Rock Lobster

Be sure to listen in on Thursdays from 7-10 for the Rock Rock Rock 'n' Roll Show on UPEI Web Radio, co-hosted by yours truly.

No, seriously. We'll kick your ass if you don't listen.

It's totally sweet, and guaranteed to be awesome.

And you never know, I could make unforeseen guest appearances at other unscheduled times as well.

vapor transmission

If someone could tell me how to deal with 170 people that hate me, and 30 people that think I'm incompetent, that'd be much appreciated.

In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey

I just came home from my parent's place. My brother got my mother a colour printer for Christmas, and had been having trouble with it. ("It just doesn't print." "Do you get an error message?" "Yes, it goes 'You can't print' or something.") I sit down, and print another Sam Brown picture. Zero problems, zero troubleshooting.

I pour my first glass of Christmas-present wine, and I sit down on my couch. Neighbour comes over. "Dude, can you help me with my ssssssssssssick wireless? It doesn't work." "Sure, what's wrong with it?" "I dunno, I bought a card and some ssssssick router or something, and it doesn't work." I go over to my neighbour's place. He turns on his computer, and it connects. Bam. Sick indeed.

I come home and power up my own temperamental laptop. (You don't think you're addicted to the internet until you go without it for an afternoon.) Lo and behold, before I even start fucking with the network settings, I connect.

In other words, I'm 3/3 on zero troubleshooting. If only I got paid for shit like this...

Glory Daze

It was either Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death or Morris Bertman in The Twilight of American Culture -- I seem to forget the specifics of each book, but they complement each other quite well -- that distilled Gibbon's protracted point: when cultures or movements reach their apex, and they become synonymous and replaceable with what they represent, there is no place for the original culture/movement to evolve. It begins an elongated descent, but first, it enters into a "new, false Golden Age of classicism." It pauses, sighs, and takes a look back at the glory of what it used to be, and tries it's damnedest to relive that glory. Never mind that conditions are different, and that social/political/economic factors that caused the first true golden age are not present -- at one time, this culture was great, and now we're gonna relive that. If you don't like it, get the hell out of my way.

I guess the prototypical example of this is the Roman empire. Sure, they were the big cheese 1500 years ago, and they were synonymous with order and civility (you think the saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" wouldn't have stuck around if they weren't anally obsessed about order and structure?), but the edges were fraying. Barbarian tribes from the north and all that jazz. So what do they do? "Hey, let's have more gladiator fights, and more races, and more crazy gods! Yeah! Just like we did a few hundred years ago when everyone thought we were the shit!"

Now, look at the US. I know, it's an easy whipping boy. By all accounts (and by "all," I mean "at least some of the commercials I've seen on CNN in the last few days"), America hit it's zenith in the early 1950's. The post-war boom was on in full effect; Europe was free because of the heroics of the plucky Americans (never mind the Eastern front); there were jobs a-plenty; women and ethnic people knew their places were not in the limelight; teens went to sock-hops and shared milkshakes with two straws in soda shops. The Beav was up to no good on TV. Frank Sinatra was as risky an entertainer as you could find. I mean that in all sincerity. Ol' Blue Eyes was rock'n roll before the name was invented. Sure, there was the constant threat of mutually assured destruction, but those Russkies were so far away that they wouldn't do anything like that, would they? Would they? I heard they're crazy. My friend's co-worker met one of them, and he said that this Russian guy said that all Russian boys from 10 to 15 have to join the army and are being trained to kill Americans.

So look at the US now. America is -- rightly or wrongly -- seen as the leader and liberator of the entire world. We've already been through the renaissance of retro music. (Remember swing? 80's hair rock? Electro-clash? New old-school jazz? Politically-concious punk?) We're already succeptible to white-washed TV. And did you hear about those crazy Islamists? I heard that they make their women walk ahead of them! And they don't eat or drink for a whole month! And they're being raised to hate America! And they're going to attack again any minute now, so be prepared!

So, just like everything else in this blog, it all comes back to me.

People see me, and they immediately say "So how was trivia? Didja win again?"

I've been listening to true old-school jazz and watching TV series on DVD that were cancelled well before their time, but I used to love it when I was in school and thinking about stuff beyond video games.

I've been hanging out in student bars, with students. Constantly. In that everyone seems to know me, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but when you meet people and they say "Yeah, I used to play Barbies with your younger sister," then it might be time to move on.

And I think the worst of this all is that I haven't written anything new or interesting in months. But I keep telling anyone that asks that yes, I am working on a play, and yes, I am going to enter it in some competition that is coming up fairly soon, and yes, it is based on something else I wrote.

Oh, and apparently I'm doing a radio show now. Old-timey, with sound effects, and hopefully some robots.

These were some good times, after all. They sure were.

...tres, catorze

These days are becoming weeks.

I don't like people who have six weeks' experience telling me how to do my job.

That being said, I like my job, for now.

I had something intelligent to say about the Hip, and Canada, and the world, and how we're none of us doing enough, but right now all I want to do is sleep the days away and send the pain below.

Fuck I hate blogs like this.