titles can be so akward when you don't know what the post will contain

But none the less follow the procedure my man, the only question left us why?  This exact question was posed to me years ago as Carl Fatman and John "the blueberry butler" left artworks to go see the string cheese incident.  Could have just gone to the show but then Carl and King Dinosaur wouldn't have had that conversation that went to tape, only to be snatched by security later in the evening... i blame a bad back and a dwindling decline in the passion for the job at hand.  My fault, one should never get beaten by security as a matter of principle.. always stay ahead of the game, or don't play it.

Clearly i hadn't fully thought through the "why" portion of the evening... i was in more than most people would have been, but not to the level i come to expect of myself.

I wake up and make the calls on what i do in my life, every failure is on me.  And in the end it's all just memories, many kinds.  Who knows where my path will lead... sometimes i have dreams...

Dreams are a weird thing... sometimes you could call them anchors... you hold so tight to every single one of them you are never open to the possibility of something great that comes along.  My dream is to be happy, and i hit it most of the time... i should note that as a rage hero i can be happy in a rage... you just need to be on the right side of a rage.  You need to ride the rage like a pro surfer and not be knocked over pulled underwater thrust and turned around.   Like playing hockey angry.. some times you play better... if you can find the line.  Funny i just zapped into a sequence in last nights game where i got into it with an opposing defense man... i took a savage jab on the back of the legs and gave one back... my intention was to hurt at the time.   We both got penalties... it's not my style to take penalties like that... i was on the wrong side of a rage.  Should have let him take the penalty and then used my rage to score on the power play.  the only thing i really fee bad about is missing on my shot to injure his leg... he did it again to another teammate late in the game and was ejected from the game.

But back to dreams... dreams are like trees in the forest, you can't hold on to all of them all of the time if you want to live in the forest.  Sometimes you have to pass them a thousand times before you are ready to climb them.  Perhaps dreams give purpose, a mission, or even more dangerous... an identity.

I remember tree planting, and i had a good friend Holgate, who was involved in a few moments that changed my perspective in life.  Anyhoo at the time i told him my dream was to live in a warehouse and play in a rock and roll band with the gear set up by my bed...  Later i had achieved that and actually forgot that i had stated  that earlier in life.  At the time i was stewing with the probelms associated with living in a warehouse that doubled as a common live space and music studio, but i ran into Holgate and he was overjoyed that i was living my dream.. i just forgot that it was my dream.  Fickle we humans are... it is what it is.  Luckily i learned another lesson... have dreams but don't make them all inclusive.  I remember dreaming of having a CD out... it would be a CD i made and it would sit with my collection of commercial CD's... well i think i have 13 out now, and who gives a shit.  In the end it's about the process, making things happen, and thinking you are doing something... feeling good with progress.

Since i moved here i have really being enjoying seeing music played live.  i haven't played live here, I'm involved in no "music scene", and i think that's the trick.  When i go to a show, i'm looking for something good, and i can usually find it... perhaps something lost on me in my old town.  Watching a show with a bunch of other used car salesman waiting for their chance to pitch their product... maybe talk up some people, perhaps during the show... the ironies are heavy.  I wouldn't say that one town is better than the other, but perhaps my mindset in this town is more structured to the life i lead now rather than the life i lead for a long time in the other town that grew like a vine, snaking all over the place.

For sure I'm a bit different,  one of the hallmarks of my existence id that i fail to see eye to eye with the people in the same boat as me.  Think of the failed postal strikes, or the "there is no place to play music in this no fun city" rant... the whiny parents throwing their kids in front of the TV so they can have some "time".... I never fit in.

When i tell postal workers you will get killed if you strike, they get hostile with me... my info comes from being on strike and then being ordered back to work at a worse contract than what was offered in the first place... we end up in arguments and i come off as the corporate lackee when my point is that in this day and age when you go on strike against a company owned by the government who has the power to force you back to work then yes you are fucked... not meaning to be an asshole, just a fact realizer.  It's not a right or wrong thing... it's a game plan thing. There are of course other ways to fight but one would need a coordinated effort, and not just arguments of fair and unfair.  The world ain't fair... fight to win.

When musicians complain about not being able to make money, i think of farmers... they are actually providing something we need and they can't break even.  Don't get me wrong, we need music but there is tonnes of shit out there and you know the person complaing about not bing able to make money has it in their head that they will become a "rock star".  They have rock star camps for kids... ask me that's a horrible idea... don't learn to love music, learn to become a self important demigod as a carbon cutout of what has become promoted as successful.

Put your kids in font of the TV... yea maybe my daughters can learn to become princesses... if only they are beautiful enough then one day a prince will come along and marry them, completing them and they can live happily ever after.

Alien sex fiend has a great song called Smells like shit well, they have a lot of great songs.

i smell the roses now

I fucking hate fireworks

The best time i ever had watching fireworks was up at the cottage on the may 24 weekend... long time ago.  It was at my parents first cottage @ 15 Balsam road, Woodland beach Ontario.  We were all heading to the corner store, Whitfield's pharmacy, for ice cream when we stopped to see a pathetic display of fireworks on some lawn, and some yahoo in a really lame voice kept saying a long protracted "WOW" after each poping display.  My sister and I, being hyper critical people, had a big laugh over how "gay" (that was the word used at the time and it meant, in this instance... weak, feeble and lame) this dude sounded with respect to this event.  I feel weird using that word now, but that's the way it was... hey we were raised in Scarborough and right or wrong that's the way things rolled.

Anyway it was the most fun i ever had with fireworks... making fun of some feeble chump's celebration.  Actually come to think of it there was other fun with fireworks...  Going down to the park where the kids made out in cars with roman candles on the end of hockey sticks and firebombing steamy parked automobiles.  As each flare hit the windshield a shocked couple scrambled and perhaps if you were lucky you could see a girls naked breasts.  It was the closest i could ever get to seeing naked breasts, and being a fan of surprise chaos... it hit the spot.

Then there was the firebombing of a good friends house that begat this song. And than i guess there was the time there was that scavenger  hunt in high school where i somehow accidentally let off a bakers dozen roman candle in Vern's parents car.  It was a rather innocent event to start with... you see we were going down the 401 and i needed to try to get the rival car away from the exit they needed to take to win the scavenger hunt so i thought a little firebombing might prune them back a bit... but old butterfingers me dropped the silly thing and next thing you know hot embers were flying all over the place.

I don't know if they were good memories, but they were strong ones for sure and if i could touch a button and erase fireworks from the conscience of humanity i would hit it in a second... even if it cost me a song.

Loud, annoying, polluting, stupid, non participatory, expensive and bone head drawing.  Apparently it drives dogs insane... if it does the same for squirrels i guess i can call that a positive, but it's can't be good for birds at night in their state of torpor.

Swimming in English bay in Vancouver after a million dollar fireworks celebration one is swamped with discarded firework garbage, and living in a human society where we are always crying poor when it comes to having money for the right things, it just seems insane to blow up all this money on some momentary culturally created celebration of noise and light. I guess i could say it brings people together, like religion, to a common focus, but really is it that exciting? Give me some good music and a buffet, and perhaps a water cannon and see the smiles on the faces of the people.

In a country where we can't even afford to send our children, the future of out nation, to full day kindergarden, we find the money to explode things all night long, a great cost, shipped from a communist nation overseas, to celebrate independence?