Time Is Money

People are always saying this. You can see how they get the two mixed up. Both time and money are abstract figments of the human imagination which can seem terribly real due to the importance we place on them. They each have a track devoted to them on Pink Floyd's hugely popular album Dark Side of the Moon, for instance. They both travel in one inexorable direction, from possibility into memory.

We are compelled to perpetually spend great quantities of each, and having spent them we never get them back. Therefore, we are always looking for ways to save or create more time and more money. In our search, we have cleverly devised ways to trade one for the other through institutions called banks. These places will sell you time for money (loans, mortgages, etc.) or pay you money for your time (bank accounts, RSPs, ...), although it's really only the money side of things they're actually interested in, trading your T&M upwards for larger quantities of M, in a nefarious worldwide pyramid scheme which is not only endorsed but heavily participated in by the world's governments. This scheme is called "interest" because it is the only way anyone has thought of to get people personally involved in such a boring system of numbers and slips of paper.

But the two concepts were invented to solve completely different problems, and I think we should try not to confuse them. Time keeps events separate which contradict each other physically. I can't be both here and not here at the same time, but give me two different times and it's the easiest trick in the world. Similarly, the only way two people can occupy the exact same place (in this dimension) is if we are checking at different moments in time. And how can that old man slumped on the park bench be the same person as that little boy playing stickball in the street with his friends? Because we have agreed to identify objects with each other which share a contiguous history through time. It is a system for distinguishing objects and events one from the other.

Money, conversely, is a system designed to equate different objects and events with each other. It allows us to evaluate everything in the world relative to everything else, based on human desire. One apple is equal to two-thirds of an orange, or three minutes of work emptying wastebaskets in an office building, or one forty-fifth of a Fifty Cent compact disc, or one four-hundred-and-fifty-millionth of Fifty Cent, or one three-billionth of Oprah.

Therefore, our desire for more money is pure desire, since money is a measure of desire itself. Although money will never fully appease this desire, it at least represents a real wish for something positive. Our apparent desire for more time, on the other hand, is really just a fear that we may lose our status as a distinct object — i.e. a fear of death — masquerading as desire. Not wanting an unknown quantity is not the same as wanting a known quantity.

The next time you find yourself irrationally anxious about one or another of life's great impossibilities, ask yourself a couple of questions: Do I want something I can't have? Then it's money you're after. Or am I afraid of something I can't avoid? Time is your guy. Let's try to keep the two abstractions straight, despite what the bankers would like us to think.

- Andrew

Sunny Sunday

Another busy week full of music playing and recording (with Al), teaching, yoga, and the usual shenanigans with Buster. I did manage to catch the flu that Andrew had (rats) but that gave me lots of time to rest, think... and knit a new awesome yellow hat for Andrew to wear! Here he is wearing it while going over some tunage. I think he looks dang sweet.
That reminds me: he has a new place for you all to check out that features some of his newer, super-great songs!

-Ali

Catching Up While Lying Down

I guess I never did tell you about non-music-related stuff that had been happening in the past week, and now it's been a week since I promised you it would be less than a week. Consider that further evidence of how hectic things are around here.

Here are the main(e) pieces of news I wanted to relate. Alison flew to Maine for a couple of days to assist on a photo shoot. While there, she ate very poorly because all the food they came across was apparently deep fried and topped with butter and/or meat. On the way back, the flight from Boston to Halifax was delayed, so she had to have dinner in the Boston airport (worst laid-out airport I've ever been in, by the way, and it seems to always be undergoing some kind of major reconstruction — what's up with that?). One of the only items that wasn't meat of some kind was a bowl of clam chowder, so she opted for that. When it arrived, it had bacon on top of it!

Meanwhile, I was back here attending our yoga class alone, wherein our teacher announced that she will be moving back to Japan in the summer. As she's pretty much the best yoga teacher in the world and her classes are super cheap, I'm not sure what we're going to do. I was very bummed out and couldn't concentrate through the rest of the class. My "Warrior III" turned into something more like "Warrior on Pogo Stick".

I was also going to tell you about The Street, a really good BBC series we rented. Every episode is about a particular household on a working class street in northern England, and the different stories intersect in different ways. They're all quite sad, but they also all reach some kind of redemptive conclusion. The writing is quite good, and there are some fine British actors from the Mike Leigh stable and elsewhere.

And finally, Pingu! Meg loaned us an eight-episode tape of this super-cute Swiss claymation program for kids, and we both got hooked on it. There's no dialogue besides some vaguely morphemic sounds, and nothing much happens in the course of each five-minute episode, but they all manage to convey life as seen through the eyes of a child, and teach some sort of lesson thereof. Meg apparently has another tape of this stuff, so I'm hoping to borrow that soon.

As for this week, I'm not really sure what happened. I know I played another show with Al on Wednesday night and stayed up too late, then ate too much Thai food which we ordered in on Thursday night and was kept awake all night with heartburn. Since then I've felt terrible and haven't been able to eat anything beyond cream of mushroom soup or do anything beyond sit up and read. I guess I must have gotten some kind of stomach flu. There's been something like that going around at work. This means not only that I had to bow out of a couple of shows with Al this weekend (ECMA weekend with all its attendant hype), but that I've now been sick twice so far this year, and it's only February. Cf. last year, when I don't think I was sick once.

Oh yes, and the most important thing, which I almost forgot: Alison finished the hat she's been knitting! It's pretty cool, I have to say. Now she's starting on one for me in yellow, my favourite colour. I'm gonna be the man in the yellow hat. I can't wait.

- Andrew

Grammys Redux

The red carpet: boring.

John Mayer: ick.

The Police: boring.

Justin Timberlake filming himself dancing: unintentionally funny.

Bob Wills/Don Henley tribute: weird and boring.

Dixie Chicks winning all the awards: super boring.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers: unbelievably, mega-stupendously boring.

BUT:

Gnarls Barkley: stirring.

Corinne Bailey Rae: cute and pleasantly understated.

And then this woman keeping the memory of James Brown alive by pulling him out of his still fresh grave by the throat and slapping him hard and repeatedly with his own best song, not out of disrespect, mind you, because simultaneously exposing the militant feminism inherent in said song, in case anyone suspected it of being misogynistic, which would be fair, given its source, but no, instead heaping admiration and respect on the honouree by showing that she GETS him and by singing, nay CHANNELING the song with even more passion, anger, and yes BALLS than even he did: unforgettable.

Am I the only one who was totally blown away by this performance? I am a man, after all, "lost in the wilderness"... Please tell me my judgment has not been compromised by some false eyelashes and a pair of tight white pants.

- Andrew

Pop Culcha

Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares.
- Mahatma Gandhi


The worst dream Alison ever had was of someone forcing her to eat the dirtiest, blackest snow you can imagine by the side of the road. I've heard about it on many occasions. She can still remember exactly how it tasted. We happened upon this batch the other night and had to take a picture of it, as it matched her remembered nightmare so exactly. Believe it or not, it's a colour photo!

I don't even know where to begin in telling you what we've been up to, so much has happened in the last week. It's good to be busy with projects you care about, but sometimes things can maybe get a little too busy. I'll try to confine myself to the actually interesting.

Most recently (yesterday, as a matter of fact), I played a couple of shows in one night again. This time only one was with Al. It was an early show at a space called the Bus Stop Theatre on Gottingen, as part of the In the Dead of Winter festival. The space is really nice and intimate, and right around the corner from our house. I hope to play there again sometime soon.


What's that key you've chosen there, Al?

The woman playing harmonica is Catriona Sturton. She used to play bass (and harmonica) with Al way back in the day when I used to play guitar with him. She was also the bassist for Plumtree, a long-time favourite of the Halifax indie rock scene, with whom I shared many a bill when I was in The Euphonic. Catriona was in town to give a harmonica workshop and play a show of her own at Gus' Pub, which was the second show I played that night, as I accompanied her on guitar.


Catriona came by our place at nine in the morning that day to teach me the songs we'd be playing together.


I had to learn a bunch of songs in pretty short order, and then there were some fairly awful sound problems at Gus', but in the end it was a really fun time. The crowd was eating up Catriona's unabashed showwomanship. I got to play a super-rock-out guitar solo, too, which I completely mangled.

In other music-related news, I finally got together with my friends Charles and Cliff last week for a solid jam session in which we worked on a couple of brand new tunes. It was a great time and I think we're going to try and take it quite seriously, getting together once a week. Tomorrow night's the next rehearsal, which means I have to pick out a new piece of music to work on from my steadily growing mountain of unused riffage, and write some melodies/lyrics for what we've already started. I'm looking forward to getting down to it, but I hope it's not going to interfere with my Grammy-watching tonight.

I know, I know, the Grammys are a mostly unwatchable celebration of terrible music and self-congratulation. I know it's an outrageous waste of time and money, the sole purpose of which is to further inflate the egos of a bunch of cheesy-smiled, cacophony-loving, talentless narcissists whose heads are already swelled to near-exploding capacity. But, as I've recently become re-involved in the music business, I feel it my duty to witness the public judgment of my peers. Will Justin Timberlake continue to be the luckiest boy alive, or is some even less likely "musical" prodigy preparing to usurp his sexy, impeccably produced throne? Actually, I really just want to see The Police's reunion. A new Police album right now might be slightly less relevant than a "Where's the Beef?" t-shirt, but given the choice between Sting and his mates or Sting left to his own devices, I'll take the former. Then I'll probably continue watching until the Gravol is just about to lose its efficacy.

Did that sound a little hateful? Hmm. I don't want you to think I go around hating everything because it's just not true. I've been buying tons of new music lately, and some of it is just fantastic. Here are two songs that are my current favourites.

And speaking of stellar music, my coworker, Sean, loaned me a 2-disc anthology of John Lennon tunage the other day, and I listened to it all day long. I always knew that I was a Lennon fan, but maybe not the extent of it. I think he's somebody I should be consciously ripping off a little more. I also realized that this song much better expresses what I'd been trying to say in that other post a couple of weeks back. And now Lennon keeps coincidentally cropping up in my life. That documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon is coming out any day now, so I'll have to rent it.

Blah blah music music... I've got plenty more to tell you that has nothing to do with music, but it's going to have to wait, as the Grammys are going to be starting soon and I haven't even eaten my dinner. Sorry. It'll be less than a week, though, I promise.

- Andrew

Links, Weekend

OK, I figured out how to get audio files to youse guys, although they don't stream nicely on the blog like before. Instead, these links will download the files onto your hard drive, and then you can play them. Not the same, I know, but it'll do for now.

Here's the John Lennon song, and here's the Tomita piece. Oh yeah, and here's an interesting test to see whether you have a brain disorder that prevents you from recognizing people's faces.

Yesterday I played two shows with Al: one in the afternoon and one in the evening. Today I'm getting together with Charles and maybe Cliff to work on new material/new band. I also have to listen to about ten songs that my friend Catriona from Ottawa sent me, as she's coming here next weekend to play a show, and I'm going to accompany her on guitar. And pretty soon the rehearsals for Buck 65 at SXSW will start happening. Busy time!

Alison's got a knitting class this afternoon. She's been working on a hat and it's almost finished. Today they learn how to do the top part where it all comes together. It looks really cool, and I totally want one now.

Now we're going to put up a couple of shelves in the "Studio". Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

- Andrew

Me, me, me, other people, me.

There seems to have been a fair amount of confusion about my last post. I was trying to describe a particular way that I've been feeling lately, and maybe I assumed on behalf of the reader a little too much familiarity with my own thought processes, or even deliberately got a little obscure to amuse myself. I think I do that sometimes. I am convinced that if I could have just posted that John Lennon song like I wanted to, all miscommunication would have been avoided, music being the universal language and all. Anyway, I don't think I did a very good job of conveying what I was trying to convey, and then I kind of got drawn into an argument about it, which is pretty crazy when you think about it, since arguing about the way you feel is like trying to disprove a headcold. And now I feel like maybe I should just let it be and move on. But instead, I'm going to try to simplify and clarify the description of my personal and moral mood, at the risk of boring/annoying/confusing everyone further. Maybe that makes me an indulgent, egomaniacal jerk. But then again, this is my public diary, and what the hell else am I going to write about? If you don't like it you can go and read someone else's blog, or better yet a good book. I recommend The Life of Pi, which Johanna gave me for my birthday and into which I'm just starting to delve at bedtime with Alison.

So, here's all I was trying to say: I try each day to make my life one of joy, wisdom, compassion, and, above all, awareness. And by "awareness" I mean a pre-linguistic, pre-cognitive, consciousness of what's actually going on at any given moment, before it gets bent into some already recognized shape by thought and language. I believe that this trying is the best kind of life I can make, not only for myself, but for the world around me, especially as such awareness actually breaks down the mental distinctions between myself and the world around me. That's what's with all the yoga and meditation. Sometimes I am better at it than other times. Lately I've been feeling like it's been going kind of all right.

But then when I look at the state of the world, I become disappointed and frustrated that there doesn't seem to be enough like-minded effort going on elsewhere. Most of the stuff that happens on a large scale seems to be caused by people either a) being overly concerned with maintaining the status quo or b) desperately avoiding facing the reality of their own and other people's lives. And b) is probably just a consequence of a), since confronting an unpleasant status quo would mean doing something to change it. But that's fine. I can deal with that. It's a pitiable state of affairs, but it's probably always been like that, and I certainly don't blame anyone personally. After all, it's very easy, and often even advantageous, from an evolutionary standpoint, to filter out what we don't want to see. And it only becomes easier the more technology and entertainment we happily heap onto ourselves. I'm as guilty of it as anyone.

However, we're now reaching this state where the physical world itself is showing the effects of all our avoidance and self-distraction, and these effects may not be reversible. The two most obvious examples: i) Average global temperatures have as a direct result of human culture risen faster than anyone thought they would, and are causing much faster, much more permanent damage than anyone thought they would. ii) The very finite and irreplaceable amount of fossil fuels left in the earth is rapidly approaching zero and almost no headway has been made on what we will do when they're gone. Surprisingly, we're not even building enough nuclear power plants to take on the extra load, let alone getting cost-efficient "clean" energy sources up and running.

It seems that things are probably going to get very, very bad for the human race in just a couple of generations, and we may all in fact be completely obliterated in a few generations after that. If we're going to do anything about it, it has to be done fast, assuming it's not already too late. I.e., the status quo is glaringly NOT WORKING, and will in fact change itself for the worse, no matter how much we try to maintain it. But we're not, as a culture, very good at facing up to problems that are not affecting us directly at the moment, or at changing our collective mind about things quickly. In fact, we've set up systems with the express purpose of PREVENTING ourselves from changing our collective mind quickly. This is the feeling of frustration and disappointment I've lately been trying to overcome.

I wondered "aloud" (atype?) in my last post, half in jest, whether the best way to overcome these feelings wasn't to just think of the matter objectively, and see our species as merely one unimportant, dead-end phase in the long history of the universe. So there'll be no more humans. Big deal. Might as well have a good time while we're still around. Maybe our downfall will even prove (to whom?) a complicated mathematical theorem that I barely understand myself and almost surely should not have brought up in a bit of light writing for the general public. That was the kind of stance I was starting to feel like I should take toward the whole predicament. But I think that this kind of nihilistic attitude is exactly the same as the cultural problem that's giving me a hard time. Turning away from possible solutions and thinking only of myself is not going to help anything, and is in fact going to add to the ugly mess. Besides, I really like us humans, warts and all, and I can't pretend I wouldn't be sad to see us eliminated. We have such great potential. Sure, we blow it a lot of the time, but that's part of what makes us so gosh-darn lovable.

Maybe we won't be able to get out of this one. I really don't know. But if there's any hope for us, it's going to consist in compassionate, non-judgmental awareness of ourselves and each other, so that's what I'm going to keep trying to develop in myself and put out there. Even if it's a completely futile endeavour, at least it makes me generally happy. And if the fact that most people are not trying to develop such awareness in themselves sometimes makes me less happy, I can feel sadness and sympathy that there are unfulfilling lives being lived, rather than anger that I can't do more about it.

And now, since Castpost seems to be gone for good and I still haven't found any other way to post sound files (without paying for a subscription), I recommend you track down and listen to Tomita's 1974 electronic version of Claude Debussy's "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair". Such beauty, ingenuity, rapture, and existential longing... It makes me feel completely alone and completely connected at the same time, like when you lie on a beach at night and look up at the stars. And it'll do the same for YOU.

- Andrew

Music, Mystery, and Magyck

Seems like there's been so much going on around here there hasn't even been time to blog about it. I've played a couple of shows as a bassist with Al Tuck now. The first one was pretty awful and humiliating, as I really hadn't rehearsed enough. There was one song that was in a different key from what I had written in my cheat notes and I finally had to give up playing random notes in the hopes that some would be right, and just stand on stage watching Al play the song instead. Luckily, there were no more than forty people in the audience anyway.

The second one was on Thursday and it went a lot better. We had a keyboard player with us, which really filled out the sound nicely. Too bad there were even less people at that show. But once the word gets out about this fantastic band he's got backing him...

Alison has started teaching her class again. Seems like a similar bunch of people to last time. But she's a little better organized this time around, and a little less nervous. Now if she can just figure out a way to make them do their homework.

["God" by John Lennon belongs here. I can't put it on yet because Castpost is down for maintenance. Grrr. Please hum it quietly to yourself while reading the following paragraph.]

This song has been in my head a lot lately, so I thought I'd put it on the old bloggio. It's kind of how I feel these days: a combination of Richard Dawkins' unyielding atheism and Krishnamurti's distrust of all spiritual precepts. I'm quite content right now to go around trying to find my own answers to the great and not so great mysteries, and undiscouraged if they're not forthcoming. The meaning's all in the search. (I like, by the way, how "Beatles" is the most shocking thing Lennon can think of not to believe in. I guess it probably was at the time.)

It is kind of bothering me, though, that most people seem unwilling to take their own searches very seriously. Not in an individual way, mind you: I completely sympathize with how much effort is required of a person to constantly question the nature of things in this powerful self-propagating culture we've created, even given the belief that the unquestioned life is ultimately meaningless. More in an oh-no-the-entire-world-is-screwed-unless-everybody-starts-thinking-very-differently-and-I-don't-think-it's-going-to-happen-soon-enough kind of way.

Maybe the answer is to think of the human species as a failed evolutionary experiment. Or a biological example of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which states that any mathematical system powerful enough to express anything interesting will be able to express propositions about itself that prove it either internally inconsistent or incomplete (i.e. unable to express other propositions that it should be able to express, because they would render it inconsistent). The biological analogue would be that any species smart enough to communicate intelligence intergenerationally will evolve ideas that either conflict with the species' own evolution or prove that it is not really all that smart after all. It's all language's fault, I'm convinced. Maybe homo mutiens will have a better go of it.

So, what else is going on? I'm working on some tunage with a couple of guys I've played with before, and that's hopefully going to develop into a serious musical project. More bass. I'm really having a fun time playing bass, so far. Could be I've finally found my instrument. Or more likely I've finally found my instrument of this week. I've also been contributing to some collaborative recording that Rich is working on. Speaking of which, it looks like the band is going to get to play at South-by-Southwest in Austin in March! We'll be down there for three days. If the other two times we've gone down are anything to go by, that'll be a complete blast. I'm already having olfactory hallucinations of cheap and delicious Tex-Mex.

I had a performance review at my job on Friday, which went very well. Nothing really to tell there. The work continues to be suspiciously fun and Satan has had no complaints yet about the soul he's been purchasing on layaway from me. Sorry, that sounds like I'm being insultingly metaphorical. Please understand that I'm talking about the ACTUAL Satan, and not any mere mortals.


Speaking of underworld-dwellers, we went to see Pan's Labyrinth with Meg and our friends Ron and Kristina on Friday. It was pretty good, I guess. Quite violent in the "realistic" parts. I don't know, maybe I'm missing some fantasy-enjoying neuron or something, because I just can't seem to get into the genre. I have no particular bone to pick with it or anything, but the fairy tales for adults just never really do anything for me. Is it the linearity of the plots? Their heavy-handed allegorical nature? Or the fact that once magic has been introduced to a story all restrictions are effectively removed, making surprise impossible because ironically anything is possible? I can't say. But, as I said, I have no bone to pick with the infantile, unicorn-and-fairy-loving genre.

That's enough for now. Gonna go play some MYOOOOOOO-zik! Cheers.

- Andrew

I am a woman of few words.

Since Wednesday, the coldest friggin' day ever, we've been up to a lot¹, and have seen many weather changes. Today, however, the deep freeze was turned back on. Brrr!


Dana, it was great having you here - we miss you!


Jason, where are you? Not that you can read this now, but it would be nice to see you again before you leave.

I start teaching again this week at the community college. The sole fact that I'm actually blogging right now should give away how successfully I'm putting off getting ready for it! haha.

¹ Mostly the yoozh with some extra talking and beer drinking thrown in there. Not really enough to warrant a footnote, but whatev.

-Ali

Minus Thirty-Four with Windchill!

What the hell, man? We haven't had any cold weather all winter, and now suddenly this? I think my sister and her husband brought it up from Ontario. All the way to work this morning I was thinking of these lines from a song of mine:

This winter morning is a dream.
Look at the harbour: it's a bowl of steam.

I guess it didn't seem as enchanting on the way home tonight, because all I could think about then was this poem by Alden Nowlan:

Canadian January Night

Ice storm: the hill
a pyramid of black crystal
down which the cars
slide like phosphorescent beetles
while I, walking backwards in obedience
to the wind, am possessed
of the fearful knowledge
my compatriots share
but almost never utter:
this is a country
where a man can die
simply from being
caught outside.

- Andrew

What's New:

I'm playing music with real people again, twice a week.

My sister's coming to town for a visit in three days.

There is snow here.

The jeans I'm wearing.

I read a passage in a Jon Kabat-Zinn book that got me re-motivated about keeping up my daily yoga and meditation practice, which from infrequency had started seeming like just work:
"If, from the meditative perspective, everything you are seeking is already here, even if it is difficult to wrap your thinking mind around that concept, if there really is no need to acquire anything or attain anything or improve yourself, if you are already whole and complete and by that same virtue so is the world, then why on earth bother meditating? Why would we want to cultivate mindfulness in the first place? ... [O]ne reason we might want to practice mindfulness is that most of the time we are unwittingly praciticing its opposite. Every time we get angry we get better at being angry and reinforce the anger habit. ... Every time we become self-absorbed, we get better at becoming self-absorbed and going unconscious. ... Practice does make perfect. Without awareness of anger or of self-absorption, or ennui, or any other mind state that can take us over when it arises, we reinforce those synaptic networks within the nervous system that underlie our conditioned behaviors and mindless habits, and from which it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle ourselves, if we are even aware of what is happening at all."

The video to the Shins single Phantom Limb, from their third album, which comes out January 23. I can't wait! Well, I can and I am in the sense that I refuse to download the record and listen to it before it arrives in stores, but it's a serious struggle.

The sweater I'm wearing.

We saw this display in a basement window of the house beside the vacant lot that used to hold the house that Paul Gailiunas and Helen Hill used to live in, before they moved away and it subsequently burned down. I'm assuming it's in tribute to her. The black figure is a stuffed crow.


My favourite internet radio station: KUSF from San Francisco.

- Andrew

Bad Start to Oh Seven

Before I start ranting at you, here's a couple of pictures of us with Jeff in Toronto, like I promised ya.


This arms-length self-portrait was taken as the streetcar was opening it's door and the driver (conductor?) was waiting for me and Ali to get on. Hence the quickly formed, ill-conceived facial expressions and composition. I think I look kind of like Harpo Marx.

And by the way, we're both feeling a lot better now. Turned out to be just a cold, but what a roller coaster of a one! Every time I thought it was over, there was some new symptom ready to show itself. Now that we're healthy again, it's time to get back into shape. We had our first yoga class of the season tonight, and it felt pretty great. Made me realize how quickly I can lose flexibility, though.

So, right now this whole city is very bummed out, as its favourite ex-patriates, Paul Gailiunas and Helen Hill were victims of a random shooting at the front door of their home in New Orleans. Paul is OK and Helen is dead. It's really one of the most tragic things you can think of, as they were known by everyone as the friendliest, nicest, most socially-conscious and giving people imaginable. Many have remarked that if the gunman was looking for money, all he had to do was ask and they would have gladly handed over everything they own. They were a huge inspiration that was immediately missed when they left Halifax for New Orleans a few years ago. I hardly knew them at all, but I feel like they still managed to inspire even me immensely, just by their positive presence in the city. I think most people who had any contact with them at all when they lived here feel the same way. I guess there's going to be some sort of memorial type activity for Helen this weekend.

In other random violence news, more and more people keep getting attacked on The Commons at night. It's happened to a couple of people I know now. A group of junior high school-aged boys waits for someone to come along when no one else is around, and then beats them up. The boys usually don't take anything, either, satisfied with just getting some aggression out. It's quite sickening.

And finally, drivers' contemptuous, if cognizant at all, attitude toward cyclists and pedestrians continues to escalate. No one stops at crosswalks anymore, for instance, unless you actually step out in front of them, and then they act like you are a maniac for stepping out in front of a moving car. Usually they will actually speed up if they see you waiting. Corners are supposed to be the same as a crosswalk, pedestrian-wise, but you can forget about that unless you actually do have a deathwish. And I just heard about a friend of a friend whose leg was broken by a woman starting into an intersection, without looking, after stopping at a stop sign. The woman asked the manglee whether she was all right, and then drove off when an answer was not immediately forthcoming.

It's a difficult time for theists, that's all I can say.

- Andrew

Sickos!

Ali and I both seem to have come down with some kind of cold or flu. It's pretty bad, and has been keeping us home from work. Blah. Some people who've had it say it lasts 3 weeks! Others are saying it could be strep throat or mono. Jeez, man, I hope not.

Not much has happened since the last post. We got to see Jeff for a few hours. That was a good time. I'll put some pictures up next post. He told me about this MySpace-for-books site, to which I'm now completely addicted. I bought The God Delusion and ate it up in a couple of days. It's a highly entertaining and persuasive read, but don't pick it up unless you're prepared to start proudly wearing an "Atheist" badge around town.

New Year's Eve was a bit non-existent as we were in the initial stages of this illness. We did visit Krista and some of her friends upstairs for awhile, though. Then on New Year's Day we went to see Almodovar's latest, Volver with Johanna and Meg. Not so great, really. The story was pretty boring, and relied heavily on Penelope Cruz's bosom to maintain interest.

Now it's back to work and the usual routine, which is actually kind of nice. Or will be, once we actually go into work. And now, back to bed for the twentieth time today.

- Andrew [cough, cough]

One Week Later...

Christmas has come and gone now, and Alison and I are preparing to leave the unabashedly selfish hedonism and never-ending, hideous expansion of Toronto behind in favour of the ignorant reverse snobbery of doing-everything-it-can-to-be-every-bit-as-hideous-despite-geographic-constraint li'l Halifax. We've had a really nice time visiting with our families and are now completely wiped out. Heavier, too. My dad's out of the hospital and toodling around the house like nothing happened. My sisters' families are sweet and fun and everything great. We had a nice long walk in the Markham Ravine, a hilarious games night, and many awesome meals, culminating in a full family delayed Christmas dinner last night (i.e., Thursday, today being Friday, Dec. 29, even though the date at the top of the post says otherwise). I even got to read A Visit from Saint Nicholas to the St. Louis kids on real Christmas Eve.






Alison spent (actual) Christmas night at her friend Alicia's family's house in Waterloo, as has become a tradition. Alicia's daughter, Meghan, has gotten really grown up, but not too grown up for a Baby Alive doll that makes digital farting noises and says, "Uh oh! I made a stinky!" Or so I'm told; unfortunately I didn't get to experience that first-hand.



I also read enough of my dad's brand new copy of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion to know that I now have to buy it, even though I'm pretty sure of the ending (Dawkins wins by a forfeit). Tonight we're at Alison's parents's downtown watching some dumb tube before we meet our good friend Jeff tomorrow for lunch and then hop on a plane. And now, apparently, Saddam Hussein has been executed. So happy new year, everybody!

- Andrew

It Only Gets Brighter from Here

Yesterday was the shortest day of the year, and it both did and didn't feel like it. It definitely seemed like something strange was up. I had to go into work very early and stay late to get a bunch of high priority, super rush jobs done. That, combined with the stress I've maybe been denying a little of this annual annoyance called Christmas, meant that when I got home my head was reeling. It felt like I'd been wearing a hat that was too small all day and when I took it off there was a throbbing ring of dizzy pain left over.

I went to bed early. Alison had to wait because she was colouring her hair with henna, and couldn't sleep with a plastic bag on her head. That was fine with me, but then every time I started to drift off, the phone would ring. Like, four or five times, and no one was answering it. And each time, I would bolt awake, wondering where I was and what that noise meant, and cursing loudly. Finally, the fifth time it happened, I jumped out of bed, threw some things around angrily, stomped down the stairs naked, and kicked the bedroom door open to see what was going on. Alison was nowhere to be seen, but I found all her clothes, including underwear, hanging up on the back of the bathroom door.

Completely freaked out, the only thing I could think of to do was start making a weird keening noise that I wasn't even sure was coming from me. Luckily, the phone interrupted me by ringing again. This time I answered it, and it was my mom, as it had been all along, just wanting to talk about the awesome Christmas present my dad gave us all by being in much better health than we'd thought for awhile. Describing my ridiculous situation semi-incoherently to her made me see the humour in it, and after getting off the phone I found out that Ali was just upstairs visiting the K's in her pyjamas. Today I feel much better: I'm ready to raise a glass of soy nog and belt out some carols. (Hmm... has anyone ever considered the possibility that Scrooge was just overtired, and that the real redemption of the story came when his nightmares finally allowed him some much needed sleep?) So happy Christmas, and god bless us, every one.

- Andrew

Those Crazy Kids

I played another "show" with Al Tuck on Wednesday night, this one at Tribeca and drumless. I thought it would be a nice, intimate evening of folk like the old days when Al played there every Wednesday. However, as we arrived with our scrappy gear, a young woman named "Krista D" (pictured) started coming in with her full rock band plus supporting band and entourage, all done up in some kind of goth/saucy schoolgirl outfit, and setting up mannequin stage props and a large wooden rack displaying the CDs she had for sale. I guess they accidentally double-booked the night. The guy who'd booked Al couldn't find the email confirming the date, and Al said he would take fifty bucks to walk. But the guy thought we should at least play a little for fifty bucks, so we went up and did three songs while the other bands got set up. It was a little humiliating, since some friends of mine had come specifically to see us play, but I have to admit that I was a little relieved too, as I'd just gotten some pretty bad news that night about a good friend's health, and wasn't as focused as I could be.



And speaking of good friends, Matt and Laura are in town from Toronto on a surprise extra long Christmas break, so we're going to get lots of quality hanging out time in with them. They were downtown last night with Laura's sister and a few of her friends, so I got to meet up with them after my staff Christmas dinner. Unfortunately the dinner had given Ali a stomachache, so I sent her home in a cab before heading over to Tribeca again to yell back and forth over the very loud music with a somewhat drunken and very high-spirited M & L. It was really fun, but I ended up staying out until 4:00 am! I never do that anymore. Maybe I felt like competing a little with the obnoxiously young crowd that wreaked minor havoc on, and then closed the bar. I think mostly, though, I was just having a really good time and didn't want it to end. Yoga this morning was exactly what I needed after that.

- Andrew

It Is a Sad and Beautiful World

My jingle isn't going to be used after all, I found out today. I'm pretty bummed about it. My boss decided it's not aggressive enough for the client's image and he bought some other piece of stock music from Toronto with no lyrics instead, probably for a lot less money than what I was going to charge. He says it doesn't mean we won't use it for something else, but I don't really see how that's possible, since it's a jingle about O'Regan's Chevrolet-Cadillac. So, since it'll never be on the radio (boo!), I guess I can let you hear it (yay!). Enjoy.


You will never hear this song on your way to the beach.

Last week, especially the weekend, was a bit busier than I'm comfortable with, but a lot of it was pretty fun stuff. Johanna's first ever solo painting exhibit opened at the Argyle Fine Art Gallery on Friday night, so we went to that and out to a bar afterwards with her. It's a really great show and if anyone's reading this who actually has the option of going to check it out, I can tell you it's definitely worthwhile. All the paintings, which she completed over the last year, are of the area in the LaHave Islands where her parents have had a cottage for decades, and they're all done in large, abstract brush strokes and a beautifully muted palette of greens and greys. Some of them sit absolutely still and others are full of movement and gesture, but they all express — or maybe "exude" is more accurate — a deep, almost mystical love of nature that remains defiantly level-headed in the face of blinding rapture.

Saturday was full of yoga, errands, and a fun rock show at the One World Café, followed by some more hanging out with Johanna. Then yesterday we spent all afternoon Christmas shopping in the Mic Mac Mall. Ugh. We just got Sunday shopping here a few weeks ago, and now everyone seems to actually wait until Sunday, as it's such a treat. I think we handled the relentless crowds pretty well, but were definitely tired by dinner time. Ron and Kristina, a couple of friends of ours out with whom we hadn't really hung before, had invited us to their house in Dartmouth for dinner, so we went straight there and had a really nice time listening to music and shooting the poop and appreciating their 3-year-old puppy, Seymour. They had to make us some special pasta sauce after we rudely refused the meat one they'd been simmering for awhile, and it was of course great. I hope we'll be seeing more of them, and I may even play some music with Ron if all goes according to plan.

Lastly, this has nothing to do with anything, but I find it very interesting. Beside the corner store that we regularly frequent, between it and what used to be a pizza place until it went out of business about a year ago, is a corner store/pizza place called "Rassy's". Or rather, was. Rassy's boldly plopped itself between Joe Thomeh's Convenience and Toulaney's Pizza Factory years ago and began to directly compete with both of its snug neighbours by putting pizza ovens in the back of a slightly less convenient store, and a rotating multi-pizza rack at the front. The Factory eventually couldn't compete and was sold, becoming Big Italy Pizza and almost immediately folding. So Rassy's earned itself a local monopoly on inedibly large slices of pizza. But I guess it wasn't enough because the other day it was suddenly boarded up. No warning, no signs, no explanation. Even Joe doesn't know what happened. "One night, he just go," Thomeh is reported to have shrugged. Alison and I went to check it out a couple of nights after the closure, and were still discussing it, bewildered, as we rounded the next corner and stopped short in front of a brand new establishment called "Razzy's," in the lit window of which sat two young men trying to finish their enormous pizza slices.

In conclusion, weird.

- Andrew

Winter = Time for Brain Volleyball

First snow! It got very wintry very fast this afternoon as a moderate rain turned into huge psychedelic snowflakes that freaked everyone out by covering first their heads and then the roads. Visibility was near zero and traction somewhere in the negatives around the time people got off work. Buses were stopped in lines along the side of the road. The food court in the mall couldn't contain all the folks who'd thought they'd just grab a quick bite while they waited out the worst of it. Of course, then it started to rain and the streets REALLY turned into a slushy mess. Alison documented the high key splendour out the back window, while Buster settled in for an evening in the scarf and mitten bench.





I played a show with the legendary Al Tuck at Gus' Pub on Friday night, and it went very well thank you, despite the fact that I'd never learned about half the songs he chose to play. Maybe that should be "because of," come to think of it. There's something pretty satisfying about learning a song onstage and getting through it all right while maintaining a certain sensitivity to what the other guitar and percussion are doing. I'm sure my own excitement about that and intense concentration came across in the overall performance. Too bad some lady was talking loudly on her cell phone through most of the show.

Gus' was completely non-smoking that night, as it will be I guess from now on. They've just passed a law here, effective December 1, that there's no smoking in ANY public place, which includes out on a sidewalk if you're within like 40m of a commercial doorway. As I think I said before, that's some pretty tough love, aka paternalism. If you know Gus' at all, or if you've ever been in any old man hardcore beer hall that has only recently become a place where indie rock kids can enjoy the irony of seeing their favourite bands there, then you know how strange it was to look into the VLT room/smoquarium and actually see the people sitting around in there, empty-handed, watching the show through the glass, not to mention breathe comfortably. Of course, people were going outside and back in so much that the front door was left open the entire first night in Gus' history that it would have been preferable to keep it closed. It was right comical.

And speaking of people trying to control the addictive behaviour of other people, my dad and I have been debating long and windily about that very subject while ostensibly playing an email chess match. It started with what I thought to be only a mildly provocative remark about the evils of advertising (my chosen pact with the devil), and has escalated, via the related subject of people sometimes not knowing what they want or wanting what they don't want to want, into a full-scale polemic on free will, responsibility, and the nature of the individual. Doesn't everything. The major sticking point seems to be about how much of a person's behaviour we should count as choice, which is why I selected the particular piece of music I did for this post, although honestly besides the "choose to choose" stuff I really have no idea what the hell Lou Reed's talking about in it. But it sure is cool. Goes nicely with the snow, too.

Anyway, this debate definitely has an air of My Dinner with Andre about it, with yours truly taking the titular role (i.e. Andre Gregory) as the interesting but probably a little too kooky idealist, and my dad as a less lisping but just as bemused and possibly not entirely comprehending "me" (i.e. Wallace Shawn). My Email with Andrew, as I'm therefore referring to the whole belligerent mess, is making for a very slow chess game. At least from my end.

Finally, we saw Borat on the weekend. It was worth the wait. Unbelievably funny and gutsy and really probably too over the top. I'd say almost definitely, actually. But hilarious. My favourite part was when he sings the phony Kazakhi national anthem to the tune of the American one at a rodeo in the south. Check it out if you hate political correctness and believe poop and naked men wrestling will always be appropriate comic fodder. And really, who doesn't?

- Andrew

RIP, Allen Carr

This is very sad, and also weird, given last night's blog post, but Allen Carr died this morning. I guess he finished his last book and it's available as a free download. I've been thinking a lot about addiction lately, and I feel like some kind of small and spooky torch has now been passed on.

Goodbye, Allen. You'll be missed, but your message will live on.

- Andrew

Plenty Going On

The most exciting news around here right now, for me, anyway, is that I've written and recorded a jingle for one of our clients at the ad agency where I work. And I think it's going to get used! I REALLY, REALLY want to put it on here so you can hear it, but that would possibly get me fired, and I should wait until it's gone through all the hoops and revisions anyway. But I don't mind telling you, it's super catchy. I'm very psyched to hear it on the radio.

We went to a party at our friends Ron and Kristina's in Dartmouth on Saturday. It was a really fun time. I'd recently decided I didn't want to drink any more because the combination of alcohol in me and the annoying self-aggrandizing behaviour of drunk people around me brings out a certain biliousness in me that I don't like. But at this party I had a couple of glasses of wine and still had a really nice time talking with everyone. Maybe it's just bars that I hate. Especially the smoking ones. Yuck!

As of this Friday, there's no more smoking in any public places in Halifax. A lot of people are telling me that includes anwhere outdoors that is not your own backyard, but I find this pretty hard to believe. If it's true, that seems like some very tough love. I don't know what all those wretched nicotine addicts are going to do! Every day I thank my lucky stars that I'm no longer one of them.

Allen Carr, the guy who wrote the book I and Ali and many of our friends used to successfully quit smoking, now has lung cancer. Could be because of the many years for which he smoked before quitting twenty or so ago, or it might be related to all the second-hand smoke he's inhaled since then, helping others who want to quit. He encourages smokers to continue smoking as much as they want until they're ready to stop on his program, so that their powers of concentration will not be diminished while he de-brainwashes them. Whatever the root cause is, it's very sad. He's helped so many people, and is still unrecognized by any advertised cessation programs. I guess he's writing one last book about that very "scandal".

Final bit of news: I've been doing some rehearsing with Al Tuck, and will probably be playing a show with him and one or two other guys on Friday night at Gus' Pub. He's back in Halifax now, so I hope this'll be an ongoing deal. He's such a great songwriter, and a heck of a guy.

OK, must go tweak some cheesy drum sounds now. Still no Borat in sight!

- Andrew