Month: June 2007

The musical meat grinder, um, grinds on

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In the last few days at work I’ve had a few periods of uninterrupted work at my desk (!), allowing me to screen some music that’s been sitting in my “inbox” for months, including:

  • apostle of hustle . national anthem of nowhere
  • dalek . abandoned language
  • low . drums and guns
  • ted leo . living with the living

None of them exactly set my world on fire, though each has a few good songs.

Listening to Ted Leo always makes me think of Ottawa, and for an odd reason: I always think of his song/album “Hearts of Oak”, which always makes me think of the Royal Oak (caution: site has loud & cheesy embedded music), an Ottawa pub my brother and I frequented when I lived there for a summer. In fact, we went there on the day that Keith’s was first introduced to Ontario. Anyway, yeah, that’s Ted Leo for me. My brain strolls in weird directions like that.

.:.

Last night was the second episode of the latest season of The Shield (aired here in Canada anyway; the season’s already done), which I’ve always said is one of the best shows on TV. It made me appreciate The Sopranos even more; without the success of The Sopranos, shows like The Shield (and characters like Vic Mackey) wouldn’t exist, let alone entire networks like F/X.

[tags]apostle of hustle, dalek, low, ted leo, royal oak, the shield, the sopranos, f/x[/tags]

Masochism is a dirty round orange ball

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Even though it was 323 degrees outside today T-Bone, PC, two other friends and I decided to play basketball. Yes, we’re idiots.

OK, so it wasn’t 323 degrees exactly, but it was definitely over 30, and very humid. And we played outside. In the sun. On asphalt. Uneven asphalt at that, not even a real court, so the ball (and therefore our hands, and therefore the rest of us) got extremely dirty. All in all, we could barely move (heat aside, none of us have played for a year) so it wasn’t the most energetic outing. And with only 5 players, it was 3-on–2 and for all four games we played I was on the “2” team. Still, my team won 3 of 4, so I don’t feel too bad.

OK, must go watch The Shield and then drink some A-535.

[tags]basketball, the shield[/tags]

"Damn, we're gonna win this thing!"

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A few good songs have crossed my path in the last few days: “Road To Home” by Girl In A Coma, “The Gold We’re Digging” by Parts and Labor and “2080” by YeaSayer (thanks Joe). I’m also digging Patti Smith‘s cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Chris Cornell‘s cover of “Billie Jean”. Also: the mashup of The Ramones‘ “I Wanna Be Sedated” with Avril Lavigne‘s “Girlfriend”. It’s like listening to old bubblegum.

.:.

My thoughts on the Sopranos finale: I liked it. I like it even more now that I’ve thought about it. I’ve put the rest of my thoughts after the jump; if you haven’t watched the episode, then DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK. There are spoilers yonder.

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The night shift lullaby

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I just made my dad a CD, which I shall stick in the mail tomorrow. He likes getting them every now and then, and I like making them; it’s inspiring and reassuring to know that my 64-year-old father likes good music. Here’s the tracklist:

  1. cat power . “kingsport town”
  2. r.l. burnside . “old black mattie”
  3. amy millan . “blue in yr eye”
  4. magnolia electric company . “the night shift lullaby”
  5. black keys . “you’re the one”
  6. yo la tengo . “my little corner of the world”
  7. jessie mae hemphill . “standing in my doorway crying”
  8. old crow medicine show . “minglewood blues”
  9. ox . “1913”
  10. broken west . “down in the valley tonight”
  11. great lake swimmers . “i could be nothing”
  12. pablo . “wall street”
  13. william elliot whitmore . “does me no good”
  14. avett brothers . “shame”
  15. kings of leon . “the runner”
  16. sufjan stevens . “amazing grace”

I suspect he’ll especially like the songs by R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Ox (since it’s a Woody Guthrie cover), William Elliot Whitmore and The Avett Brothers. The Yo La Tengo, Pablo and Kings of Leon are stretches, but you have to keep the old man on his toes.

[tags]mixed cd[/tags]

Is 36,000 BTUs enough to cook eggplant?

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It’s been a busy weekend. Yesterday we got up early, went to St. Lawrence Market to pick up some shrimp and scallops and fruit, ran a few errands, picked up some shirts we ordered from American Apparel, did some work (schoolwork, in my case) and went over to CBGB’s place for a barbeque. The barbeque fun didn’t stop there; we zipped around the corner to Home Depot and ordered a barbeque of our own: this one by Vermont Castings [pictured at right].

.:.

The party at CBGB’s (in belated honor of GB’s birthday) was a lot of fun…a packed front porch followed by a packed backyard patio, great food, cold beer, many laughs, and a slight overindulgence in the desserts. What’s better than that?

.:.

Today’s been great so far too: I slept in until 9:00 (the cats practically kicked me off the bed after that), got up, read the paper, went out to find some breakfast and came back raving about the perfect weather: it was warm but not hot, and breezy enough to keep the smog off. I collected Nellie and we headed off on a stroll to the Distillery District. We had a peek in a few galleries, stopped at the Mill Street Brew Pub for some brunch, got some amazing chocolate at Soma and wandered home along the Esplanade, popping up to Front Street so that we could see all the dogs at Woofstock. Now, sadly, it’s back to reality as Nellie has to work all day and I’m catching up on a bunch of stuff. It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning though…

.:.

My comment spam problem is getting worse and worse. Most of you never see it (unless you subscribe to my comment feed) because the comments are buried in old posts, and the vast majority of it gets caught, but when you get 1300/day a few are bound to slip past my spam filter. What does slip past is often very nasty too, so if you’re reading the comments and you see unpleasantness, I apoligize.

[tags]st. lawrence market, american apparel, home depot, vermont castings, distillery district, mill street brew pub, soma chocolate, woofstock, comment spam, akismet[/tags]

Kind of makes "purple monkey dishwasher" seem logical

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Everyone else was exhausted after their 3-day session. Me, I’m energized. I like being around lots of smart people and trading big ideas.

.:.

Some days I get some weird search engine hits wind up on my blog. Some days I get a really weird one. Today was special: I got two of the weirdest keyword hits ever…”people inserting thermometers in their ass “& “monkey turnip outsourced”. I have no idea how those ended up on my blog, but there you go. The magic of Google, everybody.

[tags]keyword searches[/tags]

Emilio Estevez must be so happy

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The Stanley Cup has been won by the Anaheim Ducks. I’ll bet there are a lot of people who never expected to hear that sentence. At least they dropped the “Mighty” from their name and ditched the dopey logo.

.:.

I almost never remember my dreams. Maybe once or twice a year I’ll wake up and actually remember something, even just a few seconds. But when I do, it’s always about the same thing: a plane crash. Big plane, small plane…here in Toronto, back on my parents’ farm…it’s always a plane crash and I always see it happen. Every single time.

Let the psychoanalysis begin.

.:.

In case the civilized world needs another reason to ban the death penalty:

At Christopher Newton’s execution by lethal injection last month, it took 90 minutes and at least 10 stabs of the needle for the execution team to find a vein. The procedure was so drawn out the staff paused to allow Newton a bathroom break.

Sickening.

[tags]stanley cup, anaheim ducks, dream interpretation, death penalty[/tags]

Working full time

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I just submitted the term paper. What a steaming pile of crap. I’m almost embarassed to put my name on it, but time just didn’t permit a stellar offering this time, so I’ll happily take a 9/15.

.:.

If you haven’t heard the 2005 album Tournament Of Hearts by The Constantines, go find it. You owe it to yourself.

.:.

Today was an interesting day at work. One of our senior executives has taken ~40 people and locked us all in a bunch of conference rooms with some strategy consultants. Most of the people in the room are fairly senior, and we’re all meant to be pretty smart, so some interesting ideas came up. You can tell they’re driving us toward something bigger (we’re there for two more days); hopefully my brain’s still in it come Friday at 5PM.

The most amazing thing is that they managed to get all these senior managers, directors and VPs to focus. No one was running off to take phone calls or dash back to the office. No one’s Blackberry went off in the sessions. It was like we were all teleported back to 1992 when attention spans were in vogue. Crazy.

[tags]strategy paper, constantines[/tags]