just a terminal case

of the beach and clothes

2007-09-13T23:29:00.000-04:00

the other day was september 11th. a date that i couldn't wait to arrive, courtesy of david usher and the intimate acoustic performance he did at rw&co. a store, by the way, that i'd never heard of before, but when i heard about the contest, i promptly joined their mailing list and entered the contest. in a shocking turn of events (in my life at least), i won! for my trouble i received 2 passes (whoo hoo) and a $50.00 gift certificate to the store! yey me. however, after checking out the boring clothes on the walls and racks - i'm not sure what i'll spend my gift certificate on.... after spending the summer at the gym - i do need new pants though!

but more important than the clothes, obviously - was the acoustic performance itself. as always, the performance was incredible. in such a small venue with so little other instrumentation i was able to lose myself in the texture and strength of david's voice and marvel at what sounded like new keyboard arrangements on old favourites like 'push'. it really was special and i consider myself fortunate to have been there.

my pictures are really blurry (no flash allowed, please and thank you) and none of them really turned out with the exception of this one :

while going through my camera, i also found some more bad pictures i took at david's beachfest 2007 show. the guy moves so damned fast on stage that i often just end up with a blur where a person should be. this one is a little atmospheric, a little not.

a gurl needs a goal (or something)

2007-09-07T23:06:00.000-04:00

i'm playing with the idea of switching blogs. i've set up a new one at wordpress - a new one that suspiciously has all the same content as this one. ;-) i'm not sold on the idea of moving yet. i am a creature of habit and there are some things i'm not groovin' on at the new home.

for instance - the stats tracker sucks at wordpress. if i do make the plunge, i will bring my current stats tracker with me. it rocks. and i'm still getting used to the layout differences and the fact that even though there are at least 2 dozen more templates to use - that the one i've picked locks me into the dread capital letter. oh, we should all have such problems. troubles and woe.

i whined about this in an earlier blog, but my trainer is moving to a new gym and my sessions with him are ending soon. i think i have 3 more weeks or so with him. still so sad about that. i'm happy to be on my own in the gym - but i'll miss his energy and his enthusiasm.

two days ago we've picked some new goals for me to attain before he leaves. one of them i did tonight! whoo hoo for me. i bench pressed 40lb dumbbells. who knew. when i started this whole thing on april 20, i had no clue that i'd be doing stuff like this. yey me. not only did i do 40 - but i did 13 solid reps of 40! before we started tonight, my trainer said he figured i'd be able to do 4 or 5 solid ones and to give it what i had. i sailed past 5 and kept going. so exciting. now of course, we're talking 50lbs. he thinks i should be able to do 2 or 3 reps. haha. sure - why not!

the other goal - which i have serious doubts about - is a chin-up. a full on chin-up. that's a lot of upper body strength and i'm not sure i'm there yet. we have 3 weeks to get me there. crazy. tonight i did 2 with a counter-weight of 35. that poor performance isn't going to get me to a chin-up! we'll see how it goes. i have faith though - why not. why couldn't i?

everyone should invest in multiple sessions with their own trainer. they help you to open up fitness and physical possibilities that you would never have dreamed attainable.

another goal (haha) i have for myself is to get on twitter. sounds simple, huh? damn. this thing is fighting me tooth and nail. david usher is talking about sending twitter notices (tweet, tweet, little birdie) for guerrilla-style accoustic sets that could happen anywhere, anytime. i would be most unhappy to miss that! but twitter doesn't love me right now. i've sent them an email - let's see what they can do.

big day tomorrow. boot camp, yoga and a facial. how lovely. a self-indulgent day dedicated to me!

[music : adele | "daydreamer"]

it takes confidence

2007-08-30T22:56:00.000-04:00

while outside eating my lunch this afternoon, i happened to look up from my book and noticed a very obnoxious hot pink delivery truck. that's right - there's no two ways about it. it was a pink cube van. hot pink. and it was a holt renfrew truck! all i could think (besides, damn, where's my camera!) was, "it takes a man who is very confident in his own masculinity to drive around the streets of downtown toronto in a hot pink truck." holts seems to be making hot pink their signature colour. check out their website to see the colour their delivery vans and paper shopping bags are this season.

i happen to work close to holts and my gym is close to holts so i end up seeing a lot of the holts-ites in the area. it's funny really - i don't know what it is about obscene amounts of money that makes you just look like a holts person. perhaps is the impeccable (expensive) clothing, perhaps it's the precise haircuts and make-up - but i'm starting to think it's the footware that probably ends up costing approximately what i pay in rent each month. maybe it's all those things combined. maybe it's just the fact that money gives these style mavens a dose of confidence, may it be real or simply an illusion seems to not matter.

my hair stylist moved to montreal a year ago and i've been lucky enough have had my hair cut by her twice since she's left. once she came for a visit and fit me in and the second time was in march when i visited montreal. the other cut i've had in the past year was at the holt renfrew salon. i made a grave error and thought that since i wanted a bob, that a place like holts should be the perfect place to get a classic cut with a modern twist.

and wow... was i ever wrong...

i ended up looking like a soccer-mum. *shudder* it was such a non-edgy, boring, safe, staid cut. not at all what i was used to after more than a decade of having my hair cut at coupe bizzarre. i was used to walking out after my cut and feeling the confidence that the amazing haircut would give me. that for a day or two my hair was perfect and looked exactly the way i wanted it to look. needless to say, i did not go back to the holts hair butcher. my hair is getting a little long and a little unruly, but i'm thinking i'll hold off for a cut until i go to montreal in october! hopefully i don't cave before then. and if i do - i'm wondering if i should go to vidal sassoon. i know, it's probably a mistake waiting to happen - but that's the thing about hair - it grows back! it's just the times when you're waiting for it to grow that are murder....

[music | nlx, "code red"]

education

2007-08-29T21:47:00.000-04:00

a few things i learned today :

my trainer is moving gyms in about 6 weeks. :-( so sad about that. i've loved working out with him. he's given me so much confidence in the gym. i'll make the most of my 17 remaining sessions!

i hate humidity. actually, i didn't learn that today. it was simply reinforced knowledge.

i'm developing allergies! ack! i went for a 3 hour walk (or so) in high park last night with michael and this morning i woke up with no voice, itchy itchy eyes and a scratchy throat. oh - and a puffy face. lovely. someone told me it's ragweed season. why am i developing allergies now!?! *sigh*

there may be pay raises coming at work. maybe, just maybe. i'm not holding my breath though. not-for-profits tend not to have crazy pay raises!

[music | david usher, "in this light"]

shudder, how embarassing....

2007-08-26T01:06:00.000-04:00

to think, when i last wrote here i was watching a gawdawful music reality show. not just watching, gleefully and faithfully blogging on it.

well. what's happened over the past year?

work has gotten busy and then no so busy and is now crazed again.
it's my own fault - i have some work-addict tendencies that i must squash. especially because there are so many other things to do!

i've been to both paris and to tuscany since i last wrote here.
really. believe it. i can hardly! paris was october and july was tuscany /rome. i feel so fortunate to be able to have visited two of the worlds greatest cities in less than one year.

health and fitness for all!
i've realized i'm getting older and not younger and therefore have begun this business of taking better care of myself. better now than later. my mom had a health scare in the spring (right around my birthday, no less) and thankfully, it's not as bad as initially feared. it's still not great, but it's not immediately catastrophic. send some healthy thoughts to her - will you?

anyway - her health scare prompted me into action for my own health. i have a few issues i've been avoiding for a while and began to own up to them to myself. this prompted me to the gym. not only to reactivate my 3.5 year old membership, but to sign up with a personal trainer. that's right, since april 20th i've been working 3 hours a week with a trainer. i'm nearly at the end of my sessions (my visa will be reeling for months, if not years to come) - but so far it's been worth it. i'm leery about the whole scale/size/inches thing - but let's just say that i've noticed some major differences in not only how i appear, but more importantly, in how i feel. even better than that - i honestly feel like i've built a new foundation that will last the rest of my life. i'm all about the strength training now. i guess i should do more cardio, but a the moment i'm loving the feeling of being the only gurl in the free weights area with these testosterone guys. heehee. it's a trip.

i have started keeping fish.
and now have two tanks! it's a lovely hobby that's turned into a full fledged fishy-obsession. i even have a small tank in my bedroom and my fish are having babies! they are promptly eating their babies, but we'll work on saving the next batch. ;-)

what else is new. a few and sundry items.
i've decided i hate my downstairs neighbours (both sets of them). jerks, slobs and cheapskates. is it really so hard to take out the garbage on your scheduled week? and is it so hard to pay for the garage you're renting from me? and is it really so hard to collapse boxes for recycling and to not put random junk in with the bottles? seriously....

i've fallen under the evil-sway of facebook. it sucks up many many hours of otherwise productive time.

i'm tempted to move from sympatico to rogers. anyone out there have any advice? i find sympatico's customer service is either non-existent or that it resembles strapping on full body-armour in order to absorb the battle. but really, would rogers be any better? i have my doubts. but at this point i'm convinced that if i could burn the bridge to bell - that i'd be a much happier person.

i am looking forward to september and october when i will see david usher no less than 4 times, tori amos 2 times and regina spektor once. as shan said - 'rocktober is shaping up to be incredible'!

[music : sia, 'numb']

rockstar : supernova : final episode

2006-09-12T21:59:00.000-04:00

good gods - didn't we get rid of ryan star already? damn you u.s. verizon users for subjecting us to ryan's annoying original song one more time.

after the survivor-like show wrap-up (my, how far our little rockers have come. or in dilana's case, how far we came and then faltered) we moved on to the performances.

toby rand - karma police (radiohead)
this is one of my all-time favourite songs and as such, i may be a bit rougher on poor old toby, but you know what... his accent was really distracting. and the very poignant song just became an insensitive mess (why the fuck did he ask the drummer to go ape-shit?). no. just not right.

toby rand - chemical dreaming
well, you know... magni stole this performance. and toby is too into the props (magni's head, magni's guitar).

lukas rossi - fix you (coldplay)
not a coldplay fan. but lukas' version of that song gave me goosebumps on my shins! you go lukas! barb - i hope you're there to watch your boy win this thing!

lukas rossi - headspin
we've heard this song loud and fast twice already, so tonight lukas slowed it down. you could hear every word out of his mouth and his voice was just gorgeous.

dilana - roxanne (the police)
toby's presence and lukas' vocal brought this song up past where dilana had been able to deliver it.

dilana - supersoul
after telling us one more time about what the song is about (get over yourself already) she started to walk through the crowd. where upon we immediately lost sight of her in the crowd. i don't know why she kept insisting on going into the audience. you're the singer. you're supposed to be a rockstar - stay on the stage! :-)

magni - hush (deep purple)
i don't know why - but for some reason when magni finishes i'm expecting brooke burke to say, "and coming up next - ike and tina!". i liked it though - so fun.

magni - when the time comes
this was another intense performance from magni. loud and it looks fun to play. magni should get his old band together and play this with them. ooh. tommy lee's comment was mean and unnecessary. boo tommy!

who is going to win this thing? well, i've made no secret that it has to be lukas (as far as i'm concerned). i think the final two will be lukas and toby. magni will go home first. dilana second.

the end.

rockstar : supernova : week ten

2006-09-05T22:50:00.000-04:00

when i got home tonight i played back my pvr recording of rockstar and was greeted with "tonight's show will separate the great from the truly amazing" ack. did i tune in to rockstar? yes, yes i did. let's not get ahead of ourselves brooke - this is merely a slightly more cool version of american idol!

dilana - behind blue eyes (the who) & supersoul (original)
nice for her to be carried out... i'm sure she's really injured, but leading into the song she performed, it just seemed like a sympathy ploy. and if you're stuck on a stool - don't jerk your lower body around like frog legs on a sizzling griddle. i'd have to say this performance was pretty underwhelming. we have gotten her vibe and it's worn thin. her original was another sad attempt by her to curry favour (please forgive me, i was bad, i have learned and i have grown). that's fine and a good message - but it's literally all we've heard from her for two weeks now. the one note is yesterday's news.

magni - back in the u.s.s.r. (the beatles) & when the time comes (original)
elvis meets the beatles.... interesting....his stage performance is getting a little stale for me too... he doesn't really have any dynamic moves on stage. don't get me wrong, i don't need to see magni dancing - but a little more than the pacing/wandering would be nice from time to time. and his original was good - sound a bit like what i imagine gavin rossdale's band bush would be doing now if they were still recording. driving, urgent but not incredible.

storm large - suffragette city (david bowie) & what the what ladylike (original)
love, love, love the outfit, the touch of sexy androgynous is never wrong, especially when you're covering bowie. she really thinks about the songs she's doing and makes certain her look matches the song. smart woman. and she just killed this song - so great to watch. is she one of the 'truly amazing' brooke was referring to?? teehee. and dave navarro getting up with her was inspired. and her original was sultry and threatening at the same time, what a groove. the best original in the show so far.

lukas rossi - livin' on a prayer (bon jovi) & headspin (original)
when the song began, i was concerned - i couldn't understand the words in the first verse, but as the song went on, he seemed like he grew more confident with the lyric. a very different rendition of the song, it had some spine-chilling moments. oh - and his hair is really cool this week. but i'm not diggin' the fact it looked like he and brooke both raided the same 80's-pirate inspired closet this week. the original was effortless and heartfelt. a boy who sings about his mum always scores high!

toby rand - mr. brightside (the killers) & throw it away (original)
a very straight-ahead jock-inspired cover everyone's favourite killers track. i love toby, i really do - but this cover really needed the darkly odd quirk that brandon flowers brings to the song to really have it make sense. as my friend said, 'toby doesn't look like he's had a loner-awkward moment in his life'. you need that awkwardness for this song. then again - i could just be a killers purist! how sad is that? and he intro's his original by talking about being wasted - he should lose points for obviously pandering to the crowd! despite a frenzied performance (complete with groping) this is just not my type of song. but, i seem to be in the minority!

2006-08-29T21:58:00.000-04:00

so we've started a pool at work - a rockstar pool. or rather, i should say - i've started a pool! i've never run one before and i've never even BEEN in one. it's fun making up the rules. heehee. and somehow, i'm in the lead!

so, before i start sobbing like dilana (not to mention throwing red goblets around), lets go into the performances. even though it is oh-so-lame to let the fans pick the songs. i'd rather see the band pick songs for the performers.

lukas rossi - lithium (nirvana)
how can this guy not be the winner? just how? i usually can not stand it when the 'rawkers' mess with nirvana - but that was brilliant.

magni - i alone (live)
yet another live cover. i don't like live - but magni puts that band to shame. he is really oh so good. and he wipes up the floor with live. what a voice.

ryan starr - clocks (coldplay)
gag. can't say i enjoy his falsetto. rough rough rough. did he lose his razor? he is fake. contrived. and a poser.
storm large - bring me to life (evanescence)
this was not at all in her style or register - but she pulled it off. she pulled it off so much that i forgot to type and just watched the performance. :-) and toby was incredible too.

toby rand - rebel yell (billy idol)
oh - if only he'd of coloured his hair platinum for this week! :-) i bow down to you toby. this was entertaining, and perfect for him. and the crowd ate it up. so did i. and oh, with the fans, so so so freakin cool. so much fun. it's now between toby and lukas.

dilana - mother mother (tracy bonham)
i can't believe i feel this way - but i really never need to see this woman perform again. and she's got the chipmunk voice going on again - just like when she sang the supernova song.

my picks for bottom three - storm, ryan and magni. my pick to go home - though i'd do cartwheels to see ryan go home - i'm afraid it's magni's week. he's just not disturbed enough to front that band.

rockstar : supernova : week eight

2006-08-22T23:01:00.000-04:00

apparently the last episode of rockstar : supernova is on september 13th. that's pretty close. these are the best performers on the entire season (well, with a certain exception that is. zayra should be there instead of patrice) and evey week should be outstanding. so what is in store for us this week?

patrice pike - beautiful thing (original)
if you've been reading this - you know i detest this woman's performance. this didn't do anything to help change my mind. well, except for the fact i liked her eye-makeup. is this song still on? it's v.e.r.y. long. very.

magni - smells like teen spirit - nirvana
ooh - what's with the touque? no no no. that being said - he always delivers a very impassioned and professional performance. he's incredible.

ryan star - back of your car (original)
ok, his reprieve of a few weeks ago has spent itself out. yes, it's loud and yes it's fast. however, it's also flirting a bit too much with radio-land for me. it's ok to be commercial and sell records and be on billboard's charts - but i just don't go for the live/goo goo dolls thing. many many people do though.

storm large - crying - aerosmith
i really think she should of fought for her original song - i mean, the broadcast royalties off of that thing alone! all the markets and territories that the show is aired in - major money folks. but i digress. i think she did a great job on that song. her vocal delivery was sultry and powerful, her performance was interesting too. yey storm!

dilana - every breath you take - the police
dilana is fabulous. we all know this. but for some reason i just didn't feel a connection in this performance until she hit the latter half of the song. i really hate to say it, but most of this performance felt like a wedding band.

toby rand - layla - eric clapton
i think that after patrice leaves this week, that we will see toby go home next. i think we've seen all the tricks in his bag. he does have a very very very hot body. ;-)

lukas - all these things that i've done - the killers
i loves me some killers. swoon. really really do. he did a great job at this song. the beginning gave me such goosebumps, it got a bit patchy for a bit and then it got really good again. but like gilby mentioned - it is very very odd when lukas turns his back to the crowd so often. so strange. regardless. lukas will win this competition. is it ok for two canadians in a row to win?

pages of a not-so-open book

2006-08-20T08:12:00.000-04:00

don't ask me why, but i was inspired by an email i recieved - feel free to post the same on your own blog...

2 moments in your life you’d like to erase

1 - the time i was too afraid to go to a concert by myself. after a phone interview tori amos asked me if i'd be going to her upcoming show in toronto. i'd told her i wasn't able to afford a ticket and she said, 'what's money between friends. i'll put you on the list. i'd like to meet you.' comes the day of the show and i was throwing up all day. could of been 24-hour flu or it could of been nerves. i've regretted it ever since. it taught me to hate regret and taught me to allow myself the strength to make choices that i won't regret.
2 - the time i had to help my mom hide the easter baskets for myself and my younger brother and sister.

3 moments you'd like to re-live

1 - any moment where i was laughing to the point of tears. i love those moments.
2 - when my in grade 7 my phys. ed. teacher told me i was very graceful; as i'd lived my life believing i was clumsy and awkward.
3 - the feeling i had sitting by the sacred lake at karnak temple in luxor, egypt.

2 places you wouldn’t want to go again

1 - high school - for obvious reasons
2 - athens, greece - i got yelled at too many times for it to have been enjoyable.

3 places you can’t wait to visit/visit again

nyc - my current travel-crush
montreal - it's been so long... i miss the people and the streets and the shopping
london - to see the things i didn't care to see when i was silly and 24.

2 foods you can’t stand

meat - i'm a veggie
daal - i love indian food, but can not stand to eat daal. *shudder* it's the texture, i think.

3 foods you love

tofu and veggies in thai red curry
dishes with mushrooms and tomatos (fresh or sundried)
my mom's saskatoon pie

2 current songs that make you change the station

i don't listen to the radio anymore - there are FAR too many songs that made me want to change the station that i eventually turned it off for good.

4 current songs you play over and over

the music - david usher
when you were young - the killers
is it any wonder? - keane
lips like morphine - kill hannah

2 books you’d never finish/read again

the english patient - michael ondaatje - tried several times, but found it way to pretentious
when we were orphans - ishiguro kazuo - could not get through this one and won't try again

4 books you have read more than once

the chronicals of narnia (all volumes, several times)
neverwhere - neil gaiman (have re-read all of his novels)
eva luna - isabelle allende (loved this one so much that i read it a second time right after the first time)
dracula - bram stoker (probably partly responsible for my love of vampires and bats)

[music | muse, "starlight"]

toronto zoo and tattoos

2006-08-19T19:02:00.000-04:00

the things we do to entertain ourselves. my past weekend involved the zoo and a tattoo. a virtual study in extremes.

first, i had a tattoo re-done on saturday. the poor thing (a bat on my upper arm) was done in august of 1993 and the artist that did it has died of a drug overdose. lovely. i now go to a new artist, one who does not seem like a heroin addict and he did a great job of making my poor sad and neglected bat look all shiny and new again. if you're interested in getting work done - go to jay at passage. he's incredible.

and for all those lovely individuals out there who told me that getting a tat retouched hurts because they're going over scar tissue - you're wrong. getting the damned thing feels exactly the same as getting any old tattoo. what should be said, however, is that the healing process is much longer, much more intense and generally not fun at all. i'm now just hoping that all the colour took - so i can avoid the healing again!

also - i ended up booking a new appointment for a new tattoo... :-) i'm getting it at the end of october. as long as the money holds out, i'll be inking myself.... i can feel the images attaching themselves to my skin as i tap away.

but the real reason for my post today is to put up some pictures of the animals at the toronto zoo. i went on sunday and it was an incredible day. the weather really couldn't of been better (sunny and clear) and it was a fantastic day. i ended up leaving just before closing. i walked my little feet off and was feeling a little strain around my left foot for days afterward!

this guy was the coolest thing ever. i seriously fell in love with him. he'd float over the the glass, stare at the silly humans standing there, practically wink at us, and then push himself off of the glass with his back paws. really quite dramatic. you go bear!

and here he is pushing off. brilliant.

this bear was playing with a giant rubber ball. he'd push down on it with his front paws until it went shooting across the cement pond. it looked like fun and made me laugh!

the zoo now has 2 hippos in their vastly improved habitat. they spent about 30 minutes wrestling with each other. and by wrestling, i mean opening their mouths and lip wrestling. seriously. :-)

i have admitted to myself that i have a thing for giraffe's. i really do. can't get enough of them.
as evidenced by the 20-odd images on my digital camera.

this is the matriarch - tara. we happened to hit the elephants at the same time the elephant keeper was doing a q&a. hence the knowledge of the name of the matriarch... ;-)

the rhino brigade. i love the fact these three large barrel shaped tanks are standing in front of the red rocks. it's like they know a good photo op when they see it.

nothing more graceful than a swan. and this one really knew his angles. i have a second picture of him with the only difference being the fact that he's looking the other direction. very very nice.

a flock of flamingos going though some pretty serious politics. they all seemed to be having a bad day.
a very bad day.

[music | nxl, "i got a lot"]

rockstar : supernova : week seven

2006-08-15T21:57:00.000-04:00

at this point i'm not sure why some contestants are still there. well, actually just one. i'm looking at you ms. pike. and a comment about clothing... where on earth did brooke pull out that polyester nightmare? i'm figuring either an airline stewardesses or a newscasters closet - both circa 1974. and poor tommy lee. when my roomie saw him she said, "looks like tommy picked up his outfit from janet jackson's 'rhythm nation' outlet store". i thought it was pretty funny.

regardless - our 'rockers' have come to sing covers once more. and here are my thoughts, comments and other nonsence ramblings. i'm not feeling very chatty today - these will be short.

zayra alvarez - original song
for her original song, she decided to give us a very pretty spanish-language song. very pretty, her voice really suited it. would supernova do this sort of material? not in your life.

magni - starman (david fucking bowie)
entertainment weekly seems to think the gig will either go to magni or to dilanah. and with this performance i can see why. i already thought he was a strong contender - but now he's just getting better and better.

patrice pike - message in a bottle (the police)
i can say nothing nice, positive or constructive here.

lukas rossi - hero (chad kroger)
well, lukas has really found his singing voice at this point in the competition. very nice delivery. however, i hate the song he covered. and i didn't like it with lukas doing it either. it will be interesting to see what will happen as this competition goes on.

storm large - i will survive (gloria gaynor)
this was sort of lounge-singer meets drunken sailor. poor stormy. she just didn't pull this one off. and holy, holy - the comments from the band and mr. dave were really pretty rough.

toby rand - solsbury hill (peter gabriel)
why on earth are vests coming back? practically no one can pull them off. a little too cutesy for me. his voice was a little tight in his throat and a bit like a muppet's.

ryan star - in the air tonight (phil collins)
i think if i don't have to WATCH ryan that i prefer him so much more. he get's this strange and awkwardly intense look on his face and it becomes kind of funny. this song is supposed to be intense and sexy. he got the intense bit down - sort of.

dilanah - cats in the cradle
why is she acting out the song? the hand guestures were really not necessary. i think she might be getting a bit close to 'coasting-ville'.

and as far as bottom three goes. i think it'll end up being patrice, ryan and zayra - though storm may find herself down there. and who goes home. it has to be patrice.

rockstar : supernova : week six

2006-08-08T22:50:00.000-04:00

week six. it's going to get a bit better now - a lot of the people who shouldn't be there aren't there anymore. and oddly - no one seems to want to play in front of members of the band that they are there auditioning to play with. so so strange. don't they know why they're there?

dilanah - won't get fooled again (with gilby clarke) - the who
i am a dilanah. yes i am. but i have to say this was the most luke-warm i'd left one of her performances. her uniqueness was gone. less sparkle than usual. maybe it's the fact that she said she did not know the song until this show. i don't know. but i think gilby out-sang her on the chorus! (p.s. and from watching monday night's show - she doesn't seem to be much of a songwriter... i'm worried)

jill gioia - mother, mother - tracy bonham
i have to give her some credit for not screetching this song out at us - but at the same time, did she need to play dress-up and go as avril-lite tonight? i think that this gurl is another one with an performance identity-crisis. and i think we'll see her go home this week.
ryan star - paint it black - the rolling stones
i really enjoyed his vocals on this song - but did not enjoy his performance. something about his costume reminded me of a collegiate spiderman. like when toby mcguire first became spidey and made his costume out of his gym clothes. Something smacks of poser.

storm large - we are the champions - queen
she has to be the strongest and best 'singer' in the competition. she did a great version of this classic classic song. not easy to do. and that middle part where she gets the crowd involved. brilliant! way to go stormy-gurl!

zayra alvarez - all the young dudes - david bowie
i had a hard time understanding some of the lyrics in this song - but does this gurl understand spectacle, or does she understand spectacle. i think bowie would be proud of what he's wrought. her voice has some very pretty moments to it too.

josh logan - interstate love song (with tommy lee) - stone temple pilots
i spent the entirety of this song trying to block out josh's vocals to listen to tommy's drumming. i really hadn't ever paid much attention to it before. he's good. that supernova will have a good drummer holding things together. and it will get much better when southern-fried mr. agreeable (aka : josh) doesn't sing in front of it!

magni - the dolphin's cry - live
he made me forget the original version of this song. this is another performance that i'd purchase. he just laid this song down and left no questions that he has already had a career of being a rockstar. it's a lot like being big in canada - no one in the states knows who you are - unless you're a female.

patrice pike - instant karma! - john lennon
ok. we all know i don't appreciate this performer. and i did not appreciate her rendition of this lennon song.

lukas rossi - creep - radiohead
back on the bandwagon, baby. i'm so so so so sorry i hopped off. wow. i'm all a-tingle. someone i know from toronto is in l.a. right now and is going to see lukas on rockstar. i hope she was there for this performance!

toby rand - burning down the house - talking heads
finally he broke out of the seemingly self-imposed purgatory he'd put himself in the past two weeks. this was great. loads of energy and heaps of talent (but i'm with dave - i hated the megaphone. *shudder*). i think toby's discovered his unique brand of demented.

bottom three at the end of the show were jill, zayra and patrice. i agree with this - but i'd like to see josh in the bottom three. as my friend said, "who the hell out there is voting for josh every week????" i don't get it. one last note - jason newsted was very annoying this week. a little preachy. ease up there, jason.

rockstar : supernova : week five

2006-08-02T20:17:00.000-04:00

so. how hot is it in toronto these days? so hot that my modem refused to work last night. i think it had a heat stroke or something. it was so disgustingly hot last night that i went to see a movie after work (devil wears prada - and though i enjoyed it, i have some commentary on this puppy. maybe tomorrow!) and then i went to go check out slute at the crowbar. one of the new guys at work is the guitar-god in training in this band. incidentally - slute's writers are signed to the same publishing company that lukas rossi is.... it's a tiny ole world, huh?

so - regardless of the fact i'm a day late and the elimination show is on in the background, here are my comments on week five.

patrice pike - higher ground
i'm ready for this one trick pony to go home.  tommy lee was incredible
and loud on the drums, but she is just boring as hell on stage.  i
don't agree that she's changing it up from week to week.  i think the
positive response was because of tommy lee.

josh logan - santaria
ok, i change my mind.  THIS one trick pony needs to go home.  he does
not know why he's there and it's a waste of time and the house band's
time, supernova's time and really, you'd think the producers would know
better than to bring this guy in for supernova.

dilanah - can't get enough
it does not matter what song she's given, she just nails the song every
time.  good song, bad song - it makes no difference.  she is perfect.
done and done.

toby rand - pennyroyal tea
it had moments, but overall i hate to say it, but i'm just not feeling
toby's performances.  and he re-arranged on of my most beloved songs
ever.... it's hard to love that.

zayra alvarez - 867-5309/jenny
gotta hand it to this girl - she believes in every performance.  she's
so not right for this band - but man, she's got a star magnet.  i'd
listen to her performances over the brit's and jess's and x-tina's
every week. 

magni - clocks
where is the runaway train?  maybe a giant rock was rolling after magni
and the band?  that must be the reason for the crazed-speed, right? 

jill gioia - don't you forget about me
yes, she has an incredibly powerful voice, but she has not learned how
to control her voice apparently.  why did she decide to go for the
shrill shriek?  she looked a bit like a stripper without her pole this
week.
 
ryan star - losing my religion
ok.  i take back a portion of the mean things i've said about him.
that was amazing.  really really spine-chilling.

lukas rossi - celebrity skin
what did you have against the audience this week lukas?  much of the
performance was with his back to the crowd - never a good move.  i did
not get it this week.  not at all.

storm large - changes
she picked the right time in the show to show vulnerability.  and what
a great song to do it with.  she's been rocking the shit out of things
and this week she delivered a beautiful song in a beautiful way.

dana andrews - baba o'reilly
she looks nearly identical to the way she looked last week.  but i'm
not sure if she had the chain.  i think i liked her performance, but
i'm not sure i loved it.

rockstar : supernova : week four

2006-07-25T22:03:00.000-04:00

i want to start this off by saying that this week i blogged during the performances. there are times that what i blogged nearly matched the supernova critiques. i feel so obvious! that or i've been watching this piece of cheesecake a little too long... ;-)

and if jenny's mom, friend, sibling, co-worker, fan is still reading this by any chance - i'm sorry. :-( but i think she's better off not on this show and she's better doing her own thing. i wish her the best!

lukas rossi - bittersweet symphony (the verve)
why not... he's really got a natural sense of stage presence and how to deliver a performance. and as we saw on monday's show, he's got wicked song sense too. i am starting to agree with jason newsted though, open your throat more. don't sing pretty, just sing with less gravel to get you stuck on the road.

zyara alvarez - call me (blondie)
"you're ready for intergalactic travel" - heehee. and dave navarro just said what i've been saying all along. i want her to stay so i can keep watching her - but she should have absolutely no difficulty getting quality producers, writers and players to work with her. go get'em gurl!

dana andrews - about a girl (nirvana)
this should be the theme song for a new fall show that should be called "revenge of the disturbed hillbilly". no disrespect to dana, i too am from hillbilly territory! :-) i think she nailed it tonight.

patrice pike - some remedy (black crows)
if i remember correctly, this was the girl that i thought was trying too hard with her performance the first week. since then she seems to have had lost more and more energy every week. she was pleading for remedy and really, if she'd come knocking on my door for it, i'd doubt she was really in need of anything other than a hello. what happened?

toby rand - white wedding ( billy idol)
booya? seriously? *shudder* maybe they still say that in australia.... i hate to say this, because i really like toby - but that came off a teeny tiny bit like a cover act, rather than just owning it. his voice is so strong though...

magni - heros (david bowie)
one of the best songs ever. it's pretty tough to mess this one up and thankfully magni didn't. i don't know if we need to see him on the stage with a guitar though. he moves much better without it and i think he could of translated the song just a bit better sans axe.

ryan star - i alone (live)
i liked this so much more than anything he's done for us yet - but i just can't shake the feeling that he's a stockbroker on sabbatical.

jill gioia - brown sugar (the rolling stones)
way too obvious with the sexy posturing. and her backup vocalist drowned her out in the mix. wow. i didn't think anything would drown out this woman's screetching. i used to like her a lot more than i have the past few weeks. i'm ready to see her go home.

phil ritchie - one headlight (jakob dylan)
send him home. he's WAY too full of himself, and not in any kind of way that he can back it up with any goods. i'm tired of his bobble head performances. (and apparently so are the band! lol! scary this parroting i'm doing. i'm starting to feel like a cover-reviewer)

dilanah - time after time (cyndi lauper)
pretty pretty song delivered by a somewhat scary woman. it worked. of course it did. she knows the exact right moments to allow the tension to build and where to let it out. that can't be taught.

josh logan - no rain ( blind melon)
speaking of parroting - josh just attempted to deliver a carbon copy of shannon hoon's distinctive vocals. attempted. and if you're going to do an audience sing along, please make sure the audience is actually singing along first. no no no no.

storm large - anything anything (dramarama)
i'm a storm gurl. yes i am. but i think the song sang her a little bit on this one. regardless, it was a great song to be grabbed by the neck and drug around the stage by stormy. can i see it again? :-)

in my wanderings last week i found an mp3 blog that has been including most of the tracks from the performance show. weeeee! go to the jeepney diaries and scroll down down down.....

my picks for the bottom three? patrice. josh. phil. who's going home? could be any one of them, but it may be curtains for josh. i'd say patrice, but i doubt we'll see two girls go home in a row so soon.

blistering heat and feet

2006-07-20T20:59:00.000-04:00

we've had several days of hideous hot and humid weather here in toronto. if the sun isn't beating down on you, you feel as though you are wading through hot butter. urgh. oh, did you want to sleep comfortably at night? not so fast, you great un-air conditioned masses.

and most alarming of all - last friday i heard the summer's first cicada. normally those suckers don't come out until the august long weekend. just goes to show that nature thinks it's pretty freakin' hot too.

but what is amazing about the hot weather is that you can wear girly skirts and beautiful shoes. after getting over my summer cold, i decided it was time to christen the new gorgeous shoes i'd picked up on an end-of-season sale just before the plague hit me. are these not just amazing? so so pretty! and they made me so tall and feminine. when you're 5'4" it's nice to pretend you're 5"8. ack! that's right, 4" heels.

as i left the apartment, i had a vision of me placing a pair of comfortable shoes in a bag and bringing those along - just in case. you never know how new shoes are going to treat you (normally not well). throwing caution to the wind ("i'm tall! i'm wearing a flirty skirt! look at my shoes!") i left without the sensible gear.

what a mistake. by the time i got off of the subway downtown i was feeling like i was walking a bit like one of the chinese women who'd been through a deforming foot binding. as i clomped my way through the underground i could hear a definite change in my gait. where previously i was tap-tap-tapping along, now i was whap-tap-whap-tapping along. and wondering if i'd ever seen the grocery store selling flip-flops. the answer, in case you were wondering, was"no". but being a somewhat/sometimes bright girl, i picked up a box of band-aids (55 & assorted sizes).

regardless, men held doors open for me twice as i made my way to work. i like to think it was because i was tall and wearing a flirty skirt and had empowering shoes on - but in retrospect, it may just of been because they saw me trying not to limp through doorways. they could very well of been thinking, "poor poor girl, why'd she go out without her cane?".

i walk the 10 minutes to work and at this point just dying to sit at my desk and take of my shoes and plaster my feet with band-aids. which i do. which is a good plan, until i need to use the washroom. which meant i needed to put the evil shoes back on. i do my best and wander on over to the loo and a gay co-worker sees me and says, "work it girl! you look amazing today!". i smile, thank him and then lean against the door and say i'm about to cry. immediately understanding the look in my eye in the way only a gay man or another female would, he looked down at my feet and said, "ooh, new shoes. ouch. if it's any consolation, you look great."

i could go on in a similar vein, but i think we all get the picture. i ended up having to cancel a lunch with another co-worker. i had to tell her why i needed to postpone our club monaco trip. being an amazing person, on her way back from lunch, she went to a dollar store and picked up a pair of flip flops for me to wear the rest of the day. prior to the gift of comfortable shoes, i was convinced i'd need to take a cab home. the cab would of cost about $25.00. washing out the point of buying those death-trap shoes on sale.

so there i am wearing an orange skirt and new cheap PINK flip flops. there was some orange on the sole of the shoes (in a vague attempt to match, i guess) but let's not be fooled. they were bubble-gum pink. quite a bit less fabulous than the enzo angiolini's i was wearing earlier in the day. i'm sorry, let me revise - i wasn't so much as wearing them as having my feet turned into minute steaks in them.

regardless - i wore those flip flops home, the pretty new shoes in a bag by my side. and trust me - i did my level best to muster all the glamour of a fashion forward five-year-old as i walked back down the street.

[music david usher, "the music"]

rockstar : supernova : week three

2006-07-18T23:58:00.000-04:00

so after spending the week looking forward to this show i had to miss the first broadcast of it - seems my kitten artemis had decided to tear out all but one of her stitches during the day. so after an emergency trip to the vet and ordering pizza - i finally got to sit down with the taped show. gotta love the rogers pvr. i guess it's the canadian equivilent to the almighty tivo. but really, who knows (or cares).

patrice - helter skelter
apparently she had to FIGHT to get this song. ok. great. but i didn't see as much of that passion in her performance as i saw in the clips showing the 'debate' between jill and patrice.

josh - come as you are
i don't think i'm able to write about this performance. i just don't get josh as a performer. then again - it's not my band, is it? if supernova wants this grinning annoyance to front their band - that's their business. kurt - i'm sorry if you saw that performance from wherever it is you are now.

storm - just what i needed
what i just adore about storm is that she can sing pretty and clean and she can also deliver a dirty performance like this. messy but polished. and this woman's eyes seem to nearly sing the songs themselves. so expressive.

lukas - let's spend the night together
fucking unbelievable. seriously - where can i buy these tracks? lukas' and dilanah's performances and abilty are simply millions of miles above anyone else on this show (storm and magni are the closest out of everyone else). it's almost not fair to have those two compete against everyone else.

jill - all right now
damn this girl can sing. and she so obviously loves doing what she does. she'll be around for a while.

ryan star - fortunate son
right from the beginning his performances have bugged me. he gives off he aura that he believes he's the real deal - it's just too bad that he doesn't give real deal performances. i don't actually believe that he's a musician - something just smacks false.

phil - white rabbit (w/ jason newsted)
this was the best of phil to date. he really gave a great performance, perhaps it was the extra jolt he got from actually performing with such a distinctive bassist. it was so nice to see/hear that metallica thing.... wow. ok - i admit, i was a little distracted. ok... maybe i liked it more because of jason.

dana - it's my life
i really want this girl to do better. she has a great voice and i can see her eventually developing a great stage presence, but right now i just see her trying to be something that she's not 100% sure of. and was this song just in the wrong key for her, or what?

toby - runaway train
so so sad to see this performance. way way way to straight. couldn't he of been messy and quirked this up a little? he should of. but i think his performance was best summed up by my roomie : "he reminds me of charlie's older uncle". you know, charlie from lost... anyway... i started cackling madly.

magni - plush
one of my favourite songs ever and he didn't make me cringe! ;-> i'm half tempted to make an attempt to find some music from his band in iceland. he has attitude, vocal chops, rockstar delivery and he still makes me want to hug him like a teddy bear.

zayra - everybody hurts
i hope she stays on this show for a very long time - top 6 at least. and then when she finally gets asked to leave, i will be the first one on line to buy her album. i LOVE this woman's voice and style. i want more and more and more of her.

jenny - drive
oh good god. i'm sorry. this sucked for supernova - did anyone happen to catch the look on poor jason newsted's face mid-way through? he looked utterly bewildered. and the lilith fair comment was exactly what i was thinking. does she want this gig?

dilanah - zombie
the way she moves across the stage is so otherworldy, as is her command of the stage and every song she takes on. i've heard other singers attempt to deliver the song 'zombie' and fail to even match a drop of dolores o'riordon's passion. not our dilanah. she seemed to wring new emotion out of that powerful song.

if you want even more rockstar : supernova to tide you over until the elimination show tomorrow - check out this good review.

he doesn't look a thing like jesus

2006-07-14T20:10:00.000-04:00

my kitten artemis is spending her second night at the vet's. i miss her. she was spayed this morning and my fabu vet sent me a picture of her in "recovery" immediately post-surgery. now that's a good vet! it's almost like she wanted to prove that they still had the kitten. then again, considering the fact that 2 of my three cats had to be put to sleep in that clinic.... maybe they weren't so far off the mark to send me the picture.

and in exciting 'fuck you' news - turns out that a european court has determined that the song bmg merger should not have been authorized to proceed when it did. apparently they needed to provide more information before the merge was to be green-lit. then again - perhaps the merge would of never happened.

*le sigh* and then i'd still be working at the best job in the whole freakin' world. but instead i'm working at a crappy job for crappy pay. don't think i'm not looking for something that lets me plug my brain in a bit more. don't think it for a moment. regardless, seems like good news for the peeps at warner and emi. this court finding may just delay their proposed merger (once again).

still reeling over the purchase of chum tv by bell globemedia. i was going to go snooping around for a job on the chum tv side of things. i almost think it's not worth it right now. even if i did get a job there, who wants to go through a merger again, even if it is a "friendly" takeover bid. friendly... almost makes it sound like there will be face-painters and balloon animals and lollipops.

at long last there is new the killers music out! i love the song - but am not sure about it as a first single. you can have it rampage madly through your own brain by going to their myspace or hitting their website. yey for the killers! i miss the fun brandan flowers bitchery in the media.

and to kick off a fun weekend with the downstairs neighbours - the bastard nsf'd a cheque on me. urgh. he owed me 2 months of rent on the garage he's renting from me (it came with my apartment and i don't need it, yey for me!) and he freaking bounced the cheque. adding to the fun - my bank charged me $7.00 for the pleasure. it's a good thing for him that i don't have his phone number on hand. he would of gotten a slightly pissy and fairly condescending message from me. i'll remember to play nice when i go knocking on his door looking for cash.

[music | the killers, "when you were young"]

swollen head

2006-07-12T13:43:00.000-04:00

after fleeing work late in the afternoon yesterday, actually, it wasn't fleeing so much as lurching, i ended up staying at home today. i can't afford to take all these days off - but really, am i going to drag myself to work with a bad flu/cold/whatever in the pouring rain?

then i find that chum ltd (home to citytv and the much music family) is being bought out by Bell Globemedia (CTV, MTV Canada, TSN and others). wow. this is a giant move in broadcasting. on on a personal note - all of a sudden not getting an interview for the job at MTV that i would of been perfect for doesn't matter anymore. who needs another merger mess right now? not me.

can you imagine it? a world without much music? they may have been swarmy and missed the point more than three-quarters of the time, but at least they weren't from the land of dorks (CTV, in case you're wondering). i hope that we don't lose city tv here in toronto though - i'd miss my cp24 for quick local news. chum hasn't commented yet - so this might still be speculation - then again, no one to be the one taken over.

last night was the 2nd installment of the live show for rockstar : supernova. and even though i could barely raise my head off of the back of the sofa, here are my thoughs - for what it's worth.

magni - my generation
interacted with the house band, less ego-driven gimmicks and better audience relations. he looked and sounded better than he did last week. but i don't think the band digs him.

jenny galt - tainted love
i actually *heart* this song and was really curious to see what she was going to do with it. she sang well her voice was not nearly as timid as it was last week. i think the performance was still a little dull, she needs to find a way to deliver a performance for this show. and what a strange comment by tommy lee at the end - telling her to go eat because she looked hungry.

jill gioia - violet
holy fuck. are you kidding me? are you going to apply for an impersonator job when you get booted. her performance was way too faithful to courtney love. and the band called her out on it. poor jill. this may just spell her doom.

zayra alvarez - you really got me
i can not say enough about this girl. she is an amazing performer who so far has delivered two very different and phenomenal performances, but i just don't know WHY she's on this show. she needs to find a producer to work with on her strange and quirky neo-gothic debut.

chris - take me out
he seemed to yell in the same tone constantly. i don't know if there's enough depth there. i found this performance boring and unfortunately, so did the supernova-ites.

dilanah - ring of fire
this woman is still the obvious winner, in my opinion. she took this powerful song and switched it up completely and made something all together new. looking like the high priestess of the hellfire club she delivered her song in a way that left no room for criticism. it was like a gothic wet dream meeting a snake charmer.

josh - arms wide open
stop smiling! just stop it! i have been known to hate-on creed and scott stapp before, but this performance made me wish i was listening to creed's version. for those that know me - that says all i need to say.

phil ritchie - eyes wide open
the band is all over this guy. they lurve him. and i don't know why. i think he's a generic radio singer - but then again, if he's a generic singer guy, he should garner some play for supernova, especially in the states. me - i just don't get it.

storm large - surrender
great energy and a very strong voice. i think dave navarro gave her some great advice when he told her she needed to have character, not be a character. hopefully she takes this to heart.

patrice pike - heart shaped box
seeing her sit in the stands, i honestly didn't know who she was. did her look change from last week? or was she that forgettable? i seem to recall that last week gilby clarke told her that she seemed to be the only one who really wanted the job. regardless, her performance this week did not connect for me.

lukas rossi - don't panic
not being a coldplay person, i had no idea what this song was going to be, but was sure i'd recognize it when it started. not only did i not recognize it, but i actually think i'd buy lukas' version of this song. i think the band put another coldplay song in the list this week just to see who'd be dumb enough to take it after their lesson of "song choice is king". in someone else's hands this could of been certain doom. for lukas, it was like icing on the cake left over from last week.

ryan star - jumpin' jack flash
seeing him standing in the wings and hearing brooke burke say he was going to sing 'jumpin jack flash' i said aloud, "it's gonna be like a wedding." and it was. urgh. and he was dull and awkward on stage to boot.

dana - born to be wild
this girl has a fucking amazing voice, so incredible. but, watching her this week was painful. it was hard to watch her mince about like a sex-kitten. she needs to figure it out - but i think with some guidance - she will.

toby - somebody told me
someone did this song last season and just sucked. this guy did not suck and actually was able to pull it off. but i kept wishing that he'd done more of an industrial feel to his arrangement. it would of been killer with his voice.

the result show runs tonight. from their comments - i think supernova is leading the audience to put chris in the bottom three again and i think he'll be heading home - unless someone does some bone-head move like duran duran again, or wears another wedding dress.

[music | pink floyd, "wish you were here"]

tempt not yon hell-cat

2006-07-11T13:29:00.000-04:00

i woke up on the weekend only to discover that i have a somehow caught the dreaded summer cold. it began with with razor blade swallowing, moved on to congestion and aching kidneys/gums and is now settling nicely into the 'plugged ears' portion of our game.

needless to say, work seems to be taking an eternity to get through. in honour of this - i thought i'd post a few little distractions.

a friend of mine sent this to me ages ago - but am just now getting around posting it. someone has taken clips from various george w. speaches and made him sing u2's "sunday bloody sunday". it's nothing short of brilliant. watch and be amazed.

and of course - this is just too hideous for words. almost too hideous for the eyes too. the one (and thankfully only) huff.

bringing me to the end of my lunch hour - please be entertained by making fiends. it's several short flash cartoons about a girl named charolotte and a girl named vendetta. vendetta makes fiends.... you have to watch them to understand. it's made by the same person who did my beloved muffinfilms several years ago. long live creativity.

[music | keane, "is it any wonder?"]

cubical hell

2006-07-06T12:38:00.000-04:00

i honestly swear that this was done by someone in my office. it is nearly a perfect description of my current employment situation.

[music | the killers, "andy you're a star"]

rockstar : supernova

2006-07-06T02:33:00.000-04:00

i have to say it - the name blows. supernova? c'mon. you'd think those burnouts would be able to think of something better to name their mega-super-fantabulous-lordsoftheuniverse-group other than some tired re-tread of an vaguely 80's-sounding phrase. then again, what is this series other than finding musicians from the 80's a new singer boy/gurl for the, er, 2000's. (i refuse to type the oo's. it just looks odd. bring on 2010!

but i digress. get used to it. last summer i had great fun blogging about the shows and my take on the performances. so in my own sad attempt to recapture the past (except in my case, it's only 12 months ago, not 12+ years ago) please find my thoughts and ramblings forthwith.

it was nice to see dave navarro back. these days he comes off more like a giant care-bear than a guitar-god, but i can hardly hold it against him. we'll need the balance with tommy lee sitting next to him on ye ole rockstar sofa. and brooke burke was dressed in some strange metallic dishrags. ala kiera knightly, however, brooke looks healthy, even if her hair is a tad over-done.

and the new kiddies, even though some of them look a bit riper than kindergarten. ;-)

storm large - pinball wizard
yes, she claims that's her real name. good for her. bad for her parents. but she held this song together very very well. she'll be around for a long time.

ryan star - iris
oh my good gods. i was taking short notes with a pen and paper (so i could remember names and songs for blogging later) and i had to stop myself from jamming my pen into my ear drum. my only note about this guy was, "generic radio singer".

toby rand - knocking on heaven's door
and of course this song is a classic. and of course this aussie decided to go accoustic with it. and of course it was predictable, but his voice had something really special to it. please pick something a little more out there next week.

patrice pike - somebody to love
i wanted to like her, but she seemed a bit, well, i don't know. a bit like she was trying a bit too hard to be one of the boys. however, the band told her that she seemed like she really wanted the job. so i guess maybe they are looking for a boy-singer. or at least a gurl who's not gurrly.

magni - satisfaction.
poor little icelandic buddy. his voice was deep and growly, quite different from the boy-men filling the rest of the show, but his performance wasn't really quite rock. it was ok, but a bit too cheesy and ego-rific. if he sticks around, he may improve if he's a fast study.

zayra - bring me to life
this girl is so not for this band, but she was utterly and completely captivating. her voice isn't nearly as strong as anyone else's, but i think she'd be better suited to front her own band. and better off singing songs that don't push her vocal cords quite as much. then again, if kelly clarkson can have a career with her crappy voice - this girl can too.

jenny galt - generic nickelback song (missed the title, not that it matters, they all sound the same)
again, so not right for this band. my notes for her read, "chick rock, can't sing and skirt is too short". i'm sorry vancouver. it's just not going to happen.

josh logan - she talks to angels
urh. yuck. find him a christian rock band to smile in front of.

matt hopper - yellow
for a man, has a very pretty and nice voice - but i'm thinking this is the extent of his range. i don't think he can dirty it up for the mighty supernova. (nope, still don't like the name)

dilana - lithium.
done. she's perfect. insane, but perfect. it will be interesting to see if she stays strong or fades quickly and becomes tiresome. off the top of the show, it seems like the gig is either hers or lukas' - but we haven't gotten to him yet....

dana andrews - i'm the only one
is it just me, or did that song get sung every other week last season. or was it just that every other song that dana johnson (is that her name?) did sounded like that? i really really dug this girl's voice - but i have a feeling this might all she can do.

phil ritchie - cult of personality
ok. not great, but ok. something about him reminded me of my friend frank mixed with scott weiland. random, i know.

jill gioni - piece of my heart
another case of, "wasn't this song done to death last year"? i hope dana and jill and patrice can all do something other than what they did this week. otherwise you'll see a fast exit by the females.
chris pierson - roxanne
poor bastard. how do you do that song? apparently not like he did it. i think he can do A LOT more than what he showed tonight, but i'm worried he may get an early boot.

lukas rossi - rebel yell
easily my favourite cover of the night. and easily the most developed performer of the night. hands down. lukas has been kicking around toronto for years, has a major publisher behind him and a big-time record producer helping him out. this is all good. if supernova doesn't happen for him - this will just bring it all to a boil for him. go lukas! :-)

[music | rayna, "unnamed angel"]

one down, and not in a good way

2006-06-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

yeah. so. i didn't get the job. it's still not official, coz the fuckers haven't called me yet - but i've heard through some pretty reliable sources that someone who also used to work for them has just left his current gig. i'll bet you all a million dollars that he got the job. of course he did. so now their a&r department is full of men. and entire department of guys. how lame is that? not that i have anything against men - but c'mon - a little gender diversity isn't a bad thing....

le sigh. i'm now back to wondering what that hell went wrong in my life. why can i not get the things i want? this industry really blows. what a mistake it was to get into it. and then shame on me, get BACK into it. i had my chance to leave. but now i'm kind of stuck. with no prospects other than my current dead-boring one-task a day gig. and that's worth a really big le sigh.

so. this leaves me with one big want now.

no more split focus. all energies are now on the oilers winning the stanley cup. game 6 in edmonton goes tonight at 8:00 est. i'm nervous and anxious for them. in articles they say they are calm - good for them - it's because i'm taking up all the nervious energy for them!

thought i'd post a few pictures of my trip to edmonton for game 4. enjoy, or not.

this is currently my desktop image. pretty cool.

an essential part of any game-day expeience is getting there ontime for the pre-game skate. so so exciting!

a few hours before the puck dropped, cbc was getting some footage. my dad's in this picture! and no - my dad is not don cherry.

an essay on wanting

2006-06-14T19:19:00.000-04:00

my gods. i want two things very very badly right now.
1 - an a&r job
2 - the oilers to win the stanley cup

the whole sordid saga of my job interview is too tedious to put here. briefly... i had an interview. it went well. i have done the job before and i seem to be a natural no-brainer to hire. that being said, this industry is never one to go with brains. if you know what i mean. i was promised that i'd be 'hearing from them very soon'. then i got a return message to my thank-you for the interview email telling me they would make a decision by the following week.

by mid-week i was wound tighter than a (i don't know, insert metaphor of your liking here) and making myself ill over it. i sent another quick email asking them for a timeline on their decision and told them again how excited i was by the opportunity that they have to offer... blah blah blah. by the friday i still hadn't heard from them and i was leaving toronto on the saturday not to be back until the following wednesday. not wanting to send them another note so soon, i decided to send my contact info to the vp of hr. she sent me back an email telling me she 'believed' that they had made a decision to hire from within but that she still hadn't heard from them either.

i was bummed. what a way to go off to edmonton in an attempt to cheer on the oilers. so so bummed.

anyway - i'm back now, but my sources at the company say that an annoucement has not yet been made about the new hire. and i still haven't heard anything at all from the guys i interviewed with. should i rekindle my dying spark of hope? (ok, let's be serious - it wasn't a dying spark. it was dead. as a door nail. done. over. finished. boo.) i am starting to have a little flicker of hope that the game is still afoot. maybe it's still meant to be mine?

please?

and regarding my other want - the oilers play the hurricanes tonight at 8:00pm. if we can win this one, we go back to edmonton. the oilers have come too far to have their season end tonight. GO OILERS GO!

i'll be the crazed person yelling at her tv at the top of her lungs tonight.

so much wanting. please give me a little satisfaction.

[music | editors, "munich"]

past | present | future

2006-06-01T20:13:00.000-04:00

a friend of mine scolded me for abandoning ye ole blog. i don't know if it was more the fact that these pages are languishing away - or the fact i left off with an entry about paris hilton. regardless - i think those who aren't even updating their own blog shouldn't be too smug!

gainful employment has cut down on my blogging time. that and my seemingly ever-increasing obsession with myspace. regardless - much has happened. not the least of which involves me going on a job interview. a job interview for a job i really really really really really really want. how do i know this with such certainty? well, you see, it's a job i had up until a year and a half ago. it was the best job in the world. seriously. i ended up getting laid off in a merger and now the person they decided to keep instead of me has taken a more senior job at another company. opening the door for me once more.

going into too many details may just jinx the damned thing - so i will leave it at a request for anyone still reading this poor neglected page to send some serious luck and positive energy my way. pretty please?

also - i've been pretty much a shut-in for the duration of the stanley cup playoffs. i grew up just west of edmonton and in edmonton you watch hockey. watch hockey and shop in a giant eyesore of a mall. when i wasn't killing time in the mall or shutting myself away in the basement to listen to music, i was watching hockey. as a result - i am still a hardcore oiler fan. and my boys are 4 wins away from bringing home the stanely cup once more! the last time they won it was in 1990 - the year i moved to toronto. it's been a while.

why am i telling you this? how about because i am going to GAME THREE OF THE STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS. yes, indeed. june 10th in edmonton. i fly out to edmonton in the morning and come back on the following tuesday. if luck is on my side the oilers will sweep the cup and i'll be returning to toronto as a very giddy oiler-gurl.

i'm going to try updating this forsaken page a little more frequently. and i hope i can update it soon with news about my new job and that the stanley cup is in canada once more.

[music | snow patrol, "chasing cars"]

2006-04-22T22:34:00.000-04:00

mother theresa = paris hilton

2006-04-04T12:34:00.000-04:00

paris hilton is going to be asked to portray the late mother theresa in a film.

i don't know... i have no words.

[music | editors, "munich"]

things i learned today

2006-04-03T18:24:00.000-04:00

today i learned that my hero of the day is kardinal offishall. i've never bought one of his albums and am not a fan (he just doesn't do the type of music i appreciate) but i read an interview with him where he said he'd never attend another juno awards again and gave the reasons why. read it. it's good.

i decided to work from home today - it's the best thing about working giving you a laptop. however, while working at home i've discovered that either the wireless router is beginning to cack out (which i don't think is the case) or that the outlet i've plugged the thing into isn't great. several times it turned itself off on it's own. so annoying to have to get up, unplug it, wait a few moments, plug it back in, turn the modem off and wait for the whole works to reboot itself. *whine* technology will be the death of us. or at least of me. i'd hate to speak for you.

what else did i learn today? that when lightening hits right above your house - that also plays havoc with the router.

i learned that the downstairs neighbour has reddish-brownish hair. he knocked on the door and gave me an envelope with money in it. not randomly or anything - he's paying for the use of the storage shed in the back. it's a really cute brick building that was once a homing pigeon loft (coop? covey? dovecote?) and in more recent years, a car garage. the house my apartment is in was built in 1905. more than 100 years old... i don't know enough about renovating older homes, but i think that through the years, the people renovating either kept original elements (fireplace mantle, wooden doors with skeleton key locks, mouldings and trim) or did a good job at restoring things.

i learned that 5 cups of coffee keep me in the bathroom most of the day. actually, i didn't just learn that - i've known it for quite sometime now!

i learned that there are ignorant people out there. (knew this too, but still). some idiots with nothing better to do decided to knock over more than 200 hundred tombstones in a cemetery in toronto's west end. the images on the news are really quite disturubing. why would someone do this?

and i also learned that the ttc monthly metropass is going up again. city council approved the hike last week and wasting no time, the ttc put it into play this past weekend. just in time for my april pass to be more money. lovely. it now costs 99.75 for a monthly pass. wow. still cheaper than a car - but i don't see the service getting any better!

i hope that i learn less tomorrow. *wink*

[music | editors, "bullets"]

return of golb

2006-04-02T21:38:00.000-04:00

yeah, i know, probably a million other fallen bloggers have used that subject line before i have.... do i look concerned? for the record, i don't, i kind of look bored and disinterested. but it may only be the juno awards i just sat through.

why did i sit thought it, i'm not sure - other than it's the industry i work in and that i haven't missed watching (or being at) one since i was about 10 years old. it's kinda a thing i do. however, the show and awards themselves seem to have become increasingly out of touch with music. it's much more about the politics of the labels and now with CTV televising the damn thing - it's much more about the 3 or 4 acts that CTV decides to shove down our throats (not the least of which are from camp canadian idol). whatever, i actually worked through the awards and left it as an annoying backdrop.

one last thing... did the black eyed peas become canadian citizens and i just didn't notice it? why the hell else would they perform at evey canadian event over the last year? (mmva's, the grey cup and now the junos). strange and somewhat annoying. it's almost like how CTV likes to slut it up with the rolling stones and somehow managed to include a pre-recorded clip from them this year.

for the past while, my cat raja graced this page... he still does, but you have to scroll down further. lots has happened since he left us. another kitten has been adopted. we adopted a female kitten, but as she's growing, she developing quite a bit of gear in the back. i think our she is a he. and she's named after a goddess - artemis. if she really is a boy, we'll be calling him neptune. either way - the kitten is cute.

zelda and neptune/artemis in the new apartment

zelda in the old apartment... the new place has NO carpeting - rejoice!

artemis/neptune in box-world (aka my new place)

hat else is new... i've moved to a new apartment in a cooler location that i've lived for a few years (or ever, actually). it's a big place and now there are still boxes galore kicking about. boxes and not enough furniture. you know how it goes. best bit... it has a dishwasher. how slothy is it to be able to just rinse dishes and throw them in a box under the counter and not have to see/deal with the dishes until they're clean. quite slothy.

a little side-story about the whole needing to move because i was evicted from the old place. we were told that "tom will be using the apartment". logically, the assumption was made that the landlording-overlords were splitting up and the male portion was moving out. well, guess again. the scummy liars that they are - they evicted us (not quite legally, truth be told) to move tom's business into my old apartment. you see, tom runs a little record label and it all appearances seem to indicate that he can't pay rent at his business location anymore. so they evicted me and my roomie for their stupid little record label. not that i'm bitter or anything - but if anyone out there was thinking of supporting holly cole or kim mitchell - don't. you'll just be supporting the enemy. jerks.

i still have a job... it's quite nice to have that security. i'm bored to tears most days there - but it's a start. for the first month i was actually very entertained. i was able to come up with a project plan, content sketch and site map for the re-vamping of the company's website. the site hasn't had a new design for more than 8 years (i'm certain) and badly needs it. other than that - my job has been pretty dull. it's ok. they pay me. and i have a work laptop. could be worse.

lots and lots of other things have happened - some of them even interesting - but this is what happens when you don't blog every day - you forget the stuff!

here's hoping i'm back sooner than the autumn!

[music | stellastarr*, "my coco"]

raja-bean

2006-02-15T20:28:00.000-05:00

raja at his regal best

i can't believe that only 6 months from the time we lost our dear cat nes, that we have now lost her big brother and living teddy bear, raja.

we were with him today as the vet helped him ease into the long catnap. may he be basking in eternal sunbeams tonight. with great piles of cat nip and the company of his other cat family - nes and boris.

beanie-baby, i miss you. thank you.

sporting one of his, 'i'm so much better than you' expressions

ready for your extreme close-up?

chillin on the sofa

no one is pround of this shot - but it just had to be included! raja in his rolly-polly prime

a day in death valley

2006-02-01T00:21:00.000-05:00

as promised, i ended up dragging my dad to death valley. we both love, love, loved the trip - even though it took the entire day to get there and back. it ended up being a 14.5 hour trip in the car. i got up at 5:00am and we hit the road by 6:20am and got back in the house by 9:00pm. there were a couple of walks to sites within the park that i wanted to do - but realistically, we just did not have the time. as much as i am a city girl, i am a nature-lover at heart and i am always ever-so-happy to explore areas i've never been before. so, i took the chance to wring as much nature as i could out of this inhospitable desert.

a little primer on death valley : it is the lowest point in the western hemisphere (282 feet below sea level). it is also one of the hottest places on earth. in the summer, temperatures routinely hit 120F (no idea what it is in celsius, but damn, doesn't 120F sound hot????) with the ground temperature once being measured at 201F. urgh. basically - you can die here. that message was probably the most advertised in park information. you can die here and many have before you.

the park that holds death valley is also the largest park in america and it apparently got it's name from some gold prospectors in 1849. seems they tried to take a shortcut through the desert to make it to the gold rush that was happening on california's coast. needless to say, their shortcut didn't end up being a good bet. hence the name.

as always, pictures tell a better story than i.... so..... keep on looking down...

here we are with the devil's golf course (a rock salt field. you wouldn't belive how hard and sharp and hurty salt can be).

if you turn around at the devil's golf course you will see this flat field of salt, doing it's best snow imitation.

these are some incredible red hills. they look spray painted - but they're not.

this is the artist's palette. unfortunatley, the camera didn't capture the amazing colours - we have reds, yellows, greens, turquoise, violet, mauve, chocolate and gold all in this one group of stone.

these formations were seen at one of the many look-out points in the park. stunning in person and pretty cool here too!

just to prove that there are living things in the valley i thought i'd include a few things that aren't rock or mineral. i saw this little lizard during one of my mini-walks. he was pretty good at staying as still as the stone he stood on. these yellow flowers (they're called 'golden daisy', believe the name or not) are just starting to bloom throughout the park. and finally, no visit to death valley would be complete without seeing one of the major scavenger birds, the raven.

[music | the doors, "roadhouse blues"]

a canadian in california

2006-01-29T19:31:00.000-05:00

it's true... i am a canadian through and through. things i miss are little, but meaningful...

i miss being able to buy tropicana juice in the charming faux milk carton that it comes in at home. here, it comes in a big ole jug. no charm what-so-ever.

i miss good cheddar. the brand-name stuff here is practically worse than the no-name stuff you can buy at price chopper.

i miss celsius temperatures. i never know what the bleeding temperature is here. 75F. what the fuck is 75F? argh. i am left with no other option than asking my parents to convert the temperature into something that makes sense to me. fyi, 75F is about 24C. not too freakin' bad... :)

i miss cp24. when i visit alberta during the holidays, it is somehow comforting to be able to turn on the 24-hour toronto news network and know that you can be up to date on all the shootings and random moronic goings-on that make toronto my quirky little home. i feel oddly out of touch with toronto right now.

i miss seeing bottles with mL measurements instead of a bizarre mixture of fluid oz and pints. (1 pint & 0.9 fluid oz = 0.5 litre). why the american's don't just join the rest of the world and go metric... i do not know. i actually have some theories, but i don't want to be kicked out of california before i come home on thursday...

i miss canadian accents! i can only guess it's a canadian accent because absolutely no one down here doesn't sound like they have a rampant american drawl. no one.

i miss the haughty cold manner of the folk at home. i miss being able to just scowl your way through the day without anyone acknowledging you. here everyone is just so damned friendly. don't they know that there's good scowling to be had?

there are good things here too....

you can buy starbucks beans in the grocery store.

they have salt and pepper flavoured chips (i thought you could only get those in the UK).

they have gorgeous palm trees, mountains, blue skies and wonderful swimming pools.

i am the youngest person in just about every place i go.

the l.a. times is a really great newspaper. the paper actually has journalisic articles and opinions - it really puts the toronto papers to shame.

the neighbours are so nice... when i mentioned i liked making fresh lemonade out of the lemons on the lemon trees, they began leaving bags of lemons on the patio table for me.

with that sort of treatment, who needs to scowl all of the time?

[music | david usher, "going home"]

night divides the day

2006-01-29T10:35:00.000-05:00

i really shouldn't get as excited as i did over breakfast at international house of pancakes.(signed pics of ice cube on the wall!!) sadly, it insists on being called "ihop" now. *sigh* for the uninitiated, it's a giant american chain of restaurants and it has yummy yummy pancakes and omelets. mmmm.... so far, it's been the best food i've had when i've been out to "dine" in palm springs. there has just got to be better food in america than the dry and abused and salty eggplant parmesana i had at tony's pasta mia (signed pics of sinatra on the wall!!), or the slimy veggie burger i had at coco's. (no signed pics on the wall, what's wrong with them, don't they understand where they are located??)

a few days ago my dad and i piled in the rental suv and drove our asses off to get to a place called the salton sea. the website, if you go to it, is far more impressive than the damned sea is itself. it took several hours of driving though the desert to come to a smelly stagnant body of water with an insane salt content (25% more salty than ocean water). apparently there are many many birds that come to this lake. i saw a bunch of gulls. what else can i tell you... uhm... the water is red.... seriously, it's red - i did not alter this picture.

the other thing i can tell you about the salton sea is that there were people camping there. why there? i do not know... it smelled, was hot and there was nothing much to see. and someone camping there once apparently does not care for president bush... this is a picture that i took in the loo. heehee. just so you know, i don't make it a habbit to pull out the old digital in the washrooms of the world.

the next day was spent in a more picturesque location.... the living desert in palm desert. it has a mini-zoo with giraffe's, cougars, zebra's and scary wild african dogs. there was something just so primal about them. i felt an uncomfortable thrill deep in my core when i looked at them. everything about them screamed predator. they moved very quickly and seemed to have an economy of motion that would lend itself well to a killing attack. *shiver* then last night as i was falling asleep i heard wild coyotes howling - which of course made me a little afraid of the african wild dogs! i just held my jim morrison book tighter!

i have also talked my dad into making the 5 hour drive up to death valley. i have no idea what we will see there, but ever since i was a little girl, i loved the name death valley. probably because it had the word death in it and i was always a touch morbid - still am. monday morning i'll be getting up at 5:00am and will be hauling my cookies several hours north. the thing i like about it the most is that my dad hasn't been there yet either. and when we go places he's been before he tends to want to re-create the last time he went (on the way to the salton sea, we stopped in a little dust-trap of a town called brawley, only because last time he went to the salton sea, he stopped in brawley. you get the picture.)

speaking of getting the picture - here's the latest installment of my photo-travel-log.

the very scary african wild dog. it was staring over at the gate. like it was trying to reason a way out.

the exhibit had 3 giraffe's and apparently we were lucky that these ones were so close to us. seems they like to hide behind some of the hills in their enclosure.

a huge part of the living desert was the cactus gardens... there were literally 100's of different types of cacti.

a simulated "oasis" of giant california fan palms. these trees had trunks about 3 feet wide and grew quite tall. the stuff you see that looks very much like shaggy mammoth fur is actually old palm fronds - which provides a lot of shade for those seeking refuge from the hot desert sun.

final picture tonight is of a female mountain cougar. between she and me was a glass barrier. she was really quite beautiful - i had no idea cougars' eyes bugged out quite so much.

[music | the doors, "love me two times"]

the west is the best

2006-01-25T23:44:00.000-05:00

so here i sit in palm springs. on an unsecured, un-password-protected, unknown wireless connection. heehee. guess i won't be doing any banking from this connection, will i?

after yesterday's panic for leaving for the airport on time, it was nice to be able to just sit on a couple of planes and think of nothing for several hours. nothing but the amazing and fascinating stephen davis biography of jim morrison that i've been reading. holy, unholy fascination. since beginning the book a few days ago, i have begun to become a doors fan. yes, me. a fan of the doors. after spending most of my life trying to avoid their music, i'm now downloading tracks from itunes at a frightening clip.

what a fucked up individual (jim, not me). he is reminding me a lot of kurt cobain. growing up when i did, i was much more aware of cobain's music and his demon genius. i also have a copy of his published journals (sorry, kurt, i know how much you would of hated that) and i have to say that the absolute messed-up havoc that pushed cobain seems to have also pushed morrison. it's hard to know which one was pushed harder or further.

i will say that it does seem that if people like kurt and jim didn't actually end up creating enduring music and art that they'd some of the biggest losers ever. then again - maybe their torment and addictions and bad behaviour were necessary to birth their creations.

anyway - after the journey across north america, i was happy to end up in joshua tree national park today. it's pretty big, pretty hot and literally full of joshua trees. the best part of the day was the search for "skull rock". i found a trail with a big-ass arrow on it pointing in a direction. we began to walk down the trail, assuming that after 10 minutes or so, we'd come to the rock shaped like a skull. well, we walked and walked and then walked some more. it was some very beautiful desert terrain to be walking through, but there was still no damned skull rock. we actually got to a bit of a dead end and decided to turn around and go back the way we came. thinking we'd come across this goddamn rock on the way back. nope. we just missed it... or so we thought. instead, right beside the highway there was skull rock. literally 10 steps in from the road. plainly visible. actually, it was just to the left of the big-assed arrow i mentioned above. heehee. i think my dad was a little regretful of the long walk under the very hot sun. oh well... i loved it!

taken as the plane was coming in to palm springs. come to think of it - this could very well be joshua tree national park!

part of the formation imaginatively called "jumbo rocks"

the joshua tree forest - you literally could look to your left and see these strange and twisted trees for miles and miles and miles.

a classic image of a classic joshua tree. it's a lot larger than you think it might be.

doesn't this look like the hand of a giant who is trying to climb to the top of this hill? it wasn't, just in case you were wondering...

the infamous (and obvious) skull rock.

[music | the doors, "the end"]

can i tell you two things?

2006-01-21T01:07:00.000-05:00

this is short but sweet as i'm tired as all-fuck.

1 - i got a full-time job. yey me. don't ask me what the job is... i really have no idea at the moment.

2 - i am going to palm springs on tuesday, jan 24 and not coming back to toronto until feb 2nd. i am SO going to the joshua tree national park. and i will come home with a picture of me by a joshua tree... just as it's decreed that every good u2 fan should do.

who knew that by the end of this week that not only would i score a great apartment - but that i would also score a job that will help me to actually PAY for said apartment. i didn't know. that's for certain.

k - going to sleep now.

yey me.

page 118

2006-01-19T15:06:00.000-05:00

i am reading alex garland's most recent work. the coma. it made me cry on the subway on my way home this afternoon. or maybe it was because the job that i was considered the "best candidate" for went to another person out of work place loyalty.

when will i not be "the outsider"? i thought all that gets sorted out after you leave highschool. guess not.

what's the passage that had me fighting back sobs?

"Long grass and black windows. A bit of rope hanging from a tree that once held the swing, whose wooden board had rotted away. A front path, where moss grew over broken concrete and dandelions pushed through the cracks."

i think i need to read cheerier material. and i probably need to be listening to cheerier music than depeche mode's mid-80's singles. it is a question of trust, indeed.

[music | depeche mode, "strangelove"]

living

2006-01-18T20:57:00.000-05:00

still around... just really don't have anything new to add to this space. work situation is still unresolved, however it's getting stupider by the moment. i'm told i'm the best candidate but that they're offering the position to a person who's been at the company for eons to show loyalty. yey. i think 99.99% of companies out there don't have any sort of demonstrable loyalty to their slaves, er employees. i somehow have managed to find the 00.01% of companies that actually seems to have some sort of bizarre loyalty to their long-time suffering staff.

that's all fine and well - but still leaves me without. there is still a chance that the person won't accept the job. she's thinking about it. she's also been offered a carrot for later this summer and an even bigger carrot this autumn - but only if she stays in here current role.

i know. it's fucked.

and i still am ready to book that flight to palm springs. it will cost my parents more to shell out to see me - but they are telling me that they still want me to come if i don't get the job. i fear that they should be preparing for a sad little muffin appearing at their poolside.

the bit of good news is that today a landlord accepted me and my roomie's application. as of march 15th i have a nice place to move into. i just hope that i can pay for it. *gulp*

we're going to see it again on saturday (and to hand over some cheques) and i should have better pictures then. until saturday, here's a sneak preview of my new place.

it's in the 2nd & 3rd floor of this house. much better than a mainfloor.

the view of the dining room from the kitchen. the room in the distance is the living room

this is the lovely living room. or, rather, it's half of it. the room is very very large. yey.

ok. that's it. i'll try to muster more cheer next time. i'm hoping it won't need to be false cheer & that i will be able to write here about my wonderful new job.

[music | the arcade fire, "rebellion (lies)"]

this is ourselves....

2006-01-11T00:12:00.000-05:00

the soundtrack of my days most recently has been queen and david bowie's track "under pressure". why? well, how about because it just fits.

" it's the terror of knowing what this world is about"

i had a chance to go on an all expenses-paid trip to palm springs, california sometime between january 23 and february 4. my parents have my aunt & uncle's time-share for two weeks and i have been invited down to lay by the pool. my parents said they would pay for the entire trip.

why wouldn't someone in my situation take this trip? well, how about because my potential new job, the one i don't even know the details of yet, the one that's been dangling in front of my nose since august, would probably be starting right around that time. and that's even IF i were to land that job.

i asked the big boss person if it would be a smart thing or a dumb thing for me to go away for a week at the end of january. she very diplomatically said it probably would be quite shit-timing and apologized that she couldn't tell me the details yet. so, i won't be booking a flight to sun-shiny california. *sigh* i so wanted to go. i could do with some palm trees and swimming pools right about now. i just hope i don't regret passing up a trip for the job i don't even have yet.

"watching some good friends screaming, 'let me out!'"

between the job search, the apartment search and the stapling of many many important pieces of paper with many many numbers on them - i just have been feeling the pressure. and today i cracked just a little bit. i thought i'd been holding up fine, but apparently i wasn't me normal cheery self at my hourly-wage place of employment. by the end of the day 3 separate people had asked me if i was ok. i guess my demeanor didn't fit with my words.

sample conversation :
random nice person popping up through the cubical wasteland : "hey jodi, how are you doing?"
me looking up from my calculator and great stacks of paper : "i'm good. how about you?"
random nice person : "oh, are you sure about that? you don't sound too good."
me : "oh, i'm just feeling the apartment blues. it's rough these days." (meanwhile, i'm thinking to myself, 'well, duh, i'm not doing good. i've soon to have no home and i'm doing some pretty menial tasks here.')

on the flip side of that, about an equal number of people told me they liked my shirt today. you got to look for the small positives!

"pray tomorrow takes me high high higher pressure on people people on streets"

and can i tell you about the apartment search. my roomie and i have been pretty adamant about what we will accept and what we won't. as soon as we realized we were being booted, we somewhat facetiously made a list of things that were "musts" for the new place. it included stuff like a fireplace, french doors, dishwasher, washer/dryer, gas stove, 2 large and equal sized bedrooms, a dining room, a living room a den (or more accurately, the cats' room), ttc accessible, access to the back-yard and the apartment should be on the 2nd and 3rd floor of a house with character. gosh, we're not asking for too much, are we? ;)

the fact is, we pretty nearly have all that stuff now (excluding the french doors, dishwasher and gas stove). it's hard to want to settle for less. then again, since 2006 seems to be a year of big change for me - maybe i should get used to living in a smaller, less luxurious place. i may have to settle for that - but why should my roomie. and she's the one with horseshoes up her ass. i told her the shoes needed to work a little bit harder these days!

over the past week the places we've seen have ranged from :
spacious (but with dirty carpeting, a scary-side door access and most alarmingly - bugs, ewww!)
to tiny (we saw a 2 bedrooms + den that really should be re-advertised as 1 small bedroom + living room & dining room)
to smelly (the place tonight smelled of stinky fried meat. guess it's not a good thing to check out places during the dinner hour.)
to really quite acceptable and nothing quite wrong with it (but still something wasn't right about it. i didn't get the warm-fuzzies and i couldn't see myself living in it)
to non-existent. well, the last one we didn't actually see - but the pictures were just stunning - as was the description. i thought that as soon as we saw it in person, that we'd love it and that the landlord would love us and let us take it. but it turns out that the current tenants gave notice and then took it back a few days later. jerks. so the great place went off the market until later this spring or early this summer. jerks. don't they know that they're in our apartment!

oh well... something is out there. i can feel it coming around the corner. just hope it's not a giant squid.

also - i defy anyone out there to walk down the street listening to madonna's "hung up" and not feel really good about themselves. it's my sure-fire fool-proof way to bring a little spring to my step these days. that and listening to live recordings of david usher shows. thank you david for all the many kindnesses you've done me.

[music franz ferdinand, "do you want to"]

feelin' da love

2006-01-05T18:15:00.000-05:00

after not being able to face the day yesterday - today had a much brighter sheen to it. my eternal dangling job lead came a little bit more solid today and i should know full details on monday or tuesday next week. i am the leading candidate, but will have to convince them that i would not be leaving the position any time soon. if that's the only stumbling block, i should be able to do a good job of convincing them that after the year of uncertainty i've had (laid off for a year and recently evicted from my apartment) that i will be looking to root somewhere so solidly that they'd have to set off plastique to get rid of me. i shall be like fleas on a dog. i shall evoke the power of the tree and just not move. even further than that, i will become like the moss and lichens which grow upon said trees. they will not shake me.

i just want a home! both to live in and to work in.

and since right now i'm doing hourly work for them, i did not expect to receive any money for the time when the office was closed for the christmas holidays. well guess again. they estimated how many hours i would of worked, had the office been open and paid me for them. i almost started crying. it was a totally unexpected and lovely surprise. yey. i'm getting teary just thinking about it again.

another lovely thing. i got a ride home from work with about 15 flattened boxes. time to start packing the non-essentials. my problem is that i have spent large portions of my life being a pack-rat. i loved to accumulate and hated to purge. i've gotten better in the past 5 years or so - but i think i may need to purge again. and i have so many books. so, so, so, so, so many books. and i can't bear to get rid of most of them. i will be day-tripping down to the local used bookshops to see if they will buy some, but i hate to sell something i may re-read. same goes for cd's. except i have A LOT i'd like to sell. been-there-and-will-never-do-that-again sort of stuff. *shudders*

and i also was forwarded a project manager job at a web development company. i hate web development and it's not my first choice - but it is a job and i have all the experience and qualifications they call for. not to mention that someone my roomie used to work with is currently a director at the company. that alone should give me an interview. but one can just never tell these days.

[music | franz ferdinand, "evil and a heathen"]

new beginnings

2006-01-04T14:18:00.000-05:00

i'm almost ashamed to be writing this here today... it's more not-so-hap-hap-happy news. i really am not a person who dwells on all the not nice stuff, but lately it just seems i'm getting that in spades... soooo....

on january 1st my landlords slipped a note under the door telling me that they need the place for 'personal use' no later than march 1st. that's right i've been evicted.

this is so strange and surreal. no job and now no place to live. i'm beginning to think that i have somehow slipped into someone elses' skin. i'd like my own back please. from a casual glance, i must seem like the most monumental fuck-up out there. i really am not a hideous beast. most people actually describe me as a 'nice' person. bus drivers always say hello to me. people in stores generally want to help me. i don't think i make a bad first impression, or second or third. but who knows. perhaps i am in a massive hallucination. maybe i'm severely mentally damaged and none of my friends and family have bothered to tell me i'm a little bit off. maybe there are no friends and family - maybe they are all in my head.... hmmmm....... must look into this.

all i know is that my current situation doesn't reflect who i am. then again, what image am i holding up against my current state? maybe that image is wrong. holy existential tangent.

the universe seems poised to do any of the following :
push me into a deep crevice. to provide me with untold opportunity and riches here in toronto. to move me to a beach in thailand or portugal.

lovely low-tide beach in portugal. wish i was here.

new beginnings for 2006. my life has been about quite a bit of change lately. i don't mind a calculated risk or an educated gamble... and i think i'm better at those than most... but now the universe seems to be demanding a complete tight rope routine from me. and i don't have time to look to see if there's a net. wish me luck!

[music | nine inch nails, "only"]

top 10 albums

2005-12-23T12:49:00.000-05:00

it's that time of year and i have fallen victim to the dreaded top 10 list as well. in no particular order....

1 - the beekeeper - tori amos
gorgeous tori, as usual. the album was built around the concept of female divinity and female archetypes. gorgeous.

2 - if god had curves - david usher
david's first album since his split from emi. a virtual songwriting clinic, his lyrics are becoming even more multi-layerd.

3 - pretty mess - bella
ordered this from the band after seeing a review of the disc on the sadly defunct music site - umbrella. it's been a disc i've listened to again and again.

4 - secrets of the lonely - chris koster
one of canada's most unsung talents. he is a true artist with epic songs, fantastical stage antics, the most interesting voice and the scruffiest hair.

5 - with teeth - nine inch nails
gotta give it to trent again.... thank you for continuing to make music that makes me feel.

6 - witching hour - ladytron
another one i just sorta stumbled across. dark electro pop... very evocative of joy division.

7 - set yourself on fire - stars
the montreal band that's actually a toronto band. once the dust settles on all the indie-hype surrounding montreal and toronto these days - i think this band will still be standing.

8 - surgery - the warlocks
it's just like surgery. admit me now.

9 -happenstance - rachael yamagata
this actually came out in mid-2004, but i only found it in december 2004... and listented to it A LOT in 2005. she's in the singer-songwriter vein and has the most deeply raspy voice.

10 - sadly, due to lack of money, there are quite a few things that i have not yet picked up, but plan to when i get some of that yuletide money rolling in... franz ferdinand, the libertines, neil young, stellastarr, imogen heap, controller.controller, and on and on.

[music | david usher, "white christmas"]

the lightening of the dark

2005-12-23T00:30:00.000-05:00

ok.... it's been a while since i wrote here... but believe me - i have spared us all a boring, whinging litany of how strange my life has become. to make it less long and more short for the month of december i have been doing some hourly-wage work for a company that processes A LOT of paper. a lot. and i've been doing exciting things like alphabetizing giant stacks of paper by company name and then taking a calculator and adding up all the totals of all the same-named companies together. urgh. i know - it makes no sense.

and this brain-rot has the unattractive side effect of hurting me. seriously. i have some sort of strange nerve/muscle thing happening in the left side of my rib-cage. i think the constant sorting of papers with my left hand has done this to me. yech. guys, be warned, excessive repetitive hand motion can lead to a searing and rather painful ribcage. who knew? on the bright side - my doctor gave me a prescription for tylenol 3. she wanted to give me 40 (?!?) for one week. i said i wouldn't need that many. 40. for one week. that seems excessive. maybe i'm just too squeaky clean.

right now i'm putting off washing dishes (so that the cat sitters won't think i'm a total slob) and then calling a cab to come pick me up to take me to the airport tomorrow morning. yes, that's right - i'm headed to edmonton. where they actually don't have any snow on the ground. here in toronto we have absolute mountains of the stuff. it's a total reversal of wintery-fortune. of course the nice weather in edmonton has made me pack much less wool and heavy-duty winter clothes. normally when i'm back home, i freeze the entire time and end up wearing layers and layers. hopefully my choices don't leave me missing the warmth.

earlier today i caught ed the sock's annual festival of frommage and this year wasn't nearly as cruel or cutting as it could of been. i think the videos are all just so bad that ed has lost the will to massacre. regardless, there was a great line that actually made me laugh out loud. it was during the review of gwen stefani's horrid video, "rich girl". ed said something along the lines of, "it's funny that they're singing about not having money when the budget for this video could feed a third world nation for a year, or pay for all canadian videos for one year."

blessed yule, merry christmas, happy hanukkah, joyful commercialism, or whatever it is that you may celebrate this time of year.

[music | stellastarr, "love and longing"]

the week that was

2005-12-11T08:36:00.000-05:00

having a bit of a sleep in on a sunday morning becomes nearly impossible when you have a kitten. behind my closed door i hear the most pathetic mewing and scratching at the door and digging at the crack under the door. and you'd almost think that after a bit she'd get the hint and wander away. oh, no. not our zelda. she literally just won't stop. she goes on and on and on. so i finally get up, cuddle with her, feed her, play with her and then two minutes later she's upstairs doing the same routine on my roomie's door. there's just no winning with zelda. it's almost like she's saying, 'there's a whole day of fun and playing and annoying to do. get outta bed!'

this past week i've been feeling almost like i've been in career purgatory (yes, i have escaped my early catholic upbringing, but obviously, not completely!) i've been at an old employer of mine. it's a music licensing agency and there is a lot of paper there with unit sales, percentages and total amounts payable. publishing and copyright is quite a tricky thing to understand. i think it's the most least understood aspect of the music industry, in fact, i've worked for at least 2 different publishers who, i'm sure, didn't understand all the moving pieces either!

basically, this past week i've been doing whatever they needed me to do. which, unfortunately for me, consists of clearing up old projects that they haven't had the bodies to do earlier. so, i've been sorting 8 quarters (2 years) worth of royalty statements from zomba music payable to a large number of publisher clients represented by the agency i'm now at. and by sorting, i mean taking a stack of papers about 5 inches high and alphabetizing them by publisher name. and also making sure that any statements that total $0.00 are out of the pile and placed in a separate pile. then i need to photo copy them. and repeat this 8 times until all the quarters are complete. and just to further illustrate the tedium i'm now dwelling in, then i have to merge all quarters together and total all the totals. urgh.

at least i'm not 2 of my friends who called me this week to let me know that that they'd just been fired. one on tuesday and one on wednesday. and no, they don't work at the same company as each other, in fact, they don't even know each other. one had just started as an associate manager at a large tier one company in their online marketing department. after 3.5 weeks she was let go. turns out one week after she started, the hiring manager went to hr and said she wanted my friend to go. the for the next 2.5 weeks hr and the hiring manger's manager tried to keep my friend, but alas... it was not to be. sucks.

the second person to be fired (the wednesday gurl) was someone i worked with at a publishing company. she is from switzerland and about 1.5 years ago this company had gone to the trouble of completing all the paper work and going through all the legal fees of getting her to work for them. because she spoke 5 languages, she was doing all of their international licensing - and from what i could see, was quite good at her job. i haven't actually had the chance to talk to laura yet to get the details, but he message did say 'fired'. urgh. the place we worked was an absolute hell-hole. i left after 3 months and was very happy to do so. basically though, the owner was one of those folk who had worked in publishing for about 20 years (he was an entertainment lawyer first) and that i don't feel really understands the basic concepts of publishing.

a ray of shiney happy light happened on friday evening though. i had an interview at a record label earlier in the week and got a message back on friday. of course, i missed the call and now have to wait until monday to speak to them, but i'm hoping the news is that i'm on the short list and being called back for a second interview. the job would be incredible with new challenges every day and it would be very different than most things i'd done before. it would also include a car allowance. after living here in toronto for 15 years, it would be strange to finally have a car again. not to mention quite convenient for picking up groceries and such!

it would be scary working for a major label again (especially one that HASN'T merged yet), but at least you know that you are given a package if the wheels fall off! but then again, i am not trying to lend any negative energy to this... only positive thoughts. i know, sounds a bit like i'm cracked and some new-age believer-in-angels (for the record, i so am not!) but i do believe that if you make something your reality that it becomes your reality. so no more thinking that i have a black star following me and more thinking that i'm a force of nature that just can't be denied what she wants. ;->

[music | david usher, "white christmas"]

the good and the not good

2005-12-01T15:36:00.000-05:00

interview confirmed for monday afternoon.
data entry/filing work confirmed for tuesday (i need money, it's money).
another interview confirmed for the following monday afternoon.
divination tonight.
brunch with my old project management team on sunday.
art show on sunday, where i may possibly be doing some tarot readings for money.

these things are all good... yey!

and then i came across this bad bit of news. tim burton is amazing and i love his work (well, except for planet of the apes, but that's another story) but please... do not work with jim carrey. i really wanted to see the lemony snicket movie, but didn't. my cherished childhood memories of the grinch were dashed when the movie version starring carrey came out. i know, he's canadian and i'm supposed to like him just because of that... but seriously... tim. don't do a movie with him.

[music | the lovely feathers, "fudgicle"]

hark! what's this?!

2005-11-30T17:39:00.000-05:00

i'm generally not a wallower... it's a habit i outgrew long ago... like the habit i once had to never look anyone in they eye and the habit i once had to trim my nails with my teeth... i just don't like to wallow... it gets mucky and murky and cold and lonely. and who wants that for any extended amount of time? and if you do want that... my friend, perhaps you should begin wiggling out...

so after spending two days wallowing in fear and paralysis and 'why is this happening to me? what is wrong with me? who did i fuck over in a previous life in order to deserve this? *whinge, whine, whinge again*', i have found myself on the receiving end of a few (few meaning more than 2, but not quite more than 3) bits of yippie-type news.

piece, the first :
the interview i went on last week finally got back to me... they are planning to interview for the next few weeks and will be in touch in mid-december for next steps. ok.. that's not a kick in the teeth. now, is it?

second ray of sunshine :
while on an epic phone conversation with wee-kelly (thanks for your ear, luv) i got a phone message from the head of an a&r department here in toronto. a few weeks ago i heard about a potential opening from a couple of my music contacts and followed up on it. i had called him twice and hadn't heard anything and was just wondering whether or not to surrender to dorothy when i get the message with an apology (!?!) for not getting back to me sooner. turns out he was out of town. i may have an interview next monday.... just playing phone tag with him right now.

third thing not resembling a swift kick in the teeth :
even more weeks ago i had gotten a lead from an old boss of mine. the job is for an office manager for a company that works exclusively with music artist managers. i could do that job with my eyes closed... except for the "thrill" and "excitement" of dealing with artist managers... they are such a breed apart. a friend of mine who was once managing a band signed to a major label was once told by that label's president, "you aren't a big enough asshole to be a great manager". that's basically the personality-type. aggressive, pushy, mouthy and tough. gotta love 'em.

so little bits of growing greenery seem to be pushing their upward... off to go water the seeds....

also - it's time for an overhaul... good-bye current blogger look and hello to the new blogger look that's already on it's way....

[music | david usher, "souring"]

so much, so little, so what?

2005-11-29T11:38:00.000-05:00

since i last wrote we've had snow, several days of shovelling, several days of rain which has taken away most of the snow, i still have no money for december, canada's minority government fell and we're having an election in january.

snow.
every time snow falls here in toronto, i begin to wonder about all the people who are new to this country. the ones who have lived their entire lives in a much warmer climate and then all of a sudden find themselves in the middle of ice and snow and slush and grey skies for months on end. and the worst bit of all... the bitter bitter winds. actually, i don't think i mind winter too much - except for the winds. i am no fan of the winter wind. this snow had me wondering about my poor little mexican friend i met a few weeks ago... it was a warmish autumn day and he was absolutely freezing... poor guy. he's probably was in shock when the snow came and stayed.

rain.
the several days of snow were followed by several days of rain, in fact, it's still raining. now, that's more of the toronto weather that is expected. normally november is the month of umbrella's and soaked pant cuffs. i think they are calling for more snow tomorrow... looks like we're in for a long winter.

job / money.
*sigh* don't think i want to write about this. energy follows thought and i'm right now in a pretty low-ebb of positive energy about this topic. anything i write will probably just damage further. though, i will say that when you have an interview with a company and you send them a thank you note asking for the timeline of their interview process, it's only proper that they write back to you. i'm sending them a little 'follow-up' request today.

government.
a year-and-a-half ago we had an election and the ruling liberal party was voted back in, though as a minority government. minority government's are tricky things... so tricky that last night a vote of non-confidence was introduced and was passed. the liberals could not defeat it. this is a very simplistic view, by-the-way. i also have very little positive energy for our politics.

so on january 23rd, we're off to go vote to put a party in power again. my guess is that it will be a liberal minority government again. though, it could easily become a conservative-minority. it will NOT be a safe and comfy majority government, that is for certain. it also appears to be shaping up to be a rather negative campaign.. the liberals must fight for their lives and will come out slinging mud and arrows any which way they can. the conservatives already have the reputation of being negative... so my guess is that they will try to position themselves as the moral high-ground (they will do their best to ape the success that bush's right-wing christian moral majority republican's won in the last american election. urgh.)

somewhat happy things.
i am planning on seeing an amazing artist tonight. the unique chris koster is having a free show at the horseshoe tonight. i want to go... but mentally and emotionally i may not just be up to it.

my dear friend kelly is having her annual winter artshow in her house this weekend. she comes across the most 'interesting' people... last year i had a long and painful and protracted conversation with a creepy-strange man from her neighbourhood that drums in his basement and likes to invite the 16-year-olds to come hang out and learn to drum. ahem. he also then tried to tell me what a serious buddhist he is and how healing mediation can be. there are always characters at her events. she's been working on her smithing lately... yes, my wee friend kelly is a blacksmith. these are a few of her creations and this summer she sold the piece on the far right-side of the photo. yey!

this thursday another friend of mine is holding an event called, "dine, wine and divine" at mitzie's sister on queen west. it's a fund raiser for a pagan conference she is putting on next february and she has tarot readers for 10.00 a pop. as you may or may not know, i do read tarot for other folk, but i have the most difficult time getting a decent reading for myself. and not that i rule my life by divinations... but i think in this time of such wild uncertainty... a little tarot is a good thing. tarot tells you nothing you don't already know... it just brings things up and puts them in a context for you to move forward from. hard to explain... you're either a tarot gurl/boy or you're not.

finally.... don't you all just want to be this baby giraffe?

[music | chris koster, "if you see me"]

tombigbee = jodi's fucked

2005-11-24T19:48:00.000-05:00

i am so fucked. it's not even funny. long tedious upsetting story made short... i was laid off of my job last december. i got a package and quailified for E.I. from the feds. i got a letter from hrdc saying my claim was for xx amount of weeks and was available to me until february 2006. i misinterpreted the government-speak and took it to mean that the amount of weeks i was eligible for took me until february.

well. i was wrong. o-so-wrong.

i got a notice in the mail today that told me my benefits were ending soon. i thought to myself, 'yes, in february, thanks for the long warning, twits.' i called and got the bad news that i have only 2 more weeks of benefits left. that means when i file my claim next friday i am without money.

i am also currently without a job.

so you see

/////// i . am . fucked ///////

luckily, i was able to get on the phone and arrange some potential data entry work with a former employer. see, i'm not unemployable. THEY love me. even if no one else in the hiring market does. so i could be drastically under-employed, but at least i would be employed. somewhat. and there is a potential GREAT piece of news out of this too.... my former employer is on the verge of signing an agreement with another organization to start and run a new venture. and if that is the case, my old employer would hire me on full-time as a supervisor to hire and train new staff and set the procedures up. i want this to happen. please....

also, i was on a job interview yesterday afternoon and it went well. it was for a project manager for a canadian company that sells downloadable tracks and provides e-commerce stores to other companies that are looking to sell music online as well. it's not my dream job, but it is in music and it is project management - which i am quite good at (if i do say so myself). cross your fingers and toes and boobs / balls (if you got 'em) for me.

to sum up... the lyrics to tori amos' song 'tombigbee' really fit my frame of mind right now. so, without further ado :

To you it's another day
to me it's a grim reaping
just another shooting star
strung out on your wire

prick my finger
on his virgin silver
he took me raw, Ginger -
it carmelized me

Tombigbee, Tombigbee
help me hang these bones
gotta hang these bones out to dry
he loved me, he loved me, ravishingly, low
gonna hang these bones out to dry
dry, dry, dry

oh, you do it, man

Got a blackberry stain
and they're not even in season
if you're not yet a woman
you got no business playing at this

Tombigbee, Tombigbee
help me hang these bones
gotta hang these bones out to dry
he loved me, he loved me, ravishingly, low
gonna hang these bones out to dry
dry, dry, dry

oh, you do it, man

so you get done
then you get some
sure enough, it won't hold you for long
then you say "right.
this is all mine"
but hasn't your donor card expired
from Blueridge to Cattail
on the prairie
from fly over country
back through Mississippi

I said go, man you go
well you raise me twenty
I'm raising you five
hundred treaties signed by your father's lies

just go man, you go
cause I'm trailing her tears
the ones you won't hold
you roll me a carpet
roll me a carpet, boy
roll me a carpet from here to Oklahoma

Tombigbee, Tombigbee
help me hang this bone
gotta hang these bones out to dry
he loved me, he loved me, ravishingly, low
gonna hang these bones out to dry
to dry, dry, dry

I'll do again
dry, dry, dry

[music | tori amos, "tombigbee"] (if you don't know this song, find it and listen to it)

my top 10

2005-11-23T08:17:00.000-05:00

after seeing a particularity disturbing search query that someone used to find me, i thought i'd post the 10 most recent searches that brought web seekers to my site. by the way... the really distrubing search that prompted this post is the first one :

raine maida shirtless
o. mi. gods. how disgusting is this!?! eeewwww. (and how immature am i for this response?) i was probably bitching about raine acting like he thinks he's lord of the universe or something... and who knows what i was rambling about with the whole shirtless thing

jodi yoga (this came up 3 times)
i am addicted to yoga. yes, it is true. but i think these searchers were looking for a jodi in new york who is a yoga instructor of some renown. actually, when you search that, you come up with a lot of yoga instructors named jodi. maybe it's the new prerequisite... damn, another missed calling

spontaneous human combustion
*shudders* i have long held a bizarre fascination with this phenomenon. may it never happen to me or to you or to anyone we know.

abba
this needs no explanation. abba ruled when i was 8 and abba still rules. i love it when people seach music and find my page.

chris koster
more music searches! yey for chris that ppl are searching him. then again, this visitor was from kingston... so it may have actually been chris himself.... *wink*

debbie harry
*sigh* who doesn't love blondie?

drugs and sport
interesting. lord knows that i have never ranted about drugs in sport... i almost want to dig through my archives to see what this post was about... almost.

toronto new terminal
this is funny actually. this seems like quite a sincere and serious search query. someone was probably looking for info about the airport and they end up coming to my strange little self-serving site... heehee....

miss universe voyeur
this visitor from serbia is a dirrty dirrty person... just so dirrrty. *flirt*

sex and drugs
oh, if only they'd been searching sex and drugs and rock'n'roll!

[music | the warlocks, "just like surgery"]

what's for supper?

2005-11-22T13:59:00.000-05:00

when is a coincidence just a result of random choices and situations and when is a coincidence something else...? if you google 'coincidence' you end up getting many many sites with many many explanations on why true coincidence does not exist and is rather just a mathematical equasion. and let me tell you that these mathematicians LOOOOOVE to go into incredible and excruciatingly boring detail about the how's, why's and wherefore's.

i am not a scientist. i am not a mathematician. i am an instinctive and intuitive creature... so my bias, when presented with a coincidental occurrence is to look at it and either get shivers or not. lately, i've been getting shivers.

my mom's side of the family has always seemed to just be a little more linked and in touch with each other than my dad's side. there's no hard evidence other than how supportive that side of my family has been, how close they were (and still are) and how much my grandmother just 'knew' stuff about you. :) my grandma k was very much a devoted catholic, but she was somehow wired into the magick of her scots and irish blood. perhaps it was through her great faith (in her deity and in her family) that she seemed to know events in your life before they happened - or perhaps she just willed the events into destiny... i don't know... i'm also not a theologist!

but back to coincidence and my life. when i was a university student here in toronto, i had to survive on very little money. from time to time my mom would send me 'care-packages' from my alberta home. often times there would be something in that box of goodies that i had thought i needed only the week or days before. for example, i remember thinking i needed to head to honest ed's to pick up some new cheap facecloths and low and behold.. when i opened the next box - there was a stack of 4 new plushy white facecloths for me. another time i was thinking i needed a hardcover book for a new journal that i wanted to keep for story ideas. the next thing you know, i had a care package that included 2 hardcover journals.

a skeptic could say that facecloths and notebooks are standard things that a mom would send to a child in university - but the fact remains that she sent those items just when i needed them.

i believe.

and more recently (since my university days are LOOOONG behind me) the coincidences have spread to cooking and baking and now also include my sister. i'm still in toronto and my mom is still in stony plain and my sister now lives in edmonton. this weekend while i was on the phone with my mom she was telling me about a dish she was making for supper (a yucky dish i can't stand, but that she and my dad love... sauerkraut with potatos and pork hocks). i told her that the last time we talked she was making sauerkraut. she laughed and said she hardly ever made it, and was only making it this last time because of some big edmonton eskimo football game that was going to be on tv that afternoon.

i agree that is just a coincidence. i tend to talk to my mom on weekends and on weekends she would be more likely to make a big dish like sauerkraut because she and my dad would be more likely to have guests over. you know, to watch things like important football games. i see that. i'm not that touched!

but where the coincidence factor kicks in is when my mom told me that she and my sister had begun starting to make the same dish for dinner several times over the last while. dishes that they hadn't talked about in advance. they would be talking on the phone and discover that they're making the same soup or casserole or other things that meat-eaters in alberta might make.

my sister and i both love to cook and we both grew up in a house where our mom made dinner ever single night... and made full dinners with a main course, a veggie, bread and a salad. every single night. so my sister may have picked up some recipes from my mom's repertoire... that is true... but to make the same thing on the same day... that's just beyond random. there's some sort of connection there beyond just looking in the 'fridge and pulling out the same ingredients.

and to further prove that... as my mom was telling me about her sister and their double hamburger soup incident i said, "since we're talking recipes, i need to ask you for your banana bread recipe." she asked why, in a somewhat strange voice. i had made banana bread the day before and i was not happy with it. it was good, yes, but it wasn't as good as my mom's is. as it turns out, my mom had made 3 loaves of banana bread on the same day i did. weird, huh? she made a loaf for herself and a loaf for both my sister and brother's families.

now i think that's just too bizzarre for words.

[music | sigur ros, "glosoli"]

i miss the sparkly x

2005-11-16T13:51:00.000-05:00

what do you do when someone you've been friends with for over 10 years begins to morph into someone nearly unrecognizable to you? do you just smile with silent complicity or do you begin to take several large steps backward or do you heed the call of responsibility and say the unpleasant things in hopes of handing a torch to your friend (take a look at the landscape of your life now, just take a look!) or do you hand over that torch and watch helplessly as they begin to set fire to 10 years of laughter and tears.

what do you do when your friend (let's call them "x") begins seeing someone and then promptly begins to exhibit signs of losing their own strongly developed sense of self and identity. with the new love x has begun to take on traits that i'd never seen in the previous 10 years. are these new traits x's traits that had been just so buried beneath the surface that they were denied even to x? or is x swimming in the murky muck of co-dependence? probably both.

the strangest thing to me is that i've never even met x's new love. and x has been seeing this person since the spring of 2005. over half a year ago. and x is a person that up until that time, i'd been seeing on roughly a weekly basis for the past 2 and a half years. we'd lost touch for a few years and then bang, we were friends again. the last time we lost touch, x had begun to spend a lot of time with some new friends. as x came out of seeing those new friends, i came back on the scene. so is this just a pattern? does x tire and bore of folks and i'm just 'lucky' that i was allowed back in?

i have written and re-written this entry many times. i feel like i'm giving away a lot of myself here and want to be o-so-cautious. x knows of this blog, but i think that x very rarely comes here. it's not like i'm writing this to open a dialog. x knows my feelings about the new love.

x knows that i can't stand the fact that the new love has shown violent tendencies (yelling, biting, hiting, bruising, throwing things, punching the wall) and x knows that i am not comfortable with the fact that x now finds themselves doing many of the same things. and x tells me about their own violent disfuction in a way that seems to me like, "see, my love is not the only fucked up one. i am pretty fucked up too! give me a cookie and hate on my new love less, will you?"

it seems that x (a sensitive and highly intelligent person) now feels that punching the person that fired you is a good and positive solution. when i objected to that logic, x came out with a very patronizing "i don't mean to put you down, but...." (i'm not an idiot... i know that when a sentence starts that way, it's like flashing a huge red sign that says, "it's so cute that you have an opinion, however, you are soooooooooo unaware when it comes to this matter, and let me show you just how silly you sound")

i miss x. i miss the old x. i must prepare for the fact that the old x is now gone. i wonder if the new x will still have room for my friendship? i wonder if i can sit by and watch this keep happening? or am i being selfish in wanting things to remain the same?

[music | tori amos, "hey jupiter"]

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 4, 3, 2 ,1

2005-11-14T17:20:00.000-05:00

i found this over on myspace... and thought it'd make more of an interesting blog post as opposed to a unsuspecting bulletin forced on all of my friends over there.... who, by the by, are mostly bands and musicians. i'm sure madonna and dave gahan don't care about my faves.... pretty damn positive, anyway.

10 favorites...
favorite color: green
favorite food: thai
favorite band: david usher / tori amos, such a toughie.... see the list on the side of my blog for more
favorite movie: wizard of oz / nightmare before christmas / willow / labrynth
favorite sport: yoga (is that a sport)
favorite season: autumn
favorite day of the week: don't have one
favorite ice cream flavor: butter pecan

9 currents...
current mood: hungry
current taste: fahbulous, darling
current clothes: black long sleeved t-shirt, knit komono shirt and jeans
current computer: compaq presario R3000, laptop
current time: 4:52 pm
current surroundings: living room
current annoyance(s): bad movies on tmn

8 firsts...
first best friend: derek - the son of my parent's friends, i called him "dirket"
first aim screen name: druidess
first pet: dog, named sam or sammy
first piercing: my ears
first crush: sadly, i think it was wayne gretzky. that or jesus. i blame my catholic upbringing!
first word: horse!

7 lasts
last cigarette: i've never had a first... the smell is too sickening to want to do it myself.
last drink: red wine, last night
last long car ride: toronto to hamilton - i'm rarely in a car, so that's a long ride for me!
last person you text messaged: no text for me
last movie seen: the looney tunes movie on tmn yesterday afternoon
last phone call: michael
last cd played: chris koster : secrets of the lonely

6 have you ever....
have you ever dated one of your best friends: no
have you ever hugged a stranger: yes
have you ever done drugs: yes
have you ever died: no
have you ever been on tv: yes
have you ever kissed someone you didn't know: yes

5 things i did last night :
1 - continued knitting on my latest project
2 - wrote a poem
3 - read my tarot cards
4 - watched "grey's anatomy", it's kinda good
5 - started a book named 'veronica'

4 places you've most recently travelled to...
1 - new york (october 2005)
2 - montreal (october 2005)
3 - saskatoon/edmonton (august 2005)
4 - montreal (april 2005)

3 places you've most recently been
1 - yoga class
2 - dr's office
3 - corner store

2 choices...
night or day: night
meat or vegetables: veggies

1 habit you'd like to rid yourself of :
procrastination

[music | stellastar, "sweet troubled soul"]

random things

2005-11-11T11:49:00.000-05:00

i'm not really certain what exactly this is - but after you get over the disturbing imagery, it's quite fun. if george gets stuck, just nudge him along with your wee mousie.

i have sent a resume off to a job in new york. sure, i've been sending out resumes here in toronto too... but someone has to finally respond, right? why can't it be new york? and as audrey says, they should schedule the interview for december 5th. piano's in nyc has an interesting artist playing on that day.

the lcbo is handing out giant magazines for free. these magazines are full of amazing recipe's for the holidays. cakes with liquours, cookies with a dash of liquour, cocktails galore, pan sauces with liquours... happy boozey holidays everyone! do you not want to drink something called the mistletoe martini? on a less alcohol-soaked note, i am so going to try the portabello mushroom lasagne... yummy.

and sweden has decided to play the mean old curmudgeon and rip the veil off of imagination. seems sweden has a lake monster that was protected under their endangered species act. was protected. it's now free game and hunters have taken to the lake in droves to catch and kill the beastie. nice. does science have to defeat imagination at every turn? of course the hunters will not find anything and the debate will continue on whether or not the thing exists. isn't it nice to just have something beyond our experience to believe in? isn't it nice to know that somewhere deep in the lakes of the world a prehistoric monster lives on (if not that lake, pick another one, most countries have a similar legend)? damn rational scientists.

also - is it wrong for me to be loving madonna's new song? i think it has something to do with the abba sample she used. ah, abba. one of my earliest musical loves. yes... my first two albums that i bought with my own allowance money were blondie's greatest hits and abba's super trooper. i knew abba from my mom's 8-tracks, but my 9-year-old self had no idea who blondie was - i think i must of just picked it because i loved the kick-ass cover of debbie harry and her band on the roof of a manhattan building. a love of abba and blondie has followed me through my entire life. what was your first album purchase? and do you still love them now?

[music | madonna, "hung up"]

nyc and the mighty monkey

2005-11-08T18:57:00.000-05:00

so this blog has become a bit of a wasteland... i've been delinquent in visiting it, never mind even thinking of posting on it. for a while there i thought that my desire was derailed by my newly renewed obsession with myspace, but no... that bores me too. i think the real reason is that i wanted my nyc post to be a thing of beauty. i wanted my words to mirror my experiences - but some things just refuse to be recorded. much like the ghost-hunter who tries to accurately capture his latest escapade, but only finds failure in his audio recordings, his photo catures and a blank mind when it comes to eyewitness reports.

so what follows will be a bit of a high-school yearbook entry. random bits that really will only make sense to me and perhaps a few select others. and in a few years time, i won't know what i was blathering about either! seriously, have you ever re-read your highschool yearbook? i don't know what in hades i was on about.

alarm rings at 4:30am. cab arrives at 5:45am. in the plane ready to take off at 7:30am. 8:00am - still sitting on the runway. sometime after 8 we hear this announcement, "this is the pilot speaking. sorry for the delay folks but we're having some engine

grand central terminal is large. traffic is insane. how long are we going to sit here waiting for the shuttle bus... should we just pop into the subway? and then it turns out that we were within walking distance of the hotel. ahh... good times.

lesson to remember - if one is taking the time to go up the empire state building, one should not expect the weather to be as clear and sunny on top as it was when you started waiting in line 30 minutes earlier.

lesson #2 - when one encounters a wholesale store dedicated to semi-precious stones one should remember that one does not hold a craft license in the state of new york and therefore will not be able to buy anything, no matter how pretty or inexpensive it is. no falling in love. no hatching of schemes to get random strangers to purchase items for you. when you leave, resist the urge to run madly through the streets shouting, "i love malachite! and it loves meeeee!!!!!". for the record, i did resist, but just barely.

when in nyc on a friday evening, make sure you hit MoMA between 4 & 8. coz it's free. and you will not believe the unbelievable works of art that you can see for free. amazing. of course, if you are a cultural moron like myself, you will really only want to hit the 2 floors with the paintings. modern sculputure and bizarre architectrural drawings really don't do anything for me. and i don't think they do for most people. so stick to the vincent's (that's van gogh to those who haven't seen his works in person) and the cezanne's and the dali's and the picasso's and the matisse's and the monet's. you get the point. unreal.

when buying these super cool drinking glasses back as a gift for your cat-sitters... don't be too bitter if they don't appear to give a shit over them. just plan ways to sneak into their place and steal them back.

central park is green and gorgeous and not a bit creepy, even in twilight.

the met is BIG. bigger than it seems possible. is that billy zane or just some random guy with a shaved head? why is the special egyptian exhibit closed? suckage. the drawings of vincent van gogh caught a lot of people. not us, we sped through like the hounds of hades were nipping at our heels. i guess after seeing the orgy of vincent the night before, we had one gogh too many. is it just me, or is the ghostly medium exhibit, kind of, well, weird? what's with the fluids portion? really. what was with it?

the candle cafe gave me one of the bestest meals of my life... ever. though my first few bites i was disappointed. it took a few bites for the complexity of it to really take.... amazing, really. they have a cookbook available - i want! the place was recommended as the best veggie restaurant by a native new yorker, she wasn't wrong.

the farmer's market at union square on saturday morning was incredible. if i lived in nyc, i would be there every saturday. all the fresh veggies you could want. and one table had all varieties of fresh hot peppers and chili's. they would become my best friends, yes they would.

abc carpet & home is the optimum place to go to drool. such wonderful little items for the house and home. the flagship store was on broadway near union square and it was absolutely amazing. and we met the nicest person there. she recommended many great places in the city. she also lives in the east village. rock on.

and speaking of the east village - the best smelling store in the world is located there. red flower is divine. i'm actually glad i don't live in the city... i'd be broke buying lotions and creme's and candles. i brought home their african lily body lotion. divine.

moby's tea shop teany really lives up to it's name. and a pot of tea and a scone there will take you a long long way. and the washroom had to be the nicest and best smelling washroom i'd been in.... ever. and the one actual random 'famous person' sighting took place there (we're not 100% certain about mr. zane). no, not moby - but mike myers. yes, that's right. mike myers, the toronto boy. who we've seen at least half-a-dozen times each in toronto. heehee.

and who can forget the rockwood. the place that introduced me to the joys of gin and pomegranate juice. one can get a nice buzz on AND detoxify at the same time. ha! who said it couldn't be done. *wink* and one can sit there from 6:00 until 12:30 drinking copious amounts of not-water and even see david usher there from time to time. what an amazing experience. next i feel he should come play in my living room!

all in all, i'm now searching new york job listings.... seriously. can you just imagine it?

music [madonna, "hung up"]

nyc photos...

2005-11-08T18:56:00.000-05:00

don't you want to be here? this was central park on october 31, 2005.

being the eyptian geek that i am... i had to post this one.... i have a series of 5 of them from all different angles...

central park waterfall.... i think you can see faeries dancing here!

a view of lower manhattan from the empire state building. that's the teeny-tiny statue of libety out there in the distance.

and speaking of the empire state building....

the flatiron building. i think it may be one of my favorite buildings in nyc.

this is the new yorker hotel. it was my home for 4 glorious days in october. it's celebrating it's 75th anniversary this year. i'd go back, in a flash.

after getting off the shuttle from the airport, we had to wait here for the hotel shuttle to come get us. hello new york.

what's supposed to be

2005-11-03T08:30:00.000-05:00

this was meant to be a happy excited blog entry about my trip to new york - which was absolutely amazing, to say the least. and that entry may yet come. however, i awoke early this morning with feelings of doom and dread and with the actual metalic taste of fear in my mouth. fear of my own unwillingness to take just "any" job. or even look for anything other than a music related one, for that matter. and this is apparently a stupid childish dream. one which i should grow up out of. they do say that most people hate their jobs. i don't want to be one of those people. i want to have a job i love and a job that i am good at and a job that fulfills me. i know what it's like to hate your job... it's not a good feeling. i think i will be lucky to get any job that comes my way now. my employment insurance runs out in february... when in february, i'm not sure... i'm scared to actually call and find out. i have one potential solid job lead - however it's been dangling in front of my face for a couple of months now. it's a situation where the company who has contacted me is still waiting for a different company to give them the go ahead. i had put my eggs, my muffins, my cookies all in this one basket. stupid. i think the basket has a hole in the bottom. and someone has sent me a lead for a real crap ass job that i am so over qualified for. one that would bore me to tears everyday... but i am sending off a resume. i am about to be a beggar, so i must not be a chooser. i really was hoping that my contacts would end up paying off for me. and they might yet still. but today does not seem to be that day.

[music | no music today, just the sound of my laptop in my silent house]

nyc, here i come!

2005-10-27T13:45:00.000-04:00

ok - prepare for a nonsensical post. i am going to fucking new york tomorrow morning! i can not believe how excited i am for this whole thing. nyc just seems to have a magick spell that it casts and weaves over everyone. i spent some time there 4 or 5 years ago. it was a brief visit, just like this one, actually. but last time i had to spend 2 days in some sort of training classes for music publishing software. it was a free trip - and that is always a treat. gotta love having a per diem. and i had 1 entire free day to myself.

but this trip there are no boring training courses and no talking of work-like things. this trip is a free-for-all. right now this is a list of things that i want to see and do.

1. have a drink in new york's revolving lounge. it's in the marriott marquis in times square. i remember a colleague taking me here last time - it was really quite stunning to see the lights of the city come on as you have a panoramic view of the entire place.

2. see great works of art at the museum of modern art. last time, strangely, i opted not to go (admission is $20.00) but this time we have found that admission is free on friday nights between 4 & 8pm. that's where i will be tomorrow night. wild.

3. go to the met, go to the met, go to the met. i did go here last time and i will go everytime i hit nyc. last time there was a touring exhibit of art in ancient egypt - focusing on the the 5th dynasty - very early. this time there is an exhibit called, "the perfect medium" as well as another egyptian exhibit depicting medicine in ancient egyptian art. did you know that the egyptians were the first folks to perform brain surgery. well, they were.

4. eat at moby's restaruant, teany. it is an organic tea house that also serves veggie/vegan food. yummy! it's in the lower east side and well, i am just going to happen to be in that neighbourhood on sunday. also, i am a tea junkie. audrey and i have a tea cupboard. seriously. it is a giant cupboard that would normally be taken up by dried goods and such, but in our pad, it's a home for all our tea. and even that's not enough. we have two tea chests and there are built-in shelves that are positively crammed with wooden boxes of flavoured black tea. not to mention various tea strainers, pots and on and on.... the best tea store in toronto is close to my house. it's called say tea and they carry wonderful blends.

5. see david usher at the rockwood music hall. really, it's the reason this trip is happening now. new york is amazing in and of itself - but an intimate david show with 4 musicians and 3- 4 new songs.... oh.my.gods.

6. visit love saves the day. yeah, yeah. i'm going to geek out and go all fangurl, but i need to go to this little nostalgia shop in david's 'hood. at his last show in toronto, he mentioned that he lifted the song title for, "love will save the day" from this place. heehee. i need a picture of the sign.

7. ground zero, the world trade center twin towers. i did not see these while they were still standing during my last visit to new york. this time i will go see what remains after the terrorist attacks. you kind of have to.

8. visit central park. i walked very briefly through a little corner of it by the met last time - this time, it might be nice to actually see a bit more. it has over 26,000 trees. cool. and as there is virtually nothing i love more than trees in the autumn... well....

9. macy's for some good deals. audrey went to san francisco in the spring and came out with some amazing deals (cashmere sweaters for like 15.00 or something obscene like that). i want to partake of the deals! gimme the deals! and considering the hotel is only a few blocks away...

there is more i want to see and do, but i'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now! i think i need to pick up a guide book - or something. again - i am just so excited, i almost can't contain myself!

now, however, i must go and do somethings so i can acutally leave tomorrow morning. vacuum, wash dishes, do laundry, have a sauna (ok, that has nothing to do with going tomorrow, but it's nice, doncha think?)

[music | the warlocks, "come save us"]

54 million dollar lottery ticket sold in alberta

2005-10-27T13:07:00.000-04:00

please be my mom or my dad! please!

no?

ok....

[music | emm gryner, "daerg doom"]

montreal

2005-10-25T14:08:00.000-04:00

having just returned from montreal, i thought it might be appropriate to post a couple of pictures from my very cold sunday down in old montreal and the old port.

montreal is a city of such magic for me. the people know how to really enjoy life, the men make eye contact, history is present and there seems to be much less of an emphasis on the race through life that i see everyday in toronto.

having grown up in alberta and having lived the past 15 years in toronto i can say that the cultural differences found in montreal are very evident and very wonderful. anyone who claims that quebec is not a 'distinct society' has clearly never made the trip to la belle province.

i think, however, if i were to drive in montreal, i would feel very differently about it all! the stories of horrific montreal traffic and drivers abound. a store clerk in old montreal was so excited to hear that we were visiting from toronto - she kept marveling about how big and wide the highways and freeways are there. she thought that there must be lots of room to move on them. seems she's never experienced rush-hour in toronto....

it was such a cold, damp and windy day.... you'd have to really want to be alone to sit here...

regrettably, i don't know what these buildings are - but they really help to capture the feeling of old montreal...

the clock tower on st. lawrence river...

another building i don't know the name of or the reason for - but damn, doesn't it look cold!

and of course, the reason for the trip was the david show on saturday. as always, the show was a highlight beyond description and well worth whatever it takes to actually get there. next, new york city on friday morning!

[music david usher, "too close to the sun"]

"form keele"

2005-10-20T19:38:00.000-04:00

ok... so there i am waiting for the bus to arrive when i realize i've been waiting a very long time. i live within walking distance to the station - but sometimes i like to play the fates and just see if i get a bus. it was one of those mornings.

after i first got there i sensed someone behind me and it was a man also waiting for the bus, but standing several feet away from the stop. whatever. then as i waited and waited and waited, i looked back at the man and said, "i guess we're stuck here now... it's too late to walk." meaning, if i started walking (as i often do) 2 or 3 busses will whiz mightily past me. the guy walked closer and agreed that "we prisoner now".

taking a second look at him, i realized that he was hunched up in his windbreaker like he was freezing to death. he tells me he's from mexico city and that this is very cold for him. it really wasn't all that bad out there today. more of what i'd call a lovely typical october day. (i love the autumn... but i think anyone reading this rambling entries may have picked up on that by now).

turns out he's here studying english and french and he wants to end up going to university here. he is staying the winter. i told him he needed to buy warmer clothes - because this isn't cold at all. i told him the secret to surviving an ontario winter - many many many layers and that he needed to buy wool. then the poor puppy says someone told him he could buy gloves at the sears in yorkdale mall. what the fuck? why is some moron sending him all the way out to yorkdale (from bloor and keele) to get bluddy gloves? urgh.

i test the waters and say, "you must have a lot of people telling you where to get things." and he responds that he lives alone and actually doesn't know many people and that it's hard for him to get the things he needs. i told him he just needed to start talking to people and they'd be happy to help. then he tells me the one thing that just dissolves my defenses, "i try but people often don't have time." for me, that's just awful. as a transplant to toronto, i do know what it's like to feel like the city couldn't give a flying fuck about you (now, that's an interesting visual). for many years after i first moved here i would look up at the looming and somewhat mocking cn tower and feel like it was laughing at me, "go back home you little alberta farm gurl. you don't belong."

and at least i had the ability to blend in quite easily... i am a white canadian-born female. no discrimination to deal with there. even though toronto is easily the MOST racially and culturally diverse city i've ever been in (and i actually have travelled a little but, so i do know what i'm talking about) it is still different for people who are not born here. i am guessing. an example today was heartbreaking. my new mexican buddy and i are getting off the bus at the station (he moved aside to allow me to go first... his madre taught him manners we just don't see in canada) and he said, "many thanks for the ride" to the driver. the driver didn't even look over. so i say, "thank you." and the driver responded to me. now, was it just the fact that the driver didn't hear the spanish accented english, or was it that two people in a row said something or was it the fact that i had no accent.... who knows.... but i didn't feel great about it.

long story short, i ended up giving mr. mexico (his name is actually antonio) my email address and said if he had questions about stuff in the city to feel free to ask me and i'd help if i could. he then asked me about "niagra falls lake". heehee. i told him he meant, "niagara-on-the-lake". i have never been there myself, but told him that it was supposed to be very beautiful with a lot of bed and breakfast type places to stay in and that it's in the middle of ontario's wine growing area. antonio was shocked i'd never been there - told him i had no car, and he seemed to understand. then a good ole toronto boy (so stereotypical that he was wearing a leaf's jersey AND cap) piped in and started talking about niagra-on-the-lake and how to search for it online.

my stop rolled up, i felt my work there was done and i said bye-bye to antonio. a few hours later when i get home i see an email from him with the subject line "form keele". the email was sent not more than 1 hour after we met. he wanted to make sure he had the right email address.... i hope i haven't gotten myself a puppy dog....

[music | rob zombie, "living dead girl"]

my ipod has a sense of humour

2005-10-19T15:13:00.000-04:00

do you ever feel like your ipod is having you on? sometimes the randomly generated playlist is just too genius to be mere.. well... randomness. i'm usually not a random kinda girl. i'm pretty serious about my music and what to listen to what i want to listen to. i rarely pick the shuffle option. i like to hear the music in the order that the artist intended it to be listened to.... some of them actually want to take you on a journey. the debate about song sequencing can get pretty passionate.

however, occasionally i just don't know what i want to listen to and let the random surprise me. often it will pick a song which will make me go to the album that song is on and all is right in my musical world again.

and then other times you get a sequence of songs you are just enjoying so much (for various reasons) that you just can't bear to tear yourself away. today was one of those days. for today i was treated to the following (and i am exposing my musical soul here, warts and all for you to see) :

golden years - david bowie (amazing to walk down the street to)
back in the u.s.s.r - the beatles (the airplane sounds were hilarious while i was on the bus as it sped down keele street)
butterfly (live) - david usher (an intense live song)
sailing - rod stewart (and song just to drift away on)
song of the sibyl - dead can dance (perfect for the rattling leaves this time of year)
famous blue raincoat (live) - tori amos (leonard cohen cover) (this song had me actually fighting tears as i was getting off at eglinton station. i really think tori should do an entire album of cohen songs. the world should be so lucky)
morpheus laughing - skinny puppy (bit of a juxtaposition - to be certain!)
sink the bismark - johnny horton (ok - at this point i think my ipod has gone mad - this is a country artist from the 1950's. he's actually quite brilliant - you should look him up for a treat)
jesus was my girl (live) - david usher (i'm totally smiling at this point... to go from a nationalistic "let's win the war boys!" song to david's lyrics screaming, "fuckings over, but i just keep coming")
concertina - tori amos (a pretty and gorgeous meditation on acoustic and electric elements in music)
toxic - britney spears (*blush* ok, alright.... it's true... i have brit's greatest hits on my ipod!)
mandolin - moist (to go from a very slick sounding track to this gorgeously understated song off of moist's last album... priceless)
hey kids - david usher (which then went to one of the most fun but sardonic statements off of "if god had curves")
girls on film - duran duran (and i nearly spit out my mouthful of latte when the clicking camera's of this classic duran track started)
lucky man - richard ashcroft (ahh - lucky men have girls on film... i see)
yellow - coldplay (this just reminded me that at one point i actually really did love coldplay. before they began to be overly profound and feeling like they needed to carry the burdon of the world on their musical might. *yawn*)
lazy days - robbie williams (robbie has a knack of writing crappy songs about absolutely NOTHING, but still manage to make them sound a little interesting)
bittersweet symphony - the verve (greatly overplayed in it's day... but really is a stunning piece of work)
these days - joy division (i was nearly home as bittersweet was ending and i wanted to turn off the music because i couldn't imagine anything more perfect... but then this joy division song came on. these days of autumn are upon us indeed)

the tea party is no longer a party

2005-10-18T14:44:00.000-04:00

of the three... there are now only two left... their lead singer jeff martin decided to publically announce that he's left the band and that he is interested in recording and touring his own solo music (pardon me if i'm mistaken... but wasn't all the tea party music pretty much written solely by mr. martin?)

at first glance, it might look like when david usher begain his solo career and left moist behind. but it's really not. first, david never made any sort of press release saying he's taking his mike stand and leaving (how anti-david the concept of a press release is!). and david's career sort of organically grew... he did a solo album while still in the band (the incredible 'little songs') and then went on to record the best moist album (mercedes 5 & dime) before beginning to release sucessive solo albums. and david still works with most (often all) members of moist. it does not seem that way with jeff martin. something must of happened... oohh... gossip gossip!

i'm curious to see what happens out of this. just as long as martin doesn't steal any of david's precious airtime.

interesting side-note... this news hasn't even hit their website yet!

edit : turns out it looks a wee bit nasty after all. one of the other band members has apparently issued a statement where he said that neither he or the other guy knew this was happening. ooh, the intrigue... or not. whatever. maybe we will have to suffer through a ctv produced "rockstar : the tea party" next summer! ahhhh, i kill me.

[music | tea party, "writing's on the wall"] (i'm not really listening to this - ewwww- but how true this sentiment ended up being)

let me count the ways

2005-10-18T13:03:00.000-04:00

today is a great day... :) here are some things that are going on to make it such :

i got a solid offer from someone to buy my old laptop. i've been trying (albeit half-heartedly) for several months now to sell my old compaq 725. it's really still a great machine - i just outgrew it... my bluddy ipod could hold more songs than it could!

i am getting a cheque dropped off this afternoon. i have been doing some work for a music producer and he's coming by to drop off a cheque this afternoon. so happy for that. he's been out of town working an album in vancouver... so it will be good to have the money again. the hungry monster that lives in my visa will be very happy to see it. also, he's picking up 3 boxes of random shit that i no longer need anymore. glory be. his basement is much larger than my dining room.

i am going to new york city in 10 days! you see... david usher (yes, him) is playing a small intimate show in new york at the end of october. i'm am just crazy enough to make the trip. granted - nyc is worth the trip all on it's own, but david playing new material before he records it is just too amazing of an opportunity to pass up.

i am going to montreal in 4 days! yippee! montreal doesn't actually cost much by train and it's a lovely train ride indeed. especially this time of year.... in the city, the leaves are not really turning yet... there are some yellows and some faded orangey-browns - but i really love to see the gorgeous spanish skirt colours of red, gold, orange, rust, ochre, brown. and the train will afford me that opportunity. oh yes, and also, david is playing montreal on the 22nd.

i am seeing a david usher show tomorrow night. oh to be living in toronto... where i am in such close proximity to many cities. it's a very good thing. the phoenix show will be the first one since the labour day free show - and that one was only 30 minutes. it will be the first full show in a very long time.

david usher in hamilton on friday. (do you see a trend emerging?) normally, i would not be able to make this show - so i am just really really thrilled that i am going. a super nice person has offered me and audrey a ride. i am just so thrilled over that! actually, i think i was an assey-jerk and asked if i could hitch a ride... not a proud moment... but i get to go to the show! see, actually, i thought it was going to be a theatre show - those are just so special. i don't think it will end up being one as it's a general admission gig... oh well. it's still a gig.

there are other things that are making me happy today - but i will keep those to myself for now.... gotta keep a little mystery....

[music | gwen stefani, "cool"]

gender bender

2005-10-17T22:34:00.000-04:00

i really disappointed myself today. yes, indeed, i surely did. you see - today, for the first time ever, i bought gender-specific gifts for kate and josh (my niece and nephew). kate is 5 and josh is 3. they are bright kids and they are live-wires... they literally just never stop going until they sleep. but i guess all kiddlings are like that.

when they first came along i made sure i was a good aunt. as i live in toronto and they live in alberta, i really took time and effort to pick the just right gifts for them. i really wanted them to love me (or just remember me) even though they didn't get to see me very often. very carefully i would pick the right books to expand their little minds and to introduce them to some classic tales that are so often today over looked in favour of stories about blues clues and some explorer named dora.

and when i wasn't buying them books - i bought clothes. kids clothes are pretty damned adorable. at any rate - there were no frivolous toys from aunt jo... and definitely no dolls for kate and no trucks for josh. i hate the whole idea of just falling into the normal and standard gender expected ideas and thoughts. a girl wears pink, a boy wears blue. a girl plays with barbies so she can learn to nurture, a boy with legos so he can learn to build the universe. i don't have kids myself - so there is a real possibility that i could just be full of it!

anyway... this year rolls along and i find myself looking for affordable gifts. seems that my siblings have decided spawn themselves with quite a bit of regularity (my brother has 3 little demon seeds and my sister has one with another on the way). the more kids they have - the less my generosity grows! when they first came along, i spent upwards of 60.00 on each of them. if i did that now, well, it would be unrealistic in my current state of affairs!

so i discovered what limited funds equal. they equal gender toys. shudder. i know. i am sitting here in a pit of self-loathing. urgh. come december 25th, kate will find herself with a my pretty pony, a clickit (girl lego) kit to build necklaces, bracelets and hair clips. josh will find himself with a monster truck (purple with giant tires) and a series of 3 cars that come enclosed in 3 plastic eggs (like kinder eggs, but with die-cast cars). my only concession at a cool non-gender gift was the fact that they are both getting glow in the dark dinosaurs. a triceretops for kate (happens to be her fave, or at least was in august) and a t-rex for josh (that was his fave in august too).

i can take some consolation in the fact that josh will love his little cars and truck... he is such a classic boy. and kate likes art projects - so she should get off on the necklace making bit... and she seems to be developing a love for horses... so the my pretty pony should be just about right.

oh well - next year i can get back to more non-traditional gifts.

[music | david usher, "butterfly" live]

star searching

2005-10-16T14:28:00.000-04:00

growing up i continually found myself drawn to things a bit mysterious, arcane and occulty. things that didn't really make a lot of sense on the surface or analytically - but when you peeked beneath that sharp surface there was a whole other universe living and breathing and sparkling. and it called to me from the earliest age.

as a toddler, i really remember bits and pieces of a past-life experience - and it was a life where i was surrounded by horses. a life where i was so intimately involved with horses that for years i would pretend i was a horse. my early drawings weren't of stick people - but of stick horses... if you ask my mom, she'll agree and she probably has some to pull out to show you. the very first articulated word i ever said was 'horse'. disappointing both my mom and dad - they both were hoping i'd say mumma or dadda first. haha. not me! right from the get go, i was pulling myself in a different direction.

one of the most accepted of the 'other' arts is astrology. whether people laugh and think it's a funny game or whether people pay hundreds of dollars to have their charts cast or whether they read their daily or weekly horoscopes in newspapers, magazines or websites - most people are aware of astrology and most people can tell you their sign.

i am a taurus. strong, stubborn and determined. loyal to a fault, but beware the fool that dares cross a bull... you may be eventually forgiven - but you will forever have a little caution flag by your name. bulls are loyal, honest and fair - and are very hurt when we come across folks who are not.

recently i found a site that gives you a quite detailed description of your natal chart (all you need to do is punch in your date, time and location of birth) with all of the corresponding planetary influences. what fun! here's a little cut and pasting from mine. my comments are in green.

Sun in Taurus (The sun represents vitality, a sense of individuality and outward-shining creative energy)
She is strong-willed and conceited. She has charm, and is tolerant and stoical. She likes pleasure and the good things of Life. Appreciates the Arts.
Sun in conjunction with Mercury indicates that she is intelligent and knows what she wants. Is a good organizer, she likes moving, travel. She likes literature.
Weaknesses: obstinacy, laziness. She is too materialistic, and is a snob. She is greedy and proud.
conceited? ouch! how does that fall into the good points section! lol. and if that doesn't get you - how about the fact that i'm greedy! i can be lazy at times.... this i know well. and i do love to travel, to organize and to read.

Moon in Pisces (The moon represents a reaction, unconscious pre-destination, and the self-image)
Imaginative, sharp insights. She is impressionable, with an abundant imagination. Multiple births. (my mom's father was an identical twin - the family had heard that twins travelled from the father to the daughter's female children. of the 4 potential daughters, only one has had kids so far (my sister) no twins yet. suppose they're waiting for me!)
Weaknesses: troubles caused by too much sentimentality, worries, problems, unhealthy imagination.
She has a tendency to bad dreams. Is interested in the occult. (i am the nightmare queen and i am indeed interested in the occult)

Mercury in Aries (Mercury represents communication and logical spirit)
She argues, disputes, discusses, answers back. Lively mind which quickly understands a given situation. She is very resourceful and capable. (all skills which were honed to a fine point while growing up debating politics and ideologies with my very intelligent and forceful right-wing conservative father)
Weaknesses: she is impetuous, hot-headed, petulant. Impatient and hasty, which causes problems due to lack of foresight before acting. (i actually don't see any of these points in myself. i can be impatient, but am trying to cultivate more serenity!)
Her thirst for knowledge is never satisfied. She is full of mental activity. She undertakes exhaustive studies, always studying for pleasure. Likes journeys to faraway places, and can go to live abroad. (so true.... i am a little research nerd. the more depth with which i understand a topic, the better i feel about it. and nearly everytime i travel i end up thinking that i'd love to live there)

Venus in Pisces (Venus represents an interest for emotions and values, exchange and sharing with others)
Very sentimental. She is easily moved. She is melancholic, romantic. When she loves, it is the most generous of loves.
Weaknesses: risky and confused loves, insane hopes. (gotta love seeing the word insane in there)
Not frightened by the unknown, death. She has a peaceful and happy end. Natural and late death. Possible inheritance. (possible inheritance - does that mean i leave one, or i get one?)
She is good-hearted, generous and has a good character. She likes well-being, comfort, a life without problems. She has good relations with her circle. She is easy to approach.
Her professional life is unstable. She has a taste for the Arts, is a dreamer, is easily influenced and romantic. She is emotional and very sensitive. (professional life unstable - how true that is. i seem to have a knack for picking places that go under or merge or just end up being a hell hole for some other reason. sigh. i just want a job i can go to an feel good about myself. sigh.)

Mars in Capricorn (Mars represents the desire for action and physical energy)
She is very firm, controls herself, observes and is very watchful. She has a great sense of responsibility.
Spontaneous nature. She takes professional risks. A great worker, she likes everything that can be done quickly, and detests things that hang around for a long time. It is the same for her emotional life: no candy-floss or fine speeches, she gets directly to the point.
She is ambitious, has a great capacity for work, has self-confidence and goes to the end of her plans. (there were a lot of negatives here too... i cut them out! i guess that's part of the conceit and excessive self-confidence. however i do take professional risks. i never really thought i was a risk-taker, but it turns out i am. i have made some very hard decisions and forced change on myself. putting me in sink or swim situations twice in my life. both times, i swam and learned a lot about myself. yey me.)

Jupiter in Sagittarius (Jupiter represents expansion and grace)
She is agreeable, seductive, engaging and generous.
She likes and believes in justice. She is an optimist and is generous. Professional success is rapid and helped by the family. Family life is very important for her. She likes comfort, well-being at home. She knows how to entertain in style and above all with pleasure. She is very generous and altruistic, helping people in difficulty or sick people. She knows how to listen or, at least, how to give that impression. She is a dreamer, with lots of imagination: she likes the Arts.
(i like how this makes me sound like the life of the party and the soul of any social gathering... haha. i think i agree with some of this. i love people to enjoy the food i cook and i really do think that people do enjoy coming to my home for meals. we light candles, have a nice red and over-indulge on yummy foods.)

Saturn in Taurus (Saturn represents contraction and effort)
Slow but persistent in action. Perseverance of effort, assiduity, in a regular and set manner.
Weaknesses: she perseveres, insisting on her way but is intransigent. Not very expansive.
She is serious, methodical, persevering. She perseveres, achieves her projects through hard work. (all work and no play makes jodi a dull gurl. wow. i feel sapped of energy and life and fun by just reading this.)

Uranus in Libra (Uranus represents individual liberty, egoistic liberty)
Well-developed artistic leanings. Her balance can be upset by too great an independence. (these two statements are me in a nutshell. i am very very independent - i tend to do things on my own and it inevitably ends up being the harder way of doing things. and arts... i'm not a creator of the arts - but i am one who loves to serve the arts.)
She has a lot of flair. She must have an out-of-the-ordinary job, in which case all goes well: otherwise, she will often change jobs and will have financial problems. (sigh, so true. i am very particular about my job and my career. and as a result, i do have financial problems.)

Neptune in Sagittarius (Neptune represents transcendental liberty, non-egoistic liberty)
Likes long voyages, things foreign, water. (yes, yes and yes)
She succeeds thanks to brilliant and unusual ideas. She is very much influenced by her mother. (i am very influenced by my mother in the fact that i am very concious that i have not picked her life - that is a huge influence on me. she is a kind hearted person with a lot to give, but she did not chose a life that makes her completely happy)

a general round up of the planets and the houses in my chart :

Will not earn a lot of money through work. (i have come to accept that)
She looks for refined unproblematic people, with whom to have long discussions, without raised voices of any kind. (i actively seek to REMOVE drama from my life. takes too much energy that i'm just not willing to give. i had a lot of drama in my childhood and now i will walk away from those who try to give it to me now. not open for drama.)
Family rows will be frequent. Might receive an inheritance. (haha, what did i just write above this... :) and inheritance again... hmmm... my 3 remaining grandparents recently passed over and i did not recieve an inheritance. if i'm to get one from my parents - let it not be for many many many years.)
Discussions about an inheritance. Be careful of water. (again with the inheritance. shudder.)
Likes meeting, ceaselessly discussing with well-informed people, full of ideas. (sounds like a dream evening for me. probably one in which i've made the food and lit the candles)
A few problems with authority or someone in charge. (haha! yes, indeed. if the person in charge is smart and fair, no problems. if they seem dull or weak or makes dumb decisions, i have problems with them.)

i realized this has been an epic post. and really probably not interesting to anyone but myself. however, i'd recommend this site to anyone who has even a passing interest in astrology.

[music | depeche mode, "waiting for the night"]

meet the new me

2005-10-15T12:13:00.000-04:00

.i am pretty fucking cool.

and my monster ass-kicking self is pretty righteous too

[music | the warlocks, "it's just like surgery"]

summer 2005 & alberta in photos

2005-10-14T20:15:00.000-04:00

i was cleaning through my picture folders and realized that it's been a while since posting a wack of photos.... so, without further ado... i hereby present - summer 2005.

much earlier this year (may?) i bought 6 fish for the wee pond in the back yard. half of them were assigned to the compose heap and were replaced with two new ones. now i have 5 fish and one of them is actually big enough to be a meal! if i wasn't veggie that is....

i have always had a weakness for morning glories and their sister plants, the moonflowers. this year i planted 4 blue plants and 4 red. the blues ended up being absolutely huge - the blooms were about the size of a tea cup plate. next year i can see the yard being absolutely covered with the damn things.

a spider took up residence on the front steps. she moved her web from the ornamental trees, to the flower pot and then back to the ornamental trees. at one point we were convinced that she was attempting to spin a web large enough to catch a person.... luckily, she did not suceed... then again, we do have a new postman these days...

the newest addition to the house is dear brat zelda. she has become a bathroom troll, seems you can't attempt to relieve yourself without a kitten passing you some toilet paper.
and just to show that i'm not playing favourites... here is the reigning king of the house - raja... the only male worthy of living with me, well, unless you are counting sushi, the betta fish....

and of course this summer i went back to my parent's farm. this is the old chicken barn, which has also been home to sheep, pigs and one of my horses when he needed to be weaned from his mummy. as a kid, i used to dare my city cousins to jump from the windows... and by city - i mean the town of 5,000! only once did one of them twist their ankles... heehee.
my lame attempt at an 'art' shot. it's just an old piece of farm equipment - i think it might of been a livestock feeder in another life. it was a lovely sunny day. there is just something about alberta blue sky and alberta blazing sun that just can't be duplicated.
my dad owns several hundred head of cattle in the summer (the number is much less in the winter, as they end up going to auction markets when canada is not in the grips of mad cow frenzy). this is one of 8 bulls that he has at the moment. it's something else standing 3 feet away from an animal that weighs about 1,800 pounds and is basically all muscle.
and here is one of the many calves that has probably either been sold already, or is wintering on my dad's farm. calves are just so adorable!

several years ago my parents planted hundreds of trees on the farm and at the same time, my dad put in some rose bushes for my mom. they are basically left to fend for themselves and as you can see, are doing quite well on their own.
while i was home, there seemed to be an absolute infestation of these pink, orange and brown butterflies. apparently they are called 'painted ladies' and come to alberta from california every 12 years or so. according to local gossip, the butterflies had missed the last migration because the weather sucked. they were out in force this august... i spent about an hour hunting butterflies with my digital camera.... but i won't subject you to all the shots!

[music | leonard cohen, "suzanne"]

bush speech

2005-10-13T15:23:00.000-04:00

hee - found this over on moby's journal.
much fun.
heehee.

[music | the warlocks, "it's just like surgery"]

hobbits | the letter j | the internets | sharks

2005-10-13T12:42:00.000-04:00

hobbits may have actually existed? scientists are finding bones of smallish human beings in caves in an indonesian island. the scientists are calling them 'hobbits'. if this is true, my already tenuous grasp of reality will be further in jeopardy.... ;-) as a wee gurl in alberta, maybe, just maybe i stopped trying to get my horses to speak to me too soon!

a couple in america has just had their 16th child - and they want to start trying for another one right away. they are from (you guessed it) arkansas and apparently the father has aspirations of political office. all 16 kiddlings have names starting with the letter 'j'. somewhat similar to my family - except for my parents stopped at 3 j's. thank the gods. however, i was slightly alarmed when my brother named one of his kids josh! his other two are kaitlin and kelly... so the j-dynasty is over... but there seems to be some sort of attempt to found a k-dynasty.

and did you know that technically, america controls the internet? and that the un is getting involved? and that other nations are severly pissed? no, neither did i. but it's an interesting thought - the fact that something that really is supposed to be a global tool for the free flow of information and ideas is actually governed by a country that for the past 6 years or so has essentially been pulling back from the rest of the world. that and the fact that the man running the country that runs the internet calls it "the internets".

and finally and most cool - great white sharks might use stars to navigate. recently a random great white was tagged off the coast of south africa and this shark ended up on a migration trek to australia - over 12,000 miles. marine biologists had no idea or proof (but tiny hunches) that the great whites travelled this far. it's possible that this girl shark headed to aussie to find a boy shark before returning to south africa 9 months later. while on her trek, she dove deeper than 3,000 metres (a record for great whites) but spent more than half of her trip swimming along the ocean surface, leading to the celestial navigation theory. there were 30 sharks tagged at the same time and this one was the only one to make this trip... but i highly doubt that she is the lone visionary of all the sharks. or then again, maybe the boy sharks in her neck of the woods were just all jerks and she felt she needed to get out to meet someone new... not so unrelatable!

[music | ladytron, "destroy everything you touch"]

dungeons and dragons camp

2005-10-12T18:21:00.000-04:00

time for a music round-up....

this friday i am going to see my friend alana kurtis play at holy joe's.... she hits the stage at about 11 and it should be a lot of fun. she's a doll of a person and writes quite beautiful songs - they are a bit on the country-flavour for my tastes - but she's still worth seeing.

chris koster, one of my favourite, if unknown artists, signed recently to the orange record label. i hope it is a good move for him... i've heard some not so favourable things about the folks at orange... but chatter is useless, right? a woman i greatly respect (and until now, i've never heard her say a bad word about anyone) thinks these folks are less than savoury (to put it mildly). whether they are dicks or not - we just need orange to finance and promote a kicking video for one of chris' songs and hopefully give him his proper introduction to the masses. or at least the clumps who are able to appreciate interesting artists.

and another uh-oh... checking chris' website i noticed that he is now managed by jake gold.. *le sigh*. oh well. might just be some sour grapes on my part... the whole the song corp venture and all.... whatever. jake and his partner allan gregg and their egos ending up driving 3 great indie canadian companies into the ground. and i'd been working at one of those indies before it got swept up in the ambitious merger to create a canadian multi-service label. a dream that ended in bitter feelings, macho posturing and bankruptcy. a nasty chapter in canadian music, for certain. good thing maple music has gone on and done that very same thing in a much more civilized manner!

yes, i've been through it... bankrupt indie-labels, merging major labels, a boss who was a little too touchy feely, entry-level pay for a senior position, being pigeon-holed into the 'female' jobs in this male dominated industry and on and on and on. and why do i still want to work in music? hahaha. sometimes i shake my head and think i'm a silly-goose for still wanting this. oh well. there are shitty people and environments everywhere. at least if i'm working in the industry i get to deal with my passion every day. i still cling on the the hope that i can have a job that is both interesting and fulfilling - and one that helps artists in their expression and their careers. this is all i want. oh, and a paycheque.

regardless - nothing inspires me like the artists do... and believe me - they get treated far worse in this industry than i ever have been. it really is a wretched business! where you work at a label for a salary that you just KNOW is more than a lot of the artists signed to that same label make in a year. the reasons that an artist is dropped by a label, which often times deals more with the ego of the people at the label than it does with the artist themself. and then of course, the ever-blessed bottom line. where you can see a&r and marketing and promo spending so much money on an album that the artist has no hope of having a good p&l sheet. and if you don't have good p&l - well... see ya later bucky.

ok - this was less of a music round-up than it was a rant. but you know what... that's ok too.

[music | tool, "pushit"]

walk.dont.run

2005-10-07T17:05:00.000-04:00

today is a david day. news of his first show in nyc came out this morning and i got a copy of his dvd documentary of the making of his 2005 album, 'if god had curves'. it's called walk.dont.run and is only available in his online store and at some shows this autumn. i was really looking forward to this dvd since he was posting on his website that it was a very personal and raw look at the writing/recording process of this ablum. and yes, i'd have to say that pretty much nails the description down.

if you're reading this and you haven't seen the dvd yet.... be warned that i will touch on some parts of the dvd... beware! proceed at your own caution! turn back now! it's not too late.... heehee - that puts in my head the scene with the stones from labyrinth where jennifer connelly's character sarah chooses a certain path on the her search for jareth (adroitly played by mr. david bowie). there - enough space wasted.... ok... on i go....

from the early moments of the dvd where you are in the bathroom with david (wow, that camera is close! and, 'is that a plaid robe you're wearing over your chest with no shirt on it?') you are sucked right into the artist's world. so into the world that you can sit there and wonder how on earth does he get any work done with that counting child in the next room? he tries and fails to play a song several times before he stops and says something blaming his own short comings. he must have the patience of a saint when it comes to his kid. proof positive that i should never have one! i could not stay that serene...

while there is an early sense of, 'wow, am i seeing too much here?', that discomfort soon gives way to the rapture of new york which is presented as a very present backdrop to not only david's life, but to the album itself. you can see the ease with which david lives in this city. sitting on the subway, walking through central park, stopping at restaurants, all without one person staring at him or asking him for some of his time. in other words - he is our beloved canadian rockstar - but living in a city where he can just be without a persona. very nice.

some highlights :
we see the recording of several tracks and are a fly on the wall for some rehearsals
it's nice to see jeff and kevin (the moist boys) and some of their comments made me laugh out loud
the little story about contacting leonard cohen to see if he would sing on the album
the ongoing saga of trying to get gloria steinham's lawyers to clear a sample for 'love will save the day'
the humble hope that tegan from tegan and sara would consent to sing on a track.

all in all - this is a wonderful gift from an artist i respect like i do few others.

and best of all - for the nyc show on october 30th - david will be trying out some new material before he begins recording it. apparently it's going to be more acoustic guitar with a little electronic kick. how much will new york cost. just how much will it cost to not be there?

[music | david usher, "souring"]

don't eat the berries

2005-10-05T17:14:00.000-04:00

someone today asked me to recommend some tori amos tracks.... i don't know if she'd heard any tori before and it's just possible that the music might not appeal to her at all - tori is an all or nothing sort of artist. i've never heard of anyone being so-so on tori. either you are lifted to another realm by tori, or you stay on this one. i think it's really that simple.

going through each album and trying to select just the right songs to recommend to a new listener was an interesting little task. a refreshing challenge to try to bring some objective ears to her music! tori's music for me is such an intensely personal thing. listening to her albums over and over and over again until every nuance flows with my very blood and breath.

and her live shows.... well - that's a whole 'nother level of personal. only twice have i gone to her shows with someone else (monique who i used to work with at lichtmans - lichtman's luvs ya! and ambika, rob and mike more recently). all other times i have gone on my own. at the beginning it was out of necessity - no one i knew liked tori enough to spring for tickets & i didn't have enough $$ to buy a ticket for them. almost immediately i became protective and selfish of my tori-time. once i had told someone how excited i was that a tori show had been announced - and this person (lovely margarita) wanted to come too. i felt not-so-great about it, but we bought our tickets together. then, the night of the show, margarita ended up not being able to go & had her boyfriend scalp her ticket. i did not know this until a stranger came and sat in her seat.

on another musical note - i've been listening to witching hour by ladytron. i'd read a good review and besides - how could i not buy an album named 'witching hour'? itunes describes the music as electronica - but i don't think i agreee. i actually hear a lot of 80's gothy influence there.... the jesus and mary chain, bauhaus, the cure, joy division and a bit of siouxsie in the vocals. if you like any of the mentioned - check out this disc.... turns out this is their 3rd album - looks like i've got some catching up to do. yey for new discoveries!

tonight i'm off to the drake to check out chris koster. i've seen him a handful of times and he really just seems to get better and better (excepting an odd yelping performance at cmw a few years back). seeing him both solo and with a band - i'm not sure which i prefer - though some of the songs are quite epic with a full band backing them. his album secrets of the lonely is really quite amazing - it will go down as one of my most listened to of 2005.

on a non-music related note - i am very interested in seeing body worlds 2, currently at the ontario science centre. a german scientist found a way to placticize human bodies, organs, tissues, muscles, etc so that they look as close to living as possible. the exhibit contains over 200 specimens. i was going to go in january 2006, thinking it'd be better to go in the deep of the toronto winter (to beat the crowds), but i heard from my yoga instructor that if you go now, there are hardly any crowds at all and you can spend as much time as you want in the exhibit. the tickets are crazy expensive ($25.00), but i really think this will be a unique exhibit.

[music | ladytron, "the last one standing"]

the occult in new york

2005-10-01T10:47:00.000-04:00

beginning in the victorian era and continuing on into the mid 1900's most of england was obsessed with spirituality, the occult, witchcraft, ancient gods and the study of all things anywhere near related to the paranormal. after all, england was home to things like the hellfire club (sir francis dashwood's ocultish/satanistic cult of the mid-1700's). and home to internationally renowned (if controversial) archeological like the fascinating dr. margaret murray who in the 1920's wrote serious and scholarly papers on the history of the practice of witchcraft in medieval europe.

also during this time early photographers began an interest in documenting the occult. there is some question on whether this was a genuine interest in art, or whether the photographers were playing the charlatans just as much as some of the occultists of the day. taking advantage of families missing fathers, sons and brothers through various wars, the business of mediums and their scenances grew madly. i think it was common for most well-heeled folk of the time to have their own personal medium on call.

the metropolitan museum of art in new york city currently is hosting an exhibit called "The Perfect Medium : Photography and the Occult". their site describes it as the "historical intersection between photography and the once wildly popular interest in spiritualism." i can not tell you how much this excites me. it's many of my pet passions converging at once. mueseums, history, ghosts, the occult and interesting art.

i am hoping to make a trip to nyc in late october to go see some david usher shows and if i can actually make this happen - you can guarantee that you will be able to find me at that exhibit.

[music | tori amos, "never seen blue"]

she is me

2005-09-30T19:12:00.000-04:00

the return of the online quiz.... a few months back i was obsessed with online quizes and posted a few of my results. most memorable where when i was declared to be both ghandi and buffy the vampire slayer in one day....

today - surprising no one who knows me - i was declared a social liberal.

You are a
Social Liberal
(80% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(8% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Socialist

Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

[music | bauhaus, "telegram sam"]

season of the witch socks

2005-09-29T19:21:00.000-04:00

we're really getting into it now. for the past few days the thermometer has been dropping - reinforced by the fact that both cats run for the sofa whenever they see me pulling out a blanket to snuggle into. the sun is still out, but the solar heat is just not the same as could be felt just a few weeks ago. gardens are now somewhat overgrown and the holly berries are beginning to turn their bright red in preparation for autumn and winter. the morning glories are still valiantly attempting to worship the morning sun, even though the temperatures are cooling off rapidly. the few rusted leaves that are on the neighbourhood lawns will soon give way to a crunchy blanket of red, orange and yellow.

this is also the time of the thinning of the veil. for those who believe in such things, now is the time when you begin to hear extra creaks in the floor boards, lights being on when you know they were off and for my poor roommate - a face full of water as a result of the shower head being turned in her direction (i didn't do it... and i don't think that the cats can reach). i've lived in places that experienced far more activity than this one. places where a self-declared non-sensitive found it hard to walk up the stairs to the upper bedroom. and while she felt something restraining her, the believers felt a virtual invisible wall of resistance. i could go on about my experiences, but those are best saved for cozy nights in front of a roaring fireplace and servings of warming blueberry tea. or tarot readings. the last tarot party i did ended up with me sitting in a suburban mississagua home being asked to tell stories of my experiences with other worldly things. i felt a bit like a dog and pony show - and could see a bit more clearly why some readers develop a dramatic persona to go with their readings.

it's the time of year when nightly dreams arrive just that more vividly and quite often with a message for you to learn or to recall upon waking. it's the time of year that i remember all that has happened in the previous 12 months. it's the death of the living year, so in that time, for me it's only natural to remember those who have left this life. this year i will recall my grandma erna and my cat nes. this is the time of their final passing. i will also remember those who have left in years before : norma, decker (actually jacob - but my grandfather lived his entire life with a nickname... how cool is that?), arthur, george, rose, john, cornelia, sam, boris, diva and on and on i could go. i will remind myself of all the wonderful memories and experiences shared with each of them. i will let go of the sadness i still feel on each of their passings and remind myself that while their actual presence is in absentia my thoughts of them will live on as long as i do.

i find comfort in the seasonal changes, i really do. sometimes it's rather simple to become so self-absorbed that one loses the thread of their own life. the core of the person and the essence of that unique spark that makes us all individuals. when i get a little too self-obsessed with self-loathing (why did this happen to me? what do i do wrong? why does nothing go right?) i find it so helpful to be able to look at the ever changing robes that nature cloaks herself in. the cycle moved in it's ancient pattern long before i ever drew my first breath and the dance will go on long after i have exhaled my last. the sun somehow remembers to rise and shine each day and the moon glows in it's cool counterpart to the solar melody. it's all so much larger than any of us.

[music | dead can dance, "oman"]

poof, be gone

2005-09-28T23:41:00.000-04:00

so this morning in my shower i came up with two blog topics... i was so pleased... sometimes the hardest thing about rambling on a blog is to figure out what to ramble about. i knew the flavour, the phrasing and the flow... they were going to be fun to write.

off i went to my yoga class and somewhere between leaving the class and getting to the subway i got weird little butterflies in my tummy. urgh. i thought i might be hungry. stopped by the second cup to see if i wanted a muffin or a coffee or something. nope. no food thanks. and no caffeine either, thankies. i sucked on a white hot chocolate on the way home and read my book. by the time i hit home my stomach really was feeling like i had a swarm of monarchs in there.

i took some gravol, grabbed a cat and a blanket and curled up on the sofa and slept for several hours. woke up, had some water and went back to sleep with a different cat. woke up to the sound of a phone ringing, had a conversation and went back to sleep until 7pm. my stomach is still feeling fluttery and i'm getting tired of it now. hopefully i'll be able to sleep tonight - haha. i might just be finishing my great book ursula, under tonight.

maybe those two great ideas will come back - but i think the gravol chased them away.

on a side note - i'm not sure if i like the new look to ye olde blog - but i was a little bored of the other....

[music | dead can dance, "cantara"]

everybody's living in a material world....

2005-09-27T16:39:00.000-04:00

as a kid i loved having things around me and never wanted to throw anything out. i used to save every scrap of paper i ever wrote on and ended up hijacking one of my parent's end tables for storage. it was one of those oh-so-70's octagonal shaped column table... with a cupboard door on the lower portion. i would shove all my goodies in that damned thing. my dad used to call it a fire-trap. which, on retrospect - did not help my fear of fire. i have always had dreams of fire and burning up - especially as a wee girl. with the knowledge that the end table was a fire trap i would lay in my twin bed in my tiny room and toss and turn as i imagined the papers just somehow spontaneously sparking up and burning the entire place down.

as i've aged i've gone through periodic purges. i used to save perfume boxes - just because i liked the packaging and thought it'd be a waste to throw them out. i used to keep every book i ever read - even if it was a brutally bad book that i did not want to ever read again - much less inflict on anyone else. i used to keep all the wrapping paper that gifts came in - not that i'd usually remember who the paper was from or what the gift was or even to re-use the nice paper - i just did not want to throw it out.

through time i've gotten better at letting go of these material objects. i will take books to the used store or give them away to the movers who have the carry the damned things in a move. i only keep very very very pretty wrapping paper now - and i do know what and who goes with it. long ago i threw out the last of the perfume boxes.

guess you could say i'm a pack-rat in recovery. that doesn't mean i am in the clear though. i still have a concert t-shirt from 1989. it's a giant oversized bon jovi tour shirt. i don't keep the shirt for any sentimental reasons (though i clearly remember going with my friend leanne and that we stopped at a dairy queen for hot fudge sundaes on the way home). i don't know why i keep the shirt. it's part of the pack-rat thing, i suppose. from time to time i will still use it to sleep in. i guess i am comforted by sleeping with my 18 year-old ghost. i don't see me throwing that shirt out just yet.

and the pack-rat-ness extends to keeping the last item of things. am i attempting to stem the flood of time by keeping one of everything i've ever owned? it really has to be a sickness because i will keep things like the last tea bag from a particularity good box of tea. or the last few scrapings of powder in the bottom of a great international coffee tin. does this mean i hate saying goodbye? does this mean i am comforted by things staying the same? does this mean i just hate finishing things? self-examination is difficult for me... so these questions may remain unanswered until another time. maybe when i'm able to throw out the bon jovi pj's.

what i do know is that i've begun making tea from those last straggling teabags and loose leaves. the past few weeks i've been drinking ancient cups of many brands of earl grey, darjeeling and a whole shop's worth of flavoured teas (cherry, rum&butter, chocolate, orange/peach and the list goes on).

i'm not sure what i'm accomplishing - but i do know that i feel lighter doing this. if only i knew what past baggage i was really holding on to and how to rid myself of it....

[music | tori amos, "siren"]

tooth marks on your soul

2005-09-23T13:18:00.000-04:00

some days are just destined to be more of a struggle... aren't they? then again - it's really all on how you look at things. do you look at them with suspicion and narrowed eyes, or do you blink and grin.

when you realize you didn't wash your sweaty yoga clothes the day before it leads you to dig through the drawer to mine less preferable items... which takes a few extra moments which then may lead you to just barely miss the bus whizzing past your face. which then possibly results in your arrival at the subway station 10 minutes later than you normally plan. and that just might take you to the transfer station with only 15 minutes to spare before the friday yoga ritual begins. and what if at that subway transfer there is an unknown problem which leads the ttc to unload 3 trains in front of your face, unburdening their human cargo onto the already squashy platform. one might, just might then decide that yoga is a no-go and head off to the bank machine to put in some gold or take out some gold.

all of this interuption to the regularily scheduled program may lead one to place one's book on the shelf at the royal bank machine. and then you wander off in search of a coffee and a croissant and a seat where you can read your book for a bit.

in case you haven't figured it out, i'm talking about my own day (insert sardonic wink here, "duh, jo"). i make my way to the coffee and croissant, but when i reach for my book - it is not anywhere to be found. i molest my yoga bag looking for the book - but no, it has not somehow rolled itself into the sticky mat.

with resignation and the full expectation that i will need to purchase another copy of the book, i head back to see if it's still there. i was especially bothered as this book is actually really really brilliant. i have been reading a series of good, but not rapturous novels and just kind of fell across this one as i was looking for the 3rd book in a well-written trilogy about fictional shogun japan (brilliance of the moon). this astonishing book i'm loving is called ursula, under. it is a completely unexpected treasure. i am halfway through and already mourning it's completion.

arriving at the bank of machines, they are all empty except for the one round the corner from my sight. there is a man completing this transaction and i look on the shelf hoping to see ursula waiting for me there. she's not. i feel a twinge of regret and begin to hope that the person who found it would love it as much as i... but then my eyes travel upwards to the man's elbow - and some kind soul (perhaps this man) has tucked ursula anywhere but under.

the book has been thoughtfully placed behind a little post - up and out of the way. giddily, i wait for the man to collect his money and leave. he's barely left (but not without first casting a puzzled glance at me, "why is this woman waiting for this machine, when 3 others are open and free?") i collect my book and begin the walk back to the second cup so i can continue my postponed date with a cup of coffee. unfortunatley, the man is also heading in the same direction - and he's now freaked out and looking back at me - like i'm going to roll him for his 20's. tee hee. as he speeds away, i stop and browse in the window of de ritz. mmmmm.... bags........

thank you to the kind soul who didn't take my book, but instead placed it somewhere safe. thank you very much indeed. may good things happen to you today. not everyone is a craphead.... it's nice to be taken out of your own little zone and remember this from time to time.

[music | placebo, "brick shithouse"]

bubble girl

2005-09-22T16:29:00.000-04:00

we've just moved past the last day of summer and into the first day of autumn. mabon is a time of reflection and balance - and yummy soups. i thought i'd take the day to take stock of my current place in the landscape of my life and i have to say - wow. can we all lighten up a little?

we've got a 33 year old pervert taking cell phone pics up the skirts of little girls in grocery stores. we've got recovered bodies from two separate missing women in ontario. one was apparently murdered by a neighbour and we still just don't know about the other. we have yet another canadian scandal involving money- this time it's with the feds giving grant money to some tech companies that may or may not have lived up to their end of the contract. we have a man in ontario being released on bail after spending 12 years in jail for the rape and murder of his niece - but now it appears that she may not have been raped or murdered (what the fuck happened there?)

we've got raine maida pontificating about how profound and selective and important he is (but that's nothing new). we have shirley manson complaining about inxs reliving the past by picking a new lead singer via a reality show. we have the american media in a mass orgy over the prospects of another katrina scale hurricane (who need to talk about katrina's effects anymore, we have the potential grim disaster of rita to dwell on). and lots and lots of people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom (eewwww!) and if they're not doing it in public - you just KNOW they're not doing it at home either.

i could go on - but why bother. why not just go to kitten wars and see how zelda is doing? :) 61% at last check. c'mon gurl!

[music | the music, "breakin'"]

borrowed from a dream

2005-09-20T15:36:00.000-04:00

this morning i dragged myself out of bed earlier than i wanted to. maybe it was the pressure on my bladder, but i had a dream early this morning that is lingering like the smell of stale cigarettes.

it was a dream of the movie of my life. the person playing me was the girl from the ctv show "instant star". i had to look her up to find her name - alexz johnson. i've watched the show a few times, but only because members of david usher's band are in some of the episodes as part of ms. instant star's band.

anyway - in my dream, we were reliving some actual and some fictional accounts of my life circa the university era. what was real - i was a journalism student and i was working on the annual ryerson review of journalism. what wasn't real - i was working at the perfume counter at a suburban shoppers drug mart (i actually worked at an indie book store in downtown toronto).

in the movie dream i was treated horribly by the other students - kind of treated like the gum on the bottom of their shoes - there and needing to be dealt with, but it's not a pleasant thing. and the instructors all seemed to hate me and my work. in the scene where we were working on the magazine - i was being told to fetch coffee and being yelled at because my fact checking and copy editing wasn't worthy of everyone else's work. i was wearing big baggy clothes and wearing a strange yellow and black houndstooth shirt. very strange. and quite unflattering!

then the dream had a voiceover (told you it was like a movie) where i/alexz johnson was taking the bus to work. the voiceover was all about how i flunked out of j-school and did not graduate with my degree and she started to go on about how much this affected her life when i woke myself up.

my waking self (admittedly groggy and stupid with sleep) started thinking that i should take my degree off of my resume because if anyone found it out, it would be bad and i'd have no answer for it. then i started to feel like a failure because i couldn't even graduate university. but of course - I DID. i remembered that i did get my degree and that my mom even flew in for the ceremony.

silliness that should of dissipated when i washed the sleep from my eyes - but for some reason it hasn't. i feel like my subconscious is playing a nasty game on me. telling me that i am sub-par and just not a winner at life. rationally i know this is stupid. besides - who the hell wins at life? is there something to win? argh!

maybe this is all because of the dinner i made for a friend last night (spaghetti squash with peppers, carrots and tofu and an apple curried soup). he's quit smoking and been going through some relationship turmoil - both of which are leading to some pretty acute anxiety attacks. we talked and talked and talked and talked about it. maybe i'm absorbing....

on a more positive note - there are 4 new live performances by david usher up on the sympatico site. go check out the orange lounge for some amazing music.

[music | david usher, "faithless"]

take a look at my world....

2005-09-15T15:29:00.000-04:00

can i just say how disappointed i am in the whole canadian idol thing? why is it that this concept (which is basically just a televised illustration of one of the many ills of the industry) is so popular. i literally do not understand it. a friend of mine believes it's because the public gets to think that 'one of their own' beats the star system and becomes famous. that because these performers are in your living room singing (albeit usually off-key) classic pop songs, that the people start to feel protective. almost like it's the kid who lives down the street. why wouldn't you want to support little danny or little janey?

this mini-rant is brought to you courtesy of this weeks album sales. one of the former rejects from one season or another of canadian idol released an album on universal this week. and they debuted in #3. i just don't understand. all i know is that idol needs to go away. it needs to stop existing. and until that point in time - all things idol are as dead to me as certain hilton heirs. i will not acknowledge their existence any more. until i snap and need to rant again over a sold out tour or something.

as i write this i have metallica : some kind of monster on in the background. it's 3 hours long (?!?) and you can just tell all participants feel they're making an important contribution to the world of documentary film. instead it just appears to be coming off as a band that is past their creative prime still struggling to be heard in some form or another. (as i type this james hetfield is talking to a therapist while wearing a triumph band t-shirt) *sigh*

guess i'm kinda surly today.

uh, i'm responsible.... forgive me????

2005-09-14T17:07:00.000-04:00

well, will wonders never cease? first we had jd performing his gawdawful original song for the 3rd time last night on rockstar : inxs and now we have gwb claiming responsibility for the horrendous response time to the results of hurricane katrina. and that is a first - i believe. it's probably the closest that administration will ever get to an apology.

this is the administration that refused to acknowledge the faulty information that lead to the war in iraq (remember the whole, "they have weapons of mass destruction" song and war-drum dance?). this is the administration that refused to apologize for the human rights violations that were documented in abu ghraib - and potentially in the guantanamo bay prison as well. this is an administration of arrogance. granted - if you were handed the keys to the worlds most powerful and wealthy nation (twice!?!), you might feel a little puffed and mighty yourself.

but bush has come out and gone on the record basically stated that the buck stops here. he is to blame for the problems and for the fact that response time to disasters haven't improved at all since 9/11 (in fact, it seems to have gotten worse). he claimed that he was responsible for the mishandling of the response and reaction to the hurricane katrina aftermath and flooding. the flooding, by the way, is starting to look more and more like the levees were broken via arson, not katrina. that would be the saddest news of all.

now i don't think that gwb has woken up on the other side of the bed and decided that he needed to appear more humble. no, sadly, we all know that this is part of a massive image tweak that is beginning. i mean, he's gone 3 times now to the areas most affected by katrina. this from the president who in the early days of this disaster elected to have photo ops with guitars and good ole boys. this is a start, but at the same time, it's really kind of like the proverbial finger in the dike. the claim of responsibility stopped short of being an apology. and it's rather late, don't you think?

moving on.... what the hell is a sheep doing in a bra in a dorm room. eeew! or rather, ewe.

also - what do you do when you own a smelly cat. the new kitten pretty much refuses to clean and she is greasy and beginning to smell. most unattractive. this afternoon she came running up to me - and one side of her was soaking wet. first i thought she'd been undergoing a heavy duty cleaning session - but no, it turns out that she fell into her water dish - and just couldn't be bothered to lick herself dry. if this goes on much longer i won't be able to cuddle with her! the wet food already makes her farts smell like rotten pumpkins and now she smells of dirty hair. lovely. but she has the most beautiful eyes! :)

[music | the smiths, "money changes everything"]

who are you...

2005-09-13T11:03:00.000-04:00

i've been watching the senate hearings for the new chief justice of the american supreme court. i have to admit - that i do not really know anything at all about judge john roberts - but i do know that he is gwb's nominee and that fact alone makes me think i won't like roberts. a quick google search turned up the interesting fact that judge roberts provided legal advice to florida govenor jeb bush in 2000 regarding the presidential election. more specifically - how the florida legislature could legally find in gwb favour. that rumour aside, to be somewhat fair - from what i see today, roberts appears to be eloquent, cautious and polite in the face of some not so polite questioning by some of the senators.

but look at his eyes! his eyes! his eyes! his eyes look like the grown up version the village of the damned kids. yes, he may have dyed his hair dark - but his eyes still look bizzarre and like he's about to unleash his powers that will make us all fall under his thrall.

roberts keeps emphasizing that he has no firm and calibrated judicial philosophy and this seems to be the very thing that the committee is attempting to uncover. for someone who has stated that he's not running for political office and that he does not have a platform to run on - he sure is answering like a politician. sidestepping just about everything that comes his way.

the position of chief justice is a lifetime appointment and roberts is only 50 years old. he could conceivably have this power for the next 30 years. that is power. power for roberts, power for the republican party and a very powerful legacy for gwb. roberts would become one of the most powerful men in the united states.

a quote yesterday from one of the democratic senators pretty much sums it up :

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, told Roberts he needed to answer senators' questions so they can determine "whether you're in the mainstream."

"In a sense, we have seen maybe 10 percent of you -- just the visible tip of the iceberg, not the 90 percent that is still submerged," Schumer said. "And we all know that it is the ice beneath the surface that can sink the ship."

the republican senators are holding the line that roberts should not answer any questions about how he might rule in a case or issue that may come before the supreme court. (well, then, shall we talk about playstation 2 or the latest golf swing techniques?). and the democratic senators are pushing to know more about the personal viewpoints of this judge. another democratic senator took a pretty sharp focus on the events of the coming week :

"Judge, if I look only at what you've said and written ... I would have to vote 'no,' " said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware.

"This is your chance, judge, to explain what you mean by what you have said and what you have written. "

the hearings are meant to wrap up by the end of the week and if judge roberts is confirmed he will take his place as chief justice when the court begins sitting again in october. why, oh, why, oh, why did sandra day o'connor retire? a moderate republican... does such a thing exist anymore?

[music | nine inch nails, "ringfinger"]

my pretty face and all my gentle ways

2005-09-12T15:25:00.000-04:00

most of last week and continuing into today there's been a parade of loud trucks, jackhammers, cement being poured and men, men, men, men, men. you know how the powers-that-be at city hall gets their little whims and just begin frenzied and seemingly pointless construction projects? well, they're doing it on my street. as near as i can tell, they are ripping up sewer drains, manhole covers and nearly all the sidewalk on the street. i'm not sure what they're accomplishing, other than the fact that we're all going to have nice newly poured sidewalks.

last thursday, i was walking up my street on my way to go meet a friend and spend the day on the toronto islands. very happy to escape my needy new kitten (who ended up being a zelda and not a tallulah) and the noisy construction when i nearly walked right onto a newly paved sidewalk. it was so newly paved that the city worker was still smoothing out the wet cement. i stopped, pretty much in the nick of time and said, 'oops' just as the construction guy said, 'whoa!'. i stepped into the street and looked at him as i told him that i was lost in my thoughts and didn't even see what was going on.

and then i saw what a mistake that was... this guy was stunningly gorgeous. yes, sure - bad me - i'm objectifying him based on his looks - but if you saw him - you'd not only forgive me, but you'd understand and reach for a tissue to wipe away your own drool. ;-> he was shirtless - but for the open red and orange construction vest, wearing dark sunglasses and with dark and lovely skin. and oh yeah - very nicely muscled. *sigh* picture a sunny beach somewhere in latin america and you pretty much know what he looks like.

then he flashes me this stunning smile and asks if i'm alright, if i have too much on my mind. i just smile back and tell him i'm ok and thank him. as i walk to the subway i start to wonder what the hell i'm doing. unless this guy was just the sweetest most concerned guy on the face of the planet, he seemed to be hitting on me.

which lead me to wonder - how does one successfully flirt without getting a serious dose of self-loathing. i mean, flirting usually is gag inducing. it's a game. i don't like games - i like honesty. i think i'm too straightforward for my own good.

discussing it with a friend that night, i told her that i wondered what carrie bradshaw would do, faced with the same circumstance. we agreed that she would of gone right back into her apartment, made a giant pitcher of freshly squeezed lemonade and would of come back out to offer it on a perfectly perfect serving tray while wearing a little sundress - probably with pink and yellow stripes on it. life just isn't like sex in the city - is it?

i saw my gorgeous friend again on friday morning. i left early on my way to yoga and we smiled and waved at each other as i walked past him on the way to the bus stop. the weekend came and the street was silent.

today on my way home from yoga and a late lunch with friends i was walking home when i passed the arriving cement truck. the cement truck acted like a siren's song for the construction guys on my street. there was a parade of about 6 of them walking from the bottom of the hill, to the top of the hill to meet the truck. and from across the street that gorgeous guy smiled and waved at me.

as i smiled to myself and unlocked the front door i realized that i didn't need to flirt, i didn't need to make an ass of myself - it was enough just to get those little smiles and waves. that and the fact that i realized that this guy is probably 10 - 12 years younger than me.

[music | bella, "can she play guitar"]

are you a tallulah?

2005-09-06T17:33:00.000-04:00

this is a kitten that was found on the toronto cat rescue site. she was also found hanging out for adoption at the bloor west pet valu store. and as of tonight, she will be found in my home.

not so long ago my lovely 13-year old cat nes passed away of a heart attack. normally my roommate and i wouldn't be thinking of getting another cat so soon after losing a valued member of our feline family - but the one remaining cat (raja) has been with other kitty companions for his entire life and he's been taking the loss pretty hard. he is much more needy than normal - always needing to be petted or sitting with us on the sofa. he's been crying a bit more than normal and most heartbreakingly was his reaction last friday after spending the entire day by himself. when we came home he was nearly frantic and then seemed a touch depressed for a couple of days.

i would be happy with just raja and i'm not looking to replace nes, not at all - but i just think that this will be good for raja. we'll just have to watch him to make sure he doesn't swat the new little gurl into the middle of next week out of sheer annoyance.

right now her name is augusta - but i think we're going to try out tallulah... it might just be right for her...

[music | tori amos, "caught a lite sneeze"]

david usher : september 5

2005-09-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

so one of those 'good days' that i was talking about in today's earlier post happened yesterday. i went down to the beachfest and saw david usher and band play. even if it was for just a 30 minute set. it was an amazingly energetic set. i live about a half-hour walk away from where the festival is held (makes me wonder why i don't walk down to those beaches more often) and headed down pretty much just to hear david play. it was a radio station festival - and i don't listen to the radio station, so most of the music just kind of made me scratch my head - but the crowd there had a great time - and they seemed to enjoy david's set too.

these are some pictures of the day. they are not mine - my camera only took shadowy silhouettes of the band. and my friend's pics of the band were pretty much just dark figures too... so here are some ok ones of david.

all in all it was a great day, lots of fun, lots of sun (my nose is now red) and lots of cotton candy. it was like all of summer in one day. got to take in the air show, got to walk along the beach, got to see some great music and on the way back, we walked through high park and saw some deer, some llamas, some peacocks and some mosquitoes.

[music | david usher, "see you fall"]

i believe

2005-09-06T09:14:00.000-04:00

i just want to know why i do believe.... belief systems and beliefs in certain things being certain ways are comforting - but they also can act as blinders on the horse, a placebo provided by the practioner or a false history surrendered to a new love.

i believe in all sorts of things - one of which being astrology. the logical mind tells us this is crap "science" but the akashik heart sees much further than the pages of discovery magazine. each and every month i go to astrology zone where susan miller posts lengthy pages for each and every sun sign. i read her (and rob brezney's free will astrology) more often than any other astrological source and i have to say that i have found some uncomfortable comparisons to her writings and events in my own life. she can often predict job turmoil for me - and job bliss too.

this august's missive for me is somewhat disturbing. she writes as though it shall be the best of times, it shall be the worst of times. and when i read it, i remember firing off an email to a friend saying that it alarmed me that the astrologer wrote more about the good things and just ominously mentioned that the good days will come with the trying and that i will feel as though i am on the rollercoaster from hell (or something like that). i joked that the month of august would probably be bad with a few chocolate sprinkles tossed in for good measure.

then i put it promptly out of my head.

then the next day i find that the government is out to get me. no, i'm not sitting at home wearing a tin foil hat. seems that though i am eligible for EI benefits, they were suspended pending a review of my situation. it also seems that the work i've been doing for mr. record producer (and we're literally talking 80.00 a week, 40.00 a week, 60.00 a week) is considered "self-employment" and self-employment is grounds for loss of benefits. fuck me. like i can exist on less than 400.00 a month. get a grip.

so my thursday was spent in tears, in vomit, in headache, in meetings at the local HRDC office and in nap. when i finally left the office, it was with a 98.99% assurance that all would be well and that my money would be processed in the next few days - though i could take as long as 4 weeks for a decision to be made. i called on friday to get an update and heard nothing.

which led to some panic all weekend long.

panic that i forced back down into the seething pit it kept trying to claw it's way out of. i refused to acknowledge the fear. why surrender to powerful negative energy when i didn't even know if it was valid. back damned beast! back!

then this morning i got a call from HRDC and all is well. they thanked me for filing my hours and hoped that i would continue to do so (reading between the lines, "don't start getting paid under the table, please be honest").

so we're back to the 'i believe' statement. it's a chicken and egg thing. it's a forest and trees thing. does that astrology zone write up see patterns that may be emanating my way which causes certain affects. or is it the fact that i read the essay and lend it some of my own belief that it begins to manifest in my day-to-day existence. or am i just looking for things that aren't there?

[music | the beatles, "penny lane"]

table for two, ma'am?

2005-09-01T10:08:00.000-04:00

it seems i've somehow become a 'ma'am'. i used to be a 'miss'. and i don't know how i feel about that! sure, i'm 34 and well into the ma'am area - but i generally get told that i look to be 25 - 27 (with a few years spill over on either side of that too). but somehow this summer i've morphed into a woman instead of a girl. i blame it on my new bobbed hair!

if i am indeed looking a bit older - perhaps it will help me with career stuff.... i think one of my big problems is that i look so much younger than my experience actually is - that and everyone seems to think i'm quite nice. nice = passed over in the career world. you need to be a bitch to get taken seriously. and i actually think i am quite bitchy, thank you very much.

i got a call last week from one of the companies i used to work for. they MAY be opening a new line of operations and if they are, they're interested in seeing if i want to come back to them to hire, train and supervise the staff they're going to need. i don't have any of the details - the company is working under a confidentiality agreement at the moment, but if it's along the lines i'm thinking that it might be... i could be VERY interested. well, that and i'd need to make sure i was making more $$ than the last time i was working for them. i really could only just make budget with them last time. and trust me, it wasn't an extravagant budget. well, perhaps it may be for someone who's just a MISS - but i'm a bluddy MA'AM now!

keep your fingers and toes crossed for me... and the best thing about it is that i could still do work for the producer guy... it would be a nice little way to help me get my crazed visa bill under control! my bill is probably not as bad as it seems, but i am a taurus... we're hyper aware of money and what we owe.... it's not a good thing to know that you are carrying a balance from month to month to month and getting a massive interest bill along with it. currently, my monthly interest is enough for a nice dinner for 2 (with wine, perhaps 2 glasses, if not a 1/2 litre) or a nice skirt or a nearly enough for a new pair of jeans.

at any rate - it was very nice for my former employer to think of me for an opportunity. she once told me she would remember me... i'm glad to see that she wasn't just saying those things you say to ease social transaction.

[music | chris koster, "if you see me"]

carrots good, death sentence bad

2005-08-30T14:29:00.000-04:00

a week ago i was back where i grew up - alberta. i was 19 when i left for school in toronto and i really haven't looked back. i was happy to go and study journalism but i was more happy to be moving not only away, but to toronto. shiny city of my adolecent music dreams.

when i first hit toronto i thought i'd venture out into the city for a little walk around my new neighbourhood. hell, i'd never ever HAD a neighbourhood before (grew up on a farm, donchaknow). on my first little wander around lake devo i saw a drug deal. i wasn't on the farm anymore. actually lake devo (besides having the kewl name musical name devo) was used in a tea party video a few years ago. i don't remember which one it was, but it was the one where jeff martin wore a white suit and sat in some dark and expensive looking chair. it would take a better tea party fan than i to actually remember it.

if you're in canada, you're already very aware of the specialness of alberta. and the special right-wing anti-tolerance point of view of a great many of it's dwellers. that is unless you've been leading your existance under a giant redneck rock. for anyone who isn't in canada - just think of alberta as canada's own version of texas. the pick-up truck driving good ole boys. it's actually funny. living here in toronto i meet many former albertans. and they're all either gay or in bands or doing some other artistic endeavours. it's unfortunate that most people of a more open minded pursuasion have to leave the province to feel like they belong.

i bring this all up because of a moment that happened with my dad while i was back home. my mom and i were watching satallite television (it's in the country, if they didn't have satallite, they'd have only 4 channels.) when the susan sarandon-sean penn film, "dead man walking" came on. i told my mom that it was a fabulous movie and she agreed to watch it. i think the only time she watches movies is when i'm home. last time i was home we watched "the banger sisters" and it was hysterical.

so we're munching on garden carrots and watching the death row inmates when my dad decides to join us. at first he's reading his newspaper, but then gets quickly drawn into the movie. i was beginning to wonder how this family experience was going to end up.

if you don't remember, "dead man walking" is a very intelligent and compassionate look at the reality of death row and the result of a death sentence. it's a look at the horrific crimes that people can commit and a look at all of the messy results of a murder in a state that will sentence people to death. we see protesters, victim family members, the murderer's family members, church leaders and the legal and prision system all acting and reacting.

and, well, you see, my dad is a right-wing, conservative, non-politically correct sorta guy. one who believes it's a great shame that canada no longer serves capital punishment on a steaming platter. during the scenes where sean penn's family spend their last hours with him my father says, "you just never think of the other side, do you?". i think he forgot that his eldest daugher is a progressively minded woman. one who does not believe the death penalty is right. in the interest of not starting one of our infamous 'debates' at that precise moment i just replied, "it's a difficult movie to watch"

i had a small thrill of victory. this movie was going to open my dad's eyes to something he hadn't considered before! no sooner than i was congratulating myself on dragging my dad out of the dark ages he announces that, "i don't think i want to watch the rest of this" and he got up and left the room just as the priest was coming for his final visit.

my mom and i watched it to the end. my mom hated the flashback scenes of the rape and murders of the victims but watched the movie. as credits were rolling, my dad calls from the other room and asks if it's over yet. we answer yes and he returns.

it was an interesting moment for me. my father, who believes to his core that if a capital crime is proved in court, that the death penalty is not only just but necessary did not even want to watch a cinematic representation of the legal execution of a man. it was eye opening for me. how clearly the close-minded want to see things the way they see things. if you really just want to keep your belief system in tact and never have it challenged, just refuse to be exposed to a well thought out and presented opposing point of view.

i respect my dad and know that he is highly intelligent. he keeps himself well informed in world affairs and politics, however we rarely if ever agree on things. our view points and experiences are just different. someone once challenged me and told me that it was impossible that my father should be considered intelligent since he believes in so many non-progressive ideals. i just told that person that he'd just proved himself to be as close-minded as my dad. intelligence comes in many flavours and we may not all agree with the resulting taste in our mouth.

[music | the killers, "andy you're a star"]

so not my demographic

2005-08-29T19:26:00.000-04:00

i stupidly watched the mtv vma's last night. what a fool i am. pass the dunce cap and i shall don it promptly. from the promising opening performance by green day - nearly the entire rest of the show went to hades in a rickety little handbasket - the kind with pastel ribbons tied to it. except instead of pastel ribbons there were huge strings of tacky bling bling.

speaking of bling bling - i had to give myself the heimlich maneuver when i saw one of the award winners (i think it might of been ludacris) accepting an award. around his neck was a gianormous gold and diamond encrusted pendant of africa. where did those hundreds of diamonds come from? are they blood diamonds from sierra leone? diamonds responsible for putting guns in the hands of children and the exploitation/rape/murder of africans? and then i began to wonder how much hunger and starvation that a pendant like that could put and end to in africa itself. not to mention healthcare, medications, education, agricultural improvements, etc.

watching the show itself i left with the impression that despite recent resurgances that rock and music played with instruments and sung with melody was well and truly dead. the show was a near constant parade of excess, diddy, dance, rap and hip hop.

nice try the killers.

see you in the delete bin green day.

go back to your day jobs at baby-goths-are-us my chemical romance.

but then this morning i read a list of vma winners. and it's all bluudy green day. with the exception of the genre awards, green day nearly cleared all the awards.

it made me feel a bit better about the world.

[music | tori amos, "famous blue raincoat"]

dark goddess

2005-08-28T01:05:00.000-04:00

not from toronto tonight - but a gorgeous picture from http://rosenauer.dk

i have just returned from a tori amos concert down at the molson amphitheatre. it's almost like a summer tradition - summers when tori is touring, she always makes her way to the lake ontario venue. it really is a gorgeous venue - especially when you have seats about 25 feet away from the stage. stage-left side. the side that she faces for the majority of the show. heaven.

i have seen tori every time she's come to toronto - well, to be honest, all except one - the convocation hall show during the 1994 'under the pink' tour, and was that ever a mistake... at the time i decided i was too broke to go and it has ended up being the impetus for me to go to every other tori show since then no matter what the money situation is or isn't. as tori once told me herself (i had the honour of doing a phone interview with her in 1992), "what's money between friends?". and her music is absolutely one of my best friends in the world. her music brings me such solace, strength, sadness, pain, anger, fear, joy and love. i've found nothing to quite compare to it - and i've looked in many, many, many places. probably the closest to it is moist/david usher or david bowie (but the regret with bowie is that i was just a wee gurl growing up through most of his career. i mean, ziggy stardust was released the year after i was born. while his music remains incredibly meaningful to me - it's not a soundscape that was painted during important moments of my own life).

each and every time i see a tori show - one of her girls (her songs) brings me to tears. and it's always unexpected and always different. usually its because i suddenly have click moment where i feel that i completely understand a song on a very different level that listening to it over a hundred times on cd will never bring. tori has this way of communicating the songs live in a way that is almost completely via sonic energy. it's impossible to explain and i'm beginning to feel like a gushing fangurl - but it's just how much her music makes me feel.

tonight's song was 'icicle'. a song about tori as a young girl masturbating while her preacher father hosted easter dinner in the room below her bedroom. it's a song about robert plant and the way she felt when she played that 'devil's music' after hearing church hymns all evening. the song isn't a tear-jerker (not like 'playboy mommy' the one that got me last time about a miscarriage and the concept that the little soul just didn't want to be born to a girl like tori) but somehow at the beginning i caught a flash of her conflict and strife over her upbringing and how she just knew that she was going to break with everything that her family wanted and expected from her.

the other song that hit in an unexpected level was 'the beekeeper' from her latest album. it is a story about the fear of losing one's mother to old age after she recently lost her brother in an automobile accident. the lyric is very staightforward and fairly linear (a rarity in tori's lyric writing, to be certain!) but the emotion behind the song was nothing other than utter and complete respect to the dark goddess who comes to take us all back to her one day or the next. tori's performance of this song was so remarkable and so visceral live (when on record i like the song, but it's certainly not one of my picks on her album) that i have left with a new understanding of one of the many onion layers that makes up this talented artist's music.

Flaxen hair blowing in the breeze
It is time for the geese to head south
I have come with my mustard seed
I cannot accept that she will be taken from me

"Do you know who I am" she said
"I'm the one who taps you on the shoulder when it's your time
Don't be afraid I promise that she will awake
Tomorrow somewhere
Tomorrow somewhere"

Wrap yourself around
The tree of life and the dance of the infinity
Of the hive
Take this message to Michael

I will comb myself into chains
In between the tap dance clan
And your ballerina gang
I have come for the beekeeper
I know you want my
You want my queen
Anything but this
Can you use me instead?

In your gown with your breathing mask
Plugged into a heart machine
As if you ever needed one
I must see the beekeeper I must see if she'll keep her alive
Call Engine 49 I have come with my mustard seed

Maybe I'm passing you by
Just passing you by girl
I'm passing you by
On my way
On my way
I'm just passing you by
But don't be confused
One day I'll be coming for you...
I must see the beekeeper
I must see the beekeeper

[tonight's setlist | original sinsuality, icicle,blood roses, here. in my head, general joy (o-my-fucking-gods!), mother, crazy, if you could read my mind (gordon lightfoot cover), both sides now (joni mitchell cover), cars and guitars, northern lad, spark, taxi ride, the beekeeper, jamaica inn, cloud on my tongue, putting the damage on, baker baker]

nosferatu (aka nesley & most often nes) - rest in peace

2005-08-24T11:34:00.000-04:00

our lovely cat nes passed into another existance on thursday august, 18th. i was still away in alberta on a family visit when i got the call from my distressed roommate audrey. :(

i will write more about this lovely creature at another time - but until then here are some recent pics... mostly for me to look at...

nes had the cutest little face and endured a lot because of it!

"i'm so freakin' regal - it hurts"

painting day - and look who had to get in the action.

[music | nes had the worst taste in music, as far as i was concerned. we used to leave on queen street in the beaches and every year at that horrific jazz festival when everyone else with good sense would be blocking their ears, she would be laying on the floor on her back, all the better to soak in the vibrations. she was quite the little tease!]

rain, rain, go away. come again another day

2005-08-18T01:21:00.000-04:00

i've been out here in the wild west since saturday, august 13th and i have yet to wear any of my capri pants or t-shirts. i have been wearing and re-wearing and wearing yet again the one pair of blue jeans that i brought along. who knew that august in alberta would be quite this cold and miserable. there is even fear of frost tonight - and that would be a very bad thing.

my father is a farmer and since july they have had less sunshine and less warm days than normal. the weather has been so cold and rotten that the crops are way behind where they should be and this spectre of an ungodly early frost would be close to disastrous. farming is a brutal occupation. in most businesses you can somewhat control the major factors of your day-to-day affairs... no one controls the weather. (and apparently no one can predict it either!)

but back to saturday - at my cousin's wedding in the rockin' town of saskatoon - which seemed to most closely resemble a more 'countrified' peterborough. do you know who parties hard? chiropracters party hard. my cousin is a chiropractor and at the reception the table seated behind mine (table #14) was full of chiropractors. (they stole the bottle of red wine off of my table when we were all away. i was the only one drinking it - but it was MINE to consume at will and with glee). and apparently as part of the whole wedding deal, during dinner there are usually speeches and an open mike for guests to come up and contribute stories (i don't know, i so rarely go to these things). anyway - this wedding did NOT have an open mike - largely for fear of what stories table #14 might unearth to embarrass the groom into the middle of the next decade.

after the dinner/dance was closed (1:30) the party continued in one of the guests rooms in the hotel. and no less than 3 times was hotel security sent up to tell people to quiet down. the last time the threat was that people would start to be evicted if they didn't wrap it up. and apparently at 4:30 in the morning the bride and groom were running through the stairwells of the saskatoon hilton in order to evade security.... i was not there for that, but heard the story from about 6 others - one of which was the groom's mother (who was with them).

the drive back to edmonton was fun. we left at 11:30 in the morning and got to edmonton at about 5:30 - and we stopped about 1 and a half hours for lunch. apparently my brother and law sped quite a bit of the way... the ride was supposed to be me, my parents, my sister, her husband and their 8 month old little girl. however, the baby came down with 'early-pneumonia' while in saskatoon and as a result my parent's caught a ride with someone else and my sister and brother-in-law and i had a great time riding back together. it was a lot of fun. but i don't need to hear the new nickelback song EVER again. *shudder*

and since it's been so rainy and cold - i haven't yet had a chance to go wandering in the fields and pastures. i love to hang with my dad's cows. he has close to 400 of them at the moment - and the spring calves are still pretty damn cute. maybe tomorrow. i have forgotten just how big the sky can look here - and how absolutely HUGE the moon is as it hangs in the sky in the late summer/early autumn. we've been having clouded nights and last night as i was falling asleep i hoped for clear skies so i could see the stars and the beautiful moon - and tonight i was rewarded with a very very clear sky, many stars and a gorgeous golden moon.

top 5 great things about my parent's farm

fresh veggies from the garden (as organic as it gets!)
saskatoon pie
cows
trees, trees and more trees
the haunting sound of coyotes at night

[music tori amos, "cornflake girl"]

the odd and the end

2005-08-12T15:17:00.000-04:00

so after running around yonge and bloor area like a chicken with her head cut off, i now have everything i need for the wedding. i hope. my cousin chad is getting married this weekend in saskatoon. yesterday i thought i was ready for my early morning flight out to saskachewan (i arrive 2 hours before the wedding ceremony - please air canada - don't be delayed!) but as i was walking to the subway with all of my travel sized items i walked past a stunning display of beautiful and unique gift cards. fuck! i forgot the present! and the wrap! and the card! ack!

see, the problem was i knew what i was going to get as a gift... a new t-fal pan, some organic maple syrup, some organic jam and a couple of no-fail recipes for pancakes and for irish soda bread (which i'd made for chad before & he just loved). nice to have the idea. not so nice to not actually pick up any of the necessary items. i actually can't take credit for the idea - it was my roomie's idea... :) but they are my recipes!

after a slight panic over not being able to find nice paper i was able to come away with some passable parchment paper from lewis craft. it seems that since the advent of email - no one uses nice stationary anymore. i felt so victorian as i asked shop after shop if they carried stationary or single-sheets of writing paper. it was rather disheartening to be directed to the back-to-school lined paper on special - on more than one occasion. for a while there i was fearing that i'd have to make the long rainy trek out to queen west to make a visit to the fab japanese paper place - but as my friend pointed out - i'm not allowed in there without a chaperone, lest i lose my little mind and buy things i don't need.

being the good and organized traveler that i aspire to be, i checked out the weather on good old environment canada's website... and my gods, i am going to freeze out west. tomorrow in saskatoon is supposed to be 20C but with rain. and all next week in edmonton has it sitting at 12C/4C. that is autumn weather. i don't know if my heat addled brain can compute this. must bring jeans, sweaters & long sleeved shirts. how bizarre.

i'm off in a few hours to catch a david usher show up at york university. very nice send off for a trip. reminds me of the david shows a few years ago at lee's palace that i saw the night before i went to costa rica. of the 4 lee's shows i only got to see 2 of them - as the other two were happening during my trip. that's life.

i'm not sure how much i'll be able to post while i'm off in alberta - my mum has a prehistoric dial-up modem and i normally don't have 15 minutes to wait for each page to load. le sigh.

[music | david usher, "souring"]

holy mother of &*%

2005-08-11T19:41:00.000-04:00

how does one go from looking like this :

to looking like this?

i mean - my gods... unassumingly i clicked on this link to read about the latest in our gal courtney's life and i nearly choked on my own spittle... get the woman into rehab and keep her there. and maybe give her a mirror.

[music | rasputina, "transylvanian concubine"]

lush indeed....

2005-08-11T10:54:00.000-04:00

i'm fearing the dreaded summer cold.... just in time for my visit to alberta... how lovely. i'm sure i'll look smashing at the wedding all puffy-faced and swollen-eyed with a big red nose... and all this beauty before i begin drinking!

this morning i've been sneezing up a storm and my voice is all kathleen turner raspy. and yesterday in my yoga class i was fatiguing in poses that i am normally very strong in... there was one pose where my legs were shaking so much it was reminiscent of wyle e. coyote after the roadrunner made him eat earthquake pills (if you've seen it, you know exactly what i mean). the instructor even came up to me to make sure i was alright. i don't want a cold. this will suck surpreme... guess i'll know in my class this afternoon... if my body cacks out on me again it's probably official - and no amount of vitamin c will save me.

and one of the most odd things you'll hear all day... did you know that the word 'lush' (meaning very good) wasn't listed in the oxford dictionary until this edition? what? how strange.... i feel so uncouth for using unapproved language!

according to this article other words that were just added include :
potty-mouthed (how can this be)
demographic (this is insane!)
cockapoo (why does this have to exist in the first place... it's a combo between a cocker spaniel and a poodle - two of my most loathed dog breeds. def not lush!)
ruby murray (this is my personal fave... the brits use this as a slang for curry... i love the brits!)

off to swill vitamin c and some herbal tea...

[music david usher, "my way out"]

pennyroyal tea

2005-08-10T14:25:00.000-04:00

the most meaningful thing i think i'm getting from rock star : inxs is the remembrance of just how much i love nirvana. and how much i miss kurt cobain's creativity. i never fell out of love with nirvana - it just became more like a previously torrid affair that cooled to more comfortable familiarity.

but week after week of hearing the hopefuls warble in their best nirvana-esque ways has driven me to dust off the cd's and listen again. sure, it's been said before in many ways and by many people - but it really is astounding just how gifted poor tormented kurt cobain was. from his vocals, to his playing, to his songwriting.... i miss you kurt.

i was working as a receptionist at a recording studio the day that kurt's body was found. i remember sitting there at my little desk (so minimalistic - it was a retro school teacher table/desk with a mac computer on it and a little green glass lamp. kinda cool, kinda not) and one of the assistant engineers came in and told me the news. just shocked me. one of those moments where your adreneline kicks in and you feel like you're about to fly right out of your skin. too strange. too sad. too stupid.

pennyroyal tea from 'in utero' :

I'm on my time with everyone
I have very bad posture

Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that's inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty

Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally

I'm so tired I can't sleep
I'm anemic royalty
I'm a liar and a thief
I'm anemic royalty

I'm on warm milk and laxatives
Cherry-flavored antacids

Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that's inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I'm anemic royalty

[music | nirvana, "about a girl"]

poddin'

2005-08-09T13:19:00.000-04:00

every once in a while my thoughts turn morbidly curious...

i will cross the street and wonder what my body would look like after it was smeared down by a speeding car - would i be all artful limbs displayed in the most beautiful pattern - or would i look more like the roadkill pigeon that graced my street for about a week earlier this summer?

i will enter a corner store, sense some random tension and then begin to wonder what i'd do if the loitering teen pulled a gun or a knife on the clerk.

i'll tramp down the subway steps and wonder idly if all the garbage on the steps will get tangled up in my shoes and will i then fall face first down the stairs - the impact driving my teeth through my lips leaving me with horrific scaring for life...

lately my wonderings have me running "stranded" scenarios. the other day i was sitting on the subway (with my ipod headphones on, natch) and got bored by the latest prattling star news in my daily metro when i began to look around and marvel at all the folk wearing headphones. and how many of those same folk have the distinctive white ipod headphones.

which then gets me wondering what would happen if for some bizarre strange reason our subway car was sucked into some other reality where we weren't in any immediate peril, but that we couldn't leave the train. sorta an urban lord of the flies.

first we'd break off into groups. the moms with strollers. the stinky rubbies coming home from a day at the local pub. there'd be the group of tragically dressed teens - the boys with pants falling off and the girls with belly shirts showing off their baby fat bellies. we'd have the group of sweet and not quite yet senile seniors. and then there would be the folk who had headphones. we'd all embrace a 'we're in this together' spirit and share bottled water, gator aide and chocolate treats.

however, it's inevitable that each group would begin to splinter under petty tensions brought on by the stranding and the mindnumbing affect that the silver walls and red seats would bring. in the headphone group we'd begin a natural caste striation and the ipod folk would either begin to think we were better than everyone else and we'd start our own super-cool survior group. or would all the other headphone owners just shun the 'pod people as trend-sheep and they'd all stop sharing their chocolate covered peanuts with us. which, sadly would force the ipoders to stage a little rebellion (to the soundtrack of some fabulous alienation music - probably the arcade fire or modest mouse) to take over the covert supply of wrapper candies that the seniors have been hiding from us all. it could get messy.

ok - back to reality. when not having a psychotic break on the subway - i'm actually thinking about the fact that toronto is a fairly large city and it has the reputation of being a city that makes it VERY difficult to meet new people in. the older i get, the more i realize that the only new people that get introduced to my life are ones i meet through work. one could logically assume that a public leveler like the subway could be good place to meet new and interesting people - but besides the fact that as a confirmed torontonian i think every second person out there is off their nut, it's really hard to start up a conversation with the cute guy across the car when we both have our headphones on.

ipods are a great way to kill the monotony of the trip - but it really does make our already singular and alone existence seem all that much more lonely. i won't stop listening to music on the subway - but it makes me wonder what would happen if people started being people again....
[music | a.f.i., "bleed black"]