music: pat metheny - the way up

so here i am, NOT attending the Charity Ball, but choosing to pour some of my intelligence onto a word document. in essay form. it's fairly hard to do, ignore my social life. and it's also proving to be substantially hard to write this essay, as my emotions are getting in the way. i really hate it when this happens, when you let feelings and thoughts (that dont concern the essay) take over. impossible to get ANY work done. this is why i ignore people's opinion of me, to an extent. because when i do choose to not ignore them, it always seeps into my thoughts at the wrong time. and to top it all off, im sitting here kinda sick with a brutal sore throat that shows the extent of it's pain when i decide to swallow. yep. so the weather here officially SUCKS. its been freezing rain for a while. and whats kinda funny is that Ottawa's winterlude festival started YESTERDAY. thats right WINTERLUDE, meaning lots of people skating on the frozen canal. except not this year. depressing weather, a couple essays to write, sore throat, thoughts and emotions (ugh..)- i think the world is going to end soon.

by the way im not bitter, i just want to punch my english prof in the face. i hate university profs who, depsite YOUR money being paid for the course, seem to think that a class should be run like highschool. my english prof bitched at us for not paying attention to her while she spoke. fuck that shit, the other profs dont seem to mind, maybe you're just retarded, english prof. k i honestly think she assigns like 50 assignments so she can complain about how busy her life is. in which case is incredibly sad.

yeah, im really not mad, just not in the greatest mood right now. buuuuut whatever, life rolls on just the same. peace out.

listening to: Bedouin Soundclash. man i have to buy their album.

so i guess i'll start off by saying happy new year! my time spent at home was enjoyable, good times breaking tables and cutting ourselves with glass. and mike threw another kickass new years jam. lots of fun. i ended up going to tremblent for a few days as well. it kind of sucked because the staff were on strike and not all of the hills were open, but skiing was still fun. it felt weird being on something lengthier than my usual trusty snowblades, but i got the hang of it. heres a few insights as to what it was like (i took these with my awesome digital camera i got for christmas).



this is a sweet ass picture from the top of the mountain.

today i went skating on the canal for the first time in a while. actually, i hadn't even been on skates for a couple years, seems weird for a retired figure skater eh? so yeah, except for all the holes and random divots int he ice, it was freaking awesome. we skated for about 3 hours, going from carleton to downtown and back. it was especially cool because they had 3-4 areas where they set up washrooms, mini-chalets, and beavertail stands. my skates aren't broken in just yet, so i got this blister developing on my left foot. whatever, it was fun anyways.

me and mike.

john and mike.

taylor and jenny.

typical "rest area", with washrooms, beavertail stand, and mini-chalet dealy.

alright, time to get some work done...i just got back two days ago and im already being piled up in assignments, involving english and my dike english prof. im out.

it's wrong to want more than a folk song.

so im just posting a quickie because i havent doen so in a while. nothing interesting has really happened, therefore nothing to post about! i hate it when that happens. so i only have one pointless exam to go. which would be saturday at 9am. for english. im always afraid i'll sleep past the scheduled time. that would suck. i had 3 exams (luckily) this semester. i think i did ok on most of them. i had history about a week ago, which went fairly well. my psych exam was kinda tricky, and im not entirely sure how that went. eep. im coming home this sunday. im pretty excited for that. especially because we got a new tv. i like new things.

so i was watching alice in wonderland with john yesterday, and i came to realize how incredibly disturbing it was for a childrens movie. i could take every scene from that movie and apply it to a real-world character named alice having many sexual experiences with drugs, going to parties and taking drugs, and having one of the biggest trips of her life as she continued searching for that white rabbit. i think one day i'll write about that movie in detail. it made so much sense last night.


seriously, there HAS to be acid involved with this.

listening to: sparta. good winter music. and it's snowing tons today!

i sent this email to a bunch of people, but here are a few hilarious facts about Chuck Norris that you probably didn't know (even if you don't know who Chuck Norris is, these are still funny):

- Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
- Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead decided to punch his way out of his mother's womb. Shortly thereafter he grew a beard.
- Chuck Norris recently had the idea to sell his urine as a canned beverage. We know this beverage as Red Bull.
- To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer, Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes.
Beat that, Lance Armstrong.
- If paper beats rock, and rock beats scissors, what beats all 3 at the same time?Chuck Norris.
- When Chuck Norris's wife burned the turkey one Thanksgiving, Chuck said, "Don't worry about it honey," and went into his backyard. He came back five minutes later with a live turkey, ate it whole, and when he threw it up a few seconds later it was fully cooked and came with cranberry sauce. When his wife asked him how he had done it, he gave her a roundhouse kick to the face and said, "Never question Chuck Norris."
- Chuck Norris once shot a German plane down with his finger, by yelling, "Bang!"
- Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
- Chuck Norris took my virginity, and he will sure as hell take yours. If you're thinking to yourself, "That's impossible, I already lost my virginity.", then you are dead wrong.
- The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.
- Chuck Norris punched a woman in the vagina when she didn't give him exact change.
- One time while sparring with wolverine, Chuck Norris accidentally lost his left testicle. You might be familiar with it to this very day by its technical term: Jupiter.
- Chuck Norris doesn't believe in Germany.
- Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
- Chuck Norris is actually Jeeves from AskJeeves.com.
- Chuck Norris wears a rattlesnake as a live condom.
- In 1945, Adolf Hitler was really kicked to death by a five year old Chuck Norris.
- Chuck Norris' penis is so large, that he in fact has to tie it around his left leg so that it doesn't get in the way of his round-house kick.

man, the Kaiser Chiefs are awesome.

today was remembrance day, and being 15 mins away from the core of the nation's capital, i took advatnge of the amazing ceremonies that went on. first of all, i woke up at 10:30, and by that time my entire floor had already gone. so i was all like "fuuuuuck", but mike was thankfully still here. i would feel terrible if i didn't go to SOME kind of ceremony. i have a fairly strong military background and i have been to a remembrance day ceremony pretty much every year of my life. downtown ottawa was really cool to see, all the officials from different countries driving bulletproof cadillacs. as well as the navy/army/RCMP/air force marching around the amazing war monument in front of the parliament buildings, WITH the prime minister and governer general watching. i definately didn't expect it all.

we had our first snowfall yesterday. not much, the grond wasn't frozen so it didn't stay. but none the less, it was exciting.

this is pretty much just a random post. i'll put up some pictures for entertainment values.

this is me at the carleton coffeehouse, before it started.

i'm playing!

miranda the pirate, carly and natalie the sexy police, and victoria (my res fellow) the "schoolgirl". (i love halloween)

soup kitchen kaelan (i was a bum for halloween) and chris the mime.

i just realized the harry potter "goblet of fire" movie comes out soon. i'll have to find out when.
NEIL YOUNG TURNS 60 TOMORROW. just thought i'd mention.

listening to: radiohead, the bends (album) personally my favourite radiohead album at that.

well, happy halloween. i get to celebrate the festivities by sitting in front of my computer studying for my lousy psychology midterm tomorrow morning. the 9:30 AM midterm thought is quite scary, but other than that, i'm just not experiencing the greatness of halloween. anyway, i was thinking about music this week and what really makes great music, because as a musician and (more often than not) a music critic, there are a lot of what i like to call "un-tasteful" bands out there (as i am sure i've mentioned before). so here are some guidelines concerning what i perceive to be crucial in "good" music:

1.lyrics/vocals: first of all, a singer for a band needs to be good at BOTH of these. you may to able to sing great, but if your lyrics are just sentences, well, you have some work to do. lyrics are a form of poetry, and they are meant to be interepreted AND sung well, not just the latter. i dont believe you need to have a fresh new, cool sounding style to be a good vocalist. but you should be at least able to sing well and write good lyrics that can be interpreted, like a poem.

2.bass guitar: being a bass player, i am probably most opinionated about this part of a song. bass lines, presently, aren't as creative as they should be. for example, a common bass line in a pop-punk band (such as simple plan) would look something like this:
DDDDDDDDEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCGGGGGGGG.....(continue for 3 more minutes)
wow. i now understand why people share the common thought that bass is a fairly boring instrument. where's the creativity? where's the complexity? any moron can play many notes in a row. frig. a bass line doesnt mean it has to be the center of attention to be good (listen to Led Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown", or pretty much any Led Zeppelin song for that matter if you don't believe me). oh, and if you are playing bass, please don't feel you need to follow the guitar part and support it all the time with the root note of the chord. a bass guitar is a completely seperate instrument, and a bass line can be featured, just like any other instrument in the band.

3.guitar: basically, a guitar part should be a complex, intriguing, and catchy, whether using chords or not. what seems to be happening with guitar parts in bands today is that they're using powerchords, which are okay once or twice in a song, but in every single bar?! again, any moron or beginner guitar player can play three chords for 2 or 3 minutes. i don't even play guitar, and yet i can probably learn a song by evanescance, for example, in 10 minutes. your band is successful because they have talent and experience at playing a certain instrument. please don't play guitar like you learnt it two days ago.

4.drums: there aren't many issues with drums, but my one main concern is again with the simplicity and apparent lack of talent. why don't you just buy a machine to play a drum at a constant and well-kept pace instead of paying a "drummer" to do it for a million bucks. a good example of this is The White Stripes' "Blue Orchid". now, this song has some cool lyrics and vocals, a very catchy guitar riff, no bassline (this, believe it or not, is not the issue), and a constant single bass drum beat. oh, there are some symbol crashes in there too. so what has this drummer shown really? she can hit symbols hard, and she can tap her foot to the beat on the bass drum. seriously, i would do this for $10, that's $990,000 you're saving by letting an average musician fill the part of a so-called "professional". again, the drums don't have to always be featured, but they should at least have some kind of musical knowledge thrown in there somewhere.

ok, so this turned out to be more of a rant than anything. just remember, music is an art form, meant for interpreting. that's great if you can make some noise and blend it with some other noises, but that's not what makes good music. good music is a way to express, just like an artist painting a picture. by leaving the whole "interpretation" part out of it, you're ruining the entire concept.

so that's pretty much it. now i think i need to sleep, midterms suck. especially morning ones. dinger!

kae is out.

listening to: Razorlight

well first off, commencement was boring. real boring. ugh. but it was great seeing everyone again. i also got to see pattison, bower, mr.thomas and mr.jull, so it was great. after commencement i got pretty hammered. dave and lowe crashed at my place. we didnt get up until 3 the next day, a nice 12 hour sleep (for me it was a bit longer). that night was markham bowl. pretty much a bunch of gr9 (and maybe younger) chicks running around drunk. but, i got to see more people so, again, it was worth it. saturday i read a freaking lot, and went grocery shopping with my mom because im THAT cool. later on i went out for coffee with lauren, which was super-fantastic because i hadnt seen her ALL summer. sunday=thanksgiving. monday i went back to carleton (which i have to say, after spending 5 days in markham, i really missed it, but markham still nice, once in a while).

this week has been hellish. lots of reading to catch up on. i got assignments piled on me in my english class. but at least i have no midterms until november first. oh, and i got a bad cist on my arm (just like the one i got this summer). it had swollen one hell of a lot, so i went to the campus doctor, and he CUT IT OPEN. it was intense. i figured he'd just put me on antibiotics for a week. but no! lets take a knife to kaelan's arm, slices his cist open and lets the puss flow out in logs. here's a couple pictures of me later on that night:



ouch!

last night i got real drunk, walked ALL THE WAY over to crappy ottawa U, and...



this is my artist's rendering of us. yes, we are all very fat.


good times.