Ugh.

What a week. I've been working my ass off for the record label trying to get things sorted for the next release (which is now-thank Christ-mostly in the bag) and the show we're putting on next week. Except I can't get a hold of the guy at the venue, so I'm not sure what's happening there. Also, my day-job has been extra shitty lately: no real story there, but trust me. Also, cash has been an issue, since I'm trying to save, which means tightening the belt, which means no fun. Then the fucking Oilers go and dump Ryan Smyth for a bag of pucks and a torn Shooter Tutor, which made me so upset that I ended up getting the heave-ho from my soccer game last night (two yellow cards for dangerous tackles, goddammit). Well, that's my excuse, anyway. (The other fun part of the Smyth deal is that it screws both of my teams: the Oilers lose their heart and soul and the Islanders gain a weapon to use against my Habs in the playoff race. Of course, both my teams haven't exactly been earning my affection, so maybe I'll just stick with cheering for their PS2 equivalents.)

Bah. Me grumpy. Me go away now. Fuck.

Travellin' at the speed of light...

Hey yo kids! (What's up?)
Remember when I used to be dope? (Yeah)
I owned a pocket full of fame (But look what you're doing now!)
Well, I know, I know
I lost touch with reality
Now my personality
Is an unwanted commodity...
...
You played yourself.

-De La Soul & Teenage Fanclub
Falling

Dear terrorists...

You're right, we're wrong. We totally have it coming.

Mugged by reality

I'm generally a pretty liberal (as in lefty) person. And I recognize that this province is in a pretty shitty place right now and no-one, least of all the government, seems to give a shit about "quality of life" issues like the lack of housing (our new-ish Premier recently popped out of his undisclosed location long enough to poo-poo the idea of slowing things down a bit to allow the province to get a handle on the stresses growth has caused. To say the very notion of-to use Eddie's words-"lowering the boom" on development is unpopular is an understatement: you'd have better luck talking people into eating a nice big hunk of roast baby.)

But of late my liberalism has been sorely tested by the profusion of bums. Recently I dragged my ass out of bed before noon on a Saturday (a rare achievement) to pop down to the bakery for some fresh-baked treats. Now, venturing out of the house on the weekend is trying enough on the best of Saturdays, as it takes a measure of dexterity to pick one's way through the many puddles of half-congealed and frozen vomit left over from the Friday night binge-drinkers. But it becomes infinitely worse when a simple visit to the Insta-teller for some croissant money entails interacting with a pair of hobos who've camped out in the lobby and who are well into their case of Alberta Genuine Draft and gutter smokes at 10:30 on a sunny weekend morn.

That sort of thing, as well as the fact that I can't go 30 feet without getting asked for change, really singes my nuts. I want somebody to do something about this bum problem, stat. See, I, uh, just want to, uh, help these poor people. Yeah...help. The fact that getting them off the streets and out of the ATM lobby would significantly improve my quality of life as well is totally beside the point. I wonder how much it would cost to clean these hobos up and put them to work in the oilsands....

When stout-hearted men can stick togeth...wait...can I start again?

Every now and then, when I'm feeling down in the dumps, I like to scour the internet for stupid people saying stupid things. Today, I give you Janet LaRue. Now I hear you ask: "Who is she?" The answer, of course, is "who fucking cares?" All you need to know is she's getting paid by somebody to write really stupid shit. Let's go to the tape....

President George W. Bush released his 2008 budget on Monday, cashing in at
$2.9 trillion dollars. It includes $481 billion for defense costs, plus another
$142 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's another $313.4
million for the U.S. Department of Justice "to address violence against
children, including sexual exploitation through the Internet," according to the
White House Office of Management and Budget. More on that in Part II.
Our troops and their families who are sacrificing themselves to save us from
annihilation need and deserve all the moral support we can give them and all of
the resources our national budget can bear. For that reason, government
officials must make sure that none of our limited resources is spent in ways
that harms rather than helps our troops and their families.

Pretty standard right-wing boilerplate, right? First she lulls you into a false sense of security and then...WHANGO!

Many continue to cite abuses at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq as an excuse to oppose the war. Certainly, the abuses at Abu Ghraib must not be repeated. But that requires a lot more than re-training guards and interrogators.
Much of what is depicted in the 279 photos and 19 videos taken at Abu Ghraib resembles behavior in hard-core pornography, which is readily available to our troops via the Internet, magazines and DVDs.

...

The Department of Defense (DOD) cannot effectively protect our military from
pornography and its copious adverse consequences by banning porn only in Muslim
countries. The DOD needs to understand why the troops at home are ordering the
"sexual purity kits" - they need homeland security from pornographers.

Yup. The problem with the troops in Iraq is that they can't stop beating off.

Important toe update!

The nail on my right big toe fell off last night. The nail of the left big toe is still hanging in there. Stay tuned for more important toe updates as they develop.

And baby I was raised on Prince, not crack, so I gotta let you hear it

This shitty article in a shitty student newspaper about this band has caused what can only be called a "kerfluffle." It was the talk of the show I was at last Friday (the drummer of one of the evening's bands, who also serves in that other band, took the time at the start and end of the show to take shots at the article's writer from the stage) and was the subject of no less than three letters in this week's edition of said shitty student newspaper.

Now, I'm inclined to defend the author for a couple of reasons. For one, I'm an asshole with a tendency to reflexively hate popular things. For another, I've bitched about the lack of honest criticism of Edmonton's music scene before. Finally, I'm on the record (in my younger, angrier days) as not being a fan of the band in question, though I am acquainted with several of its members and they all seem like good dudes. That said, I just can't get behind Ms. Ash's points.

The main problem is that she premises the whole whiny mess on the idea that SO Ox4's Juno nod was the result of some fluke unrelated to their work ethic. And that's just horseshit. I doubt there's a band in Edmonton, now or ever, that works as hard as they do at playing shows and playing the game. That's what you gotta do to make it, and regardless of your feelings on the band's sound, you can't pretend they haven't paid their dues.

She goes on to blow off their record as "drawn out, thin, unbelievably repetitive and just plain boring." Which is probably true: though I've not heard the record, that pretty much sums up my feelings about the band's output. Ash, however, thinks this disqualifies them from Juno-worthiness, as though the Junos actually award aesthetics. A look at the rest of the field puts that notion to bed with a quickness (Hedley?). Ash must know this: why else would she go on to describe a Juno nomination as "the ultimate handjob?" Because she a shitty writer, that's why.

Now it's readily apparent that I (who is only doing this because he likes to tear other people down) and those who wrote huffy letters have already put far more effort into our takedowns than Ash did in the writing, so I'll sum up the rest bullet-point style.

• "The rest of Edmonton’s music scene" is not, by and large, more talented or harder working than the SO Ox4. They are, for the most part, lazy hacks.
• That Edmontonians "giv(e) bands attention just for the sake of getting Edmonton’s name out there, not because they’re actually worthy of respect." is a fair point, but it comes too late and after too much stupid.
• No one in the band has "emo hair." Only one comes close, and his lack of a bad Loreal "Black Leather" dye-job and unfortunate piercings disqualifies him from such categorization. Do your fuckin' homework. (Thanks, D.)

To sum up: Edmonton does have an unfortunate tendency towards mindless cheerleading. And yeah, the band in question is not everyone's cup of tea, and much of their local following is made up of stupid teenagers whom I would like to lock in cages with man-eating tigers with Ebola. But at the end of the day, one party in our little saga is living the rock'n'roll dream, playing stages from Edmonton to NYC to Berlin, and have been recognized on the national level, something taht can only help the rest of Edmonton's music scene. The other party writes crappy articles for the Gateway. Need I say more?

Speaking of Shout Outs, handjobs and the Gateway (that's a segue, motherfuckers!), Gateway alumni Pleasure Motors gave yours truly a mention in a recent entry over at Covered in Oil. Just another example of the mighty vaunted Edmonton Domino Effect in action. And in a neat little bit of symmetry, the CinO entry in question also references hojos. Thus, the circle closes.

Better blogging

This is quickly becoming my new favourite blog, not just because it's pretty much my only source of Montreal Canadiens information (seeing as how Hockey Night in Toronto doesn't show Habs games), but because it's just great writing. This post here is a must-read for any sports fan, skewering as it does the old cliche of "yeah, X is a dirty sonofabitch chickenshit cheapshot artist...but you'd love to have him on your team." He also does a bang up job of conveying the deep pathos that is the constant companion of the contemporary Habs fan. Good stuff.

Tangential Answers to Rhetorical Questions

Q. If the "Mainstream Media" is liberal-biased, if not actually with the terrorists, how come all I see on the tee vee is angry, white, male, right-wing assholes like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs banging on about how lazy Mexicans are and how the terroRists are soon to be in our citiez, killing our doodz?

A. You should probably be doing less cardio.

This has been "Tangential Answers to Rhetorical Questions."

They say that, in comedy, timing is everything

CaN anyone tell me where sexy went in the first place?

Heavy

This weekend, I caught a show on CBC Newsworld showcasing the winners of the 2006 Rory Peck Awards for photojournalism. It was both uplifting and crushing: the former because it's good to know there are people who are willing to risk everything to tell the stories of some of the worst places on earths, and crushing because such places exist.