Not worth reading...

The amount of correspondence I have had with work, benefits and medical forms lately are absolutely mind-boggling. For the record there is nothing really wrong with me... besides the obvious... that being I do what I do because I think it is a good idea based on multiple factors having to do with my state of mind and what it is I want to learn. If I were a natural consumer, I would have an easier go of it... riding the highs of new products and buffered with the comfort of minimum credit card payments. Where was I... oh yes my point was to do with the insane bureaucracy of a few simple claims, THAT ARE LEGITIMATE IN THEIR ENTIRETY. It is my belief that we have spent far more man-hours on this issue than would justify in the claim in the first place. It's just an old-fashioned chess match now with the opposition believing “well perhaps we can just stall this into eternity by requesting other more irrelevant information, one letter at a time”, and the home team now believing "Fuck you! You are paying cause that's the deal". It's true that an incompetent supervisor who can't punch 4 digits into a computer correctly may have opened the window for denial, but right is right and wrong is wrong, probably why they hire supervisors who are dumb as a post. Somewhere in this shithole I have a plaque for perfect attendance, which apparently recognizes my ability to put my work ahead of other things... there were many a nights when I stayed a few pitcher of beers too late at the SRSS, but who the fuck was at work the next morning @ 6:30 taking care of business so the company wouldn't lose... it was the guy with hundreds of hours of sick time. For the record I don't think anybody should ever call in sick if they "do it to themselves", you should call in sick when you are sick so you don't go breathing on your goddamn co-workers fucking up their rhythm. It's no wonder people go mad, you hold up your end of the bargain, and then when it is your turn to be re-inbursed, new rules are added, quaint phrases are recited, lines blur, and your resolve is tested.

I can almost see it in the board room "OK boys, just go out and fuck everybody and we figure 40% won't even push back... and that's pure profit right there". Sure it's well known, but it's also mentally taxing, and it really fucks with one's ability to achieve completion, as well as having any faith in the system we live in.

I was reading in the news that we are just too damn stupid, as people, for democracy to work. This is something I have been telling anybody who will listen, and others who won't for years... When you have an analyst on television breaking down an election and they say things like "well so and so just talked too intelligently, which alienated the voters who felt more comfortable voting for somebody who talked like they did"... at the level of a grade 4 student, you have to wonder. If you were in a spaceship going to the moon and the guy driving the thing said a bunch of things that seemed intelligent and knowledgeable, you wouldn't say... hey wait a minute can we get that slang talking son of a bitch in her to drive this puppy. No you wouldn't, you would take comfort in the fact that the person with your life in their hands has a solid grasp on the issues that could spell an end.

I mean as a society we still argue over whether humans are in fact impacting the planet in a way that will make it difficult to sustain life, even though you can measure man made toxins in a fetus... and here we thought fetuses were worth protecting at all costs. Or is it protecting control of decisions... apparently there will be a "modernized" environmental assessment agency, that will do away with all of these nasty little problems that happen when man efficiently extracts valuable natural resources. Are we going to solve the problems, or just pass a rule that says you can ignore them? I think we know the answer... how are you to stay sane? You can't take drugs, that will cost you time in a prison paid for by the taxpayers, and essentially ruining your employability forever, not to mention other problems. Speaking of that, I think if you are going to make drug policy they you should have to experiment with the drug... just so you actually know, for sure what the hell you are talking about... Just an idea. It just seems like there are an incredible amount of people, working people, useful people, tax paying people, that smoke grass... and so to criminalize and jail all those people, it kind of seems bad for the economy. I was thinking, like if you let good people who smoke grass grow a few plants then they will have all the grass they need, you will solve your crime money problem, and you won't need to jail good people. Is it about the drug, or the choice? I mean I don't know, I have never smoked grass because it's illegal and I am afraid of the penalty, but I seems like some of the people who do aren't out to harm... yadda yadda

I guess I need a new point.

Then there is the guy running Canada at this moment... clearly not an idiot... not dumb at all, highly intelligent actually, but yet has been a leader on the climate change denying front for many years, he is swiftly progressing his agenda... but who for? Is there some chance that he and his children won't have to live in this planet? Or is there some weird guarantee that if you act in totally corporate interests then you will be promised the last glass of fresh water.

I don't know, perhaps I’m just totally insane, this human path we are on make no sense to me. Everything I have learned from listening and watching is essentially the same as some bizarre language rule... yes I always comes before e... oh but there is a c there... sorry you are Shit out of luck this time.

Oh yea and on the robocall issue- If you are dumb enough not to vote in 2011 because some automated call phoned you to tell you your polling station had changed, then you don’t deserve to vote. The idiot Conservative party won because it formed a coalition with the idiot Reform party, meanwhile the idiot Liberal party and the idiot NDP party refused to do so and got outfoxed on the issue. The also did well to deliver the senile vote.

In the end it’s all just memories, and deficits, and irreversible environmental catastrophes, and the elimination of the middle class consumers buying power, and the dumbing of society as a whole… just don’t smoke grass it will make you a dumb criminal.

I'll take a blog over a tweet any day

Of course blogs are long and boring, you actually have to read paragraphs... like it say's in the music marketing emails: Make lists, stick to "bullet points"... feeling the rage... calm down and stay on task.

OK, I was reading about the start of twitter and apparently it happened that it was invented and then at a conference a bunch of people got up and left a lecture to go see another lecture. You see through twitter people found out instantly that there was something really interesting going on in another lecture, so they went to check it out. Clearly that was a key human tool in its infancy used as a tool to let people know about something happening. Sounds good to me, I guess it's a matter of who's doing the telling and why.

Unfortunately now it has become a standard marketing tool flooded with millions of yelps from millions of Who's working to push their product... always a bad combo. Me, I follow hockey writers, music folk, politics, news and a few other various science related folks. Tweet comedy or links to blogs or sites with interesting material are my favourite... incessant gig notices, sports franchise "tweet ups", and non-comical self suffering dreck are things that annoy me. I'm sure I annoy others, but I don't give a rat’s ass if people "follow me". If you don't want to hear what I have to say and you are not hearing it I think that's awesome, it helps the both of us.

I was actually about to go to bed, when I saw a news story that read

Flames post controversial tweet on Hemsky

Hemsky plays for the rival Oilers and has displayed the skills of an offensive player but is having an off year in terms of goal production... I think he has about 4 goals this year, but he was just resigned to a fairly healthy contract for 2 years... so somebody tweeted a mockery of that signing, and then the tweet was taken down, and now it's news... important enough to have a title and a story.

So let me get this straight. There is etiquette for short 140 character blurbs written in non-English, that are flooding a virtual world at an apparent rate of 2 million per day, and one of them is real news for real humans in a real world with real problems.

It's a good thing I'm not famous, it wouldn't go very well.

you guys read instructions?

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.

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...

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

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!

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

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.

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"

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!