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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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 kind 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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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"

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.