Today is for random thoughts:

• I watched Safe (imdb | rotten tomatoes) the other day. It was weird, certainly. Very hard to watch. I don’t like it when I’m not quite smart enough to figure out what the movie was trying to tell me. Maybe I just wasn’t close enough to the 80s to understand what he was getting at. Maybe she really did get sick and the movie was a critique of the early (and ongoing) skepticism about the environment. Maybe she only got sick because her mind was rebelling against the pointlessness and vacuity of her 80s life. I vote for the latter.
• I’m quickly losing interest in Pitchfork. First, they still have no RSS feed, which basically excludes them from my daily reading. Second, they’ve become so interested in their own coolness that the site now feels very exclusionary, rather than the inclusive mood I felt when I first started reading it 5 years ago. I far prefer to get my music info from Chromewaves (I think Frank is my long-lost brother), Largehearted Boy, the Anti-Hit List, etc.
• We’ve been completely slack with our movie watching lately. Our zip movies are gathering dust next to our TV, we haven’t seen anything in the theatre in weeks. Our February has been crazy busy, and March isn’t looking much better.

Right now I’m listening to Playing With Fire: A Tribute to Spacemen 3. It’s freaking me out, and I’m only on the third song. God help me when it gets to Bardo Pond and Low.

Jeopardy is really breaking out all the big guns. Chuck! Remember Chuck? And Frank! And Eric, that really intense guy who reminds me of the guy in high school who we were sure was going to kill everybody at the end of the week! And they’re all playing for the chance to face off against Ken.

I think I’m still full.

Yesterday being valentine’s day, as every married/involved guy now knows (even if they didn’t know it yesterday). I’m often glad my wife isn’t traditional and/or high-maintenance, and yesterday was one of those times. She insisted that we keep valentine’s day low-key, and that she would take care of it. I had no problem with that.

Last night she came home with butter chicken, aloo gobi, rice & naan from Banjara, all of which was amazing. To celebrate (not just v-day, but also my wife’s first official day of her (sort of) new job) we opened a bottle of wine my brother and his girlfriend gave us on our wedding day, a 1997 Montreso Amarone.

Being the superb gift-giver that she is, my wife also brought home all the ingredients for sundaes (including new sundae dishes & spoons), so once the indian food had settled we scarfed chocolate & vanilla ice cream sundaes made with fresh brownies, chocolate & caramel sauce, whipped cream and chocolate shavings (which she’d made from a Lindt chocolate bar). I felt as if I would expire at any moment.

She’s the best. I think she’s trying to kill me though.

Courtney Love gets coherent long enough to kick some RIAA ass in Salon.

Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.

All you blues fans out there (especially TimmyD and BigJC) should check out Sunday Nights: The Songs Of Junior Kimbrough. It has Kimbrough covers by Black Keys, Blues Explosion, Fiery Furnaces, Mark Lanegan, Iggy & The Stooges, Pete Yorn, Cat Power, Spiritualized and others. And it’s kicking my ass.

This morning my Nomad, in its random wisdom, played “Jump Around” by House Of Pain (which delighted me no end, and brought to mind my high school basketball team warmups).

Just now, in the convenience store downstairs, the radio was playing “What It’s Like” by Everlast, ex of the afore-mentioned H.O.P., a song that’s at least six years old.

Eerie, no?

I’ve uploaded a few of our pictures from this weekend.

Of course, you’d have already seen them if you subscribed to my flickr stream…

Home again, home again.

We all slept like the dead. I got up around 9, which is pretty early for me, especially considering we were all in bed before freaking midnight. We had yet another delicious meal (croissants, fruit, cheese, apple turnovers, grapefruit, and some chocolate cake for G and I). While nuking our turnovers, G found a piece of chicken pie that had been left in the microwave since the last people left, about a week ago. Now, it was green curry chicken pie, which made it hard to tell if it were moldy or not…but since it was hermetically (not really; I just like this word) sealed in the microwave it didn’t appear to have rotted, but nonetheless thoroughly disgusted C. We all decided that this weekend shall henceforth be referred to as the mummified curry chicken pie trip.

After eating, peeing, packing & cleaning we were on the road by noon. Ash didn’t want to leave as she had unfettered access to sunbeams, but she must’ve felt particularly conflicted when G stuffed her into her carrier while simultaneously kneeling on her tail. That was one of those times when I bet cats really wish they could talk.

After a quick stop at a nearby general store where we got fudge & some pies, we beat a hasty southward path to Toronto, where we got back just in time to veg and recover from a weekend of vegging. All in all an excellent weekend, rotten pie and purgatory-Wendy’s notwithstanding. We’re glad we got to join G&C on the farm, and sad that it was too short a trip.

Aaaaaaaaaand that’s basically it for us until the end of June when we leave for Europe. Egad.

We’re old and tired. We’re cold, and there are wolves after us. And I don’t like the look of those teenagers.

Tonight was a much earlier night than last. By 11:30 we were all bagged and went to bed. Throughout the day we’d made a couple of feeble attempts at competition, mainly via board games, but even that seemed to tire us. After making our own pizzas and eating the cake that C so graciously made to celebrate my wife’s recent birthday, we watched Collateral and called it a night.

I feel like we just got here (and, in fact, just 24 hours ago we were still unpacking the food); we need another day. But alas, 12 hours from now we have to be on our way back.

One other thing: something in the air at this farm is causing us all to urinate constantly. I must’ve used the washroom 10 or 12 times today, and so has G. I don’t know what’s going on.