you made me realize

i find myself posting merely as an excuse to use titles that occur to me. i prefer titles to posts. sometimes, however, it is impossible to find a title for a post that is already written. the last post was merely an excuse to use 'the box of souls' as a title.

i've signed on to a committee that will be meeting weekly for three hours at a time, between october 20th and december 22nd, in addition to an all-day retreat to be held october 13th at the vancouver rowing club.

hearing swing out sister's breakout right after my bloody valentine's you made me realize is a great moment. in other music news, sam sullivan's victory song, after winning the npa nomination for mayor, was fleetwood mac's don't stop(thinkin' about tomorrow), which, the wise will recall, was also used by bill clinton in 1992. to follow the parallel, david cadman was very close to playing ross perot to jim green's george h. w. bush this fall. in the grand tradition of ronald reagan, gordon campbell began his campaign this spring using bruce springsteen's glory days, until someone pointed out the irony in the lyrics.

a prize to whomever can tell me which songs were used by the following canadian politicians:
stephen harper
stockwell day
paul martin

further, if you know the theme music used by any other political figures of note, please let me know. i love this stuff. if kofi annan had music when he was elected secretary-general, i want to know.

the box of souls

as much as i'd like to stay up all night to finish luna, i'll need to get some sleep for my two general meetings tomorrow night. i've got work to do thursday as well, and most of the day saturday. maybe i can take next tuesday off. hopefully, we can start planning the real election on saturday afternoon, and get a committee arranged. i also wish we knew when the election would be called, but i'm also looking forward to the urgency of a surprise campaign.

we didn't like sin city, but i can't quite articulate why. it was undoubtedly a formalist experiment, but it was in a style that i had no interest in whatsoever. the film felt heartless, i guess, very hollow. someone else's line was that 'i'd never felt so bored by an action movie, ever', and i'd have to agree. all glamour without any sense, lots of style, certainly. it's not a style that i particularily care, for, though, and the lack of anything but style left me cold and uninterested.

it's too early in the semester for me to get anxious about not having enough time to read novels, but i'm getting there already. i want to read don delillo's underworld again, and atlas shrugged, too.

this is the background that i put on jan's computer. she thinks that it's ugly, but i love the guy's expression.

a very modern dance

i'd rather be either sleeping or reading my interpretive history of the american west, but i can't seem to focus on either.

nothing made me happier this weekend than sam sullivan's victory over christy clark. i think that we might now be able to have an election about the city, respective records of service, and respective ideas and plans, rather than personalities. a jim green v. christy clark race would be about one thing only: ambition. granted, i think that jim green would have a much easier victory over christy clark, but it would be a hollow victory, without a mandate or a real endorsement of any platform; jim green would have a mandate to not be christy clark, but little more than that. aside from generically 'staying the course'. for jim green, i think that a race against sam sullivan is better, because the campaign will be about vancouver. a christy clark victory would have offended my sense of justice; sam sullivan has paid his dues, and has, by all counts, earned the right to stand his record up to run for mayor. i'll say the same for jim green; he's got a record to stand on. most of all, i am happy that a 2000+ member nomination meeting solidly rejected glib media politics in favour of something more thoughtful and honest. feel free to call me on the hyperbole, but this is a blow against anti-intellectualism. this was a vote against lowest-common-denominator politics. the only persuasive argument that was put forward in christy clark's favour was the force of her star-power. the insinuation was that sam sullivan's record was irrelevant in comparison with that star-power; in other words, that the ability to sell was more important than actually having something to sell in the first place. i probably won't vote for him in november, but i absolutely believe that sam sullivan is the right choice for a mayoralty candidate.

i'm excited to watch this civic election from the front row as a citizen, as opposed to from the war room as an operative. i want to go to all-candidates forums to judge rhetorical ability and responsiveness to my pet issues. i want to hold my vote up in the air, and match my wish list with what's on offer. i honestly don't know who i am going to vote for in any position, and i look forward to building my ballot over the next two months.

loose translation

two new records yesterday, almost polar opposites:
leonard cohen, songs of love and hate (1971)
the new pornographers, twin cinema (2005)

i'll talk about the first another day, because i'll be seeing the latter band tonight, with rich.

i'd forgotten that destroyer was opening, and now i'm very excited, because destroyer is one of my favourite bands. on the new pornographers, though, i like the new album a lot, which is interesting, because it took me about a week to get into the last album. oh well.

my job is easy because i am honest. some people are having a very stressful time right now. those people happen to be artificial fucks with no work ethic whatsoever, outside of a constant regime of self promotion. i blame karma!

i refer to the NDP as my day job, and the student society as a side gig. while it's really a joke, it does reflect my priorities. it's sandbox politics vs. adult politics, and there's really no contest.

i'm enjoying the middle of sharon butala's luna much more than the beginning, and i fully expect to hate the ending. her short stories in real life are great, because they're all middle. if i can;t find her gates of the sun to read next, i think i'll be rereading ayn rand's atlas shrugged.

trans-island skyway

today:
leonard cohen, i'm your man (1988)
donald fagen, kamakiriad (1994)
leonard cohen, recent songs (1979)
sebastien tellier, politics (2004)
joe jackson, body and soul (1984)
leonard cohen, ten new songs (2001)
depeche mode, songs of faith and devotion (1993)

it's too late in the day to say anything more.

it's just the motion

my instinct, for a few minutes, was to stay at home, watch the chronicles of riddick, and get over myself. in retrospect, it was a good idea. i'm probably at the same conclusion (that i had the right answer a week ago) regardless, though. i attribute this lapse to a flush of ego and bad advice. i should know better, and i do know better. it is by knocking down the barricades and still arriving at the same conclusion that we know said conclusion is correct. i questioned my plan today, and came to the same end.

while the hot springs hurt my head, the trip there was incredibly rewarding. it was a good finale to a stressful period, and it grounded me. we went up around garibaldi, tracing the riding boundary to the very top of lake harrison, just past port douglas. i'd do that again. seeing the gothic church in skookumchuk. lilooet lake, mount currie, pemberton, tipella, sloquet. being naked in the hot springs with relative strangers.

i regret that i imposed on a friend tonight, longer than i should have, out of sheer unhappiness. i should have left sooner. hell, i should have stayed home.

jazz police grounds me. sharon butala, as much as i fight against her writing at times, grounds me. the globe and mail saturday crossword grounds me. you on my mind grounds me. vancouver-kingsway grounds me. sushi grounds me. the myriad details of retail work grounds me. drinking a double short espresso on the skytrain grounds me. sam sullivan v. christy clark grounds me. trout lake grounds me. don delillo and baseball grounds me. jan grounds me.

real as a gun

i'm not sure where to go from here. i crashed this afternoon, and i'm not sure what the next step is. i think that i will engage in an extensive consultation process.

i'm a star in new york

i'm happy about the honourable member from vancouver-point grey's initiative for a second referendum on BC-STV following a boundary commission report for several reasons.

1)his lack of interest in reviving the MMP debate should be the end for adrienne carr. for someone who, in the public eye, was a leading voice on electoral reform before oct. 23 2004 to so completely cede her political ground in one outburst betrays a grotesque lack of instinct. that such a politically incompetent and unskilled person still holds the leadership of the bc green party is a testament to said party's embarrasing and amateur approach to public life in general.

2)i'll have a use for the 300 citizens' assembly glossy reports in my den. the assembly was a neat exercise, and now we've got a chance to talk about it again, with, hopefully, a more informed and less hyperbolic tenor.

3)i'll still have a chance to go down in history! i had, while certainly not the most influential, a relatively substantial hand in the assembly's decision, and, for a political trainspotter like myself, i'll admit to the allure of having had the inside track on a major political development. this 2008 referendum will be the difference between the assembly's fate as a chapter or as a footnote in bc's political biography.

4)most importantly, BC-STV still has a chance. it's really pretty neat, and if people calm down with the partisan bullshit and paranoia for a second, we might have a chance at cracking open our politics. if the system changes, the experts change. while people are naturally scared of any political realignment, we have to be optimistic about our ability to favourably reshape the landscape. to interpret an electoral system that does hand greate choice to the voter as bad for the left is to suggest that the left can only win through trickery and a 'hidden agenda'. if we believe in what we have to say, then we have to believe that the citizenry, when given the chance to vote in favour, will agree. that's what ideology is all about.

now that the legislature is back in session, i can get back to my habit of reading the hansard blues every evening, looking for harry bloy or other gov't members to say stupid things, and scanning new democrats' statements for rhetorical flourish, or the lack thereof.

i have to be at strand hall at 8 am for a meeting with a senior administrator. in other words, i love my job. today's scus meeting felt almost pornographic for the sheer amount of politics at play. i must admit, when i have no stake in the matter at hand, it's a lot of fun to watch.

the light in the land of plenty

i'd go to bed earlier, but i find that between 10 pm and 2 am is the only time in my day for uninterrupted reading/listening. until i've mastered the entire leonard cohen catalogue, i think i'll have to stay up late. it's just so hard to go to bed when there's so much more to get out of these songs. i love poring over such a rich discography; i just wish i could do it before midnight.

it's funny, that every time i think i'm done and settled in my collection, i find a new mission. last year that mission was morrissey, and now i have all of the morrissey records. soon i will have all of the leonard cohen records.

now i have:
recent songs (1979)
i'm your man (1988)
ten new songs (2001)

in other news, the old virgin/new hmv store has two martha and the muffins records on cd: metro music (1979) and this is the ice age (1981). i'll pick them up soon. today i got then again, an 18-song martha and the muffins retrospective.

we built this city on rock and roll

the most potentially frightening aspect of what's happened to new orleans is the sudden knowledge that cities are vulnerable. while in new york, four years ago, the cry was to rebuild, the cry in louisiana is to vacate a city that has become a very literal hazard to its few remaining occupants. there is a very real question as to whether new orleans should even be repopulated.

the city has been a constant since its advent in north america, and even more so since the rural flight of the last 100 years. we've grown accustomed to the death of small towns, so much so that to find one that thrives is a surprise. we know, as much as we hate to admit it, that small towns are over. cities are all we have. they are the only context we understand, regardless of what our mythology might say. we use rupert's land for weekend recreation, but without a city's anchor, we would lose our coherence. while urban decay, suburban booms, office parks et al have complicated the urban myth, no serious challenge has been launched against the supremacy of the city. now, however, a city may have died, and our myth of the immortal city will have to incorporate, somehow, this newfound fear.

here's a question: who gets to hold their 2008 presidential convention in new orleans, the democrats or the republicans?

brandy in a dixie cup

tonight, i rode my bike to pick up dinner from chao phraya, at cambie and 7th. i ordered from home and rode out along the 10th ave. bike route, turning north at cambie. i felt really clever at first, getting across town and picking up dinner using my own motive power. then i was unhappy, because i know that i'm gradually turning into one of those bike people. i guess it's a phase that every one in vancouver has to go through at some point. i hope i don't get sanctimonious about bikes. please stop me if i do.

on thursday, i plan to go out to zulu to buy all of their used leonard cohen albums. i want to find dear heather, songs of love and hate, recent songs, and new skin for the old ceremony. i'd buy anything, though. every time that i think i've got everything that i could possibly ever want to listen to, i go and find something new. i love leonard cohen. i think i love him because he is broke now; i'm listening to everything through the lens of 'now he's 70 years old, and he has no retirement savings'. it was that news that prompted me to track down his songs. i love joan of arc; it might be his best song, aside from jazz police, which never fails to make me happy.

i've got four books on the go right now:

luna, by sharon butala, which is the middle novel in her major trilogy. it is about women living in a small saskatchewan town.

the power game: how washington works, by hedrick smith. it is a large text from 1988 detailing the channels of power and influence in washington d.c., particularily within the reagan administrations.

the 1200 days: a shattered dream, by lorne kavic and garry nixon. it is a detailed autopsy of dave barrett's ndp government of 1972-75.

fights of our lives: elections, leadership, and the making of canada, by john duffy, liberal strategist/talking head. it thoroughly details the strategy and outcome of five critical federal election campaigns, as chosen by duffy: 1896(laurier v. tupper), 1925-6(king v. meighen), 1957-58(diefenbaker v. st. laurent), 1979-80(trudeau v. clark, what a matchup!) and 1988(mulroney v. turner).

avalanche

i had a website in highschool, that i made in grade 9, i think. 1997 or so. it was called 'a bank where the wild thyme blows', after a line in a midsummer night's dream, and the address was http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/4488. there's nothing there anymore, since yahoo bought geocities, abolished the districts, and put advertising on every page. there was only a small ad at the top of each geocities page in 1997, and most of the ads were for other people's homepages, which i was certainly wiling to indulge. i made a lot of other sites then too, relying on my circa-1997 HTML knowledge and my burgeoning paint shop pro abilities. soon, my interest in graphic design outstripped my interest in actually 'developing content', and i ended up creating common font/colour schemes for a good 20 sites without any actual information or text to surround it. i wanted to make an empire, of sorts, all linked out from 'ABWTWTB'; the central site all about me, and each satellite devoted to a particular interest that reflected the respective district.

i loved the organization of geocities into districts(eg. SoHo) and neighbourhoods(eg. Coffeehouse), each with individual street addresses. each district was meant to group common interests together; there's a comprehensive list of the districts and neighbourhoods here. it's a real nostalgia rush to read through those.

i attempted to keep the central site updated daily. i was told by a friend who had a site about videogames that noone wanted to read daily updates, and that it wasn't necessary. i still tried to keep the schedule up. later, in 2000, i believe, i had another homemade site hosted on my older, cooler friend meighan's domain. i tried to update it weekly, at least, and eventually moved to diaryland, thinking that the chore of manually coding and formatting the update was what kept me from more consistent posts. in other words, foxbase alpha is merely the latest form of a project that i've been pursuing intermittently for eight years.

i'm feeling good lately. it's not unlike how i felt during grade 12. not just confident, but competent consistently since grade. i feel as if i know what i'm doing, and that i'm secure. i haven't felt that way since grade 12. that year, it meant that it was time to move on and try something new. in other words, it's time to move on and try something new. i'll give it until april 30th.

in other news, a new kate bush album, titled aerial, will be out on november 8th.

going to the candidates' debate

i'd intended to write about music here, but it seems there's only so much to say. i listen to records differently without a discman, and might buy one soon, if i have a spare $60.

remember the odds? they did heterosexual man and eat my brain. oh, and someone who is cool. the choruses were great. "just a hetero... sexual.... man." "come on and eat my brain." "i'm just a picture that i'm holding of someone who is cool." the problem is that all you need to hear is the chorus, once. then you're done; it's the money shot. all you need is 45 seconds, not a full 3:50 running time. maybe the odds are the perfect music bingo band.

this really is the beauty of music bingo. you get to hear all the great hits you know and love, but you don't have to put up with the whole stupid song, just the good bits. it's like a whole night of big chorus money shots. night ranger's sister christian is great for 45 seconds, but any more and you'll be unhappy. when you get a clip of a song that you really do want to hear straight through, like kids in america, the tease is half the fun. music bingo is the perfect pop culture experience. if you start drinking during the classic rock game and keep going through the middle game, you be happy and drunk and singing along to the extended 80's round at the end. good, clean fun.

working with a poser makes me so grateful to be secure in my taste in music. i was almost a hipster. in late 2002, it was the identity i was edging towards. a righteous canadian nationalist and a burgeoning hipster. i read all the local papers to read about rock bands, and really wanted to go to rock shows. i wanted to go to rock shows for the sake of going to rock shows. i'd want to hear a new band for the sake of hearing a new band. it's just not worth it. i was pointed in a different direction the following spring, and am happy in life as a result, but it is an interesting road not taken to consider. i would have been so unhappy.

an interesting explanation for my taste in music, perhaps: i successfully avoided a punk phase. if there was any 'rebellious' phase in my development, it might have been shoegazer rock, but it was hardly a detour or a rejection. at no point in my life, however, have i enjoyed punk rock. neither have i attempted to reject my parents' taste in music.

a list of hit songs that i really like: (this list is not comprehensive)
bruce springsteen, dancing in the dark
this lizzy, the boys are back in town
gin blossoms, hey jealousy
rush, tom sawyer
duran duran, ordinary world
john parr, st elmo's fire(man in motion) - this was the rick hansen theme song*
the killers, mr brightside
petula clark, don't sleep in the subway
journey, don't stop believin'
elton john, daniel
tina turner, we don't need another hero
elvis presley, suspicious minds
fleetwood mac, you can go your own way
the beegees, words
gerry rafferty, baker street
white town, your woman
van halen, running with the devil

*a note that hearing this makes me think of bc in 1987, after expo. it makes me think of the plaza of nations and bc place. a strange, very different bc. bill vander zalm, free enterprise, small business, a waning resource economy. selling coal to the japanese, and building tumbler ridge as a brand new company town. brown and grey suits. the keg, canada place, omnimax,
it is because of these associations that i like this song, and also why i like going to bc place and loitering. it unsettles me, and i'll keep spending time there until i figure out exactly why.

jan has a website now, called the leader of the church of i hate you. we may be entering a strange new phase.

i think i do a good job of leading a balanced life. i do not tend towards fads, and am getting better, i believe, at a separation of work and real life.

i've been described as mellow, which i appreciate. maybe this is why i am so tolerant of what we euphemistically describe as 'workout'. it's not really bothering me. i accept it. sure, it's loud, it's dusty, these are facts, but there is little that i can accomplish by being upset, and each day they hammer at plywood is another day closer to the end of the project.

it took me years to listen to leonard cohen, but i'm currently making up for lost time. i like songs of love and hate and i'm your man. i love the jazz police.

even more, i love the total self-obsession of foxbase alpha.

post a comment if you got to the end! all you have to say is that you read it all.