Don't h-h-h-hesitate

I apologise for all the video clips in my blogs lately. It's lazy blogging, I admit. However, I just can't help myself. The video for Joel Plaskett's Through & Through & Through is available on YouTube and I feel compelled to share its awesomeness with the world.



Things I love about this video:

1. Parts of it were filmed on compost collection day (you can see the green bins in the beginning and later on in the trailer park).
2. The double tape deck boom box and the ride past the minihomes .
3. The sidecar!
4. All the Nova Scotianess.
5. Joel Plaskett!

Zombie Season

Vampires are so totally 2008, y'all. Zombies are the "it" monster now. Has anyone else noticed that? I mean, my current reading list and my to-read list both contain zombie books (World War Z, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, respectively). Then today my mom sends me a link to a trailer for a new zombie movie. It's zombies in the arctic (not to be confused with vampires in the arctic; or, maybe they're just in an alpine system, but whatever). This clip is definitely NSFW, or small children, or people abhorrent of gore.



Oh, yes. It's not just Arctic zombies. No. It's arctic Nazi zombies. My mom thinks it looks awful. I think it looks awesome! She's more old-school when it comes to zombies, preferring the classic Romero versions to the modern remakes.

(Aside, I wonder how much CBAR funding we could get to do mark-recapture on artic zombies? Or SI? Or heavy metals? Oz, Justin, I feel a collaboration coming on...)

Nothing new under the sun

The other day Alej and I were lamenting the onslaught of remakes in Hollywood right now. Do we really need another Melrose Place? Why the hell are they remaking awesome movies, like Footloose? And we came to the conclusion that there's no new ideas out there.

Then, today, I came across two clips that prove how right we were. But, in this case, it's not movies, it's music. Both of the following clips are pretty sweet in their own right, and both do a really good job of illustrating a bunch of well-known and popular songs that are all, basically, the same song.





And, while we're on the topic of well-used themes, here's a video of Buffy kicking Edward Cullen's creepy-stalker-ass. (More than anything, that clip makes me want to watch the series again).

Best description of the weather that can also double as a porn name

Misty Wetness.

(Courtesy of Alej).

Happy Birthday, Oz!

That's an oldie, but a goodie.

So, I've been thinking about what I should write for your birthday, and I'm drawing a complete blank! It's only 8:45am here, and I've already had two coffees, and I'm a little giddy from lack of sleep because I started work this week and my circadian rhythms are still set to "Unemployed." Writer's block sucks. Well, as my creative writing prof used to say, "When you get writer's block, distract your audience with a picture of Daniel Craig."



Okay, so I'll tell you what I did in my last few days of unemployment. My parents were in town, and we did a lot of touristy things, like taking the ferry over to Halifax and walking along the waterfront. The new thing this year is the painted dolphins. A few years ago they did the same thing with lobster. I think Toronto did it with Moose one year. I think it's a fundraiser, maybe? With the dolphins auctioned off after tourist season? Regardless, they're fun to look at:

On another day, we went to Fisherman's Cove and walked on the boardwalk and beach. From the cove you can see the Halifax skyline off in the distance.


And thus concludes my special Oz Birthday post. I was going to put a bunch of pictures of you up, bud sadly I don't have that many of you, and in most of them you're sleeping in the back of the car on various road trips. When you come to visit me, we'll remedy that.

Thief of Time

Two songs I can't get enough of at the moment: Cobrastyle by Teddy Bears, and Alibi by Elvis Costello. The former because I'm a sucker for songs with clapping and the latter because it has the awesome lyric "You deserve it 'cause you're special /Alibi, alibi/Maybe Jesus wants you for a sunbeam/Alibi, alibi."

I figure I'd better get my post about my trip to Ontario out of the way. As most of you know I've been un-/underemployed for about 6 months, and now that I have gainful, full-time employment looming on my horizon (and, damn, that's going to be a hard mindset to get back into) I decided to spend three of my remaining free weeks in Ontario.

I've already kind of written about it. Deb came down from the big city to see Joel Plaskett with me. It was an awesome show. He played pretty much all the songs I'd want to hear, took requests, did a lot of talking and interaction with the audience. And, of course, we hung around afterwards and got to meet him. Did anyone miss that pic the first time around? Here it is again, just in case:

He's playing a free concert at the Dartmouth ferry terminal on Canada Day! Who wants to come with me?

My time at the cabin was a little buggy, and chilly - rightly so, given that it was late-May in northern Ontario. I spent most days within a five-foot radius of the fireplace. On nice days, I went down to the bridge and sat facing the wind (to keep away the bugs). On the worst day, the high was about 4oC, and it snowed. I've never been there for a snowstorm, so I went down to the bridge to fully experience it. I tried to take pictures, but they don't really show the snow, although they do get across the angry-looking water. I swear, there is snow in all the following pictures:

The cold and the fire made it prime conditions for copious reading. Have you ever spent an entire day reading? It's phenomenal, not something conducive to your cardio-vascular health, but such a great treat when you can get it. While at my cabin I finished Ahab's Wife (Sena Jeter Naslund), and read Little Dorrit (Charles Dickens). I had only read one Dickens before this (Great Expectations), and really didn't think much of it I think Little Dorrit has completely reversed my opinion of Dickens. I loved every page. It was one of those books that you get so immersed in that it becomes a part of your life, to the point where you almost grieve for it when it's over; you miss it that much. To get over my sadness, I started Mercy Among the Children (David Adams Richards). I finished that book after I got back to Nova Scotia. It was such a sad book, depressing, but it also filled me with anger and pity. And, yes, big surprise, it made me cry. Then, as if I wasn't sad enough, I had to go and read Columbine (Dave Cullen). My BFF loaned it to me with a disclaimer to the effect that it made her cry a lot, so I'd probably cry non-stop through the entire thing. It was such a fascinating book- everything I thought I knew about that tragedy was wrong. It made me cry, yes, but it also made me angry. I won't discuss it here - it would feel too much like gossip.

So, there you have it folks: my vacation and summer reading (so far) in one convenient post. Everyone should read those book and tell me what you think, or tell me what you're reading (I have a Comments option for a reason, people!)

Now I'm back in the land of NDP-leadership and hockey golden boys. It's good to be home!

Hockey Wagons

Apparently, I'm pretty random in the bandwagons that I choose to jump on. A few years ago, while I was living in Edmonton and they were in the Stanley Cup playoffs, I just really didn't care. I mean, it would have been nice if they won, but it didn't matter to me one way or the other. Fast-forward to Game 7 of Pittsburgh v. Detroit and I'm sitting on the couch, glued to the screen and holding my breath. Somehow, I managed to catch it. Sidney mania. It's very potent stuff; I've only lived in his hometown for 6 months, but it got to me (Aside, I prefer "Sidney mania" to "Sidney fever," as the latter sounds like some kind of VD).

It's all very cool - like some motivational sports movie. The greatest player since Gretzky (so they say) and he's, like, twelve, and is already Captain of the best team in the league, and is in Tim Horton's commercials and everything. Then he wins the Cup. And he grew up a few blocks from where I'm sitting. If you were in my place, you'd think it was cool too.

I'm so very glad Pittsburgh won. Not just for Sidney, but also because of my dislike for Redwings fans, that I've documented before. Take that, Motor City!

I can live with this

Finally, election results that don't make me want to cry. I mean, given the way my poor country has been heading, an NDP majority with a Liberal opposition is damn near Utopian.

For all my Albertan friends who are wondering what this feels like, I gotta say: pretty damn good. The PC lost seats! Imagine that!

A moment of silence for the lightning tree

I just got back from a three week vacation. Even unemployed people need to get away, you know? I want to extend my personal apologies for the lack of new content to Kimm, whom I think accounts for a good 50% of the hits my site gets. (That reminds me of an episode of DNTO I listened to on the drive from Cobourg to Halifax, and it made the really good point that things like blogs and email are so addictive because the rewards are unpredictable, and if lab rats have taught us anything it's that we will perform a behaviour more often just at the chance for a reward. Or, something like that. Second year psych was the only class I ever took where I actually failed a test, so that would suggest I have a pretty weak grasp of psychological things).

I have every intention of writing about my trip in more detail. In the interim, Kimm, you can look at a picture of me with Joel Plaskett.

And here are a picture of water, and some downed trees from my cabin:

And, just to make this post even longer, I'll tell you that I was really sad when I saw these downed trees. One of the trees that came down was my favourite tree - it's was this tree:

It has a strip of bark missing that spirals down the tree. When I was a kid I told myself that the mark was made one day when a bear slid down it, using it like a fireman's pole. When I was older, I thought that maybe lightning had done it (we all called it "the lightning tree"), but I don't really know. It was such a distinct tree, and has always been there. RIP, lightning tree.