The Super Robertson Chronicles II

you guys read instructions?

2012-01-25T23:28:00.000-08:00

You guys meaning anybody who happens to read this gibberish, for title clarification purposes of course. Me I just can't seem to read instructions, or take them for that matter... life is just a vast pool of mistakes and forks that didn't need to happen. Don't get me wrong, in the grand scheme of things my ship is sailing fine and in what appears to be the right direction... but if someone were to say... "sailor Robertson loosen the jib on your boat" ( I guess we are doing a sailing analogy here). I might find the jib see it all taught and start tugging on it angrily wondering why this rats nest of rope won't work with me... in reality it would be a cow hitch / lark's head / whatever you want to call it knot, but i wouldn't know that and in a split second snap decision i might just cut the damn rope thinking for a second that i smartly solved the problem. The euphoria would never even peak before being taken over by that familiar mind boggling "what the fucking-hell is wrong with me" Robertson regret.

Luckily i can roll with punches better than most and i might be like... "OK boys, we are not going to have too much control for a little while, and if the good news is if a sudden storm comes upon us we don't have to worry about having a taught jib.

In my world it's odd how a Blackberry wine making error turns into a sailing lesson... I mean there is totally a process one can read about, be prepared, and then do it... Or you can just start winging it knowing that the simple chemistry of all that sugar and the yeast is sure to make a potent batch of giggle juice no matter how hard one needs to wince to gulp it down your gullet.

Ohh it ain't that bad just a little heavy on the peptic enzyme, and the acid balance agent. The enzyme I'm not too worried about, when the job is done the job is done... that's the thing about enzymes. If union workers were enzymes there would be no problems... they would just do their jobs while the company reaped the profits. I kind of see me as the company, and I'm OK with those enzymes slaving away for free helping make my product. It is the overdose of the acid balance agent, that from a pure chemistry perspective has to be bad... Lets put it this way boys "i feel confident we won't have an acidic blackberry wine"... the real question is "what will a basic wine taste like and what will it do to ones stomach".

Tums are basic, so is Pepito bismal... hot damn i might be on to something... S Robertson's Hammer-time alkaline wine. Have today's stresses got you down? Are you feeling stressed about the state of the world economy? Rising oil prices? Shopping uncertainty? Are these stresses culminated in abdominal discomfort?

Maybe you should try S Robertson's Hammer-time alkaline wine. A natural organic and good old fashioned King hell time. Not only will gulping back a few litres (i mean gallons) of Robertson's clinically proven juice, take the edge off a hard day but Robertson's (TM) chemically balanced wine actually works to reverse the negative PH balance associated with high stress ulcer patients.

Ahh look here we have an email from the account of Dr. C Tognoon... and authorized email account i might add. "S Robertson's alkaline Hammer-time wine is clearly the best medicine available"

there you have it folks

Another fine Canada Lynx Product.

I should probably just stop now.

2012-01-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

Old Mule old sport had me all conscious about bloggerson activity over the past year with his scathing disapproval of his own output. I tried to count posts but then i lost track... Mule is a real writer of course, where i am just a point maker and comedian with a dream.

Year ends are good milestones... a chance to take stock of the output and evaluate what you think you need or need not to do. Me, I have been kind of on this weekly deadline for some time so years mean nothing to me... well they do... I'm less flexible than i was last year... i speak in terms of tendons and gaits, and not in terms of fickle personality disorders.

In fact, the end of the year is so irrelevant to me at this point in time it's almost comical... I mean talk about new beginnings... in like 10 days we move a family of 5 to a new city in a new country to a new house we have bought that i haven't even seen with my own eyes... I walk away from all my friends, my neighbourhood, my garden, my teams, my band, my show, my kids school... everything i have ever known my adult life to start fresh.

No don't feel bad for me... I ain't trying to lay a sissy sorrow trip on your ass... i see this as a real opportunity... this is destiny at work! I don't know what is going to happen but the fork in the road has been accepted and the adventure is about to begin... there will be no year end blog summary from the SR headquarters... actually i was thinking of finishing off the super Robertson Supper Show Blog with the top ten best moments... but that can wait until after the storm when i have perspective... but will i even want to visit that?

Fact- on our porch sits a bag of VHS cassettes with the only Knockin' Dog and Roadbed performances and all the early SRSS years... there is a person in the house who is eager to toss that shit... i was thinking save it, but if it's gone it's one of those things on my list of things to do that just gets erased, and in the end who would really care? Perhaps i need to be more Buddhist like and let things that are gone be gone... the dilemma?

It's odd... i do these things and the feedback i get from certain members of the family is that i am an doomed to fail with my bizarre attitude. And then some of the same people tell me that i should write a book about my experiences as a stay home dad with 3 young girls... they say i could make a million. But if I'm no good at creative projects how could i make a million? The difference between ideas and execution of ideas really slips the grasp of the average person... If you can't write a good song (if it's not a hit it's not good right) then surely you can't write a good book, because a book is one hell of a bigger effort than a song. Not only that a song can just be a ditty... a book needs a point!

My point here is people see your situation and think you might have a unique perspective, which is true, but then there is the whole art of unveiling that perspective to a common audience... but perhaps it doesn't matter with the right sales pitch, tag lines and twitter feeds one might be able to make "a million" on something that doesn't properly make a point but strikes the right mood for the moment of civilization we live in, which i think is what people were trying to say in the first place. It irritates me on a few levels, but that's my scene... although i have never tasted success i see clearly the irritations that would come with the concept of the work you do, the random success it garners, and the faith people have in you. The thing is, it's not related. If somebody dumps 7 yards of topsoil onto your driveway for your garden in the back then for sure you will notice all the work the person with the wheel barrel will do to bring that soil out back to the garden... I could do that in half a day, and i have on a few occasions... it would take me a year to write the book and another year to find distribution for it and it would cost me plenty and then i would just be another author trying to sell their stuff wondering why the Million didn't drop from the sky as promised.

Every human activity has a common talking point... but can you talk the talk? Can you relate to the people who are listening?

Life is like a good moustache... it's not until you can twirl the hanging end of your handlebar with your index finger while you ponder a point that you can truly find the answer, and the answer might not be what you want it to be, but it is what it is.

Hot damn, i wish i didn't get on this tangent... clearly Mule's fault. I could just delete but that would be against the rules of the Super Robertson Chronicles... and the rules are the rules... in life you have to follow your rules for good or ill. Perhaps it's the honey cream ale's fault and not all Mule's fault... poor Mule doesn't need another cyberattack when the time comes that some Internet phenomena alerts him to the fact that this has been written and he has to digest the role he may or may not have had in it's existence. Who would have ever thought that a guy making a comment in a bar years ago to the tune of "super Robertson might make interesting Internet correspondence" would be leveled with this onus as all the hope hung like dew on 2012.

the good old News...

2011-11-24T21:50:00.000-08:00

They shouldn't even call it News anymore, should call it Irony's.

Apparently Arctic ice levels are at the lowest in 1,450 years, and permafrost melting in the North is affecting building stability and is expected to COST a lot of money. In another Bizarre article there was a poll asking how much money you would be willing to pay to save a polar bear with the title "Is saving each polar bear worth 400K". Like considering we got ourselves into this mess by always going for the fast buck, to hell with the consequences, and we are actually lead by a democratically elected person who spent a good part of his life arguing on behalf of industry that global warming was indeed a kooky left wing conspiracy that had no truth at all, and that the same said person is busy replacing scientists with human resource folk who know how to push the buttons the people who are paying them want them to push, it just seems a little ironic to me.

I think we are due for a press release from our very own Alfred E Newman imitation specialist Finance Minister... Might he say "everything is looking green in my yard, so for the hungry people out there... let them eat cake". There was a story about Canadian wages plummeting... that's what happens when you replace higher paying jobs with lower paying jobs so companies can post more profits... where does that money go again? I'm not an economist, but it seems like if you put money in your people... i mean consumers... then they will feel the lure to spend that money... but i guess if you can just yank it away without doing the loop you can stash it somewhere. In the News people are fighting B.C Hydro's smart meter program because they are worried about health issues and privacy... as they post there statuses on facebook with wireless devices. I'm not saying it's not bad for you, but nobody is mentioning the company will save money because they won't have to pay people to read meters... more employed consumers sent to the curb for more corporate profits... the picture is all wrong.

There is a manners debate going on in the House of Commons, apparently they promised to be civil a while back but as usual promise broken. I don't know how anybody growing up could ever look at politics and have any hope that politicians who raised millions to get elected would every be able to do anything other than pony to their cause and their cause only and to hell with what the research says.

Hey Canada is having "Black Friday" a time where retailers lower their prices and insane frenzied consumers trample each other to get there first. But i liked our custom of having Christmas dinner and then going down to a store to wait by the front door all night on a cold rainy night to get first crack at the 50 dollar Sanyo dvd player.

Check this one Unbelievable! These are signs you might have a debt problem? What is the 13th... large bearded man from loan shark agency comes to your house and breaks your legs? Are there people reading that thinking... OMG! that's me I do all that! LOL do i have a problem :-( ?

When i was a kid i was led to believe adults should know the way. Now i think everybody should smoke pot and kids should sit as court judges cause they have a real true sense of right and wrong, not hindered by relationships and handshakes.

and in the end it's all just memories

2011-11-18T22:42:00.000-08:00

How the "occupy wall street" movement has turned into "evict anarchist tent city in our public spaces" movement is a classic example of how humans destroy themselves. It reminds me of the time i went out to bike in critical mass and the Mayor of Vancouver at the time was there with his family... likely to support the whole idea, and he was ringed by some lunatics screaming obscenities at him over the state of humanity. The chant "we are not blocking traffic, we are traffic" became hijacked with anarchist gibberish. Hell i agree 100%, we got fleeced with regard to the "economy"... the only good i can see that came out of the economic collapse is that when i go to work i don't have to listen to all of these "market gurus", or "house flipping geniuses", who think they know the answers... all those suckers that rode the Nortel wave all the way to the bottom thinking that they were Wall street kings found out that no, you can't out guess the market after all. Now they just shut up and do their job, or part of it anyway.

I Loved the idea of taking your money out of the banks and putting it into credit unions... i would love to see everybody cancel their cell phone service, cancel their cable and refuse to buy anything that is not absolutely necessary... but lets face it, that ain't going to happen... the people that live like that are in the tents, and i don't believe that that was necessarily their goal when they started out on that path. For sure, I'm for housing the homeless, even if it costs me a bit more. I believe in the idea that my standard of living will be higher if i can bring up the mean standard of living... and that's what it's all about... personal gain. Everybody wants more for themselves, it's just a matter of how to get it, and what is the definition of "More". What was the William S Burroughs quote? "beware of whores who say they don't want money.. what they mean is they want MORE money".

As per usual the people who run the game understand the game better than those who play the game... the golden rule "he who has all the gold makes all the rules". They must have said "Uh oh what are we going to do" and then some wise person who has a great grasp on human psychology said "just sit back and let them eat themselves".

Way back in the 90's i had an old German man as a neighbour, Gunther was his name, and we got on quite well, he was a sniper who worked high level security jobs and taught marksmanship at the Armoury. He and his wife were Gardeners and would be up late at night plucking slugs and insects from their garden in typical obsessive German fashion and sometimes we would get into it. He would talk about the pure insane corruption in our society but the fact is that people won't riot in the streets over it because they have too much to lose, which i still think is true today... it's only when you have nothing left to lose that you hit the streets but then it's too late... you know what i mean? Is anybody skipping work to gather outside the government or banking buildings or do we just leave that job up to the unemployed and homeless to set up camp and then slowly have the press dismantle the whole Movement.

I remember one time i was out talking to Gunther and some other neighbour who played goalie came home from a late hockey game.. this guy was a pro military technology person and he and Gunther got into a heated argument over new tanks that were resistant to to hostile fire and could withstand attack... Gunther scoffed, and the goalie explained something about sensors that detected fire an then protected the wheel base.... to which Gunther replied "well then you just shoot the sensors out" and then back to the usual... they really got into it. It doesn't really matter what you do, there is a way around it, was the point.

The argument now is, are the camps legal? And the way the news articles read, one would think that public support is growing for the camps to be removed... which of course is a nice change of focus from why the camps got there in the first place which, from my simple memory was because society is structured in a grand Ponzi scheme to fleece working people and reward non working people with titles. Remember how we have to pay massive salaries to the people who run the economy in order to "get quality people", but yet they ran the bastard into the ditch, and then cried for a bailout and got it no strings attached. Remember that!

I have loathed the word "economy" for over a decade... that's why i wrote the song Mr. Greenie in the year 2000.

It takes thought, so you give it all you got
Economics is a saying, and it's you and me that's paying

I'm Mr Greenie, they Call me Greenie

Some people like to talk, but they standing on the same spot as the was yesterday, and the day before.
Some people like to shop, they shop until they drop but they bought the same things that they did the day before.

I'm Mr Greenie, they call me Greenie
can we give it all we got

I will not buy, i will not believe, I will not see what the tell me to see
I will not buy, i will not believe, I will not be what the tell me to be

I'm Mr Greenie.. they call me Greenie

G-R-E-E-N-I-E spelled mis correctly always talking on the past these things will never last

The song didn't win a Juno or anything like that but on the subject matter i feel the same way i did then, and i am right. If you called me a fucking ass hole i would be less offended than if you called me a Consumer. When i am referred to as a Consumer i hear "dumb gullible simple son of a bitch", and i am truly offended... one of the reasons i am a horrible salesman. A while back i decided to do what i do and if people like it great, if no then they can leave it... I don't like to ride on a train with a stack of waffles... cause they don't really know how to party. The best people to party with are the people who know who they really are.

In the end nothing is heard:

Nothing is Heard by superrobertson

todays topic... a deal is a deal!

2011-10-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

Never think of altering deals in a moment when you think you could do better, or get more for yourself on a single incident. Lets face it we are all number one in our own world when push comes to shove, but remember number one can learn more form failure and using the gift of time, than number one can ever learn from quick draw reactions. Unless of course number one has been down that road before and knows the outcome, but then again if number one is on the road to disaster yet again, then number one clearly made and error in decision a few miles back down the road, so number one deserves what is coming down the pipe. What is the saying? If you make the same mistake twice then it's not a mistake but rather a choice. I'll give some lenience on that dog, cause sometimes the mistake is hidden... but then that's the goal... to see life from a calm perspective and see what is as what is, and of course what isn't as what isn't.

If there is one thing i loathe it is the person who talks big about a plan and then a few steps into a plan tries to tell the world that they are doing too much and others are doing too little and therefore they need to get some more for themselves. I say, you can never settle all the scores until it's over, and for sure if your mind is closed due to this unfortunate state of megalomania then you will always have these problems, and you deserve them, once you give up then you cease to learn from the full circle.

In my life, i have been blessed with dealing with numerous difficult people, and as a result i have learned numerous lessons that i wouldn't have. What is the other saying? People can teach you 2 things... what to do and what not to do. Some of the best things i have learned is on the what not to do angle, but the trick is, you have to ride the "what not to do" angle out to it's disastrous final and suffer the brunt of the fiasco, because of course the difficult person will never take any ownership of the problem once the problem has occurred, but rather shift the onus on the student. It's the way life goes, for good or ill, and you can never give up on learning. Well actually most do, for fear of being wrong... or something like that. If i never stuck with the game, i never would have had the knowledge to write the song "frustrated man", which never would have been heard by a certain club owner, which never would have got me in the good books, which never would have lent me the opportunity to start a weekly show, which never would have allowed me to learn another large series of grand lessons. I could have shut my game down a decade ago under the idea that i was wronged, and it's wasn't fair, and my failure wasn't mine so to say.

Not that i have accomplished anything so to say, in terms of "considered success", but that's OK... I'm doing pretty good at the end of the day... Because a deal is a deal, an a life is a life, and you do have the choice in which you want to live it. Provided you live in a rich country and were raised to mind your financial maters, so that you don't become someone who wished they could. But on that note, barring certain maters, some of the world's poorest people are some of the happiest, maybe they have never tasted excess, as i have, but sometimes i see clips of them singing and making music out of nothing, and getting into it, and i think; It would be hard to find people to find joy in those situations in the world i live in... rather it might be people bitching about what they did and what others didn't.

If i were to run for king of the world:

I would ban plastic, punish advertising by death, put politicians on a modest stipend, make it illegal to claim scientific patents, ban religion from politics, legalize illegal drugs... and by then of course i would be assassinated... but that's another story.

If you make a deal. follow it though, it's the best thing you can do... for yourself.

Injection site

2011-10-01T00:36:00.000-07:00

What i don't understand is how anybody could be against IN SITE... let me try here, for real... you are against drug use so therefore you shut your brain off, draw a line in the sand and oppose against all logic, something that is good for all members of society, proven beyond a rock solid proof.

Do we just assume, probably correctly, that the mass populous is just a collection of grunting ignoramuses keen to jump on a talking point that they clearly don't understand... perhaps there is something else... what do they want? Clearly Kingpin dude will want to change the supreme court folks who ruled with reason over political insanity.

By no means am I pro intravenous drug use... until of course I'm in my late years and i start shitting my pants and i decide to go out on a cloud rather than suffer further... but that's another story in itself... don't worry I'll save your precious health care dollars plenty.. there will be more for you. My point being, i think it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a junkie will do what a junkie needs to do regardless of what any well meaning law was apparently meant to do. Now do you want those junkie's with unmonitored diseases breaking into places leaving needles behind in the shadows of society, or do you want a hand there to check in and see what's going on? In our security crazed society, i see only one logical answer... but perhaps it's not security we are after.

The same fools defend the Tar sands claiming environmental impacts are overstated... OK I say spend your money cleaning up one of those trailing ponds and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can return a freshwater lake system back to a freshwater lake system, and we can talk, but that ain't going to happen... that's why you have cannons firing blanks 24/7 to scare wildlife away from the pond because you know it is lethal to land there. And if you have a half a brain in your head you will realize that when Water becomes more precious than Oil we will be wearing the goat horns and the money will be all gone, and then we will just move forward forever with this new reality of what we once had and now longer have because, well hey short term economic gains trump sanity.

It's bullshit, it's time this world was run by scientists rather than lunatics and money mongers.

Oddly enough i have been feeling a little lost lately i was actually thinking of turning to religion to help become grounded... the routing and practice and social aspect of religion.. which religion... i think i would have to go Rastafarian or Buddhism. No way i could do Christianity... too popular= too many fucking idiots... among other poignant problems.

I don't worry about what people can't do I work with what people can do.

2011-09-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

I had to bark down that bone wisdom at a band rehearsal the other day... it was more of a casual fun music session in a living room.. that's the way to roll. You see SR JONES got into CITR Shindig (Tuesday September 20 @ the Railway), one of the first shows i ever played in Vancouver, and the first at the Railway club... It was the only way to play the Railway club in those years if you were me.

It Looks like I'll be splitting this town in the New Year for an extended absence... another fork in the road that looks like it will land me in Portland Oregon.

8 years ago if you told me i would have spent the last 3 plus years as a stay home father to 3 young girls, i would have called "loony bin" on your ass. Now it looks like another turn of the fortune wheel of life ( king lear). I'm set for it... as they say on the bench "fuckin' rights" I could use a new adventure. I never had the young adventures... or at least the travel and such as i set to work very young to make money to salt away for some reason... that was the house... Not that i didn't have adventure, I just made it locally. "I may as well put this Fatman suit on and go out and do some interviews if nobody else will" i would think. My poor cousin, who flew out from London Ontario, just a sweet innocent girl, picked up at the airport by Carl Fatman and then rushed to a Motorcycle Man show at the Cottage Bistro... The family back in Ontario was concerned for me for quite some time after that one... It really wasn't until i had kids that they considered me normal, cause that's what normal people do right?

I guess the next segment is:

Never rule out what somebody might be able to do.

Not that we are trying to make any sense of coherency in this little exercise... that's what paid writers do. Although glancing through the National Post the other day... i might have to wonder.

OK it was the band thing i meant to talk about... some people weren't there.. why worry about them? (I knew they couldn't make it as they were out of town... why should that stop progress) The classic mistake of the rookie band. When i was in a band called Knockin' Dog we had a member who came an hour late every rehearsal and then proceeded to spend 20 minutes complaining about something... in time, the band that we were in the first hour of rehearsal was 10 x the band we were in the latter part of the rehearsal. Of course the self centered son of a gun, who had a deflection for every reality, refused to quit the band so you are tied to this sense of earlier commitment which is stalling every bodies good times. We had a studio session booked a few months in advance and he just stopped showing up at all, so naturally we just prepared for the session... He was playing another game but we were interested in music. On that day we went to the studio to record i had a visit from the said absent band mate. Knowing that other members believed "no fucking way he is playing if he doesn't show for rehearsal" i just lay ed low... for sure he damn well knew we had the studio booked and was there to lure me into some insane argument over my apparent betrayal... i was in no need to be annoyed so i just offered tea and snacks and weathered the moment... If it was just us, i probably would have been fool enough to try to go into the studio as an act of non betrayal... which is total horse shit, but that's the way we rolled... and in the end it would have been a nightmare. But because i had a commitment to other people who had worked hard i had to hold strong... that's the thing about me... I will always throw myself under the bus but i won't throw somebody else under the bus... ( However it is fair to note that sometimes the bus goes off roading and mauls innocent bystanders)... so i need to put somebody on the team that has the same reasons to thrive as myself so i can defend their ground and by default stand up for myself. it hasn't always been that way of course, and I'm sure reading this could prove to be a great source of ironic comedy for many.

That day, the only day i left a studio way early, our band stomped down a album (Roadbed-Represented), that i think is fair to say has stood the test of time. There was so much focus on "would we actually even be able to come together and lay down this music we know, love and are hot on"... and so little focus on "we have to do this, to achieve this, to then advance this", and only one person is smart enough to think for everybody. I remember being in Red Robin eating dinner with the band and the sun had not gone down yet... and we were done.

do what you can do... Let the chickens worry.

I guess this blogaroo fits under the guise of "SR Chronicles"

2011-09-17T21:47:00.000-07:00

Was in the dressing room after another hockey game loss and one of my teammates said he was reading my blog and getting a good kick out of it... i had to spoil the moment by asking "which one"... I, without thinking, was generally curious but then shifted the focus back on my man who was smiling remembering a story he thought was hilarious, but then he had to answer the name of the blog and became confused like it was a test of sorts. I realized what i had done smiled and said i was glad he enjoyed it... that's why you do "art" right... it's a personal thing where maybe you can brighten some body's day with something you did. That's the way i see it... the hard slough of the music industry is a soul killer, and it's bull shit too, just like the world economy is bull shit, and the idea that we can't afford to not turn our freshwater lake systems into trailing pond toxic zones for short term economic gain is bullshit. You either get it or you don't, or you don't care to get it for some reason or another.

It just seems like we are all focused on the wrong things... remember distraction is a human strong suit. It looks as though i threw a hissey fit on "facebook" the other day when i mentioned that only one person who i had given a "download card" for my new record to actually downloaded it. That's the problem with soundbites... My point being that over the years i have released 13 CD's and numerous tapes and there is always this idea of getting the music out there, wherever the hell "out there" is. i always remember seeing sealed copies of my CD's in used CD shops.. there was even a report of the Knocking Dog "simplex" album in a CD store in Drumheller in the free bin on the sidewalk still with the wrap on the plastic holding the plastic... Kind of a victory given the song "the Drumheller Boogie" was on that CD.

This is fine, nobody is asking for shit so you dump it on them, and that's what happens... i myself have plenty of CD's people gave me that i never got around to listening to. I think that was the cool thing about tapes... you would hand make like 30 of them and it would take you a long time and then you would give them to people who you know would listen to tapes... You know the Mule would listen to a "roadbed" tape, or an "8 minute MAN" tape, or a "Restore/ 21 Tandem Repeats" split tape... and there would only be a few of them. You made some music and you shared it with your peers, and later a tape would come back your way... perhaps somebody would put out 2 tapes in a row and you would feel shamed and get back to work.

I think with CD and digital... well the limit was originally 1000 and then 500 copies of CD's... so you had way more shit than you could ever deal with, so rather than learning to deal with it, you figure i should just get the music out there and give it away... which is the biggest mistake you can ever make... if you are giving something away then it is worthless. Like the classic coffee story... some dude started charging more for coffee and people paid more gladly thinking that they were getting something gourmet, something special. the other mistake fools make giving away their music is they give it away to other fools trying to "make it" in the business, and those people only care about themselves... which is not a knock on them... that's what they are supposed to do... community is a mirage when the shit hits the fan.

So anyhoo, i have a stack of download cards now for my latest album, and the neat thing about that is you get a report on any activity... if somebody redeems one of them is shows up in your accounting. I mean the basic idea of getting a CD out (now) is to get that CD into the MP3 player of the person, because that's how most people listen to music... for good or ill... so if you give your CD away it is just another piece of plastic that becomes somebodies garbage which is bad for all, and in the end you don't even know if it was ever heard, which was the basic point in the first place. With the download card you can shoot at about 2% and know it, and for sure it is good to know how you are doing. And that's all i ever really wanted to know.

I remember i met a guy one time years after i gave him a copy of "Roadbed-Represented" and he loved the album, and he said "it's so rare that somebody gives you a CD and it's any good at all". That was good advise... i didn't see it as advise at the time, it was just a statement, but the point is you don't want to be that person giving away your "product" (loath to use that word), because you are just showing that your product has no value. It might almost be the worst way to get people to listen to your music.. quite seriously. I know that after somebody heard a song of mine on the radio they took a different approach to the idea that the music i made was any good... I think there is some thing where by people need to hear of it from another source but yourself. otherwise you are just shilling, and that's always bad, and shilling is what has driven some of the most of the talented people i know out of music.

For me physics was always my strong suit... light mathematics but it was how to apply the equation, or when to apply it for that matter. From where i stand, any equation that has an artist do all the fuckery that is necessary to achieve success, is bull shit... never mind some of the loathsome pap that is turned out but focus more on the psychological damage done to young people trying to achieve a dream that was never really their original dream in the first place, but rather a status. But i guess status is the new world order... your status is important and people can comment on it and share it and even like it. Sure there are things i would like to be that I'm not, but that's what happens in life... and in the end it's all just memories... right Mule?

What were those points i had?

2011-04-11T23:38:00.000-07:00

They seemed so witty and relevant earlier in the day, although others were political and so the ponigent irony of those left one to just shake their head in disbelief.

How bout our society... something insane happens, people get there knickers in a knot and say to themselves I'm going to go home and blog about this... yep this is me sitting at my computer spewing my vile out into my irrelevant until popularized web presence. Actually it's worse than that, blogs are too long, you just need an update now... and a minor understanding of the issue to fit in and not "miss" anything that is going on.

I was at the playground today and there was a double slide and the kids were climbing up the slide and sliding down and crashing into each other having a blast. I tried to mention that perhaps one of the slides could be a "going up slide" and the other could be a "going down slide" which really got one of the grandmothers going. It was the old school "slides are for going down" so go down them and stay out of the way lest somebody get hurt. As a parent of 3 kids it is important to know when you are set to win and when you are set to lose, so i just fucked off to a distant part of the park and felt the great sunny day and let other people argue about what a playground piece of equipment should be used for in terms of regimentated play. From a distance i watched the kids go up the slide and they were using their arms and their legs and their abdominal core strength to get up the slide... i myself was feeling a little soft on the core strength and thought perhaps i could use a little "slide walking up"... the kids would pobably dig it, but there is that matter of what the other "adults" that are too old to play would think.

The other day on of the twins (3 years old) went off the high diving board with a life jacket on.. i was in the water and she had a blast... i was then warned by the lifeguard that you are not allowed to go off the high diving board with a life jacket on. I told him they better open the small diving board then or face the wrath of Hailie... they did and then her sister (Emily) went off the small diving board for the first time. She was scared so she sat down at the end and rolled off.. grand times... then i was warned that rules stipulate you need to go off feet first not bum first.

2 big firsts in their life and both are in direct violation of the rules... the rules for safety.

The rules are there so you won't hurt yourself, i am told, but is not hurting yourself part of the process of understanding the world we live in. Isn't the point to hurt yourself on the small diving board so that you remember what no to to on the higher diving board where the hurt will be greater. What is HURT? You get hurt in life all the time and your legacy will be how you quickly you get over that hurt and back on task.

Everybody has to drive their kid to school because it's not safe to do otherwise, but yet the greatest chance of serious injury is in a car crash.

We are fucked, we do know that right.

March 4 2011

2011-03-05T00:47:00.000-08:00

Currently there is a crazy political scandle where some idiot sent some letter to a member of the the opposition party with the same last name as the doufus in his own party outlining some ways to con ethnic voters into voting for their party.

The other party called the ethnic voter plan "offensive".. which begs the question why?

It is offensive to put in a letter that it's all good to shovel as much hoarse shit as possible to gain a vote? But yet that is what the average day of a politician consists of... that is their job description, spin and pander to everybody... speak in the tongue of who you are speaking to and promise them the world knowing damn well you will yank the carpet they stand on from under their feet once you are secured in your end of the bargain.

Just don't put it in a letter, and if you do then don't sent it to the opposition party because that is just too stupid for words.

March 4 2011

2011-03-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

Too many IRRELEVANT DECISIONS TO BE MADE, and then there is the problem with the caps lock, general disorganization it the kitchen at this hour... it is late but not too late to spank down some words for no other reason than to challenge oneself. What is the challenge? who are the winners and who are the losers? I always think nobody is a loser when they are click away from leaving.

Kind of like a nasty game of chatroulette where people say fuck you, your not what i'm looking for, but yet do they really know what they are looking for, or are they just confused humans trying to be something that they don't really understand. Sure they might be looking for a naked women but what they need might be some greater wisdom on self realization , and the skill to find out what it is that they really want, and the courage to go get it.

A natural nudist needs to be comfortable in their own skin so they can wear it to the party and not let it get in the way of a good time...

I had a great idea the other night at the SRSS while talking to Caleb Stull... it would have been a tweet if i were a cell phone fellow, or smart phone fellow but i am neither. I can't remember it now but it was fine logic for sure.

I cut my thumb on a broken bottle from a brewing accident... capping bottles can be a hazardous experience... a violent pressure experience.

Speaking of brewing, where can one get a proper bottle-ing tool? All i can seem to find is shitty fucking useless plastic peices of shit that fail me at the moment of truth and that reminds me of all of the shitty useless things that we as humans make. Why do we create throw away packaging? It makes no sense at all... it is insane, but apparently it is good for the economy, and that apparently is more important than a fully functioning environment that we need to sustain life... our life.

It is bizarre, to live in these times where it is clear beyond reason that what is deemed important has no importance, and the people calling the shots would call a boat an elephant if they thought it would gain them favour.

It's not good

I should try to import a bottel-ing tool from Germany... nice stainless steel ball bearing, built to work, built to last and built to not spill beer all over your kitchen on an otherwise peaceful Thursday night.

Typical Robertson

2011-02-25T00:36:00.000-08:00

Music industry party meet and greet... why the hell not, having a destination is perfect, add a purpose even better.

Get in and mingle... you really have to walk up and ask people what they do... don't be afraid, conversations start and often you will be given the opportunity to learn something. I had made a few fine points, scooped an accordion player for SRSS jams by quoting early They Might Be Giants and stunning a fan (of TMBG) who thought he was alone in the world.

I start getting the hang of it, laying down advice as it came to me and then got involved in a rant on advertising... my points were a bit different than the rest but none the less to illustrate my point, or at least teach how to live it when i got the beer that was on sale for $3.50 a can i asked for a glass so i could pour the beer in the glass and hence foil any chance of further advertising on my end of the consumer product relationship... i was feeling it and i was ready to stomp down some wisdom, and then i bumped into a fellow who asked me why i was pouring my beer in a glass because i looked so happy doing it. It was kind of like i was a stick of dynamite and he lit it and i went off on an anti advertising sermon that basically when summed up stated "the mere act of advertising has stripped the average consumer, or human, as i like to refer to them, of the ability to recognize and appreciate what is important in the world, and why it is important"... I went on to say this it's time to get tough on advertising with manditory... jail time for convicted advertisers... new laws calling for public stonings for people responsible for making throw away packaging... it was around this time my new friend was in retreat mode, the vibe wasn't so jolly... so i figures OK, and said "What do you do man"... "advertising director of a large record company".

random point night in the blogosphere

2011-02-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

Can we just drop the fucking puck when a game is set to start rather than always indulging into some extra long, extra lame ceremony celebrating some fucking thing. Also i don't need to see 5 minutes of Don Cherry walking into a crowd of cheering fans. Don't get me wrong, i like Don Cherry am willing to forgive his bizarre slips in the past few years... but really, as a society are we that obsessed with celebrity that we need to witness a celebrity greeting overzealous fans ad nausium? As a hockey fan, the amount of hockey a fan is exposed to becomes less and less... it's facts like that that we need to start boning in on. Oddly enough one of tonight's ceremonies was to celebrate that a year ago the Vancouver Olympics started... and what was the best thing about Olympic Hockey? Fast efficient games (need that venue for the next game), no advertising, no TV time outs. Clearly they missed the boat, but that would cost money... tell the fans that an extra delay is a bonus for their inflated ticket prices.

lets get off hockey

Politics- It has bothered me for some time that our system of democracy basically has a party in power and another party spending all of their energy trying to make the other party look bad so they can get their chance in the trough. For the record i am not a Harper fan at all and would consider strategic voting to keep him from majority power... which interestingly would make a case for a coalition government. The comedy being the argument against coalition government is that the people get a government that they didn't vote for... but if you voted to not have Harper leading your government then you are all roses. Anyhoo that was not my point to start out... my goal was to present an idea on how society could be better... and then i remembered we are being led by a very smart man who argued strongly against the idea of climate change on behalf of big business, was exasperated when his country didn't join a war for oil, argued for transparency in government but has shown none, and of course recorded record deficits playing the "nobody could have foreseen" card even though he was auguring from the pocket of the business that caused disaster.

Now i feel hate... but i was thinking about politics and society and i was thinking we need to move to a 20 year plan. It was the US model and a quote by Republican folk who vowed to opposed everything Democratic President Obama worked for in an effort to gain back power in 2012... and i thought that is just totally fucked. If you can now openly say to a news channel that that is your plan and it is par for the course then we really are all fucked.

Same game in Canada, your energy making the other party a villain because the goal is to retain power and push your agenda.

I think we need to decide what is important, have a plan and then implement it. All efforts need to be focused on anti corruption, and education to get the ball rolling. I was thinking we need to elect a number of intellegent individuals with various skills to put together a plan to make our country what it needs to be for the future. The question becomes how do you nominate the intelligent, observant, caring members of society and prune away the members of society that sit there in a suit on behalf of business and preach honesty. I would think a group of professors from various fields nominated by non business individuals would be our best shot although it's a hard one. We would need society working together as one, and that is against out nature... we seem to be a divisive society that works on hate and revenge... never together for the common good. But with the 20 year plan we make the plan and then implement it... and if done right the 20 year old's have been educated as non consumers, throw away packaging has been made illegal and society might roll as it needs to. But then there will always be a pack of jackells there to hyjack the process.

20 year plan- how do you make it work?

You need the right people to run it, and how do you get that to happen?

Our hockey team got blown out 7-0

2011-01-17T00:09:00.000-08:00

Where is the positive in a 7-0 shellacking ?

The answer is that its a great lesson in what not to do when you play a hockey game... Oh we didn't get the bounces... and for sure that happened, but remember you have to make your bounces. It helped expose some key weakness in our team at a good time before playoffs so we can make the proper adjustments and not suffer such a crippling failure at a critical time.

One of the problems with non professionals... some people never learn... it's just a game and a chance to go be one of the guys. Of course I don't buy that horse shit for a second, but you need to know what you have and then play accordingly. A group with lesser talent can beat a group of greater talent by working together, and that is one of the great highs of the game. I always remember those times when every player buys into the plan and plays up to their best level within the scope of the team, and the team wins the game. It is really one of the greatest feelings... like a band playing a tight show.

Oddly enough this team i play with has on it a fellow who i knew from way back in my early rock and roll days. He was a Jazz guitar player in a wicked band and i was a maniac in an insane band and we did some 4 track recording in the day and played a few "improv" shows together.

We sat beside each other in the dressing room tonight disecting the game in the same way that we would have disected a live show years ago. A very scientific evaluation of the events. Hockey like music often suffers from peoples unauthentic recolection of what actually went wrong. It's a human problem... obviously i didn't do anything wrong lets find some other fault is the way we work in this century.

The raw fact is we got pushed around... in another game with another referee perhaps there would have been some calls, but there wasn't so you need to push back and put your anger into the game not verbally at the referee. The more we fell behind the more we shot into the opposing goalies breadbasket... the more we tried to catch up the more we fell behind. When you start trying to cheat (for offence) in hockey it's kind of like drilling another hole in the rowboat that is floating above the reef in shark infested waters.

I actually believe we needed a sharp defeat... one of the dudes asked me how it felt not scoring as i seem to be good for about 3 points a night up until this night. I know what i did wrong on all my chances tonight... and that's a good thing. I have always been a prolific point scorer in hockey all my life... I never made pro clearly, but it's a funny thing being a point producer... I"ll make the analogy to music again... the band that does well is shitty and got all the breaks just like the guy who puts up all the points is a puck hog. When I was 14 I won a scoring title in some Toronto league and some of the guys on my street who went to school with other guys I played in the league with started telling me I had the reputation as a "Puck hog" even though I led the league in assists. For the record it was my right winger Nate Lindon that really helped me win the title... he was always open and could always finish... in the end I beat him by a point or two, but it could have easily gone the other way. I'd carry the puck down into the zone and he would put it in the net.

it's just the way it goes.

Under pressure Robertson finds a way...

2011-01-05T00:21:00.000-08:00

My wife was so proud of me trying to find the positive in things this year... i guess if you are married to a clinical Rage Hero that kind of news might be music to the old ears. It was a positive day for sure.. every member of my family was occupied by some institution while i was out getting a good sweat in on some eliptical cardio machine. I even chose one of the machines away from the television so to not be tempted by the dark side. I then came back home and ate a tuna fish sandwich and made some piano music... good times. Then to the school to pick up my 6 year old daughter... she had written some stuff in her journal about our trip to Bold Point Road we had a great walk home and decided that we would spend out time together mowing through some chapters of "The Wizard of OZ"... not to play spoiler here but the Wicked witch of the West dies in a different manor than in the movie.

Perfect day basking in the positive... may as well bottle that cider and wheat beer so we can stay "in booze" if you know what i mean... clearly positive. If only bottling devices weren't made cheap cheap cheap... and of plastic. The device is meant to control beer flow through a tube so that one can take the tube from one bottle to the next and stop the flow of beer in between... but of course when shitty cheap plastic things are shitty cheap plastic things they cease to function resulting in a hose pouring of good beer on the kitchen floor.

Well i guess i went into a swearing frenzy while focused and on task not even realizing i was doing it when i heard CT say... "so what was your positive thought of the day"... And the only thing i could think of under the circumstances was that one didn't need a positive thought every day and by setting one to such a harsh regiment of forced positivity one was perhaps likely to view positivity as unattainable and that would be wrong.

I passed my first test

2011-01-03T00:27:00.000-08:00

I had the fine fortune of finishing up the latest 21 tandem repeats album today so i took the train out to the studio and took a shortcut through the Costco parking lot... and it was, well, like a Costco parking lot... jam packed with lines of idling cars waiting for a spot to open up... some just waiting for others to get a spot so they can then leave... me walking sucking in the exhaust observing the whole package.

Normally that's when i would snap and go into a negative vortex that would cloud the rest of the day and somehow become part of everything else through the energy i chose to hang on to. But i was telling myself... No man find a positive! Just as i though that i saw a woman with a super sized arm full of stuff inching towards the back of her pickup truck. I smiled and said "can i give you a hand here" and reached to lower her tailgate for her. She smiled a wonderful smile said thanks and we parted ways with that good energy and then i was out of the parking lot happy to be helpful.

The later on at night i was at the Grocery store and i noticed they were blowing out eggnog which means that eggnog season is coming to an end... and that's a negative... but then i thought about the positive... eggnog for $1.29 per litre... then the negative (8 L limit)... then the positive (the eggnog goes bad in 3 days so you still get 2 days of drinking 3 l of eggnog and one day of drinking 2 l of eggnog).

So yes with my new found attitude i found happiness today...

A more positive Robertson

2011-01-02T00:52:00.000-08:00

I was thinking today that i should try to be more positive this year, and perhaps my engagements will be more productive. Perhaps less anger, fewer swearing tirades, less time hating objects and people for their shortcomings... perhaps i could spend a day not loathing plastic garbage litter, and then making some connection to how it represents how fatally ignorant humanity has become.

Because we have had all of those thoughts, over and over again... they are old thoughts and they end in despair. There is always something positive happening, you just need your radar adjusted to tune it in. When i was a kid i was a bird watcher... something i did with my day and my neighbour and others. I have often been out with people hiking or anywhere and amazed people with my ability to spot birds. Driving down the highway i point out hawks left right and center... and people say "how the hell do you always see them"... and the answer of course is because i have been trained to see them, and i like seeing them, and i am interested in them so i know their habits and what they like to do, and where they like to be.

The point is they are always there it's just that most people don't see them because they are not looking for them. It's like the positive or the negative, what are you looking for?

I just need to train myself to find the positive.
That an playing the piano is what i need to do this year.

OK

Ok man

2010-12-12T23:12:00.000-08:00

I had such great ideas about what to write just a little while ago... and then I ran into a Facebook snag... A couple of quality chats none the less. And then just before coming here to do that thing I do for some reason, I went to the old Craigslist site and looked under events... I like to see what kind of events are posted being a man who has events and feels some basic promoter urges to get the word out. It can be a real complicated loop if you let it be... the key for me is to know why I am doing something and what I want out of it, and fortunately for me, what I want out of it seems to be the raw fact of doing it.

Anyhoo, one of the events posted was the opportunity to learn about the "Music Business" at Douglas Collage in a course. This course was offered years ago and I remember waffling with Roger Dean Young over whether we should take it or not. I decided to take it in some retarded wave of "I need to know this if I want to do this properly" mind sequence. So I signed up, paid with credit card and marked my first day of class on the calendar. Shortly before that day I suffered and incredible back injury... I was in agony and sitting was the worst thing... going to class would be not recommended , but when I sign up do do something I damn well do it (a trait my parents instilled in me).

I remember being on the Skytrain with my notebook and my spine in agony with every slight movement of the train... How could I survive this day? It was important... I make records and put them out for business.. I should know that business.

I got off and walked up the hill to the "college" and found my assigned classroom... It was empty. There was a math class going on across the hall but my class was empty... How could this be? Hey I'm a nice guy I'll just wait for a while... after half an hour i went down to the "Info booth" and their records showed just like mine that yes a class should be going on in that room right now... but it wasn't... I even went back up.

And then I went home... In a way mostly happy that I didn't have to spent the day in a chair.

A week later just before the second class I got a phone call telling me the class has been canceled due to lack of interest... I mentioned that I was aware of this fact already and that the call was a week late... there was indifference on the other end of the line.

So I did learn a lot: When you are trying to make it in the music business nobody gives a rat's ass about you... you are in a classified group of consumers who can be parted with your money with the hope that one can help you succeed... and if there aren't enough of you to fill the coffers on any given venture then fuck off until next time.

That's the raw truth of the music business... if anything has ruined music it's business, and we all know that's true. So if you are going to go to a class to teach you how to change to fall in line with a system... I say, you might be better off going to the casino because in the casino they will always welcome you.

It was shortly after my brush with Douglas College that I considered quitting music all together, and I was very serious about that... But the fact was that I wasn't thinking right. I was thinking about the music business and what a cold self serving, "you want this opportunity pay me" horse shit vibe that i was sick of.

So I had to ask myself "why do i play music?", because it's fun and I feel good doing it and I like a lot of the songs that I come up with. So why not do that, and embrace that, and grow that... I went to a club and pitched a show I wanted to do, the club agreed and I showed up every week for the last 6 years and am still figuring out what it is I mean to do... People come and people go, and in the end it's all just memories.

Last week I got to play with Lewis Melville by following my heart:

Bloggerson strikes again

2010-11-23T23:29:00.000-08:00

But the only Question is Why?

I think at the heart of the issue the answer lies somewhere around the idea that it is just a fact that Bloggerson is doing it, so then carry on... but then again, along the same vein, if one could come up with some great philosophical answer to why one does anything then answering that question could be worthwhile.

I have a feeling that answers to questions like that are solved by answering other questions and then the logic is strung together to make sense only to be then reduced again to something more portable and poetic. Remember poetry is a Jackass sport... feel free to remember to put that on my tombstone or Urn for that matter.

What do i mean?

Poetry is great in the hands of a true poet but there are a million jackasses out there for every poet who believe stringing flowery language together ad nausium is poetry and they are always trying to share it with you at your own peril. Often these fools would like to discuss it further, and they are such sensitive fuckers that you can't even call them on their "horse shit" without spending even more energy putting out the fire that be ignited by that truth.

Moustache- OK i raised $41 so far for cancer by being part of a "Movember team"... I consider it a deep insult to my character to be on a team of people growing moustaches and most of the eager for the month to end so they can go back to their safe clean shaven mode. One guy on our team looks killer... nice moustache, soul patch... but it's driving him crazy... hopefully he will come around and keep the stache into the new year.

What is really weird is how the other wives get involved in this whole decision... My wife and I, we are in a different universe. I guess it was pretty clear from the get go that by getting together with me you would be in for a life of pro sideburns, moustaches and full beards that will come at you randomly and consistently. Perhaps these fellows didn't lay the proper groundwork before they got married and now all the calls that a man should make are being dialed up by a woman.

Imagine if i married an anti moustache soul releasing poet?

I'll take CT any day... she is a crazy Kook, but she is my kind of kook. Comes up big on the things that matter and then crashes into home plate with a smile on her face. I have a feeling she threw out some of my good stuff last month, but in the end I don't think I'll miss it and our house has a little less clutter to it which is actually uplifting. I Loath to admit that... in the event that she will read this... which I'm sure she will at some point in time... and then get a head of steam and feel all confident to throw out more stuff. I do have plans for all of that stuff... it's just that I'm kind of overwhelmed right now... not that i should be... i waste many hours every day on needless horse shit... i need focus... i am a failure.

But this was Bloggerson strikes again and in a short time i have reduced myself to a failure... nonsense! That equivalent to dissing a good moustache... no worries i just punched myself in the face... kind of wish i didn't hit my eyeball with my knuckle in retrospect... my vision has yet to come back in that eye... but it looks like it is coming back... sharp pain in the back of the eye... but lets face it, I had it coming.

In the Can- So i recorded the latest 21 Tandem Repeats "album" a few weeks ago and i am set to go mix it very soon. I really feel great about this one... and i think if you know me you know that those words don't often. I think the big thing here is that i had the confidence to make the music i wanted to make and knew how to go about doing it. I think on this topic everybody has their own method and there is never any one right way, because of course "art is a line and it follows a spine and you know when you know when it works". That's why art is beautiful, because there is a method behind it and you follow that and then you enter completion and the real trick is not to get stuck on some minor decision and think it really matters. It does matter of course, but you take care of that by making sure you have written your songs properly, and by making sure you can play them expertly, and then in my case by making sure the people playing with you are excellent and aren't sure what is about to hit them, and that those said people are Gun ho on that fact. I have always known this... I remember being in a jam in Northern Ontario at a tree planting camp and i led a jam on a tune that i made up on the spot and everybody had a grand time, and after the fact one of the guys, who was a good guitar player pointed out my gift... the gift was to carry the spirit of the song so that others could play along... here we were in a hotel in Manatuage Ontario In 1993 and now in the winter of 2010 i put it together... mind you i needed to learn a lot of lessons and accumulate a lot of skills and test these over time. I feel great on this one.. perhaps it's the fact that there is a lot of grand piano played by C.S. Rippin on it, or perhaps it's the fact that Alvaro Rojas delivered the masterpiece on "Famous person", or perhaps it's the fact that JLS pulled some baseline from out of nowhere to make the song "Nothing was heard", or maybe it's the fact that Shawn Killaly is just an incredible drummer. I think for me, mostly it was the fact that the bet payed off... I spent more money than i actually have, but i realized what i needed to, which on my end is better than spending less than i have and ending up in some democratic decision making process that one finds them self in when they are in an official "band". Don't get me wrong, i love all the people i have ever played with and made records with and i stand behind everything i have ever released... with the exception of the "Chicken EP".

Whats wrong with the Chicken EP? I'll give you an example of the decision making process. There is a song "East" which is a pretty cool number... so a few band members go out on the town to record some wind chimes and they find some wind chimes in some ladies backyard so they record the wind chimes and while they are recording the lady comes out of the house and confronts them for being in the backyard and one of the guys recording the wind chimes comes up with some smart assed response to her concerns and then there is laughter... it was funny for the record, but it went on for like half a minute. So the question became should that sample be before the track? democratic vote that was split so the compromise was to put the sample at low volume which meant the listener of the CD heard 30 seconds of basic silence before the song started... i tried to point that out at the time but as we know democracies are useless... there are good ideas and bad ideas... everything on that release was that way... for a collection of songs that had potential boy did we ever work against each other... my vocals were brutal and that was helped by the same forces, but the point is that's not how you do it.

To do it right you need to learn how to do it wrong.

You have to be bad to be good.

One tip on how to grow a Moustache

2010-11-08T22:54:00.000-08:00

Of course it is Movember, and I was asked to join a Movember team with some of the local fathers. Now it's not like I need any facial hair prompting so sure I'm in.... why not. Besides i kind of need to start a Moustache to look like my passport photo for that trip we are taking in the winter.

Well it has come to my attention that I am dealing with a pack of facial hair rookies, and even worse they are reveling in their rookie state. It's a damn shame and a disgrace to professional facial hair as a whole, but it's for a good cause, and it raises awareness about prostate cancer (will it get all the guys into a doctor to get the rubber finger through the rectal hole for a feel to see if anything is enlarged?) You know you have to do that right?

So the most obvious mistake is the fool who shaves every day to leave a tiny moustache on their face to be ridiculed, and laughed about at work, by family members and "friends"... a test of your manhood right... good for conversation and awareness and perhaps the embarrassment becomes a better fundraiser, but it's all wrong.

Grow a beard... if you haven't done that ever in your life i don't know what to say... really I can't comprehend.

Why?
1) Because you need to know how your facial hair grows in.
2) That will let you know what will look best on your face
3) You will need to carve the moustache from some real growth to be able to see it for what it wants to be.
4) Not only that but if you trim it every day you become suspect to the "over trim", especially as a rookie... a little mistake on one side and then you have to even it up next thing you know you have the Adolf Hitler Moustache... and that's a real hard one to wear.

Other notes include the fact that you spend the first few weeks walking around with a chump moustache, and that becomes the focus of ridicule... you can't raise a proper moustache under those circumstances... like a child, a moustache needs love, and it needs to be worn with dignity. You have to start dressing to the moustache, walk a little taller, speak a little firmer. As a matter of fact if you get a good moustache it's best in social situations to only talk about things you really know... you start flapping your gums talking some B.S. then you are prone to embarrassing your moustache.

I know of a fellow who can really rock a moustache with great dignity and he has a name for his moustache. I always accepted that as a good idea but now that I'm writing this i can see it clearly.. it is about respecting the moustache and so you give it a name and when it has a name you treat it better, like a son, who you wouldn't ridicule in public. I also read on the internet that Tom Selleck`s moustache has it's own publicist... that is not the sign of a silly little joke.

Now next thing you now it will be Mecember and the rookies and their wives who allowed them to do this this "one time" will go back to their clean little faces just when their moustaches are coming into their prime, which is a damn shame i say... like the week you can go to the water cooler, hold court and bark down some facts about brewing stout and for a while there nobody even notices the moustache, because the moustache is just part of the full package that barks authority.

If you want you can Help me raise more money than the rookies on my "team" because this is embarrassing but i realize the fact of donor fatigue.

I'm starting with the "handelbar" with sharp straight lines on the sides that can grow into a fine "standard" moustache in time, so that when I'm sunning in the carribean I'm also looking good. I want to feel that moustache moving with the tide on a moonlight night... What can i say, I'm a romantic.

this happened today

2010-09-07T21:42:00.000-07:00

It happened that i had Kaiya (6 years) today and no twins (3 years) so we could do things that we usually can't, therefore, a hike in the Mountains was in order. We went up one of the local mountains to a small lookout and had ourselves some high-end chocolate as a way to say to the world we are the greatest. Looking down at the city we notice the quiet and just go explore for a while... I note that there are many berries in the bushes, we try some but they are getting past their prime.

We come to a spot where i see a Canada Jay, also know as a Grey Jay or Whiskey Jack and i remember an old trick even though its not really my thing i give it a go for my kids sake. I hold out a piece of a granola bar and the bird comes flying down into my hand in front of Kaiya and takes the food. Normally i would't do that for the main reason that the bird feet could be a hub for parasites, but my daughter, is impressed but yet instinctively says "should a bird eat human food ?", to which of course the answer is no for a few reasons. You ever hear about that mouse study where they fed wild mice, or moles perhaps human food and they developed the wrong kind of fat.. you see there is brown fat and white fat, and if you are in the wild you need the brown fat to survive. The point being animals should get naturally occurring food (if there is any left after humans have devastated the natural world)... actually while we are on that note Kaiya said on the way up on the path "is this man made, and if man made it would they make it like this"... i said no "man would find a way to screw it up"

anyhoo, there we are on the mountain me with one hand that has touched bird foot and we decide to feed the bird one more time... the bird is way off up high in a tree about 100 yards away so i hold up the food and start clicking... she asks me if i can talk to birds as earlier i flushed a thrush out of the bushes with a Phsss phsss phss sound... once a birder always a birder so i call the bird down and we observe the flight path down to my hand and the bird takes the food and flies away... and then the rustling in the bushes as a bear comes out to see who it is that is giving away all the food. Reason 2 not to give small wild animals food... because big wild animals might be watching.

we beat a hasty retreat and Kaiya thought it was a good lesson for her... I agreed.

a new office

2010-08-30T22:35:00.000-07:00

or headquarters for that matter... you see i have moved my operation to another part of the house, made a few upgrades and am feeling a "fresh new vibe".

Which begs the question... what is my operation?

Jesus effin crouch, why do i have to ask myself these derailing questions just when i start to feel like i am on a roll... and then publicly state that i am on a roll which is a sure fire way to rattle the bones of the OMEN GODS.

Now don't get all crazy one me and think that our good warrior old S Robertson has lost his faith and turned into some religious sucker like the pack of fools at my door this morning trying to give me a pamphlet on the truth. "The truth" sounded good but the pamphlet was horse shit and the dudes couldn't see it... they kept saying you see it's written right here, and i had to say sure sure but i could write a pamphlet and print it and i could write it so that it says "Ron sucks shit out of shit ass"... and i could even put in a picture of you and have an arrow pointing at your picture and then come to your house Ron, and disturb you from a fine bong hit to tell you about the truth that is written in my pamphlet... but the thing is Ron, it might not be true... do you suck shit out of shit ass Ron?

Apparently Ron has never and will never suck shit out of a shit ass... so i apologized for insinuating such but none the less i asked Ron and his partner if they caught my drift.. but like a fine tuned salesman they just dropped back into the routine so i had to shoe them away asap.

But the OMEN GODS are different... it's more about balance in the universe and pure mathematical probability. On a grander scale it is probably more about self blame... if you said something couldn't happen and it happens than you are presented with the opportunity to hate yourself for tempting fate by declaring it couldn't happen.

I do believe in "karma" and positive mind training.

Karma- good things happen to people doing good things because they spent their energy in a way that inspires positivity and hence are in the vicinity to benefit, and perhaps through their efforts they will recognize opportunity when it comes as they will understand the process of how good things work.

positive mind- if you believe you can you probably can, if you believe you will fail you are done.

One thing i know for sure is that gaining direction in ones life does not come by accident, but rather the result of a committed effort on a number of smaller fronts.

hot damn...9 years of the chronicles

2010-08-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

August 14, 2001

What is a website?

How is it useful?

Why should people go there?

And is this going to be an enjoyable pursuit for myself?

These Questions give rise to other questions for example

What is professional with respect to art and a rock and roll band?

In fact who even cares about quality?

it is indeed a fast food industry, and I'm stuck in the middle of it. This is the roadbed website, Your connection to the Super Robertson take on things. I am an artist, funny the word artist to declare yourself one its kind of like barging in and joining some club. Art is cool right, and cool attracts idiots, posers, and confused souls desperately subscribing for a sense of belonging. Of course Art attracts lovers, lovers of things beautiful and you can find beauty in anything. Don't get me wrong I mean i love innocence and I want people to have a good life.

Talked myself into a corner...am I really going to post this on the web site...I don't really know what else to do I make music, dabble in visual Art, make movies and write things that may be classified under the concept of poetry. In my spare time I like to camp, play music on nude beaches, create things and play hockey. My problem is this.... I have this band with The Shockker and Two Sticks called Roadbed...We are truly Independent and we would like to be heard because we believe we have a lot to offer music. So basically what's happening is that this here will be the Super Robertson take on the life and times of Roadbed a book written before your eyes. Now I hate the term book because it alludes to a final product which is not really the goal here...anyhoo I am going to post this up on our site let the chips fall where they may and let what happens next happen next...

-SR

that was the first post ever to this here blog series
2001-2005 the original Super Robertson chronicles are hosted on the old Roadbed website... i remember it taking years just to get audio up... now you can embed video wit a few simple clicks... yep the old Internet has come a long way. i didn't know what a blog was... apparently the term was first coined in 1999, 2 years before. Apparently "blogaroo" is not an official term although a quick search will show that it is gaining momentum. "Bloggi apparatus" is still deep under cover.

2005-present has been with this here blogger site under the heading "Super Robertson chronicles II". the blog itself was originally titled by the late great Gareth Evans... which reminds me i should look at that old mountain goat footage/ cliff jumping... things to do.

I like the fact that i started with a rack of questions, many of them remain relevant and up for debate to this day. i think we spend so much time in front of computers now that we are beginning to alter our sense of "normal". the best times i had this summer so far were when i was out far away from a computer, away from the reach where you thing that something MIGHT be important enough for you to stop doing something valuable to do something "status orientated".

when i first started this it was out of the need to "keep new content coming" so that people would have a reason to come back to the band site... i also thought it would be great for the band members to have their own page where they said something in an individual context to give a greater picture of the band. I have since learned to rely only on myself for these type of ventures.

Have i accomplished anything?

of course, any practice at articulating the thoughts in your head can only be good to help re-enforce who you are, what you believe in, and why it matters, and as a songwriter this is key no matter how illiterate you come off. always good to keep a keen sense of humour about everything because in a world of people with sticks up their asses you need to laugh at somebody so never count yourself out of the game.

on that point i also believe that a fine trigger to be insulted is a great weakness... you do what you do for the reasons you do them and if somebody tries to damn you and you let them you are allowing their shortcomings to affect the plan of your long game.

When i look back at all of the things that people have told me about the forces and drives that carry the persona of Super Robertson I'd have to say that almost all of them are bull shit. I do feel comfortable with why i do things now, something that perhaps wasn't the case years ago... i wonder if my kids will ever read all of this... EGAD!

random thoughts

2010-07-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

random is correct

I had so many earlier, thoughts were like raindrops in a downpour free to soak me like some sucker at a casino who doesn't care what he loses chasing the dream... random thoughts seemed easier on the skytrain when you are sitting there staring out the window and you are so bored that all of your thoughts seem wonderful in some unique way.

Hockey thoughts, music thoughts, plant thoughts, BBQ thoughts, insane maniac woman thoughts, crazy kook thoughts, lyric thoughts, real person thoughts, why is this world so fucked thoughts, free thoughts, sex thoughts... how fucking stupid is a list of thoughts... it is almost anti thought when you think about it.

take your chances on the long ball from time to time in life... don't bet the house on it

this makes no sense and should be deleted immediately

right now i assume "immediately" is spelt correctly because i does not have a red line under it, but more pressing is that the word spelt does have a red line under it which can put unusual pressure on a man who knows where his Achilles heel is at... so when he goes to do the spell check spelt is apparently ok... was it just not really a word until a while ago when the gatekeepers of proper language use finally submitted recently and allowed it to be a word

right now i assume "immediately" is spelled correctly because i does not have a red line under it, but more pressing is that the word spelled does not have a red line under it which means we can put a stop to this nonsense once and for all.

spelt is like a pelt, a beacon to murder.

is plastic better than pelt?

pelt is sustainable, i mean to say was sustainable, but we fucked that up... oh well acid off a ducks bath... i mean water, perhaps oil

a good victory

2010-06-25T23:21:00.001-07:00

Our hockey team won a good victory tonight with 6-5 victory... rather crazy because we were up 4-1 at one point and looked to have the game under control which is always what happens when you think you have things under control. I believe we were going into the third period up 4-1 and then we got soft in our own end and became the masters of the "flick shot special"... the flick shot special is when you move the puck from an area of danger to an area of greater danger with a little weak four foot bouncing chump ass shot.

Our key to victory was our ability to answer when necessary... the opposition tied the game @ 4-4 and immediately we answered back to go up 5-4, and then they tied it up again and then 40 seconds later we went back on top with a sneak wrist shot from the high slot that nobody saw coming and it found a way through the 5 hole.

We were able to shut the door for the final 4 minutes through a series of fire drills and scintillating saves from our goalie Dave... there was luck and hard work and diving for pucks... there were scrums on the boards and a few chops to the ribs. We won the last few key draws of the game which helped kill a bit of time before the flick shot special had a chance to apply a sense of doom to the team but in the end it was one giant successful flick shot that saved the day. High enough to clear the defense but not hard enough to go for icing.

It is funny how a collapsing game can feel good if you come away with a victory. On many levels it should be a failure, but i tend to be heavy on labeling things a failure... for example we won a game 2-1 last week and i declared that it felt like a defeat... and it did... we should have stomped their balls but it was a lack of compete inspired by the probability of sure victory that got me steaming.

I thought generally tonight we had a good for check which caused the turnovers, which kept the pressure on but then when we sat back and they had some D men that could skate and that caused problems. You have to get on those bastards immediately before they get a chance to get some speed and confidence.

I played pick up hockey the other night and when you play pick up you either wear a dark or a light sweater. I have been going dark lately in a effort to play with a few other fathers in the neighbourhood... i call us the V5T line, stemming from the postal code of course. Anyhoo we had a good D man show up an play dark right around the time i was assessing the talent on the White team, which happened to be a scary scenario... i skated up to him and said... I'm glad you are dark, and then we got talking and he said he never worries who is on the other side... because it is up to us to assure victory... I like that attitude... we won the match 4-1 which is an incredible feat that a stacked team of talent only scored one goal in a hour... most of the credit goes to the goalie... he almost got a shutout... i don't think i have ever seen that in an hour long pick up game. None the less our team played hard and over their head for most of the game... there was a fearless element to our attack... we scored on our chances and defended with honor. what else could you ever want?

idk

2010-06-23T00:03:00.000-07:00

Do you know what IDK stands for? It means "I don't know" and i found this out just moments ago when i figured that it was time for a little blogaroo but i needed a topic so i went on to chatroulette to ask some random stranger to give me a topic. i ran into (among many things) a pack of young girls (20 years old) who saw me and yelled gross, started laughing and then called me a pedobear... which is not a good accusation, but that's what you get for going on chatroulette. It's a place where people jack off to each other... which is fine by me but then people on the site assume that everybody wants to jack off to them which is not always the case... not saying that i wouldn't WANT to jack off to them, i just wouldn't... being a father of girls and more importantly a man on a mission for a topic for a blog... which is clearly more important.

The amazing thing is that the girls never use a person like me for information... sure i'm a worn, fat, balding, ugly, unkept bulgy eyed sideburned old bastard but i also know the mind of a young man and could provide some insights if people were interested in fully using the form of communication. It is almost like a real opportunity lost... i always like talking to older people on the off chance they can give me a few nuggets of wisdom or even better some well defined cases of the stupidity of mankind.

anyhoo i finally got somebody to give me a topic and the topic was idk, which was basically an answer to the question "please give ma a topic"... "i don't know" was the answer (in the form of idk) which is a good answer because it is an honest one and one that people rarely admit to. There are so many things we don't know but rarely will we admit that we don't know them. We just tend to carry on like we know the answer because we might seem stupid if we didn't... and surly people would assume we are stupid if we said that.

The other side of the window is kind of like this bizarre belief that technology will save humans no matter what damage we do to the environment that supports our ability to live... in this case we say we don't know but we actually do know... we being the knowlege that is available for those who want to see it. It is then that "i don't know" becomes an excuse to just carry on and say "more study is needed".

I don't know a lot of things... languages have always eluded me, why people pay for cable TV is another... i don't know why people ruin their lives to "be real" for a chance in a million to be a rock and roll star, i don't know how i got here other than a series of events where one chance won over all of the others... i don't know why i go on chatroulette as nobody ever wants to talk to me... i think i'm pretty good on the chats... i come up with a lot of points that other people do not... and maybe that's the problem

IDK

Rage barber.. the hunter becomes the hunted

2010-06-18T00:44:00.001-07:00

So i went to a barber the other day... probably the first time in over a decade. I have always been from the school that a real man can cut his own hair and then walk around with his head held high singing "i will not buy". There are not many of us left out there in this fast food hipster world... but hey "i just gotta be me".

The big draw for me was that i had inside information that the barber i was going to liked to get a little hot under the collar about some issues that had to do with the development of our neighbourhood. I figured it was a no brainer... go in there, get in the chair and then try to get on a few issues that a friend of mine had mentioned really gets this barber going... in principle the idea is golden... get the barber going stoke the rage all while a little clippity clip clippity clip clip clip happens to my head... how could one possibly lose?

How you lose is when you go in so confident in your plan that you think you can not fail... and you focus is all on the success of your plan and how your plan is going to unravel and you chuckle and cluck to yourself about how it's going to be so great... and educational also... i mean that, I'm sure a barber knows a lot of stuff about the neighbourhood... i was hoping for a lecture from a a man who i heard can get quite animated over certain issues.

Funny that it occurred to me that it would be educational because a lifelong barber would have his ear to the ground and his thumb on the pulse of the neighbourhood, but it failed to occur to me that this same man would be a pro at reading and dealing with all kinds of people, and there is me thinking it will be a cakewalk, which of course is a critical error. The best rage heroes only go off in fine form when they are in the proper environment. I of all people I should know this, and it was a great failure of mine to not see this... almost like that time when we had the rage cab driver that got to know me and sometimes he would have to pull over by the side of the road so he could turn around and point his finger at me to exclaim his rage... I was a mailman at the time and i had a route that was dubbed a "cab" route, which meant that i went out to the route in a cab because it was far away from the station and the bus service would have taken more time than just paying for a cab... anyhoo i had a buddy that was on a route nearby that was a bus route but since it was on my way i would take him in the cab and drop him off... he was a good guy and he was eager to learn the ways of a rage cabbie... originally he was taken aback that our cab ride had taken so long because the cab driver went bananas over an issue (happened to be the George W. Bush war that was started under obvious false pretences)... anyhoo the driver knew me and was comfortable with our conversations. To make a long story mid lenght my friend was originally a bit nervous but learned to enjoy the rage lectures and after a few we got in the cab and he said "so anything making you mad".. this was a rookie mistake because it put the cab driver in an odd position and there was no rage that day and i scolded my friend for his silly approach.

and then years later i made the same mistake... i walked into a barber who i didn't know me but knew how to deal with people thinking i was going to call the shots.

When i walked in there he had a friend there and the barber was cutting somebodies hair so the friend and i started talking cameras and i let it slip that i was there for a "social experience" and the room changed like a wind coming from the other direction... it was probably then that the hunter became the hunted but the hunter failed to realize that because the hunter was suffering from confidence induced delusions and that is never good for a sportsman... as you can well imagine.

And then when i got in the chair the barber asked me what i wanted and i said i didn't care just go at it... he wanted no part of that and said he doesn't "style" but does what people want, and then i went further in my folly and said i didn't care what my head looked like and i wouldn't be angry with any cut... and then i mentioned that i usually cut my own hair to which he replied that he could see that by the fact that it was all completely uneven (this brought laughter in the shop)... and then i tried to explain that this cut was actually incomplete... to which he agreed before I could explain that while i was performing that particular cut an emergency happened and i had to stall the cut process and forgot to get back to it which in fact put me in an odd position of looking like some deranged lunatic.

I had these nice overgrown sideburns that i was going to refuse to let the barber cut thinking that he would be frazzled by focusing on the items that i had expected we would talk about but instead i took a savage beating and i spent the entire haircut on defense and then when it came time for the sideburns he just plainly said that it would look stupid to go around with the elongated sideburns... i tried to resist but his friend mentioned that i was indeed in for a social experience and then the clippity clip happened... i had already stated that i didn't care, i was indifferent and just along for the ride... essentially meaning that the barber was the driver and i was the passenger. It was like walking into a room with a bag of marbles and the bag spits and your marbles scatter.

By the time i was done i looked like a fat middle aged salesman with cheap sideburns and a comb over to protect a balding hairline... i limped out of there and went home with my hair out of my eyes which was good.

I think I'll go back but I'll be prepared next time.

what are we doing

2010-05-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

I am the leader here right... this is the super Robertson chronicles part 2

What do i have to say... i don't even know... it's hard to say where was I...it seemed like i had a number of good points a while ago but that is now just time lost. That is the essence of life, it is what you make of it and as you get older you loose the ability to remember the pure comedy of all the great moments of the day that could be described in a blog as fine comedy if portrayed properly but then there is reality and all the things that need to be done in the day and in the end it is all just memories... memory is cheap what do you think?

Digital memory is cheap on 2010, but the memories of a life are priceless... memory is now a word that should be re-defined because a memory that a human had was something that stuck in the mind for some reason... and now memory is just everything that happened has now been recorded on memory.

I think I'm losing my focus... i must go way back to the foundations of the reasons that i took the path that i am on to answer these very basic questions that i now have trouble answering much less asking.

Telus fucks me, other people and the environment again

2010-05-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

so i had 2 cribs i was trying to give away on craigslist and i got no replies for some time and it became this obsession i was trying to give them to anybody... if i saw a pregnant woman i would go ask her if she needed a crib... finally i lost it and tried to drop them off at the salvation army... but the Salvation Army won't take them because people are too insane over "Crib safety" and in today's society nobody is smart enough to make a judgement call. the cribs were fine... so yesterday i took them too the dump... it was a long line up and i was very depressed to be dumping 2 perfectly good items that apparently nobody in this world will use due to what i thought was an overzealous safety paranoia... it was sad it cost me a few hours of a holiday Monday, gas and it left me depressed.

having some email problems so i went to the telus site and realized that Telus only sends me some of the emails that are suppose to come my way... and there was a good dozen that were responses to my crib giveaway by people who could have really used the cribs and would have been very grateful to have them.

but fucking Telus fucked us all

I'm sure there is a jackass right now saying "well have you checked your settings... blaa bla bla"... i have received emails from craiglist before under similar circumstances. it's just a damn shame... a totally preventable waste that could have gone completely in the other direction.

new post

2010-05-21T23:44:00.000-07:00

The garden is full of spinach an i myself am a salad king... for now nothing quite like fresh spinach. the trick is to water it at around 3:00PM and then harvest it at around 6:00 PM just before dinner.
then the game becomes preparation... how to prepare you salad... i found that with a little shredded carrots one can make a wrap of carrots in spinach leaves. it is so tasty it doesn't even need anything, just pure flavour. There is that word again... the one that is correctly spelled but yet is not acknowledged due to some country having a different idea about what is tight and wrong than another country. That's life however and the key to life on that level is to accept the things that aren't worth changing. There is a great religious saying about god giving you the power to change the things you can and to accept the things you cannot and the wisdom to know the difference.

and that's where our "Rage Hero" fails... the rage hero cannot accept the things he cannot change and so he tried to change them with brute force and then.

frozen spinach is for lasagna, fresh spinach is for kings and soon spinach season will be over and one must prepare by getting the beans in the ground where the spinach once ruled

i guess i need a new post... or blogaroo for that matter

2010-05-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

you see i posted the wrong blogaroo on this blog, due to some automatic sign in fiasco, and once again i think of the mule back in his office getting an URGENT email notice that YES IN FACT THE SUPER ROBERTSON CHRONICLES 2 has been updated... and then i can imagine the Master Mule almost spraining a wrist frantically clicking on that mouse to get the latest version of S Robertson bone wisdom... and then finding in fact some re-hashing of an event he was actually at and surly could have done a better job at summarizing without of course the bruised groin story, which again is probably too much information when you think about it.

the lesson here is always be aware of what blog you are writing in... like when i start S. Robertson's man Gardening blog the last thing we need is some lunatic going off on a political rant... unless of course it is a rant about genetically modified seeds.. and boy oh boy is that a good one... what the hell am i doing here.

how a song made my life better

2010-05-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

well i had a problem last year and in dealing with the problem i proved myself a "rage hero"

Rage hero- a person who reacts to a disaster in a manor that makes the disaster worse.

so i wrote a song about it and some people heard the song and recognized the problem and those people had administrative duties with respect to my problem and an opportunity arose for them to help me with my problem and they did that and now my problem is solved and on top of that the situation that had elements of problem now have elements of symbiosis... and that a good thing

the ARK

2010-05-02T23:39:00.001-07:00

"I don't know of any expedition that ever went looking for the ark and didn't find it,"

-Paul Zimansky, an archaeologist specializing in the Middle East at Stony Brook University in New York State.

you have to love that quote

Apparently a group of Cristian explorers are 99.9% sure they have found the remains of Noah's Ark.

got me thinking about the whole thing... apparently legend has it that a mountain in Turkey is the final resting place of the arc, where Noah and 2 creatures of every kind went to repopulate the earth.

what do i think of all of this?

I think it's time for another flooding.

so say I'm Noah... i guess it would be Super's Arc... I would be on a boat with a lady 100 venomous snakes (apparently there are 50 kinds of venomous snakes), a stack of stinging ants, scorpions... not to mention an agitated rhino pair a few hungry crocodiles, a pair of all of the large cats...

i think Super's ark will actually be a large barge towed by a tugboat... it would be a suped up tugboat with shag carpeting and a lava lamp

no no... i guess to get the gig you need to be one with the animal kingdom.

Oh well

i was just going to go to sleep

2010-05-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

but then it happened... i read the news, and the obvious happened... i am now enraged. It's kind of odd, isn't the news there to strike fear and then the fear can be manipulated to exercise political will? And then the logical thinkers just all start swearing and talking to themselves and are written off as crazies.

It was all about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

"I don't think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we're faced with now," said another BP spokesman, Steve Rinehart.

It just drives me insane when you hear the "nobody could have ever foresaw" card... a card that gets played every time some man made operation that makes a lot of money for a few people goes ape shit and destroys all kinds of lives... it's always "nobody could have foresaw". So you are speaking for everybody now, because you are so high and mighty and all of those people who have suggested we not do these things but nobody listened, and now that disaster has struck their voices just never happened...

Nobody could have predicted?

Nobody could have seen the financial meltdown, except all of the people who predicted it and warned against the insanity going on leading up to the disaster... but those people don't count... so nobody could have seen it.

Robertson's rule- if there is a Human involved then there can be Human error, and sooner or later there will be.
The human error can come in many forms... error in construction, error in design, error in monitoring, error in not listening to logic because money pays you otherwise... the only thing for sure is that it will happen sooner or later.

If a big earthquake hits Vancouver and the city of Richmond sinks into the ocean, somebody may say "nobody could have seen this coming", but it has been predicted by many... the human error would have occurred long ago when some fools decided to put a city on unstable Grade A Farmland... the kind of thing that a city might need to produce food one day. Just saying but nobody could possibly see that coming.

When fresh water is the most precious thing on earth the people in Alberta might be wearing the goat horns having turned many of their fresh lakes and watershed into a collection of toxic oil ponds, and somebody will say "nobody could have ever foresaw", which of course is utter horse shit, and grossly insulting to all of the left wing commie pinkos that have spent their lives energy trying to tell people exactly that.

Being right about things is something that humans react strongly to... although sometimes it is a nice feeling to be right, i don't think people really feel joy about disasters. For most people, i think, the reason they are against exploration of that nature (oil), is because they truly care about the state of the planet, and are trying to make a difference so that the planet will be live able and enjoyable for human and all forms of life. It gives people joy to see nature... these people get a sense of calm to be out in the "natural world" and so that is why they worry about these kind of developments... because nature is unpredictable... didn't we learn that from the Titanic?

So when you are some hot shot massive company that's made billions on a product that is causing all kind of grief, perhaps stepping up to a microphone and uttering a ridiculous statement that basically tries to skirt blame and nullify any opponents points that they have been making clearly for years and years, is a bit of an asshole thing to do, don't you think?

here we go again

2010-04-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

so once again a head official who made a insane call in favour of L.A. and against a Canadian team has to come on TV to try to explain why the call was made and ends up babbling away for like 4 minutes contradicting himself and all.

kind of like this:

Oh well water under the bridge EH!... no biggie.

Of course tonight was only game 3 of the first round and any team that can't kill penalties is dead anyway.

Sure i believe Sedin was aware of what was happening when it was happening, but that's what great players do let it happen. Like a great defenseman running "unintentional interference". That's what you do you as a forward you stop in front of the net and fight for position and if the puck goes off you and into the net that's a great play.

Just seems kind of weird that the last game was decided on an overtime power play where a referee decided that a defenseman purposely played the puck with his foot as he was cut in the face and trying to get off just a few feet from the bench.

I mean Vancouver lost by 2 goals anyway but the balance of bad calls seems tilted... but as the study goes we competitive people always see it that way.

the most annoying thing now is that i watched the game unnessicarily. You see i had Choir practice when the game was on, but a neighbour and fellow hockey man (also a person with multiple children) taped the game on PVR and started watching it later. A fine plan to put the kids to bed and then watch the game at your speed plowing through all of the silly comercials and commentary. Which in theory is good, but in practice was bad. Seeing L.A. get the benefit of all these calls has brought a lot of the rage back... need to rewatch some Olympic Hockey and put this nonsense out of my soul.

2010-04-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

it's always hard to try to find something to write about after a big loss

So i go on chatroulette to change the subject and end up talking to some kid baseball player from Las Vegas who happens to have a broken arm and some ligament damage. It was a good chat that almost didn't happen... he tried to get rid of me 2x but i kept popping back up (some weird glitch), and then he finally said what you 3x... and i made a few sports puns one of then having to do with 3 strikes you are out, which got us on a baseball roll. I started telling him about "windmill Robertson" who tore up the Scarborough little league in 1983 setting a record that still stands to this day (most batters hit by a pitch)... you see i was a little wild as a picture so i had to compensate by playing the inside of the base... back the batter off the plate a bit and then go for the strikeout... which ended up more often in a line drive double into center field. Later i was moved to shortstop but apparently it's not cool to go into a swearing fit when you bobble an easy ground ball in the 6th inning. then i was moved to the outfield where on one play i would make an amazing diving catch that all thought impossible to get and then on the next play i would have a routine fly ball bounce off the bone in my hand and to the ground.

The game of hockey has always suited my nature... aggressive fore-check, shoot from anywhere and force your own rebound... attack defend... he who can last the strongest the longest wins... there is great technical merit but one can be effective with smart and fearless play. It's a game where you are expected to physically intimidate the opposition and the game is constantly changing so a new play is always available and a high risk move can make you a hero or a goat in an instant... i guess that's the high slider in baseball on a 3-2 pitch... but when that pitch is hit deep to center field the fielder can't make an amazing play send it back and score for his own team.

who cares... it's like splitting hairs... that said Hockey is a better game... which puts us back to the start and why i was so bitter in the first place.. a game lost that should have been won... that familiar empty feeling of failure finds it's cosy home above my diaphragm and below my heart.

what a day

2010-04-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

isn't it annoying when people whine about what a hard day they had... that's the first key indicator that you are dealing with a failure. especially when it comes from our part of the world... Gee i woke up had the opportunity for a nutritious breakfast... ran the tap for a while so my glass of clean water would be cold enough, then took a shit in drinking water, checked my facebook and had to go through all of these messages some of them sarcastic and i had to re-assure myself everything was OK... then i had a big lunch and threw some of it away because it was just too much food for me at that time... you get the picture.

watching the news the other day and there was some big news on what to do with the "space program"... and people were happy that space exploration will continue, with getting near an asteroid and going to mars on the radar.

I tend to be a big fan of learning to live on this planet together without destroying it as the key and most basic fundamental problem humanity faces... but that would cost money with little chance of glory.

It always amazes me that the majority of people living in "democracy" keep the people who forward the destruction of the planet in power with absolute vigor.

Irony alert... the new cell phones are "green"... which has come to mean planet friendly (apparently). Could a nuclear bomb be made with some recycled metal and then get the consumer classification "green" by the ministry of the truth and the environment branch of the economic watchdog? If the right form were filled out I'm sure it could be done.

Different topic... i was out the other night and was asked a few questions on the nature of the music business... the questioner was looking for short "sound byte" answers and i kept try to tell them that that was in fact an essay question... but then we both agreed that nobody has time to read essays anymore because they are so long and you have to remember the beginning when you get to the end... which is really too much to ask, which then in fact basically answered the question in the first place.

people just want to stand on a quote for 5 minutes and then move on to the next moment of awesomeness.

what the world taught me... be smart, get what you can and then duck... not overly community minded... like the bees who work together make little waste and perform. I guess the bees don't live long enough to get to the point where they say "fuck this shit I'm tired of building cones... I'm making ovals"... the bee that tried that shit would immediately be carried to the exit and that would be it... no trial... no nothing... that bee's carcass goes back to mother earth to start again.

funny i always think of humanity in terms of other organisms in an effort to see how "off track" we have become. anybody who disagrees with that is a fool, i say. How can Humanity willingly destroy our own natural food sources, perhaps irreversibly, and barely give a rat's ass or at least totally fail to see that that is what is happening.

so we are all totally distracted and at the end of the day our distractions are causing us grief so we whine about it. In fairness we are stuck in a shit hole system where you just have to do or be damned... and then the crazy guy on the street who is saying the world is ending is actually right but he smells bad and won't get a good night sleep on the cold streets. Which begs the question... what would that guy do if we all tore down the city and made it farmland again and worked the farm together to get the food for the winter long party... he might be walking in the field saying "those turnip seeds are cursed by the colon gods"... in which case we would need to collectively do what the bees would do and sting the shit out of that wino.

don't get me wrong... i realize that there are some flaws in tonight's ideas... anytime you try to tackle the problems of humanity on a few liters of amber ale you are sure to drive down a few one-way streets in the wrong direction.

notes from chatroulette

2010-03-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

what will they do... staring at the screen... one with his hand on his head... squintey eyes and a moustache and glasses... nothing typed a closet with one shirt and a crooked hanger. and on my end i correct myself but id does not matter because i am not heard for the things i type... who figures anything anymore... focus and a head scratch i wave goodbye

not bad thanks... what are you listening too... nothing Ha

China Brazil... wow that's a big male member... it always amazes me how forgetful people are when it comes to this type of thing... somebody could easily capture that and put it on youtube and then you could become as we say "the Jack of all asses".

Grey lines that run diagonally mean you don't want to play or perhaps you want to test the water before you jump in. Remember the signals when TV went off the air in the old days? Or how about that time Homer Simpson was Mr. Plow and he had his commercial and it came on just before the lines and the whole family stayed up too watch it.

camera come on... guy rubbing groin... he says hi... me giving the benefit of the doubt type hello... then i get you want to talk dirty... i reply not really

now we are back to people looking for a naked girl and finding me instead... i always relished the role of the spoiler

on another unrelated note i went to an open house today just for laughs (it was in the hood) always a good chance to get house ideas... and like everybody and his brother was there... the house had 2 bedrooms and other families from our street said to me "what are you doing here" to which i had to reply "same thing you are"

there were 3 offers on the table for everybody to see.. the plot thickens
I am not insane.

somebody was pulling the goalie in a balaclava... i typed good cover man... but they might have your ip address

2010-03-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

ahh the old new post... a kid screaming, a tv on, some children watching the tV... and in the other window are various chatroulette "partners", most of them don't stick around long enough for a good dose of Robertson wisdom.

Many are looking for video sex... if that's what you call it... if phone sex is called that then i guess that would be it. I'm a natural nudist so i am not scarred by seeing these things... i think i might keep a magnifying glass by the table so that the next time i catch a guy pulling his goalie i can pull out the optic and put it to work. Most of these people i think are hoping for a naked girl and not the balding disgruntled fat body that happens to carry my soul... don't worry i'm just being hard on myself, remember life is a laugh... and then at nightime in the bed you give your goalie a workout off camera.

That's the way i roll. well now CT is now home... what happens if she walks in the room and at just that time some dude is yanking his member... would that look good?

perception can get in the way of reality some times...

Skypeing with random strangers... the lead line i have being going with these days is "S Robertson advice professional at your service".. i figured that could get the ball rolling in a direction i can deal with. Some are offended, some amused, and then there are other reactions.

well dinner time

2010-03-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

it is possible that i lost my mind on that last post... fore sure the greatest goal scored in Vancouver all things considered... but hey... shit i forgot what i was going to write... this is happening all too often... it was more about technology with respect to shithole band websites and social networking, that all seems rather insane now that we got thinking about a grand victory. i think i was going to try and write some lyrics

i signed myself to twitter
and a widget that will fitter
right tight in the website for the updates and all

but everything that i say
is really not to gay
and now i can alienate...

i don't know

at least i had ice cream cake

Social media ain't too friendly when you have a fist full of fingers/ why do we do anything/... ahhh simple barley old sport. Never use "WE" when you mean "I" and your sanity is perhaps in question (wrongly of course)... it get's people a little "birdy" whatever the hell that means he says as he eyes another red line. The point being, or one of them anyway is that NEVER ASSUME MOTIVATION. Often times the motivation people have is rather different than the motivation that one may perceive from the actions that got motivated. Good folks want to stat punching people in the head over that kind of stuff. In a perfect world people who had points to make could make them and others could ponder those points and classify them accordingly, and then of course everybody else would just have to shut the fuck up... and don't even go outside where you might be tempted to think something out loud causing what we would have to classify as an "overhear error", which of course would activate a judiciary body to come and make a declaration of further insanity.

Blog regret
the greatest regret you lost all that time your a loser
Facebook regret
who gives a shit some assholes will just make a comment
Twidder regret
a little regret it comes and goes fast then it's gone again
Myspace regret
a common regret at least there is music a playing
google regret
a stinging regret of that time that you exposed your member

there's nothing you do but sit in your chair posting updates and checking the status
no rock and roll no hockey goal but the dishwasher cleans all your glasses

horn solo

OK I'll say it... the greatest Goal in Canadian history

2010-03-02T23:39:00.000-08:00

Paul Henderson scored a huge goal in 1972 to stop Canada from going into a nervous breakdown over their Hockey superiority.

Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux team up to win the Canada Cup in 1987.

But Sidney Crosby's goal made the Olympics. Yea we were on a roll but can you imagine if we lost that game?

I'm an Vancouver resident, taxpayer, homeowner, hockey enthusiast, Canadian patriot and parent among other things. I voted against the Olympics in that referendum back all those years ago... i remember waking up thinking "right on we are going to shut this thing down once and for all today"... i was wrong. My point was it's a bad idea to give corrupt politicians with deep ties to developers a free pass to make hordes of money... I'm not wrong about that. I'm glad we have bettered our transit system but I'm not sure about closing ice rinks for a few years canceling kids hockey seasons so that a good working rink can be "upgraded".

My wife an I also seriously considered buying into the Olympic village which was being billed as a sustainable community at one time... we even went to a few meetings... enough to realize that that was not the case.

I could rant about the Olympics but my point was more to set the tone that I was not a Ya Ya go Olympics kind of guy. But sports and my country are things I like and I suffered through the CTV coverage... remind me to go ape shit over that one in a later blogaroo... and got into the Olympics.

So come the final event of the Olympics and Canada is set to break the record for the most gold medals by any country ever, having just broken the record for most gold medals from a host country, and it's hockey... our game... you saw the adds.

If we lose that game on our own soil in the city hosting the games it's going to be an all time low. Can you imagine sitting through the closing ceremonies watching a group of lumberjacks tow an inflatable moose around a stadium waving at people after they just lost one of the greatest big games ever? I don't think so. People wouldn't have been cheering and acting gaily... remember what happened when the Canucks lost to the Rangers in game 7 in 1994 (the game in New York)... there was a fucking riot and some dude took a rubber bullet to the head (perhaps he had it coming... i don't know). What i do know is that me, an Olympic non believer, headed out of the house that last Sunday night to witness the vibe and take a few hundred high fives from the packed city streets... i saw police high fiving drunks... the police chief himself posing for pictures with smiling Canada jersey wearing happy people. I saw people shake hands with police thanking them saying "you guys did a great job" and the police smiled back and said "you guys did a good job too"... lots of garbage but very little damage... everybody was happy as can be.

Canada as a nation has lost Canada Cup's before...(now called the World Cup for some insane reason).

If we lost in 72 you could say well we came back from what look like sure defeat and made a game of it.

If we lost in 2010... well we didn't we don't even need to go there.

notes on ideas

2010-02-12T01:25:00.000-08:00

When i was in my first band and second band, i spent a lot of my life and energy and tooth enamel for that matter putting up posters for shows thinking that this huge effort was in some way worthwhile. I was trying to send a message, or like that big shift in a hockey game where you gave your team momentum with a hard fore-check... it doesn't transfer well in band situations. In a band usually everybody is insane in their own particular way and time and mis-assigned intentions grind the bastard down to useless powder

I was actually giving a lecture about the topic at a club the other night to anybody who would listen... but the scientist must now ask "what is it now that sucks my time and energy in a non constructive way?". The obvious answer being those insane maniac children of mine, but the "new postering" is the Internet. It's a better game because you are warm and dry and not fighting city workers and other poster people for real estate, and when your shit is up it stays up... notice the negative in "it stays up". A poster will evaporate in time but a link, bad video, drunken tirade can always come back to haunt you... unless you can rise above all of that and believe in:

"Cyril once observed that the only reason for writing was to create a masterpiece. But if you haven't got it in you to make a great work of art there is another option- you can become one."

-Solomon Gursky Was Here

Mordecai Richler

most folk don't have the proper training for that one... but I'm getting off topic again... my point was somewhere or somewhat to do with the reality that we always seem to kill our precious time in life doing things that don't matter. The plays change but the game is the same on some levels.

I don't know why i make music to be honest, i just do, i absolutely do NOT want to be a "rock star" under any circumstances. And i honestly believe that i mean that. I have a desire to make money to buy freedom, and i feel good sharing opinions through song, and i love to just sit on a groove and feel it.

why am i awake writing this?

the experiment started for the same reason as the posters, but it was meant to add a human element to the dilemma. I remember "band meetings" where i tried to get the other members to come up with one 3 line poem per week to put on the site to give a more varied view of the band but no can do... in the end the whole site was called "my personal vanity site" by some.

you know the song "your so vain you probably thing this song is about you".. my dad always though that song was hilarious. My point being a blog (called the chronicles) should be about you. I'm just a guy in a band and this is how i see the world, and I'm going to be wrong and i might be right from time to time, but why fudge it to the trends.

the raw facts are it's 2:00 am and i need sleep

i should just delete this shithole, but lets let the truth ring for good or ill.

2010-02-10T00:13:00.000-08:00

I just punched back a few more episodes of "The Wire" and then down for a night of blogging, or is it a morning of blogging. After hanging with 3 kids all day a man can really get into a little of the old AM silence if you know what i mean. Probably not actually, because most of the sissies (no offense) with kids my age are sleeping away worried about what tomorrow might bring... my attitude (for some reason i use to always try to put "additute" but the spell check finally straightened me out... who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks). Anyhoo, which is not a word, by the way... my attitude is that tomorrow is going to happen anyway (if we are lucky).. he says as he hears a police or military helicopter go by.

In some ways it's a rather easy day tomorrow, i have a band coming to play the Super Robertson Supper Show, so all i have to do is either stay home, or show up and force the crowd to write a poem and then force the band to preform that said poem, which will be harder on them than on myself of course. I bet you old Mule is glad he is not on deck tomorrow night... Olympic security, band with set, lunatic with principle.

Principle is like values you have.
Principal is the guy in charge of your school.

I remember my mother telling me that your principal can be your "pal"... she was a primary school teacher. Sure as hell wasn't my pal. Principal's have no sense of humour, when it comes to practical jokes and their feelings for destruction of property are not aligned with my own...

I was a special kid in school... there were a few Principal's that saw something in me and tried to reach out and i always ended up disappointing.

It was the principal who encouraged me to be the only boy in "french club" and then when we sang that song at the assembly i pulled the curtain on us.

It was the principal who saw me as a "leader" for the band as my early trombone skills set a good pace, but then there were too many complaints from the clarinet section about kids getting bopped in the back of the head with the business end of the trombone "outer side", so then i got moved to percussion because i needed to hit things but the reins were too heavy and i snapped at the Christmas assembly in front of all of the parents and went for an ad-lib solo. My Pal showed such anger in those eyes and those lips... thin moustache quivering... sorry man,. I'm just a natural ass hole.

2010-02-07T23:19:00.000-08:00

It's a lot of work watching television, or at least you can lose a lot of time that you could be doing something "productive". I have been watching a series that ran 5 seasons, mowing down a season a week, staying up late lying on a couch banging episode after episode... in some ways it beats wasting time on the internet and perhaps some down time is what i could use. It's sort of why i don't watch TV... I just have this obsessive way about things. On one hand i watch it on "my terms", meaning no commercials and not waiting week to week for an episode... the beauty of technology. But are My terms really watching TV all weekend? Doesn't sound like the kind of terms i would naturally subscribe to if we were like talking philosophy if you know what i mean.

It's been a strange week. On Monday i got a call from my sister telling me my Mother was in the hospital because she happened to be walking into a grocery store in the middle of a robbery and some dude ran out and bumped her out of the way, breaking her wrist and pelvis. My Mother is my fathers caregiver so you can do the math on that disaster, but it looks like things are being sorted accordingly.

It's the "incident" that some of us in the family have been worried about for some time. I have been trying to get my parents to scale back and get into a place more suited to their "changing lifestyle". I'm not meaning ship them into a "home" but rather find a place that's not a 3 level house with bedrooms and laundry and kitchen all on different floors. My parents, being resistant to change have laid out excuse after excuse and in the end i think the greatest respect one has to give somebody else is the right to live their life as they choose. So it was always "what if this happens?", with the logic following then "you won't have the choice", on the better to choose your destination. Still i do a lot of things i perhaps shouldn't (some might think), and i surly appreciate a stubborn self preservation attitude... it's what keeps people moving. I mean i probably wouldn't have made all of those records (or CD's) if people believed in me... i had to prove them wrong and the power to prove people wrong can be a mighty ally indeed.

where am i going with this?

i think it was a story in the book of Rumi where a farmer and his son live on a plot of land and some wild horses come onto the property and the neighbour says "that's good news" to which the man replies "we'll see", and then next day while trying to train the horses, the son is bucked off a horse and breaks his leg and the neighbour comes by and says "that bad news" and the man says "we'll see" and then the next day the king's men come around to collect all of the able bodied men to fight in a war in some far away land and the son can't go because he is lame and the neighbour says "that's good news"... you get the point.

Apparently my Mothers pelvis is actually fractured in a good place (for full recovery), so i guess I'm trying to put the best spin on this possible (with all of this philosophy talk). I am a man of faith although i have no use for religion personally, so from thousands of miles away i am trying to help my family find their way. Mom and i laugh on the phone, that's what I'm good for and in between chuckles i try to slide in some good options for the future.

One thing that pisses me off is going on to websites of "retirement" communities... may of them offer you a free gift to join in. To me that smells like shit. You are talking about your life and the most basic part of it your home, and no "free gift" will ever make that right. Then you start thinking about "management companies" and i recall my brief stint as Strata Council president "working" with the "Management company"... and in the end i ended up just cutting the fucking grass myself because it was just too damn stupid and expensive to get somebody else to tell somebody else to tell some pecker-head to cut the damn grass.

The crime aspect is weird and hard to swallow, but you can't change the past. Oddly enough years ago i was beaten on the streets for some reason I'll never know but it did give me a "timeout" and a chance to re-think the direction of my life and i look back at that as a positive moment. I remember they sent me to a psychiatrist to talk about it (being a victim of crime and all) and i laid that on him and he told me i was remarkable well adjusted.

here's hoping.

2010-01-17T23:16:00.001-08:00

So there i was out and about meeting and greeting the people of the world, sharing stories and good cheer... perhaps even for a moment coming off like some easy going fun loving average Hammerhead. The wife of the man trusting in me to be a rational and sane person to bounce their "difference of opinion" off of me. Apparently the wife thinks it prudent to throw out the man's Kennwood cassette deck and life collection of tapes because of course they are so like "yesterday". For a moment i was thinking of agreeing with her and offering to come and remove the deck that could serve as an emergency backup to my backup tape deck... but then i came to my senses and openly questioned the said woman's sanity in a colourful manor which really didn't go over to well... it probably didn't help that the Husband's eyes literally bulged out of his head in agreement with my sentiment.

women are insane... take it from me, i live with 4 of the weasels.

case in point: take the old Man and Woman sharing a toilet scenario... all you ever hear is this bullshit about the man leaving the seat up... what, like the woman is so dumb she would actually sit down on a toilet seat with out looking and if for some reason she plunges into the toilet it is somehow the man's fault? Totally insane of course, but you know the real thing here... when women piss in a toilet they get piss on the underside of the toilet seat which the man then has to touch when lifting the seat so that he doesn't end up getting piss on the toilet seat. But the men never say anything they just clean it an carry on to the next task... natural team players.

How many men out there have gone to take a piss and got a finger full of piss concentrate, cleaned up and went downstaris to have to then defend their right for their stuff to not be under the constant threat of becoming deemed obsolete.

I guess that's why they make those "horse shoe" toilet seats

The other real problem here is that we have lost our focus in the modern era... it's all about newer better buy more and not about really enjoying what you have, which of course you can't do because you are so busy "competing" to just exist that there is no time (or the time get's lost on wasteful procedures) to enjoy the things you love.

I was talking to another couple an older retired couple and they mentioned that their life quality has increased ten fold since they retired. As he said "people ask me don't you get bored not having to go to work and have a purpose"... this guy and his wife have a few good purposes... great people.

When you look at the raw facts it looks unlikely that i will one day be able to retire and have my own personal space where i can set up all of my stuff and enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed... but at the same time you have to "dare to dream".

black and white

2010-01-17T00:25:00.000-08:00

There was some discussion over the nature of blogs going heavy on the black and white text layout... very much like this old shit hole blog, so i was almost thinking of changing it but then when you open that can of worms you get windows that alert you to the fact that you need to re-format, because i guess the Internet has moved ahead and it wants to take you with it, but deep down you know that moving ahead equals more surveillance, tracking and consumer profiling... which is about as inspiring as the wait room in a vasectomy clinic.

you would think a guy like myself would be all over the vasectomy idea... being the confidence level i have in the idea that i do not want to have any more children... many other fathers in the neighbourhood have gone that route but i don't see me in that boat. I'm not a fan of the word "snip"... lets face it, it's a shitty word... four letters that have a zero positive factor. And of course the great lesson in life is to never give up all your cards in the game... not that there is really a game in the sense of a selfish person versus person angle, but rather you never really know what the future holds, and the minute you think you do you are wrong.

For example in the years ahead when fresh water becomes more and more scarce and Canada has to be invaded by foreign nations under security certificate ratification to make sure that the "earths" water for the "people" is in stable hands and not under the control of 13 term Prime Minister Harper, know for his aggressive attacks against the apathetic citizens of Canada. Being a port city, Vancouver could be one of the first places bombed and destroyed and then occupied... we might have to flee to the woods and live among the trees as rebel fighters... in a situation like this I could be called on as one of the natural leaders to donate sperm to help re-populate the rebel forces... clearly under these circumstances i would strongly regret any snipping that were to occur in my groin region.

Of course there are many other equally believable scenarios that all end in regret when the word vasectomy is used.

come to think of it... what a bad blog topic... I blame Mule... to take a page out of the Jefferson's

Damn Mule

what has mule got to do with it?

mule posted something on a network site, which got me thinking, which caused a distraction which then forced a simile and now we are visualizing testicular operations... damn Mule!

And he thought he had an eye problem!

I don't know what else to say... it could possibly be that this here blogaroo is "un-recoverable"... there is no saving it... the ships hull had been destroyed and the tiger sharks are just slowly cruising around knowing that the end is a foregone conclusion. Speaking of that last sentence... actually it's not even a proper sentence but the word "cruising" i had a hard time spelling... i was trying to throw "e" in there and then a "w". On thing i have been trying to challenge myself on is to try to spell the word right without going to the spell check that will give you the right answer... unless of course you try to spell colour or neighbourhood.

2010-01-12T00:09:00.000-08:00

Went to the gym tonight to catch the third period of the Canucks game on the cardio machines... not since Wayne Gretzky high sticked Doug Gilmour have i seen such insane officiating.

Tonight there were some phantom calls when the game was on the line, and the calls changed the game... I would be more enraged if i had paid top dollar to see the game live... which of course would never happen (me paying top dollar to see a sports event totally geared for television). I believe i went in to that concept a few times so you can sift through the archives if you care.

I went to see Avatar on Saturday Night... I'm not a movie guy, but there was a "woman's" meeting in my house that night... where women talk about spirituality and goals and do tarot card readings, which is too much of a kook show for my man blood, so the options were drink and watch the Flames douse the Canucks or go to that other side of life and see a very popular 3D movie at a Cineplex Odion.

My friend had a "herbal remedy" that we sampled before going into the conglomerate complex of noise and lights... we had our tickets... my friend is very organized and he got them online in an effort to lessen the stress on our poor hearts. To make a long story mid-length we were there with our tickets a good 45 minutes before showtime.. we were actually outside listening to the end of the Flames Canucks game on our trusty portable radio thinking time was on our side... but we were wrong.

we went to our gate (gate 5) and they sent us to gate 10 on the other side of the building where there was a massive line up and people yelling at people... the crowd control people were shouting orders at the crowd... it was most degrading, and i was thinking that they are really wasting an opportunity here... they have all of us "consumers" here there should be screens on the wall or a designated waiting room hitting us with "cool" advertising rather than some middle aged troll barking at people not to sit against the wall but rather stand in an orderly fashion for the next 40 minutes waiting to hear some teenage jackass yelling have your tickets ready... as you can imagine we were rather traumatized by these events.. i just covered my ears when they started yelling as to shut out the bad energy. When the line finally started moving it looped into this strange hallway and back out

this was me in the hallway:

it was around this time i decided to ask anybody shouting for a pen... i had a bunch of ideas and the pen talk seemed to put them off their game and shut them up for a bit.

we got into the theater grabbed some decent seats and spent the next half hour being the suckers i wished we were when we were in line having fools yell at us. We sat comfortably and were the victims of some aggressive advertising. This is where i was thinking that a band would be a nice touch... i mean we are all here paying top dollar taking hit after hit... you could give us something... I'm sure i stand alone.. loud commercials me swearing for a mute button and then i remembered that i had to take a shit... now was my time to rid myself of that long skinny fecal matter that had been barking at my sphincter for some time... eventually that was over and i made it back for a few thousand previews and then our movie started.

the movie was pretty good... i liked the fact that it was low on the love scenes... the 3D was pretty good... i kind of wish i saw in in Imax but i imagine you would have to be in a line for hours with people yelling at you, which is worth nothing in this world.

but i guess the movie is about another world and it sure was that.

The other thing about the Movie was that one of the main characters, a woman scientist was chain smoking in sealed chambers where the humans had to live becuse the "gas" on the planet didn't jive with human breathing. She was smoking away and they really played up the "she is strongly addicted" card, which from what i have read is one of the primal bases of unconscious smoking addiction... ie: the smoking fetish.

good that our hero Mr. Cameron didn't pass up the opportunity to get in bed with the smoking industry in 2010. some things never change.

Now what is it that our hero has to hunt and peck over?

2009-12-14T23:42:00.000-08:00

Looking for some data i discovered a hidden stash of wheat beer... i guess that's the way we roll around here. The latest wheat beer that was bottled last week is a little sweet at this time... you see i was out of Dextrose so i used Sucrose and that could be a problem. I believe the Chemistry of it is that Dextrose is 1/2 of Sucrose... meaning that sugars are made up of what we call "hydrocarbon rings" and essentially one hydrocarbon ring is a dextrose formation and 2 of them bonded together is a sucrose formation. I'm worried that the yeast will have a harder time fully breaking down sucrose... perhaps it will just take longer. It's one of the problems when you wear a lot of hats... you put on your "brew master hat' and your realize the jackass forgot to get dextrose when he was wearing his "shopping with 3 kids hat" and you look at the schedule and it's bottle tonight or 5 days from now... but this is how you learn. i did use sugar in the ginger beer... brown sugar to be exact, and lets just say when you grab a ginger beer it is "hammer time". the next brew will be an amber ale and i guess I'll have to start it tomorrow night because the night after is SRSS and then a sting of Christmas social events that basically string into the next year.

That's right we almost made it to the end of another year... how did we do?

well i just went into a very dark moment falling into the whole "human civilization" thing, where you get an automated call wanting to talk to you about your credit card rates and then somebody gets on the line and tries to offer you a deal to borough money at around 15 cents a dollar... and then when you tell them that what you really want is for them to never call you again they say something rude and hang up. An now we are into the "Climate Gate" which from my understanding is a new PR move to once again try and deny the concept of "Global warming" to cater to the scoundrels of the short term economy.

I would like to have a conference with all of those who believe in that sort of denial... if we could get them all in a room and then get some cars in there and start them up and let them idle... Oh but they would die because of carbon monoxide poisoning. yes that's true... along with global warming fossil fuel burning creates an incredible amount of toxins.... but why worry about that... the economy is the only important thing and since we ran the economy into the ground creating a culture of consumers with insane borrowing habits... lets just keep it rolling... status quo yay!

One of the amazing things about our times... people commenting on news stories.

"global warming is the biggest pinko con job ever we need a break at the pump not some left wing tax grab" written by a person who forgot they were human an required clean non toxic air, water and food to sustain a happy life... or should i say healthy life. 230 toxins found in the average new born baby on this earth... way to go economy, better get that kid some plastic toys asap, train them to want and need "new".

I guess the question on how did we do should be more... did we have a happy year when we weren't obsessing about how insanely stupid the human race is? and yea we had a lot of laughs... Emily took her first poo in the toilet today. She told me she had to go so i said "you go in the toilet, I'll give you some ice cream with a cookie on top"... so she went so i gave her the deal and the Hailie (her twin) was like OK I'm going now and the Kaiya (5 years old) was in like a dog pointing out that she had a poo earlier in the day.

Kaiya is about to sing in the Christmas play for her school, but she doesn't like one of the songs because the character "Suzy" just wants more and more presents.

My kid- listening to lyrics, and disagreeing with the premise that they are based on.

I love it!

supper

2009-12-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

at dinner Kayia asks me
Ok Dad which one do you like best : Hockey, making Beer, or doing Supper Show

more later

S Robertson motivational lecturer

2009-12-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

Man is unfocused and frazzled the lunatic kids are rioting upstairs perhaps they need to be separated at night... which would give a new reason to scream. It's like 10 fucking thirty and for some reason i feel like a hotel bell boy running up to do room service when the incessant racket become too much for one man's teetering sanity. It's no wonder i never get anything done around here... just absorb complaints, try to solve problems with rational solutions, which are met with tantrums that need more absorbing and then end of the day problems. Oh well, buy the ticket take the ride. Suck it up, and now is the time for me do do something utterly useless like sitting like a sloth in a chair pecking out this gibberish.

Note to self... don't attack what little momentum you have, it's not good for business. Business being "the act of doing"... interesting now that i mention it, it's like the word business has been ruined by money in that same figurative way that money destroys everything. I was always a fan of the term "business end of" as in " The Ho Chong diner called it a salad but it was in fact just the business end of an iceberg lettus", or, "Uncle Don reached under the cabin to retrieve the baseball but instead grabbed the business end of a common porcupine". Speaking of that i just had to go up and give a business talking to the twins who just can't see to SHUT UP! Emily had stolen Hailie's blanket so Hailie was freaking out... totally insane, they both have 2 blankets so for some reason somebody needs 3 which causes the girl who needs to go to school tomorrow to be awake having to listen to this nonsense and the father who is always on the edge of flying off into a patented rage unable to focus on anything no matter how unimportant it may be... fortunately the Mother is downstairs sleeping, we need her awake and annoyed like we need a root canal right about now.

I mean i write this stuff, but it's just because i have no real purpose in life (joke OK)... the point i was going to start was that I don't have to go to Canada Post tomorrow and work as a mailman for my troubles... i actually don't mind the mailman work... it's just the incessant stupidity that comes with a job like that. What kind of job... a job in a company desperately trying to rake in more profits all while claiming to serve the public (which they do) that is swamped by incompetent managers aggressively ducking work and trying to climb the ladder writing memos and lectures to a heavily unionized workforce who are divided by apathy, opportunity, disillusionment and sloth, where in most cases are represented by the loudest and laziest voices.

wow just writing that took a lot out of me.. i had to think back and remember how there were multiple exapnles of total incompetence that directly put plenty of unnecessary stress on all kinds of peole that helped foster an attitude of apathy and despair that was completely unnecessary. I should almost go back as a "special liaison officer" between management and worker... I could go into the meeting and find out what it is they wanted to say to the workers and then word it correctly, or as in most cases just say "is this really important to the function of our company or are you just trying to justify your job in some bizarre way"

hey the kids are asleep... i feel kind of bad... perhaps i should just wake them up so they can scream at me and i can just take it like a man and be happy. Of course I'm not going to wake the kids up... it will be music time once i get this dog of a blog done.

Speaking of insane twins, i had to go to main and 14th to get our passports, because my useless piece of shit mail person (who is covering my route) carded our fucking passports... sure we weren't home we are never home at that time because we go to the school to pick up kaiya passing the mail people in the neighbourhood and chatting of course since we are co-workers and we have worked together for a long time... all i'm saying is that if it was me i would have found the said person home FOR SURE...

none the less i guess we got out for a walk which is always nice, and i managed to scarf down a burger at Vera's Burgers with all 3 kids so not all was lost... but when i was in the Mall some guy came up to me with crazy eyes and pointed out to me that I indeed had twins... i thanked him for pointing that out to me and he pressed on... he got in real close... he has twins also 22 months i believe and then he mentioned that at the "people with multiple births support group" there is a couple with 18 month old twins and they are expecting triplets... Holey shit! the question of course is that if you need to be in a support group because your children are overwhelming you 1) how do you find time for sex and 2) you have got to be all over the birth control... perhaps some religious fools... anyway it got me thinking... this guy needs some help so i tried to sell him on doing a supper show... his eyes almost popped clean out of those rickety sockets... i got in close and spoke with calm authority "this is the way it's going to be from now on"... i said "Wednesdays we do the SRSS and drink hard until midnight, then we man it up Thursday morning, do what needs to be done and focus on recovery for Thursday night Hockey 10:45-midnight... then we drink again". And for a moment i was actually really excited... the schedule that i have... that i have been questioning as of late will actually come in handy in helping a fellow man. The only problem was the the "fellow man" was fully retreating and almost tripped over a fixed mall bench... unfortunately he failed to see the opportunity that was being presented to him. For a moment i was ready to act as a mentor to a complete stranger, almost in some way forcing my hand on the issue. My point of course was that this whole "support group" is not working for you... you are running around with an aura of defeat... it was then that i noted myself and my "failure" complex, but i didn't mention it. I was more like we can go on stage, i'll have some beats and some bass lines and you spill your guts... we will come up with a name for the segment... and then we will go over it, develop a new attitude plan for you and we will hit it again the next week and there will be a theme of growth. I tried to mention there will be good people there to drink with and the whole process is what we are looking at, but he made a clean get away when the twins started pulling hair and i had to break them up... as he turned the corner i yelled "some of us are trying to to put a dodge ball team together... perhaps that would work, it's a nice metaphor for twins" but he was gone. Oh well so much for me as a mentor.

i just can't wait fore my kids to be old enough to manage my myspace account.

Speaking of that i had D Rilcof over to the house on friday... we hit the home brew pretty hard and he made the fatal mistake of logging into facebook on my computer and forgetting to log out later that night i noticed the error and decided that his profile needed a new status update... "I soiled my pants due to a cabbage lunch but it's not that bad... i just lined my underwear with toilet paper and nobody will be any the wiser. Well I'm off to a Christmas party now". Watching the comments that flowed in and the eventual disbelief that somebody would actually do that really is an interesting statement on our society. Basically we are all adjusted to this level of communication (and i think it's good don't get me wrong), but when it is posted that somebody has just shit their pants and is essentially not really worried about it, well, can we have a little levity people? Life aint that bad, sure the world is fucked and there is a zero chance of changing that, but hey we are still kicking, lets live a little.

Bloggerson Strikes back episode like fucking 2 million

2009-11-30T22:16:00.000-08:00

I should really think of what i am going to write before i fatally title a blogaroo whilst i sip a pale ale and render a Hey Rocks Livingroom. I won't miss the Super Robertson Supper Show when i stop doing it in a few months... i mean i will miss some of it, but the obsessive documentation that, for some reason, I believe it to be pinnacle.

Does the word "pinnacle" even make sense there? i was kind of thinking about tennis balls earlier. Why was i thinking of tennis balls, millions of readers simultaneously ask... well you see i was watching tennis clips as a pre-procrastination Blogaroo exercise. It all started very innocently... go over the sports news of the day, and find out the Serena Williams is being fined for an outburst during a Grand Slam match... which of course led to the obvious... watching some classic John McEnroe outbursts. Now there is a rage hero!

Where was I? Well i worked my way to the concept of a rage hero which always makes for a good blog... i publicly foreshadowed the end of the SRSS as we know it thus breaking the hearts of millions of fans across the internets... mentioned the beer... a constant. CT is home now so a new diversion is due.

CT went grocery shopping so we put the stuff away and i discovered that the squash i bought last week has gone bad on the counter... it it were summer the fruit flies would have given it away but it wasn't until i moved it and my fingers went through the skin that i knew beyond a shadow of a doubt Mr. acorn squash was doomed. In a more negative note... actually lets skip that... I'll just come off like some fine point rage hero jackass... Ok, none the less we have a few new plastic piece of shit sleds in our house... much like the sled i borrowed from the neighbour and took Kaiya to the hill during last years snowfall. I believe there was a blogaroo over this issue and if I'm not mistaken i spent the whole holiday season telling anybody i had pinned in a room for 20 minutes of "SR Logic"
1) why the design is a piece of shit
2) how could this possibly be mass produced
3)why isn't anybody else enraged by this

As a member of the great West Hill CI toboggan team, i take my tobogganing very seriously... so you can see why, when being ridiculed by the other parents when Kaiya and I could not make it down the hill without a sharp turn followed by a savage wipe out... i went insane. I won't bother explaining why because NOBODY CARES, and i have already explained in this blog, and it is irrelevant because CT scored a fine old school wooden toboggan on Craigslist and that's what I'll be flying down the hill on this year letting the other suckers in the neighbourhood eat my dust. Note to tobogganers... you cannot buy a good toboggan in Vancouver once a good snowfall has happened... which of course makes you wonder what happens to all of those plastic pieces of crap.

Speaking of plastic pieces of crap i went to Disney on Ice this weekend with my oldest Daughter... it was a friend and myself and our kids... we were killing ourselves at what people will pay for useless items that will one day end up in a landfill or floating in the pacific ocean. The best was this $24 plastic thing that spins, makes an annoying noise, and the spinning part has lights. i believe it is a "tinkerbell" magic wand thing.... so you are watching the show (Cars driving slowly around the rink set to "life is a highway") and people are screaming ("cars" was a Disney movie) and waving these annoying noise and light makers. The real comedy is that before the show the loudspeaker had this one "during the show there will be non toxic smoke which in no way could be hazardous to your health... and now would be a good time to shut off your cell phone so to not disturb people in your section". they definitely have the art of fleecing down. For $10 you can get a plastic cup with some coloured sugar ice in it.

In the end i made sweet popcorn when we got back to the house... it was my first time making sweet popcorn but it went well... we had to make some deals with the kids in the stadium.

The Brew

2009-11-18T00:40:00.000-08:00

Tonight's Brew was a standard pale ale done while sampling aged wheat beer and ginger beer... these beers aged a few weeks really taste better, but for some strange reason the beers around here never get a chance to age properly. I mean the blogging has been good and the insanity of screaming children passes come night time, and the pants are getting tighter. Who would have ever thought one could make such tasty beers from their own office. "Never give up on a game Robertson" a man says to himself as he ponders the days events and casts a slurred grin to the hope that tomorrow might bring.

Speaking of hope, i applied to some thing where you get a showcase spot at Canadian Music Week in Toronto this March. In part of the application there was a short essay question regarding "how this showcase will help your career".

I answered along these lines:

It comes down to Hope and Purpose with the emphasis on the latter. What all bands really need is a purpose, some light on the horizon that offers a glimmer of hope that what you are doing is indeed worthwhile. A purpose draws the focus of a band to prepare for the event. In the end a career will be judged by the body of work created (one can only hope) and having a purpose with hope could translate into a productive quarter that ultimately will have a positive effect on the body of work, and in the best case scenario create a "surge effect".

Of course i went off the rails hammering that idea, and it's true. A career is life and life is a journey and a journey needs destinations, or a change in the pathway good or bad... just something to happen! the two times i have had broken hands resulted in some fine songwriting as a result of being forced to keep it simple (if that's even possible to say that for me). The songs "Hey Rock's Livingroom" and "with a damaged Hand" would not have happened if my hand was not broken at the time of conception.

None the less something tells me my answer is wrong...

one for thee old Mule

2009-11-16T22:19:00.000-08:00

Like i mean shit, if somebody is going to read it why not?

Funny have been having a few talks with some people lately who say they always read my blog and like my relationship with "failure", although they find it ridiculous but are amused none the less... and then i hit them with "what blog are you reading?" and they look at me like an Alien, or the chat becomes confused. i have a feeling people are reading the Super Robertson Supper Show Blog but of course I'm not too sure because failure is everywhere... I spy with my little eye something that is about to become an unmitigated disaster. Why look on the bright side when the dark side is so rich... or the classic patented WB approach plan for the worst and then maybe, just maybe, you could be pleasantly surprised.

For the record: I feel that my brand of negativity is just more realistic banter that seems so down and out because our world is always trying to squeeze awesome out of ordinary.

I also have a bone to pick with the lies society told me as i grew up... the goalposts of success, why you do things, what you can't do, how you need to dress, what you need to have... all bullshit... well not completely but the rules are not absolute and the game's referee's are as crooked as a big time lobbyist.

Success is in the eye of the beholder and failure is in the eye of society. My poor Mother, when i got a job as a Mailman she in her supportive way said "well with your education you will shoot right up to the top of that company"... which is totally not me for reasons that would need 1000 blogs to make clear and surely i would be dead now as the result of a massive brain aneurysm that would occur at meeting number 1673945 to go over the simplest of ass backwards thoughts. Hanging out with a bunch of people who have more ambition than brains, with the sense of humour of a rhinoceros, and the personality of a garden gnome.... all ready to stab each other in the back and fuck the workers over for a chance to move up the ladder of "success".

No thanks I'll take my failure please. I know what i haven't done (sold a bunch of records and thus made a respectable income which would justify my continuation as a "working artist"). HELL I was such a Failure of a parent that i didn't buy my kids BABY EINSTEIN dvd's to sit them in front of to make sure i aggressively grow their brains from a young age as the promotional material that was picked up by the press clearly stated. For the record they lost that case the other day and have to refund people who bought that shit under those pretences... except in Canada... i think there is a 6 month window. Imagine that nonsense... put your infant in front of a television so they will be able to "keep up" with this ever intelligent society we have... that's just incredible. Hey man i hear eating a shit sandwich makes you smart... get that in the press and then buy manure stocks...

I failed to see the rationalization for various wars, i fail to see why it is more important to let companies continue to produce throw away packaging, I fail to see why the fact that there is an island of plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean that is slowly degrading and irreversibly contaminating the environment, and it's not really an important issue for most living humans that make the key decisions on what to do and what not to do for the sake of our continued "well being".

I am starting to feel an uncontrollable rage coming on...

2009-11-09T23:35:00.000-08:00

took the old myspace blog down... not much to miss there

The body is like a fluid mass
But just words that are boundless
Insert symbol
because poetic is easier than making sense
in a world gone wrong with generic responses
to problems caused by the greed of money

It has been said that continuous effort, rather than strength and intelligence will unlock our potential.

I guess you have to buy into that kind of stuff in order to find the strength to do things like this.

By golly gee, another blogaroo... another opportunity for some fine wisdom. Words of advise to others... avoid sitting in a chair staring at a computer. Go for a walk, learn an instrument, read a book... Well now you see that is silly, for if you are to read this you will be sitting at a computer checking out the band 21 tandem repeats... the thing we want you to do... I should talk about how great we are with our riveting live shows, mind bending lyrics, and natural pop sensibilities. Yes indeed 21 tandem repeats puts on the show of shows... nothing short of extraordinary.

Single Parent

2009-11-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

Well my wife went to the big smoke (Toronto) yesterday morning (Thursday) and it's now tonight (Friday), and boy am i glad i have a healthy supply of home brew in the house... i was just going to go to bed, but then i thought about the mighty Mule (Rob Hughes), who i had a good chat with the other night at the SRSS (Super Robertson Supper Show)... much more on that next Tuesday night in another blog. Not trying to get off topic, but rather get into a proper Robertson writing flow where the thoughts are not impeded by anything (proper sentence structure, reality)... well i just took a call from Pockets (my neighbour) and we were talking about beds and the idea of me perhaps getting these 2 free single beds from craigslist (for the twins) and then she mentioned BEDBUGS and now we get to revisit paranoia. I mean i have 2 cribs to get rid of, and there ain't no bugs on them, but you never want to be the loser in that game. Good beds are expensive and our family tree's both stipulate good bedding... you are never mad at yourself for buying good beds.

Jeeze i wanted to talk about how insane it must be to be a single parent... but now we are on a bed tangent. My father always subscribed to good beds, and i was a recipient of that fine forward thinking... unless of course we were on a road trip and pulled into a hotel and dad would spend 10 minutes lying on each bed making sure he got the best bed... which of course was all for naught because we had to move rooms at midnight because some "squirrely" hotel desk clerk railroaded us into a room next to some device that made a lot of noise (hotel air conditioner unit). My mom was horrified, and my sister rolled her eyes, i stood by my dad as we moved rooms.. it was at those times you would get those beauty one liners (man thinks the world is against him... he is just an honest paying customer being screwed by lassitude and incompetence). It's always an odd situation when you have relatives who have no regard for quality bedding who are always trying to have you come down and spend the night... It's hard to say "yea i'd love to come but since you don't have a bed that it's possible to sleep in i'm going to have to decline"... i believe therin lies part of the root of some of the famous family feuds... hopefully families don't read blogs written by failed musicians.

OK the word family got pecked on the keyboard... now it's time to crack the wheat beer we bottled last week and get down to business. Of course a tall glass of ginger wine is not the kind of thing one would normally use to cleanse the palate, but you got to do what you got to do.

actually it's pretty good... my last two brews haven't been my best, but this one i believe could be a winner.

Ok single dad... that's what the title alluded to... single dad a few days after Halloween, is not a good combo either... parenting is never good when the kids have a supply of candy... I mean it's good, just not ideal. On Thursday it was raining and we were hungry so i did the unthinkable... i went to that McDonalds by Hastings and Highway 1... it has a big playground. the kids all ate a Hamburger and drank a milk and played around on the slides and climbing apparatus. There was a woman there with 2 boys who i wanted to punch in the face (the woman)... she had the loudest annoying complaining voice... i believe she was a single mom from the many cell phone conversations i was forced to hear... it's a tough go... but one thing you might want to consider is not loading your kids full of sugar and then yelling at them to settle down.

I think eating properly and routine are the key to child rearing and when you become a single parent you have a mighty task... for me i can keep the kids rolling and make a fairly healthy dinner with most food groups present and then CT comes home... everybody is happy to see her and she takes over the 1 on 1 interaction with the kids... at that point is is something she wants. She loves her family and wants to be involved in a positive way, the kids love the mommy and are overjoyed she is there, and i can somewhat shut off from the incessant needling of my wonderful family.

But as a single parent dinner comes and there is no relief and you don't care who eats what and your just praying for bedtime, and you become less in tune with the reality of the true nature of you kids and more focused on their annoying tendencies... you want to will them to do what's right but you have lost the handle on everything. I could see how this could become habitual where the parent and the children draw lines in the sand and operate as enemies. Even in the best intended scenarios, and especially under the way we live as "consumer" humans, it just has to be unbelievable.

In my situation having 3 kids at such a young age i can't imagine being a single parent... it's easy to handle a stretch knowing it's just for a limited time and having a partner, who for the most part, barring tree pruning, is on the same page as you. You could do insane labour, or intense computations, but to be fresh for your kids who need you the most it really takes 2... at least. You need to see your kids with the mindset of "look at you all cute let me give you a hug" rather than "get away from me before i kill you" kind of attitude.

fast food industry

2009-11-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

That's what Rodney was singing at the end of "Chicken" and "Chawmin's Head" from the dubious Chicken EP release. He was singing about the music industry of course, which is true... no point fine dining on a sale... get the next one yesterday. And the whole world has kind of gone that way, and the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of understanding the average person has with regard to the big picture. Not trying to say i know everything, and i don't for sure, but the ability to be distracted is almost like an evolved societal response. One of the reasons George W. Bush got elected was because he talked like a grade 5 student, and that is the average level of speak for the voters so they felt comfortable with him as one of them. To me that is just completely insane... would you want the pilot of your airplane to operate at a grade 5 level?

This whole Swine flue fiasco is a comedy of errors... a few weeks ago i heard advertisements about how both governments are working together to have an appropriate response to this health crisis. That's when i knew we were fucked... when a government buys ad space to tell you they are doing OK you know you have problems. Not that i am really worried about swine flu... on that note i have been avoiding taking the twins to "toddler time" at the local community centers where every kid sticks every toy in their mouth. I'll get shots if i can without waiting in line with a pack of paranoid people.

Paranoid people... that was my point when i started this blogaroo... as you know, comedy is everything to me, so the problem with societies with great numbers of "non thinking" persons is that paranoid comedy is hard to enjoy with people because nobody gets it. Indeed you should be paranoid, but you also need to laugh at yourself, and other fools.

what a weird democracy... the government buys ad space to tell the "consumers" that they are dong a really good job, and i'm sure the research proves that that will change public opinion in a favourable way. And any articulate intelligent counterpoint can be countered as "egg headed banter".

Did you know that scientists are now recommending freezing samples of coral reefs for future generations because there is really no hope left for them? and humans are fighting wars and fighting climate change truths. An insane amount of people still refuse to believe in evolution... they will drive a car built on the principles of science but under no circumstances follow the same science because it interferes with religious or economic beliefs.

I think in an ideal society everybody would be educated and they would be required to vote on issues... should be able to be done on some open source computer software. Part of your duties as a member of the society would be to participate. There are countries where it is the law to vote... in Canada like half the people vote on a good day, but everybody complains. And then there is the "swing vote" somebody who makes up their mind at the last second due to some final "momentum" by some candidate. How can you vote and not know what your principles are? Once again that's fucking insane. I guess that's a lyric at best... i heard they have a space program when you speak they can't hear there's no air.

that's why i wrote the lyric "you've got to get what you can while you can" in the song "Never wanted to be anyone"... and why did i write that? shameless self promotion of course. who cares the only people listening know that already and the rest don't care.

on the bright side... never mind

Halloween

2009-11-01T00:22:00.000-07:00

drinking ginger wine and roasting seeds and thinking about my late buddy G Force, who happened to love Halloween

What's my bottom line:

The day we went to scatter Gareth's ashes on the old campsite above Joffrey Lakes i had 2 songs take over my brain.

this one

and this one

And the point being was that the day, which was my second out of body experience in my life was surrounded by the art and spirit of people that i know and love in some way.

That's why i know that I'm on the right track... there is always a failure to obsess about but when the cards are on the table and you leave your body, who is there for you? It's not rock radio, that's for sure.

Funny, when i was cleaning up the kitchen from the Robertson Halloween party i was thinking of going on a rage about certain parents in the neighbourhood going AWOL on Halloween... how can you do that as a member of the community? Perhaps it was the ginger wine's and a reflective night of great people that i have met that turned the corner on this rage blogaroo

Updating my web log or BLOG... or of course shocking back a blogaroo

2009-10-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

I went to the gym tonight to watch the Canucks blow a game, and get a little sweat going... it's funny how you can find the strength to get into the gym at night if you have threatened yourself with a 6:00AM gym time. For me it's about flexibility... something that happens to my body when it is not used properly... like for example if one were to spend hours on some shithole computer gathering information and commenting on it than that person would need to do something less sedentary that would put the back in a better position.

I'm coming around to the new Ginger Beer that i brewed a week or 2 back. As a brewer you always get this major paranoia about your beer being bad, or perhaps as a Robertson you apply a base paranoia on everything and depending on the issue the paranoia is manifested with the proper "doomsday scenario" angle.

back to the start... why dd i mention the gym? Because on the way back I happened to go by the sanctuary and Shockk was there and we had a little jam with me on the drums and him on guitar... so much fun. I have been playing my neighbours electronic drum kit from time to time which is great... ***note the paranoid application of that last sentence, actually don't even note it... just go check out some other blog... nothing to read here... I'm going to stop after the next sentence

Did we lose those small minded petty thieves ? What kind of father would i be if i didn't demonstrate a strong reasonable level of paranoia.

One of my greatest moments was in Grand Prairie and we were all tree planters staying in the local lodge for a weekend of binge drinking and laundry servicing. I was coming back to the hotel and i noticed my car was unlocked... i had loaned it to somebody... so of course i grabbed my favourite tape from the cassette deck and then closed the door and made like i was locking it with the key which i didn't have... moments later a woman, one of the cooks for the camp, who i loaned the car to asked me for the keys even though she had them on her person... she happened to be watching me "fake" lock the car and bought it and forgot what reality was. i of course was delighted that my dedication to the slim possibilities had paid reasonable dividends.

chicken

2009-10-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

we went to a "keep chickens in your backyard" seminar type thing at a library tonight.. it was a potluck, so i made some pasta and we went. we were kid of hoping the library would be open, but of course it is Monday... we don't have the funding to open library's on Monday... but we have the money to buy tv ad space to promote Canada's economic recovery plan.

There was a table full of "serious" chicken policy discussers and the 5 of us... no place for a 5 year old and two 2 year old's, and the library is closed. We are in a meeting room by the library, for the record. They are doing the thing where everybody around the table gives their life history and what they hope to get out of their Chicken seminar... then CT takers the stage... she talks i do some minor organizing and then the group turns to me, and CT tells them that i like the idea but don't want to do the work, but she wants to do the work. Jesus Christ now I'm fresh to a room getting my bearings and the crowd of discussion loving earth and animal lovers are looking at me like some lazy fartass. Mind you i did tell CT and the neighbour that i wasn't really into doing a lot of work on the Chicken raising front... for very good reason of course. the obvious logical thing would be caring for animals is a big job and a serious commitment which an honest rational person would understand and commit to or not.

when i told the ladies... my wife and the neighbour that "I like the idea but am not really committed to the work" it was kind of a nice way of saying "what are you crazy, you think I'm getting involved in a labour intensive project with you two loons"

I think last year i was asked about 4 times to see if me and a few people could move a large tree, as if it was something that could be done in a few minutes... in the end i did some tree pruning which assured me Villain status for a long fucking time to the point where ultimatums of me not touching trees on our property have been suggested, which of course has been a bad thing for the Pine tree that took a hit in the snowstorm last year and disparately needs a prune before it splits and tears a long line of bark off the main stem. The point is it's not done and apparently I'm not allowed to do it so the point is if we can't take care of a tree together how the fuck can we take care of chickens. As you get older you have got to know what you can and can't do... I'll take care of the kids, do the compost, run the vegetable garden, make the dinner , clean the kitchen, do minor maintenance, play hockey, stretch, try to keep pace on the album per year release through the last decade, change 2 sets of diapers... but i ain't scooping chicken shit from a pen in my neighbours yard... sorry.

Don't get me wrong they are great ladies and i love them but sometimes you have to call your shots.

Robertson Notes

2009-10-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

Kids refusing to sleep and screaming incessantly... last night took the locking doorknob off of the bathroom and put it on the Twins door... tonight CT took the bulbs out of the light. Thee old battle. Kids get old enough to do something (crawl out of bed, turn the lights on, have a party, come downstairs...) and then parents have to enforce the boundaries... most of the people i have talked to end up spending hours outside the kid's room... I like locks, i always have liked locks. Locks remind people that they shouldn't be doing what they are trying to do. I could go into great detail about locks and security but to post that online would be a serious breach.

Earlier today when i was walking around in my underwear @ The Bay, our crew had to breach security. In the end the lady was really nice about it, and since we did end up buying SR 2 pair of new Jeans, it was all good. I have been going around with a hole in my jeans for some time now, that has me exposed from time to time at some of the more formal occasions a man of my stature ends up attending. I find if you just stand at the Buffet with your knee's facing the table you are usually OK... anyhoo it was Bay Day which means big savings apparently, it was also Sunday it was raining the kids were crabby and we had to go to a Birthday party in a few hours, so why not go down to Oakridge mall and get some Jeans with three kids... there are many reasons not to to this, but that's what happened. CT is a business operator when it comes to buying SR clothes... go to the jeans grab a bunch of different sizes and go try them on, so in the first round we get my size... in a few minutes CT has a small collection of possible jeans, but there is a lady by the change rooms who's job it is is to see how many items each "customer" has and then they put a hanger on the doorknob that has the number 1, 2,3,4 or 5. Five being the Key number, because under the protocol you can only take 5 in with you... our normal way is say a pile of a dozen and then a yes pile and a no pile... the poor lady. she has probably been to many "company meetings" where she is told she is responsible to enforce the rules or face punitive damages... which is kind of why i felt it OK to do a little lap in my underwear servicing the different piles.... i figured it would 1. clear out the area a bit and 2. if caught on camera it would help make the nice lady look good. this woman dealt with a rule breaking family of five who showed no regard for showing "skin" in a consumer environment but yet managed to sell 2 pair of pants in about 5 minutes.

Then i went to the gym and caught the canucks game and when i was in the shower some guy came up to me and asked to use some of my soap... and he had an erection. I guess what comes around goes around... what do you say to that? i gave him some soap and tried to ignore the "member", but in some ways i think once you are dealing with erections the game changes a bit. Like it's not like you wouldn't know you have an erection, and sure erection's happen from time to time... but in those times you might want to curb your nude interactions.

I remember when i was a kid, i think like grade 9 and i was on the swim team who practiced at 7:00AM before school... sometimes after practice in the shower my body would do what young boys bodies do and haul off and pop a boner for no good reason, but you can be sure as hell i was out of there like a lightning bolt to sit down in the change room with a towel and then get dressed and off to school to await my next erection which usually happened in English class, for some reason. i had my share of "naked moments" in high school... Ok, i set a record if we are counting... but erections would never be part of the game. It's about comedy,and perhaps challenging a rigid society... but i guess by that ruler a naked erection is more funny and far more challenging.

Nakedness is what you are, erect is what you want.

like you could say... "hey could i have a squirt or your soap, oh yea, don't worry about that it's just a little problem with my penile dorsal vein valve"... no problem man have a few squirts... go crazy.

2009-10-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

Ginger beer was a total failure... go back to thee old Robertson Logic. NEVER USE CITRUS PEELS FOR ANYTHING. Ok we knew that, but we lost our fucking minds, just for a quick moment, but it turned out to be that moment that counted the most. That is how life goes... you lose your fucking mind because you think you know what you are doing but the truth is you don't. A classic case of one step forward and 4 steps backwards, as my father would say... well he would say 3 steps, but since i bottled the fucker in a vain attempt to say like "it will be OK", now i have to re-clean those bottles. And then there is the fact that the beer operation feedback loop took a big 1 week hit.

Robertson brewing rule #1... Brew what you know, and then vary that in slight increments.

I had other things to muse upon as the Wart chills, but the rage in my obvious failure is killing me.

Now failure is a term i use from time to time, i believe i have even written a song titled such and it is at this time i would like to differentiate on the kinds of failure our hero finds acceptable.

I am a failure and i know it- with respect to myself as the sole proprietor of a Canadian record company that has 10 releases... yes i am a failure. Having played a show every week this year and having sold next to zero cd's and less than $100 in digital downloads, i believe failure is the term. Ohh don't be so hard on yourself i can hear people say... i say who ever said that stating facts is hard on people... well it is, on most people, but it shouldn't be. Imagine if i was on Dragon's Den... that show where you pitch your business to cut-throat executives... i'd be laughed out of the room... as i should, and as i would want to be. My plan would be that of a failure... and that's what i mean by that.

My ginger beer was a failure- completely unacceptable! This it the kind of failure that is grossly irresponsible and cannot happen. Besides the irony of me being able to accept my body of artistic work a failure, and at the same time see 23 liters of soiled alcoholic beverages a mind numbing failure, there is real logic in the game plan.

summary- if you are going to do something do it right if its black and white, and if it's art then do it on your own terms.

do i want to be a success? I don't know... i kind of like the comfort of failure

will i be mad if the beer i brewed tonight goes bad? livid.

best part of home brew- not having to deal with the bottle return now that the stores only allow you to return a dozen, or is it 2 dozen bottles at a time. having bought all my beers at the store and paying a deposit on the bottles, and being busy with 3 kids and a failing business venture i certainly don't need a lecture from some clown on why i can't return all of my bottles that are clean and neatly packaged together.

the biggest losers- liquor tax agency, and the bottle collectors in my back alley.

shit is it 1:30 am... brew nights... is there a song in there.

OK

remember never use citrus peels... bullshit. I remember some people who tried to push citrus peel muffins on me. Citrus peels are not for human consumption... remember "NORM and the ORANGE PEELS"... I guess Norm lived with an old friend of mine named Chris, and Norm ate acid one night and as he was tripping he decided he had a hankering for some apples, and he found some, so he thought. The next day Chris saw 7 Orange "cores" on the kitchen table. Norm ate 7 oranges as if they were apples... and the reason that is hilarious, so hilarious n fact that a musical project named "Norm and the Orange Cores" had to be started, is the plain fast that Orange peels are completely unpalatable... but that's the kind of failure i can get behind.

OK

2009-09-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

Well i made ginger beer tonight... time will be the hunter on that one.

I also mixed down the drums and guitar "song skeleton" that i have to work on lyrics for... and i was in the zone, but what i ended up doing instead is trying to figure out how to get and MP3 from a garage band mix to itunes to slam on my ipod and sort the lyrics after a nice long walk.

I'm not convinced that you even can do that,but i can't believe that, or more annoyingly it's not very obvious and when yout take the normal routes in solving problems like that you are met with minimal options that may not even allow you to operate under such situations.

I mean i hate to be the guy, who is swearing at a computer when his wife comes home from a gala ball... and he still hasn't solved the problem... that apparently an art friendly computer and program should deem a fundamental priority.

OK i do now have a 54 mb version of the scratch song on my ipod, which is the route i should have gone hours ago, and the lesson is there... but it's often hard to imagine that the things i want to do are so far out of the average consumer's orbit that the mere idea of catering to that key function has become economically irrelevant.

King Fire-Man came up huge on the beer bottle front the other day... I now have a stellar collection of green and brown grolsch bottles with the easy pop tops. The multiple colours are key to identify the batch. For example the last batch of pale ale is aging in brown bottles and the ginger beer will occupy the green bottles.

I'll explain how to brew one day when i get a bit better with respect to a total understanding of all of the "actions' and "reactions"... which reminds me of the old university days... i would wright reaction as rxn in a frantic effort to catch up to the professor.

I was at a great show last night.. it was a COPPERSPINE showcase... they have some serious talent in that crew... you should really make an effort to catch Leah Abramson some day soon... last night there was a perfect balance of awesome talent and confidence.

the word is spelled confidence not confidance... it's not a dance it's a dence.

if i was a tweeter that would be my speed... and there is no such word as spelt

after the show last night, i got into a discussion with a few people over the nature of twits and tweets... my point was that, sure the concept is annoying as hell, but there has got to be somebody out there who, in their own way is funny as hell, and of course you would never find that person through the mess of fools and celebrity hucksters.

I should make shirts up... twidder the lazyman's blog.

but then the other idea is that distillation is key to quality. If you can take less words to say the same thing that is a benefit... it's just that great poets may ruminate for a long period of time to phrase a concept with all things considered, while a tweeter feels the need to tell you where they are standing in an effort to stay connected to a "network".

well since we still need to wait a bit for the wart temperature to come down to the point where we can pitch the yeast... and since we have strolled way off topic on this little blogaroo we called OK, or i guess i called it OK... and now i am remembering the MP3 episode and the rage is coming on like a heard of caribou... stop... calm... think... turn it around... perhaps this will help... i remembered my point.

SR's tweet a day for a week

Monday- I simple man, simple life, want peace, why does garage band and itunes want to work against me

tuesday- melons are good for you... remember that. Musk melons aka cantaloupe are high in beta carotene

wednesday- Entertainment and supper option.. free show tonight @ the railway 7:30-8:30

thursday- the ice cube maker makes intermittent noises, this is to be expected, so it's really a none issue

friday- Friday is a good day to rest up for your early morning Saturday gardening session... don't forget that

Saturday- SR is out of the office

Sunday- Sunday is a religious day, a day to remember... never forget Gord Harding is a fucking ass hole.

2 computers = multitasking

2009-09-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

listening to the song "the Little's" as performed by myself and JLS last week at the SRSS, and of course writing this blog... both of questionable merit but hey "buy the ticket take the ride"

The show went better than i thought it did when it went down, although i think, or at least i know that i was disappointed in myself for a number of reasons, and the main one has to do with my spirit of attacking the SRSS in terms of my preparation and ability to stand on my own head. It would be a long dog to try and explain that one but lets just say that I'm a bit different than your average guy that plays a weekly show and for some reason writes about it.

perhaps i should just write about my experiences raising children and fuck this whole music bull shit, but i think the real problem with that is that it could have a negative effect on the children. As we know our hero becomes obsessive when he gets his teeth into something and he is liable to lead his crew into danger for the sake of the story. and then there is the benefit of being a failure but yet sticking to your guns... or a more positive way to put that would be to have an interest and desire to do something for life enhancing reasons and to work that activity into your life without compromise. By compromise i mean not to end up as some pudgy coffee sucking parent on a bench complaining about how his kids robbed him of his chance to pursue what was "important" to him.

Good version of "dead by the side of the road" except i bombed a few lyrics... that's why god invented Genny Trigo.

Good comedy in the schoolyard the other day... Kaiya goes 1/2 day to Kindergarten so the twins and I pick her up and eat lunch in the park and play with the kids at the lunch hour... so the kids were making a giant leaf pile and then a game broke out where you throw leaves in the face of others... Of course the twins love that game as it is a variation of the "throw wood chips on each other" game. so you see two little two year olds hanging tough with the big kids, mixing it up... and then a boy took a pile of leaves and shoved them in kaiya's face, and that spooked her back a bit, and Hailie saw that and took a handful of leaves and went over to the boy and shoved some leaves in his face and stood there and puffed out her chest and gave him the stink eye.
I was killing myself laughing and then one of the "security folks" came over and started laying on the whistle.

The early morning workouts seem to be going well... i'll just try to do a few times a week although i missed Monday so i did Tuesday... now my problem is SRSS is wed night and Thursday night is late night hockey, so if i don't go tomorrow one of those will be a painful one... but you can never let yourself off the hook with some bullshit "tired" excuse, because that nonsense perpetuates itself. The good thing is that my back has been doing well lately, although i could really use a few nights of yoga and less drinking... perhaps is time for beer yoga at the SRSS... light beer.

Well the SRSS is over now... soon the twins will be up and we will rock another day.

Hey its the last day of Summer

listen to "summertime will end when it's over" by 21 tandem repeats today

Politics

2009-09-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

Not this i think it will happen over this particular issue, but lets make the point anyway...

There was talk of bringing down the government over a "home tax renovation" a while back, and while i have no respect for the party in power, this is insane.

On what level however? To me the whole thing is crazy... you live in a house that has working function, and while we are in the middle of a "recession" and a total environmental collapse idiot people and idiot politicians, or i guess smart politicians, seeing that this is a thing people deem important, are bickering about a tax incentive program the encourages impulse and "style me" type of consumerism... I mean i do hate to be a negative ass, but isn't the obvious lesson of the current multiple fiasco's of mankind to avoid these types of ventures.

just saying

I eneded up finding an alley

2009-09-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Now for some good advice urinate on your tomatoes... of course you probably just want to get the urine to the roots, but it got me thinking along the lines of public urination... not that i think that people should be pissing all over the place, but then again. Like for example, today i was in the park with the kids and i had been up early @ the gym sucking back the water and then home hitting the coffee, and then in the park after picking my eldest up from school... the three kids wanted to play in the park, which was a good idea, but i had to piss like an owl with 2 dicks. this put me in a very uncomfortable position for a very long period of time... packing up everybody to go piss was a half hour job and we were in the playground beside my child's new school with various parents and teachers around, and the last thing we need of course is to carry around the curse of the "naked Robertson" for another decade in a new group, but at the same time i couldn't help think that the best thing i could do for some of those trees is give them a good shot of fixed nitrogen... but that would be wrong and obscene of course. It got me thinking about the whole problem however. Humans in first world countries are required by law to piss into a receptacle of treated drinking water to be flushed into a sewer system for treatment. while i do agree that as a general population we are to stupid, lazy and self centered to handle a proper piss program in the community, but let's digress anyway.

It's always the far away hidden corners that take the heavy pissing and are more inclined to smell like urine, which would be the #1 point of attack for a brilliant plan like the one i'm about to lay down.

Trees in the park should have near by an affixed abacus type apparatus that the good citizens could keep track of the "piss frequency"... a simple solution could be 10 beads on a string and after a piss at the base of the tree one could move a bead over... also note that one should piss on the ground and not on the side of the tree... that way by working together we could make sure the trees and source of fixed nitrogen get a "fair shake". this could be a great boon to the trees as they are suffering from the fact that their leaves always get removed so they loose that opportunity to regenerate that source of nutrients.

Now I'm sure you would have groups of smart asses moving beads in an effort to deceive the community and perhaps the odd jackass that might loos his fucking mind and drop a #2 in the park, although given the amount of dog shit around here it might actually go unnoticed.

I know i know, it's not the kind of thinking that your regular pencil necked paranoid stiff would be comfortable with, but it makes sense on a number of levels.

2009-09-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

long time no blagaroo,

so i started my "new" regiment today... up @ 6:00am and off to the gym. I'll try that like every other day for a while to see if i can stave off old age, sloth and gluttony... it could open the evenings for more creative ventures... roughly translated to swearing at a computer trying to make music... or something like that.

it's time for "the ocean is life part 2", if you know what i mean.

What happened this summer worth a blogaroo? Well there was that cottage we rented that smelled like death and we had to spend the first day prying the drip pan from below the refrigerator to clean the decaying food from it, that started a bad vibe between ourselves and the owners of the cottage that is now at the point where they are avoiding us... why? well of course they kept our $500 security deposit on the basis that we did so much damage to the place... which is bullshit of course, but it's their word against ours and we live in Vancouver... I'll start a major blog on this at a later date.

what else happened. played in Toronto:

Oldest daughter started Kindergarten the other day and the twins are pretty hilarious in their own right.

I have been eating orange beets from the garden... speaking of garden it's not kindergarden it kindergarten.

It comes from the German words "kind" and "garden" and is defined as a program or class that serves as an introduction to school.

sounds like the twins are up... and this blogaroo is over

SR

How did i end up in that booth singing that corporate jingle for the chance to win some "vacation certificates"

2009-06-29T22:43:00.000-07:00

And then i guess the next question is why did i post it on my facebook page... the whole thing is very disturbing indeed.

Well it all started out with me making like old mother Hubbard looking in the cupboard and seeing nothing tasty there so i packed up the twins (2 years old each) and headed to the large "BOX" store... that i don't feel like naming as it would further give props to another corporation, and seeing that this blogaroo is being powered by the shame of the reality of what happened a few days ago, lets just keep it at that.

So there I was walking into the store with my cart and my bags and one kid on my back and on in front so they can't fight and i see and hear booth for a company that makes products that you might store in your bathroom and they are pulling people out of the parking lot to sing their jingle as part of a "talent search", but clearly the marketing of the plan is through the Internet. You sing the company jingle they post it you get all your friends and relatives to vote you up so you have a chance to win $8000 dollars worth of "vacation certificates" and in the end the company gets a large population of people to hear their jingle and it puts the product in their head.

So as i pass the damn thing i think to myself "what kind of a fucking idiot is going to do that shit" and then i go into the store to by food for the family for the next week with 2 2year old's. Now the kids are fine and we know the routine but perhaps we stayed a little too long... but they were blowing out decadent ice cream deserts at half price so i picked up like 6 boxes...

The line ups at the checkout were long so i had to let the kids down to run around as they were starting to loose it, but as solid Robertson's they were a great help loading the groceries on to the belt... it was at the checkout things began to go fowl. I guess the checkout lady thought that obviously a man couldn't handle 2 kids and bagging his own groceries so a gross incompetent was called in to help me. She got in the way, dropped stuff, got bags filled with the bananas and apples on the bottom, put chocolate on ground beef and it punctured through and she got one bag misplaced on the belt that belonged on the adjacent checkout and then she bumped over Emily and all the while she was complaining to me about how hard life was... i finally sent her away but she had damaged most of my stuff by then and i was suddenly in a very bad mood. So I was leaving mumbling to myself about how that is the stupidest thing i have ever seen when suddenly some crazy guy leaps out at me with a blue tie a white shirt and says "OK YOU GUYS ARE UP YOU READY TO SING THE JINGLE"... i was eyeballed him for a few seconds and then was left with no choice but to scream "OK man we are doing it!". Then a girl came at me with a lyric sheet, so i started trying to back out as anger and comedy impulses faded and sanity started to take over, but then the guy came back... this guy was a good salesman and then i remembered about the six boxes of ice cream treats in the hot parking lot and really at that time my duty to the family was to secure those cold treats into our quality freezer ASAP.... it then occurred to me the quickest route home is through the recording booth.

Do i need a rehearsal, hell no i know this jungle like the back of my hand, and then i looked at the back of my hand and made a face like i had just observed a foreign object... the joke went unrecognized... people were to busy explaining how to use a microphone... and then there was a music stand with like 500 copies of the words, and i said don't worry about it, lets hit it... well in my first take i missed a key product line so we had to do it again, and the kids were having fun so we hit it again and then i started going into a dream sequence about how you could do take after take for hours on end like you might do if you were in a band making "the ultimate" recording with a bunch of "experts" who want to quibble about each syllable.

after 2 takes we had to split but i toyed with the idea of telling him that perhaps if he edited the first part of the second one with the last part of the first one it could be gold... he was a good guy an i was walking away with some great "if this was a reality show" comedy ideas. And then we got those ice creams home and then i washed the ground beef off of the chocolate and the hate came back.

When the company emailed me with my version of the song there was a convenient "post to facebook" button, a good idea for their "get their jungle in every body's head" plan and so i hit it. On the plus side our relatives got to see a video with the twins and CT and I had one hell of a laugh over my representation of the b part of the jingle that perhaps it was worth something.

He who blogs a bit today blogs again today

2009-05-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

I expect only Mule and perhaps a few others will understand that title, but i think it is high time to bring the chronicles back to some more abstract musing. Well i just did a dictionary check on the word "musing" and i believe i have used the word properly, which keeps my percentage around that of the save percentage of any Toronto maple leafs goaltender over the past few years, which in turn reminds me of an email i failed to respond to today. Damn and i thought my real problem was something else all together. Alcoholism is a manageable problem i say... why not say that... the world is full of many perfectly functioning alcoholics. Hell i read in the news today that one of the drug companies... i won't mention their name because i don't need an email from a representative that is paid to monitor a "google alert" with that company's name with respect to what it is i am about to write... which i might add i don't know what i am going to write next. Where was i.. i doesn't matter... actually it does matter. the point of the news story was that they were going to offer free Viagra to people who lost their jobs and are unemployed in this recession. NEWS STORY HERE.

I wonder what Viagra is all about... i should take some as an experiment. i remember i knew a girl in University and her story was if she smoked pot she became horny and wanted to have sex... unfortunately i never took advantage of that fact... so obviously Viagra is marketed (on Hockey night in Canada) as a sexual stimulant but what else does it do... didn't they call acid the love drug at one time, before it became illegal... or possibly after.

well i just did another search for the affects of viagra and i got these beauties * bleeding of the eye
* convulsions (seizures)
* decreased or double vision or in extreme cases blindness
* a blue tint to your vision
* prolonged, painful, or inappropriate erection of penis
* redness, burning, or swelling of the eye
* anxiety

I can deal with anxiety... now mind you these are rare*... or at least classified as rare... I won't be doing a Viagra experiment.

The whole perception of drugs is very bizarre in our world... drug company good... naturally occurring plant bad.

There seems to be a stronger movement these days to legalize marijuana... something that is long overdue in my humble opinion. i have read a lot of arguments pros and cons but the one thing that never gets touched on is the fact that it's classification as an illegal drug, in my opinion, is detrimental to people's understanding of what a bad drug can do to you.

Let me try to explain. So you are told "all illegal drugs are bad for you because if you use them you life will lead to ruin" which is essentially what i believed until i went away to University. So you then get somebody who tries some pot, or grass or marijuana for that matter, has a bunch of laughs with their friends and wakes up the next day all fine. they try it again later and have some perception changing moments that make them a better human more in tune with the world around them... and they cry bull shit on the voices that tried to ban them from meeting this "herbal remedy"... The real danger is here... that person may think what they heard about cocaine, or heroin, or pcb or crack is bullshit as well... which it is not... those drugs will most likely ruin you life... but because you were lied to all those years you don't know what to believe at the moment of truth.

safety first

2009-05-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

Of course there is a company called "safety first" that makes the most annoying useless products that are made of cheap disposable plastic and are destined for the dump.

They sell infant products, thus the name playing on the common fear of safety we have as a serious disorder in our society.

I want to start a rival company and call it "function first", but i fear there is not enough intelligent folk left to keep me in business. The latest outrage was these cupboard cabinet lockers that i challenge an adult to solve... except there is nothing to solve... they are just made so shitty you just have to pry and force the fuckers... and then you get a smashed thumb.

our old one broke after about 4 years of good service, and there really isn't much variety in you big department stores... a statement that is full of errors i know, but shit happens and on some days you end up shopping and you hate yourself so much you just want to buy what you need and escape back to your home where you find out you are once again the victim of some useless product that was made to throw away... i think we bought 3 of them so it is like a $10 loss... but on principle we might try and return them as that is what should happen to send the message that shit products like this won't be just absorbed anymore. It's always amazing to me when a product like that makes it to the market... like that piece of shit plastic sled Kaiya and I ran into this year at the time of the great winter snowfall... HOW DOES THE PRODUCTS TOTAL USELESSNESS NOT GET CAUGHT IN THE TESTING PERIOD BEFORE IT IS MASS PRODUCED !

I mean i have had one that was a good design and worked and now i have 3 that are useless and are a general hazzard to my health on account that i risk having a stoke every time i see one of them going off on a "how does this happen" rage.

For the purposes of this blog i should go down and film myself trying to open the bastard and post it on youtube and then embed it in this site... yea... that's when you know you have lost your mind.

everyone has an opinion so here goes...

2009-05-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

A promising Vancouver Canucks gets bounced in the playoffs... what went wrong?

On paper 7-5 suggests poor goaltending, but in reality that was not the case... there wasn't a soft goal in the lot... there were some ridiculously good shots and some good bounces.

Was it the poor offence of the "Sweden" contingent, I don't think so... point per game for all three is not a problem. The twins made things happen, and Sundin made a lot of great plays and was getting stronger. Perhaps the "Ovechkin factor" is at work here... If a guy is not skating through everybody, all while firing rocket shots at an "off the charts" pace, then he is not doing anything.

Was Chicago that good? Perhaps.

Was the defence weak? Not really... but there was a total inability to control and get the puck out of their own end for the final 5 periods of the series?

Did the team just get out coached? I have been leaning towards this... Joel Quinnville's team changed its game, exposed a weakness, planted fear and used that fear to create chaos.

The last 5 periods of that series the Canucks defense would try to put the puck up the boards to a crowd of red Jersey's that wanted the puck more than they did. You have to wonder if they could have pulled off a stretch pass down the middle it might have changed the game a bit... Not that one should take stretch passes up the middle lightly... but it seemed to me that Chicago had the answer for Vancouver's game plan... Vancouver stuck with that plan until the end. I'm sure it would be good to have a guy like Brian Campbell who can skate the puck out of the zone at will...
but they didn't have that guy... Chicago did.

Putting the puck up the boards is almost always a good hockey play... but when everybody is lined up on the boards perhaps up the middle will do... a risky play still and if you fuck it up the mental loss would be almost unbearable... but if you can pull it off you can get the other team thinking and adjusting and feeling less invincible.

Perhaps there was a good reason Chicago made that coaching change about 10 games into the season.

should read "how dumb are you"

2009-05-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

Not all good ideas carry weight with the betterment of technology

2009-05-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

The band i played in when i move out to Vancouver B.C. like 16 years ago was called Knockin' Dog. We released 2 CD's the first one titled "Simplex" and the second "Chicken EP". Well our first CD got into the Jukebox at the Cambie Hotel and received a fair amount of play, so of course, always thinking, we decided to put a track on the Chicken EP called Super Knockin' Dog Jukebox pick... and it contained the whole CD on one track.

Now that the Chicken EP is on Itunes and other digital music download stores i have noticed that people are taking advantage of this setup... you can buy the whole damn EP for 99¢. I think it's great, the point is, or was, to get the music out there... and that's done and there is a deal to be had... although i have to be honest and say that the Chicken EP is the one body of work i am least proud of. I think there is some good stuff there but we totally lost our fucking minds on parts of it. It was my first experience trying to do live jam outs on a studio recording. I think you need to be on stage in purple fleece pants playing a double neck guitar and doing leg kicks to get the whole thing. When you are in a studio analyzing things it is never good.

I should do that with all of my albums... put a track at then end with all the songs on it. In the end trying to make money from music can take away from one's enjoyment of life... maybe i'll write a book about it one day.

I guess we should post something.. for some reason... writing exercise

2009-05-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

But yet if it was a writing exercise then why would I be about to tell the legions of "super robertson Chronicles" readers about my attempt to understand the 100.5 peak performance Project application agreements. Don't get me wrong this radio station is a great station... coming from a guy who's kid fucked the CD player in the car so therefore i am stuck with local radio... so if CBC isn't working for me i tune into the Peak and the twins start rocking.

If you enter into this project... which would essentially help you gain traction as a legitimate artist (a good thing). But there is something about reading a long legal document that really gets the paranoia flowing... i mean i understand that somebody is pouring a lot of money into this machine, and so they need that machine to produce what they built it for.

It could make a good reality TV series... Super Robertson and aging failure leaves his wife and family of 3 small girls to attend a week long rock and roll boot camp to be trained in the areas of stage performance, songwriting, online and traditional publicity, promotion and marketing, tour planning, introduction to music law and business, funding, media training and other development topics. But then we all think that our lives would make good copy... why not EH!

I'm sure it would be a good time, when i was a kid went to camp and in high school I was given the opportunity to go to leadership camp and then i was a camp counsellor as a young adult. Camps give you the rare opportunity of a community isolated... you eat together, you do activities together and then at night you are together... this all happens for a period of time and you develop a special camaraderie with the crew.

I was also a Junior Ranger for one summer and i remember our foreman "Douglas Semour Telford Coleman", when he picked us up from the train station in Cochraine Ontario said "yea you see a lot of shy faces at the beginning but you don't see any dry eyes at the end". I wonder how Doug is? it was a long time ago... One of the great tragedies of life in Canada was the cancellation of the Junior Ranger program... all those 17 year old's without that opportunity... well at least we have the Olympics coming to our world class city.

S Robertoan Strikes back

2009-04-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

That's right the good time train is running through the station tonight, and what i could really use is a smokey wooden horn to blast a few good honks of pure blogaroo wisdom. Wisdom is a burr of a word, wouldn't you say.. it's like it needs an "e" on the end of it to give it the soft feel of truth.... I remember logging in... now I'm angry... not really, just disappointed in the lack of discipline... and then there is the word discipline which i know is "dis-cip-line" and not "dis-clip-line" but when you are in "dis-clip-line" and your self correcting blogger spell check gives you no options... well at least i forgot about that "I remember logging in" bull-shit i was quacking on... now i feel the hate again!

the idea is to stay in your element

My new element could be "Chatting"... i think, or at least to see clearly that my original idea behind email was what might have better been suited to the concept of chatting. Email has just too much natural authority that when it comes across an ill thought out violent threatening email... i know i know what you are all thinking out there in blogland, you fucking ass holes.. that was a joke... i know i really shouldn't swear... i should just delete and rethink... but i think we need to remember these moments in order to truly correct them. lets go back... i know i know what you are all thinking out there in blogland, you time wasting sissy snakes... son of a bitch i have forgotten the original train of thought... fucking fuck. I remember my man Jerry A'Hearn once told me about the sentance The fucking fridge is fucking fucked! Fuck gets a noun an adjective and a verb.

I had some interesting "chats" tonight, emails seem so permanent.

Imagine if you were in a band, and a band member sent out an alarming Email on the eve of a key gig, and that email exposed a gaping differential between the basic concept of "why the band even exists". Now perhaps if it was a chat you could just reply "OK sparkey you keep working on that one, but for tomorrow night, we will just do the stock set we had written on that paper that i have safely tucked away on our trusty duplication machine... you're a crazy guy but i love you."... then you would be wise to log out of your chat program.

I should go over some songs...

obvious

2009-03-13T22:27:00.001-07:00

In doing my things that a man in my position does... i happened to be pacing the house in a fine waffle over something that really doesn't matter looking at the ground and all when i saw a spider walk across the floor... and i thought, well the natural response would be to kill it, but yet the obvious response would be to see if this guy, or girl for that matter can make a go of it in this environment. if the spider can stay healthy then i believe the proper wording would be... "the spider and i live in symbiosis". The rogue translation of that would be that if the spider is eating well then perhaps the spider is doing me a service in decreasing the population of other small invertebrates.

I have been writing a lot of songs lately... using deadlines to hammer myself with a tidal wave of failure. Sometimes i feel like wile-e-cyote (sp?) pulling an umbrella out as protection from a large boulder falling from a very high cliff.

Now I'm not an entomologist but yet i have a pretty high degree of certainty that this particular spider is not poisonous.

Of course if it was a wasp (and insect that also eats insects) i would definitely not be relaxed right about now. I believe i have made my case for that over the years.

2009-03-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

going over lyrics i remembered this quote from Brian Burke

on speaking about an NHL rule that restricts a team's "legality" to call up only 4 players from the minors after the trade deadline.

"It is a ridiculous, archaic, stupid rule that the Players Association, for some reason, refuses to change... but that's just my view."

I like Ron Wilson's press conferences to... i never miss them.

2009-03-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

Morning everlasting light
you look good when you fight
Morning favurite coffee bean
things aren't quite what they seem
early on a young school day
i love you you will say
is there an everlasting fire?
bell rings beneath the sprier
warning everlasting warm
the bees begin to swarm
good morning everlasting song
the children get along

you are Blogging all your simple thoughts in set's of rhyming lines
pace around the kitchen a couple hundred times
try to write a song live in your fort
I say poetry is a jack ass sport

Boring Never ending game
the outcome is the same
the weird guy has the name of ron
he has a pet python
summer and a bbq
the foot fits in the show
baby and its time to sleep
she won't make a peep
a list of faults the came before
there is less and there is more

He has tagged and lived to regret it.

2009-03-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

It's always depressing reading news of one of the many "Bailout" situations that seems to be running like a bad virus through our human important systems.

To me it's a simple thing... if something is fucked and unsustainable then it will fail and to pump what little resources we have left to maintain the appearance of "normal" cannot make sense. All the laws of physics, Karma, Biology, Chemistry, fate and evolution bring a resolution, but yet we are so into wrong thinking... "the economy is the only important thing.... we need more profit for the shareholders".

I think of it like a teeter totter. Imagine a massive cement block on one end and a porous plate on the other.. and sugar was gold so you put sugar on the plate to balance the teeter totter, but the rain comes down and washes the sugar through the plate so you have to put more sugar on the plate to keep the balance... and so you do again and again rather that chipping away the hard cement block be cause you are so use to seeing it that it would look unnatural for a teeter totter to not have a massive cement block on one end.

because that's all you know... you know what i mean?

a good omen

2009-02-22T16:35:00.000-08:00

I think a bone in my wrist is broken or cracked or sprained... perhaps i will get a chance to get to the hospital in the next few days.... Why is this a good omen you might say? have no fear old sports and omen is an omen and nothing smells like a good one. You see i have been in this major creative spell the last little bit hammering out some songs with Genny Trigo as star vocalist... and when i look back on my creative history most of the great moments have me with a broken hand, or thumb or something. let's face it only a sissy would stop playing with a little broken hand.

the Van Gophers... broken thumb
Jackass has haybreath... hand in cast
Roadbed 4 track session that spawned "with a broken Hand"
now this fortuitous snap

babies are up now... so i gotta go. also being a chicken pecker on the typewriter is another "Robertson built in safety measure"... i spent their nap fixing songs and perhaps that was done on the power of a damaged hand.

2009-02-06T23:15:00.000-08:00

One thing that really has me enraged at this moment, and it is not the fact that some forest company has enlisted Bob Renny to sell land they own on the island (probably purchased under a sweetheart deal) for development... Ok that got the old blood boiling too... but it's a win win for everybody right.

I have to come down hard on Mac computers... sure i love Mac if only because PC's are useless pieces of shit for my purposes. But as Mac increases in its dominance of the market share it's products are less likely to serve the artist, and more likely geared to the average hammerhead who wants to shit things together. My first computer and Mac was a G4 tower that still to this day serves me well... this squirrelly I mac i have now is a fine machine sure but i find the options on the programs enraging. i was trying to grab some audio of a digital video camera.. something i do often, but for some reason a glitch occurred where when importing the song (a freshly written song) the video became "split" if that is the term. So to extract the audio i get 2 files that i can't put together to send to the vocalist who is singing the song and i have to spend hours in vain trying to do a simple procedure. I did try to reload the whole dam thing 20 minutes into this fiasco but the same glitch happened. Sure i am no computer genius but when you go through the options... or the toolbar you get all kinds of nonsense options for non creative people... can't i just render the 2 clips as 1 and fucking move on with my day rather than having to turn a 20 minute task into a fucking insane marathon... i now know that if you import the fucker into garage band you can fucking do what you need to do... but if you stay in i movie you are fucking fucked with options of importing photos and text with various fonts and other bullshit "cute" asshole items that you might use if you were to send your retarded cousin a movie for their birthday

Oddly enough my Wife had to go in to work tonight because the tiff files she made for a talk she has to give on cancer research wouldn't transfer from Mac to PC so she is at work at midnight on Friday night trying to sort it out. I find it the model of Humanity to have this technology rendered useless because of the forces of business or money making. I say as i have always said... the economy is a lie... and consumers are morons.

Rage Barber

2009-01-19T22:12:00.000-08:00

You see i was out with a few of the other fathers in the neighbourhood, at an event that was put together by one of the more gregarious guys in an attempt to get to know each other... and i guess get out. I had been out ever night that week, which is oddly not unusual for me, a father of 3 kids... there was a show and a supper show and then a hockey game and then this night. Shortly after this night i became deathly ill and put out of commission for a week and counting. Anyhoo, I'm getting way off topic here... The guys are swell fellows who have a similar outlook on the state of our city as i do. We are all parents and homeowners, and will be ill affected by bad decisions for a long time as we see Vancouver as our home. There was talk of the Olympics and the insane rhetoric that the various Yahoo's are yelping and then we got on to the new "Mount Pleasant Community center" and the planned demolition of the old one and of course the well used outdoor swimming pool that works very well thank you very much... again another story.

Aparently at the new center that they have been building for the last decade, or so it seems, they put the brick up... but apparently it was the wrong brick so they chipped it down and are starting again... not really out of the ordinary... but the real nugget of information i got was that one of the guys goes to the barber on main between 7th and 8th and apparently this barber gets really wound up about these events... and apparently if you ask him about the local coffee shops he really gets going.

This is great news... i mean i always cut my own hair but i think i might have to go for a trim and a nice dose of rage... which is a bit odd... most people probably would try to not help induce rage in their barber as they are getting their hair cut, but yet me... that is why i will be there.

I think the other fathers became concerned when i became so excited at the opportunity to get buzzed by a "rage barber"... "but watch out he likes the clippers" was the last thing i heard as i drifted into my rage barber dream sequence. I have never been one to give a rats ass about my appearance with regards to fashionable haircuts... i think it stems from a "never judge a book by it's cover" philosophy even though the rational person inside of me knows that it never works to be obviously weird. I have always thought of paying for a haircut is a waste of money... but a person in a controlled rage is like a small private play, more real than any fringe festival piece that might attempt a re-creation of sorts.

I am hoping it will be as good as my favourite "rage taxi driver" from years ago when i had walk 86 at the post office. This guy was no George Bush fan, that's for sure and he wasn't about to be force fed any of that horse shit that was being shoveled through the mainstream media back in 2002. Often times he would get going so hard he would have to pull over... "when i was in India we drove to a gas station and waited 2 days for the petrol truck to show up"... he would say pointing at me "that is a gas shortage!... this is not a gas shortage!"

One haircut coming up.

to be a rage barber
with scizzors and clips
looking out at the harbour
at the sinking ships

First rage of the new year

2009-01-01T20:58:00.000-08:00

First off i have to say the 2008 was pretty good... no doubt i worked like a bastard but we got some things done and there were many good days. Even the collapsing of the economy and the housing market was like a vindication of sorts... Are people really insane... yep. Also i don't know how you could be a decent person and not feel good that that chimp of a president, the self proclaimed king of the world is in his last year in his role as a power abuser.

Well I guess the first rage of the year occurred when Emily and Hailie
screamed their fucking heads off all morning... But tonight we were going to do something fun, yep we were going to Willingdon Avenue to go to Eileen Davey Pool because there is a really fun water slide. Luckily for Kaiya, who was a large child we could lie about her age and she has been riding that slide (with me) for a few years now.

But no more... you see the B.C Safety Authority (1 800 566-7233) has come in and deemed that the slide is not safe for tandem riding = some some incompetent klutz took their whinny brat down the slide and caused an incident, and now we all can't do anything anymore.
If it was me and just our family was there i would have no hesitation to go down it with the twins who are 18 months old... one at a time. You can imagine Kaiya's disappointment after we got there and excitedly got up to the top of the tower and were turned around and had to walk back down... her favourite slide that we have ridden hundreds of times over the past 2 years... no worries in 4 years she will be able to ride it again "safely". Where to start... in all seriousness. Perhaps we should call our province Wimp Columbia.

Safety- the most dangerous thing you can do is get in your car and go driving on the street (getting to the pool)... Pure percentages folks. Does anybody have any ideas on what country i should move to? i can't even sign a consent form so that we can use the facilities properly. I guess my suggestion of getting a bar in the pool won't be considered too seriously.

I have nothing else to say
again i am disappointed in humanity
Safety... my new most hated word

and i was going to start this year off with a nice positive blogaroo about the few thing i was going to work on (slowly) to make myself a better person this year. i guess i need to get on the safety council and start reversing some decisions... i can see a Province cover story... "Risky Robertson threatens the lives of the average consumer".

check out these Mike Palmateer saves

2008-12-30T00:37:00.000-08:00

also note the winner gets $5000 and a Panasonic treat.

A goalie making saves like that wouldn't get out of bed for that much now.

also i like how the goalie has to clear the pucks???

Now in a shootout they send the zambonie out to re-clear the ice on occasion.

Different game

201st post... good comedy Snow in Vancouver.

2008-12-28T22:10:00.000-08:00

I was reading in the news today that some guy did some major damage to his house trying to clear the snow off his wooden deck with a flame thrower. Which was oddly an idea i had just the other day... well substitute wood house with intersection at Glen and 10th. As i thought through my plan i did think of the paint jobs on the cars nearby. The few people i told my plan to laughed at me... none the less it was Keith who came out and said "OK you have finally guilted me into it" and I who shoveled the street. Some people scoffed and said "our tax dollars should do that"... i said "spend my portion on more trees, or community programs". I mean i have the 3 young kids at home for days getting restless and needing an adventure... we were getting out for sure!

Later when i was shoveling out the drains on the street somebody did call me "the street hero". to me it was fun, "man versus nature" is always better than "man bitching to man about nature or the city services"... save that shit for the CBC news comments.

200 blogaroo's

2008-12-26T22:31:00.000-08:00

i guess this would be the 200th post on the super robertson chronicles II. Wonder how many there were in the Super Robertson Chronicles... that old Dreamweaver site doesn't have a counter on it so it would be a dog of a job. I guess 200 is some sort of a milestone... you know how computers can correct grammar and all (not in this case)... well i was just thinking as i often do when i'm in mid blogaroo... well first i was thinking that it is a bit hot in this here kitchen , so i opened the window. Where was i... oh yea 3 dots and then a new random thought. OK so what if a computer could read a blogaroo and then judge it and then further classify it on some sort of scale and then give the Blogger some form of constructive breakdown in their statistics.

would computers judge art better than humans or is the mere question irrelevant on the basis of judging art and also insinuating the the Super Robertson Chronicles series is in fact art? For the record i don't think it is art... i think its a record of thoughts some of them misguided but yet present and dated.

I just went back to check my response to september 11, 2001... it hurts too much to think about that event that provoked a reaction that took our continent on the absolute wrong path. As they say hindsight is 20/20, but foresight shouldn't be blind... i remember thinking for a few days "this could have a silver lining" perhaps we will move away from oil dependence, and then Jim from work looked at me like i was an alien... "he's not going to do that, he is an oil man"... now i'm in a fowl fucking mood.

I actually feel like i should be able to sue the world leaders for causing me undue stress for the fool policies i have had to witness being implemented, which means of course the bad sales job on the public... and then the failure of the policy while all of the common sense sayers are villanized... and then the "who could have known" B.S. years later after all the money is gone. luckily for them there is a whole generation of trained consumers waiting to "buy Now"

man am i ever furious now... better listen to CBC radio 3 and try to calm down a bit.

oh yea i found out that it was September 17 2001 when i had that dream that became the song On frozen Pond

"September 17, 2001

Had a song dream today, the rare and illusive song dream, to remember and capture is next to impossible. But hey and old pro like super robertson doesn't wake for nothing...." Edmonton it's the same as its ever been and I hope the pond will freeze over" It was this reoccurring birthday song lead by some folky woman strumming a clock like an autoharp. We must have sang it 3 separate times... everybody sang in unison except on the third time she was early and i couldn't quite understand why .... then i woke up ..... it was a little boy's birthday and the song seemed to celebrate outdoor ice hockey rather than a birthday, but we all innately knew the lyrics. The only other noteworthy thing i can recall is that i became more of an observer, and my perspective moved gradually to the back of the room."

I have this other blog now called S Robertson's man parenting column, it would be about my experience as a dad of 3 little girls. When i write in that blog which i haven't lately i am more careful about what i write... to me the chronicles will all be about learning to articulate things. i do have this weird fear about writing about my kids as it is not their choice... if i make an ass of myself the it's just another day... but they still have a chance, a clean slate, a chance to make something of their own.

think ill go back to the party next door as the kids seem to be sleeping now

2008-12-09T21:57:00.000-08:00

He's the famous Mailman on our street
On his porch he's creaming his feet
and the famous Blogger on the net
losing his temper wouldn't you bet

remains a mystery
to the people who see
and he plays for free

just like the famous actor on TV
things aren't what they seem to be
and the famous birdman on the wall
done by Gforce et al

remains a mystery
to the people who see
and he plays for free

Famous person
Famous Person
Famous Person
Pull the curtain

bitch and you shall recieve

2008-12-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

or i guess it could be that you should watch what you write because people will see even though you thought nobody was listening... that's OK this whole thing is a science experiment right. kind of makes me wonder though some guy in Vernon is being sued for defamation for saying shit to a private investigator who was leading him to say that stuff NEWS STORY HERE. So the question becomes how does "the leech and gold medal spam champion" sit with respect to that nonsense. Clearly i could never run for public office now that you start thinking about the bigger picture here... well it got me off the email list.. or so they say... i imagine it did as i received what should be my last email from the company Sonicbids. Who knows perhaps it is a good company for some people... it is quite possible that my music sucks turtle cocks and hence is rendered useless...

Perhaps when you think about the history of things it will probably be sometime in the future that the only way to get a gig will be through that company and there will be a little pile of text beside my name... just like that time the phone company screwed me when we moved houses and i talked to the lady and said i am closing the bank account where you withdraw my internet account so can you put it on my phone bill (as it is the same company)... Oh sure Mr Robertson... and you are going to high speed... then you get 3 months free... OK... Later phone bill... no internet charge.. me thinking (stupidly) perhaps this is my first free month... a few months later i get billed for 3 months and 3 bounced payments (at $40 per payment) because my account was closed... so the phone conversation happened and the women pulled out a letter that i had written the company after i had spent a week trying to configure my email account on their website that was FUCKING BROKEN!!! ( TELUS TELUS TELUS) <--- what i did there that was funny

anyhoo... now we know how to get off an email list.

Thanks Sonicbids you are alright

SR

well i guess i have to write something

2008-12-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

so much to say... who am i talking to? and why?

Just got an email and it wasn't from SONICBIDS, the leech and gold medal spam champion.

Don't know i you have ever tried to get your band gigs, but if you have you know discouragement that leads into desperation, which is where a company like sonicbids takes advantage. Hey it's a great idea and i wish it was my company. Essentially they make it easy for you to apply for "opportunities" that cost you from $5-$30 on average per application. Basically you have an electronic press kit that remains active so long as you pay the monthly fee... which is comparable to a website monthly fee.

The dead giveaway is the fact that you get 3-4 emails per day letting you know about the exciting opportunities in your area and across the globe. there is a simple note on the end of the email on how to unsubscribe, but unsubscribing is essentially impossible.

Anyhoo they did get a bunch of my money but that was a while ago.

The email was for a show by the great outdoors on December 6. I like that band so i can take an email on that.

Nov 20 @ the Railway Club

2008-11-20T14:36:00.001-08:00

Nov 20- Railway Club 10:00 PM
Nov 21- The Dancing Bean (Chemainus B.C) 8:00 PM
Nov 22- The Cambie (Nanaimo) 10:00 PM
Nov 23- Logan's (Victoria) 4:00 PM

Goat

2008-11-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

Goat has always been a favourite word of mine, used in so many phrases like... "could you pass me another curie goat roti", or "What the fuck is GOAT doing out there on the ice in the dying minutes of a tie game".

Later when Goat was very unhappy about his name, even though he weighed 110 lbs and couldn't skate and had a very suspect understanding of the game of hockey despite the fact that he fancied himself a huge fan of the game... you get the picture, he was the goat. Anyway it was late one night an he was lobbying to have his nickname changed, which is a very dangerous game when you are dealing with a smart team of 2 vicious assholes. his point was that he was a finicky eater so he should be called the CAT... because after all Cats are known to be finicky eaters.

i remember it like this:

Goat- "so i should be called CAT"
RDB- "cat... kit kat"
SR- "Rowntree"
RDB- "Lowney"
SR and RDB- "LOWNEY GOAT"
Lowney Goat- "FUCK YOU GUYS YOU FUCKING ASS HOLES"

Everybody loved the Lowney Goat handle and it stuck like none other.

It was a CBC story that gave me the inspiration for the words to the song Disappear... can't find the story now but the idea was that when the alpha predator (the wolf) is gone from a region you see an explosion in the deer population and then all the deer eat all of the sapling trees so trees essentially stop growing and then there are no trees which then puts stress on the songbird population.

The latest story i am kind of loving is this here one about GOATS. you can tell by the comments that it is a bit too much for some of the more "cultured" individuals of our fine society. I really think that these are the kinds of solutions we need... the only real problem is the goat shit but seeing as my neighbour's dog makes a habit of shitting on my lawn it would be better to have something that would taste good putting on the pounds eating the weeds. Another problem might be the temptation to Cougars. the Cougars would be lured into town for some easy prey and any confrontation between a wild animal and a Man's property always ends up in the loss column for the wild animal.

But this idea of using nature... i believe it is called Symbiosis to help us live better and free of noxious chemicals or gas powered noise machines is a good one. Like that crazy idea of using trees to absorb the sun's energy and hence cooling the earth, or that old fashioned concept of letting insects live so they can pollinate the plants that give us masters food.

Disappear from the original SUPERSIMIAN release.

not to get all negative again

2008-10-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

I guess it is natural to hate yourself for what you did or didn't do if you are a self respecting perfectionist. Now calling me a perfectionist would be a far cry from the truth but in this particular case i think i deserve a Hammerhead award. I ended up getting interviewed today by the CBC live on air. The theme of the show was patience... i had plenty of time to think about my angles... perhaps too much time because i had it all figured and even had a few points written down... but the truth is i was like a god damn clucking chicken. It has been a long time since i have felt "stage freight" (i feel "stage shame" all the time). They knew i had young twin girls and a 4 year old... talking about patience should have been a slam dunk... all i had to do was to relive the events of last Friday when i was home alone with 3 sick kids for the day... but no, Robertson chokes like a victim in a horror movie an then tries to make a point about the virtue of impatience failing to connect the dots on how impatience can be a driving force in getting things done... next thing you know I'm talking about gardening.

I think next time this happens i need them to call Willingdon Black or i need somebody standing beside me with a taser ready to give me a little shot when i start losing my fucking mind.

I wonder if the batteries in a standard taser would last a 10 minute SR interview.

In the end I'm sure it's all good.. cant be worse than that time I __________.

I'm afraid this might become a night of bad bitching

2008-10-21T21:54:00.001-07:00

#1

WHO IS FALLING FOR THAT SHIT?

I'm sorry, truly unbelievable... that is like Bugs Bunny talking Yo Samity Sam into taking another beating in a trap that Yo Samity Sam set himself (remember the exploding piano).

This one works too...

Speaking of American Politics... who would have thought that "Batman" would foreshadow 2008 all those years ago.

Now lets shift over to Hockey, in particular, my favourite show CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.

As we all know there is an new "anthem" for Hockey night in Canada and with that comes some sore losers like this guy... who specifically asks to send this to everybody in the world.

"....I've just heard them. I've just heard all of the five semifinalist's hockey songs.
And they ALL...SUCK!! I've been jobbed by some useless dude named Bob Rock.
But am I bitter? Hell no. "F" you...Bob Rock. CBC has done it again. CBC sucks too.
My song was...and is...the Best. Thank you CBC...for ruining my life.
Yours truly, Lloyd H. Manuel
PS: Please FORWARD this to everyone in the World."

Poor Lloyd... at this point we can only hope that he is fictional. If you are real old buddy don't feel too bad because your in the Super Robertson Chronicles... a place where rage gets the better of one's judgement from time to time. I mean surly your life can't be ruined by the CBC... If they had just paid the 3 million for the old song then you never would have had the chance old Lloyd boy.

I think the real error that CBC has made (and i think the song chosen will be fine) is hiring Mike Milbury, who just wrote a piece called The Vancouver Canucks: Contenders or Pretenders
... in the first line of the article he actually has the gall to point out his article title is clever!

Good grief, as Charlie Brown would say... Mike Milbury could be the worst GM ever! He is a man with the ability to set an entire organization back for a decade. The man that traded Chara and the draft pick that became Jason Spezza for Yashin. He also traded Wade Redden, Eric Brewer, Bryan McCabe, Roberto Luongo, Olli Jokinen, Todd Bertuzzi, Raffi Torres, Taylor Pyatt and Tim Connolly among others. A well known mad man of a GM who is now paid by the CBC to write opinions on other GM's. As one Islander fan said "Mention his name to me and you get an eye twitch and my blood pressure rises to an uncomfortable level".

Not only that but they have inserted him into a segment with Kelly Hrudy and Ron Maclean. I'll admit that at first i didn't like Kelly Hrudy... he seemed too slick but after watching him for the last few years he has proven to be a man of keen insights and integrity. It almost seems like Milbury is there as the obnoxious "shoot from the hip", confrontational character that some yahoo decided might work for ratings... and i guess it might. Many of these sports shows have guys that don't see eye to eye and the viewer is treated to the spectacle of the annoyance. I mean, sure, it's hilarious when Don Cherry moves Ron Maclean's hand away from the imaginary line that says "this is your side and this is my side". Apparently 2 of the guy's on sportsnet hate each other (i don't have cable tv) but i know people who watch the show to see those guys fight.

A friend of mine who got into Hockey a few years back credits Hrudy for teaching him things about the game... and that was one of the advantages CBC use to have... that and the song.

I guess i should add that i think Marc Crawford is a good addition to the CBC hockey Night in Canada Staff.

disrespect

2008-10-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

I finally got to see Def Leppard's idiot singer Joe Elliot put the Stanley cup upside down. it was on TSN.com and the video was about how Chris Chellios was not too impressed with that kind of deliberate insult. He wanted to make sure that people knew that it was not a Detroit Red Wings event but rather an NHL event.

too bad it didn't go like this...

Joe Elliot goes and puts the Stanley Cup upside down on a hockey net and then Bob Probert with a Red Wings Classic Jearsy comes on stage and begins laying a series of haymakers on old Joe's head until it is a mess of red. Then a giant Gatorade bottle rolls on stage crushing the rest of the band and bursting open the members of the tragically hip would start in with "fifty mission cap".

be rightous in your wrongness

2008-10-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

I had this idea an i think it has merit.

It's how the global warming deniers dominated for years and still remain to this day.

I just hate selling... the idea enrages me.

smart people should make their own decisions based on rational needs and contained desires. That's the way it has to be... perhaps it would be better to be a debt ridden mindless consumer, perhaps you probably wouldn't care, and so there wouldn't be the constant disappointment. Maybe there is another culture on earth... but still the earth has a limited biosphere so once you know we are fucked can you ever lose that. Perhaps i need to volunteer somewhere and make a difference and see that difference and then begin to believe in some change some where.

i went to the park with the twins the other day and it reeked like solvents. they happened to be working on an OLYMPIC ice rink at trout lake park... you know the one where they spent all of the citizens money on the Olympic rink and now there is no money left for the community center and the perfectly good rink that was there before has been closed for 2 years so there is no local hockey or skating for the community. Another interesting point now that i am frothing into another patented rage. The new UBC rink is open and i talked to a guy who was offered a chance to play some drop in FOR $28. 28 bucks to play hockey... usually it is 15 bucks per person. Do i smell a rat... if that is the case WHO THE FUCK CAN USE THE FACILITY? to be honest i'm not too sure what the whole deal is but neither of us had ever heard of 28 dollar drop in hockey before.

What about the Mount Pleasant Community center in Vancouver? They are building a NEW ONE on a triangular piece of property by one of the more insane intersections in Vancouver... the building is mostly apartments but there is a small area for a community center (also a library and a child care center with a 5 year wait list... better get on it now in case you meet that special someone and have a child in the future)... no pool of course... wouldn't want that for a community.

Apparently they are going to tear down the old building and just go with "green space"... unless the plan gets altered of course.

Why tear down the building? first answer i'm sure starts with "can't afford". It's a great big building with a few gymnasiums with old school hardwood floors and all... surly we the community could use that space.

why is Kaiya crying.. i need sleep

one more thing

2008-09-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

I thought i should go on record on my thoughts on the Toronto Maple leafs this year as the pre season opens tomorrow.

I really like the way the new coach (Ron Wilson) is talking. I hope to see a departure in the poor defensive play that has been part of the Leafs culture for as long as i have been alive.

Talking about goalie workloads he mentioned that in San Jose last year the team gave up 23 shots on net per game and then noted that the Toronto goalie faced significantly more.

this is the kind of logic i like to hear rather than the old "we are going to be tough to play against with our aggressive work ethic"... and of course to motivate that work ethic we have signed many players to lucrative long term deals with no trade clauses.

said one leafs fan to the other "you never know"
and the reply was "yea you know... it the Leafs"

might this be the end of the classic "leaf collapse" (where they play good for a period and a half and then give up 4 goals in 3 minutes and never recover)

speaking of shameless promotion

2008-09-21T21:33:00.000-07:00

were we speaking of that?

oh right we don't speak.. i write and you shake your head at the stunning lack of grammar understanding i display.

This recording kicks some serious ass. i always view it as a disaster as the making of it punctured the first hole in the Roadbed armor. During the mixing of that album very strange things happened one being the saga that became "deep fried" and "deep fried reprise" which essentially ruined that song for me forever and left me with a bad lump somewhere.

Anyhoo, one of my favourtie local parents and i started talking music at the park while the kids played today until an upper body injury took out one of the kids. in the end i ended up sliding him a few Roadbed CD's... and then i got all paraniod so i took a listen.

Knockout hits is a fantastic CD, humorous, original, real and rocking.

My wife just came down and asked me what i was laughing at and it happened to be "territorial lynx" and the words to "Willingdon Junction".

I skipped Deep fried... hearing OK sung the wrong way still kills me.

Knockout Hits

actually fuck it... just listened to "Chimp on the ropes" and all the rage came back.

all copies of this CD should be destroyed... wow. no lyrics on the first chorus... i remember that one now... i think i am remembering the reasons i can't listen to this record. i end up in a series of why questions.

the economy

2008-09-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

My main point in the song Mr Greenie is the whole idea about this nonsense we keep hearing about how the economy is so important.

If there was no more economy, would food not still grow on the earth? Would there be no air or water (of course poisoned by the byproducts of "the economy"). it's so weird people vote for people on the words "strong economy" and "low taxes"... how one could fall for that bull shit i don't quite know. Apparently if the economy is good we can work 80 hours a week and be just able to afford all of the new consumer products we need to keep our selves "in style" and "happy". One of my main goals in life is to go and live off the land and the grid.

Explain to me now how a government who is apparently all about a free market system, allows hype machines to make people believe bad loans are good loans all the while fleecing the average citizen, home deed owner and consumer. Then when the shit hits the fan as many smart people have been saying for years then the government covers the money that has now apparently disappeared with taxpayer money. So the government is not going to regulate it they are just going to cover the loss.

wouldn't the free market dictate that if that company made a bunch of dumb moves then they should pay the price. What is the price? Can the economy fail? Can you prop up a flawed giant... wont it fall sooner or later if it is really fucked.

Me, i don't really know much about economics. i know i don't like debt so i avoid it at all costs... i work hard and i do without, and as i do without i miss nothing of any significance. i know people who lost a lot on money on Nortel and some who lost on Bri-ex... i have long been predicting the end of this insane real estate climb. and i have feared for people who have no fear... the ones who don't care what it costs because it's the life they want. Does anybody really know what they want?

you think i would be a commune kind of guy with all of this talk, but a commune would never work for me because there would always be a few lazy jackasses who have no shortage of words to explain and re-explain their own predicaments that it would drive me to have an immediate and massive stroke.

I just shake my head that this economy, which is the root of the problem destroying the live ability of the planet (pollution, loss of bio-diversity, global warming...), is so important that after it fleeces the fools who drive it those people pay again to keep it going... and that's all cool.

we define insanity

Super Robertson for Prime Minister

I'll take this country back to the stone ages... back when a rock was a rock.

Just going over a few of the more obvious things

2008-09-15T23:32:00.000-07:00

I realise you are all in your homes thinking the same thing...

as they say in the years to come there will be wars over water, because water will be the most precious commodity on earth. they also talk about how northern locations will have a more temperate climate with this "Global warming" thing.

A place like northern Alberta could be very well suited for this "NEW GLOBAL ECONOMY" what with it's vast networks of freshwater lakes... unless of course all of those lakes became toxic holding tanks that need air cannons going off all the time just so that ducks don't land in them as they will face sure death if they were to land in that unsolvable environmental fiasco. If that happened one might hear some fool say "if only we had known" and "who would have ever predicted", and perhaps, "did we save any of that tar sands money or is it all gone".

It would cause a lot of financial hardship if they were to shut down the operations, but what is the future price? I guess the answer is who cares, we need new stuff now and people will be out of office drawing golden government pensions when that shit hits the fan.

Apparently the price of oil is down yet the price of gas is up... i just paid $1.47 a liter... I'm not complaining i think it is still way to cheap when you think about the actual cost.

wasn't i on some "how to" kick

2008-09-14T22:11:00.000-07:00

It's always hard with these blogs reading backwards... if you know what i mean.

last time i believe i had my little head up my big ass and i was whining about having trouble booking shows in other Canadian cities. Just do it you chump.

I guess i got all of my stuff into the publicist so i all i have to do is pay him and people will know about this CD. And that is the real goal here... nothing, for me, is more frustrating than trying in vain to get your music heard. it's true that i am a horrible salesman, and i take that as a matter of pride. if you ask me a question i will do my best to give you the answer that is best for you. I just think that that is how people should be.

Let face it humans are insane. The only thing that matters is "money" and "the economy" and north americans are about to suffer through the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars to convince people to make last minute knee jerk reactions and vote for some fool. Imagine if all of that money could be put into some renewable energy project and all the candidates just had a web page with there philosophy and people could read and understand and make a consciences decision. i also believe that anybody who believes in the theory of "intelligent design" should be striped of their right to vote as they have proven that they are unable to think for themselves.

as humans we have to think like the beehive

Do bee's shit in their hive? Does one bee come in and give a dance to tell the hive the location of a prime field of sunflowers are and then another bee does a better dance and tells the bee's to fly in the other direction to en empty field with a few wilted lilies... but the field happens to be owned by a buddy of the fine dancing bee.

the bee's would sting the shit out of the liar bee don't you think.

Bee's don't have garbage day.

If we are to survive on this planet... and i doubt it, i think we will need to take lessons from organisms that live within their environments. the word freedom comes up but i think the freedom we need is free time... which apparently we have less and less of... so perhaps the economy is not the main dog that it is cracked up to be. i guess there are a few generations of humans out there who have been heavily programmed to spend and want.

you ever had a kid who started to walk and then had people tell you "now you have got problems". you should be allowed to sock people in the jaw for that kind of fool talk. One jackass parent told me the other day that now that their kid is mobile they can't control her. Have we all lost out fucking minds? Is the goal to raise capable competent thinking active and adventurous humans that have a sense of belief in themselves. god help them for the shithole disaster industrial wasteland of a planet that they will inherit. might not even bee any bees left by then

2008-09-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

It's has been a bit of a rough period and i hold myself completely responsible for losing focus lately. I need a new list. Most of the stuff is done that was on the master list, but what i need is my own list to do things i can do to help make things appear, as sim might say "Bigger that they really are".

I have been trying to book a tour, with some success but now it has become a series of emails that may go somewhere but most likely will go nowhere. I think the real trick here is to hire somebody to book a tour for the band 21 Tandem Repeats because the work falls into the kind of fuckery that leaves me uninspired and to prone to being on the computer following silly political coverage which then remindes me how WAY OFF BASE the human way of life is with respect to maintaining a supply of clean life essentials.

I guess what i could do is to write some news stories on the 21 tandem Repeats, and canada Lynx Records websites. I should probably just stick to the raw facts or should i, just fore once, make up some elaborate story that has little relavance to to truth as it is defined in the Oxford dictionary?

Way's not to create a "stir"

1) get naked at the supper show
2) jump under peoples tables and force a puppet show on them
3) mentioning human sewage

Things to do for Robertson.

Feed and take care of twins and family
should write and not be on internet.
Exercise
work on vocals