Cults

http://cults.bandcamp.com/

Cults - I found out about these dudes from the newspaper this morning. I like their retro-pop vibe. Give it a listen if you dare. 

Crazy Cats Coerced into Cooperation

King Cat

Time keeps passing, smiles come and go and the sun has risen again. My new place is only a few blocks away from the old one, so I'm thinking of training my cat to strut the route between by walking him on a leash to and from a few times. I've never much cared if my neighbours thought I was weird, because I find most of them weird to begin with. A cat with two palaces? That is completely regal.

My friend's acrobatic cat Archie (he jumped up there without encouragement)

An acquaintance of mine who sometimes walks her dog with my father wrote a poem that she said was inspired by me, and she gave me a copy yesterday. She's not a romantic interest, but it was a pretty flattering piece. If she gives me permission I'll publish it here. 

Music Vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PnOG67flRA&feature=related

Metronomy - The Bay

Psycle

The new bike is a speed demon. I'm not normally the type to ride the brakes down a hill, but this thing is nuts. Out of the gate the thing is so light that it picks up to speed in no time... so sweet. I can't really take much credit because it feels so easy to get speed with all those gears. The serious riders are definitely riding way faster. It will take a lot of time for me to get to their speeds and endurance levels.

The Humber Pedestrian Bridge

I listened to most of the Hurley album by Weezer today. I wasn't very impressed... when did they become super cheesy? They were always pop music, but there was some bite to them before. Now it's all bubblegum heart-cries, half-assed whining and lame chord progressions. The Blue album and Pinkerton were awesome, the Green album had a few good tunes, but after Maladroit I gave up. It looks like I did so just in time, because since then they've released five albums and four ep's, none of which made any splash on my music radar besides the song Hash Pipe (which I'm not a big fan of). 

Dear Weezer, I write you in spite of years of silence. You've cleaned up, found Jesus. Things are good oh so I hear. This CD, Blue Album awakens ancient feelings. Like others, those others, new sound is drowning in the flood.

New Directions

I finally got a chance to take the new bike for a spin last night, and shit damn is it easy to go fast on that mama. With the intention of hitting up the waterfront bike path, I made the mistake of riding down Dufferin south of King... what a shitshow. That pavement might as well be a minefield. I'm not yet used to avoiding every bump in my cycling path, so that mistake won't be repeated. It's too bad that there isn't any kind of pedestrian/bike bridge over the tracks anywhere between Dufferin and Strachan.

My good friend pointed me towards this awesome music video that recaptures all those times as a kid battling it out with nerf guns and the imaginary battles. IS TROPICAL - The Greeks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwrbyVaC6EU&ob=av2e

Good Showing, Mr. Jools

Today I learned two things: that young-ish alocholic men can develop gout and blame it on spicy food, and old crackhead men pee their pants semi-regularly.

Writing new songs feels really good.

I think I should probably go to punctuation rehab for excessive and inappropriate use of ! exclamation marks. Sorry everybody.

Shadows cast from tape on a friend's window. Missing a couple of S'

Probably the best way to respond to a compliment: "Tell everyone about me"

My cousin was telling me about this cool british music show, which pointed me towards this sweet deuce of live Arcade Fire songs (Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) + Rebellion (Lies): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTttNdw2zVI
They have really great stage presence.

That encouraged me to keep looking, so I found a badass live version of The Bends by Radiohead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG-adf3Z7_A
I wish they still wrote tunes more like this.

Road Bike

I've clearly slacked off considerably with writing these entries, and am sorry to my loyal readers for doing so. It's been a funny few weeks for me, as I'm going through a big life change in finally moving out of my parents' house. It's been a long time coming, and isn't the most prudent financial decision, but you can't place a proper price on growing up. I've been sheltered from reality in some ways by escaping the serfdom of bills, and that has allowed me to establish habits that are counter to personal growth. Living with two other dudes will bring its own brand of madness, but I'm looking forward to a stimulating change. I have this feeling that I really need this, and I've resolved to trust my gut feelings more than I have in the past.

Bicycling has been on my mind lately, and I'm seriously considering treating myself to a proper road bike. My biggest reservation is that I don't want to be confused with those douche bag bike couriers and the rest of the holier-than-thou crowd who feel entitled to be an asshole because they choose to ride a bike and not drive a car. The infrastructure for cycling in this city is quite lacking, and that causes a lot of friction between riders and drivers, but to lash out at honest drivers without taking responsibility for your own actions is shamefully rude.

Cyclists generally feel that drivers don't share the road with them. This is often true, but while saying that it must be acknowledged that a good majority of cyclists feel entitled to follow a different set of rules of the road. Going the wrong way down a one way street, swerving unpredictably, not wearing proper safety gear, not using front and back lights, blowing through stop signs and red lights are all examples of things cyclists typically do and then flip out on drivers who have close encounters with them.

I play for both sides and understand how it feels to be on either side of these situations. I strongly support the idea of licensing cycling in order to require a basic knowledge and respect of road rules and safety. That is not to say that I expect quite the same standard between a cyclist and a motorist, as rolling stops are permissible in my opinion (if the way proves clear...). But we could all benefit from a little compromise from the current situation. It seems that right now most people are firmly in one camp or the other, and are unreasonably firm in their stance on road ownership. A shitsack mayor doesn't help, and the physical infrastructure needs a lot of work, but lives could be saved and peace could be made if members from both sides came to the table and worked out a systemic change. Here's hoping. My biggest reservation is that given the current political climate, this whole idea could hugely backfire if enacted in a way that is unbalanced in its execution.

Dreams Crushed By Waking Up

Three TV shows have occupied my eyes for the past few days, and are worth a watch if you're interested in any of: brutal medieval/fantasy power struggles, mid-90's biker gang shenanigans, or post-apocalyptic zombie hoards vs. Americans. I'm talking about Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead. Watching these shows back to back is making me fat. That, and my laziness, which has been preventing me from hauling my carcass around at a velocity sufficient to burn off the excessive amount of energy I consume as a lethargic ape-creature. I went out skating the other day, and surprised myself with the amount of control I still have for the board, and then put myself out of skateable commission by hurting my legs without even falling. The youngest old man?

Completely and Utterly

Regardless of complete lack of, or any kind of incessant enthusiasm towards continuation, and largely in spite of; this madness shall continue. I heard once from a wise slug who mentioned that ear canals posses the capability to navigate the infinite circles of crazy. Three witches united to enslave the populace of rice, who rebelled in unison towards sanity. With clean fingernails, I once wished for clarity. With good intentions, we succeeded in enrolling goodness into frenzy. And that is all.

By the way: http://foresttree.bandcamp.com/

Flames of the Overworld

There once was a land where the people didn't know about demons and insisted on burning everything. They learned that by melting things and setting them on fire, they could produce what they called chemicals. With these, they amassed great riches and built extravagant castles with fantastic gimmicks, which the barons constructed in order to compete with one another, in a game of one-upmanship that pushed the very boundaries of physical possibilities. Towers were built so high that from their tops you could look down upon fireworks and aircraft.

With their knowledge of combustion, the people produced jet propulsion, and hopped across continents en mass. However, because these people were frenzied by the explosion of physical dominance that science had unleashed, they overlooked the wicked force of the demonic hoards. For even a child should know that whenever you burn something, a small demon (known as a 'Syet') slips through the hole created in the fabric between the realms of the overworld and the underworld.

Given enough time and misuse of the terrific power of flame, once a group of not less than fifty Seyts gather together, they perform a summoning ceremony (with the combined power to summon a true demon in the form of a 'Hralx') . It takes a while for the Syets to cross between the worlds, and longer still for them to reunite, but time passes more quickly than most admit. Within decades of misuse, the first Hralx's crossed over, and began toying with the unsuspecting populace (whose complete faith in their religion of science left them completely open to attack from the realm of the fantastic).

They started small, by tampering with weather systems and gathering power by destroying wildlife that the people didn't care about enough to protect. 

As the decades became centuries, the Hralx's had multiplied enough, and gathered enough power to bring across the worst demon that had ever been seen in the overworld. His name was Throg, and he especially hated people who didn't burn incessantly, which slowed the seeping of power over to him. In order to speed up the process of change from lightworld to darkworld, he added salt powders to the flames, which released gasses that entranced the people and made them attack each other.

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