Mantis Style!

I'm sorry if I wasn't a little more clear in my complaining on my last post. If you look back, it seems that I inspired a comment thread listing all the great musical acts that my dad is proud to call Canadian. This was not quite my point. I respect Gordon Downie as our countries second-greatest lyricist and poet, but damned if I can stand to hear him sing for more than 3 minutes at a time.

What I was bemoaning about was these ridiculous indie supergroups that are achieving such undue accolades. Sure, you've got 3 violinists and some dude who can play the dulcimer, but why don't you fix the damn metronome first? In the indie scene, it's frustrating to see a lack of structure being percieved as artistic merit. Here's an idea: Broken Social Scene can change their name to Canadiohead. If not, that's what I'll call them anyways.

posted by Tay @ 4:23 AM 22 comments

So I guess Broken Social Scene has a new album out. Everybody and their dog is freaking out, and frankly I don't see the point. Another album of anti-climactic ambient instrumental garbage doesn't really do it for me. As a matter of fact:

Dear Canadian indie-rock bands,

We already have Broken Social Scene, Do Make Say Think, The Arcade Fire and Godpeed! You Black Emporors crowding up the pointless indie-pap catergory. That's already too many, so please don't feel obliged to join the party. Maybe try starting a real band instead.

Sequentially,
Tay

Come to think of it, the only thing that I like about any of these useless "supergroups" are the side-projects that they spawn. Metric, Feist, Final Fantasy and Stars come to mind. I wonder how the hell such mediocre melodramatic bullshit can turn into really awesome acts that we can proudly call Canadian? I think the conversation would have to go a little likte this:

"Hey, you wanna dump these losers, stop playing music that sounds like a Downs-Syndrome jam session, and start playing actual music?"

"...sure!"

That's really all I have to say about that.

posted by Tay @ 1:01 AM 23 comments

Ryan lent me DJ Q-Bert's Wave Twisters last week, and I just finished watching it. If it doesn't give you a seizure, then you're likey to enjoy it. The animation is tight, the scratching is unbelievable, and Buckethead makes an appearance.

Also, my Kinko's mission was a complete success! What I did was took the The Englishman's wallpaper from his website, make it 12"x12", turn the background pink, and have it printed off on glossy paper. Then I took an old frame that I stole from my house and hung it. If I can borrow a camera, pictures will follow shortly.

posted by Tay @ 5:28 PM 0 comments

Shout-outs

Matthew did a totally awexome thing the other day, and bought me a Mighty Mouse as a birthday/housewarming gift. That was swell of him, and I just wanted to shout to the world that it is a rad mouse that totally matches the rest of my hardware. It's slick that's for sure.

I also need to holler at my boys overseas. Kyle and Colm are travelling it up, in Peru and Europe respectively. I hope that they are having wicked times, and won't stay gone for too long. They're jerks, but we miss 'em all the same.

Thank god it's payday. Sensei took an unexpected final withdrawl from my accounts yesterday, leaving me flat broke. Now I can afford those ukulele strings, an extension cord for my nifty wall lamp, and a trip to Kinko's for a fun little decoration project. Also: fancy dinners and such for nice times with Meg. I guess some money should go for rent/utilities/insurance as well. It's a good thing that living doesn't suck, otherwise I'd say it costs too much.

posted by Tay @ 4:11 AM 5 comments

Ukeing my guts out

My ukulele came in the mail today. I'm going to start learning chords and songs and stuff, but some things need to be done first:

1) I need to learn how to tune the damn thing. This may require new strings, as the ones that came with are garbage.

2) I need to shrink my hands a few sizes, because damn but them frets is tiny.

Why buy a ukulele, you might ask? I'll admit that it was an impulse purchase, made after I had listened to Jack Johnson's song Breakdown about 36 times consecutively. I found a bunch of tabs for songs by Johnny Cash, Iggy Pop, Bob Marley, and other cool songs to uke out to.

Kyle, where is this place that you said sells ukuleles? Perhaps I can buy a set of quality strings from them.

posted by Tay @ 4:12 AM 6 comments

Full of Internets

The cable guy came by and got us hooked up with no troubles, immediatly after which we began work on running illegal splitters and routers for the rest of the house. I don't even think we said "bye" to the dude, our arms so filled with coax cable that we didn't notice him leave. It turns out that in the 5 or so days I was without internets, I became inexcuseably behind on my RSS feeds. 90 unread comics, 10 unread blogs, and too much unread stuff not on RSS feeds to bother with. It's like surfing the internet became a job that I really suck at.

So what else is fun? Ooh, sneaking into your old house aat night to raid the deep freeze of all it's delicious stock. That's fun. Food is hella expensive. I've spent about $130 or so dollars just this week. Honestly, I have no way to guage just how long any of it's gonna last. Will I need to go get more groceries tomorrow? What the hell am I missing?

Moving out has been a pretty rad experience though. Things are finally starting to shape up; I've got my room all painted/decorated, there's space to cook in the kitchen, and while we may not have chairs to accompany it, we do have a kitchen table for eating on. There's only one thing that's really irked me about the whole situation so far: Fat Mike is a food waster. He wastes food. I made a fancy dinner of orange curry chicken, baby potatoes, and spinach salad w/ vanilla dressing, and he wanted to throw out damn near half his plate. While otherwise might roll my eyes at this, I had just spent about $90 to get all the ingredients together for this meal.

Make no mistake: I am quickly becoming my father's son.

posted by Tay @ 3:28 PM 8 comments

I Guess Some Cops is not All Bad

I accidentally set off an alarm at the Office Tower of Destiny, and sure enough 3 cruisers and the HAWCS helicopter were on site before you could say "oops". It was cool though, one of them brought out a box of Krispy Kremes, and we hung out for a while before I had to get back on the road. Just chatting shit and what have you, before I had to wake up the building manager at 5 in the morning to let him know that nothing happened that he couldn't find out by reading the report I left him. That's the funnest part.

posted by Tay @ 5:04 AM 1 comments

Blogging at work for The Win

All of my stuff is in boxes at a house that I don't yet live in. Hopefully by Monday morning I will have things like a bed and food, so that living will be a possibility. Until then, I may have to continue breaking into offices to read/update blogs and check email and webcomics. Actually, screw email. I never get anything good.

posted by Tay @ 1:09 AM 0 comments