Back and- I’ve found what I want to do?

July 19, 2009 at 6:00 pm (U.I.F. Indie Music, U.I.F. Life in General) (, , )

So I haven’t totally abandoned this blog, promise. I was actually on a vacation in Cuba for a week, so I didn’t go on the internet at all. Apparently the internet there was pretty slow anyways, so I didn’t really want to take my chances. Besides, it was only a week.

I had lots of fun just generally relaxing but I didn’t start writing this blog post just to tell anyone who atually reads this what I did in Cuba.

Actually, I wrote this because I think I know what I want to start doing with this blog. Last week I was having a chat with one of my good friends and he noticed that I was blogging an awful lot of indie music, but more specifically Canadian indie music.

And so he got me thinking, and he suggested that I maybe focus on Canadian indie music for this blog. If I did decide to do this, I would do album reviews and report on any major music news. As well, I’m planning to get a voice recorder soon and start interviewing local bands and maybe even bands from other provinces if I’m able to. I may also still rant about things from time to time. For some reason my Twilight rant is what has been drawing people to my blog lately. Who knew?

For anyone who actually reads this thing, what are your opinions? I’m very open to discussion. I’ll leave with this picture. Enjoy.

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How not to deal with life’s problems

July 9, 2009 at 9:54 pm (U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , )

Recently an event happened that upset me. I’m not going to mention what exactly happened, but I will say that it wasn’t a death, for anyone who actually reads this.

And how did I decide to deal with this? I decided to go a bit more than 24 hours without eating or drinking a thing. It was not smart in any way whatsoever, and I do not reccomend it to anyone unless they’re doing the 30 Hour Famine.

I began to feel the effects of not eating or drinking after about 20 hours or so. I found that I had little to no energy in my legs and I was getting tired just walking across the street to go for a dentist’s appointment. In my mind there was also some disorder. I found that I was a LOT more irritable, mainly towards my brother who unfortunately crossed my path a few times. When I finally did eat something, I think my body was already adjusting to not having any food and I almost threw up.

And really, I didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything, that’s sort of the moral of this.

This is not in any way trying to gain sympathy from anyone who reads this. I’m not trying to have you all feel sorry for me, that’s not what I want at all. I really just want you to think of how stupid I was and how stupid my choice of action was. Do not be like me and starve yourself.

That will be all for this post. Sorry I didn’t post anything too substantial. I’m going to have to make a new blog post soon so that this one doesn’t stand too prominent for too long.

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The art of the fanboy

July 5, 2009 at 4:58 pm (U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , , )

Sometimes it’s a fact that’s hard to come to terms with. The day you realize that you are a fanboy of several different things. Like me. Here are some signs that you might be a fanboy like me:

1. You write a blog post gushing over something you absolutely love. Check!

2. You constantly visit the band/artist/celebrity’s MySpace/Twitter for updates. Check!

3. In a review of a festival you spend more time talking about one act than others. Check!

I however have come to terms with this. There are a few bands that I am absolutely obsessed with: them being the Winter Gloves, Beast, Los Campesinos! I am also a rather big fanboy of Lana Gay from CBC Radio 3 but I’ve already gushed over her in one blog post.

I had my sort of epiphany, the realization that I am a fanboy when today, I was on the Winter Gloves’ MySpace. See, I’m already planning on going to see them at Harbourfront in Toronto this Friday (they go on at 8!) but then I saw that they are playing a free show at the CNE on August 29th with Tokyo Police Club. I had a mini heart attack. If I go on that day, in one summer I’ll have seen both the Winter Gloves and Tokyo Police Club twice. My heart beats with anticipation.

But see, being a fanboy is a bit of an art. If you go too far with your fanboy-ness, then you end up looking like an obsessed freak. The idea is to use your extensive knowledge of whatever it is you are a fan of but not overdo it. For example, if you’re in a conversation with someone and you’re discussing your favourite band, it’s fine to throw in a few points like “Did you know that Charles F of the Winter Gloves was in a band called Lady Grey before he formed Winter Gloves with his friends?” The person you tell this to will be moderately impressed. However you cross the line when you’re not even talking about the band anymore and are just throwing the facts around at totally random intervals.

As well, as much as you’ll want to jump up and down and gush, you need to cool down a little. I recall that when I saw Beast at EdgeFest a few weeks ago I could not even contain my excitement at seeing them. This got to the point when one of my friends said “You’re really excited, aren’t you?” Guilty.

And so despite seeming weird from time to time I am at peace with the fanboy part of me. I leave you with a video of how one guy reacted when his Mom cancelled his World of Warcraft account. This is when the fanboy has gone way too far.

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Now I understand energy depletion

June 23, 2009 at 10:39 pm (U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , , )

Have you ever had one of those days where you’re doing something exciting all day and then you think you just won’t sleep? But then you decide to sleep anyways because you need it. Except you only sleep for a few hours. When you wake up you think “Oh, I feel great!” and then about an hour later you realize that you’re not feeling great at all. Truthfully, you need a lot more sleep than you got, but it’s already the next day.

This happened to me today, and goodness gracious did I have a very, very weird day. I went to bed technically today at 4:30 AM and only got 1.5 hours of sleep. NOT EVEN NEARLY ENOUGH. When I woke up, I felt alright and was able to make decent conversations with the people I was “camping with” once they woke up. Truthfully we had had this big campfire after prom and just sat around it for a long time.

I’ll describe prom briefly here- I’m sure that other people will be writing more. We basically had around 3 hours of dancing to a DJ that would cut songs short and talk between music. Not only that, but he played a “dance-able” (in other words not at all) version of a NICKELBACK song. Seriously? Nickelback?

Anyways, back to my weird day. So yah, I got home at about 9:30 AM or so, checked my e-mail, Facebook etc. and realized I was already deathly tired.  So I showered and then climbed into bed. I slept for another two hours or so.

Then I decided I was going to continue and read Oryx and Crake, a novel by Margaret Atwood I’ve been looking at over the past few days. I began reading one of the chapters when I began to experience the same symptoms I feel now when I am reading something right before I go to bed. My eyes start to close and I have to re-read sentences or paragraphs in order to understand what I’ve just missed due to my mind breaking down.

For the next few hours I would be drifting in and out of sleep, and finally at around 5 PM I finally broke out of it and am now typing this post. I think I’ll manage until tonight. I hope I sleep in tomorrow, I really do.  Video quite related, I would say.

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Truly it knows no bounds

June 16, 2009 at 4:06 pm (U.I.F. Internet Culture, U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , , , )

I understand that it is hard to be noticed in this world. There truly are very limited ways of ever becoming famous, and one tool that many, many people use to achieve at least their fifteen minutes is by use of the internet. And how does one become e-famous? By shamelessly promoting themselves in every possible form.

Now I’m not lashing out against anyone who posted a link to their blog on a website once, or someone who wanted someone else to look at it because they thought the ideas that the two of them shared were the same. I’m talking about the people who feel the need to advertise themselves or their site every day in every form.

There is one group of people out there that I excuse from this rant- and that is musicians in general. If someone has devoted their life to music then I understand it’s not easy to be heard or found out. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, MySpace is a good way of getting exposure.

Where I get lost is why people need to advertise their blogs or websites. Chances are, if you tag your articles correctly they’ll come up in search engines. Why tell everyone to read what you wrote?

But I’m not just trying to target self-promotion whores here; I also am targeting narcissism. The Dalai Lama is an advocate of compassion, the act of helping others in their time of need. He would be crying if he logged onto Facebook and saw some of the groups and notes people have made up. I’m not going to mention any names, but there is one particular friend of mine who is so in love with himself that he wrote a play which I haven’t read yet, but is called “Gotta Love ______”. That should sort of speak for itself, shouldn’t it?

I feel as though I am the antithesis of the modern human. This is not a vain attempt at trying to make myself seem modest and humble and therefore above everyone- but I really don’t like putting myself out there. I would rather just compliment others and be satisfied. If other people want to look at the things I have personally done then they are welcome to.

That’s why I have been sustaining a flirtation with Buddhism. Currently, I am an agnostic, and I feel as though I need to rid myself of this belief, as it just makes me seem indecisive. Buddhism is such a wonderful religion simply because it does not force anyone to believe in any sort of deity, but rather just gives guidelines on how to live one’s life. I couldn’t agree more with these teachings. Now to find a Buddhist temple…

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The Teal Movement

June 16, 2009 at 12:52 pm (U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , )

For years and years, the green movement has become bigger and bigger. Most people have realized that, in fact, there IS such a thing as global warming. The fact that plastic bags take a thousand years to biodegrade. People are finally starting to get the picture. It makes me so happy that stores in Toronto are now starting to charge for plastic bags and that I’m seeing more and more people shopping with reusable cloth bags. People are starting to ditch old plastic water bottles for the more environmentally friendly stainless steel variety.

But it’s really not enough yet. I am a little bit of an environmental nut; if I can’t find a recycling bin for something I will hold onto it until I find a place to properly dispose of it. I am also the one who runs the green bin in my home. My dad takes care of most of the garbage, he always takes it out on Wednesdays and puts out the recycling too. He does not, however, even so much as touch the green bin. Even if the green bin has stuff in it he won’t even bring it out. What a baby. ANYWAYS.

The point I was trying to make was the reason why this article is called the teal movement as opposed to the green movement. Well, last year April I met a girl who was just as concerned about the environment as I was, and so we together started a Facebook group called the Eco-Awareness League and membership sits at exactly 59 members at this moment, which is respectable. It’s great to see that people do actually care enough about the state of the planet and that they will show concern. However, it seems that they don’t want to help the group out, just be members.

It’s so frustrating. The Eco-Awareness League has been around for over a year and no one volunteers to do a goddamn thing. We send out numerous ideas for events and we don’t even get a response from anyone. Finally, a few weekends ago my co-founder and I decided that we would just do an event ourselves, forget what anyone else wanted to do.

We decided to go and clean up a park by picking up trash. It was really very successful. We got a few compliments from people which made it all worthwhile. We did it ourselves that day; if we had relied on others nothing would have gotten done. So we figured that the group might get a little more morale seeing as something has already been done. We started talking about changing our name to something more active.

No one has since responded to plans of another possible garbage pickup or name change. Fuck.

So my working theory of people is that they will be concerned about the environment but will not want to do anything to help out. This has been proven by all I’ve written above. Wow, that kind of sounded like an essay. Anyways, I’ll leave you with Everything’s Gone Green by the Fabulous Lemon Drops. The song is really cheesy but it does have somewhat of a point.

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A little more personal- not a Lindsay Lohan reference

June 14, 2009 at 11:45 pm (U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , , , )

I’m not sure what brought about this change of mood for me. I would say for the most part my blog posts so far have been energetic even if they were rants. But I was suddenly struck by a kind of realization today. More specifically, I was struck with this realization twenty minutes ago.

I’ve realized that I have left so many issues in my life unresolved, and they relate to a few girls that I know now. I am by no means any sort of player or seducer of women- believe me. But I have been a really big idiot towards girls that I have known. Most of this idiocy has come from my shyness and awkwardness and my inability to just fucking communicate with people.

I don’t want to go into any real specifics- I’ll just keep my stories in general terms. My first misstep- accepting a girl’s feelings and being her boyfriend even though I was not in any way ready for a relationship, and also that I barely knew her. That didn’t end well, and I don’t know if she’s truly ever forgiven me. Then again, I’ve never asked her either. It would seem horrible to bring it up now, years after it ended. Not to mention that, not much later, my second misstep occured.

Once upon a time an awkward high school boy met a girl he liked. She was smart and very pretty, and most of all she wasn’t egotistical at all. The high school boy truly wanted to confess that he liked her but didn’t know how to go about doing it. So he sent her an e-mail telling her exactly how he felt. Worst idea ever.

Ever since then, the high school boy has of course had crushes but has never since had a girlfriend. He figured it was probably because of the e-mail. It must have lowered him in standards for everyone else.

I could now going into a diatribe about how I am a hopeless romantic; my imagination always gets the best of me and makes me think as though certain things can happen. Of course, most of the time they don’t but my mind convinces me that it’s certainly possible. Possible, but not likely.

So, for both of these incidents, I do feel a huge sense of regret and I feel as though I need to reconcile with these people. While both of these girls are friendly enough towards me now, I can’t help but feel as though one of them is carrying a very deep grudge in them and is perhaps even subconsciously punishing me for making her develop it.

I’m truly sorry, both of you; if I could turn back the clock just a few years I would make sure to tell you that I was sorry and finally put these underlying issues away. Gosh, that was heavy. What do I end with? How about Robots by Dan Mangan? It starts off kinda funny and turns into a really, really nice song. You should also find Dan Mangan as one of the most adorable singers in a while. You’ll see what I mean.

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Om nom nom nom nom

June 14, 2009 at 1:24 am (U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , , )

Okay, I offically cannot stand eating dinner with my family anymore. I have so many things to complain about. Where do I begin?

Talking with full mouths. I don’t like that I’m the only person who doesn’t speak with their mouth full of food. Not to say that my family is full of barbarism; but they just all seem to think if there’s some space in their mouth then they can talk. I figure I can’t tell my mom to stop talking with her mouth full, she’d probably be angry at me for trying to act like the parent. Apparently I do that a lot. Anyways, whenever I’m asked a question with a full mouth, I almost feel like I need to restrain myself. I think I end up answering whatever question with a bit of an angry tone. Most of the time my parents don’t catch it, but still.

Not only that, but it always seems like my mom has to talk about whatever food she cooked for that particular meal. Whether it’s how nice and juicy the meat is, how much of an improvement one bun type is over the other, how good her new sauce is- it irritates me like nobody’s business. And I don’t know, I suppose my mom does deserve some credit; she does cook most of the stuff in my house, although I’m finally starting to learn my way around the kitchen.

And also I suppose that we don’t ever have something interesting to talk about at the dinner table. Whenever there’s something more private, that I would only tell my mom, I’ll hesitate because I’ll also be speaking in front of my brother and my dad. My dad doesn’t even eat at the dinner table, but that’s a whole other story.

This long-winded complaint of mine is the reason why I cannot wait until I move out of my home and get my own place. Because I know that there, I will hopefully at least have someone else with whom I can have more intelligent conversation with. My goal is to have someone so witty that we end up talking at the dinner table long after we’ve both finished eating.

Shit, when did this turn into the “my ideal mate” blog post? I guess that’s my cue to end it. What shall I leave you with? I’ll leave you with a song by Ben Harper- Don’t Talk About Murder while I’m Eating. Please try not to get the wrong idea; I just think the song is kinda nifty.

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The other day I met Ginny Jenny and I said…

June 12, 2009 at 12:48 pm (U.I.F. Life in General) (, , , )

Today I am performing a slightly modified version of one scene from Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and I have to say it was one of the strangest scenes I have ever seen. Not to mention that the scene plays host to some 8 or 9 different characters, and that there are three people in my group. It is very strange, transitioning from one character to the next in the blink of an eye.

Not to mention all the weird musical interludes. I mean, the scene takes place in a stable, where a wedding breakfast is taking place, and then Polly, who is the new bride, starts to sing a song about Pirate Jenny. Where the fuck did that come from? The mind of Bertolt Brecht, may he rest in peace.

As random as the scene is, I really did enjoy my research into Brecht. He seemed like quite the amazing guy for his time. And he had quite the life- threatened by Nazis and constantly roaming around Europe looking to find a safe place to stay.

Totally wandering from what I jut said, I also found it surprising that Brecht’s jokes are almost Shakespearean in their dirty nature. For example, I as Matthew (the right-hand man of the protagonist, Macheath) say “Well, keep your head up old man, I mean- as far as your head’s concerned, never let it droop.” Took me a while to actually understand that joke- looks like I need to work on my deciphering of subtle undertones.

I’m expecting that this short scene rendition will just make the audience go “wtfwtfwtf” but that’s the reaction I’m expecting, really. I’ll leave you with Pirate Jenny- maybe you’ll appreciate it? I have no idea. Give it a listen anyways.

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