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

Celebrations Part II

The Thai dinner was great and the bowling was even better. We went to the alley with Krista and her friend Steve, grabbed some ugly shoes and hurled some balls pinward. Pretty soon Johanna showed up, and then Cliff. I won the first two strings semi-handily, but then Steve came out of nowhere in the third with a score over 150, beating all previous scores by a substantial margin.





I got some real nice gifts and had a very fun birthday, so thanks a lot to everyone. One of my coworkers told me how her forties were the best decade of her life, which I thought was rushing things a bit since I only turned 39, but still nice. Krista gave me Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists, from which we all read while bowling and at which we generally busted guts. The lists referred to are somewhat like David Letterman's Top Ten lists, but generally wittier. And there are lots of them. Here's a sample:

Lesser Known Movie Prequels

Borderline-Inappropriate Dancing
Four Bachelorette Parties and a Friend in the Hospital
Joseph and the Nondescript Monochrome Sportcoat
There Are Plenty of Mohicans

I drove Alison crazy last night reading it in bed, chortling, and outright guffawing until all hours. I was actually still laughing as I fell asleep.

Today at work I was assigned the task of writing a jingle, about which I'm super excited, so I'd better go work on that now. It's for a car dealership. Anyone know a good rhyme for micropolymers?

- Andrew

Celebrations

Of course it was Ali, ya gooves! Who'd you think it was?

It's been a pretty nice birthday so far: card and homemade cake at work, plus a couple of presents, everyone's being real nice to me, and we had chirashi-sushi for lunch. Yum! I'm just waiting for Alison to pick me up now, and we'll go out for Thai food. Then there's gonna be some bowling! Probably the usual suspects, and maybe a few less familiar faces. Meg can't go because she's in Cape Breton overnight on business. Bummer, man. But she gave me a really nice looking book this morning.

Looks like Big A's here. I'll let you know how it all went.

- Birthday Boy

Have a great day!

Our Wonderful, Creative Friends

The other day our friend Al came over and ended up staying over for a couple of nights. We played some of his songs together with two other musicians. It was really fun, and I think we're going to try to work up a set for a show on December 1st. Then the next day he brought his daughter, Isabel, over for a short visit. Holy cow, what a cutie. She just turned one and the natural showmanship is astounding.







She really didn't want to leave when the time came.

Buster was not into Isabel at all. He wouldn't go away from her and eventually hissed at her and I had to banish him to the sunroom. He likes that room anyway, but I wish he could learn not to be like that. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do to convince him that he needn't worry. Now Al may spend another night here with Isabel, and I'm a little worried about how that might play out.

Also last night, we went to our friend Rebecca's book launch at the Argyle Fine Art Gallery. It's a collection of the "House of Sugar" comics she did for The Coast (Halifax's snarky and underinformed entertainment rag), an autographed copy of which we were very glad to purchase because they were so good and there were lots we hadn't read. The book looks great, too. Nice spot varnish on the cover. And they also had a lot of her woodburning-and-then-watercolour painting artwork displayed, which is all gorgeous.

Has anyone seen Borat yet? I still haven't had a chance. Looks pretty funny. Plus now there's a new one of those Christopher Guest movies coming out, which I'm sure will be fantastic. I'm so busy lately, though... Tomorrow I have to wade through 14 hours of dictaphone tapes, trying to find an electric piano part to one of Al's songs (I don't even remember which song), which I'm convinced is pure gold. Wish me luck!

- Andrew

They never call it "experimental" if the experiment is a success.

Hey, hi. We are going to warn you right now that we are doing an experimental blog post. You might wonder why the heck everything seems so weird about what we are saying, and you probably do. Let's see... Today we never meant to compose a cryptic message but here one is. The kooks are in the beans. So here's another important truth you should know by Andrew: this is being real poorly done by us each time. Help us to tell you what we're doing tomorrow. It must be said to you now that you're not alone in this puzzling debate because it is certainly confusing to us both too. That makes this even stupider, but we don't mind. Bye would be a way to go, don't you know, so let's do something else like say what is going on. Really silly shenanigans have temporarily caused side-splitting rules to be enforced in here: what we do is always type one word and the other person, in theory types the next one. This induces many hilarious moments of tears without fears in hopes of making you laugh, dear reader. Unfortunately we are sucking at this so let's just end up with the rub: we're having a nice weekend together. Hope you all like baloney sandwiches.

- Andrew & Alison


P.S. Grand Illusion is a great film for Remembrance Day, The Breakup is a piece of junk, we still haven't seen Borat yet, Scrabble with Joan is always fun, the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning is a good time only if you stay for less than twenty minutes, and tearing down the picket fence between your neighbours' yard and yours is a good way to get cat poop all over your shoes and pants.

Delight and Disgrace

We went to see The Prestige on Saturday, as part of our day-long anniversary celebrating, so now here I am telling you to go and see it. It's a really cool plot with lots of twists, told using an interesting structure (it's directed by the same guy as Memento — he's really into backwards causality), and it looks fantastic. In all senses of the word. Michael Caine is very good in it too. Plus it's about magicians. What more could you want? OK, some of the dialogue divulging important information is a little clunky, but there's a lot of important information to get out. It's not like Primer, which we also recently watched again, where you not only can't figure out what's going to happen but you don't even know what happened after it's over. Not that I didn't like that movie too, because I really did. But it was a little dense, you have to admit. I'm just saying.

Before that we went to the farmers' market to buy fresh fish and some little charcoal disky things that we burn our hippy-dippy loose incense on, then went to hippy-dippy yoga. And after the movie we rented more movies and ordered in too much Chinese food. It was a pretty perfect day.

I was recently glancing through Strunk and White in search of something I thought I remembered "them" saying (i.e. always spell "all together" as two words; turns out it was "all right" I was thinking of), and I ended up getting all excited and full of admiration as I usually do, and read the whole thing again. It's not like it's huge or anything. I was particularly struck by Reminders #8 and #9 in the "An Approach to Style (With a List of Reminders)" chapter:

"8. Avoid the use of qualifiers.
Rather, very, little, pretty—these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then."

Ouch. OK, damning enough, but then I read on:

"9. Do not affect a breezy manner. (Uh oh.)
The volume of writing is enormous, these days, and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. "Spontaneous me," sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribblers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius.

"The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day. Open any alumni magazine, turn to the class notes, and you are quite likely to encounter old Spontaneous Me at work—an aging collegian who writes something like this:

"Well, chums, here I am again with my bagful of dirt about your disorderly classmates, after spending a helluva weekend in N'Yawk trying to view the Columbia game from behind two bumbershoots and a glazed cornea. And speaking of news, howzabout tossing a few chirce nuggets my way?

"This is an extreme example, but the same wind blows, at lesser velocities, across vast expanses of journalistic prose. The author in this case has managed in two sentences to commit most of the unpardonable sins: he obviously has nothing to say, he is showing off and directing the attention of the reader to himself, he is using slang with neither provocation nor ingenuity, he adopts a patronizing air by throwing in the word chirce, he is tasteless, humorless (though full of fun), dull, and empty. He has not done his work."

OK, OK! Uncle! Even imagining the lameness of the CGI, Julia-Roberts-as-Charlotte version of E. B. White's Charlotte's Web that's coming out couldn't do any work toward softening those pointed blows. I hung my head in shame, vowing never to irresponsibly blog again.

Until next time.

- Ol' Cousin Cornmaster Himself

Hallowe'en Post Mortem

Well, Hallowe'en has came and went and it been one of the less eventful ones I ever seen. It was our anniversary too, but we're waiting for the weekend to celebrate that. I hope yours was nice, with the candy and the goblins and whatnot. Us, we didn't put on any funny costumes or anything, and in fact went to a yoga class. I know, bo-ring. I had this fantasy that everyone would show up in a rubber Nixon mask and do yoga in silence as if nothing was out of the ordinary. But that didn't happen, as you might have guessed. We did get what I think is referred to as a smattering of kids looking for handouts before we left, but they were soon dispersed when we called in the police. Just kidding; of course we gave them candy and lots of it. Most of them were cute as hell, too. The dominatrix was a little precocious for my taste, but otherwise...

And OK, there was also this pumpkin carving contest at work before the TOT'ing. I hesitate to tell you about it because the ending is so tragic, but I'm still bursting with pride so allow me to be a bit of a bloggart for a minute. There were three teams of four people, selected at random, and each team had a leader, also selected at random. I was the leader of our team, so I designed what I thought would be a pretty cool-looking jack o'lantern, observing the rules that we could only bring one tool apiece and triangular eyes were not allowed.

The night before, I tried out my human skull design on a much smaller pumpkin, so that I could work out the carving kinks and develop a teamwork strategy, as there was a time limit of one and a half hours. I got the whole thing completed while listening to Black Sabbath's first album, so it seemed that we would be fine for time. I messed up a little bit on the three-dimensionality of the brow and upper mandible, but could see where I'd gone wrong and how to do it right the next time. Especially exciting was the discovery that peeling the pumpkin, which I'd thought would create a really cool effect but also be difficult and time-wasting, was in fact pretty easily accomplished with a potato peeler. And it did create a really cool effect of bone with thin veins running through it. (I know that veins don't actually run through bone, but it just looked biological and creepy, OK?)



When the actual contest happened, the plan went off without a hitch, everyone contributed, and we ended up with an awesome looking pumpkin. Check it out.





However, the three adjudicators who were brought in from outside the company decided, in their infallible judgement, that both the internet-downloaded Frankenstein paint-by-numbers stencil and the internet-downloaded obscene hands grabbing a rear end stencil better fulfilled the adjudicatorial criteria of originality and creativity. Who cares, though, right? We had a fun time. Just because we didn't win the crappy tickets to see some crappy movie that probably nobody would ever want to see in the first place, even if you paid them, doesn't mean I'm going to get bitter about it.

But the final paring knife in the squash was that this morning when I entered the office — having had two beers, a yoga class, and a good night's sleep in that order and therefore being truly and completely not bitter in the least about the previous night's travesty, seriously — the glory that had been Yorick (as I'd come to call him) was now a pile of something the colour and consistency, but not the smell, of rolled cookie dough. Completely unrecognizable. Turns out the skin is essential to a hollowed out pumpkin's structural integrity. It was very sad, and my coworkers and I each said a few words of tribute and observed a few minutes of silence before smushing him into the garbage bag.

- Andrew