With a bang and a whimper

There are two sayings that I like to pretend were said by my grandmother, although I think I probably picked them up from all that nineteenth century literature I read when I was a kid. They both essentially mean the same thing, I think. The first is, "it never rains but it pours" and the second is "if it's not chickens, it's feathers." So I'll leave it to you to guess what kind of week I had.


Collective bargaining began this week, and occupied six hours of my time on Thursday, plus countless hours of my thoughts since then. I also had dinner with my mother and one of her friends from nursing college. On Friday, I attended a Deans' Breakfast for the frosh, followed by an information session for the English majors, and met with the union's Scholarship Committee. On Saturday, I volunteered for the local AIDS Committee's annual AIDS Walk, and somehow got suckered into doing work with Excel spreadsheets.¹

Saturday night made it all worth it, though. Friends of mine put together a record label for artists in North Bay Rock City², recorded an e.p., and held a record release party at one of my favourite bars. After the week I'd had, I had more or less talked myself out of going until one of the performers emailed me to tell me that he thought I should go--so I got out of my comfy pants and into some other clothes.³

This was the best decision I'd made all week. The martinis were $5, I was only minorly socially awkward, and the music was amazing. Generally, when you've got a multi-artist e.p., you're going to wind up with something that you don't really care for, but this was not the case on Saturday. Everyone who took to the stage was awesome: there was a great mix of originals and covers. (My favourites were Matt Murphy belting out Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz," Tyler MacIver's version of Tommy James & the Shondelles' "I Think We're Alone Now"⁴ and Kyle Fowle's Sonic Youth cover.⁵)

Headliner Craig Cardiff played a set mid-show, which felt very intimate as he invited people to sit down on the floor and on the stage. I didn't because I didn't want to abandon my totally sweet bar stool, which was still less than ten feet from the stage. His set was excellent even without my favourite song, "Albion Hotel," and he played a lovely cover of "What A Wonderful World" as his last song.

I'm always a bit worried when I go to friends' creative endeavours, because there's always that slightly possibility that your friends are going to suck, and then there's some awkward lying involved about how much you enjoyed stuff.⁶ Fortunately, no lying would've been required for this show: I had a great time, as evidenced by the fact that I stayed out til 2 a.m.

Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better night out, with one exception--I forgot to grab myself a copy of the e.p.
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¹ There really aren't words to describe how much I hate Excel/how stupid Excel makes me feel. Also, it was Excel for Windows Vista, which is even worse. I really hate the MS Office suite for Vista. Obviously, no one at Windows has ever heard the phrase, "If it's not broke, don't fix it."
² Despite the nickname, North Bay is very seldom a Rock City.
³ I tweeted about this at the time, but I still want to know: What does one wear to indie concerts when one is a grown up? This was so much easier when I was 16 and could wear a pair of Converse One-Stars and a t shirt I'd painted a slogan on myself. I ended up in a (machine) knit dress and a pair of jeans.
⁴Yes, it is the same song that Tiffany covers; it just sounds more impressive if you know the original artist.
⁵ Though, as I tweeted at the time, every time I hear Sonic Youth now, it reminds me of the part in Juno when Juno is angry at Mark and she tells him that she bought a Sonic Youth album and "it was just noise!"
⁶ This is undoubtedly a residual effect from one of my exes, who--while he was a talented guitar player--definitely thought he was a lot better than he actually was, and would get upset if he wasn't given what he thought was his due after shows.

To Marry Or Not To Marry

Whilst perusing the internets in hopes of finding some good readings for our ceremony (so as to avoid 1 Corinthians, which is beautiful, but also used by everyone) I came across Charles Darwin's list of pros and cons in answer to the question of "To Marry Or Not to Marry?" I've excerpted it here for you:

This is the question

Mary

Children — (if it Please God) —
Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, —
object to be beloved & played with. — —better than a dog anyhow. — Home,
& someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. —
These things good for one's health. — Forced to visit & receive relations
but terrible loss of time. —

W My God, it is intolerable to think of
spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing
after all. — No, no won't do. — Imagine living all one's day solitarily in smoky
dirty London House. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with
good fire, & books & music perhaps — Compare this vision with the dingy
reality of Grt. Marlbro' St.

Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D.

Not
Mary

No children, (no second life), no one to care for one in old age.—
What is the use of working 'in' without sympathy from near & dear
friends—who are near & dear friends to the old, except relatives

Freedom to go where one liked — choice of Society & little of it. —
Conversation of clever men at clubs — Not forced to visit relatives, & to
bend in every trifle. — to have the expense & anxiety of children — perhaps
quarelling — Loss of time. — cannot read in the Evenings — fatness &
idleness — Anxiety & responsibility — less money for books &c — if many
children forced to gain one's bread. — (But then it is very bad for ones health
to work too much)

Mr. Darwin and I obviously think along the same lines.

If you have suggestions for readings that aren't 1 Corinithians, please feel free to send them my way. Mat has suggested the lyrics to There Is A Light That Never Goes Out but I'm not sure that "to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die" quite sets the right tone.

Devil's Haircut

Yes, I know that I owe you an entry. Several entries, truth be told. Unfortunately, I am flat out exhausted right now, and of no sound mind nor body to put together something coherent. Instead, I will leave you with this little gem that I found on the memory card for my camera. It's from the Crowded House concert that Dad and I went to at the Danforth Music Hall last year. (Seventh row seats. Squee.)

Songs of Summer

There has been massive construction work going on at the end of our street for the last month or so, and one of the unfortunate side effects of this (aside from the shaking of our house) has been that the city keep turning the water off between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. This makes it really hard to get anything done during the day, like laundry or cleaning. Alas. As a result of this, I spent most of yesterday afternoon at the beach, finishing up Wolf Hall, and trying not to further the previous day's sunburn. (Waterproof SPF30 is the way to go, it appears.) Wolf Hall was ultimately unsatisfying, or at least not as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be; it was gorgeously written but not quite the sum of its parts, I guess. One of the problems that I often have with historical fiction is that I'm always laying out a map in my head of the historical timeline, and the fiction often becomes secondary to connecting those dots. It took a long time for Anne to become Queen, even if the journey was beautiful.¹

One of my academic colleagues and I have embarked upon a new project together: we are watching David Lynch's Twins Peaks. It's a re-watch for him, but a first time through for me. I have seen bits and pieces of the show before, but nothing in any kind of cohesive way, so this is especially exciting for me.

A few people on Facebook have been posting their favourite summer songs, so I've been trying to compile a list in my head of my favourite summer music. So far the list is pretty short:

Summertime - The Sundays
Rock Lobster - The B52s
Santeria - Sublime
Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles
She's a Rainbow - The Rolling Stones
Steal My Sunshine - Len²
Left and Leaving - the Weakerthans
Be Still My Heart - the Postal Service
Tonight Is A Wonderful Time - April Wine

What are your summer songs?

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¹ In retrospect, perhaps not the best "beach book" I might have chosen.
² Yes, yes, I know that this song is actually kind of lame, but you're forgetting exactly how catchy this song is, as is the song it samples, the Andrea True Collective's "More More More." Plus, if I only hear it for a couple of weeks in a year, I actually don't mind it.

And your bird can sing

I have spent the last hour playing The Beatles Rock Band and I have sung myself hoarse. It's marvellous! Sometimes I like to imagine a world where karaoke is made for people like me: slightly tone deaf, but with a love of music that makes up for. Someone who isn't interested in singing Top 40 hits. I want Crowded House Rock Band and Elliott Smith SingStar. I want to sing songs that actually mean something.

I miss the Albion Hotel in Guelph. I miss the jukebox, and the Strongbow (one of my least favourite things about this town is the total lack of cider on tap anywhere). I miss eating nachos and putting ten dollars of quarters in the jukebox and pissing other people off because the next ninety minutes of music were all mine and I was going to be drunk and enjoy every word out of that beautiful lighted box.

Today was a good day at the end of a long week. Mat went hunting for deer, which left me alone with a queen sized bed. There is something to be said for having a whole bed to yourself. He came back last night, as the hunting party reached their quota quite early in the week (and it was raining).

The winter Interweave came today, along with my skein of Dye For Glory yarn: Three Irish Girls' Father Time. It's beautiful and manly. I got it on Finley Fingering, which I'm quickly realizing is one of my favourite sock yarn bases. It's very squooshy.


I also grabbed a few snaps of some finished projects. First is Caitlin's birthday rpesent, the ubiquitous February Lady Sweater:



I also finished the Ripley hat from Whimsical Little Knits 2:



And I have cast on a Swallowtail Shawl as a gift for my gramma.

In Conversation

[While watching So You THink You Can Dance Canada, we see a dancer use a very poor cover of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes"]

Me: You know, I haven't entirely given up on "In Your Eyes" as a wedding song.

Fiance: Really?

Me: Yeah. It's the whole "In your eyes/ I see the doorway to a thousand churchs" line. It's gorgeous.

Fiance: I think we're avoiding the real issue here.

Me: We are?

Fiance: Yes. Why don't we just accept the obvious?

Me: The obvious?

Fiance: Our wedding song is Distant Sun.

Me: It is? It is. It is! How did I not know this?

Fiance: You're dumb. I think we'd talked about a few months ago but decided against it for some reason.

Me: I don't remember what those reasons were, so obviously they weren't very good reasons.

Fiance: Agreed.

Me: Distant Sun is pretty much my favourite song ever.

Fiance: I know.

Happy Canada Day!

I drew a map of Canada--Oh! Canada--
with your face sketched on it twice.
You are in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet.
--Joni Mitchell

So the only reasonable thing to do on your country's national holiday--particularly on a day that is grey, overcast, and unlikely to become appropriately sunny and hot--is to make yourself a Canada Day playlist. Of course, if you're a nerd like me, you might call Canada Day Dominion Day, since it marks that time when some of us (Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick) got our shit together and decided to become the Dominion of Canada, as distinct from England.



I'm gonna start with this song and see where it takes me. Check out the results on blip.fm at RadioFreeRhiannon

In advance of Father's Day

Assuming that my plans for the weekend will likely prevent me from posting tomorrow, I wanted to get this posted today. I've watched High Fidelity twice in the last week (in shameful, US network censored versions) which has caused me to make a number of All Time Top Five lists in my head. I'm quite pleased with this one--and I can't think of anyone I'd rather make Top Five Lists for than my dad.

The All Time Top Five Songs for My Dad (Father's Day edition)

5. Rod Stewart - You're In My Heart: When my dad retired from the police force, he gave a really touching tribute to my mother. Being the wife of a police officer wasn't easy (particularly for someone who had to balance her own career as a nurse against the demands of a province-wide force), and the early years of their marriage might have broken up a lesser couple. He used part of this song in his speech.

4. Crosby Stills Nash & Young - Teach Your Children: One of my dad's favourites to play on the guitar: "Don't you ever ask them why/ if they told you, you would cry/ so just look at them and sigh/ and know they love you."

3. The Beatles - If I Fell: The Beatles are, of course, my dad's favourite band. This is his favourite Beatles song, near as I can tell--can you ever pick just one favourite song by your favourite band? I'm always kind of surprised by this one--it's an easy one to forget, I think, in term of the Beatles' overall oeuvre, but it is a good one.

2. The Animals - House of the Rising Sun: This song was the first 45 single that my dad ever bought, launching him on a music collecting career that's spanned about 40 years and several different media. At last count his CD collection comprised about 2500 volumes. My mom bought him an 8 gig iPod touch for his birthday in April, and he's already filled it.

1. Rod Stewart - Maggie May: His favourite of all his favourite songs. Need I say more?

Happy Father's Day, Dad! I hope you like your Darth Vader card. It beat out the Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own card by a very small margin. (And if the Tom Hanks one had said "Avoid the clap, Jimmy Dugan" instead of "There's no crying in baseball", it would've lost.)

left and leaving

My father was in town briefly yesterday, and he came over to check out the new guitar. He agreed with my assessment that it was in good condition, saying that it looked to him like it had hardly been played. He then tuned it for me, so I am playing around with it a little tonight.

It's been years since I've tried to pretend like I could learn to play guitar. I have no rhythm, and no particular musical talent. Strangely, my rhythm has gotten better as I've gotten older. While I'd never say that I'm good at Rock Band or GUitar Hero, my performances there aren't quite as EPIC FAIL as they once were.

Back in high school I used to spend a lot of time teaching myself bits and pieces of songs from the Oh Canada Tab Archive. The archive is still there, though it looks like it hasn't been updated in about 8 or 9 years. It is literally like living in 1999 again. Which manages to be awesome but sad.

Though sometimes I feel out of step with my generation, I'm glad that I wasn't born younger. I would've been an emo scene kid--one of the worst kind.

iPod game

My MP3 player's name is actually Marigold. She's a SanDisk Sansa 4 Gb player and rocks my socks off.

Ok, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool..

Waking Up: Lay All Your Love On Me - ABBA
First Day at School: Now and Forever - Carole King
Falling In Love: El Condor Pasa (If I Could) - Simon and Garfunkel
Fight Song: Whispers and Moans - Crowded House
Breaking Up: America - Simon and Garfunkel
Prom: We've Gotta Get Out of Here - the Animals
Life: Volcano - Damien Rice
Mental Breakdown: The Old Apartment - Barenaked Ladies
Driving: Wandering Star - Portishead
Flashback: Oh What a Night - the Four Seasons
Wedding: Song for a Winter's Night - Gordon Lightfoot
Birth of Child: I Have A Dream - ABBA
Final Battle: Sleepy Maggie - Ashley MacIsaac
Death Scene: Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran
Funeral Song: On Peak Hill - Stars **the lyrics to this are fucking eery for a funeral song**
End Credit: Left and Leaving - the Weakerthans

I really, really love Marigold. She is about 3/4 full right now, and she's made me realize how much I missed having music as part of my life. I threw out my broken stereo when I left Guelph and it's really never been the same. I think I need to go to more concerts this year - I'm starting to feel the itch.

Children of Men is awesome!