this is the end

my final day of work. here it is.

there is no party. no cake.

frankly that doesn't really surprise me because i think there are only 4 people in this building who actually know my name...and i'm fine with that. i am the anti-networker.

to give a final example of how bored i've been here, i give you my latest forays into ms paint:

so yeah, i guess that's it for now. i imagine i shall be back now and again, and it's totally dependent on if i find more employment that allows me to waste so much time.

party on, internet

survey says....

pretty much since the invention of email, there's been this phenomenon of the online survey. no, not a quiz to find out which celebrity would be your ideal celebrity mom for your celebrity pet...and no, not a survey that you fill out about your eating/shopping/surfing habits so that you MAY win a 50$ gift certificate to pottery barn. i'm talking about one that looks like this:

last person you talked to: your mom

last person you kissed: your mom

last person who saw you naked: you, when you walked in on me on top of your mom

and so on....

originally, this little survey thing seemed to exist solely on an email level. you would receive the survey in your inbox, freshly filled out by your friend, and you would read their answers and think haha, how clever they are!! now it is my turn to show my friends how clever i am! look out, keyboard! it's time for the funny introspective details about ME!

fortunately, this seemed to die out after a few years. i thought it might be because as me and my friends got older, we no longer felt the need to electronically share our favourite moments from Friends.

until this little thing called facebook came along. oh yeah, and blogs.

suddenly, everyone is posting notes with fresh new surveys. ok, not everyone. but some people. frankly, i probably would never have noticed if it wasn't for this pesky amount of free time i've had at work every day. 'noticed' doesn't mean i've actually READ these things, but i've taken note of their existence. ok ok...i do read one once and while, but there's usually a whole lot of skimming going on, and it means i'm either expecting something funny cuz the author is a funny person, or i'm waiting for something 'funny' cuz it's just so banal it becomes absurd.

now i'm not sure if i'm actually knocking people who still fill these things out. ok, maybe i am, but i don't intend to be mean, i just want to analyze why. i do understand the value of wasting some time and attempting to be creative on some level without actually having to construct complete sentences. perhaps what i find- oh, let's call it, interesting, or at least, 'of note' - is why these peoplethink that we are actually curious about these useless facts?

passively posting something on your personal webspace is sure as hell a lot less obnoxious than stuffing someone's inbox full of these things, for sure, and yet i must wonder...what is the thought process behind a 28 year old declaring to the world that their favourite caffeinated beverage is a cappuccino? if they really want to let people know these things, why not start writing your memoir? as you go through your life on paper, you'll hopefully come to recognize what is worth describing (ie. losing your virginity) and what's boring (what's on your desk right now).

i realize that it's pretty hypocritical to talk about this on MY own personal webspace...a place where i post my opinions and likes and dislikes. however, i have yet to come across one of those surveys that is entirely justifiable as something that must be shared with the world, even if the 'world' means 2 readers...one of whom is me, wondering why i'm reading this stuff. maybe if i want to date you, THEN i'll want to know that the underpants that you are currently wearing have bears on them. bears holding baseball bats. hehe. you are so cute. let's date.

however, that one survery where you push shuffle on your mp3 player and each song represents a scene in the movie of your life is pretty cool, i gotta admit.

the scene where i meet your mom: 'love in an elevator'

give peas a chance

the reason that i started this blog is soon coming to an end...

my boss gave me my 2 weeks notice last friday. not because i suck, but because the funding has dried up for this position.

hrm.

luckily i have the event of moving apartments to keep me busy immediately after my last day of work.

the following week, i have the recording of an album to keep me busy.

the week after that, i have the fear of poverty to keep my mind occupied.

wouldn't paris hilton be so much less of a douche if she had the fear of where her next meal shall come looming over her head? instead of always thinking, "that's shiny. i like it. can i fuck it?" she'd be all, "wow, cheese is expensive. i guess it shall be a butter sandwich for me today."

thus concludes the lesson.

someone is a genius

this is public art in its highest form:

radio free canada

i have mentioned before that the only station i listen to at work is the CBC. there are many explanations for this choice. most importantly, i once made the very ill-advised choice to go to post-grad school for radio broadcasting. several months after 'graduation' (ie. there was no way i was going to go to that ceremony, particularly because the program director displayed a complete inability or interest in actually giving me my certificate for completing the course. i still do not have that useless piece of paper, and i never shall because i refuse to contact that person again and remind myself that i wasted that much time. this shall only cause a problem if i ever do actually need that piece of paper for a job...my solution shall probably be to just remove those 8 months of my life from my resume).

anyhoo, that course caused a deep-seated loathing for commercial radio. through schooling that was supposed to instill respect and skill for a dying medium, they managed to teach me that commercial radio is a more vacuous and generic form of media than Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, and Cosmo Girl magazines combined.

henceforth: public radio forevermore.

the biggest drawback of my choice is that the CBC seems to have 2 major themes: global warming, and Neil Flambe. i am certainly interested in global warming and the ways in which i can try to prevent it, but essentially every feature has a thesis given by experts: it doesn't matter what you do as an individual cuz the government licks industrial bum holes and China doesn't care, anyways, so basically don't bother having kids cuz they will be raised in a world of pain. YAY.

their antidote to such doom and gloom is this annoying feature about some harry potter rip off that's supposed to spark debate and discussion about children's novels. the only problem is that it's mentioned 20 times a day by this annoying host who penned the thing, and narrated by this annoying helium voiced female. they once spent a MONTH doing a poll about what dish the young chef boy should prepare. a MONTH about ONE THING. a thing related to FOOD... not the way he should die, or who his first love interest should be, or how he shall come to realize his achilles heel. the banality of the story does nothing to take my mind off slowly roasting to death while baby polar bears weep.

despite the annoying gulf between their programming choices, i will still listen to the CBC cuz they do manage to squeeze in worthwhile music and opinions once and a while. it's sure as hell of a lot better than hearing finger eleven's 'paralyzer' twenty times a day. actually, i still have to listen to paralyzer due to my office mate's love of chum fm, and the fact that she TURNS THE VOLUME WAY UP whenever that song comes on and dances in her seat.

in case you're confused, that is a photographic representation of a rainbow butt-ed monkey pooping on finger eleven.

i do not want what i haven't got

inexplicably, there is a huge scrawl of blue pen on the lower hip portion of the light blue dress i'm currently wearing. i discovered it while looking in the mirror in the bathroom at work this morning.

the scrawl is the size of a banana...and not one of those cute little baby bananas.

i can think of 3 explanations for the banana scrawl:

1. the large purse i sling over my shoulder to walk to work everyday somehow developed a magical hole and a magical pen poked out of the hole and scrawled all the way to work. .

2. there was an open house at my place last night (cuz we're moving to somewhere that is not infested by mice, earwigs, spiders, ants, millipedes, and criminals sept. 1). i was not present at this open house. a prospective tenant with an odd penchant for defacement must've stepped into my slanty walk-in closet and scrawled to her/his heart's content.

3. the scrawl has been there for a real long time and i just haven't noticed.

which is the most plausible explanation?

well, when examining my purse now, there is no hole in the sturdy leather, and the only pen in my bag is safely unclicked and unleaky. explanation number 2 seems rather ridiculous, honestly. and number 3?

i'm not a slob or anything, but this is most likely the answer. it still doesn't explain how it happened, initially, but, yeah, i've never let a banana scrawl stand between me and a good time.

there's a lesson in all of this:

never buy anything expensive, cuz i really couldn't be bothered by this giant banana stain on the side of my dress that shall very likely never washed out, cuz i bought it on sale for 10$ at Stitches...or was it Sirens...or Urban Planet....or was it Urban Behaviour?

buying cheap crappy sweat shop clothing is probably the closest i shall ever come to the anti-materialist philosophy of buddhism.

i certainly did not let this material possession own ME.

sexy hamburger

i am so freaking excited for this movie:

the fact that the only movie i have seen in theatres so far this summer is Knocked Up, and Superbad is the only other movie i plan to see, means perhaps that i am an 18 year old male.

nothin' wrong with that, i think.

internet, you have some 'splainin to do

so i was just checking up on the visitor statistics of my website (not this blog thing...my actual site...and no, i will not link it here, cuz if you're reading this blog, i hope you already know who i am, and if you know who i am, you know what my website is) and under 'search query report', there are a large number of the normal searches, ie. searches of my name or my bands - yes yes, everything seems to be in order - and then....

'have you seen this weirdo'.

yes, apparently someone typed in 'have you seen this weirdo' in their search engine, and my site popped up.

i can't help but feel like the internet itself is mocking me.

how rude.

goooooood morning mediocrity

this saddens me so.

i really should be defending this man instead of just linking to a mean article that ridicules and berates his current career. why? because this is the man that made my YEAR when he chose to descend from his lofty mega-celebrity world to make one of a million trillion fans feel special.

i spent my late childhood/tweens envisioning any sort of encounter with this guy. if my 11 year old self knew that one day this man would have the patience and kindness to hold several conversations with me in one night...a night which had him surrounded by many, many other fawning robin-attention wanters...allowing me to take several pictures with him...allowing me to tell him where i worked, and actually looking interested in what i was saying, and promising to visit...allowing me to give him my cell phone and greeting my friend on the phone by talking in a funny russian accent...telling my friend, in the funny russian accent, that I was BEAUTIFUL...and kissing me on the cheek, TWICE...that 11 year old would've freaked.

oh, but if i could tell that 11 year old that several days later this man would make good on his promise and actually take TIME OUT OF HIS DAY TO VISIT ME AT WORK...sneaking up to me in his giant black puffy coat and low profile baseball cap to whisper, "see? I told you I would visit." making my 26 year old body hop up and down on the spot as if i had just been given a pony...and then ASKING ME QUESTIONS ABOUT STUFF THAT I LIKED - standing close to me and staring with his twinkly blue piercing eyes that i have watched and worshipped on giant screens, turning me into a giant puddle of blabbering crap...that 11 year old would have pooped her pants and passed out on the floor.

several weeks later, my new boyfriend checked himself into rehab, and i heard a horrible story about him making out w/ a 20 year old in a club surrounded by whiskey shots and barfing in the bathroom.

i cannot help but think if, when he asked me to recommend a CD to buy in that crap music section, if it had just been a month or so later, when MY CD would've been on the shelf, i could've shoved that cd in his hands. he would've gone home and listened to it, perhaps, and then chosen to contact me at the email address provided on the sleeve, and then we could have become friends, and somehow, during this budding friendship, i could've given him some advice, like 'DO NOT STAR IN THE STUPID MARRIAGE PRIEST MOVIE. you do not need another excuse to do your tired old evangelist/healer routine. call up terry gilliam and make another Fisher King.' and he would say, 'yes joan, you are absolutely right, and you are very beautiful. please come visit me in san francisco and we will go play with the hippies in golden gate park.'

oh robin, where did we go wrong?

beet it

the following is being written on a sort of hollow feeling stomach, so i apologize for any rambly disjointedness contained within:

in support of my man friend's desire to lose some weight, i made the decision to go on a special '3 day diet' along with him, cuz i figured eating half a deliscio pizza in front of his face while he ate 1/2 a cup of tuna on bread just wasn't very nice. i was also curious as to how my body would respond to a diet.

i have never actually been on a diet. when i first gained enough weight when i was 15 to be sort of uncomfortable in the pants cuz my metabolism decided to slow down SLIGHTLY, i do recall trying to improve upon my eating habits (ie. 1/4 of a bag of double chocolate cookies instead of 3/4). i definitely did the sex and the city miranda throwing the cake in the garbage, then thinking about picking the cake out of the garbage, then throwing old meat on top of it to stop my cake binge. i've definitely experienced small fluctuations in the past decade or so, but nothing more than 15 pounds. i only ever managed the 15 lb. fluctuation due to a trip with friends to denmark when we were 16 when we all decided to eat ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. haven't eaten in half an hour? here, let's melt this chocolate bar on this piece of bread! oh, what's this? a chocolate bar called 'Ritter Sport'? 'Sport' must mean low fat! chow down, ladies!

anyhoo, here i am at age 27 and i can still say i'm doing pretty well, although i have a feeling an age related metabolistic wall is coming up soon enough, and honestly, the worst part of gaining weight, aside from the whole ego-crushing shame and hatred of yourself in the mirrors or in pictures, is just having to buy new clothes. i cannot afford to buy new clothes.

so like i said, i was curious as to how my body would respond. it's not a crazy insane starvation diet...it's actually pretty healthy, it's just about portion control and the types of foods you are eating during the 3 days.

it's all good except that last night i had to eat BEETS. aside from maybe tasting a pickled beet once in my life, i have successfully avoided this unnaturally purple vegetable. it wasn't as bad as i thought it would be, but the moment i bit in, i knew i was in it for the long haul (ie. the next 2 days).

i'm half way through day 2 now, and despite eating a larger breakfast than normal, and a sort of decent lunch, my insides feel like a cave. the portion control aspect of this diet does make me appreciate how wasteful i am with food, and how i take for granted all the various flavours and tastes in which i indulge every day.

honestly, what will really get me through this is not the potential feeling of putting on my tightest jeans and being able to sit down without flashing half my bum...it will actually be the thought of all those poor Survivor contestants that have had to starve throughout the seasons. i get a whole can of tuna and some soda crackers, and feel all depressed about the pitiful meal which i am about to consume. meanwhile, jeff probst would probably auction off that meal to a starving survivor for 50$ or something.

i should probably just be thinking of the starving children in Africa, but, well, they're right when they say that reality tv is ruining society.

i kind of feel like tooting my own horn right now.


i was playing a show on friday, and a particularly rowdy bunch at the front seemed to be enjoying themselves verily.

me - "this next one will be our last song."


rowdy dudes - "ENCORE!"


me - "well, we're about to play another song, so it is an encore, guys.... *pause*... HA! I BOGGED YOU DOWN IN SEMANTICS!"


honestly, i'm just impressed with myself that after two pints and my usual inability to string together proper non-awkward statements on stage (i have been known to say such things as "masturbating monkeys...always a good time." with little to no reason) that i managed to use such a fancy word as 'semantics' in a correct context.


go me.

hippie (hippy?) thought of the day

well, it's a thought of the day that was a day that was a couple of months ago.

oh, and i don't know if there's actually a proper way to spell 'hippie'. i prefer the 'ie' version, cuz the other version just makes me think of pear-bummed people.

anyhoo, i was on a hike a couple of months ago (not anywhere too exciting...but it's exciting enough that if you have access to a car, you can get the hell out of toronto and into some pretty scenery within a very short period of time).

as i walked through the forest, feeling heady from the fresh air and the first REAL day of warmth and sun and bare legs, the most stoner-rific - but still, like, TRUE, man - thing i have ever thought stopped being a thought and became something i said to my 2 hiking companions.

'so, you know how pretty much everything gets older, and as it gets older, it gets weaker and weaker, decays, then dies? And that's how almost all living things go? well, what about TREES, man? (*the 'man' might just be something i'm throwing in now to make me sound more stoner-rific*) the older they get, the stronger and more beautiful they become. just go to northern california or b.c. and check it out. that's pretty trippy (*once again, 'trippy' may be for comedic effect*).'

some trees even get so strong and beautiful that they grow their own wangs. groovy.

something i like

i like that the cute old chubby lady at subway called me 'sweetheart' today.

sacked

i hate sack dresses.

it's probably all her fault:

WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO COPY THE ANOREXIC GIRL WHO NOW DATES A GUY FROM GOOD CHARLOTTE???

please, unless you are trying to conceal a pregnancy, do not wear a sack dress. if you think you look fat, do not resort to the sack dress, cuz as you can see above, it even makes rosario dawson look mildly obese.

no exception, unless you are pregnant....but still, maybe try a baby doll or an empire waist so at least your bust is defined in some way. otherwise, only 2 exceptions are allowed... i had to go through sacking for these reasons:

1. i was in a high school music in grade 12 where i had a 2 line part. i was part of this sort of former prostitute/born again quartet, and having lines meant we got costumes rented for us. they didn't have enough money in the budget to rent us fancy dresses for the big number, so we had to pay 10$ for cheap red material and sew our own dresses. we were given a specific pattern which must have simply been called 'Sack'. a few whisks of the sewing machine, 1 pair of black magic gloves, and 1 scraggly black boa later, voila! sacktastic costumes to wear while we belted 'blow, gabriel, blow'. indeed.

2. i have received many oversized t-shirts for pointless reasons over the years. i used to wear them to bed. i don't wear them anymore for fear of being tempted into public sacking.

thank you. hopefully my next post can focus on something i don't hate.

my hate is on

and now, for no particular reason (much like any other post on any other blog unless you are a celebrity gossip blogger, in which case you have removed every letter from your keyboard that is not contained in the words 'paris' 'hilton' and 'prison') i give to you some bands/musicians that i hate.



i want to do this cuz while we have our old standbys Nickelback, Celine Dion, Kenny G, Jessica Simpson, etc...to hate on, the music that TRULY pisses me off is the music that is usually praised by fans and critics alike. if you are one of the 5 people who reads this blog, and you love one of the following music makers, i apologize. you have my permission to rip on Zeppelin, the White Stripes, T.Rex, or anyone else i love to your hearts content in the comments section.



*disclaimer: i am by no means a real music critic, and since i hate all these songs/musicians, if my descriptions are not accurate, it's because i try my best to AVOID said music, but the short encounters i have had to endure have left a lasting impression*



- stars. or 'the' stars. i don't know. i also don't care. i despise the listless and woozy quality of their music, and how much indie scenesters eat that indie shit up with an indie spoon (this is a quality i have found chracterizes much of the indie music scene - 'i am so cool and alienated that i am going to strum this guitar with 3 strings and play along to my ipod while i wear this scarf with a piano printed on it. i will mumble into the mic about seahorses wearing boots and YOU WILL ADORE IT!'. i'll respect the shittiest of music, even if it's delivered by celine dion, cuz at least it sounds like she's got some balls, and you have to give her credit for actually being able to sing). mostly i hate Stars cuz Amy Millan sounds like a sleepy 7 year old girl when she sings with this band. every time her fluffy precious little voice starts up over one of their 'i am so isolated yet hip, romantic and mushy' pop songs i want to stick a lolly pop in her mouth - like one of those great big round 'gourmet' ones you can buy at canadian tire - so she'll shut up...and maybe choke on it and die.


- any song on constant rotation at CHUM FM - a station that my office mate pumps through this god forsaken room from 9-5, monday to friday, which i then try to battle w/ my constant CBC listening...this is usually successful, aside from when the CBC scorns me by playing something like Stars. i curse you, jian ghomeshi. i also curse Can Con because it's the reason why i hear the entire nelly furtado and avril lavigne song catalogues day after day.



- joanna newsom. YOU SUCK THE MOST. you are also the musician i have heard the least, cuz thankfully you are not a 'commercial' success. yes, you are the patron saint of pitchfork media and anyone else attempting to be pretentious. i guess i could just lump this one in with my hatred of amy millan and the little girl voice thing, but i'd take a century of listening to Stars- type-Amy vs. listening to any newsom song the whole way through. you can argue that her approach to lyrics is original and refreshing, and her orchestration is inventive and whimsical cuz of that harp stuff, but you know what? there's this singer called Tori Amos, and guess what? she doesn't sound like an autistic child inhaled helium and decided that 'warbling' is an admirable singing technique. she's an excellent singer, in fact. amos' orchestration is quite fascinating (harpsichords, harps, french horns, sheet metal...) and she will always fulfill your need from the absurd in terms of lyrics. however, since she doesn't sound like a talking bumble bee, she has no indie cred. fucko.



- gwen stefani (this does not include 'no doubt' music, just her solo efforts, plus the song 'what u waiting for'). i was really excited when i heard gwen was going to try going solo, cuz, well, come on, who doesn't think this lady is cool? i have loved her since i saw her at a festival in denmark in 1995 when she jumped off a 10 foot tall speaker in yellow leather bondage pants. and her first single, 'what u waiting for ' was AMAZING. i loved it. i still love it. i will always love it. that's why it pained me all the more when we first put on love.angel.music.baby. at work when i was employed by HMV. we couldn't even get through the whole thing, it was so bad. i thought, "oh well, this is so shitty, it will never catch on, and she'll just go back to her band." but no, hollaback girl went on to destroy music as we know it. i blame my humps entirely on hollaback and it's 'groundbreaking' non-use of instrumentation and obnoxious fake urban accent nasal speak/singing. b-a-n-a-n-a-ASS. and the new album? that song wind it up sounds like the soundtrack to a recurring nightmare i had when i was 8 that involved evil barbapapas.



ok, this list might get longer, but that's it for now. i apologize how hate-filled these rants might be, but it's been a long week, and i had to take out my frustration on something/someone. i also just realized that everything i hate so far is female-based, but i think it's because since i am a female singer myself, it pains me when i hear someone doing the same thing that i can do, yet doing it quite shittily. catty, i know. meow.

lindsay joanhan

now here's a question for you:

what if you were born a decade and a half later than your actual birth date?

you have the same parents, the same friends, you grow up in the same area...in my case, though, i would have been born on feb. 9th 1996. would i be the same person?

obviously not.

why have i come to this conclusion?

well there are a million reasons why, but number one would most likely be lindsay lohan.

gah, i hate to sully yet another corner of webspace with that girl's name, but it has to be said. i think the lindsay lohans, paris hiltons, britneys, and nicole richies of the world, coupled with the media's constant scrutiny and the public's hunger to know their every move is seriously going to ruin a generation.

when i was a young girl i idolized the following female popstars

those are probably the four albums i listened to the most between the ages of 7-11 years old. and no, i'm not a gay man. i think i won a couple of lip syncing contests back in the day for paula's 'opposites attract' and janet's 'rhythm nation'. it's probably pretty comical for people who know me now, but i used to LOVE dancing, even though i never took lessons. i was a fake jazz/hip hop phenom...honestly, my dancing used to be 1,000 times more impressive than anything i did with my singing voice, and if you still think i'm being sarcastic, this is me not being sarcastic. i memorized that whole beginning dance sequence to rhythm nation cuz i had the VHS tape.

5-4-3-2-1...

if i take stock of myself these days, i can securely say that i have never suffered any serious chemical dependency, eating disorder, or STD. i guess i'm pretty fortunate that i was a pretty good kid, because those problems certainly did exist for teens in 'my day' (as evidenced by Degrassi).

despite the current questionable states of two of the above women (i'm giving janet the benefit of the doubt as she has to be quite brilliant to successfully distance herself from the craziest and biggest joke of a brother known to man) i would consider that they had a small hand in my rearing. i can't recall any sort of scandal related to any of these ladies back in the day, and my mom always had a subscription to People, so i was never just blissfully unaware. here is photographic proof of my paula/janet/mariah/bette influenced and modestly puppy sweatshirted 1991/92 11 or 12 year old self:

i scratched out my friend cuz she doesn't deserve to have her nerdiness displayed w/out her permission. my hair looked like a mullet that day, i believe, cuz it was my birthday and we were going to go see Les Miserables later on and i had already prepared my up-do for the evening. while the leggings and general bagginess of my ensemble may echo a bit of the current styles, i can't really picture paris hilton out and about in a beagle sweatshirt, sheep boxers and some strange woven pouch around her neck (unless that was where she was keeping her cocaine vial).


i missed the spice girls phenomenon by a few years, which honestly makes me kind of sad, cuz those girls seemed like a lot more fun than paula, although i solely blame them for taking 9 year old girls out of sweat pants with elastic cuffs and into belly button rings...oh yeah i guess that's britney's fault too. so if i was young and impressionable during the young brit and spice days, then i would've been dressed a lot sluttier, but i think that's about it.

but if i was eleven years old RiGHT NOW? oh god. oh good grief. i would pity my mother (well, i would pity my mother in the future, maybe, if i wasn't still occupying myself being a self-obsessed anorexic coke head). the way i figure, when i was actually 11 in 1991, i was just slowing down in my idolatry, but i spent a large chunk of time trying to emulate the dance moves and fashion sense of the above ladies.

i feel like the following would be an accurate depiction of a 2007 era 11/12 year old joan on her birthday and on her way to an ashlee simpson concert:

rough.

i really really hope, for the sake of our current 11 year old girls, that paris has to spend a fair chunk of time in jail, along with lohan, and nicole richie, and whoever else manages to eff up majorly and DUI themselves into oblivion. otherwise, anything parents try to teach their children to be 'wrong' will be meticulously and fully displayed by all media as being nothing but a bunch of idiot girls 'acting out' and 'being young'.

grow up, assholes, unless you want little girls with pink duct tape on their nipples.

four legs good, two legs bad

having never been assigned george orwell's Animal Farm in any English or Russian history classes, i decided it was high time to read it. why? well, i was curious, since it's an oft-referenced book, plus i like aminals very much.

being such a short book, it only took me a couple of days to read, but it affected me greatly. i mean, i was UPSET. poor little aminals! poor Boxer the hardest working horse ever! stupid mean piggies!

i must say, some might fault me because i appear to prefer animals to humans. here are a few examples:

- i was once given a scenario by my friend kate - a newborn baby and a little puppy are drowning. i can only save one. which would i save? well, my first instinct was 'puppy'. i think i said that outloud, too. i was eventually convinced through guilt into saving the baby, but my heart was still with the poor drowning pup.

- i greatly hope that one day, if i have heaps of money, that i can donate a large chunk to the humane society or another animal related service. i have never fantasized about contributing large amounts to any other sort of charity

- the last time i recall crying due to watching a movie, it was at the end of Quill, a Japanese movie about the entire life (and death) of a charming golden lab seeing-eye dog. before that, i MIGHT have cried at the end of 'i am sam', but i blame that on who i was watching it with...taes tends to cry a lot (which isn't, of course, a bad thing). before that, it was probably during a Benji the Hunted (when it was in theatres...in 1987) and before that, i remember crying at the end of some Disney movie that featured a puppy who appeared to be dead, but then a little girl picked it up and rubbed it in a blanket, and he woke up. i have no idea what movie that was, but i'm tearing up right now at the thought of it.

- my beloved Grandpa Smith, the man who used to take me out of school to go to Ontario Place for the day, take me for breakfast at McDonald's (and buy me COOKIES for breakfast), took me on my first upside down rollercoaster, carried a whoopie cushion around with him at almost all times, and took every opportunity to find euphemisms for 'flatulence' whenever he came up with word definitions in the game Balderdash, died almost 2 years ago. that was quite an emotional time for me. my parents went to BC for the memorial, but i had to stay at home to stay w/ our golden lab, sally, who was developing weird lumps in her neck. before my parents returned, i had to take her to the vet cuz the lumps were getting alarmingly large. i was told she had lymphoma and had, at most, a month to live. while i walked her home that day, i think i cried harder than i have ever cried in my entire life. so now i have the love of that dog and the love of my grandpa and their combined deaths permanently married in my psyche.

woo, ok, so that's all pretty heavy. umm...yeah, animal farm. i guess what i'm trying to say is, orwell did a really good job of getting the point across about the suffering of the poor working class in the soviet union during Stalin's rule, because my sympathy towards suffering animals somehow turns me into a big blubbery pile of snot, whereas the suffering of humans...well, it's bad, but the snot quotient is much lower.

in conclusion, i apparently have a very skewed and unhealthy attitude towards the human race. hrm.

however, my parents are getting a new puppy soon. BEST SUMMER EVER!

living up to the title

fair reader(s),

i will simply cut to the chase, and give you the glory that is thumbelina:

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

there is really nothing else i can say, aside from the fact that i am trying to figure out an excuse to book thumbelina for an upcoming event of some kind (yes, it's true, she is available for bookings).

find more thumbelina-ing at www.worldssmallesthorse.com

and because this post is perhaps a bit lacking the content department, i should write about, um, something important and interesting, um, like....

PUPPY MONORAIL! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

the hows and whats and the whys of the reason of the existence of this thing can be found here.

you don't really need a reason why, though, right? i mean, why not?

in conclusion, even if i come to fear becoming bored and useless in my old age, i will forever and ever be entertained by animals and their related paraphanelia. hoorah.

nowhere with joel

i said my next post would be about puppies, but instead i am posting about something just as adorable and beloved to me... joel plaskett.

i just visited one of my oft-visited pages to kill time at work, perezhilton.com, and came across this.

i don't know what to think. how can i handle having my future husband wedged between posts about kelly clarkson and donatella versace? and perez recommends one of my most hated songs of joel, nowhere with you. barf me a river. i hate that this is the song that is bringing him notoriety.

the truth is, i think i am falling out of love with joel.

i have been in love with him since the first time i saw him in kingston, playing at the now defunct Shot. i had seen his video 'maybe we should just go home' a couple of times and decided to check out the cute boy with the good song. as soon as i saw him amongst the crowd i got a bit butterfly-y. i decided to go say something to him before he started his set. i walked up to the stage (which was a foot off the floor) while he was setting up, and drawing a total blank, and being THIS close to his skinny joel face, i said, 'hi joel, i've always wanted to say this to someone before they start a show: you better not suck.' then i probably turned beat red as he bashfully (or politely) laughed, and i ran away. it goes without saying, but the following show was awesome, and my love affair began.

i then saw him a bunch more times, culminating in one of the best shows of my life...jan 2005 at the horseshoe. i staked out my spot RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE MIC before the opener even started. the spades opened, which made the night even better, as james mckenty is sort of a poor man's joel. despite the girl behind me elbowing me in the eye during the emergency's whole set, continuously yelling, "play thrush hermit!! WOOW OOO!" *elbow to my boob* till eventually i CONFRONTED her (something quite rare for me ,but i told bitch to back off as i had been standing there already for 2 hours and i would be damned if she got between me and joel's distortion pedals, and maybe she should try and listen to something joel's recorded w/in the last 5 years instead of just thrush hermit, which is also good, of course, but FUCK). the show was amazing, though...the last of a real long tour in support of truthfully, truthfully.

after the show i waited around and got to talk to him, and got a picture!

AAAAAA! we match! he apologized for being sweaty when he put his arm around me (GAH! SWOON!) and we joked about the stupid woo woo thrush hermit girl, as he was only 2 feet away from me for the entire show, so heard her just as clearly. we were LIKE THIS, joel and i. my friends can attest to the fact that my demeanor usually operates at a low hum at all times...joel is the only person place or thing, aside from baby animals, that causes me to behave in the manner of an 11 year old girl.

the obsession got to the point that a friend of a friend who wrote for Chart magazine wrote the following :

"During a concert in Toronto, their frantic screams overwhelmed the polite applause, and one fan mentioned that she would be prepared to marry him on sight."

...i was that fan. my obsession made it into a national music magazine. (read the article here)

and then la de da came out, and it was ok. meh. that's ok, i don't like unplugged records much anyways. once he's back with the emergency, he can make another 'down at the khyber', right? then the DVD came out, and despite the joel-porn quotient (joel camping! joel being funny! joel dancing! joel SWIMMING!) the bonus cd tracks, produced by big sugar's gordie johnson, were, well, sucky. it's where that awful 'nowhere with you' song came from.

oh well, the new cd will be good, right?

gordie johnson produced it. fucko.

i heard a couple of tracks on the cbc from the new album. the first single, fashionable people, is craptacular. i can't take it. maybe if it was produced better? different chorus? something?

some people say the new album, ashtray rock, is brilliant. they love it. but i can't even bring myself to buy it. i will, eventually, but not yet. maybe i've got the, 'oh, my favourite band is gaining in popularity, so fuck 'em' disease...but i think it goes deeper than that.

joel is apparently now MARRIED, to his long time girlfriend becky something or other. i even heard him gush about her whilst being interviewed on the cbc. how COULd you, joel?? we had something special. remember the 'better not suck' time? the 'woowoo thrush sorry i'm sweaty time'? the chart time? that was ME, joel. marry ME!

also, he cut his shaggy hair. my inner 11 year old does not go into NKOTB overdrive once the hair is gone.

oh joel...maybe once becky grows tired of being married to a rockstar, you grow your hair out, drop johnson as your producer, and make another 'down at the khyber'...then we can be what we were meant to be.

other people's hypocrisy

ok, as promised, the second part of this post.

so, we have already determined that i am a hypocrite until i can figure out a way to fuel a car solely on happy thoughts.

i was already pretty on edge about the whole gas thing, obviously, when this came out. you might not feel like reading the whole thing...basically, a couple of weeks before the government released their 'green plan', environment minister john baird presented a report claiming that if the canadian gov't met the goals of the kyoto accord, canada would be plunged into a deep, horrible recession.

i don't claim to be any sort of smarty pants economist - i'm an effing drama major - but there was one part of this report that made me snarf my green tea when i heard mr. baird quoted on the cbc:

"The government's Kyoto impact study predicts that individual Canadians could see natural gas prices double and electricity prices rise by 50 per cent over five years, changing $90-a-month bills into $145-a-month bills. Gasoline prices would rise more than 60 per cent to $1.60 a litre before 2012."

wait wait wait, hold up. what about those endless features on the news the past few days about how gas prices are currently gouging people's pockets. the price has gone up from 77 cents to $1.10 a litre since january. meanwhile, gas is apparently around $1.30 in B.C.

the fact that baird tried to strike fear into the hearts of canadians, dangling this abominable price in front of us as if it was your dead mangled dog("do you want THIS to happen?") was just hilarious.

canada will be lucky if we're only at $1.60 by july 2012.

perhaps i sound like a raving lunatic, but i have ceased to have any faith in the government in terms of environmental issues. the shear short-sightedness of saying 'we can't afford to save our planet, the economy is too important' is like saying 'we need more tomato sauce, so we better kill all the tomato plants and make sure they don't grow back'...ok, that was a lame comparison, but i think it's sort of what i'm getting at. i must have a craving for spaghetti.

you can't have an economy if you have no workers because they have no proper air to breathe, nor any resources with which to make and sell things, etc... maybe i'm wrong, cuz i'm not an economist, but i believe sacrifices will have to made somewhere down the line. life is going to get a hell of a lot more expensive if we want to keep breathing air and suntanning without looking like a big pile of ash.

otherwise, i hope mr. baird's great grandchildren enjoy walking to school in their fashionable protective UV suits with built in breathing apparatuses. maybe they'll print cute little yellow duckies on them or something.

well that was a couple of fun uplifting posts.

mayhaps the next one will be about puppies.

questions of hypocrisy

time to get all political on your behinds.


a couple of months ago, i became aware of 'the impending oil crisis'. my end of innocence culminated in the viewing of a movie called 'the end of suburbia' . research this, or don't...i don't really feel like going into huge detail, except that apparently the entire planet's dumbassedry refuses to acknowledge that oil (ie. gasoline...you know, that stuff you put in your car or your plane or your boat to make it go 'vroom vroom') is a finite resource. we will run out, and rather soon at that...and it's not going to end at, 'oh no, i can't go on road trips anymore.' it will get lots worse than that. it's all incredibly doom-and-gloom and left me with little to no faith in humanity. my efforts to talk to others about it either ended in comments like, 'it sucks, the world is going to hell' or, 'meh, we'll figure out a way...alternative energy and all that. i have to go buy another car and move to north of the 407 now. peace out.'

i walked around in this sort of disaster goggle haze for a few days...you know that scene at the beginning of terminator 2, after that crazy apocalyptic nuclear attack? the burning playground? that's pretty much how i was looking at the world. corner of bathurst and college? burnination. queen's park? burnination. hamilton? burnination (insert snarky comment about hamilton being better off here).

i eventually got over it. i now snarl even more at suvs and comfort myself in that i am actually able to walk to work...not even burning ttc energy! i am so super cool!

but yeah, then there's the whole 'i want to be a working musician' thing.

being a musician essentially means you HAVE to have a car, unless you play the thumb piano (there's this girl called laura barrett who does just that...not really my bag, but she's got the right idea with the portability of her instrument). now that i have this heavy amp, guitar, and band to go along with it, vehicles are a necessity in terms of getting to rehersals and to shows. not to mention the whole 'going on tour' thing. i can't think of many bigger wastes of gasoline for an up and coming band...driving thousands of kilometres just so you can play to a crappy bar in kelowna b.c. to several inatentive snowboarders (that anecdote is courtesy of joel plaskett - i have never actually experienced that myself).

i am also guilty of 2 roadtrips of north america. we're talking about 30,000 kms collectively. i saw many beautiful things, and i also saw crap like this:
that might be dryden, ontario. delightful town.

so yeah, i've wasted a fair amount of gas in my day, and if my music career goes where i hope it might, i will be wasting a whole lot more. i'm full of poop.

for some reason blogger decided to erase the second half of this entry, so i will just hit that publish button, and leave my second half of this for later...it's essentially about how the conservative government is stupid. groundbreaking work, really.

speaking of me...

i think i've perhaps mentioned a couple of times already that i often get bored at work.

a popular phenomenon that now exists cuz of this internet craze is that whole 'googling' yourself business. of course i have participated in this activity, as i went to the trouble of putting up my own website a while back, so i am currently happy to say that despite the complete banality and popularity of my name, my website pops up quite quickly in a google search.

boredom has come to the point that i even entered my name into wikipedia. i was, of course, not expecting to find myself. rather, i was just curious who else with my name might be notable enough to have an entry. i was expecting many results.

i got three.

1. a canadian politician (born in 1938...a very popular time, indeed, for women to be given the ultra glamorous name of 'joan')

2.a novelist from the united kingdom (born in 1953)

3. me.

BUH?

at first i just saw 'singer/guitarist - canadian musician' and i shrugged, thinking there was bound to be somebody else with my name doing the same thing, even in canada.

then i noticed my birthdate. SHMUH?

there isn't anything else... if you click on the link, it's dead. i eventually found some sort of history thing, cuz wikipedia is obviously all about an online community of sorts that adds and subtracts information about subjects. i saw something about Red Zeppelin, so now it was for CERTAIN that this was me, and somebody originally entered the wrong month for my birthday, so somebody else corrected it.

yeah yeah, not so interesting to you, but i have to wonder...who is doing this? does this mean somebody else deleted my profile? who made this entry? my mother? a friend? a stalker? how did you know my birthday, stalker?

i know, it's not that big a deal, but it freaks me out a little. it's not as if i have achieved any amount of fame that would justify a wikipedia entry... there was a time when i posted a live performance of Red Zeppelin on youtube. i hated it, cuz youtube is such a snarky community that really enjoys critiquing things, and i wasn't too thrilled about the comparisons of my voice to a 'dying squirrel'...i also was a little creeped out by a couple of people who mysteriously contacted me saying they'd seen me perform at the horseshoe and they're my biggest fan. i KNOW that that's a good thing - it means i'm amassing fans, or my friends are playing a cruel joke. however, i felt very exposed, somehow. i eventually took the videos down. i know i could've just ignored the comments altogether, but i think i'd make a pretty lousy celebrity in that i couldn't help but read what they said.

jebus help me if i ever get to a point that someone like perez hilton begins MS painting cocaine and cum all over my face and giving me and my new famous boyfriend a nickname like 'hobag n' blowhag'. i will not be able to look away...but it would also probably mean that i am at least somewhat sucessful in a cool career and able to feed myself without sitting at this boring desk....so i guess i would actually accept it pretty happily. bring it on.

love,
hobag

now i can blog in hindi

oh good, i was waiting for that to happen.

i don't know where my boss is and i have no work to do. perezhilton.com and gofugyourself.com have not updated in a while, and this computer won't let me play online chess.

i also got a parking ticket last night, and i don't even own a car.

please help.

there's some song by the beatles about the sun...

some days are excellent because of something you have been looking forward to for a long long time...like when you have been planning to go to the waterpark for months, and you finally find yourself on top of your first waterslide of the day.

other days are excellent because it was not expected to be excellent, and the excellent-ness emerges from a few small events that on their own would only amount to a temporary mood enhancement. add a few of those events together, though, and you've got yourself a red letter day (i just looked up the origin of 'red letter day'...apparently it has a lot to do with religious holidays. i am not using it in that fashion. i just mean 'an ass kickingly awesome day').

today, obviously, is one of those days, for the following reasons:

1. it is friday.

2. we are finally being treated to some nice weather.

3. i put on a pair of jeans this morning and placed my hand in a pocket, and my hand emerged with a twenty dollar bill.

4. i went outside for the first time without a jacket, and comfortably walked around for an hour without feeling a chill.

5. during my lunch hour, i saw an ice cream truck. i bought a small chocolate and vanilla swirl cone.

6. the cone was served by an incredibly friendly ice cream man, who was enthusiastically having the exact same conversation with every one of his customers, along the lines of the customer saying how the weather must be affecting his sales..."yup, i sure am glad the weather has changed. business has definitely improved. thank you, have a wonderful day." the ice cream man said this in a very gruff voice. he wore a leather vest, and sported long cranial and facial hair. his t shirt said something about some guy named harley.

6. while sitting in queen's park, eating my ice cream, i watched an extremely muscular bare-chested dude wearing beat up cargo shorts play with devil sticks. he suddenly stopped knocking the sticks about and yelled, "poooooooooochie! POOCHIE! COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!" a teeny tiny chihuahua w/ a pink collar emerged from a bush. the muscle man gave the dog a small tap on the nose and admonished his bad behaviour.
"now stay PUT!"
back to his devil sticks.

7. summer is coming.

7. it is only 2:11pm. so much fun day left.

compliance

i , like many others in their mid twenties, revels in bits of treasured pop culture from my youth. it causes many moments of recognition, resulting in joyful glee - such as when i looked up the smoggies and gummi bears theme songs on youtube. it also caused a bit of a disturbing feeling because i can remember "magic and mystery are part of their history/ along with the power of gummi berry juice" and "suntots suntots earth and wind and sea/smoggies smoggies smokey oily greasy", yet i cannot remember 90% of what i learned in my OAC history of Upper Canada class in which i received a grade of 93%.




in any case, i watched the amazing flight of the navigator the other night. i must have been no older than 8 years old when i saw it, yet i remember so much - particularly the part when the young hero, david, says he has to go to the bathroom, and the robot spaceship thing max (voiced by peewee herman!!) says, "does not understand 'bathroom'." later, max makes a reference to david leaking.

bathroom humour was such a magical thing back in the day. i haven't seen the movie the boy who could fly since my days of after school care, but i clearly remember the nerdy hero getting revenge by pulling up in his big wheels and spraying his foes w/ a water gun. when the bullies ask him to stop spraying them with water, he says, "it's not water...it's PISS!"

pre-pubescent gold.

anyhoo, there's not much else to this post, except that i reallllllllly want one of those tiny little aliens david holds in his hand throughout the movie. it's called a puckmarin and it looks like this:

if you are wondering what to get me for an upcoming mother's day, canada day, civic holiday, etc... that little thing is your answer.

p.s. nerd alert: it looks like you can watch all of flight of the navigator on youtube. search the title and it comes up pretty easily.

water bearer

hehe, i am ever so clever. i am an aquarius, and this post is about my nalgene water bottle.
cleverrrrrrrrrrrr.

i had to retire my green nalgene the other day. it's a bit sad, as i've had the thing since early summer 2003. in almost four years, i've almost lost the thing a hundred times, but like a faithful friend, it has always turned up eventually.

mr.green nalgene has been my constant companion, as i've been a staunch believer in constant hydration since my early teens (something about health benefits and maintaining a healthy body weight...wouldn't it be interesting if this whole blog was about how it's important to drink water? did you know water is better for you than coke? and slakes thirst??).

retiring the thing has made me reflect upon all it has been through with me, including:

-1 summer of travelling children's theatre
-2 queen's players shows (one kingston, one toronto)
-3 craptacular customer service jobs (mirvish, hmv, indigo)
-1 production of the who's tommy
-1 waste-of-time post grad program at humber college
-2 road trips of north america
-217 (approx.) band practises

sadly, the retirement has come about due to (potential) health concerns. i've heard a lot of late about how the ultra durable plastic of which my bottle is made has been leeching harmful, brain-damage inducing chemicals into my body. i was told to check the bottom of my bottle to see which number it displayed to indicate if it was safe or not.

the raised plastic number had worn off long ago.

time to get a new bottle!

i became the owner of a lovely amber nalgene just the other day. after the purchase, i decided to do a bit more internet research about this nalgene danger.

i came to one conclusion:INTERNET RESEARCH IS USELESS.

i could post some links to various fear-mongering sites, as well as the sites that refute those sites, and the sites that refute the refuting site, but yeah, i'll leave the search to you and you can draw your own conclusions.

i think i'll just stick to my new bottle for now, and avoid putting it in the dishwasher or microwave in case heat releases the harmful chemicals that would cause my future babies to have monster-like features, etc... and i'll make sure it doesn't get so old that the numbers wear off the bottom.

i hope it sees me through a few more adventures before i give birth to plastic monster babies.

a little dead, but still the same

*i posted the following on my myspace blog as well, because i feel the following useless information should be shared with everyone*

i can't believe i just quoted my own song.

lame, but a propos of the following post.

pop quiz, hot shot (i can't believe i just quoted 'speed'):

name this person:



if you guessed fefe dobson, you're right, hot shot.

so now you say...

who the eff is fefe dobson?
or
why the hell do i care?

well, i care. cuz i once wrote a song about her and her fellow lame faux punk pop tartlets.
i've had a sick fascination and hatred for these girls (the avril, the ashlee, etc...) ever since i first saw the video for 'complicated'. what was that girl in the dickies and the chuck taylors doing, standing around a bunch of skateboarders and pretending to poop on the camping toilet at the mall, singing a dixie chicks song?

thanks to the inabililty of young girls to spot a poser, and the happiness of mothers who were sick of slutty britneys and x-tinas, the avril punky thing caught on. big time...to the point that they started making other versions of avril.

to capitalize on the whole 'made in canada' thing, we were treated to someone icky named skye sweetnam, and the aforementioned fefe.

hailing from super punk badass scarbourough, fefe went to a superpunk badass performing arts school and did superpunkbadass shows like Oliver (and i'm not knocking doing broadway shows in high school , in general...i am definitely guilty of a couple, and i had a good time. i'm just saying quit selling yourself as a punk when your resume mostly consists of winning shania twain singing contests or singing 'consider yourself' to a large public audience with smudged eyeliner on your cheeks).

somewhere along the way she got a record contract and ended up drizzling the airwaves with songs like 'bye bye boyfriend', and, um, some song that was on the soundtrack for a movie about SAT scores starring that chick from the movie Traffic.

the attitude this girl dripped and the sheer mediocrity of her songs made my hatred of avril shrink in comparison. my hate affair culminated when i found a quote on her website stating that while in the studio, she put up posters of kurt cobain and jeff buckley to inspire her vocals. she felt as if they were 'watching over her'...something about kurt's picture beaming down upon her, saying, 'you can do it, fefe'.

what would kurt really say if he knew his image was being used to produce such music? maybe 'where's my gun?'

i digress.

back to the discovery i made yesterday...

joy of joys, in the midst of recording and preparing to release her new album, fefe was dropped from her label, island/def jam. as you can read in wikipedia, she apparently wanted to adopt a more hip and sarcastic image...

fefe, honey, you were signed to copy avril. if anything, what you should be doing now is teetering around in high heels and micro mini kilts and trying to emulate fergie...but, you know, like, fergie with an edge? a fergie who steals boyfriends instead of being up in the gym just workin' on her fitness?

her website has been pulled, and now all i can find for her is her own myspace, complete with poorly written blog entries full of false hope and far too many exclamation marks.
there also seems to be an epk, where all that can be found is a long rambling bio which includes a reference to fefe's meeting with courtney love.

well, fefe, the fact is, you opened for justin timberlake. karen o you're not. you probably tried to convince your label that for your sophomore effort, you should actually try and get yourself some cred, cuz you may be smart enough to know that the punk tartlet 'i'm going to wear a tie with skull and cross bones on it...with a wife beater with hearts!!' doesn't really allow for career longevity.

maybe fefe's new, lost in the shuffle album is actually good...she probably is a decent singer, maybe. but, unless timbaland decides to lift her from Can Con limbo, where nelly furtado was originally headed, i will be very happy to believe that kurt cobain is watching over fefe indeed - and ensuring her musical demise. yay!! KissES! nevr give up on ur dream!!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

p.s. thanks to anna for sending me the pic and sharing the fefe stories a couple of years ago

total eclipse of the candied heart

it is now high-pressure time. my second post. the sophomore album. the 'neon bible' of blogs (if you don't count their first EP).

as i said in my previous post, there is no real focus to this blog, so i have decided to share a story.

you know how sometimes you are trying to describe someone's personality, and sometimes, a certain incident perfectly characterizes them?

i believe this is one of those stories.

first off, i can't imagine if the following person would ever, ever, find this blog. as far as i know, billy now lives somewhere in new york, and last i heard, was creating window displays for the Gap. in any case, if he ever does find this, i hope he takes it as a fond recollection, cuz i'm a big fan.

this incident began in my 4th year directing class. our professor was a much beloved man, who is known for his timid nature and love of musical theatre - and his tendency to start every class by handing out candy. how could you not love this man?? on special occassions, he even distributed full candy bars.

i think this class was sometime near valentine's day, and tim (the prof) had a surplus of candied hearts...you know, the ones that have stupid messages written on them and taste like candied toothpaste.

tim made us pick out one heart each, and went around the class, making us each read out what our heart said. you got all the regulars: 'love you', 'be mine', 'let's kiss', 'you're sexy', 'cutie pie', etc...

then we got to billy, the new yorker. billy always entertained me. he was always impeccably dressed in his diesel accessories and banana republic clothing, yet there was something so downtrodden about him - in a woody allen/wile-e-coyote kind of way. it seemed like a muted trumpet 'wah-wah' noise should follow most of his actions and what he said.

it is also important to note that billy was from jersey, and his voice was reminiscent of a male fran drescher (for those of y'all who remember the tv show 'the nanny').

billy collects his heart, and reads aloud....

oh billy.

my excuse for a blog

this blog is somewhat being created out of necessity. up until now, any desire i have had to post any thoughts or (mostly) self-promotional material has been funneled into my myspace and website. every month (or 2) i have chosen to document something entirely inconsequential, and mostly only beneficial to my 'fans'. my most ardent reader is by no doubt my mother.

recently, i became gainfully employed. up until now, my experience with desk jobs was quite minimal - amounting to 2 torturous months as a telephone customer service rep. mostly, i dealt with the complaints of elderly theatre goers. the internet was not allowed. i briefly considered taking up smoking for the excuse of the extra 15 minute breaks, and the whole thing ended when i got labyrinthitis (re: wikipedia - please ignore the part about herpes).

after a significant employment dry spell, relieved only by house painting and the odd wad of cash from my fledgling music 'career', a temp agent fairy bestowed upon me this current job. i'm in week 6, and so far my responsibilities have amounted to some light data entry and filing. this leaves many hours of my day for surfing the information super highway. until today, the work internet fairies permitted me to highway surf everywhere except for the occasional smutty celebrity blog. my year-long affair with myspace and the three pages i help to maintain blossomed. additionally, that gross white monster (i call it that mostly because of the blank interface that makes me feel like it is sucking the life out of me) that is facebook finally enticed me into spying on current friends, acquaintances, and the occasional long lost grade school chum. mostly, i think it's only a useful tool used to discover if people have gotten fat/bald/attractive since grade/high school (sort of like a small-time jenny Jones show - i was a huge loser in grade school, so i guess I’ll admit that i enjoy posting pictures of myself looking 'cool' with my guitar/at the grand canyon, etc...) .

ANYHOO, today - in the midst of wonderment at how my former university professor has also chosen to join the big white monster, i was suddenly and rudely blocked from going any further. humph. no biggie. i still have myspace...

...HMPH!

i have no social network left upon which to hang my boredom, aside from regular old email and msn (web msn, which i am dreading that they will soon pull the plug on, as well). i have resorted to this. a real blog.

my friend Andrew encouraged me a couple of weeks ago to start a 'real' blog, so i guess this is sort of following his direction. there's no real focus to this blog. I’m not sure if I’ll even link my variety of websites and my spaces, since i don't think I’ll want to talk much about music stuff - unless i don't want my mom to read it. i want to make sure my mom doesn't read this.

that way i can post about all of my sexual exploits and use dirty swears. or not.