This will be the last TCOW Post of 2007. Hoorah! I suppose New Year’s, like birthdays, is pretty much meaningless to me. Tomorrow is just another day. But it’s a good excuse to have a party, and that’s just what’s going to happen. If you’re in Toronto, drop by Jimmy’s sometime after 9 tonight. If you don’t know where that is, call me. There’s a few shindigs going on in Owen Sound too from what I hear, but I don’t know the details. I’m sure you all already know though.

I probably won’t be on the computer for the rest of today. Before the New Year’s party I’ve go a few things I have to do, and I’m afraid there’s more things to do then there’s time for.
- shower, etc
- LCBO for party supplies
- grocery shopping with Andrew
- go to the laundromat, whee!
- feed James’ cats
- dinner w/ Devon & Co.
I better get started! So, safe partying everyone! I’ll be back in 2008.

I just got back from the Don Ross show at Hugh’s Room. It was fantastic! That man is a menace on an acoustic guitar. Anyways, if anyone is wondering what to get me for my birthday this year, I certainly wouldn’t mind one of the guitars pictured above. It’s a Don Ross custom baritone with fan frets, created by Marc Beneteau of St. Thomas Ontario. Baritone means all the strings are 5 notes lower than normal, and the fan frets are angled to improve intonation. I asked real nice after the show tonight and Don was kind enough to let me play his, and even though I wanted one before, now I REALLY want one! (hint hint dad?) The price tag makes aquiring one any time soon seem unlikely though.

Next August Don Ross is playing Hugh’s Room again, and this time he’s bringing Andy Mckee with him! I told Mr. Ross that he’d better damn well not schedule the concert for the weekend of Summerfolk, but apparently it’s up to his booking agent. It will be the best show I have ever seen, and the second best thing only to Summerfolk, and I sure won’t be happy if they do end up conflicting.

I bought his newest album, ‘music for vacuuming‘ at the show tonight, and I’ve just finished listening to it. It was absolutely great. From a guitar player’s perspective it’s thrilling to listen to all the unique and talented things he can do with his instrument, but you don’t have to be a guitar virtuoso to appreciate the beautiful sound of his music. Now… time for some sleep?

Later today we are getting together to celebrate James’ (pictured above) twenty-something’th birthday. (I know what it is, but I’ll leave it up to him to tell you) so if you’re in the neighbourhood, you should drop by and buy him a drink! James is a good man, and I’m sure we’re all very glad he’s still alive! Here’s the details for the gathering:

Editor’s Note: Today is Seameth’s birthday, and to celebrate we’re posting his first ever Worst Webcomic Ever! (click on it to see it full size, which will probably be necessary to read the text) ((please note, this comic was created under duress, and possibly the influence of some Tuborg)

Starpulse - Lynne Spears’ Parenting Book ‘Delayed’
Reuters - “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” tops ‘07 memorable quote list
thestar.com - Party’s over at U of T residence
YouTube - Jose Gonzalez - Heartbeats
YouTube - Daft Charleston
YouTube - Ukrainian Army Ad
Chain Factor - “I’ve wasted hours of my life on this game!”
New York Times - Perfectionism
Scientific American - Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones
Techlicious.tv - The best things to do with your old computer
Cracked.com - The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses

[Recent Links Archive]

I don’t know wtf happened to my blog, but it doesn’t look right. It’s too late (ie. too much vodka) to work on this right now. Erg… I’ll deal with this tomorrow.

UPDATE: somehow my wordpress install went back to the default theme instead of mine. Weird. But now it’s all better…

UPDATE 2: It’s reverted to the default theme again. This is quite odd!

UPDATE 3: I deleted all the themes that aren’t the right one. Hopefully that will help. Still kind of perplexed as to how it changed by itself twice. Also, Twitter seems to not be working (it won’t get updates from my phone anyways). Stupid Internet!

UPDATE 4: The Internet tells me I am not alone with this problem. Possible cause is a flaky filesystem. Solution: rename my theme’s folder to Default. Hopefully this problem is now resolved for good. I also disovered I’m not the only Canadian Roger’s customer right now who can’t update Twitter with my phone.

I haven’t really written anything about me in the past week. That’s because I haven’t really done much. I only made it to one of the three concerts I’d been planning on going to last week. I saw Corin Raymond and (most of) The Sundowners at the Cameron House. There weren’t too many people there, but I like it better that way. Not so good for the band, as they get paid by donation. Corin and his crew are some of the hardest working musicians I have met. Screw famous people who only tour for half a year every few years playing a concert every few nights. And they don’t even have to carry their own equipment or tune their own guitars! They don’t deserve to be rich! :O

Mostly this week I’ve been sitting in my room watching movies. I would guess at least 20 films. Some were good, some not so good. None worth blogging about really. I’m really wasting my time! So today I figured I’d be productive and practice my guitar for the first time in a while, and while tuning the thing, my high E string broke and nearly cut open the tops of two of my fingers! It didn’t actually draw blood, but it still hurt. That’s never happened before. This would have been a good opportunity to put my guitar back down and give up, but I practiced for a few hours with just 5 strings anyways, and played with a new alternate tuning. [D-A-D-F#-B (I guess you’d leave the high e at E if you have one)] It’s neat!

Friday night Jimmy had some Euro-Trash themed end of exams party. As is usual with his parties, there were lots of fantastic people there. Any party where people are almost too drunk to stand up but arguing about the merits of the different schools of Communism is bound to be interesting. Many of the people there knew other parts of my family. You just can’t leave Grey/Bruce behind! A couple of nice friends insisted I share a cab home with them, at their expense. Lucky I did or I probably would have fallen asleep before the bus showed up. Jimmy must have more parties!

That’s enough for now. I might update again next week if anything interesting happens. I’m not counting on it though. There’s too much snow.

I’m not endorsing iPods. I don’t like them much myself. I just liked this commercial.

New Rule: No more gift registries. You know, it used to be just for weddings. Now it’s for babies and new homes and graduations from rehab. Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn’t gift giving, it’s the white people version of looting.

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“All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness. The important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.” (“Dalai”, n.d., para. 1). These words were spoken by the spiritual leader of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso who is also known as the current Dalai Lama. Who are the Dalai Lamas, what was Tenzin Gyatso’s early life like, what is his present life like, and what does the future hold for the Dalai Lama?

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All I’ve got for you today are a bunch of pictures from my cell phone covering my last month of adventures.

I’m back in Toronto. It was kind of a surreal feeling riding the subway after being in Owen Sound for four days, thinking: I’ve just crossed the total amount of distance there is in Owen Sound in just a few minutes, and I’m not even halfway home yet. Or maybe I was just too tired. It was fantastic to see so many people back there, many of them unplanned and unexpected. Unlike my last trip to Owen Sound I had very little downtime. Consequently however, my throat is now quite sore. But at least my feet are warm and dry again, finally. Next time I’ll bring boots.

I’m taking today to sit around and do very little, other than one little trip out to replace my phone headset which I lost in Owen Sound somewhere. I’ve got a busy week of concerts and things. As soon as I have some free time (and maybe a little help from Ryan (I know you’re reading this in your RSS feed!) ) I’m going to try to set this weblog up with Twitter so I can update it on the road from my mobile phone. I fear it may involve having to update to the latest version of WordPress. (I’ve hacked up a lot of the code here over time so it will be slightly more complicated than it’s supposed to be. :S)

And now, I’m going to eat some eggs and watch Superbad. Good day, everyone!

The mobile party was not quite a “party”, but it certainly was mobile. I was an Idiot and neglected to bring good winter boots to Owen Sound. The city is getting to me apparently. Today I spent more time at the mall than I wished to. In fact, I’d been aiming to avoid malls, and any not necessary for survival shopping in general until well after Christmas, but I really needed more socks, due to the lack of boots. So far I’ve had fun in Owen Sound, and despite the lack of a cohesive plan I’ve managed to keep very busy. I’m keen on getting back to the city though, with it’s free (for me) transit, restaurants open past 10, and severe lack of snow on most of the sidewalks.

The sound of screaming children has got to be one of my favourite things to hear first thing in the morning. Morning? Hell… it was 7am. I haven’t seen a 7am in months! I also haven’t been to Tim Horton’s since the last time I was in Owen Sound. Toronto’s got this thing about Coffee Time and Starbucks. I sure don’t. Wow, I got 5 lines in before realizing that my brains still not close to awake.

This weekend while I’m in Owen Sound I will be missing:
- The Undesirables (for free!)
- The Arrogant Worms and Garnett Rogers @ Hugh’s Room
- Data from Paris, and Future Sound (Drum n Bass) @ RANDOMLAND (Circa)
:(

But next week the lineup I will see is:
Wed: Jory Nash @ The Cameron House
Thurs: Corin Raymond & The Sundowners @ The Cameron House
Fri: Andrew Neville and the Poor Choices, w/ Washboard Hank @ The Cadillac Lounge

I suppose I should post some details about the “mobile party” coming up on Friday (december 7). Well, details are tricky. It’s all going to be pretty random I think. My tentative plan is to be hanging around the downtown Tim Horton’s (in Owen Sound) at about 9pm. I expect we’ll stay within a few blocks of there for the first hour or two, meandering around the lights and such, so if you haven’t got a phone you can try looking for us there. If you have got a phone, well, you can call or text me anytime friday evening to find out where we are. My number’s on my MSN at the moment. Remember to dress warm, and be inconspicuous!

Our server seems to be having some troubles with e-mail forwarding at the moment. If you have been trying to e-mail me, or if you have an e-mail which is connected to a domain registered through me and forwards to G-mail, please be advised that there is a considerable delay (up to a few days) in those e-mails reaching G-mail. For now, the quickest method to contact me is by MSN or phone. I will post an update when this issue is resolved.

You can get more information on our server’s status page.

I went to Trevor’s place this weekend to use the hottub, but alas, it was broken. Then our plan to go to the movies was thwarted by a torrential downpour of freezing rain. So we stayed in and watched The Godfather Part I instead, which much to Trevor’s amazement I’ve never seen before. I have to admit it was better than I expected, but I stand by my resolve that there’s only one Trilogy. Kevin Smith fans should know what I’m talking about.

As I was trying to fall asleep, that got me thinking. There’s no real media consumption in the Star Wars universe. No-one’s ever seen watching TV, listening to commercial radio, no advertisements on the walls. There’s a few scenes of live entertainment, but as far as mass produced media, it’s just not there. And I wonder, how did the Empire communicate with the masses? How did they keep the majority of them brainwashed and subjugated? With a government like that, wouldn’t you expect a slew of Communist style propoganda? At least the Death Star should have contained motivational posters on the walls to keep the troops spirits up, like so:

Product placement and advertising in movies sure might be annoying, but the lack of them really creates a strangely sterile and unrealistic atmosphere. Also, I really wish I could just fall asleep at night instead of laying awake thinking of completely uesless things like this.