out and ramping up the publicity for the new album over the last weeks and months, and I’ve been paying close attention, but often more out of habit than real excitement. This comes because their last album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind made me doubt them for the first time. It wasn’t a bad album. It was even a good album, with some really good songs. But it was just U2 doing what they knew they knew how to do, and coming pretty close to being boring. It was not particularly interesting, nor was it particularly exciting. But it sold huge. It catapulted them back into the hearts of the public. U2 earned 7 grammy awards from it. People gobbled it up, and why wouldn’t they? It was a very well made album. But it was also very safe, almost lazy. My opinion on initially hearing it was positive, and remains so. But I dislike what it represents. Of course U2 can write an album of good anthemic rock songs, but they can do MORE. And when a band starts getting older and does something like that, you can’t help but worry that they’re not going to bother trying to push limits. So I was pretty apprehensive about hearing the new single, Vertigo. All the hype has been saying “U2 return to their rock and roll roots” and I thought, ‘great, yeah that’s what the fans want, and yeah it’ll be good, but will it be great?’

So disillusioned was I with U2 that I waited 3 hours after the mp3 of it went online to download it. I played ping pong while I was pretty certain it was probably online. And then I moseyed over, checked the U2 message board, found a link and casually downloaded it (this may seem fairly obsessive, but then it’s nothing compared to 4 years ago). When I heard the first 2 seconds of the song though, like a rush of demented, teleporting vampire weasels clawing across my mind, I suddely got really, really excited. ‘What is this sound? I haven’t heard U2 make this sound before!’ thought I. And yea, ’twas good. Of course after 9 seconds it returned to more familiar territory, but the connection had been made. The fire had been lit.

Meanwhile, twenty listens later…

I wasn’t one of the fans going bananas at the possibility of U2′s “Return To Rock”. I was a fan of them doing anything so long as it was interesting, and good. With Vertigo, U2 has returned to rock, and they have done it very well, and not been boring about it. There’s pieces of all different U2 eras here. One can’t help but be reminded a little of Elevation, or the initial 3 early 80s albums, or the darkness and seriousness of Achtung Baby, or that specific way a late 80s U2 b-side always manages to sound. But of course it sounds like U2, because it is. But put all the pieces together (and don’t worry there’s plenty of brand new ones to fit into this puzzle) and the picture you get is one of U2 rocking full tilt. Ragged and raw and fast and loose. A few years ago Bono described the album as “punk rock from Venus” and for once he may be right. There’s a ripping bass line, awesome guitars (even the jangly ones we expect from U2), driving beat, and it sounds to me faster and louder than any song U2 has released in a good long time. After it’s over, it leaves its mark in the ringing silence left behind.

And oh how it oozes with style. There’s something to be said for honest and direct music that just leaves its message on the listener’s heart, but there’s also something to be said (as U2 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt on the monumental ZooTV tour) about the importance of style. Listening to Bono count in the song in Spanish and say “turn it up loud, captain” as Edge wails on the guitar, I realize that U2 is at least pretending to take themselves a little less seriously than they did throughout the first few years of this decade. They have the swagger back that made the Achtung era so damn cool. They think they’re awesome and now rather than trying to arrogantly prove it like on the last album, they’re just having a laugh about it and almost nonchalantly kicking some ass. One of the things that made Achtung Baby so incredible was the dichotomy between its dark, brooding, heavy side and the eazy-going, fun, rocking side. I’m starting to think U2 may have some part of that back on How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb… Here’s hoping!

I also have to make mention of the lyrics. One of my least favourite things about All That You Can’t Leave Behind was the words. They were often cliched and not full of the captivating imagery and turn of phrase I know Bono is capable of. These lyrics are very much back to form. They’re not entirely spelled out, and leave something to the imagination; they don’t necessarily mean a whole lot, but they mean nothing much better than the lyrics of Elevation meant nothing. Plus, they’re into Spanish now.

This isn’t U2′s best, but it’s what I love about them and it keeps me listening. Who knows what the album will sound like, or if Vertigo will continue to keep me coming back for more (and not fizzle on me after a day)…but for now, U2 have won me back.

U2 – VERTIGO – mirror

And, unsurprisingly, there’s a story to go with it. On Friday (not, however, the morning as per their arrangement) the Bell^TM man came and supposedly hooked up my own not-to-be-shared-with-not-wanting-to-share-housemate phone line. However an inaugural call home revealed the Call Display^TM info pertained to the surnominal title of the aforementioned housemate. Evidently Bell Man had failed to protect the correct wiring of telephones the world over. I went to tell Jaye^TM about this “snafu” (if you will), and that a long distance call to London would likely appear on his phonebill and that I would gladly reimburse him for said call. He seemed rather taken aback by this situation and very concerned that I was accidentally connected to his phone-line, even going so far as to (hopefully jokingly) suggest legal action against the phone company. So it was clear he wanted this situation rectified, but Ian felt he could straighten it out without calling Bell^TM and risking long waiting times or exorbitant charges. This was haltingly accepted by Jaye, though he was very insistent that he’d really rather I didn’t use the phone already hooked up in my bedroom for local calls, and that it would be much preferable that I go upstairs and request the use of our vertical neighbours phoneline, rather than risk interrupting the viriginity of his phoneline he claims to barely ever use. I asked if this was because he didn’t want to miss God calling, and he jumped on this opportunity and agreed passionately. But I could tell he wasn’t being entirely open with me. There was something else going on. But what would life be without a few little mysteries? So the denouement of our story occurred this evening when Ian did some mystical rewiring that resulted in my phone being connected to my line and Jaye’s being connected to his.

On Friday (oooh what a busy day ’twas!) I also ventured out of my basement to go to a big house party full of mostly strangers. Even though I couldn’t find any mixers and ended up drinking long island ice tea mix straight (a trip to the beer store is in order) it was a good time. I ran into a guy who turned out to be named Adam and looked familiar, and we established that I’d probably seen him at the Silver Mt. Zion show earlier this year. It turned out he has a show on CFMU, and when I made known my aspirations in that direction he invited me to come on his show on Tuesday the 28th at 8am. The plan at this point is to play some Decemberists and Ted Leo/Pharmacists and discuss their undeniable awesomeness in great detail. Adam also demonstrated knowledge in music that makes mine seem very limited by comparison, and very good taste (he is also fully onboard the arcade fire train), and he’s also in a band which I’ll have to check out at some point. So that was all pretty exciting based on me wanting a radio show more than almost all other things. They say it’s all about who you know. I also didn’t audition for the Fall Major (a feminist musical with one male part), and didn’t not get a callback. If for some reason I had auditioned, I might have sung I Was Meant For The Stage by The Decemberists on account of it seeming appropriate, falling within my range, and its lyrics being mostly known to me.

The opener was some dude named Rick White or something like that. He was really skinny and had enormously long hair, and he played some nice quiet tunes on his guitar and sang. Then eventually the Sadies took the stage and hot damn do they know how to put on a live show. The music they played was surfy, bluegrassy, country kinda stuff, with occasional violins and a stand-up bass. They were amazing musicians… it was mesmerising to watch the Good brothers’ fingers flying around on their fretboards. And very fun to watch them going all out on their harmonies… eyes squeezed shut and mouth opened wide. It was really very folky, the lyrics (to the songs that had them) seemed to be somewhere in the vein of those old time folk jams of the sixties, and I really appreciated that. There’s not a whole lot of young people bringing that kind of music and that kind of feeling to the other young people, and I really appreciate that (I also appreciated the fact that they kicked some major ass). They played a bunch of covers at the end of the show, just randomly trying stuff out that they weren’t sure would go off, and then for an encore they brought Rick White on and just played a whole bunch of songs by various people, perhaps some by themselves. I like that angle on music.. making it a collaborative community thing not just between the musicians on stage but all the people who’ve come before and written great songs. There isn’t much of that in any genre except folk, or folk related music (there’s certainly a lot at the Celtic Festival) and I think it’s largely because most other types of music are so concerned with style and image. These guys are just playing their music, and other music they like whereas other bands have to prove to everyone who they are and try and pretend they’re original. And the Sadies really are original, just in case you thought I was claiming otherwise. And it’s not necessarily a problem to try and stand on your own, but it’s silly to put on blinders, and it just doesn’t feel as warm and fuzzy and communal. But all in all, beyond strange ramblings about the nature of various kinds of music, The Sadies kicked ass. They’re definitely on tour, and they’re definitely awesome, so if you get a chance really do check them out. There is no way not to be blown away by the musicianship, precision, and spirit in these guys. And they have a stand-up bass which is automatic bonus points. I might just use their concert in London on Sept 24 as an excuse for my first home visit of this brand new school year.. we will have to see.

And in other music news (what other kind of news is there?) I am completely in love with the new album by The Arcade Fire, who are coming to Hamilton shortly, and I definitely intend to be there. They really are what music is all about. Well, one type of music. Grand, elegaic, anthemic, honest, emotional without being fake or annoying. I may have gotten into the whole joy of music that sounds totally true and honest after being blown away by the silver mount zion concert this spring, and these guys (also from Montreal) are operating on a very similar level. It’s raw, it’s spirited, it’s meaningful, political, hopeless and hopeful. And hot damn does it rock. This album has actually crippled my ability to listen to other music as I’ve been so completely addicted to it. And just as a disclaimer, all the fabulous reviews that are know coming out about the album, and all the hype that is ballooning out has nothing to do with why I listened to the album… I found out about all that afterwards, and I must say it’s quite appropriate.

The move-in was pretty straightforward, and I have my room arranged in a very pleasant fashion. Despite being smaller than the one at home (smallness=the only incentive to keep tidy), I enjoy the set-up more, and I definitely prefer the white walls to the pink. It evidently took a while to get the internet situation up and running. And I won’t have a working phone line for another week. That was the soonest they could have someone over, and Jaye, for reasons confusing, doesn’t want to save a whole load of money and share the phone line. I spent a long time talking to him trying to understand his reasoning, and I just can’t, unless he is hiding something or a little bit crazy. That was a source of some stress, but other than that he seems to be a nice kid. Ian arrived on Wednesday night with the ping pong table in pieces. Never have I seen a messy stack of junk rearranged so quickly and efficiently. In lightning speed the unfinished basement room positively brimming with junk was transformed into a ping pong playing heaven. It was madcrazycool. Look for the Memorial Invitational Ping Pong Tournament (we kill the winner and name next year’s competition after him/her) coming sometime in the future.

Schoolwise, I’m taking Aesthetics, Creative Writing, Modern European Literature, and The Art of Acting. They all look to be quite interesting and are sufficiently different that I won’t get them confused with each other. Of course next term I have 6 courses with less differences between them to keep straight. But that’s for the future. My Art of Acting professor seems especially really cool, and I only have exams in two of my courses which will be quite awesome come December!

Generally things have been awesome.. I have a pretty light workload this term, so I’ll be balancing it out with some SWHAT and some radio station volunteering and maybe some improv clubbing and hopefully some drama of some sort (I’m not sure how much I want to audition for the Feminist Musical Fall Major this year, my chances with only 3 male parts don’t look to good and I’d likely rather be in something else, maybe something non-feminist for once). There’s lot’s of cool people in and around my house, my room is super cozy, I look forward to attending and doing the reading for all my classes. So life is pretty good.

In the big internet-hole, I took the opportunity to rehaul or at least slightly modify every page on my site. The biggest change is to the paintings on the visuals page which are now actually there! So if you’re interested take a look around, get comfortable but don’t leave your undies lying around.

I will probably (not definitely) make a brief trip up to Hammertown to leave off some stuff on friday morning. But I will have to hurry so I can be back for the season finale of Northenden (which is my GURPS campaign, and yes I know it takes a real geek to call the last session in a roleplaying game before an indeterminate hiatus a “season finale” but that’s just the way god made me, and if you start questioning god he’s liable to get pissed off and zap you). For those of you who don’t know what roleplaying is, go here, and thou shalt be partially enlightened albeit perhaps still quite confused. And I’m still waaaiiting and waiting for my new shiny fourth edition books to arrive in the mail. I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a pair of books in a good while.

The day before yesterday was Sunday. That day worked out pretty well. My parents took the whole family up to Niagara-on-the-Lake to see Nothing Sacred by George F. Walker at the Shaw Festival. You may have heard me mention this dude before, because he rocks. A lot. (Speaking of which, when the hell are those reruns of This Is Wonderland get their ass back on CBC?) I myself enjoyed the play immensely. I thought that the script was awesome, a lovely blend of biting humour and revolutionary or emotional seriousness that worked very well. ‘Twas a complex, slightly unbelievable, very original, and remarkably engaging story. Just the way I like it. The stage design was very well done too, inspired by the work of Kandinsky and a little abstract, but very effective. The acting was brilliant, and Mike Shara as the revolutionary and smart-ass Bazarov was very effective. Actually I could have sworn I was watching Jayson MacDonald much of the time he was on stage, and that’s really not a bad thing since that dude’s pretty cool as well. Perhaps it seemed so awe-strikingly good because I haven’t seen professional actors indoors on a big stage doing a play in.. several years (despite the fact that in the last year I’ve seen at least 15 plays and been in 2. Now that I think about it, that’s quite a lot really). They all had it down to an artful science, they did. Very, very impressive. Actually not long before seeing that I saw some professional actors doing Shakespeare, but that was outside… As You Like It in Gibbons Park. That was really good as well. At any rate, after the play we drove back towards home but stopped for dinner at a restaraunt called “Twelve” in Port Dalhousie (which St. Catherines has eaten). It was right on the water, with beautiful trees and ducks and a waterfall (at least water falling out of a pipe and down some concrete, anyway) in view out the windows. There’s times you feel a bit cheated paying twenty bucks for an entree and getting this tiny little thing that tastes pretty good, but not that good. Well, at Twelve, the food was actually the best food I think I have ever tasted. In my entire life. (at least that I can remember). It was the kind of cooking that even something that looks not particularly great (like random vegetables you don’t recognize, or something that looks like coleslaw, which I’m not a huge fan of, or little brown worms) it ends up tasting absolutely amazingly divine. It made Kelsey’s the next night on the way back from Hamilton seem ‘decent enough’, when normally it would be ‘mmm good’. So yeah, that was sure as hell worth 20 bucks for an entree (and my lovely parents were paying anyway). I had some sort of pork roast with spaetzles and other things. Actually one of the funnest things about Twelve was that about half the things on the menu I had no idea what they were, but I’m pretty sure it would have all tasted absolutely gorgeous.

The greatest thing about the Goderich festival is the sense of community. Every year it’s mostly the same artisans, and mostly the same sound technicians and a whole lot of recurrent performers and volunteers and even attendees (a lot of ‘em coming from pretty far away), so there’s friendly familiar faces everywhere. Soppy community-loving aside, there’s also some really goddamned good music. They call in the cream of the crop in celtic music from Canada, the US, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Listening to some of those people work a fiddle or guitar is jaw-droppingly spectacular. Tony McManus (“One of the world’s greatest and most innovative guitarists”, “The best Celtic guitarist in the world”) and Alisdair Fraser (“recognized throughout the world as one of the finest fiddle players Scotland has ever produced”) made an awesomely unstoppable duo, that often sounded like 10 people playing rather than 2. Trinque L’amourette (a band playing, singing, and dancing in the Acadian vein) convinced me that maybe I can admit to not hating the french; and damn that song was catchy. All the other artists were quite excellent as well. And I still can’t quite figure out how to pronounce Gearoid Oh’Allmhurain. It costs 40 or 50 bucks for a weekend pass but it’s definitely worth it and it tends to weed out the… you know, the lesser, undeserving whipper snappers. Vive la celtique!

This year we (me n’ the ‘rents) stayed at the same nice little bed and breakfast a bit outside of Goderich that they (me bro me ‘rents n’ gramps) stayed at last year when I was notably absent. It was a nice place and the hosts were really cool. The weather for the entire weekend was also bordering on perfection–sunny, nice breezes, and low 20s degreeage. It was really quite lovely all things concerned. I spent most of my time at my dad’s booth pimping out harps. Since my disastrous failure as a telemarketer, my family has decided that I am now the salesperson of the family. It was actually quite enjoyable standing around being friendly with strangers and expertly and politely fielding harp-related queries. I met someone who lives really close to where my work in progress is set, someone who went to my high school but 40 years ago or so, and with one of the infamous South London Hardware Mumas, two lasses who buy really old pianos and restore them in their workshop, and even some people quite interested in harps. I also got my picture taken for the Goderich Signal-Star (not sure if the editor liked my face enough to actually put me in, though), and my dad got interviewed by the “Beach Buggy” which is some on-air feature for localish radio station … W K something something I think it was. Add that to my mom being on the new PL playing the harp at Home County a couple weeks ago and it’s clear that we’re takin’ over the frickin’ world! The highlight of the entire weekend though had to be that in the program my dad was listed as Roger Muma Musical Lust. Which likely relates directly to the large number of kanteles we sold over the weekend, including the one that sold in the silent auction for 40% more than its retail value. Sex sells. And when that fails, lust le.. la… . Well there’s just no word in English appropriately beginning with the letter l that is appropriate here, so my attempt at cleverness has been ruthlessly defeated. Regardless, this past weekend was one of the finest of the summer. Sláinte!

So in the interest of preserving happiness and good will, to take my mind off my loss (in fairness I actually did get over it a long time ago, but I am taking drama) I’m going to be running off to Goderich where this weekend is the 2004 Celtic Roots Festival. My father will be there in full force displaying, and (if the Gods smile favourably upon us) selling his harps. The Celtic Festival is one of those things I sort of look forward to every year. It’s in a beautiful little town, right on the water, and it’s just nice to get away from the oppressive hug of the big city and be in a park surrounded by celtic music and crafts and dancing for a weekend. It’s got a great sense of community, and even if you just sit on your ass watching the seagulls steal people’s fish and chips, you feel most everyone there harbours nothing but good feelings for you. And I do quite love the music of the celts (they got something very very right somewhere along the line), and it’s fun hearing Irish accents all over the place, as well as perhaps some real live gaelic. Ooh la la. Well, at this point I can only hope it lives up to my expectations, and that I can manage to wake up circa six ante meridiem so we can get the van loaded and off. Which is damn early.

In other news, the new Ted Leo album entitled “Shake the Sheets” managed to leak online last week (it’s scheduled for release in October), and it’s quite awesome. I can’t quite think of another artist who has released 3 consecutive consistently excellent albums without changing his sound really at all. But it’s a damn good sound, so we’re the better for it. And yes, it’s all hideously accessible and notably absent from the radio. If Franz Ferdinand can be popular I know my Teddy can be gosh darn it! Also music related, I changed my Slippy Ducks mix again last night; it’s not exactly 80 minutes anymore, but it’s toighter, though not yet updated online. And just so this is immortalized on the internet for posterity, my most prized possession (mp3cd player) has been broken for some time and shan’t be recovering. I mourn its loss, and the money I will be forced (you think this is negotiable?) to spend on a replacement.

And I’m spent.

I would be remiss to use a word such as remiss at this juncture, because it’s rather a silly word. So I won’t. Shit. Also I shouldn’t be pretending like nothing has been ‘up’ in the last zwei woche (2 weeks). One rather exciting thing that happened, is that I got a job! That’s part of what that whole smugly cryptic entry back on the 13th was about. I know, I wasn’t sure it would ever happen either. Unemployement was kinda my thing, you know? Like MJ’s crotch-grab, or Zorro’s Z, or Limp Bizkit sucking. But no need to worry… I got fired after less than 2 weeks! So here I am back in the dregs of parental and governmental assistance.

And yes perhaps there is a story to it. And although I’ve probably told it in varying degrees of detail to varying (towards the high end) numbers of people likely to be reading this… you know what they say, “posterity, posterity, crackerjack filibuster.” Or maybe they don’t say that, that wouldn’t do well for them, I don’t think. But let’s start at the beginning.

Going on James’ advice (“this job fuckin sucks”) I eagerly applied to P.R.C. Books of London (pronounced with a hifilutin British accent and eccessive pausing for emphasis). This highly esteemed firm, a division of one of Canada’s largest communications companies, has, for nigh on four decades, been proving their mettle in the field of marketing “special offers.” Basically, my job was to call people on my list, give them a draw number for a prize, establish rapport (once the office figured out how to spell it), and then try and get ‘em to buy a 5 year uncancellable “service” (the word subscription was banned from the office) of 6 magazines. It was a rather good deal (73% off the newsstand price), the reasoning behind the whole thing being that they give you the magazines you may or may not want for really cheap so that they can tell the advertisers they have a high circulation so that they can get more money for ads in the magazines (sort of, in a way, a bit like spam now that I think about it). I worked weekdays from 9-2 and two days a week from 4:30-9, got paid 8 bucks an hour plus commission, and was expected to get 2 confirmed sales (I’m just new here, my superviser will call you back to make suitable payment agreements) per shift.

The kinda funny thing, is that I really didn’t mind the job. There were definitely some negatives… being expected to follow the annoying script exactly (but hey, I’m all about those thespiatics), if Lee-Ann caught us yawning she’d make us do jumpingjacks (???), and I find the whole idea of trying to get people to buy things they don’t need or even want a little repulsive. But almost all the people I was working with were really cool, and I enjoyed talking to the contacts who were easygoing enough to be conversary. Of course the best fun was when I left the script. I always felt much better if someone had fun talking to me (and vice versa uv keurse) and didn’t buy, than if someone was fairly boring and disinterested and for some reason was convinced to take the package. I chatted with a young woman from Brantford for longer than the usual (“…you will receive it right away” “really? are you just around the corner” “we have people everywhere” “that sounds kinda creepy!” “oh no, we’re a very benevolent force, only here to help”…). She said it was really fun and that she never usually listens to telemarketers for more than a minute and that she was sure I did really well. I didn’t make the sale, though she was willing to take the offer if I could pay for the first bit until she had enough money, which I figured was probably not doable. Two days later I got fired, cause I wasn’t actually doin’ particularly well (maybe I should have asked her for her number, har har).

So on friday, that would be the 20th, Lee-Ann calls me into her office in the middle of the shift, and informs me that she’s gonna have to let me go, due to “Lack of Production” (high praise and three sales my first shift set me up for the fall). She seemed genuinely complimentary or perhaps necessarily polite (not necessarily necessary since I have no intention of ever purchasing a shotgun though), saying I was a hard worker, and always on time and she’d hope that I would use her for a reference. So that’s good, I guess… then she asked what I had with me, and brought my backpack and my water to her office and sent me packing. It was an interesting experience, and I certainly did feel some emotion as a result. It didn’t feel particularly like disappointment or despair, but perhaps since I’m such an optimist-at-all-costs I wouldn’t know it if it hit me with a Big Beautiful Hardcovered book. Now, it so happens that on that last Friday, I had been sitting at the window and eyeing the Sammy Souvlaki trailer below me hungrily. So once I was off, and had stopped in at the bagel deli to give James the news, my destination was clear. And I gotta say, that was the best gyro I’ve ever ett. Then I took my bike around the bike path a bit, and I kinda got this giddy feeling of freedom and opportunity. Which is kinda odd, since I was only employed for 10 days and I didn’t really get beaten down into the grind yet. But I wasn’t complaining. And if Bart and Lisa want a nice trick to pull on Moe.. “who here is Freda Mycock” should work well.

So that’s that.

And this is this.

These past few days were marked by me and Brian’s trip to Hamilton, to check in on our new apartments, see Kristen, Steffan, Jared and some surprise familiar faces at the McMaster Summer Drama Festival, and then crash the cast/festival party. It was an awesome little excursion. Highlights include. McMaster being really quite beautiful in the summer. Finding out that Ian H (upstairs Ian) is likely getting a video camera in September we can produce amateur porn… or do something worthwhile with it, even. The plays themselves were quite awesome. Twelfth Night (which seems to follow me wherever I go) was quite charming and excellent. Set outside in faculty hollow, most of the cast was pretty awesome, so much so that it’s rather difficult to pick a favourite, that title goes to about half of them (including anyone who happens to be reading this). Really it was more enjoyable than the production in Stratford I saw in grade 12. The weather was interesting though, it rained sporadically but generally lightly throughout, and then about halfway through the last act it completely and totally poured, soaking everyone and everything and doing a lot to muffle the actors’ voices. The last line of the play is of course “and the rain it raineth every day”. How appropriate! We missed the Moliere play because there wouldn’t have been time to eat otherwise (quite unfortunate), but Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (which chronicles the experiences of three male hostages in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s) was really rather great. Intense, dramatic, comedic, and profound. The way theatre should be, methinks. And the late-night outdoor in-front-of-concrete setting was very perfect.

The party afterwards was a blast as well! So many fun people in such a small place! This is the second cast-party I’ve been to this summer (the other being for Hannah Feiner’s excellent A Triangle in Three Dances) and I haven’t been in a single play. It’d be nice to have both, but one is better than none as they say. There were singalongs, impromptu monologues, good people, and rather considerable amounts of drinking. I even stumbled across the fact that a certain castmember is a roleplayer, which is unexpected and quite cool. It’s every geek’s dream to find someone to mutually make fun of LARPing with (they’re the real losers!). And then on the way back home at about 5:30am or something, we found ourselves (can’t quite remember if it was me or Brian who spotted it first) about 5 feet away from a black rodent-like creature with a very obvious white stripe down its back pressed against a fence and looking rather ill at-ease. The obvious solution was to run immediately across the street. Luckily no one was hurt. Cause that coulda been reaaaal bad, and neither of us bothered to bring changes of clothes. In the morning (14:45)the Pancake House was unfortunately closed despite the sign saying they were open till 3. Grrr. So instead we got some nice greasy food at “Tally Ho” across the street. Tally Ho as the name for a restaraunt pretty much makes it awesome by deafault! I can’t remember what the food tasted like though.

I must say, I’m really looking forward to going back to Hamilton in September. It’s gonna be a good year. I can smell it.

Six. Feet. Under.

Ok, one’s kind of a number, but you get the point. It turns out that the above three words are synonymous with another three words: Best. Show. Ever. Care to explain myself, Damon? Well hey, I guess that’s what I’m here for. It’s the best show on television. Of course it’s only kind of on in Canada because CRTC won’t let us have HBO or some shit (or so I hear). By kind of on.. Showcase has been showing the first season in Canada. In America (God bless her) HBO has shown up to the third episode of the fourth season. What did we Canadians do to deserve this maltreatment? I can’t really say. But at least we’ve been given the internet to set things slightly righter. And right they have been set. And there you have it.

If you want some editorializing, look no further than here. Six Feet Under is about complex and everchanging relationships between almost seven dimensional characters. It’s a little bizarre and outrageous. You’re not always sure what’s actually going on. And through the whole thing you just want to laugh and cry at the same time. Kinda like life. You come to feel you understand the characters and know them almost as well as people you’ve known your whole life, and maybe more than themselves. Their problems and relationships make sense, and you mostly understand and sympathize with both sides. Which can be pretty emotionally riveting. The conflicts and relationships seem familiar, not necessarily because you’ve experienced them yourself, but because there are pieces you can relate to, pieces that are universal and a whole that is as completely real as fiction can be. It’s not necessary to explain who the characters are or what the plot is, even though they are the most important part. You don’t have to know if there’s cops, or redheads, or gay sex, or blood bubbling out of drains. You just have to know that it is a great story, with great characters, and it is told impeccably. After watching an episode you feel reaffirmed of humanity’s worth, and the value of moments and people, and (crazily) actually feel like a better person. So maybe I’m just falling into Alan Ball’s little trap and being converted by his (sometimes not completely subtle) message. But I think it’s one I’ve always agreed with.

(In the above paragraph, every instance of ‘you’, really meant ‘I’. I was just trying to be universal. Oh well.)

For the last several days I ran off to Sarnia, where it so happens Ian lives. Despite knowing him for something like fifteen years, it was the first time I have been to any of his long string of houses (not counting the one in Hamilton, since it doesn’t count). Fun was had. We now have a ping pong table that will be coming to Hamilton in the fall, at which point I will become number one ping pong world champion. We also got a really nice, semi-elegant solid wood low hanging table to put in front of the house. Thirty bucks at ValuVillage and it’s got a lot of class, but not so much that we have to worry about dinging it up a bit (more). It was also quite interesting to experience a whole different family dynamic.. made mostly dynamic by a highly nonrelaxant grandmother. I will leave the rest of the interest to my head though. I don’t want to be a gossip now, do I?

And since I said I wouldn’t talk about school on this here place over the summer, I will have to use other means. But all I have to say is Murgatroyd is a really cool name. Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd.

So, that stuff is pretty cool. And what isn’t cool? The 15 date, 30 band Lollapalooza tour was cancelled entirely, due to poor ticket sales. This is both a personal and a global crisis. It affects me directly because I had kickass tickets, had been looking forward to it very excitedly for a long time. It was the perfect opportunity to see tons of awesome bands for a pretty decent price and only one trip to Toronto. Even had a hotel room reserved. I had it all planned out how it would be one of the undeniable high points of the summer. And thwump. It’s much worse for all the bands involved, of course, because their entire summer was really planned around it. They had tour dates planned in the area near the tour on the off days, etc etc. And this is where it gets global, baby. Low ticket sales caused this. It seems I in my little bubble was quite overoptimistic about how popular independant music had gotten. I thought it was gonna be laaaarge. Larger than Large. But brainwashing the people I know into liking the same music I do as much as possible doesn’t do much for my sense of general trends. So getting some of the biggest names in independant music all in one place for a good price just ain’t good enough. So who’s fault is all of this? Yours! That is, if you didn’t buy a Lollapalooza ticket, and I’m guessing there’s a fairly high probability chance you didn’t (and it doesn’t count if I bought one for you. Hah!). So yes, I’m mad at everyone in the world right now. But don’t feel too badly, because I’m just an angsty until-recently-teen. Don’t blame yourself, it’s MTV’s fault anyway (I also suspect their editing style causes seasickness). And McDonald’s fault. And George Bush’s fault. I think Willie Nelson had something to do with it, too. The apocalypse is indeed nigh. My brothers, it is time to join a cult and prepare yourself to abandon this fickle physical world entirely. Grrr. Woof Woof.

Saturday brought yours truly to Call the Office for the umpteenth time, this time for to see Manitoba and Junior Boys.

Junior Boys are made up of two blokes who hail from, of all places, Hamilton, Ontario. Or at least last night they were; the internet tells me that there was supposed to be an extra bloke. While I haven’t thought of myself as a Hamiltononian often, listening to the blissed out music these fellows produce, makes me proud to consider myself half living there. I would not have considered them much of a live band. Their music soars and oozes so well because of the immaculate construction it undergoes in the studio. They did a good job of taking over the stage though, and I was surprised to see the lead singer dude strumming away on his guitar, while the other dude strummed away on bass, plinked on keyboards and fiddled with his Mac. They did not have a lot of stage presence as far as theatrics and posing around were concerned, and that was probably for the best as the music did most of the speaking for them. It did not sound quite as good in a live setting as throbbing out from an awesome set of headphones attached to my home stereo, but it was still definitely worth seeing them do it live. Especially for them, to expose their sound to a wider audience, who hopefully were suitably impressed no matter how much they thought they sounded like Depeche Mode. The sound Junior Boys constructs is so carefully placed together, each element of the production stands out, each tick of electronic drum and each swoosh of synth sounds as if it is exactly in the right place. It sounds very futuristic, very clean, very cool, familiar yet exciting and original, and it builds one hell of an atmosphere. Dan Snaith commented during Manitoba’s set that “these guys are gonna be big!” I would have to agree. They have what it takes to appeal to the masses… the hipsters, the indie fans, the dance-lovers, the hip hop kids, and hotdamn are they groovy. If there was ever a perfect soundtrack to driving through the night, this is it. Car commercial, anyone? Plus! The lyrics and singing are actually really good and totally don’t shit up the songs like lyrics in electronic music often have a tendency of doing. Well done. The major problem with the performance is that they didn’t play for nearly long enough, and they didn’t have any vinyl of their new album on sale at the merch table in back.

Manitoba was next. They (that is, three people, one of which was assumedly Dan Snaith, since Manitoba is widely reported to be a one man band… I think he was the one who did all the talking and pandering for crowd noise) arrived on stage wearing bear masks over their faces, and set about creating noisy layers of guitars and sound effects, tambourines, recorders, xylophones, and lots and lots of drums. The vocals were pre-recorded, which was an interesting choice. I think it was necessary, though, given the cacophany they were all busy creating. There was a projector showing music videos, and random other sorts of videos while they played away. That was very cool and uncharacteristically high-tech for Call The Office. It’s really rather hard to know how how much of the performance was done live, it was also at times quite difficult to discern one sound from another in the bombastic wall of sound that issued forth. When both drum kits got hammering at the same time, it was quite the experience! Overall, very intense, very cool, and they went the extra mile in making music wouldn’t necessarily work live into a great performance. Their set also seemed perhaps slightly short, though I think they went through at least the vast majority of Up In Flames, so I don’t know what more there was for them to do. All in all good stuff!..though I am not sure that they were justified in charging 3x what a normal cto show costs.

Pictures of the abovementioned proceedings are housed here

It has definitely worked quite well with a certain band called Ted Leo and the Pharmacists who are playing at CTO on July 17. It turns out they are fucking great. Literate, catchy as hell, musically interesting without being completely off the wall, very listenable, and generally good. So I am looking forward to that quite a bit now. Plus there is Manitoba wsg The Junior Boys this very Saturday, the 19th. It’s a bit pricey at 12 dollars, but it will be good. If for some mystical reason you don’t end up at the show on Saturday, I will hopefully be providing some nice pictures here a bit afterwards. And there’s always the Matadors, who are next playing on the twenty somethingth of July.

When you aren’t particularly interested in cars, and have no chance of really getting one, what’s the next best thing? That’s right! Upgrading your computer! The dream of all members of that high-tech, PC-possessed elite counterculture. It’s a thing that requires the utmost care, tracking newly released chipsets and graphics cards, following the price drops, calculating the best places to spend each cent of hard-earned money. It’s a thing of beauty. And now I get to join the club! Well, more the hand-me-down club, but shhhh, I’m trying to play this up. And besides when have I talked tech specs about computers here before? I think it’s about goddamn time! Yes indeed! My dad and my brother both decided to upgrade their PCs this week, and of course, the real winner here is me. I’m getting a 64 meg video card, 512 megs of new ram, a new case, a new motherboard and an athlon 1.4 ghz cpu. And if that means nothing to you, it’s what was top of the line about circa years ago, or something. So not something to brag about to my friends while we compare framerates in Farcry. But I tell ya, it promises to kick the ass of the lame pile of crap I currently spend all this time using, and it only put me back a hundred and fifty bucks, so maybe I can afford something exciting like a dvd burner, or at least a cdr drive faster than 2x. And I’ll finally be able to play some games that were released within a few years. And maybe I won’t have daily harddrive failures anymore. One can only hope.

Now as a bonus, here’s the first (and probably only) installment of my new feature:
Damon Muma’s really bad idea of the day #1: Using a cheap american idolesque reality TV show to find a replacement for the lead singer of your band who was tragically found hung in his hotel room several years ago. Did you hear that INXS? That is a bad idea. A very bad idea. Or did you get your heads stuck up your asses trying to find your wallets? *Big sigh*. I rarely find myself offended, it’s more of a yearly or at most monthly occurence, but that kinda did it for whatever reason.

On a similar topic that’s more sad than offensive, the only place it mentions the arts in Stephen Harper’s campaign platform is in relation to pornography. Great. And no, I won’t be speaking more about politics, because I’m pissed off that the leadership debate got in the way of This Is Wonderland this week. Well whatever, it’s clear that various people need to get their priorities straight. Or at least inline with mine.

“Wonderland works beacuse its subject-matter is exhaustively researched and not just replicated, but deeply felt. Its creators have captured the essence of the grunt’s criminal practice in a big city — deking and dodging in the lowest criminal courts, where the customers see the rule of law as a tool of oppression or a delusion of chumps. Steeping themselves in this legal aid Bedlam, where at least half the accused are not criminal so much as poor and dysfunctional (hence the series title), Walker and Romain have emerged with a truly artistic vision, at the intersection of the law and human tragicomedy.” – Jeffrey Miller (The Lawyer’s Weekly)
I have nothing meaningful to add, except perhaps that I have quickly developed a healthy albeit imaginary crush on Alice. She’s a charmer.

Tuesday @ 8PM on CBC, baby.

Everyone loves dumpsters. Dumpster diving. Dumpster fun. For the whole family. That’s why I have pictures of them for you all to make salivations at! (Warning: don’t follow the link if you have slow internet, or if you put high value on your time. Actually, barring unique personal circumstance, you’re probably better off ignoring the link altogether). Mike had a wonderful brain super smash hit by realizing that a good way to ensure creativity gets happening is to collaborate. Just like working out. You set a time, you get to work, you make magic! Hopefully the results of this will be fruitful and highly wickedsick. At some point, perhaps they will be viewable here. If you give me cookies.

And WWW dot internet birthday well-wishings to daddy Roger yesterday (58 and no grey hair in sight!) and grandaddy Ken today (95 and still the waitress has to doublecheck if he’s a senior!) dot com.

So the Unicorns were a fun show, their songs were catchy, but not catchy enough to stick in my head. Which has less to do with the Unicorns and more to do with the fact that the Dresden Dolls have taken a firm hold on my brain’s musical cache. This band is very fresh, exciting, and has some really awesome lyrics and songs. They’re playing at Lollapalooza, too. I am a little worried about seeing them though because they might be playing at the same time as some other awesome bands. But regardless, they are A+ quality. And also led directly to some important breakthroughs in figuring out what’s going on behind my work of fiction that I’m working on (if you can call 1000 words in 1 year working…)

And as one excitement soon gives way to another, I got home only to find out about the Lollapalooza festival this summer at the Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto and that tons of awesome bands that I quite like will all be playing there. Most unfortunate is that PJ Harvey is playing many of the dates on the tour, but not in Toronto. Those responsible will be punished. But in the meantime, the line-up is still monumentally kick-ass and I already have my tickets ordered. And they ain’t shabby either: Lowest seated bowl, my dudes, square in section 2-0-3

DAY ONE:
Main Stage	Second Stage	Solar Stage
Morrissey Sonic Youth Modest Mouse Le Tigre Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Von Bondies	Broken Social Scene The Walkmen Wolf Eyes Danger Mouse Datsuns Sparta	Mike Watt The Dresden Dolls Bumblebeez 81 Carina Round The Living Things Peretz
DAY TWO:
Main Stage	Second Stage	Solar Stage
String Cheese Incident Flaming Lips Wilco Gomez Polyphonic Spree TV on the Radio	The Thrills The Coup Sound Tribe Sector 9 Elbow Wheat	Mike Watt The Dresden Dolls Bumblebeez 81 Carina Round Ross Golan and Molehead Peretz

So that will cover my going to Toronto to see concerts for the summer. I’m cut off after this baby, so if I start exhibiting tendencies that suggest I am in the early planning stages for an additional trip to Toronto, kick me square in the nads or politely suggest that I cease and desist.

It has just dawned on me as well, that this film really encapsulates the sort of mood, and even some similar relationships to what I have hoped to realize in my currently very much in progress novel/novella. And now that I’m in this wonderful mood, I naturally become almost unbearably tired at speed. Great.

In what will quite possibly be the last academic news for a good juicy four months, all my marks have finally rolled in to be posted on MUGSI (which coincidentally wins the runner-up award for lamest acronym ever; I don’t know the winner but let’s just say my pessimism allows for the fact that one even more truly horrible must exist somewhere). First things first, I did pretty well, I get to keep my three thousand dollar scholarship, so maybe I shouldn’t complain at all. I mean a perfect 12/12 (McMasterese for A+) in CMST (McMasterese for Communication Studies) is definitely reason for celebration. But now that I’ve gotten all that dang positivity out of the way, let’s focus on some disturbing statistics:
Average for courses in the two fields I have chosen to major in: 9.5
Average for courses in the one field I almost majored in, but chose not to: 10.0
Average for courses in the two fields I am likely never taking again: 11.0
Finding out you’re doing your worst and abandonning your best: Priceless
It seems something is terribly wrong here, and that perhaps my life is barrelling down the wrong set of tracks into an oblivion of meaninglessness and mediocrity. O cruel fate! O harbinger of disconsolate woe! (NB: while it’s not an acronym, “ahem” is a pretty retarded way of onomatopoeiaing the clearing of a throat. my new contest is for you to come up with a good alternative) Another sort of disappointment is that the exam that I studied the most for and felt the most confident about both going into and coming back out of, and even actually had fun writing, and caused me to decide to major in the small programme that makes itself seem like they are oh so desperate for students… was the only one that lowered my mark. Thanks a lot you assholes. I must have gotten about 74 or so on the Comp Lit exam to get the mark I did, whereas the CMST exam, which had quite a few instances of me making stuff up to answer questions I was clueless about, I got 89+ on. Life is not without its lessons though. What do I take from this experience? Going to concerts the night before I have multiple exams universally improves my mark! I guess maybe I should be pleased with those results, after all, I do like going to concerts. And that’s it with talk of school. The subject will be ousted from this webpage for the span of 115 days. With any luck I will soon be able to whine about my job though, and thus I will have a source of distemper to harp on about. But that is of course dependant on me finding one.

What else has been going on? A whole lot really. Key points? I can’t find any real flaws in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (wicked sick movie!), my brother DJed at a party at Colin’s house (wicked sick tunes!), and, aaaaand. Well. There’s a whole slew of other stuff that I can’t be bothered to remember right now. And hot damn was it fun or what!

And that left all of Monday to study for my Tuesday exam, and play the guitar (rather addicted I am).

The comparative literature exam was actually quite fun to write. How peculiar. I got my essay back.. it looks like Duncan was in a pretty good mood and he gave me an A- even though my essay was of rather poor calibre. Mad props to that. I have since decided to major in comp lit which joins my etched in stone decision to joint major in theatre and film studies.

And of course I’m leaving out the most important bit… first year of university, and along with it life in residence, are all completely over and gone! I’m back in London for a four month summer vacation! My how fast that went. I gotta say it was a pretty decent year, perhaps not the best of the bunch, but I met some fabulous people and had some fabulous times. I was a tad surprised that I got a little sad leaving McKay Hall for the last time, despite my religious nonsentimentalism. No dramatic single tear though, perhaps unfortunately…it would be a good experience to have. I’m gonna enjoy the summer, but I’m also looking forward to going back in the fall.. so that’s a good thing.

And my plans for the summer? Get a job (that’ll be the tricky part), sleep (a bit easier), hike the bruce trail with Ian and whoever other attendants/accomplices come along, get to Toronto to see at least some of the tons of awesome concerts that are coming there over the summer (Franz Ferdinand, the Roots, the Decemberists, Max Graham/Hybrid/Way Out West, ETC), learn to play guitar, write a novel, read for pleasure (from listneing to the audio book and reading the sparknotes summary of Crime and Punishment, I gotta say it sounds like a real good book and I will have to read it over the summer; in the meantime though, I have started away at ‘The Last Light of the Sun’ the latest offering from my favourite contemporary writer, the inimitable Guy Gavriel Kay).

And that is the extent of the excitement in my life. Well… Way Out West, Hybrid, and Max Graham are all playing at the same party in Toronto on May 23rd; since all three rate pretty high in the top half of my hundred favourite artists and djs, and as far as Way Out West and Hybrid are concerned I never really even figured on ‘em coming all the way to my neck of the woods, let alone both at the same time, so that’s actually quite exciting as well. My psychology exam went ok, I think, who knows.. the last psych thing I thought I did poorly on ended up being an 85 which is certainly nothing to complain about so, long and short of it.. who knows? Next up is film. Nothing too worry about too much, depending on how I did on the essay. I’ll study later, and a bit today already even.
And the really shitty news. Ian’s mother passed away yesterday in Calgary. Leaving a husband, a mother, and three children. I can’t imagine what the family must be going through; she had been sick for a number of years so the shadow’s been hanging over them for a while. Death is never fun to talk about and I’m really no good at knowing what to say or how to be as properly supportive as I’d like in tragic situations like this. I guess I’ve been lucky in a way, the only funeral of someone dear to me I’ve had to go to was my grandma, and that was something like six or seven years ago and I can’t remember much about it. Not much to say that doesn’t go without saying, no deep words of wisdom or anything, I just hope Ian and the rest of his family are doing as well as they can in a situation like this. If you’re religious, and maybe if you aren’t, send a prayer or a warm thought and some sympathy.

Through all of that, I was working on putting together a new program application for CFMU radio, which hopefully will get me somewhere. I shall share what I have so far:

CFMU NEW PROGRAM APPLICATION

Name of Program:
Slipstream (unless you can think of something better)

Describe the concept for your program:
Slipstream is about Music. Music as inspiration. Music as life. An emphasis on the lyrical, poetic side of music, whether or not it is instrumental. Music that makes us feel, is rich in atmosphere, takes us to faraway places and stimulates memory and imagination. Music that is honest and has something to say. Some songs will be accompanied by poetic manoeuvers that they inspired. Emphasis on personal yet universal meanings of songs rather than politics, but politics are not excluded, (every good political song starts off with its personal appeal, after all). This is about the power of the music, and not necessarily its subject matter, though obviously those two often go hand in hand. Listeners (if there are any) are invited to call in with songs that do their bodies good and share their insight.

also known as:

I play all my favorite songs and maybe a few of yours. if you’re nice to me.

What knowledge, experience, background, or skills will you bring to this program?
Passion, dedication, an unhealthy obsession with all things musical (just ask anyone who knows me!), I am a very quick learner, lots theatre experience (including Gut Girls and Lysistrata this year at Mac) which of course means proficiency at speaking clearly and assuredly, I selected music for Thespian club’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, made a radio play for my OAC German class with Soundforge and Acid Pro that blew my teacher’s socks off, my brother is a DJ-in-training (of the vinyl variety) so I have some experience with that sort of thing. I make a mean (crossfaded, within a second of 80 minutes, carefully selected and sequenced) mix CD! And most importantly, my English teacher who I had several times in high school and directed me in the school musical said I had a “radio voice”. I do believe he’s right!

What materials will you use for your program? (i.e. magazines, Internet etc…)
My wild and vivid imagination. Knowledge from the internet. A whole lot of music. Plus I’ve been thinking about themes for shows and songs to play since I came to MAC. Maybe even before. Yikes.

In no more than two sentences, describe your program?
An homage to the spirit, atmosphere, and emotion of a broad spectrum of music

How will you promote your show?
I will pimp the shit out of this mfucka. No doubt.

I’m talkin’ radio ads, I’m talkin’ posters, I’m talkin’ talkin’ everybody and anybody into listening to it. Oh, and maybe some on-air give aways and stuff. Of course, the idea is that it will be so good it will promote itself.

If you’d like to do a music program, please list at least ten artists that you would play on your program:
The Decemberists, Weakerthans, Massive Attack, Underworld, Flaming Lips, Outkast, REM, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, A Silver Mt. Zion, Elbow, Calexico, Radiohead, Aim, Dead Can Dance, Hybrid, Nitin Sawhney, Portishead, The Shins, John Vanderslice, Wilco

In your opinion, why is it important for CFMU to broadcast this program?
Just do it.

But seriously, since coming to McMaster I have noticed an unnerving under-representation of Damon Muma on the airwaves of CFMU.

Availability: Please indicate what days of the week and what times will work best for you. Be flexible and list all possible options:
I will take anything I can get, though I do not know my course schedule for next year. I have decided that I want to do a show so much that I’ll even take an early morning shift. Now that’s dedication. (I am not a morning person, but for you, I will become one!)

Can they resist? I should think (and fervently hope) not

Despite all this unbridled productivity, I also managed to do a little bit of studying for my Psych exam that’s on saturday morning (less review and more learning for the first time though… oh psychology, why did you have to be so early (10:30.. Eeeep) and all the way across campus??). My plan for the rest of the day is to be studying even more. Hopefully that isn’t an entirely unrealistic expectation.

And now, a fun story about me doing something very stupid:
On monday, I was sitting around in my room waiting for 16:30 to roll around so I could go to class, and I was thinking about film a lot for some reason, and wondering if we’d get any nice tips about the exam. So I leave leaving to get to class till pretty late, so when I finally get to my film classroom in the basement of TSH it’s already about 16:31. I open the door of the lecture hall… and find the classroom completely empty. That’s a bit surprising. But then I realize that film is at 15:30, not 16:30. Duh! How could I do something so stupid? So I leave and head back to my res, feeling a little dumb and disoriented, already planning on getting in touch with the people I know in the class to get notes of what I missed. And then I realise, or rather remember, that not only is film at 15:30.. it’s at 15:30 on tuesday. Monday at 16:30 is Communications. Dumbass! What a trip. I am rarely so out of touch with reality. Speaking of which, I should be getting to bed.

I was exposed to the wonderful world of bubble tea for the first time, in the company of Brian, Ashleigh, and Veronica. The tea was interesting, though I had a fruit blend and not tea. I think I liked it. I think I’d like to try it again. Regardless of the fine drinks, it was very fun to just relax and talk in good company for about four hours. Ah schoolwork, how I will not miss thee over the summer. It makes my heart tremble like an elderberry. Glee Glee Glee. I am becoming delusional, so I will cut this short. Then I must prepare for my Psych presentation (last important thing before exams!) and then do that sleeping thing I do so well. But not before I mention how much the time change sucks. Done and Done. Adieu.

I have also just had my first piece of writing published in the Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper. Not the first piece of writing I ever wrote, but rather the first piece of my writing to be published in the silhouette. which perhaps goes without saying. Perhaps I should have rephrased that first sentence in the following sort of manner: A piece of my writing was published in the silhouette for the first time. Though that is also fraught with confusion, because it could imply that I expect this same piece of writing to be published additional times in additional issues of the silhouette. That was not what I intended to express. This is a one shot deal, although in the future, it is possible and perhaps even likely that I may write another piece of writing which may find itself published in the Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper. That is not likely to happen until after the summer though, as the issue of the Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper, which was just published today, with a piece of my writing in it yet not the first piece of writing I ever wrote, is to be the last regular issue of this current school year and although they publish a few issues over the summer, my presence in Hamilton during that season is likely to be significantly lower than it is currently, so much lower in fact that I should be in fact spending most of my time in London. That said, it becomes unlikely that any pieces of my writing will appear in the issues of the Silhouette that are published over the summer. So if you are looking to read something by me, do not attempt to acquire those issues of the Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper. Really, if you are curious to acquire pieces of my writing, whether written for the Silhouette or otherwise, after coming to the end of this highly insightful and non-redundant paragraph of my writing, I should say perhaps you are the owner of a funny head malady. Which is not to say that your head is funny. But that you one crazy muthafucka. For those who may hold some level of curiosity surrounding the content of the article that I wrote for the Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper, which I briefly discussed at the beginning of this paragraph, it was nothing far out of the ordinary, or even particularly impressive. Indeed it was little more than one hundred and fifty two words or so of dissertation concerning the quality and merits of a particular album that I was given by a strange man in a big coat who purported to work for the Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper. He was nice enough, but I wouldn’t want to bring him home with me. The album in question is none other than The Pangea Project. It’s decent but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it. Rather, I would say that you would be spending your time in a much more productive manner were you to be reading this solidly written paragraph from beginning to end several times and appreciating the subtle nuances of pattern and pronunciation in the prose, perhaps eventually you would commit it to memory and then shortly after commit yourself into an institution where they deal with your type of person. But if you’re doing that, you might as well have some music on in the background, perhaps to distract you from the horrible monotony of your life, and this paragraph, and it would hold a certain level of appropriateness in a cosmic sort of sense if that music you were listening to was the CD that was the instigator of this ridiculous string of phrases in the first place, wouldn’t it? But it doesn’t really matter that much to me, it’s not like I will ever know, and it’s not like that particular album is even especially noteworthy in any sort of way, so it’s rather useless to even consider the possibility.

Warning: Excessive use of ellipses may offend some viewers
I just finished my film essay this afternoon… yeah it was supposed to be due Monday, but I got permission from my TA to extend my hellish work overload a bit longer, but happily also thinner. Except that now my Comp Lit essay is due (drumroll) tomorrow… and (drumroll) I haven’t finished reading the book yet… also, (drumroll) I can’t find the book either! Actually i’m being a bit overdramatic since I haven’t looked for it yet…but…yeah… as far as this whole can of worms goes…reference “fact of the day” above.

Rant of the Day:
So, as I understand it, Wednesday, like many of our day names, is named for one of those big hairy Norse gods. Friday=Frigg (goddess of the heavens, she may have been less hairy than the others), Thursday=Thor (god of thunder), Tuesday=Tyr (god of war). And of course Wednesday = Odin. Now for whatever reason, the anglo-saxons decided to change Odin to Woden. That’s cool. I don’t have a problem with that. But how the hell does Wednes come from Woden? I understand that the other names seem to have changed a bit as well, but they all got rather easier to pronounce. If you want people pronouncing your word right, then something like Wed-nes ain’t gonna do it, chum. Anyone catch a whiff of irony escaping from the fact that Odin is the god of Wisdom? Anyway, that’s half of why I’m always grumpy on Wednesdays in February.

Freakout of the day:
Sometimes I’m completely unsure about this whole ‘major’ thing. Theatre & Film, I say, with a double in English, or perhaps Comp Lit (since the english mammyfeckers really did cancel the creative writing course. FUCK!). But at the same time I sometimes come out of Communications Studes feeling very intellectually stimulated, and I almost enjoyed writing the big essay for that course. Something I’m really interested in, and perhaps more practically applicable, especially for something like journalism, but perhaps not. But CMST has a lot of very very dry required courses, and Cultural Studies covers a lot of similar things that can sort of be a part of English. Then I think, do I really want to analyze books and plays for the rest of University? Maybe since English is kinda pissing me off and Comp Lit doesn’t have a huge appeal, I should just take neither. But I want to be forced to be familiar with literature. I wonder if I walk into that office and mark down English and Theatre and Film, will I be cutting myself off from something that I might find more interesting and be able to do better at? I wonder if I was right to pigeonhole myself by convincing myself I knew what I wanted to do so early on. I think maybe I should have taken science and math more seriously in High School, it’s not like I did poorly in them. I think maybe I should take a wider variety of electives, but at the same time I want to be less pigeonholed by having a double major, and therefore fewer electives. Ack. Having doubts about my chosen path. How do you figure out for sure what you really want? I’m sure it’s gotta be possible. That’s the point of living, right? *deep breath*

And now, Slipsteam Productions Unlimited presents “Why I’m Going to Fail my Film Essay”:
“Another element that marks The Postman Always Rings Twice as a classical film is the use of raw and unconditioned merriments in the fortuitous production of nether gas. Such usage of the plural “we” rather than the singular “apple cherry crumble cake” is deliriously evident in the second avenue of conduct. Frank says to Wendy: “What happened to the Cora Cora Cora bird? I much desire to make jousts of verbiage: to speak with her.” Wendy, eyes downcast, speaks into the wind. A voice full of terror and warmth. The sun spins round in place.”
It might be fun to be insane.

And in Closing:
The Chair and CEO of TVO talked to our Communications Studies class today. That was pretty exciting! They had TV a camera there, and it was even pointing at me at one point; I tried to look wise and stroke my beard, but I probably looked stoned. Then again, it was the local cable channel, so no one will see it anyway. I should have done something silly. Oh well. I gotta say, though, TVO hasn’t been the same since Elwy Yost left. Poor old Elwy.

Laura had said I could nab a couch for the night, but It turned out that I forgot to bring Chris’ cell number that she gave me with me from Steeltown, so getting in touch with her was made considerably difficult. Since there was going to be a bus heading back to Hamilton in a little over three hours (or so I thought! dun dun dun) I figured that wasn’t too bad and just wandered toward Union Station, found an all night Tim Horton’s, disobeyed the No Loitering sign, and set down for some reading. 1.99 for an extra large hot chocolate seems so cheap when you’ve been buying six dollar drinks at the bar. I didn’t win the truck though. I really wanted to win the truck. I feel that would have been very fitting. It turned out the first bus back was actually 2 hours later than I had thought. That was shitty. Assumption kills more than consumption these days. (There’s also no more lockers in Union Station, which would have been nice to know beforehand, but luckily Kool Haus had a coat check and I left my bag there with no problem) I ended getting back to Hamilton at about 8:30 and hitting my bed in a stiff and sore state. In retrospect, I really should have just walked to Ryerson and I would have gotten in just fine, but I figured the security would be tight and it was really cold, so I wouldn’t wanna take the trek in vain. Heck I should have been smart enough to use a freaking phone book. If I could do it all over again, I might have approached that situation differently. Oh well, live and learn I guess. Sorry for scaring the shit out of you, Laura.

And now… I’ll work on my essays until some ungodly hour of the night (my sleep schedule’s way fucked up again). And yeah, on Thursday my parents brought me tons of food, took me to Kelsey’s where I had a deliriously wonderful peppercorn steak, and then we saw Juniper Tree which was fabulously entertaining.. far and away the best Directors’ Series play of ‘em all. That was a good night, much thanks!

Press coverage is always very exciting. But it’s also a little strange opening up the school newspaper and finding full colour photographs of yourself crossdressing that you had no idea existed! And what sort of host would I be if I didn’t share this with you, my dear guest! The article, from the March 11 edition of ANDY (the arts and entertainment section of the Silhouette), can be read in full, but without pictures here. The pictures have been reproduced, despite their low quality printed nature, and can be examined below:

(I’m the handsome one. naturally)
More pictures may, or may not, depending on circumstances, be on their way.

It’s nice to write something longer than 10 words that isn’t for school and isn’t about myself. Unfortunately the poor bastard croaked so soon I didn’t have a chance to do much with him. Oh well, shit happens, I guess.

I have recently been enjoying the grand invention that is the audiobook! How lovely it is to walk from class to class with Mr. Jennings’ soothing british voice relating the words of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment right to my ears! I’m sure it’s heavily abridged.. but I’m getting the gist I’m sure. And think of the freedom it affords! Today the sun shone brightly and the birds were in song, so in the two hours between my tutorial presentation and film class, I set off alone through the backwaters of McMaster. These backwaters, for those who are unfamiliar with them, consist of Coote’s nature paradise… trails through muck and bare trees, sodden water trampled grass, steep hills, boardwalks, marshes, and iced over ponds. I abandonned the trails and wove around through the swampy areas for a bit, got rather lost, gave my feet a bit of a soaking, saw four deer (one of which remained to stare at me fixedly from about 20 feet away after the others had scampered off), and eventually arrived back on campus in a very different place from where I left. I returned smelling, er.. natural, and feeling invigorated. Now everyone’s his or her own man or woman, but to me that’s a far better way to spend 13 chapters of Russian literature than cramped in a dingy study room!

Tonight I realized my alarm clock’s tardy and unusually quiet functioning of late must be due to a lack of necessary battery juices. Those batteries will last a good half decade, but as all things, they must come to an end. It’s so sad to see the poor bastard struggling to get its second hand past the 9, and to hear the feeble cry when it finally manages to approximate the appropriate time. Figures this would happen on a day when I have an 8:30 tutorial the next morning, too.

The cast party was rather fun. Great group of people, and amazing music courtesy of one of Vince’s roommate’s and his friend whom i have kept in touch with. We were all given personalized soundtracks of the show, including every cast and crew members theme song (mine was Lola by the Kinks, perhaps unsurprisingly), and also framed cast pictures… I thought that was super super cool! And of course Vince and Tom were awarded specially made Got Phallus T-shirts. I learned a few simple lessons from the cast party: (1) when I’ve only eaten a sandwich all day, I get drunk obscenely fast. (2) pepper vodka doesn’t taste particularly good… who in hell’s idea was that stuff anyway? (preferable to a prairie fire by a long-shot, though). (3) absinthe tastes like black liquorice; which might be good if you have taste preferences other than mine. (4) whatever I drank added up into one baaad morning headache, which I remedied by sleeping in until 4:30 or something ridiculous like that.

Oh yeah, on thursday night I went to Ram’s Head and won a Stella Artois glass in some scratch and win thingie.. that was a fun time too, though drinking an entire pitcher myself amounted to overkill.

Some other exciting news in the wide world of music: the Quannum Crew (Dj Shadow, Blackalicious, Latyrx.. others) will be performing at the Kool Haus in Toronto on April 12! That, if anything, deserves a loud whoop of excitement, and maybe even an aerial arm and hand extension, forgetting of cares, and waving to and fro. These guys (formerly called Solesides) were the first brand of hip hop I decided to like after Outkast (now if only those boys’d tour!). They are a very talented bunch of people. Blackalicious in particular: they have very many ridiculously good songs! So, despite that I have 2 exams the next day, and the concert is on Easter Monday, I will find a way, and I will be there!

And speaking of concerts… that Amon Tobin/Kid Koala/Bonobo/Blobkhead/Sixtoo Ninjatune Wonderconcert is less than 2 weeks away now! Nicely in the middle of excrutiating essay overload time, but I got my ticket 2 months ago, and I won’t back down (just like Tom Petty). This is gonna rock.. every single one of these artists is of very high calibre. Now I just need to find someone to go with me. Eh? Eh? Anyone?

In other, not so new news, Nick Cave is amazing. One of the most lovely, unique, but identifiable artists going. From one of the best love songs ever (Into My Arms) to the darkest, creepiest, most intense, violent and disturbing songs (“And the walls ran red around me/A warm arterial spray” yeccch!). More than any artist I would define his music as Adult. Not that it’s all inappropriate for children, but it’s just very grown up, and takes itself very seriously. His songs take you on journeys, and he tells stories with a lot of them, which is something that is lacking from much of music today. He’d make a very fine modern travelling minstrel. Good stuff!

and last but Noooot least! Lysistrata is just about ready to run steaming and screaming into the stage at Robinson Memorial Theatre… our first run is in less than 12 hours, in fact! It will land with a big thump, a sonic blast, and free innuendo for everyone who attends. And many other lovely things as well. I hope it is a success. It’s fun having lots of people laughing at me, I guess. So I hope y’all can come see it, and those who do, I hope you are very entertained! I’m also now in a position to speak very highly of The Soldier Dreams, it is definitely a bird of a ridiculously different feather, but also definitely very good; so if you can see it, I recommend it.

This coming week is pretty filled up for me as I have tech rehearsal every day for an indeterminate, but probably fairly long, amount of time, and then of course performance on thursday and friday.

To balance out any bad marks I might be worried about getting… I got 87% on my Film midterm, which ain’t too shabby, I mean sure I would’ve been disappointed with that mark in high school, but here that’s enough to definitely brighten one’s day. Then, after a CMST tutorial where my T.A. had already affirmed that he is super cool by just being generally interesting, humorous and impressively skilled at summarizing long bits of articles very briefly in a meaning-based instead of content-based manner, I got my essay outline that was due 15% of my mark back. 15/15! 100%!! Soooo happy with that. I mean, I had no idea if mine was good or bad or what, but I guess it’s a good one. I wasn’t even sure if they were allowed to give out perfect marks on big projects like that, and for me to be the recipient? thrilling! Haven’t gotten my comp lit essay back, I might have if I had gone to tutorial but I was sleeping after a rather late night of studying.

In more geeky news, I finally got a rip of Fear of a Black Hat! (really funny movie, basically Spinal Tap about the rap industry). See I’d been trying, encouraged by Ronnie who was really keen to see it, to download it on soulseek for almost a month. Not the commonest thing online… being a fairly obscure 10 year old movie and all. But one guy had it and pretty much no one else. The problem was, he was a rather pretentious fellow who refused to let me get up in the queue. Perhaps it was presumptuous of me to ask, but I mean I was trying to get something that wasn’t available anywhere else, and I share more than 15000 files and allow far more downloading from me than most people, and am polite and help people if they have problems getting my files, and add people if they ask… I thought it could be one of those karmic balance things. So much for that though. This dude was like “sorry you don’t have anything I want. I only trade” and then he intimated that he didn’t even look at my stuff because he has “better sources”. So basically I could never get to the front of thi guys queue because otehr people would get in front of me, or my computer would fuck up and I’d go back to the beginning. But that was last week. And this is a good week. So… this week I found another guy with it, sent him a message thanking him, then he unshared his movies, but he asked me what I was trying to get, and I told him, so he put it back up for me. Such common decency feels so maximized when it shines against pretentious bitches like that other dude! Thus my faith in humanity is restored, plus I have Fear of a Black Hat to watch, and I also had luck trying to get Spinal Tap as well, which until I put it there yesterday was curiously and unacceptably absent from campus filesharing. So that’s good.

Jared made a very lovely flash animation ad for our play. It’s available here, and if you see that and don’t want to see the play, well there’s really no hope for you. Before rehearsal last night I was feeling a fair bit more stress and anxiety than I’m used to. Partially the impending midterm test that I had very little time to study for, largely due to said rehearsal, and also because I was rather inexplicably freaking out about choosing my major for next year. But rehearsal was so damn fun, I pretty much forgot all my woes. We have so much energy, and the cast is each and every one of them very great, it’s a great joy to be a part of. It’s really coming together I think, though everyone keeps cracking up on stage when things go wrong, or when things go right; it’s a very vibrant experience. We all love working on it and think it’s hilarious, though sometimes I wonder if it will all be lost on the audience. I hope not. After the rehearsal last night I was so pumped it was a little hard to calm down and study.

So today, I had to go grab some insulin before going to dreaded English class. I was a bit late getting to the pharmacy and they told me it would take 15 minutes to process, which would make me late for class, but I didn’t care too much. So I wandered around the student centre for a bit, and ran into Crystal who was in Gut Girls with me; we talked about people trying to get in touch with her for a bit because she’s also to be an ASM on Lysistrata, and then someone from those display tables that always fill up the MUSC announced a “sub-eating contest”. Intrigued, Crystal inquired as to the nature of this occasion. Basically, they gave us a free subway sub combo (with drink and fries) and whoever managed to eat the sub fastest would get to keep a nice big mug or a ball-cap (all with the CH logo). Crystal’s friend declined, but as far as I was concerned it seemed an awful lot like what is referred to as a “win-win situation”. So we gobbled down the 12″ subs really fricking fast. It took six or seven minutes in the end, though no one was actually timing… I dunno how fast that sounds, but I will tell you it’s pretty fast. We were practically tied almost the whole way through, but I ended up swallowing my last mouthful before she swallowed hers. It was very intense, and how exciting! They let Crystal have a prize, too, which was very gentle and benevolent of them, and then they made us hang around so they could get a picture of the participants (god, and the photographer, only knows what they plan to do with the picture and how much mustard was on my face). So I was very late for class, but big deal man.. free lunch! free mug! free fun! good times!

Tonight I’m going to see Jesus Christ Superstar with Mau.. that’s the play that forced Erin to stay here and slave away her reading week. I am sure it will be a funtastic experience. So that’s another thing to be happy about.

And tomorrow… Kevin is coming up to visit me from ole London, and we are going to see Max Graham DJ at the Sole Nightclub. Now that he’s out earning 20 bucks an hour it will be nice for him to have a small experience of Rez life, and it will be lovely to see him, and Max Graham will of course be fantastic. He plays such a lovely style of music… trance-like but not cheesy and lame, melodic but with a heavy beat that you can move to, and still gritty sounding. Just hope it’s not some greasy ass club like the last one. I’m sure it will be awesome though. and now, to top everything off, it’s the weekend!!

OH yeah.. and it feels like spring outside! and that’s fuckin sweet! ya gotta love it.

Back in London, I was greeted by a surprisingly bearded brother, a lovely free trip to a London Knights game (the first live hockey experience of my life.. i’m a shame to all proper hockey loving Canadians), a Matadors show that was reportedly more filled with violent outbursts than I noticed at the time, some pretty fun gaming at Brian’s, a mouth burning party at Adam’s, and a charming roast beef lunch before getting shipped back to Steeltown.

Now, I feel, is an appropriate time to divulge the release date information of Lysistrata (think, ‘o christmas tree’ for pronunciation purposes), directed by Vince Male:

Location: Robinson Memorial Theatre, CNH 103, McMaster University, Hamilton
Cost: Free
Times: Thursday, March 4 @ 12:30pm and again at 8:00pm followed by Soldier Dreams
          Friday, March 5 following Soldier Dreams which is at 8:00pm

And that’s about it. Whoever you happen to be, consider yourself warmly and cordially invited.

The next day I spent mostly with Ian and Monique. Being Valentines, it was possible for me to feel all third wheely and weird, but it a great time. They made dinner, including apple crumble, then we watched Romeo + Juliet, went to an interesting rave type situation, and then I did some more sleep on pullout couching. I generally felt welcome and happy and looked after, comfortable, and at ease. I gotta say I’m very grateful for the pleasant company and all the food, and I owe ‘em big time. Then this morning we went to a free tabla and sitar concert at the McMaster Museum of Art… very cool.

More about the rave thing: it sounded very cool from the flyer: 10-6, warehouse style venue, free before midnight, and Kenny Glasgow on decks (a relatively well-known for being from SW Ont DJ). Once we took the 2 buses and long walk in the freezing cold to arrive there, it became clear that the ‘warehouse’ style was largely a misnomer (yes!). The venue was a place called ‘London Lounge’ which was basically a grungy hole in the ground near the lovely industrial area of Hamilton. When we got there, we were informed that the no cover charge was for nights without a headliner, and that we’d have to pay 15 bucks a head to get in. We were gonna talk them down to 10, but they gave in before we had to talk to them, so we paid for the mandatory coat check and proceeded into the venue. The music was pretty good, it is fun to dance and I did much of that (I hadn’t really heard that Sat-is-fac-shun song in a place with wickedly large bass, so that was kinda cool though there were definitely other highlights). The seediness, maybe one could get past, but the big difficulty was the atmoshpere. The distinct impression that all three of us came away with was that the people putting on the show weren’t music lovers, but rather people looking for a way to make a quick buck. We had to stay a bit to make the money we had to pay worthwhile, but at around 2:15ish we called a cab and headed back to Monique’s place.

I had rehearsal today (the whole reason I’m here in the first place). We ran through the play 2 times, and I have to say it was definitely a good time: good fun in good company.. what’s to complain about that? So rehearsal is happily something I can look forward to. I think the play is coming together really well. It’s one of those plays that seems a bit iffy on first inspection. The script by itself sometimes just seems silly or weird, but now that we have all the energy plugging in, and everyone seems into it, it’s really damn funny and everyone’s having a good time. So now we just have to hope the audience will able to be in on the joke.

Currently, I’m angered by my lack of a cheese grater. I have this big hunk of cheese in my fridge, and I’d really like to be able to grate it all. I’m sure you all know that delicious goodness that resides in a bowl of grated cheese. So mom, remember when you suggested I bring a cheesegrater, and I scoffed and said “why would I want that in rez?”? Well, what goes around comes around I guess. Damn I want a grater, but in the meantime I guess it’s slices for me.

So, the whole being here over the break is kinda rough. I just found out today that Commons won’t even be open! and La Piazza (further away) will only be open till 6pm or something. Crikey! Erin is staying too, because she’s in the musical production of Jesus Christ Superstar. That makes things much more pleasant since the whole floor won’t be completely empty. We have sketchy plans to visit the grocery store some point soonishly to deal with the food problem. I might make much use of the kitchen facilities here for once. She also has pretty comparable taste in movies to me, so that’s another possibility of time killing. Not that I’m bad at time killing. I need to get better at time using, in such a way that the time lives. That’s pretty deep huh? Yeah, yeah, just smack me.

So I did not end up coming face to face with the perpetrators of the foul crime that shook McMaster to its very foundations like about a week ago or so, as I had suspected and at least partially hoped I would. In the end there were 13 of them, and according to my visitors the perpetrators caved pretty quickly when confronted with uniformed enforcers of justice and order. It seems they didn’t really consider what they were doing, or getting into. The letter was pretty well written. If it was honest, then I’m happy with it, though I would have rather that they addressed it to me by name, instead of ‘to whom it may concern,’ and an extra proof reading might have proved valuable.

I still haven’t gotten the money off my card back, but I have got my card back luckily. I think something with that will happen tomorrow, or something.

And in other news which I would expand on if not bound very shortly for bed, I am living with Ian next year. It’s the basement of a former Convenience store, it’s not a palace, but it’s pretty nice, and nicer than the downstairs at home that I’m used to, and it’s very very cheap. (300/mo, utils incl)
Das ist all fur now. Adieu. Oh yeah, I really like Nick Cave now. No genre can really describe the unique, wonderful music he creates. I’ll try and think of something though.

So I had tried to get in touch with Brendan (the copper what was workin on me case) several times, finally he called me. He informed me that the culprits had indeed been tracked down, largely through the use of video surveillance technology and tracking where the pizza they ordered was delivered to. Turns out the perpetrators were a group of people on the fifth floor of goode olde McKay hall itself! (Sold out by my own countrymen, it burns!) I was then informed that I would be reimbursed fully (which according to Brendan was 210 dollars.. 40 more than I had thought, but I’ve no complaints about that), and that the people had to write an apology letter to me. Then he said something about going down to meet them all face-to-face on Friday, that’s when I get the letter I guess. So I have some time to come up with a script for approaching the felons. I was rather exhilirated by the fact that they had been caught, and there was music in the background, so I’m not sure if I really got everything that Brendan was saying.

As soon as I got off the phone I thought now wait a minute.. all these people have to do is write a little card and give back the money they stole? that doesn’t seem like much punishment… what happened to throwing them out of school? But perhaps Brendan was only telling me the things that concerned me and there will be some other punishment as well, I’m not really sure. It will be kind of weird seeing these people around my building, and it’s a shame because I hung out with some people on the 5th floor once and it was pretty fun, so it’d be a shame if these were the same people and are therefore pretty much assholes.

The kind of annoying thing was that I still don’t have my student card back. Brendan was supposedly going to drop it by tonight if they didn’t need it for anything else, but he never came and then I called security and he had gone home for the night and no one in the office knew where my card was. I hope he didn’t decide to go nuts and steal it. So then when I was in Commons trying to get dinner with my expired temporary mealcard the staff there were being a little condescending and not really seeming to care about what I was saying as I explained the situation. Like I got the law on my side here people, stop talking down to me! That made me a little annoyed, so boo to that. And the man gave me another day of a temporary mealcard and said I’d better have everything worked out by tomorrow… well if I don’t it’s really not my freaking fault, so get off my case, even though you don’t comprehend my situation at all!!!. But I kept my cool and acted all polite as best I could. So that whole thing was a bit of a down note to what should have been a triumphant victory. So this all ain’t over yet. I’ll feel better once I have my student card in my hands.

Somewhere between there and finding out an hour later that the next dryer I put my clothes into had also failed to dry my clothes, it occured to me… a lot of fairly shitty stuff has happened to me in the last week or two. My insulin pump broke and I had to go to emergency to get a shot of insulin after running around talking to various people trying to figure out what to do; I have shitloads of work breathing down my neck, major projects in several classes that I haven’t started and have no idea what to do for; Someone stole my meal card, spent 170 dollars on it, security hasn’t gotten back in touch with me about it, and it will cost me 30 dollars to get a new one; I found out that I wasted $17.00 on a play for english that I already had in another textbook; much of the lovely food in my fridge has long since expired because I neglected to consume it (throwing out apple cider is ever a demoralizing affair); I’m lacking female companionship that has in the past provided me with many non-essential yet quite enjoyable services, emotionally and otherwise; the dryers in this damn place are really starting to piss me off; and there’s lots of other minor troubles and things nagging me I could get into but will leave out for the sake of you, dear reader. And yes of course it’s easy to focus on the negative, but I started to realize that the nearest thing to the dizzying heights, that should karmically (though i don’t mean to be presumptuous) counter all these damnable difficulties, that I can find is pretty much the dull drudgery of plodding unceremoniously through another week of classes and homeworks, and other things that leave me largely uninspired. (I will admit that the play has been pretty fun, but strike that from the record s’il vous plait)

This may all sound vaguely depressing or masochistic or something, but here’s the kicker. While I was mulling my woes over in my mind this evening, I was actually in a rather excellent mood. All day I have felt pretty chipper. The whole drying thing sucked, but it was kind of a rush being a little mad and grumbling under my breath at the damn laundry facilities here. So… take that world!! Things might be kinda downing on certain levels, but it’s a lot funner to just have a good time of it (Duh, I guess) and as a result I feel mildly triumphant. Apathy ain’t cool… but that’s a topic for another longwinded discussion rife with abnormally elongated sentences.

“I used to think, as birds take wing.. they sing through life, so why can’t we?” – Mike the Stipe

On Thursday at lunch I still hadn’t found my meal card and figured it would be a good idea to check with the hospitality people because at that point I was pretty sure that it wasn’t just expertly hidden somewhere in my room. They turned it off so no one could use it, but an examination of the records determined that someone who definitely wasn’t me had spent 170 dollars of my money in less than 2 days. Well that was a little annoying, and not good for my positive outlook on the general disposition of human behaviour that I had been fostering. So I got a temp card, and was looking at the read-out of all the stuff the guy had bought on my student card, and when and where. $60 delivery from Pizza Pizza, $30 at Commons on two separate occasions, and basically tons of shit. As I and Ciara were sitting in Commons eating lunch and investigating the records, I started watching everyone, because the thief could be anyone at all really. You’ll notice that almost everyone looks a bit shifty if you’re in that paranoid state of mind. We decided that the best lead was the delivery order to Pizza Pizza, since we had the exact time that the delivery had been placed, the pizza delivery fellow had most likely seen our little bastard face-to-face. The whole private investigation schtick was rather fun. But as I was looking up Pizza Pizza’s phone number, I realized it might be a good idea to contact McMaster security services.

Cushioned by a cloud of bitter adrenaline and listening to throbbing techno at elevated volume, I journeyed to the security office, which has all sorts of heavy doors and stairs and interrogation offices. I reported what had happened to a man in a blue suit. They (there was another blue suited man often present) told me that there were cameras in La Piazza, where the perp had used the card several times, and since the transcript showed down to the millisecond when it had been used, and at what till, they were fairly sure that surveillance footage would be able to reveal the identity of the suspect. They left me feeling rather optimistic about the chances of the little fucker getting justice dealt out to his sorry ass. I dunno what the punishment would be, but if it involved him getting kicked out of school, I would feel particularly vindicated. When I returned to my room, feeling the sweetness of revenge was near at hand I felt the urge to practice kung fu, but instead I opted to watch Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels. I think the man in blue said they would get back to me on Monday about what had happened witht he investigation, why it takes that long I don’t know. You’d think terrible vengeance could reign down upon him (or her) in a much hastier fashion. I also don’t know if I’ll ever see the nearly 2 bucks the guy stole from me again, but I’m much more concerned with him getting comeuppance of some variety.

So on Saturday night I went to Hamilton’s Underground club for the first time. Some people I was with expressed that they felt the club was pretty bad, but I liked it well enough. Not the classiest of places, but fittingly dingy for its name. I was standing at the side of the stage, about 4 feet away. The opener was some guy, not sure of his name. He started off by playing a little chord pattern on his guitar, and then made it loop and went on to add other guitar textures, hit things rhythmically, add a little bassy synthesizer to the mix, and hit his guitar with toothbrushes for a bit, add some harmonics and other effects here and there; then eventually it all subsided. It was a very impressive performance especially for one man to create, and left me wondering what it would be like to see six people doing similar sorts of things.

When The Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band took the stage, I noticed there were actually seven members. 3 guys on guitar one of whom was lead singer, and one who sometimes did drums and once did mandolin, one guy on stand up bass (the kind with bowing and some plucking), 2 girls on violin, and one on cello. They all looked rather French, and, being from Montreal, smoked quite a lot (I really wish I had some pictures, but I didn’t think to bring my camera). The first song they played was The Triumph of our Tired Eyes, and the harmonics of the guitars sounded brilliant. That’s about when I became completely enchanted with the music. As the first song started building, and adding harmonic layers, I was stunned by the beauty of it. I almost started tearing up I was so taken with it.

These people are very political, and although it’s not at all overt in the music, I got the feeling I totally understood where they were coming from. They are highly against many questionable facets of our society like globalization, corporations, consumerism, and the loss of public space. There is something very raw and basic about their music that makes it feel honest, and very important. It is a curious combination of rock music and classical or orchestral work. But more than anything, I thought of it as very tribal. The music seemed to be a cry for action, not necessarily to some higher being, but to everyone. The patterns of sound built texture upon texture and gradually rose and fell. It felt very primal. And when the voices began they formed marvellous harmonies, delicate female voices contrasted with deep man voices, sometimes singing completely different things, sometimes the same… that was a very profound thing, something that doesn’t carry over nearly as well in the recordings. I was sort of reminded of McLuhan’s rambling about the retribalization of society that he foresaw way back in the day.

I could probably go on for longer, but I have other things to do… It was a great concert, the only downfalls were that I kept thinking how many awesome pictures I could have been taking, and also how some people thought they had some pretty interesting things to talk about during the songs. The slow, gentle parts of the songs were very lovely and I couldn’t understand how someone would think their own voice had a better acoustic presence.

LAMPITO: uncovered

Lampito is from Sparta, the land of brave warrior kings. In Sparta, they don’t care so much about the artsy-fartsy philosophizing of the Athenians; they like to lift big things. Sometimes they lift big people and throw them great distances. Because the Athenians are such pussies, they accuse the Spartans of having weapons of mass destruction to cover for their warriors’ pitiful performance (maybe not just in war…). But that’s another story.

Lampito is fairly wealthy, and is married to H. H has a peculiarly short name, but luckily that’s the only short thing about him. Besides, unlike the Athenians, strong Spartan men don’t need hoity toity names with upwards of five syllables to impress people. Due to her Spartan blood, Lampito is a bit snarky, and doesn’t like to take no shit from nobody. Since H is off fighting in the war most of the time, and there are plenty of slaves to clean up all the goat blood, Lampito has recently had her fair share of free time. She filled this by enrolling in kickboxing and dance classes, and by reading tomes of great knowledge (hence her knowledge of prophetical knowledge). It didn’t take long before she was sick of the word knowledge, and so she abandoned the quest for knowledge, but not before she had a lot of knowledge.

Lampito (Pita for short) likes tzatziki quite more than any other non-chocolate food. She is pretty strongly put together (despite the fact that she appears to be totally the opposite), and has the smarts as well, but manners don’t concern her quite as much as they do some others. Lampito met Lysistrata ages ago when daddy brought her along to some ancient Greek function or other. They got along pretty well (self-empowered women tend to do that) and have kept in touch over the years through pigeon post (this isn’t as high-tech as it might sound-it involves slicing open birds and interpreting omens out of the entrails).

When the pigeons told her that Lysistrata had something up her sleeve aside from those silky smooth arms, Lampito hurried to Athens to see what she could do to help. Unfortunately, on the way to Athens her ship was attacked by pirates which she had to fight off (with the help of her servant, travelling companion, and dermatologist Boris whose life was sadly forfeit in the ensuant scuffle), and then getting into the city was difficult since she was visibly Spartan and despite her best diplomatic efforts, the Athenians like to suspend people’s democratic rights so long as they look foreign. Her considerable wiles got her through this situation however. She became a man to sneak past the guards, and unfortunately the effects of the potion seem to be more permanent than she would have liked, but at least she seems to still have all the important bits. This accounts for her being almost seven minutes late arriving in the town square for Lysistrata’s meeting. The other women probably regard her with some suspicion due to her Spartan (and much superior) background.

The task of understanding a culture built on the oral tradition is impossible to students steeped in the written tradition. The outlines of that culture can be dimly perceived in the written records of poetry and prose, and in the tangible artefacts of the excavator. Recognition of its significance has been evident in the centuries-old concern of scholars over interpretations of records. But the similarity of the Greek alphabet to the modern alphabet and the integral relation of Greek civilization to Western civilization implies dependence on the complex art of introspection. Individuals in different ages and nations have looked into the pool of classical civilization and seen precise reproductions of themselves. Renan wrote that ‘progress will eternally consist in developing what Greece conceived.’ Grote described the democratic tendencies of Grecian civilization, and E. A. Freeman stated that: “the democracy of Athens was the first great instance which the world ever saw of the substitution of law for force.’ More recently, Marxian interpretation has received its expected reward. The fundamental solipsism of Western civilization presents an almost insuperable barrier to objective interpretation of Greek culture.
     (Innis, H.A. Empire and Communications ©1986)        whoops there I go breaking copyright laws again!

I have come up with my own useful summary of the above dissertation:

LIMITS TO UNDERSTANDING:
Harold Innis.
     (Muma, D.A. Telling It Like It Is ©2004)

Wasn’t that a lot clearer? Now I might just be feeling particularly sore about this issue because we’re supposed to read (and understand) 100 pages of the man’s writing in the first two weeks of communications class, but I feel I have justification (beyond the mindless rage stewing deep within me) to make a stand. I mean sure you can figure out some sort of sense in the above quote, but the time required to do so transforms any eventual appreciation for what the man is trying to say into frustration and ill-will. And wouldn’t the world be much better if everyone was happy all the time? Yeah… thanks a lot Harold!

I gained great respect for my communications TA today when he cited Monsieur Innise as an important example of why writing style has almost the same importance as the ideas you are trying to get across. No shit. Later, while struggling through more prose more awkward than a hippopotamus tangoing, I found it quite intriguing, ironic even, when the article went on to discuss the idea that writing can never match the understanding conversation can confer. Says Socrates:

I cannot help feeling that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question, they preserve a solemn silence, and the same may be said of writings. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer.
     (Innis quoted it and didn’t source it. Maybe I should bring a plagiarism case down on his lame ass, too!)

And guess what? that actually made a lot of sense, and it was written down! Nice to see the art of writing has evolved so far in the last three thousand years, Mr Innis! Now to be fair, Socrates didn’t speak English and what he said probably sounded more like “abboo µa lampako du korakka Þakka….” and was likely translated by a kindly English gentleman with a monacle and a boler hat, but I’m not letting that get in the way of my rancorous tirade.

And now, just because the guy got his B.A. and M.A. at McMaster, they name a library after him, and we’re forced to study him as if he’s said anything worthwhile or something. Sigh.

Well, I must say that when Steph and I finish our forthcoming book entitled “Innis for Dummies” it should be considered community service in the form of massive stress relief regardless of any money we might make. Though I suspect it might take a saint to put up with working with Innis’ words for that long, and I don’t know that I’d call myself that. Interestingly, ‘Innis for Microbiologists and English Majors’ would probably be far easier to understand than what the guy churns, or rather churned, out himself.

I suppose since the old dude snuffed it (is now dead) it’s in bad taste to direct things of an untoward nature to him. And if you feel that way.. well, tough fuckin beans, Righteous McGoodster!

Thank you for your time.

(The above is dedicated all of the 300 other poor sods enrolled in CMST 1B03, who foolishly promised themselves “yes! this term i will do all the required readings for my courses”. My heart goes out to them.)

I know I’m probably making this out to be a bigger deal than it really is, but hey, my life’s not very exciting ok? So I’m gonna just flog this winded mule for all I’m worth. I mean some people at other schools get 3 day weekends, but usually at schools where you actually get to hand pick your schedule, my good fortune on the other hand is enitrely because God loves me more than you.

Holy Shit YESSSS!!! THE NOTWIST are playing Lee’s Palace on February 7th, 2003. Now that’s right good news, boys. See Notwist put out like my favourite album of the year, and since they’re from GERMANY who’d have thunk they’d be coming so close to my very own little doorstep!!! So indeed, the plan is to go and see them, because goshdarn it who knows when the chance will come again! $15 I imagine will be well spent.. plus transport and edibles and whatever, but it’s still all good. Something to do with the 3 and a half thousand dollars the government just loaned me!

Yes, things are looking up. And not only that, I got the rest of my marks back, and it was a very pleasant surprise! 11 in psych and 10 in CMST (that’s A and A- in McMasterese). That was a WICKED ASS surprise, because I wasn’t expecting that at all. So my average is 10 even, so if I slip a bit this term, I could still get my 9.5 and keep my scholarship and thereby be able to go here next year without taking out even more loans, which just doesn’t seem like a wise choice. The weird thing I guess is that my lowest mark is in the discipline I want to pursue and my highest is in the course I most often asked “what’s the point, really?” about. Oh well, at times things just stack up like that.

And on top of that, a very enjoyable episode of 24 watched live for the first time in a while, plus a film class with a prof who seems super cool.

This is a useless paragraph. It has nothing to say or do, so feel free to ignore it. Your unattention is appreciated. Thank you. And have a pleasant life.

Had a fun party at Caleb’s last night. Big crowd, and some nice sing-alongs; I just wish I’d found out sooner that my brother would have been willing to DJ there. But nonetheless he’s pre-emptively booked for the next gathering with a big enough venue. That would be sweet, yo.

And now back to waiting for my first non-spam e-mail of the new-year.

Christmas was good, by the way. I got Heaven by GF Walker, The Man Who Wasn’t There DVD, the new U2 Dvd, and some lovely pants among other things. I bought a new 80 GB hard-drive for fairly cheap as well as DVDs of the 3rd Season of Babylon 5 (best.series.ever) on Boxing Day. Money well spent for sure!

And tomorrow Brian finally gets his ass in gear and turns 19…so much fun will be had, I do hope.

I am currently rather excited because I discovered the missing link. That nigh perfect mix CD I made for Melissa at the end of the summer faltered a bit due to the inclusion of Wonderwall. It’s an awesome song, it just never seemed to sound right for some reason, but I left it in because I knew mel really liked it. Waiting by the Devlins has almost the same tone, and even a similar theme but I think it will fit in better with the songs around it. It’s already my favourite CD to listen to of all time, and I don’t know that I can hope to match it in terms of mix cd quality (my recent efforts don’t seem quite on the same level, though only time will tell for sure). It will also make the CDs total length even closer to being exactly 80 minutes. Oh my! But we won’t worry about that right now, and another lesson: I take mix cds too seriously.

Gradually everyone is finishing exams, and filtering out, leaving fewer and fewer behind. I’m looking forward to going home, being home, but I’m also looking forward to coming back in the new year. Cheers to the future.

A couple nights ago Ian and I wandered around in the woods talking about very deep and pertinent matters like life, art, love, and humanity from 3 till 5 in the morning. A very worthwhile experience. There was a deer and some younger deer in a park. I didn’t know them to be nocturnal creatures, nor really expect to see them randomly at night. I must say though, that Hamilton doesn’t smell very good late at night.

I may stick my head into the outside for several moments before sticking it into my pillow, but regardless of that, a goodnight to you.

But not before I again mention how awesome an album ATLiens is. Mmmmmm.

The chair’s too far from the desk to be comfortable. I’ve noticed this several times today, but not moved it. The garbage needs to be taken out. My essay needs to be written. But we all know what they say about passive verbs, don’t we? It’s party night, being that it’s Friday, there’s plenty of 50/50 inviting/uninviting party sounds infiltrating my room, but I decided I need to do work. And I do. But I don’t really feel like working. And I don’t really feel like partying. I’ll work anyway, I’ll take out the garbage, and I’ll move the chair closer to the desk. It’s a start!

I got a call-back for Lysistrata, that’ll be Monday. I’m sceptical of my chances this time around. But hopefully I will get lucky, as it were. Ronnie fell ill with tonsillitis and has been home for the last couple nights, he should be coming back Sunday, hope he’s feeling better. I slept through my comp lit party and my comm-stud review class. That was disappointing. The ep of 24 from this week keeps stopping halfway through, which is causing me consternation. Etc. I’ve been having some rather strange, vivid dreams lately. Etc. Etc.

Etc.

Adieu

The Aenied is soooo borrring. O my gawwd! Like seriously! It’s the story of a dumb rich kid who’s got it all made, and just gets yanked through the story by his ear and then the end, he’s all like wow I’m dramatic. I used to feel kinda be like awww he’s forced into doing shit by the gods how sad..but he’s just a boring asshole who gets fed life on a silver plater. Damn rich kids all got it good, doncha? I might just have to give Aeneas a knee in the ass. At least Dido had the forethought to commit suicide and get herself outta this sorry ass story, and plus suicides are pretty interesting which is more than I can say for the rest of this mess. Blah blah blah let’s found Rome! Ok! Let’s have the gods boss us around and bicker like they’re on a friggin’ soap opera! Great! What else do we need? Distinctive characters that you actually care about? Nah, just throw in a rousing battle and some bullshit journey to the underworld and then it’ll be all good! Wooo! Oh wait, we forgot to make it so we know exaclty what’s going to happen from the very beginning because the gods tell him what’s going to happen, won’t that add an element of surprise.. or boredome… or something, and then I’ll go to hell and bring Algae-airyhead with me. Yay! I’m Virgil and I rock!

Wankers.

And as a note, or addendum as it were, this is the only time ever that this page will be updated at 8:38 in the morning. It seems like I should count this as the 26th since I usually do things based on whether I’m still up, not by the date technically. I might have to do another one tonight, and then have 2 songs of the day. How freaking awesome would that be? But I might be sleeping.

When I was walking over to Ian’s today, the grey clouds had sunk into the immediate atmosphere and made it seem like the world ended a mere few blocks in every direction. Beyond that, nothing except for vague shapes, dreams. Is this really happening?

Fin.

Preview performance was tonight. Went pretty well, overall. The lighting’s dark and still a bit miscued.. I remembered to take off my glasses for all my scenes, and I got a nice laugh from The Line, but I stumbled over some lines in my last scene, which wasn’t cool and made me feel silly. I attribute it to the absolute darkness during me and jim’s complicated set change. everyone else did really well though. The whole beard thing is a bit uncomfortable.. And I think that in a week I might not have a face anymore. Eek!

Tomorrow is opening night. I haven’t been around for a while because I’ve been hugely busy with school and the play… couple days with 8 or 9 hours of rehearsal. But that’s the price of art. I guess. Or something.

I got an exciting email today:

Damon, I can help you with the recent history of this property from draft plan of subdivision application and the Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment application to the subsequent appeal by CN rail to the OMB.
Please give me a call and I’ll explain it to you.
Jeff Leunissen, MCIP, RPP, Senior Planner, City of London

Now if only Blueline still worked! I will definately give the man a call, but after my workload has lessened slightly.

Surprisingly or not, it rained this monday. A slow drizzle against an eerie iridescent blue grey sky. The lights of Hamilton Hall were a curiously interesting grid of brightness before the dull dark of daylight savings. Creepy weather if ever there was. If this weather was to take place on the eve of all hallows it would be as appropriate as any synchronicity I can currently call to cranium.

We (that is, I and others, those others being from South as well and consisting of five people who I will not be belaboured to name in completeness) ate (dinner, in varying amounts) at the bistro (a more upper classy eating establishment at the newly fabricated mary keyes super residence).

Then I had a meeting with my drama group. I convinced them to switch scenes, to what I deemed a better one, with a minimum of fuss. I do hope this presentation works out fairly well (it’s set to go off on Thursday). Of current highest order though, is the presentation in English I have to do tomorrow. It’ll be just little though, so I’m not too worried.

I’m sure it’s been said before, and whoever it was, I agree one hundred percent (or to the max, if you prefer). All great stories are about relationships; in the same way that life itself is about relationships. They are about how different people relate to one another, and themselves, under changing circumstances.

They are about the things that make us who we are. Every person is different—his/her own separate part of humanity, and every person is the same—united by things we all share. Beliefs laid on us by society, behaviours no one can escape, events that no one can foretell, and the overwhelming and underlying uncertainty of all our lives. Great stories are about how we react to these, and all other parts of the world, with action or inaction. They tell us about life, and about ourselves. They present characters whose little joys and tribulations, we can understand, even when they don’t make sense. Because the world itself only makes sense up to a certain point, and beyond that we only convince ourselves things make sense so we are not lost in the vast.

Great stories do not judge the characters and actions, but allow great audiences to decide themselves. They do not tell the whole story, but leave room for it to stretch and seek. Great stories are given to us in a way we can unwrap them how we see fit. They are insightful and inciting companions, not leaders or directors. And in that way they show, but do not tell.

They make us love, and appreciate the world for what it is, or for what it could be. They clarify, or give to us, fragments of our own stories, to appreciate or to tell.

And on a related note, American Beauty is a great story.

In other news I got 96% on my Communications Studies journals that I thought were crap. That’s 20% better than anything else I’ve gotten back marked in University, so maybe my thoughts aren’t worthless after all.

A few days ago spring was in the air; there was no snow and the birds sang the song of spring. But a few days later we have been plunged back into the depths of winter. Snow dances unceasingly from the heavens and has since early (7:00) this morning.
I am supposed to and should be working diligently on my year end project on the ancient Mediterranean, but I find it so difficult to concentrate. My mind will not stay. I am fighting to avoid the lure of Computer Game, the demon of mindless fun and addiction.
I am currently listening to “Your Blue Room” by Passengers, music that I fear will never be matched anymore except by U2.
At 13:00 I will be travelling to Colin’s abode where I hope to acquire the materials to play the Babylon 5 Trading Card Game.
I am currently enjoying March break which will last until the 23 of March. In the break I should and hope to go great lengths to get a substantial start on my project, but I fear I will not. Our house on 111 Alexandra St. has been sold (some strings attached [financing and inspection]) and I probably in May we will be moving to our new house on 651 Baseline Rd east.