4 days of stories, super condensed

This is my last 4 days.

Date with Cat. Very good, but she was just so intellectual, and proper, I felt wrong about making any sort of move whatsoever. Haven't called back at all.

Date with Jenna. Some things were bugging me about her, then I took her out to a show which she talked through most of, and I got really annoyed. Not much talking that night, and I think that's done now.

Date with Rebecca. Absolutely beautiful girl. Very easy going, and a good conversationalist. I thought it went really well. I got a message today saying it was alright, but no spark. So... whatever. Dating sucks. Don't ever do it, kids.

SHOWS!!!!..... Empress was cool, Solars was AWESOME, Jeffrey Lewis on Kris' birthday lived up to insanely high expectations, Role Mach on friday were fantastic, and played an entire set of unrehearsed jamming, GR8-2000 and Boogie Monster both put on some of their best sets ever on saturday..... and the week in music was overall, incredible.

GR8-2000 - I feel I should expand on this. I don't believe I've talked about him, but GR8-2000 is a 19 year old genius of a musician who most people would compare to Dan Deacon, but really, he can do anything. He has a song in which he claims he'll never eat candy again, and throws candy at the audience. Another song called "Get Your Ass On The Floor", in which the only lyrics are the title yelled over and over. The sky is the limit for him.

Actually, my label is re-releasing his first album on cd-r in the next week or two, and on vinyl in the next few months. In case you forget, www.tweedeath.com

I can talk about Boogie Monster or Role Mach another time, though they're equally as deserving.

work and media

Briefly, my friend Cory Ray wrote a blog post, and I had promised I'd start mine back up if he started his again, so...

Lots has happened in 4 1/2 months.

I started a record label with my friend Kris called Twee Death. www.tweedeath.com

3 vinyl releases planned for this winter, and a few other small projects. We also do show promotion, bringing up bands from the states that would never come here otherwise. That's been awesome, dealing with the strange and amazing people we have. Some highlights include the Barn Owl guys ("totally, dude. Totally totally."), the ladies of Mamiffer and Tiny Vipers chasing cats, doing yoga, and talking trash in Kris' east van backyard, and listening to the crazy-good sets that we're recording. Gooooood times.

This is going to be laid out a bit like a resume. But how can you avoid that when you're recapping 4 months?

What have I done for 4 months?

I've gone to about 20 shows of GR8-2000, 10 shows of Boogie Monster, and a good 50 others that don't involve either of those.

I quit my job that I probably wrote such good things about, because it turns out they weren't so great after all. I got a new job that seemed really good, but is now a bit up in the air.

I've gone almost a year without dating, but I'm seeing some girls again. That's always fun.

I started weight training to bulk up for my job, and did that for about 3 months until a 1 month break right now. But maybe writing it on the internet will force me back into doing it again.

Writing on the internet. Writing on the internet. Writing on the internet. Writing on the internet. Writing on the internet. Writing on the internet. Writing on the internet..............

I'm happy these days, but I fear the SAD of fall coming on. Maybe I should do some tanning to keep up those nice UV vibes.

I'll try and do this again sometime real soon. Since Cory has this on his RSS feeds... shoutout to my moving-away bro, HardCory.

Plants scare me

I heard a story about plants, maybe 2 months ago. I'm not sure on the sources, or credibility, or any of that, but it really freaked me out.

They did this experiment with plants where they set up 2 plants in a room, and then had a guy come into the room and completely destroy one of the plants, and leave the other one alone. This produced in the other plant an actual "fearful" reaction of some kind (I'm not sure how they determined this, but something to do with chemical processes of plants and whatnot.)

Not only was the plant fearful, but they tested further and discovered that when somebody entered the room, the plant showed less fear than it did when the same guy who destroyed the other plant entered the room. I'm not fucking kidding, the plant could identify which guy destroyed the other plant in the room.

This world is so much more connected than any of us realize. Hell, even my laptop on my bed right now is probably at the point of synthetic living where it could be thinking "please, I need better ventilation to continue working at high efficiency, so prop me up from the mattress with some books or something, you asshole." If plants interact with the world in such complex ways, why couldn't a laptop, or anything else. Literally, anything.

That reminds me of a book I've been meaning to read, which Andy Dixon (Winning, Secret Mommy) recommended to me. It's by Tom Robbins, and it's about all kinds of non-living things struggling to move, particle by particle, to some alternate purpose. Kind of like that shitty cartoon I used to watch when I was a kid, The Brave Little Toaster, which I don't recommend to anybody.

Anyway, I lost the plot somewhere here. The crux of the rant was meant to be this: plants are fucking insane, and the implications of intelligent plant life scare the shit out of me.

Stuff/Things

It's been at least 15 years since I've been in a fight. However, last night I got punched in the face by a crackhead. It was a lady crackhead, too. I'm really glad that I didn't make a big deal of it. I don't want to get arrested, or knifed, or whatever. It was just a show full of skids, so I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised.

Cory called me last night at 5 am, after he had 5 cop cars, a paddy wagon, and a helicopter chasing him. He climbed on the roof of the IGA. What a menace, that guy.

Oh, and I wrote my first song in almost a year. It's called "I Wanna Live To Be 100". Actually, it's not completely finished. It's pretty much just 3 good lines. But I'm really excited about it. Even though it's another song that ponders mortality, and I've got way too many of those.

I bought a $150 gift card for myself for futureshop. Another gift card next check, and I should have enough to buy a 360 in a month. Then I can stop having so many of these $100 drinking nights, and waste my life on some Grand Theft Auto.

We all need to aspire to something.

Escalator Riders

I saw something pretty cool today. Nothing too outrageous, but I dug it anyway.

A little old woman with a cane in hand, walking, that's right, fucking walking up the stairs of the escalator. She was holding a fucking cane, and still walked! Nobody walks on the fucking escalator anymore. But I think that's sort of symbolic of this generation's attitude, and why all the slow girls slouched over on the escalator at Metrotown every day are either obese or anorexic.

That little old lady is going to live to 100. Awesome. I wanted to high five, or fist-punch or something, but that's just what would happen in the movie version.

"That fucking kid... is back... on that goddamn escalator!"

Catching Up

Hey, internet! It's been a while since I rapped at ya.

So, my job has gone almost entirely to shit. Essentially, I'm being harassed for stupid, insignificant things, and constantly threatened that I may soon be fired. Oh well. It's not as though landscaping jobs are hard to come by in this city. However, my new plan is to wait another week or so until my benefits kick in, use them for all they're worth (I NEED contacts... and a year supply of anti-stomach-hurty pills that I've taken forever now would be nice too, given that they're damn expensive...) So yeah, once I reap the benefits of having, uh, benefits, then I'll decide if the shitty atmosphere is worth the extra $1 or $2 an hour over what I'd earn elsewhere.

Other news, Iron Man is awesome. Like, holy fuck. For true.

I might be getting a new apartment around Main and Broadway, which is awesome. My goal was to get a place anywhere within a $10 or so cab ride from downtown Vancouver, and this would definitely accomplish that. There comes a point where you simply can't live with your parents anymore, as cool as your parents may be. I think that point for me is 25 years.

Tons of good music, books, movies that I could talk to you about. But you're the internet, I'm sure you've kept up with all the message boards. (This is a not-so-subtle allusion to the fact that nobody reads my blog, I don't think, since I've only told a handful of people about it, and I never write in it... but it's just subtle enough that you might not get it. Whoever you are.)

April 27th

Well, it's 2 am on april 27th. April 27th used to be my anniversary, and this one would be the 9 year mark. (If you want to get technical, it is still the 9 year anniversary of when I started dating Jen, we just aren't together anymore, so there won't be any celebrating, I don't think.)

I guess it's just one less thing to worry about. No valentine's, girlfriend's birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

But that's not the whole story, and it's not even close to the truth. I liked buying things for Jen. I wanted her to feel the way I did when I read amazing books, or listened to mind-shatteringly great albums. I miss these things.

But I think back to when we started dating, and how Jen told me that she preferred to be called "Jennifer". I did that for years, spending the time to add those extra syllables thousands of times in conversation with her, or with other people. At some point, I stopped doing that, and went with "Jen" instead.

Now, today isn't an anniversary anymore. And I'm still too much of an asshole to add those 2 extra syllables to her name. This isn't self-loathing, or any great revelation. It's just a microcosm of how relationships disintegrate right in front of you.

A bunch of other things have happened in the 3 weeks since I wrote.

I got a raise.

I went on dates with a bunch of terrible women, and one good one.

I'm sure there's some music that's completely taking over my life.

But it's april 27th. I'll write about all that typical shit on some other non-anniversary.