He's Like A Detuned Radio

We'll start off with something that really, really pissed me off today.

John McCain: Torture Worked on Me

Newsmax, you worthless pieces of shit. Never mind the over-riding themes of how immoral toture is. Read your own article. McCain said he gave up no valuable information and when he eventually did, it was false information. The toture didn't even have a positive effect, with respect to gathering information. Assholes...

For the past week and a half, I've been trying to discover what those things are that keep me "up". I wanted to use this space to document them but I've been unable to qualify my thoughts. I've discovered my happiness doesn't stem from physical things, and this is not another slam against materialism, bear with me. Words have a much stronger effect on me than most anything else. Words of affection, words of support, words of nostalgia, words of understanding.

Someone expressed a sentiment to me a number of months ago. I'm glad they felt the way they did but I didn't really understand. Now that the tables are somewhat reversed and I completely understand what they meant. It's a source of happiness and strength for me that is completely unrelated to everything that I do. It took me a while but I got it.

Don't get offended
If I seem absent minded
Just keep telling me facts
And keep making me smile
Don't get offended
If I seem absent minded
I get tongue-tied
Baby, you've got to be more discerning
I've never known what's good for me
I will be yours

This Modern Love - Bloc Party

So the government has fallen, it's a state of anarchy. Time to start blasting the Sex Pistols and to begin the hoarding, looting and setting up of a local warlord.

When I'm at home, my riding is solidly Liberal; when I'm at school, my riding is solidly NDP. Maybe one day I can move to a riding that might actually have some excitement. Like Trinity-Spadina. Wow, there are some lucky people who live there.

I figure it's going to end up like this:

Liberals 115
Conservatives 110
Bloc Quebecois 57
NDP 26

Which will be an even more interesting session of parliament than this one. Social conservatism doesn't fly east of Manitoba, especially in Quebec. The Conservatives will remain unable to win any sort of plurality of seats until they realize this. And they haven't yet. The Conservatives have to get a fiscally conservative, socially progressive Francophone. And until they do so, they'll be stuck wondering why no one in the East likes them.

Election Prediction Project

A very useful site full of time-wasting analysis for anyone interested in following the election campaign in depth. They did a pretty decent job of predicting the last election. Just around 87% of the seats correctly.

"Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against." ~W.C. Fields

It seemed appropriate.

Thank you to the Falcons, Broncos, Chargers and Eagles for covering the spread this week and making me $50 richer. I wonder if this is another sign that I should drop out of school and begin a career as a professional gambler. Maybe I can start up the 1-900 number that Zohair and I talked about in high school. That'll get me out of having to write that Poli. Sci. paper that's due in two days.

It's day like these that I'm glad that I took Mod West in Grade 12 so that I could 100% figure out that Arts were not for me. I still hate Haskings-Winner. Bitch. My procrastinating habits seem to fit the engineering schedule much better. No individual big projects, weekly small assignments; it really limits my chances to throw away marks because I forgot about something. It's a nice safety net.

The Seven Greatest Seventh Tracks of All Time
Decided Upon In Seven Seconds (In no particular order)
1. Fit But You Know It - The Streets (A Grand Don't Come For Free)
2. Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing Ta F' Wit - Wu-Tang Clan (Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers))
3. Wake Up - The Arcade Fire (Funeral)
4. El Scorcho - Weezer (Pinkerton)
5. Jesus Walks - Kanye West (The College Dropout)
6. Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl - Broken Social Scene (You Forgot It In People)
7. Just - Radiohead (The Bends)

Honourable Mention:
Fitter Happier - Radiohead (OK Computer)

I just realized that my food for the day consisted of a breakfast bar, 12 homemade cookies, four slices of homemade bread and some pomegranate blueberry juice. Oh well, I'm healthier than I was but the appetite doesn't seem to have come back yet. Just throw some Roti Boys in front of and I'm sure I'll be hungry again.

George Best has passed away. One of the greatest soccer players of all time and definitely the greatest player in Northern Ireland's history.

One of the Greatest Goals of All Time

Just wanted to post this link so everyone could see how good he was. And keep in mind that this was done when he was already over the hill.

Oh yeah, and a big fuck you to Pizza Pizza for that disgusting pizza you delivered me tonight. First, you don't have your website working so I can't order online. Second, the combo I wanted from the website you couldn't give me over the phone because there was no code for it. So I ultimately paid $2 more for one more topping. Third, the pizza was crap. You'd actually been pretty good as of late but you've fallen back into your typical pattern.

And to the woman at 7-11, stop carding me when I'm buying Pro-Line tickets. This is retarded. OK, the first time I had just shaved. Maybe I'm looking a bit younger than usual, I'm in disbelief but whatever it's fine. Today, I haven't shaved in at least a week and looking pretty scruffy and you card me again. What the hell? I don't even carded when buying a drink anymore. So screw off.

So in the past two weeks I've placed twice in the chips in a play money tournament on Party Poker. I've finished 9th out of 4820 and 38th out of 3500.


9th Place 

I have to imagine that money tournaments consist of a higher level of player than these tournaments do.


36th Place 

Oh well, it's a good way to waste away a night when you've got nothing else to do.

And why is the Edge playing Golddigger from the Kingdom? And why did the follow it up with Disturbed, Slipknot and the rest of the "metal" set. Oh well...

Retro is the zombiefication of modern music. Music comes and music goes but those few select tunes that are deemed worthy are brought back to life. And now they have an unholy crypt of the undead, the Edge live from Velvet Underground. My Sunday night music fix is back and better than ever. There's nothing really to base that on except for the fact the Velvet is on Queen West and not part of the Entertainment District which means no more having to park down there. And we all remember what kind of hell that is.

Broken Social Scene has become a security blanket. A band whose songs I hold on to like Linus does with his nasty old blanket. Listening to Almost Crimes seems to release a rush of endorphins through my body and it just warms me right up. I feel almost guilty for saying that I didn't fully appreciate them until I saw them live this summer. The live shows just gives the album a whole different level.

Three artists/bands/groups starting with the letter 'A' that I wish I knew more about:
Avalanches
Animal Collective
AC/DC
American Analog Set

I love Mallrats. I'm not ashamed to admit that I love watching the ugly duckling of the View Askew universe. So I downloaded and watched the extended version of Mallrats today. I'd say there was at least 45 minutes of new footage added to movie including an unnecessary subplot with T.S. accidentally arrested for trying to shoot the governor. Also, all of this extra footage does explain some of the non-sequitur lines contains within the original.

However, in extending the movie, one of my favourite scenes was removed: Brodie's opening soliloquy.

"One time my cousin Walter got this cat stuck in his ass. True story. He bought it at the local mall, so the whole fiasco wound up on the news. It was embarrassing for my relatives and all. But the next week, he did it again. Different cat, same results, complete with a trip to the emergency room. Then, last week, I saw him in the pet store. He was buying another cat. I said, "Walt, what the hell are you doing, you know you're just gonna get this cat stuck up your ass too, why don't you knock it off?" And he says to me, "Brodie, how the hell else am I supposed to get the gerbil out?" My cousin was a weird guy."

Ultimately, skip the extended edition. Very little of value is added and the story doesn't flow nearly as well as the original did. Stick with the original. Jeremy London still can't act his way out of a paper bag and the story still has flaws. But I still love it.

Original version gets 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.
Extended version gets 3 out of 5 stars.

A crutch.

So I brought this infernal beast back from the dead. Keeping myself holed up in my room for the past week with a nasty case of some pulmonary virus has left millions of "loose ends tyin' a noose in the back of my mind."

Jason Lee and Beck are Scientologists. This bothers me. I don't really know why. I don't care about major celebrities and I especially don't care about their religious affiliations. Something about Scientology scares me.

I heard an Arcade Fire remix on 104.5 the last time I was in Toronto. I cried. Tears welled up in my eyes, I held them back but I knew what I felt. I've never legitimately got in on the ground floor of a band before so it's always special the first time. Funeral is a brilliant album, possibly my most listened to album of the past 12 months. Their live show, which I've been lucky enough to see twice, simply blew me away. And then I hear this bastardized version of Rebellion (Lies) on 104.5 and it depresses me. Something about remixing indie artists for commercial play scares me.

With no appetite and no scale nearby, I wonder how much weight I've lost in the past month since I've been sick. Am I below 150? Meaning I've dropped about 15 pounds since my peak weight of the summer. All that time spent at the gym, trying to eat better, wasted away since I haven't been able to eat for 28 days. Something about scurvy scares me.

I need a digital camera. I need to document my life here. The inanities, the stupidity, the occasional glimpses of beauty, the blight of the city across the river. Every picture tells a story. Well, at least they will to me. I'll post them and you'll think, "Wow, how pretentious is he to take a picture of that and to post it, thinking that we all care." Something about forgetting scares me.

What does the future hold for me? Who knows? I've spent 3 years here and I feel I haven't learned a thing. A year from now and I should probably have a job lined up, ready to start in January 2007. At which point, I'll be done my degree, hopefully and ready to move downtown, to follow in the footsteps of so many others. Almost everything will remain variable and I hope that those few constants that I'm banking on will still be around. You know who you are and how much you've done for me. In a constant struggle between give-and-take, I've taken too much and given absolutely nothing in return. Something about being selfish scares me.

Christmas is a month or so away. There's stuff I'd like. A record player to play all of the vinyl that's piling up in my room at home. A digital camera to document stuff. {That's all it is. Stuff} There's nothing that I need. Well, there are things. But those are the things that money is no help with. I should take all of that money and donate to a charity. There are more important things in the world than me accumulating another material possession, that'll just sit and gather dust. Something about people starving in the world scares me.

Everything scares me.