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.