"I Need Direction To Perfection"

This National Novel Writing business is going to kill my time. Well, well, whatevs. Linkage? Ran into a trophy mp3 blog out there. Nearly had it shot and stuffed and sent back to my jungle-ranch, but cameras are the new guns, right? So, instead, I took a picture, and you might like to, too. PolloxNiner has some great stuff, including a more-than-sideways glance at an amazing Jens Lekman song. PN appears to be either from NY City, or, possibly, a life-size studio replica of that world-eating town. Plus, blogwise, I should mention Absenter, which has some of the most consistently excellent photography that I've ever seen out there. The archives are deep, too, better than a sandbox. Beautiful, and both sites in my links, now. Linked in my sights?

Party on the week-end, spin the bottle, plenty of open-mouthed kissing. Where were the girls? Male-on-male is cool if you're gay, but I forgot my Darkness Visible eyeliner at home. Also my halloween costume, because I don't believe in glorifying the sulphur-titted lord of the underworld by dressing as one of his horned underlings. But enough about Paul Martin. Boom! Right, that's a bit harsh, I'm sorry. But I was reading the newspapers over the week-end, and got all angry. Stupid politics. Most people say I'm a softie, you know, a bit of a necromantic, but that's just the girls talking foolish talk. Girls are so silly.

Speaking of which, I went picture-taking-driving-walking with one last night. Most regular readers ("Latvia, Laos, Chad, Peru / We need their help, or else we're through") of this site will know her as The Girlfriend. And she pointed out that eminent pic in the top-left corner, as a camera pov par excellence. What an eye. What an eye, girl. I've never really hung around an industrial park before, but this make twice with her, if you count that enormous detour we took off Whyte Ave where we saw that winter-graveyard for old hammerhead cranes. That was a good ride.

Reading: Back in university, back in the classics, I don't even want to be anywhere else. One of the reasons I love the U is this environment. You know what I mean. Where is one supposed to get the motivation to read Dickens these days? Let me tell you, your professor will motivate you. And if he doesn't, his grading system will. But the academic atmosphere seeps into the non-academic, you know? And I start thinking and I contemplate reading Proust again—not that I've ever read the soft-faced M'sieu Proust—I just love the titles of his volumes, French and English. And I start reading poetry again, consistently, and names like Hopkins, Tennyson, Donne, Canning, Emily Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Christopher Smart, Vaughn and Milton appear in the top of the margin. Few of them are quantifiably better than the others. Each has his or her specific and unmatched virtues. Most of all I return to Herbert. The clarity and intelligence, and the harmony between those two virtues, of his verse is unmatched, I believe, in all of English poetic literature. He's a combination of Donne and Hopkins, unmatched by either. Perhaps only the anonymous writer of the medieval lyric so clearly expresses the unity of thought and emotion in physical imagery: "Western wind, when will thou blow / That the small rain down can rain? / Christ, that my love were in my arms, / And I in my bed again." There are no hesitant pauses in Herbert's poetry, unless it be deliberate hesitation, therefore not hesitation at all, but art, and deliberate meaning. There are no vague nouns or diaphonous verbs in the poetry of George Herbert. There are no rootless lines. His book of poetry was named and structured after a church (The Temple). Each poem has its architectural place in the book. Like a cathedral, the poetry is made to evoke admiration toward God ("A verse may find him who a sermon flies"). Therefore, Herbert would probably not appreciate my lavish praise of him or his verse, and, indeed, the parts of himself which he exposed in his verse (and there is great deal of the man carefully inserted into his lines) are put there not to catch our heart's eye with a heavy chime of emotion, but to direct the reader's attention to a similar path to God. Herbert shows that he himself is not important, not in his skill, nor in his experience, but that the experience is what is paramount. Because all men have crises of spiritual drought and heart's depair. And all men may climb out of those dark times—like Herbert, after much struggle, could climb—if they, like Herbert, seek not themselves or their own path, but let their dear desires go. Godsake, that's a hard path, George. That's a damn hard path. But thank-you for writing. Once upon a time, Herbert wrote, "The eyes have one language everywhere". This book is written in that universal language. The Temple + George Herbert

Listening: There is no contest, The Killers are so far the greatest band of the decade (Franz Ferdinand, I'd give you Best Name if it wasn't for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! or even controller.controller—that lowercase spelling and punctuation kills me everytime). Despite this, the previously-thought-senseless lyric, "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier", semi-ruined "All These Things That I've Done" for me. That is, until I finally saw the video. This is the best video I've seen all year. First few seconds, I didn't realize they were poking fun at themselves, and merely thought it was bizarre that the film editor hadn't noticed the way the images appeared onscreen. But the way that Brandon Flowers falls slapstick into that puddle, the way the men retreat one step as the women advance a single step, the way each member of the band tries on that undersized burro, well, I don't mind that chorus anymore, I plain love it. They're timid men inside themselves, you see (I finally see), overdressed, tiny-hearted, and know it, too. They wish they were enormous coyboys, apocalyptic, but facts are facts, and burroes aren't horses, and this video, metaphorically, is my ever-loving life. I thought this song was cynical, but now I see it's sincere like I never knew. Plus, that oriental girl is gorgeous. From the back of my broken hand, take a look at "All These Things That I've Done" + The Killers.

There was this story I read when I was a little tyke, all about Greenland. How the king of Norway heard news that the land had been abandoned to the worship of Thor. How brave men were sent to Greenland to find out the truth, and every night they were nearly eaten by grim wolves. How these brave men found only abandoned villages and starving cattle. How not one soul was ever found, only the pagan hammer of Thor inscribed on a single silver cup. Well, not as good a song as The Killers' single (some would slay me, there), and not as intelligent a video, but still blazingly good and with tons of LOTR eye-candy, is Ladytron's enormous single. The director of this video must have read the same story I did, I swear. The video is all frost-giants and living mountains. Magicians or explorers struggle comfortably in a storm. And there is good music, and perverse lyrics. For some reason, I love the camera angles, the change and sweep and stutter of the point-of-view. What beautiful pictures. The "Media" section on their website holds the second of my two favourite videos this year, "Destroy Everything You Touch" + Ladytron

The Rave Scene

Just heard last night that The Raveonettes are coming to town, supposedly on the fifteenth. I was so surprised, I let my goldfish drown. This is a problem. Not the goldfish—I've got others, and with prettier fins, too. See, I've got a smaller budget than the specialty-bird-store down the street (wait—is that right? that doesn't seem right), and I've got old Father Time curb-stomping my skinny schedule just about every week. The news is, and it's old news now, Broken Social Scene is also coming—two days after The Raveonettes! Godsake! This is why you don't offer the kids more than one flavour of ice-cream. Chocolate, and that's it. I've never seen BSS live, but what are the chances of another pair of Danish fashion spreads coming through Edmonton again? Dammit. More news Monday, with a proper-done Reading and Listening.

Every Speed On Our Knees Is Crawling

There is no better venue for music in Edmonton than The Starlite. I love the warped and tilted floor in front of the stage, the dark alley to the door, the pizza parlour slash obvious crack-front just left of the main undoors, the way the mensroom is practically part of that downstairs hallway, the stairs everyone gets stalled on, even the coatcheck girl's shoes (they were red, white, and blue Adidas). It all contributes, you know? And it all contributed to a strong show for Metric at The Starlite last night. There's a massive "but" buried in there, though. But, I was a bit disappointed in The Most Serene Republic. Not that I caught their whole set, but from the little I did catch (a few brief glimpses of their last two songs), they seemed to sound like a typical indie-rock band. Which is fine, but I was hoping for something a bit out of the ordinary from the only non-BSS band on Arts & Crafts. Well, maybe I missed their finer moments on stage. But as I was saying earlier, Metric was tough, a combat baby if there ever was one. Emily Haines' robotic dance moves are casually insane, like your cousin dancing at the family picnic and you never told anyone you thought she was cool and sexy (well, I never did, that's for sure). For the first song, "Empty", she would sing a few lines, keyboarding away, and then the bass would crowd her out, the music crashing down huge. She'd take a step back, put her hands on her waist and jerk her head back and forth like a Barbie doll looking left and right, long blonde hair like circle-knives hiding her face. "Shake your head it's empty / Shake your hips move your feet / Shake your head it's empty / Shake your hips move your feet". And repeat. And repeat. There were those famous little kicks, too, and the quick punk march, even some classic scissor kicks. No wonder that girl is so thin. The sound was muddy at first, or maybe it was where I was standing, but things cleared up about halfway through the set, about the time she started swinging her arms to "Combat Baby". I don't understand why she didn't include "The Police And The Private" (their best song off the new album, I think), but she redeemed the band with a killer extended version of "Dead Disco" in the encore, and "Love Is A Place" finished the night, the lights going out to the line "Nothing but blue skies". I've seen better concerts, yeah, but this is Metric, and this was worth the money. They've been here before, I know, but as long as the bassist keeps wearing pink shirts, as long as the guitarist plays and dodges like someone's shooting at him, as long as that drummer can hold those beats on "Dead Disco", and as long as Emily Haines can keep dancing and singing, I hope they come again.

Reading: There's a lot of crap out there, in The Kingdom Of Books. Someday I hope to contribute. Meanwhile, I sometimes have trouble separating the crap I like from the crap I don't like. Edgar Rice Burroughs good, Alan Dean Foster bad (unless you're talking The Tar-Aiym Krang or that one where all the whales are flying at the end). Roger Zelazny amazing, of course (Lord Of Light, anyone?), Poul Anderson horrible. Note: I also read other genres besides science fiction. I just can't remember what they are. There are books I think are going to be terrific (how bad did The Hobbit suck?) and then there are things, like the Tintin stories, which should suck, but don't. Among books which should blow would be books based on an imaginary feudal Japan, books whose hero would be a young boy, books whose hero would be that young boy being part of a secret clan called The Tribe, books with old-man ninjas who become invisible but never really fight. The book I read contained all of those elements, and does not move very fast, I'll tell you that. Every speed is crawling, here. But the book succeeds. The book succeeds for the same reason those Harry Potter books succeed. Because the author weighs the dice so heavily against her hero, that us readers can't help but cheer for him. I feel so manipulated. But I still went out and bought the sequel to this book (and, btw, this books also comes as a little chap-book in the children's section, wafer-thin Bible-pages crammed with tiny print!), because, after all, ninjas are ninjas, and the writing is very poetic, there's a lot of fairly different characters, everyone's been given a secret agenda, and there's wooden floor that squeaks when an assassin walks across it. Oh, that last one is a gooder, you bet. So is Across The Nightingale Floor + Lian Hearn

Listening: And then there was this band. Which I'm not sure if they're named after the movie, but they remind me in all the best ways of a certain collection of stories, instead, the hilarious and cleverly disastrous redneck hick-adventures of Patrick F. McManus in They Shoot Canoes, Don't They? Described as hillbilly art-rock, and there's a brutal mash for you, they're just plain good. And they've got a crazy-good website. Which seems to be based around a pickle. Although their music, isn't. Based around a pickle, that is. The music is based around the instruments, of course, which include a slide trombone, little used outside of Lawrence Welk circles, and a keyboard. There are drums played by a girl, which is always sexy, and the usual bass and guitar. Such excellent music, this, like Bright Eyes if Connor Oberst listened to Glen Miller and wasn't suicidal. Okay, not like Bright Eyes at all, then, but I don't know where to start. You start first. This is one of their best "Transmitting" + They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

The Social Pipeline

I was on the bus, talking about the asinine and unneccessary cameo perpetrated by The Dog Of Steel in Batman: Hush (seriously, The League of Super-Pets? in the DC universe? it just keeps getting worse) and I became aware that I wasn't sittting in the cool group anymore. Was I ever? So I'm thinking about sprouting a crop of acne, maybe joining the chess club. Also, one hears rumours of gamers, and the deliberate misuse of pencils and paper and dice in the halls below Health & Education. Maybe I should join those guys. They sound pretty cool. I want to go somewhere where I know someone who can plug me into the social pipeline. The gamers just may be the answer. Either that or I join the guys in poor-boy blazers who read Rainer Maria Rilke aloud outside of class and keep talking about the social dichotomies between Kerouac and Ginsberg. Yeah. Well, maybe I'll hold off on those guys.

Reading: I have read the opening lines of all his novels. Because the other day, as I was reading George Orwell's paper-mouthed Keep The Aspidistra Flying, I recalled the opening line of his much more famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aspidistra opens with a banality: "The clock struck two." Nineteen Eighty-Four opens with a parallel banality, although that opening ends with a sinister twist: "It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen." So I returned to that musty shelf in Rutherford where Orwell rots between authors he would have despised, and pulled Down And Out In Paris And London off the shelf: "The Rue du Coq d'Or, Paris, seven in the morning". This was getting ridiculous. A Clergyman's Daughter, then: "As the alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of bell metal"—this is beyond coincidence now, for sure. Coming Up For Air, third sentence: "At about a quarter to eight, I'd nipped out of bed and got into the bathroom just in time to shut the kids out." Burmese Days, second sentence: "It was only half-past eight, but the month was April, and there was a closeness in the air, a threat of the long stifling midday hours." The Road To Wigan Pier opens with the phrase, "The first sound in the morning" and even Animal Farm opens in a timely manner, with the close of the day. Will someone tell me what the blazes is going on? What does this constant reference to Chronos mean? All of this author's books open with the establishment of time. George Orwell is giving me a case of deju vu like I never knew. Everything He Ever Wrote + George Orwell

Listening: This Dan character at Said The Gramaphone has posted a solid mp3. The quality is a little shaky, but as the beggar said at Christmas, half a mug will do. It's the giving, not the getting, that counts. Which is why I'm passing this along. "Unknown Title (Bones Song) (Live)" + Wolf Parade (WP on Myspace, WP on NMC)

You Want To Talk About Parallels?

Just found out that MM is headed off to India. What? And my dad just landed in Spain, by the way. And A went to England a while back. Even GJ is out there, buried in British Columbia. Hey, New Delhi, Barcelona, London, Abbotsford? Say hello to more people who are not me. Then, Saturday night, S took his girlfriend and looked up Magneta Lane opening for controller.controller. And Saturday night, C saw Cuff The Duke and the Stand Up Firs. And also Saturday night, little G took in Sweatshop Union. Face it, me. You're jealous. Because, parce que au samedi, everywhere was somewhere else to everyone but you. And now you're slipping in a puddle of spilt milk, yes, yes, it's disgusting. And what are you going to do about it? Building bitter shells of envy always ends up boring you. Dammit then, me, let's get vicarious. But fake vicarious, cause that's better.

JSS: Heyo, S. You're not here right now, but that's no problem. Imaginary question for an imaginary conversation. How was controller.controller? Horrible, right?
S: Heck, no! They played that song that mentions vampires. Yes! Like sleeping in a warm cave, and it's dark and winter outside, but the big brown bears out there are buzzing and jumping out of the trees, turning the whole world into a carnivorous blood-red summer.
JSS: That's stupid, You're insane. Don't tell me anymore.
S: [nods] You're jealous. Nevermind, Magneta Lane opened, and they were also solid. Remember how you missed them last time?
JSS: Jealous? Serves me right, talking to my own id. I'm leaving.

Be warned. The whole post probably trails along like this. What can you expect from the gratuitous envy of a sometime hipster? Business is bitter when the stakes are small. I have nothing to comfort me now but self-loathing. And what a very small blanket that is.

JSS: Right, so, Cuff The Duke. Nobody likes them.
C: [hesitates] Well—
JSS: No way!
C: It's okay, honey, I don't really know them. I just saw them cause I knew the guys who opened for them.
JSS: My girlfriend has become a hipster!
C: Well, but The Stand Up Firs are really quite good. I like them.
JSS: [firmly] I'm going to burn all your Roxy shirts.

The argument got quite "heated" after that. Right, so I'm kidding. C also is not here right now, so I just made up that entire exchange. I am a little peeved at myself (yes, peeved) for missing CTD, though, since they were part of the Three Gut stable. I'm telling you right now, if Royal City stumbles into this town, I'm not even taking a washroom break until I'm assured of a spot in the same room as "Bring My Father A Gift". That's right. Let the work of the hospital be known to all.

G: Wow, you should come down to the Plant and see Sweatshop Union, Jay Double Ess.
JSS: Anyways, that sure isn't my style.
G: Yeah, but you're forgetting, they're good.
JSS: Dammit, yes. Yes, they are. I should go.
G: Are you? Will you?
JSS: No, I can't.
G: Oh, wow, I'm never talking to you again. The most happening night in the most happening city, and you're letting your soul rot away in that little town to the north? Good-bye.

Good-bye, little G. I will never know your like on this tangled earth again. Well, so that was my week-end, folks. Oh, the weather was nice, and I won the lottery—wait, no, I didn't—and I drove on a lot of highways and wandered across unfamiliar floors. I worked here, and I worked there, and did a little bit of this homework, and a little bit of that homework. Hey, I ate a yam, too! But I feel I missed out. God, I hate that feeling.

Reading: This book is a bitter little pill, both satire and truth at once. Which is easily seen in the frankly-blasphemous epigram alone—

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things . . . . And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.

I Corinthians xiii (adapted)

George Orwell is a hammer writing this book. The satire is broad and doesn't mess around. But the end of the book is a bit of a surprise, theme-wise. Because what about responsibility? What about kindliness and care? What about love? The world is harsh, and uses money to destroy its souls, this is true. The hero of this novel resents this chain of being. But the end of the novel resents his resentment. Are there not other mouths to feed besides the mouth of the hero? Money, then, besides being the force of the Giant Despair, can also be a force for responsibilty and maturity. Both of these themes, contrasts, paradoxes, what-have-you, are well-highlighted in George Orwell's brilliant and bitter Keep The Aspidistra Flying + George Orwell.

Listening: I was listening to OK Go again, and it struck me how well their maybe-biggest single fits in with the Orwell novel I've been talking about. Just imagine the singer is the despairing hero, resenting his neediness, yearning for the bright house of money—"Oh, you've a million ways to be cruel," he croons. Indeed. "A Million Ways" + OK Go.

A Bad Egg, A Bad Dog

I bought a Kinder Egg yesterday. I unwrapped it and ate the chocolate shell. The egg had one of those toys inside it, of course. Which is why I bought it. Of course. But the toy was already assembled. So sometimes I get out of bed in the morning, but sometimes I say, "What's the use?"

Reading: Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad kept me awake for pretty much the entire month of July when I was fourteen years old. I reread the thing, all six volumes, when I was nineteen, and laughed all over again, but at different things. I'd missed so much in that first reading: there's only so much a fourteen year old kid can appreciate about the Italian tourism trade or Hawaiian politics, and probably only so much an egotistical nineteen year old can understand, too. But fourteen, I maintain, was still a good time to read Twain's extremely entertaining travelogue. When I was fourteen, there wasn't anything that didn't make a huge impression on me, books least of all. God forbid a good-looking girl should smile at me; I'd smile back at her in my thoughts for days afterward. If a friend cracked a joke, I'd laugh at it for weeks and pass it on to everyone else. Good weather, for crying out loud, could send me up in the boughs for hours, and bad weather made me feel like a Viking. Reading books that were over my head certainly impressed me, maybe not with a sense of the importance of the work, or the great themes at hand, or the humanity of the characters, but certainly with the actual story I was reading. This youthful impressionability, I think, explains why Edgar Allan Poe, for instance, is so enjoyed by every little Gothlit juvenile (and the French) out there. Atmosphere, more than vivid character or startling plot revelation, conveys a lasting impression. I would say that most readers of "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" are drawn to that story by its evocative doom-laden title and the shadowy deathful imagery of that first sentence.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

Godsake, I'd sell my brother into the white slave trade if it meant I'd be allowed to write like that! And after a sentence like that, can any plot revelation actually be a surprise? Whatever horrible thing happens next will only, at best, bear out the evil omen of those words—and that's part of the pleasure of reading Poe, isn't it? To see if the author can possibly prolong this foggy atmosphere to the end of the story? Many times, Poe fell short of the impressions he raised, but not here, not in this particular tale. Now, it may be that you don't believe me. It may be that you have a sinister double, who whispers at you from the mirror, from around the corner, who lifts your blanket at night and says, "The man is lying. Do not trust him. Wall him up and never trust him. Bury his words beneath the floor." To you doubters and doubles I say, "Read it yourself. You can find it online if you wish, and it's not very long." Go read "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" + Edgar Allan Poe

Listening: This band has a new single out and it's garbage. I loved (I mean LOVED) their first single, and listened to it obsessively, even mentioned it on this blog, but I couldn't download a decent version of it anywhere. So disappointing. Anyway, about a month or so ago, maybe less, I came across some new stuff by them, including this piece. Don't listen to it. I'm not being ironic, here, or all Lemony Snicket. I'm saying the music sucks, the video sucks, and they've totally strayed into industrial dance and don't deserve their name. They look like that party Neo goes to in the first Matrix. And as much as I think "Dragula" is all boyscout and good clean fun, Rob Zombie wears out faster in that scene than me trying be funny, and so does this song. I'm just not that into you, new WRM. You're trash without the euro. I don't like your moves, I don't like your style. Please invite the original sound back. "Alsation" + White Rose Movement

The Twa Corbies (This Headline Is Nonsense)

I just started this new job. I know this girl (that is, know as in "Yeah, I've seen you around, I guess you talked to my brother/sister/friend/cat once, and didn't I once know your brother/sister/friend/dog?"), and she's not the slimmest girl in the world. Not by a long shot. A very long shot. Which is okay, cause even if that's not my fave, there's a billion guys whose fave she definitely is. And now it's starting to sound like I'm calling her a slut, which she very well could be, who knows? I don't. But I do know she's fat. And short. And possibly a slut. But I forgot all that when, just being friendly, she started talking to me, the Do-you-know-this-person conversation.

"You have a girlfriend," she said. "Is she tall and slender?"

"No, she's short and fat," I replied (because I shouldn't be allowed out in public). "I only date the uglies."

Faithful few, is this how to get ahead in a job? Is this how to build a reference-list, a resume? Something tells me I'm not playing my strongest cards. At least, I hope not.

[Edit: A particular person wishes me to inform the passing reader that my girlfriend is neither short nor fat nor ugly. Just for clarification.]

Reading: I don't know my Hegel from my Jewish flatbread. It's a fact. And even though I can reasonably identify a bagel as a bagel, even when it's buried under a load of smells-like-that-baker's-hand poppyseeds, when someone tells me that I should be able to identify Hegel in Kierkegaard, I just shrug my shoulders, freeze them cold with a careless grimace, and casually respond, "Oh, should I?" If the never-ending years of uni and college have taught me anything (and let's not forget nightschool with fifty Filipinos and assorted natives), it's that philosophy, as something other than a good laugh between mouthfuls of helium, is useless. That half-empty cup of pudding I left under my bed for six months is more useful, has greater utility, is more aesthetically functional, than philosophy. But I still read the stuff. See, the trick is to remember that, like fiction, it's just made up! Once you start reading Nietzche like this, for instance, he's funnier than Dave Barry on whatever substances Dave Barry takes. Man, that Dave Barry sure is a funny guy. And so is Nietzche. If The Third Reich had only approached Nietzche like this, there would have been no WWII. See, philopsophy is bad. That's why you've got to read it like fiction. And there's nowhere better to start, my sons and daughters, than Kierkegaard. First of all, he looks great on the bookshelf. Pull down a sturdy volume like Fear And Loathing, for instance, and you'll probably see a little of it in the faces of your peers. Do not, I quickly caution you, actually read any of the text aloud. The ridiculousness of what you read will immediately dispell any serious impressions you were trying to create. And why were you trying to do that anyways> Somtimes, I think you're pathetic, okay? I don't mean to hurt you, I'm just being honest. No, I'm not saying I'm not pathetic. I keep a blog, after all. In which I can write anything I wish, so don't get angry at me. Not about philosophy, at least. Seriously, Kierkegaard is a great writer. Who else (aside from Dan Brown, kind of) would think to bury a philosophic text under a preface saying that the text had been found like buried treasure, secret papers in a secret compartment of an old desk. The writer takes these papers to a romantic spot in the autumn woods and collates them for us there. That was kind of him. I'll tell you, these papers contain many strange sentences:

Why was I not born in Nyboder? Why did I not die in infancy? Then my father would have laid me in a little box, taken it under his arm, carried me out some Sunday afternoon to the grave, thrown the earth upon the casket himself, and softly uttered a few words, intelligible only to himself. It was only in the happy days when the world was young, that men could imagine infants weeping in Elysium, because they had died so early

This, from a book that begins, "What is a poet?" Oh, I think the question is answered. The writer himself is a poet. You could hardly meet with prose like this anywhere outside of Edgar Allan Poe. And the whole book is crammed with gems like these. Go prize a few of them from the crown, if you want. The book is called Either/Or + Søren Kierkegaard

Listening: In the middle of our lives, we came to ourselves in a dark wood, and found that the sleek crows had eaten the trail of crumbs we'd so cleverly left behind us so as not to lose our way. Now we had lost our way. The forest was very grim, and there were a lots of odd black shadows. I was convinced that a tall porcelain man followed us closely, often standing at the edges of clearings before we got there. Someone was singing, with a small-ranging voice (but he knew what to do with it). Well, it turned out to be Corb Lund.

Last night, I went, obviously, to the Corb Lund concert down at The Jube. And, parenthetically, why does a city with a jumping music scene like Edmonton not have a decent venue for anything above two-hundred people? The Starlite and The Sidetrack are it. Don't even talk to me about Red's, all the times I've been pushed behind that stage-blocking pillar, there. Everywhere else, you have to sit down, and God help you if the guy next to you weighs more than you do, because that means he's sitting in his seat AND your seat. And your lap. Which is cool if you're one of the guys down at The Roost, or, let's face it, just plain lonely, but I'm neither (yet), and so I resent it, you see, I resent sitting down to watch music. You don't WATCH music, unless it's seven o'clock on a Friday night and Electric Circus is on. Godsake, I loved that show. And then they'd re-air it again on Saturday morning. I'd cut back to it on the ad-breaks during The Tick and The Mask. I'll tell you what, every time I start thinking I'm ironically cool for being able to reference Rocket Robin Hood, I also remember watching those nubile bodies writhing to Da Rude on Muchmusic and you know what? I wish I was that uncool again. Oh, I'm still uncool, that's right, the choir knows, ok? It was just so much more fun being uncool then than it is now. I'm talking perspective, here, which wasn't all that bad at The Jube. Even though we were on the first balcony (see image of ticket for confirmation, please), I had a good sightline all the way to the spartan stage where Corb Lund was dealing retro-country with his newly-named Hurtin' Albertans. Except that it isn't retro, is it? I've heard it called retro, people saying they love his sound, but his sound is just basically a good blues bar-band sound. With a double bass. You know where the throwback is? It's the songs themselves, I think. Country used to be, "Life is hard, it's not getting better, I'm going to eat it anyways, let's sing". Country now is Garth Brooks singing about rolling thunder. Country now is Jimmy Buffet covering Jimmy Buffet. Country now is getting divorced from Renee Zelleweger. Corb Lund isn't about that. Yet. It's his sentiment that's old country, not his sound. And you put a super tight bar-band behind that sentiment, you'll have everybody listening to that sound. There were entire families of denim there, of course, but lots of valley girls, too (hello, St.Albert!), lots of oldsters out for a country night, lots of drunk guys crammed into billowing bomber-jackets, couple of punks with pink hair and way-too-relaxed attitudes, the odd downtown yuppie here and there, and even a few hipsters in tight sweaters and corduroy. I caught most of the singles, including "Truck Got Stuck", "Roughest Neck Around", "Shine Up My Boots" and a killr (check that Flickr style spelling) rendition of "Expectation And the Blues", but had to leave before they got to "Time To Switch To Whiskey". The band was supertight, the sound a little loud, but over all, well worth the price of the concert. Corbie's playing at The Sidetrack tonight. It can only be better. But if you can't get to The Sidetrack, what about checking out a boatload of his songs? Nearly everything is there, including the new stuff, but I still like, halfway down the page, "The Roughest Neck Around" + The Corb Lund Band

"We Better Keep Moving"

The nights are long, the mornings pale and cold. Ruined sunflowers lie in frosted heaps between the trees. Every day I bridle the dark mare and canter along the road. The neighbourhood lies abed and despises my efforts. Sometimes a man will set deadly traps along the way, steel boxes full of teeth. But the mare positively prefers to prance lightly over these devilish boxes, for she hates the icy puddles along the road. She's a good horse, her name is Edwina de Bymingham, and she doesn't mind being tied up at University all day. What can I say? Public transit is expensive and getting to class is a long hard slog. Still, next year, I'm thinking of taking the bus.

Reading: There is very little greater pleasure than a good read. Unless it's alot of good reads. I've read a lot of good books this year, and I've had a good time. All that is behind me. Now I'm on to the crappy reads, the garbage reads, the books-read-just-so-I-can-menion-them-in-this-blog reads. Therefore, no links. Not to these reads. Just yesterday, it seems, I came down from the dark rich firmament that was Robert Louis Stevenson. No more sweet lines, now, no shapely sentences. How soon hath Time, that subtle thief of youth, used books to nick it. You see, last night I read the novelization of King Kong. Is this why my parents dandled me on their knee, teaching me the strange characters of the alphabet? Did they know there was a man out there, a crass man, a crass conglomerate behind him, who would filter out any possible scrap of goodness in the 1976 movie and lard the remainder upon an unsuspecting lad like me? If so, I wish I had never learned to read. My parents have betrayed me. I'm going to go down to the basement now, and sharpen the hunting knives.

Listening: I turn to music for solace. I find comfort in song. I look for salvation in popular hymns. What do I find? That music is a wasteland. Music makes me sick. There is no good music.

Erm. Wait. Wait a bit. Nope. No, it's true. Music is awful. Good-bye.

That Statue In That Novel

Sometimes you fight, you know? But you love that person, don't you? Stop acting like an ass, then. You, of course, means me. Sometimes I act like an ass. The rest of the time, I'm a jerk. Reality is hard to take, little ones, or hard for me to take, anyways. Must be because I face it so rarely. I recall how Mr. Bennett knew that his own rarely-surfacing shame was good for him, but passed it off lightly, saying (I think he said, or perhaps it was Elizabeth), "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?" I do not want to laugh at my neighbour like this. I do not want to be laughed at in my turn. Amusement is one thing, ridicule another. Most of all, I wish not to appear ridiculous to myself.

Reading: There is this line he wrote in Scribner's Magazine—"And in early years, we take a book for its material, and act as our own artists, keenly realizing that which pleases us, leaving the rest aside"—which makes me realize how unimportant an author can be. But this line also leads me to realize that only certain types of great authors can point themselves toward this unimportance. Dickens, for instance, cannot be separated from his mannerisms, his London, his needy heart. A Dickens novel is Dickens on display. David Copperfield could be retitled The Charles Dickens Museum, and one would buy engraved shackles in the souvenir shop. Not so Robert Louis Stevenson. If RLS was an actor, he would be a character actor, and disappear entirely into his role. Afterwards, certain members of the audience would say, "Was that really him?" Stevenson's books are blocks of marble to his readers, hidden angels looking for the looking reader. If Dickens is a museum, Stevenson is like a park. You will be guided, yes, but only where you want to go, as long as you want to go there. Nothing is to be forced, nothing is to be seen under flourescent lighting.

Stevenson's next notable success after Treasure Island was (I think) a little gargoyle—RLS called it a"gnome"— of a novel called The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. I just reread this novel, and therefore just remembered why certain books are called classics. Because they're excellent, better than breathing, is why! Reading this novel is like chewing through every pseudo-literary Alan Moore script ever. It's like The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman if that comic (pardon me, graphic novel) wasn't sheer pot-black garbage. Right, then, so I guess this novella is nothing like that illustrated abomination. RLS' novel is nearly perfect. It's definitely gothic. And it's flat-out eerie. Reading a Nabokov essay in the back of my edition, I came across a strange coincidence between the author and his work.

[Stevenson] went down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of his favourite burgundy, uncorked it in the kitchen, and suddenly cried out to his wife: what's the matter with me, what is this strangeness, has my face changed?—and fell on the floor. A blood vessel had burst in his brain and it was all over in a couple of hours.

The author, apparently, wrote the first draft in ten days. Then he burned it and rewrote it again, and then heavily edited it, essentially rewriting it a third time. Stevenson dipped his pen and two months later the first pages were falling from the press into the waiting hands of an eager public. Beat that, print on demand! This book has never been out of print, joining the august pantheon of the Bible, the Shakespeare, and The Da Vinci Code. It's the language, you understand, the building sentences. It's the structure of the novel. It's the way the author simply disappears and leaves you to carve your way into this novel on your own, but that's okay, because he left you a chisel on the floor there, and the blade is sharp. This statue is going to be a beauty, I can see it already, something terrible and perfect. The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde+ Robert Louis Stevenson

Listening: So the guy sitting next to me (hey, J!) just passed me some music on his headphones, and it's like the bottom of a river, rock solid and gravelly, with warm muddy currents floating above it. Lo and behold, it comes from a blog called Long Sought Home, and this blog is insane (but where in + sane = good). Not mentally unstable because of the music, you understand, but because of the reason for posting the music, which said reason is, " This blog is about music about the afterlife. The idea of longing for the afterlife, in particular, is of interest to me. I hope you enjoy the music." Right. That's a parade I probably won't join, but I'll listen to the marching band, if that's alright. You should, too, especially as one of the tunes is a fervent choir abso-sacred-lutely ripping the lid off of "Farewell, Vain World" + Old Regular Baptists (Indian Bottom Association)

A Not Unbiased Contemplation Of AF

They were great, it was a spectacle, this is not an unbiased review. I started listening to Arcade Fire via the net way back when. Then, one day, they put out Funeral. I went down to Megatunes and bought that cd the same day. I was bean-headedly fortunate that the cd was released in September. Arcade Fire is for autumn, after all, and darkening nights. I couldn't believe my luck, hearing the band was finally coming to Edmonton. Tickets were bought the morning they went on sale. I love Arcade Fire. This is not an unbiased review.

Wanting to beat the line, I arrived two hours ahead of the people I was supposed to meet, dressed in my best poor-man's-Prada. Most of the hipsters were already there, corduroy blazers sported like uniforms. The blazers fought viciously with the diamond-patterned sweaters, until the dark-haired girls draped in scarves started crying. Well, the guys all looked a little embarrassed after that, and everyone settled down. Then Crystal phoned and said her car had broken down, because God hated her, and so did I, when I answered, "So where are we meeting?" instead of the better boyfriend-like, "Are you okay?". I am a lout. And J didn't arrive until nearly eight o'clock (doors opened at seven), but there were compensations. After all, he was wearing an RCMP parade jacket and looked like a marching band leader in a Norman Rockwell painting. I am not lying. And A couldn't make it, but I met another A and subbed him in for the first one. That worked out okay.

Belle Orchestre was up first. "What's their name?" said the native guy behind the English guy behind me. "I'm James," the English guy said. "No, buddy, the band, the band. I don't care what you're called." The English guy stayed polite and said he didn't know, so I spoke up, and then had to tell the native that Wolf Parade was coming on afterward, and Arcade Fire wasn't till last. What did he expect? The crowd was squeezed fresh off the tree, tight like you wouldn't believe. The native would just have to wait it out like the rest of us if he wanted a half-decent spot from which to see Arcade. Anyways, Belle Orchestre (I refuse to acronymize that name) was strong and kept the crowd silent, which is pretty hard to do when your songs have no words and basically sound like a parade square version of classical, which is not a knock on the Beautiful Orchestra's playing, by the way, because it WAS good. Also, Sarah Neufeld, the violinist, must have arms of brass. The word here is solid. The band was like a thick loaf of music, but, like that loaf, basically plain. Where's the butter, son? Wolf Parade was something else. Brutal feedback on a couple of the songs, and a quick rip through "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts" started turning smiles into frowns, but then Spencer Krug got angry, just about ripped his guitar in half and abandoned even that to practically scream the end chorus of "This Heart's On Fire", basically cutting off the audience's collective skull. I loved it. Maybe you were there. And I bet you loved it, too.

Arcade Fire, right? Is there anything left to say? Just read somewhere that Arcade is going to be opening for the next U2 tour. Shutup, Bono, they'll steal the show from you and you can scream bloody Sunday all you want. Arcade Fire was a spectacle, plain and simple. Always on the edge of control, music like chaos but a secret and golden order behind the chords; the drummmer, the percussionist barely keeping their hands inside the car, Richard Perry going simply nuts and through it all that Cajun Gothic couple, Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, singing strongly and with force. The whole audience sang along to "Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)". Later, we all shouted "Lies! Lies!". Oh, it was a good show. It was a bad venue, but it was a good show, a great show, and I'll remember it for a long time, for the way the band paraded through the crowd, for the way they talked to their fans, for the way ordinary people on and off the stage became beautiful, attractive, extraordinary. A lot of other things happened that night, little things, not unimportant. But Arcade Fire sang "Crown Of Love" for the encore. I'll always remember that.

The Dream-Concert Of Unknown Arcade

There's a pair of tickets in the inside pocket of my brown velvet blazer. Look at those crisp rectangles, those little friends of mine. Printed in 10cpi Courier on that shiny paper, little black letters spell, "Gen Admission All Ages / Doors 7:00 PM Show 8:00 PM". And the line above those ones? Arcade Fire is playing tonight, dear sons and daughters, and so is Wolf Parade. I'm trying to persuade a friend of mine to buy a unitard from AA and go to the show in that and a headscarf. We'd get invited to the afterparty for sure, I know it. At the very least, I could borrow the uni and sing to The Darkness on karaoke night. Can Arcade Fire top that?

Reading: Kuranes looks for Celephais, Iranon sings of Aira, Randolph Carter takes ship for unknown Kadath. What does all this searching for the city mean? There is also another thing. In a different story, the author writes, "We shall see that at which dogs howl in the night, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight". And Randolph Carter, now, voyager, is saved from the moon-beasts by a combination of the cats of Ulthar and the canine-faced ghouls. What does this feline and canine salvation mean? By the way, I write "salvation", but the ghouls are referred to as soulless, soullessness being a part of their doglike state. So what salvation? Am I asking the wrong questions? I think there is no meaning in this book. The stories are a puzzle, and so is the author, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The key to the whole book of stories, I believe, the silver key to Lovecraft, is a throwaway comment in a little story called "The Hound":

I remember how we delved in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the grave, the pale watching moon, the horrible shadows, the grotesque trees, the titanic bats, the antique church, the dancing death-fires, the sickening odors, the gently moaning night-wind, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure.

Lovecraft is sensation, of course, but that is all he is. I'm curious how that new movie of Lovecraft's most famous work will turn out. My guess is that the film will be a series of beautiful pictures, a gothic wet-dream, Tim Burton's mission statement. But it will not be a movie, not after the first twenty minutes of film chew through the script. The action of that story, after all, is not very lengthy, and the plot is spare. And while we're on the topic, did anyone else think how strange it was that AVP had nigh on the same exact plot as At The Mountains Of Madness? I felt like I was taking crazy pills, watching that movie. Right, so it's called a digression, folks, nothing to see here, keep moving. Back to Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Randolph Carter. Lovecraft, I was saying, is sensation. There is no meaning in him. His stories are circles, images on a merry-go-round. Those dog-faced ghouls which saved Carter, for instance, were, earlier in Lovecraft's opus (I'm thinking "Pickman's Model", here), one of the deadliest possible monsters to be encountered. But there is always something worse out there in the night. Earth's gods are terrible to men, but worse than these gods are the Other Gods, and worse than the Other Gods is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, but there is an evil over which Nyarlathotep has no power, the faceless night-gaunts, which, however, give authority to an ancient entity called Nodens, who is not yet the most powerful, for there are still the coloured sentient gases from other spheres of existence. You get the idea. Repetition is plot. It's not that the ghouls really save anyone; they've just become part of the pattern, another turn of the engine that moves the story. You recall the first Trek series? Klingons were all evil. Trek Next Generation? Klingons good, Borg and Ferengi bad. Trek Nine? Ferengi good, and in Trek Voyager, Borg good, too. You see where I'm going with this. The threat becomes the stepping stone to the next threat, and thus suspense is maintained even as a universe is created. Behind that veil in Oz, there's a magician who controls the city. Lovecraft's universe, however, is an unending series of veils. There is always a mysterious city. That city is always the creation of the dreamer. And that dreamer is in mortal peril within his dream. There is no authority, no stable point of view, in Lovecraft's tales. There is only the story, a headless And Then which never ends. There is no city, you see. That is, there is no definite solid concrete city which will satisfy the searcher. If that was the case, the story would end. But there are always more stories, more tales, more continuation, another amazing episode. The story cannot end, and that is why Lovecraft's soulless creations provide salvation, rescuing the Randolph Carter, saving him from death. If the story is to continue, Carter must live. Because to die is to stop the story.

Do I sound like I'm criticizing Lovecraft? Well, there is much to criticize, but that doesn't mean these stories don't succeed. Not all of them are successful, sure, but that is due to the fragmentary nature of many of the smaller stories. One of the more successful of Lovecraft's stories, indeed, a very well-written story, tying many of his amazing tales together, is the bizarre novella "The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath" + H. P. Lovecraft

Listening: Look, the reason I check in with all these music blogs is because of a song like this. What a song. What a brilliant song. So flamingly simple, mere seconds long, and beautiful beautiful beautiful. This is one of the reasons New York will never leave the music scene. Ever. This song has messed my vocabulary up. Thanks to Alan Williamson at *Sixeyes for this one, for "Paddy's Gone" + Antony And The Johnsons

Only Connect

What I like is to walk through those revolving doors into that bookstore and find exactly what I'm looking for and then skip onto the bus as it rolls to a stop on Whyte Ave, and then trek down those stairs and escalators underneath HUB in time to catch the LRT, which rolls to a bing-bing stop as I step off the last step of that moving stair, and then climb more steps to find the 202 bus pulling into the lane on its way to Grant Macewan, which is where I went today. Same feeling as flagging every green light on the main drag through St. Albert. Same feeling as putting the ball through the net three times in a row (for me, that's huge). As usual, Browning calls the case, and all's right with the world. Sometimes, I get so happy, I need a little misery just to realize how happy I am.

Reading and Listening in three or four hours. Right, so the only available computer was down for about twelve hours there. Seems a little awkward to post Reading and Listening in this old post, now, specially when I've got newer stuff happening. Who puts new wine in old bottles? I'm just going to move on.

The Good Times, They're Always Coming Back

Congratulations to her, because she succeeded, of course, just like I said she would, even though she thought she wouldn't. Congratulations, because she's kept her head through some terrible times, very sad days. Because when other people would have folded, she remained standing. Because when other people crashed and could not help crashing, she kept flying. She never thinks highly of herself, never gives herself an even break, or an uneven, or a break at all. Never realizes how personal and funny and warm-around-the-edges she can make anyone feel. Because she's stylish. Because she's tall. Because she's a fighter, and funny, and loses her temper, likes Lemony Snicket and speaks pretty good French. Because she owns that Will Smith album. Because she's dragged that unopened Monopoly game through two apartments and more. Because she basically blew off the bassist from controller.controller. Because she loves her cat. And loves me. And lets me love her. Congratulations, girl. You know why.

I Agree With R.E.M., But Feeling Fine?

The world came to a banal and bitter end yesterday. I had always pictured something different, you know? Jesus with a face like lightning appears in the eastern sky, twelve million angels in glittering clouds of doom on either side. All vehicles spin into ditches or trashcans, the refrigerators in the 7-Eleven stop humming, every lock falls away from its door. If the world wasn't going to bite it like that, I figured Islam would nuke the globe in an ultimate reaction against pig-headedly oppressive Western ideas like free trade, rights of the individual and Doctors Without Borders. I'd probably be watching reruns of Friends in the latter scenario, so the end of the world might not look like such a bad idea, then. Except I wouldn't get to see the next episode of Gilmore Girls, would I? Dernit. Hang in there, Rory!

You know what I'm talking about, I can see it in your saddened eyes, too. Hello, there. You must be a Canadian, right? I know. I, too, am a stranger in a strange land. I look around and realize, "These are not my people". My people, you see, DO NOT VOTE FOR THE DA VINCI CODE AS BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME. Godsake, have you seen the list? I read Confessions Of A Shopaholic some time ago. I've read the whole series, and it's hilarious. Kudos to Kinsella for writing it. But Shopaholic is rated two spots ahead of the Bible, folks. THE BIBLE! Because, you know, the zany lifestyle of Rebecca Bloomwood has created entire cultures, spawned world religions, shaped the bleeding fabric of ever loving history itself, right? RIGHT? Steinbeck rated below Mists Of Avalon? The Notebook ahead of Tolstoy? People, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here! Can Canadians no longer distinguish what they like from what is best? The only thing missing off the list, far as I can tell, is The Bridges Of Madison County. You know what? Kick both the Brontës off the list. We need to make room for Jonathan Livingston Seagull, too. Kids, is this why I watched my buddies die face-down in the muck in Vietnam? To watch you give the Medal of Honour to Dan Brown?

Empowered by my new knowledge of the mechanics of the popular mind, I'm going to make a bunch of confident assertions here. These are pearls, kids. Pearls.

Barbra Streisand will make a "comeback" record with Barry Gibb. Wait, that's already happening?

David Spade will win the 2010 Oscar for Actor In A Leading Role.

Muddy teal will be the new black

Cancer will be cured. Tomorrow. At 6PM EST.

Tim Horton's will go bankrupt. Tomorrow. At 6PM EST.

Every single person in the world will be required to use "Microsoft" for their middle name in less than four years. Resistance is futile. Trespassers will be shot.

The internet is good for you. So are Doritos.

Reading: You're kidding me, right? Reading? Yeah, and I goose-step on Veteran's Day, too. Have some respect, please.

Listening: Wintersleep is just another Clap Your Wolf Parade, Say Arcade Fire! Don't pay attention to any of them. They're good, I know, but that's boring. I want terrible. Destructive, even. Yeah, but that gets boring, too. What's a hipster to do, then? Hang on, hang on. What about these guys? They're crooking their pinkies at everyone, they say so in the lyrics. Let's take refuge from cynicism and bejadedness in mockery. Let's. You like the newer Of Montreal? You'll like these guys. This band is Hamlet, and good clear guitar, and lazy aggression, at least on "The Vice And Virtue Ministry" + The Happy Bullets

I Get The Irony And You Will, Too

I like being Jewish. I'm not saying I am Jewish, but I'm not saying I'm not, either. But I really enjoy the whole Hebrew thing. The dreidel song, Chrismukkah, Heeb Magazine, the sweet sweet Pentateuch and a shicksa girlfriend. What's not to love? I leave my degree of Jewishness for others to decide.

Reading: By the time I was fourteen, I had read pretty much the entire Golden Age of mystery fiction (we were too poor to afford Monopoly), including Allingham, Marsh, Chesterton, Simenon, Van Dine, Stout, Rohmer and the great trifecta, The Christie, The Carr, and The Sayers. Once a novel was done, I moved on to the next one, rarely returning to the stories I'd already read—with one exception. I have never stopped reading the detective novels of Dorothy Leigh Sayers. As detective novels go, her books are solid and solvable, a lot like a healthy crossword on Sunday morning. There might be some bizarrely phrased clues, but focus on the details, and you'll quickly fill out the spaces. Well, one can do that with any good detective novel, can't one? The reason I keep returning to Sayers is simple; her books are uniformly excellent novels which happen to contain a mystery. And because her novels contain a mystery which will inevitably be solved, which must be solved if her hero is to be vindicated in his choices and lifestyle, the novel always concerns itself not only with crime and justice, but the effect which these two abstracts have upon the public and private individual. Unfailingly, the private individual achieves personal satisfaction by upholding his or her personal code, a code which is harmonious with the public good. Good character creates good citizenship. Sayers' principal creation is Lord Peter Wimsey, a sort of early Bruce Wayne. Like the aristocratic Wayne, Wimsey acts the boffin, spending his huge fortune on this or that opera girl, this or that swift super-car, this or that family servant. And also, like Wayne, Wimsey has a secret identity. Wimsey's soul was severely damaged in WWI, and he suffers from what we today would call shell-shock. Sayers, not content with giving Wimsey the literal authority of the peerage, gives him the authority of his actions: as one of the fighters in the front-lines, Wimsey has achieved a sort of moral authority over his fellow Britons. Naturally, Wimsey becomes an amateur detective. But Sayers, still not content with giving her hero only a hidden character, gives him a literal superhero identity in my favourite of her novels, Murder Must Advertise. But let's face it, the transition between daytime gormless Wimsey and nightime deadly Harlequin is awkwardly done, and if it wasn't for her extremely literary writing style, one would dismiss Sayers as the worst of Chesterton or Stout. But Sayers' skill would come to full flower in later novels like Unnatural Death, which confidently bridges the tricky gap between serious and silly in just a few phrases, and without switching costumes.

[Lord Peter] stretched his hand, and the hand's shadow flew with it, hovering over the gilded titles of the books and blotting them out one by one.

What a beautiful line. The smallest paragraph, and Sayers has successfully transformed the prince of non-sequiturs into a stern and Gothic ghost in the machine. Unnatural Death revolves around the untimely but unremarkable death of Agatha Dawson. The novel, however, is not about Agatha Dawson, but about death without conscience, crime without justice. The novel is about the successful crime, the murder which never made the papers, the theft which nobody missed. Lord Peter Wimsey does not know what he does not know, but he fears it. And he finds blissful ignorance out, and he drags it to the light of the law, and the guilty are punished for the death of the innocent. The last image in this novel is of Wimsey and a policeman making their way through an unnaturally dark June day, cold and raining. "What is wrong with the day?" Lord Peter asks, "Is the world coming to an end?". The policeman replies, "No. It's the eclipse". The world does not neccessarily becomes a better place merely because the wrong-doer is caught and punished. But with the wreckage cleared away like so many briars and thorns, the world now has a chance to become its ideal, to realize the personal code of honour and integrity which every individual owes society and which society, most of all, owes its citizens. The sun will come out again. Unnatural Death is an unnaturally good novel. It also happens to contain a mystery. Unnatural Death + Dorothy L. Sayers

Listening: "And the bears and bees and banana trees / Will play kazoos and tambourines / And Jesus will dance as we drink his wine / With soldiers and thieves and a sword in his side." I can't do better than to quote Sean's words on STG about the easy inevitable nature of the lyrics in this Page France song, especially as I never would have heard this song without his excellent website.

Okay, imagine you have a twig, a good brown twig the breadth of your thumb. And you snap it in half. And you throw the two pieces of twig to either side of a forest. And then a lonely person comes along and picks up one of the pieces of twig. He thinks life's meaningless and lame. He wanders. At the other side of the wood he idly picks up the other piece of twig. And look! Lo! They fit together! Just. Like. That. And for a long moment he's in awe of the way the world can just make things come together in the rightest way

Like everybody else, I first ran into Page France on Fluxblog, and I've been listening to "Chariot" ever since, but this song is better. Why don't you decide for yourself, though? Listen to "Chariot" and then listen to "Jesus" + Page France

Hot Apple Cider, A Glass Of Feist Tea

Walking along the small yellow-leaved streets between University and Whyte Ave, cold air, blue sky, paper cup of instant apple-cider in my hand and the tall trees by that hotel like red lights against light-red brick, I think, I wish to live forever, and foolishly wish a moment to last eternally. Which is a fool's desire, of course. One thing, I love this season. One thing, this season and bright air quickly fade. One thing, things fall apart, and that's what makes them lasting in the always-vanishing heart. Did I rhyme? Let it go. Today, everything is well-shaped and fitting.

Reading: What I loved most about Ghost Dog: Way Of The Samurai was how the film so strongly differed from my expectations toward it. I don't recall what I expected from that movie, since I knew zip all about it aside from the poster. And, let's face it, posters are the pressed-fibre enemies of the audience, always devious, always betraying, paper quislings on the theatre wall. I offer no evidence of this two-facedness, by the way, except the evidence, the disappointments endured, which you store in your own hearts. That, and the poster for any Dennis Leary movie ever. Cripes! How can Leary's television be SO GREAT, and his movies so everlastingly blowing? Cripes! I'm digressing. What I really love about some books is how different from my expectations their contents can develop. This can be bad, sure (any Salman Rushdie novel, if that's the word, after Satanic Verses, anyone?) but it can be so unmeasurably positive, too. Folks, for instance, who've grown up on Disney's Winnie The Pooh have a beautiful surprise in store if they open Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. The original outmatches the modern interpretations of it on every front. I was cleaning out my closet the other day—"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries": Milne—and came across a book I'd read within the past twelve months, but which I immediately reread again. Anything to avoid cleaning. It's a solid book, a strong book, a book which Jim Jarmusch may one day make a movie out of, as he made a movie out of Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. But this book is much more than an instruction manual; actually, this book contains no instruction whatsoever, unless it is practical directions for climbing mountains. What this book offers is what Thoreau offered in Walden—a persuasive glimpse at another world. These authors fool you (they fool me) with eloquent phrasing and better description of this world, their world, the rock and trees and trains and stations of life. But their words for this world are actually descriptions of the worlds within themselves, their hearts, their minds, the step-by-step construction of careful thought. What these men teach is appreciation, a supreme virtue, surely. A supreme book, too. Starlight And Storm + Gaston Rebuffat

Listening: I know you're probably tired of hearing about her, but look at the weather outside. What a day to listen to Feist. I was going to go back to this spring (last spring?) and post a link to just about anything off of Sunlandic by Of Montreal, and I would have, too, if Feist didn't exist, but she does, and that's so good. So what if the last words I wrote about her are still on this page? I'll write about someone new next time. For now, it's Feist. For now, the weather is crisp and all fitting-black-sweatery. Let's all wear dark jeans and quote Wordsworth and Rainer Maria Rilke. Let's listen to my favourite song of the past six months (the one at the bottom of the page), "It's Cool to Love Your Family" + Feist

Dad, The Moon Is Alphane Again!

Novel + blog + girlfriend (Happy Birthday, Crystal! Happy Birthday Month!) + 50 000 novel + school + essays/assignments + job + damn emails keep piling up + Arcade Fire/Corb Lund/Metric?/Feist + that cd I owe Kyle + wouldn't it be nice to get that Myspace thing running? + untogetherness of self = AAAGGGHHH!!! Godsake, imagine if I had a real life, with real problems. K, time for some Doritos.

Reading: Cinderella's ugly step-sisters cleavered off their heels trying to cram those size twelve horse-hoofed digits into the crystal size five slipper. Blood everywhere, you can't even imagine, and the painfulness, too. What a mess. But a very entertaining mess, I'll give the uglies that, bloody but entertaining. See, every day I go to the fifth floor of Rutherford and read, for twenty-five minutes, a little red hardcover called Clans Of The Alphane Moon. Now, you've probably seen those skeleton shirts, right, the ones that have white ribcages printed on the black cloth? The kind which become popular around Halloween? Kate Winslett wore one in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, a film which, the discerning reader will already have noted, I referenced in my last post, because it's the only movie I've ever seen. I have no knowledge of film outside that movie. Back to the discerning reader, Clans Of The Alphane Moon is not for him. COTAM is for me, the guy who, sure, likes his soft-cover Thomas Pynchon, but will probably finish the lusciously tacky (there's that first-year Fine Arts vocabulary) Frazetti-covered Tarzan At The Earth's Core a lot faster than The Crying Of Lot 49. What I'm saying is, COTAM isn't a book, it's bare plot, a shiningly skeletal what-comes-next teetering in delicate slippers of conceptual prose. And the thing about those shirts, if you'll let me return to a digression, is that you haven't really got the whole skeleton there, have you? The rib cage, a flash of collarbone, maybe, perhaps even a small green lizard furled cartoonishly around one of the ribs, but that's quality, and you don't see too much of that, now do you? The point is, Mr. Bones isn't all there. And neither is this novel. The author has had to slice off too many elements of the novel in order to concentrate on his main concept, which is this: the inmates are running the asylum. Years ago, Earth outright defeated the Alphans. Then, cleverly exploiting their victory, the human race banished all their mentally unstable bits to the Alphan moon. These bits have formed new societies along heavily biased and paranoid lines. Earth wants the moon back, now, and complications ensue. Look, this novel sucks. The concept isn't enough. But I'm still reading it. The characters are all wading around in the shallow end, there's intricate convoluted labyrinthine plot-beasts chewing up the pages, and I swear half the novel is padding (and not just in the holding cells), but I'm still reading it. Because this novel is by Philip K. Dick, and let's face it, his junk should be most people's treasure. You should look for some buried treasure yourself. Try on some new shoes. Maybe look, with me, in Clans Of The Alphane Moon + Philip K. Dick

Listening: Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! I love this here interwebbery. I love bootlegged videos. I love David Bowie singing with Arcade Fire. I LOVE DAVID BOWIE SINGING WITH ARCADE FIRE! I also love Arcade Fire on Letterman, but the video is terrible, and the sound blows. But look at the guy (William Butler, I think) beating that drum, going AC/DC on the floor!

A Day At The Racist

"But God does love racists," he said.

"God loves everyone," the other guy replied.

"Yeah," he said, "but he loves white people more. Look at us palefaces. Always outnumbered, always outgunned. But it's been over a thousand years now, and we still don't have to make our beds in the morning."

The other guy rolled his eyes, and vaguely waved his hand at the burgundy bus seats. "Yeah, and we get to ride in style."

"Really?" I chimed in. "The bus is the place to be? The cool kids are tired of the Mercedes?"

"Mercedes!" said the other guy."I'm rolling on twenty-four inch rims here, man."

Reading: I realize the title of my post is, at best, ungrammatical. That's not because I don't know grammar. It's because I hate language. You know what language does, aside from letting itself be awkwardly personified (and it only allows that because it's bored of twirling those swizzle sticks they put in cheap martinis, as if a three-coloured straw in any way made up for watered-down alcohol and fractured conversation with the opposite sex)? Language lets itself get seen in the company of bad books, like you with those tacky friends of yours I won't stop loudly disliking on sight. God, your friends are snobs! With all the bad books junking up the libraries, it's no wonder English is losing ground faster than my Great Dane-owning neighbour. His lawn could look so much better if he got rid of the god spelled backwards, you know? And English isn't losing ground? Well, I'm not about to let English lose a half-assed metaphor either, so I'm going to pretend that it IS losing, ok? If you ever read what I read, you would be convinced, as I was convinced, that we should burn the English language at the stake. Did you read the one about Isaac Newton and the Murders In The Rue Mint? One of the SIPs (Statistically Improbable Phrases) listed for this book is "cunny parts". Right. What? One Fanny Hill per language is enough, author guy. Two is plagiarism. Nobody likes used porn. Also, our ancestors never had sex. The author does not seem to realize this, and insists on sticking sex in even where it won't go. Also, having Isaac Newton lard his speeches with every quotation filed under "Newton, Isaac" in Bartlett's is the lamest cheapest substitute for actual research or original thought ever dreamed up since I first thought of it. And even I rejected doing that (but only after I found out other people read Bartlett's, too, and not just Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine). This book is a poor man's Sherlock Holmes, without Sherlock Holmes. It's a poor man's Fanny Hill, but mostly without the fanny. Whatever you do, do not read Dark Matter: The Private Life Of Sir Isaac Newton: A Novel + Philip Kerr

Listening: I notice that three out of my last four posts have listed somebody from the whole endless paper-man-chain that is Broken Social Scene. So when I came across a new BSS song on Said The Gramaphone, I bit the bullet, pulled out the glue-gun and pasted the link. Here it is. It's good. I'm fighting it, but yeah, it's good. Come on, people! What happened to Canrock? Where's The Tea Party, Our Lady Peace, Moist, The Crash Test Dummies, The Tragically Hip, Sam Roberts? Where's the generic roar of mid-line bass and mid-tempo drums and middling lyrics sung by the talentless hacks of yesterday (Crash Test Dummies excepted). Nickelback can't do it alone, people. I feel like we're losing control of our culture, here. I'm going to go watch a Canadian Heritage Moment, maybe the one about the female student learning surgery with the men, ok? Not that she's hot or anything. Really, she's not. You go listen to "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Half)" + Broken Social Scene

Imperial Beginnings, Metric Final

I said, "Is it better to open with a sensational line, like a Dick Francis novel—'I looked at my friend and saw a man who had robbed me', or, 'They both wore thin rubber masks'—or is it better to open with something mildly interesting, like Jane Eyre's 'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day'? Which is better, the brash or the subtle?"

"Better?" he said. "The best is entirely different from these. Go to Jane Austen: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife'. It's surprising, because it's an amusing opening line. And when does that ever happen? Brilliant. It's subtle because it approaches a major latterly-explained theme of the novel indirectly, through satire. Set-up, set-up, set-up. It's engaging, because it's a supremely well-written well-weighted sentence. It's better, because, without sacrificing the what-comes-next of all good opening lines, it's far more self-explanatory, say, than Orwell's 'It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen'. Sensational, that. Instant get-up-and-go. Orwell's opening is so arresting, it should be charged for illegally impersonating an officer of the law. What a burner of a line—but Austen's is better, son, it's just so much better."

I signed up, months ago, to write a 50 000 word novel in 30 days. Because that's how I roll, suckers. And even though none of us flagellants who signed up are allowed to write one word of le actual plot before midnight on the day, I'm obsessing over opening lines. And I just can't decide.

Reading: Nevermind the politics of it. The king insults the dead, and the families of the dead, by ordering the fallen carcasses of his enemies to lie unburied on the highway. The sister of the unburied man refuses to let her brother's body publicly rot. She breaks the king's rule and is killed. Her lover, the king's son, attacks his father, but then kills himself. His mother, the king's wife, hears that her son is dead and also kills herself. The king is ruined and can barely speak. You thought Lear did it first, or Saul before him, but no, it was Creon, who, speaking loudly and angering divinity, first brought destruction upon himself through his own damn careless words. That's what hung him. Leave him alone, you say? Have you read the play? It's hard to pity the fool, you know, when he's such a proud blistering ass. Don't believe me? Your heart's harder than the king's in Antigone + Sophocles

Listening: She's good, ok, and I love her voice singing "For the love of God" after she sings "But the war won't stop". And, one day, she might leave her band, I can see it, and find her stride hitting singles out of the park in a home-run contest with Gwen Stefani. "No doubt", you say, and nod your head. This is, what, the fourth time she's hit Edmonton in the last twelve months? I like her, I keep saying, and you like her, too, that's obvious, but she likes us just as much as we like her. Which is why she'll be here for the fresh new CD on the 27th. Well, but forget us for a moment, what about Down South? She's doing one thing to the Americans I never thought anybody could. She's selling them on the Metric system, isn't she? But then, why not? I don't think this band has put out one single bad song. She's part of the whole Broken Social Scene, too, like just about every friggin indie-darling in Canada outside of the two loners in DFA79. Listen, when it comes down to it, the music is solid, her voice is wonderful and confident, and the band takes away all excuses to dance and hands out little cards with "Permision To Strike Poses" printed on them in a quasi-miltary font. Cadence Weapon likes them, Fluxblog has new stuff. Go, Emily! Hit up the "Media" option on their website for some stellar "Dead Disco" + Metric

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

One of that brightly-haloed generation which put an end to the Dark Ages, Sanctorius Sanctorius wrote a book titled Methods For Avoiding Errors, which called for analyzing particulars only after diagnosing the possible generalities which spawned them. In other words, context is everything. Is this lesson so hard to remember?

Reading: What is best in life? Back in Grade 9 or 10 or whenever it was, I loved reading this poem, mostly, I think, because of all the similar Conan the Barbarian imagery rattling around my head. "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women". Lines like that, ridiculous even in the Conan movie, are not at all out of place in the grim world of Grendel. Halt! And read it not for the torturous imagery, the interminable consonance, the (to my modern ears) awkward phrasing—for in this poem, all those flaws become virtues, contributing strongly to the over-all effect of a grey broken world on the edge of doom and ruin—but read it because the hero wins, and the monsters are defeated. That's why they call it fiction. Read Beowulf + trans Seamus Heaney

Listening: The name is a bit long, and what's with the caps? Oh well, the music is solid. Ths isn't usually my scene, but the melodies are clear and the sound is loud, and really, can one ask for more than that? A friend turned me on to them Friday, and now I'm turning you on. To them. That is. Whatever. Their other tracks are good, but I like this one best, if only cause it's somewhat creepily called "Nature Of The Ghost " + BEDlight For BlueEYES

A Feisty Return

You know them, of course. God help you, maybe you're one of them, with the sadness in the back of their brown eyes, or that reckless way of turning a corner. They were there when the levee broke, or they couldn't stop the brakes failing on that car, or the cancer came and there was nothing they could do. I knew a missionary once, a wily old lady in northern India, and anytime anything bad, sad, negative or just right-out miserable happened, and she couldn't carry any of it, she said, "Adjust and carry on." She was very tough old lady.

I am not one of the tough people. I create my own problems. These problems are not at the levels of mayhem and misery that other people have experienced, but my world is pretty small, and they take up a lot of room. I do not recall ever having suffered at the hands of someone or something else. On July 27, I received a letter from the University. The letter was all bad. I was not to think of taking any more classes. My GPA was simply too low. The letter did not mention how I love University. It didn't mention that the study ("study", ha!) of English literature is one of my favourite things in the entire world. It didn't mention how much I use attending University to balance a multitude of failings in my life. It didn't, in short, end with the words, "Here's to being permanently kicked in the teeth, and congratulations, because you did it yourself."

Last autumn, you see, I was up against it. Because of a situation of my own making, money was a little less scarce than hen's teeth. And I hadn't found any hen's teeth since I was six years old, lost in a September wood near a reservoir in southern Ontario. Last autumn, then, I signed up for only two courses ("two" as in non-tax deductible, by the way, which I later and regretfully found out). But I didn't take both of those courses. That's not my style, you see. Instead, I took one and merely didn't attend the other. By the last class drop date, I'd forgotten I ever signed up for that course, even though I'd paid for the damn thing. Are there less intelligent people than myself? Sadly, I still retain enough sentience enough to understand just how unintelligent I am. Result? Unhappiness, oh my brothers, and piles of bleeding stress. Still, the skies remained unsilver and unlined, and I decided to take the winter semester "off" and work. Which I did. Which resulted in my taken class' "A" fighting against my unattended class' "F". Across an entire school year. Thus, the University's use of the Canadian postal system.

Well, I appealed of course. And the appeal stalled. And stalled. And wouldn't start. And the whole summer, day after day, the sun rose like it always did, and there were warm nights on Whyte Ave, and my girlfriend and I fought mildly and made up better, and I listened to good music, and buried myself in mediocre books, and I pretended that returning to University for fall semester was nothing extraordinary, a given, and not a gift, not something along the lines of miraculous. I still hadn't recieved an answer from the appeal board on September 7, the first day of classes. I got up around five-thirty am, that day. Got on the bus, and stared at the floor of that crowded vehicle for forty minutes. Made my way to the appeals office, but the advisor wasn't there, again. Left a message on the advisor's machine. Maybe she would be there at ten? Tried to take a short nap in the lobby, ended up flipping my cell open and shut for fifty-minutes. That's a personal tic that annoys just about everyone I know. Couldn't take it. Wandered off toward Rutherford. And the cell vibrated as I was walking through the near-deserted halls of Engineering. The advisor. Wanting to know why I was calling.

"Well, hadn't heard from you guys since last week."

She was shocked. "We sent you a registered letter on September 1."

"I haven't gotten anything, though."

So she read me the letter over the phone, while I leaned into a recessed window, and the warm sun, and the leaves outside, passing students, a crowd of talk and future and careers. And she said I was succesfully readmitted! I tell you, I turned around and hugged the broad white wall. Sure, the two freshmen behind me were not so impressed. But I'm back, people! And this year will be the best year of my life.

Reading: There are books which take a lifetime to read. I'm not talking the KJV or Huckleberry Finn which, let's face it, would take a lifetime to learn, nevermind read, I'm talking flat-out-time-spent-in-a-chair-turning-pages. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell just about had me in traction, but it's got nothing on what I'm reading now. But there's something strangely hypnotic about reading such a large work. I remember seeing my brother first opening War & Peace and the look of bland satisfaction on his face. That's what you get out of these big books, I think, or I do, anyways. Reading as accomplishment, right? Sort of like watching Gone With The Wind—never again—or reading the Globe & Mail. Yeah! I got through it! And I'm still alive. Which is good news. And on the plus side, I've become a walking encyclopedia on early-century gossip. I always liked Juvenal. He was a cut-mouth wise-ass, and this is the kind of stuff he would have snickered at. Want to know what Caligula really whispered to his horse? Did Maximus ever cheat at sports? Just where did Galba get his dark skin? This book has the answers, son. Check out The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Vol II + Edward Gibbon

Listening: Whatever you do, do NOT look at the picture of Feist on the front of her site. Whoever that is, that is not Feist. How do I know? I own the CD and I've listened to her music. Feist is gorgeous. Feist is not that woman with the bad Ramones hair (like there's good Ramones hair?) and the "Kiss me, I'm drugged" eyes, looking like she's part of a shoplifting gang in central France. That's not my Feist. Feist is what you listen to on your way to an evening swim (I'm going downtown to the Grant Mac pool tonight). Feist is what you listen to as you order Belgian waffles. Feist knows words like "Mushaboom" and says, "It's cool to love your family". Feist is way better looking than the Feist in that picture. Forget Broken Social Scene. Remember that voice behind The Kings Of Convenience? Godsake, she sings with Jane Birkin. Go listen to the good-looking Feist, okay? The one who dances with that Buck 65 lookalike. Go to the video section and listen (it's only a sample) to the smoothest song outside of 1970. "One Evening" + Feist

On Blueberry Hill

The well-barbered man could have done better. He could have been on the flooded ground within hours. He could have been right there at the damn levee. But blaming George Bush for the looters? I can see where you're coming from, but look at the other side of the coin, that's all. There is always the other side, always. Are the American people so inherently lawless that they would quickly (three days, anyone?) yield to the pressure and opportunity to loot, pillage, even rape? Well, of course they are, dammit. They're humans. But that doesn't make the looters and the gangs any less responsible for their own actions. And it doesn't make GB any more or less responsible for them than he was the day before the hurricane pinwheeled New Orleans. The point I think is most disgusting is that many notable politicians, entertainers, bloggers, even (Daily Kos, I'm looking watchfully at you), are taking what should be an opportunity to help their neighbour and turning it into an opportunity to attack. Hopefully, this trend will decrease over the coming days and weeks, and people will use their anger and energy for positive ends, and not negative. Running George Bush down does nothing for New Orleans. It did nothing for the three thousand who died in the Twin Towers, it did nothing for the London deaths and deaths in Madrid, it's doing nothing for the millions of oppressed Sunnis, and it will do nothing for the thousands of people trapped in various superdomes across the USA. Luckily, I'm Canadian, and live so far and safely away from most everybody that I can afford to criticize the critics. Enough of them. Ignore Bush, too. What about the man standing in deep flood-water, the woman sleeping on an overpass, the nearly-dying elderly, the little children murdered? Forget about Bush. Forget about policy. Who cares about Republicans or Democrats? I hope Fats Domino is still alive. The old New Orleans saint said he was going to weather the storm in his house. And no more news. That part of the city is flooded, of course. It's only temporary. Blueberry Hill is going to outlast the Whitehouse, and it's going to wear out the haters and partisans, too. I hope Fats Domino is alright. I hope he's got some food, and a dry place, and a piano, maybe. And if he doesn't, and if everything is too late, the man died where he made his home, in the city where he made his music, a music that made the world, despite all manner of hurricanes, terrorists, tragedy and difficult change, a smoother and easier place to know. Because that's New Orleans, and that's Fats Domino. Leave the President be. We're apart, I see it, and hard times have come, hunger, and violence. But the world is still here, and one day you'll be easy and smooth again, and, if you aren't and it isn't, well, I know some good music to while away the day with, and you do, too. Let's say a prayer for Biloxi.

[Edit: Fats is alive!]

Listening: They've got the usual Broken Social Scene connections and they were just in town (that "just" happens to be two weeks ago in Edmonton, by the way), crafting some tunes down at The Starlite and opening for Pretty Girls Make Graves. I didn't go because that's what I do. Not going, that is. Sort of become my identity lately, if you know what I mean. If you don't, sorry, you must have a life. Lose it, hipster, if you want to be cool. Anyways, Robots posted them just a while ago (that "just" happens to be a week ago in Minneapolis), so I thought I would lay out a link or two of my own. The music is good, heavy on the indie, heavy on the pop, and I can't think of a single reason not to buy this CD. They've got the twee-est website ever, and they've "all realized just how big Canada is". Come on, you've gotta love it. "Where Cedar Nouns And Adverbs Walk" + The Most Serene Republic