So, I just got a random (I use that word for my younger female readers who love it so much... random wha!) phone call from my cousin, working at his desk at his gov't job. Someone he knows apparently offered him/me a one-day job of sorts, even though I'd do this for free. It's not a sure thing until it happens, but it sounds pretty legit. From what he says, we may act as extras for a local TV show. It's at 4am on Friday (for up to 10 hours), in Nova Scotia, so we'll have to go over on Thursday night, I guess. Like tomorrow. I wonder if I should ask my cuz Dave to put us up for the night... well, part of it anyway. Either that, or we'll find a cheap hotel. Anyone read this have extra space? Anyway, if this pans out, whether we make it on TV or not, it should be an interesting experience!

Déjà vu, translated, means "already seen". Seems to me, I can hardly look at one of k.d. Lang's album covers without getting this feeling. Sometimes, the feeling isn't so strong. You know, maybe something along these lines:



You know, it's not a perfect fit. The colours aren't even the same. It's just the same mood.



Or with these, things seem to match a little better... the arrangement, the colours. It's about now that things start to get a little freaky.



It's like, whoa, k.d. You're looking a bit like Nigel Kennedy here, but where'd that PJ Harvey hair come from? The look, the colour...
Then, BAM!



Sweet merciful crap... are k.d. and Dave the same person? The lighting effect, the mood... even the freakin' font and font colour are practically identical. Then, timberrrrr...



Similar font and font colour, and... if you take away the stone barrier... is that the same tree from a different angle? Boy, these two really give that "already seen" feeling. I'd thought this about a couple or few of Lang's covers in the past, and it was brought to the surface again for me recently when she released her new compilation CD:



This one's just an obvious conscious effort. But why? Why would you ever cover a cover? Besides, The Clash already did this one.

Well, I hope you learned a little, here. About what, I don't know. So maybe I hope you just enjoyed it. As long as you learned a little here, it's worthwhile. I don't know what you learned about, though, so I at least hope you enjoyed this. Get that déjà vu feeling? I thought so.

If you see other covered covers, feel free to send 'em along!

Back Alley Discs is closing. How friggin' sad. I'd heard the rumour last week, but I heard it from the man himself today. I've been going there for years, ever since the true back alley pot-scented days. True, I've been buying a little less there lately, but mostly because the store's focus shifted a while back.

At some point, Chas seemed to get a little less hands-on. There wasn't nearly as much good indie stuff from Canada (or anywhere), not as much selection in some genres, etc. For some reason (his son, maybe? maybe sales?) he decided to deal with more punk and heavy stuff. So, instead of going in and finding some Joel Plaskett vinyl on the shelf, it'd be some "cool" crap punk band I'd never heard of. Chas still has lots of good stuff, and always has, but... I guess, there was some slow transition away from more of the stuff I like.

I'll miss going in and listening to him playing guitar. I'll miss going in and listening to him play something cool I'd never heard (the last time this happened was Sam Philip's "A Boot and a Shoe"... a great CD). Where else will I get my musical tips? Where else will I get my Exclaim!? Where else can I hear the clerk make fun of someone after they bought a bad CD and left? Where else can I find such a good and wide mix of stuff on CD and vinyl, with an opinionated and really knowledgeable person at the desk? Where else will locals sell their wares? Who else will label a smashed Ace of Base CD taped to the wall as "quality control"? It's all just too sad.

As a farewell song of sorts, I was going to offer you this great musical nugget: Tom Waits' "Picture in a Frame". I think, for this, it sounds and fits just right. However, I couldn't find an online version. In its place, I leave you the most recent thing that I tipped Chas on (a while ago), Feist. Here she is, with Mushaboom.

This is the translation on the back of one of my wife's packs of tea. I thought it was funny... perhaps disturbing? Maybe I'll send it to Engrish. It reminds me of the restaurant I used to work at, where the boss labelled the stuff in the server's station once. Masking tape and marker everywhere, on things like "dinner folks" and "asstrays".

I came across this this morning, and I loved it enough to share. Do you know who Ann Coulter is? She is a bad human being. She's that thinks-she's-so-smart bitchy blond that's on American news talk programs from time to time. Her views are terrible, and she is always spewing offensive comments. For example:

"[Canadians] better hope the United States does not roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent."

"Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed')."

"When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we're up against absolutely insane savages."

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."

To disabled Vietnam vet Bobby Muller who was expressing pacifist views : "No wonder you guys lost."

"They're never very high in anyone's caste system, are they? Poor little Pakis."

and on and on and on...

Apparently, she was to appear on Adam Carolla(of The Man Show)'s radio program. She called in an hour and a half late, and told him she was tight on time. He just hung up on her and then they badmouthed her for being a bitch, etc. It makes me feel all warm inside. The article is here, and the soundclip from the radio show is here!

The listing for a BEP concert on PEI has now been pulled. Perhaps there won't be any Peas for you now. I guess PEI just won't give Peas a chance. I wonder if someone will still try to put together a show there this year...

The (forgotten and furthered by a factor of half of four) Friday Five!

1. "Flashdance" was released as "Electrodanza" in Mexico in 1983.
2. The "ZIP" in ZIP code stands for "Zone Improvement Plan".
3. Osama bin Laden is said to have 54 siblings.
4. Some ancient Greeks thought amethysts could prevent them from getting drunk.
5. Bob Dylan isn't Rob Zimmerman's only alter ego. He's also gone by Lucky Wilbury and Blind Boy Grunt.
6. The term "Blue Monday" came from the weekend before Lent. Catholics'd get their eatin' and drinkin' for the next 40 days crammed in before Lent started. Then, they would return to work on Monday, in a "fog" or "blue fog". Hence the term, "Blue Monday".
7. To "show your true colours" came from warshippery (my new word for the day). Some boats used to fly flags of different nations, to maybe trick enemies. The rules of civilized warfare were altered to say that ships had to fly their right flag or show their "true colours" before firing any shots.
8. There's a woman in South Africa who is apparently 132 years old (born in 1874!).
   
9. In 2003 dollars, a kidney in Iraq would set you back (ha ha, I slay me) $1,000. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the price jumps to $68,000.
   
10. And finally, to really top it all off, is Cymothoa exigua. It's a fish parasite. It gets in through the gills, and starts feeding on the tongue, sucking blood out. Eventually, the tongue atrophies and disappears. The really weird thing? When the tongue's gone, the parasite stays, and the fish can use it as its own tongue, thereby feeding them both.

Hilly Alexandra gets more humps. More humps, more humps, more humps. Their lovely golfing lumps. Check it out:

http://www.blackeyedpeas.com/home/events

Sony's new -and better- PSP. Why's it better? 'Cause it's not black! White is SO much better than black. Finally people can throw out their worthless black PSPs and get a worthy white one! It's about time some game company put black in its place, at the mercy of white. Otherwise, we'd be seeing black stuff everywhere, and white stuff would just disappear! Just you wait... this movement Sony is spearheading will eventually lead to putting people who play black game systems at the back of the bus, where the bumps make it hard to play games. People with white ones can ride smoothly up front. Go white!

Long time, no post again, eh? I even missed the second installment of The Friday Five! No matter. I couldn't really help it. I'll make this entry a grab-bag of things from the past few days, starting with my excuses.

You see, last weekend was the Festival of Lights, and we also did get that dog. On the FoL side of things, I only got to make it to the first night of music, plus the fireworks (from the better Stratford side). Mays was good. My fave tune was that new one about building a ship. It was kinda groovin' and definitely rockin'! Sammy was good as always, though I found the guitars quiet and the energy less than last time. I think the show last time, with way fewer people (on account of the biblical downpour), was twice as good anyway. Too many extended laid-back trip-outs this time. The Hip were as good or better than I thought they'd be. Gotta love Baker in the cowboy hat, looking cool and Jedi-like as always. Downie was a nutcase, but an entertaining one. I would have thought I'd think his lunacy would be annoying, but I liked it. Good unique showmanship. Their sound and lights were good, and so was the show overall. I liked their newer tunes they did... a couple of good rockin' tunes from the new disc. Lots of tunes I really wanted that they didn't play, though... like New Orleans is Sinking, Courage, Fully Completely, Twist My Arm, Little Bones... many good ones left off. Opening with Blow at High Dough was great, though. I think my fave #, surprisingly, may have been At the Hundredth Meridian. I'm not sure what my favourite rant was... the "Prime Minister Bush" Afghanistan bit, the "f*@#in' whales" speech, or about how to keep a microphone in its place. A very good show, overall. The fireworks were good this year, as always, and I think I like the view from Stratford more than the C'town side.


On that same day, Friday, the dog came over. We got him dropped off on Saturday morning. I think we're going to keep him, and so far, I'm rather indifferent about him, really. I'm not wowed by him, nor am I revolted by him. I'm middle of the road, so I guess we'll keep him. On the upside, he's cute, little, and friendly. He doesn't shed. He doesn't stink, just smells like a dog. He's cuddly. He's playful. On the downside, he's sometimes too playful / pushy. We have to get him to stop jumping on the furniture. He's turned the poor cat into a nervous hermit, and they both growl and hiss and bark at each other. He wakes us up really early. He barks at stupid things. He's needy at times. I'm not really glad we have him, nor do I long to get rid of him. So far, to me, he's just here. I think part of it is that he takes me out of my happy comfort zone routine. Maybe that's not such a bad thing for me.

Now, some short bits:

How fast can you type? My best score out of a few tries was 81.95 wpm (0 mistakes), 343.78 cpm. My real average is probably around 60-65 wpm.



Did you hear about those 3 asshats that sprang a leak on our war memorial in Ottawa on Canada Day? I mean, we've all watered some different things after a good night of drinkin', but how many different kinds of stupid do you have to be to pee on a war memorial? I hope they fess up, still get charged, and (to paraphrase Weird Al) have to clean all the toilets on Parliament Hill with their tongues.

Here's a joke that made me think of a few people I know:
Scenario:
You are driving in a car at a constant speed. On your left side is a valley and on your right side is a fire engine traveling at the same speed as you.
In front of you is a galloping pig which is the same size as your car and you cannot overtake it. Behind you is a helicopter flying at ground level.
Both the giant pig and the helicopter are also traveling at the same speed as you.
What must you do to safely get out of this highly dangerous situation?
(read the thread's comments to get the answer)

That should be enough for now. I'll catch up on The Friday Five tomorrow or on Friday (make it ten?), tell you all about Ron Hynes, and some other stuff.