Here’s an awesome track from The Pejoratives at the Clocktower on April 26, 2007. It’s another one of those “we just made it up” tracks. I started out on the Rhodes with a kind of salsa groove and it grew from there.

The rhythm actually came from the noise that one of the dimmers in the lighting at the bar was making. It wasn’t regular by any means, but it was interesting. I had gotten up to get a beer (forgot to get one before we started…d’oh) and I noticed this sound coming from the ceiling when Bill the barkeep turned down the lights. It sounded like morse code, or someone trapped in the ceiling trying to escape. I hurried back to the Rhodes to hammer something out.

It turned into this weird, dissonant, latin-esque, syncopated groove thingy that I doubt we will ever be able to reproduce again. Good thing it’s on tape.

"Little chocolate dog,
Why do you eat your own poop?
It is disgusting. "

This is a picture of our (soon to be) new standard dachshund puppy, Rolo. She was 4 weeks old on New Years Day. After her vet check up on the 13th of January, she will be available to come home. She comes from Embrun (just East of Ottawa) and she was the only chocolate coloured puppy from her litter. The rest (3 females and 1 male) were all Black and Tan, as is their Mom and Dad (or Bitch and Sire, if you’re in to that sort of thing).

Here is a picture of her litter (she’s the brown one). I don’t know how much she weighs, but she’s not much bigger than a chipmunk. When we picked her up in our arms, she immediately started wagging her tail (good sign). Also a good sign: didn’t get peed on. I’m sure there will be more of both in the future.

It’s only long in my perspective, really. You see it’s 10am. At lunch (noon), I go and pick up my brand new MacBook from the Purolator Depot. So for the next 120 minutes, I have to sit at my desk and do work instead of picking up the possibly awesomest laptop in the world[1]. In all honesty, though, it really wasn’t a long wait for it.

I ordered it online directly from Apple. CompuSmart could sell me a white MacBook, but since they had none in stock, they would have to get one in (about a week). However, I wanted to upgrade the RAM (naturally). CompuSmart’s price to upgrade from 1Gb to 2Gb of RAM was $150 more than Apple was offering online. So, I asked them if they can get the MacBook from Apple with the 2Gb RAM to sell to me. I expected a, “Yeah, that’ll be no problem.” What I got was, “If we do that, it’ll take 4-6 weeks.” Ballhockey.

So I ordered online from Apple. I upgraded the RAM to 2Gb and it still said it would ship from Apple in 1-2 days. Awesome. I splurged for the expedited shipping (3-5 business days, $23) because, hey, $23 is a lot less than $150. When I placed my order Wednesday night (the 6th), the expected receive date was anywhere between Dec 11 to the 14th. Not bad.

I got a confirmation email the next day (7th) saying it had shipped from Apple. Bonus. Then, when I checked the tracking information on Friday (8th), it was already in Toronto from the states. Holy crap. Obviously it didn’t move over the weekend, but it was at my door on Monday (11th) at 11:06am. 3 business days. Holy crap on toast.

Since I was at work yesterday, I wasn’t there to pick it up, so they took it to the depot. Now I have to pick it up over lunch. Well, at least I’m 20 minutes closer to lunch than before…

[1] Well, my world, of course, since the next best computer I have is a P3 450MHz from 1999.  I’m pretty sure there is tubes in there somewhere… Actually, no there isn’t, now that I think of it, cuz it really sounds like crap.

Few people know this about Havelock, Ontario, but it is the only[1] town in Ontario that dogs of any kind have been banned there for almost 20 years. You may think to yourself, “Wow, I didn’t realize that a town in Ontario could ban all dogs.” You would be wrong. The details of the events here are pieced together from the eye witness accounts of 4 Havelock residents.

For those of you who have never been to Havelock, there’s not much there to see. But if you live in Havelock, you are quite familiar with two things: The Hotel Havelock, and the Ball Diamond. Both of which were contributing factors in this debacle.

First off, The Hotel Havelock (or known locally as ‘The Hotel’) was the only place in Havelock to go and have drink and perhaps enjoy (term used loosely here) a band (likely ‘The Swamp Band’). Historically, it was the only stop between Toronto and Ottawa on the rail line where you could get hooch, so naturally it became the place of legend, spawning nightly bar fights, drunken snowmobiling, and later on it was the largest source of cougars in the area. In 2004, it was demolished because it would cost more to un-condemn[2] it than turn it into a parking lot.

Secondly, the ball diamond (or ‘the park’) was located in the middle of town adjacent to the old age home next to the rink. In the summer, every weekend there would be slow pitch tournaments, and during the week there would be regular league games. There was a little refreshment stand that sold pop and candy to all the kids that would come to the games. Pretty much everybody in town was involved with the park in some way, whether it was playing ball, coming to watch ball, or working at the rink. The important information to know about the park is that it is next to the old age home.

Now that you have a little information about the area, let’s get down to brass tacks. In June 1987, a trapper named Tom Wilkins from Northern Ontario came to town with his 3 German Shepards in his half-ton. Naturally, the first stop was the hotel. According to “Big” Tom (as he was known, not for his weight, but for the 6-pound benign tumor on his neck), his dogs were the alcoholics, not himself, and since they were good hunting dogs, he let them drink as much as they wanted.

Big Tom’s tumor was really hurting him. As was the solution for most of his problems, Big Tom drank to make the pain go away, but because it was a remarkably wet and cold June, it took more Cordova Toilet Booze than usual. And those who know Big Tom know that when Big Tom drinks, his dogs drink, so they got just as hammered as he did. But after Tom passed out in the ‘executive bathroom’ (the coat room), his dogs weren’t ready to call it an afternoon. They left the hotel looking for any unattended trash cans in which to rummage.

Eventually, the dogs made it down to the park (oddly enough, not on a ball day). The infield had just been graded, so they spent most of the afternoon rolling around in the dirt. Four ladies from the old age home were out playing bridge in the court yard when they saw the dogs playfully rolling around in the nicely groomed ball diamond. Their sense of town pride perked up and they didn’t want the dogs messing up the prize winning infield, so they went over to shoo the dogs away (their canes can be enticing).

Well, needless to say, alcoholic German Shepards don’t take nicely to being told what to do. They immediately stopped playing and turned to growl at the ladies. Before the bridge club could get out of the diamond, two of the dogs raced over to block the only exits: the dugouts. Scared, trapped, and a little gassy, the ladies panicked as the largest dog slowly approached them. One of the ladies tried to make a run for it by pushing over another lady and bolting for the right field fence. The dog ignored the ‘easy kill’ on the ground and chased her into the right field grass. He caught up with her 15 feet from the fence and made quick work of her. After all, he was a good hunting dog.

Stayed tuned for Part 2!!

[1] Technically, Marmora also instituted a complete canine ban in solidarity with the families torn apart (don’t mind the pun) by the June 1987 massacre. However, by January 1988, they realized that if they ban dogs, they can’t have the sled dog races anymore, so they quickly rescinded then ban.

[2] A friend of mine who’s dad was an electrician told me a story of the time he and his dad went into the basement of the Hotel to fix some wiring. On the way down the stairs, he looked to his right and saw sitting on the shelf a perfect rat skeleton in mid stride. It had apparently died there some time before and through the shear creepiness of the building, it was perfectly preserved for eternity.

I get up, I’m tired.  Like usual.  I hear on the radio that there has been some power outages around Barrhaven, some people have been nearly T-boned at intersections because the traffic lights have been out.  I don’t worry because I’m not stupid.

I get to McDonald’s and pull into the drive through.  I wait at the speaker.  And wait.  And wait.  It’s like 5 minutes with nothing happening.  The LED “get your order right” sign is fine.  The lights are on in the restaurant, but apparently, even though there is no CLOSED sign, or any lack of bustling on the inside, because of the (previous) power outage, they are closed.  Ballhockey.  I look over at Tim Horton’s… a guy pulls on the front door: it’s locked.  I swear I’m gonna stab somebody.

They lady behind me in a Yukon yells something.  Whatever.  I pull out of the McDonald’s and head to work, no earlier than usual, but remarkably less caffeinated.  But I think to myself, “No problem.  We’re training some people from Asia at work.  They have cookies, snacks, and coffee out for them, I’ll just get a coffee there.”  Everything works out in the end.

Somebody drank all the fucking coffee.  Now I’m screwed.  I have to wait til lunch.  But I don’t have coffee at lunch, I usually have something cold to counter-act the hot soup, or whatever, that I have at home.  And by the afternoon, I will have gotten my “you don’t have enough caffeine in your system” headache.  And just adding more caffeine only helps a little.  I’m screwed.

[1] Don’t even get me started on Decaf.

It really is a nice statue of a wiener dog. We used to have a wiener dog (Molly) and I have to say, this statue is a fair representation of the breed. However, this is where it starts to get weird. I take it out of the box and immediately notice the carefully sculpted canine wang, complete with dog balls. You don’t believe me? Check this out.

Ques’que fuck? I mean, who in their right mind decides, “You know, this is a great statue and all, but it could use some more realism. Hey Doug, can you put some cock and balls on there for us?” This isn’t a little blemish around the neither regions of a statue that public school kids snicker at and stick their gum to when the teacher isn’t looking. This is a deliberate placement of genitalia on a seemingly harmless little dog. They could have left out the sculpted dog penis and it probably would’ve been a passable female. …This thing creepy. It’s really hard to focus on writing…

Now I thought that this was an isolated incident. Apparently, I was wrong. A couple of weekends ago we were in Collingwood, ON, and as we were leaving, we passed by a statue of a horse on the highway. I shit you not, this is what we found.

We had to stop to get a picture. First of all, this is 10 feet from the shoulder of the road, taunting all who pass by. And this wasn’t like a place where you can buy statues or anything (where you would expect crazy statues of things no one would buy). This was some guy’s house. Somebody made the conscious decision to purchase, transport, and display a 7ft tall white horse (complete with wedding tackle) on their front lawn. Who does this?

Another thing that struck me about the horse is, well, if you’re gonna sculpt a horse cock, sculpt a horse cock. The wiener dog has more virility than Silver here. It should be menacing, foreboding, and stuff of legend. Don’t ever half-ass something like this. You have the opportunity to truly express your want to display a concrete penile monstrosity: go all out. Now this horse will be the laughing stock at the animal statue gym, always having to take his shower in that weird handicap stall for fear of exposing his creator’s lack of generosity. It’s a sad, sad day when a 7ft tall concrete horse can’t live up to the hype. I guess he’ll have to buy that Ford Mustang instead.

“Every man and woman and child who suffers from this addiction, from the streets of Philly to the villages of Africa, is a child of God who deserves our love and our help.”
-George W. Bush, June 23, 2004, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

In itself, it’s an innocuous quote. But taken in context (speaking about HIV/AIDS) it really shows you what we’re dealing with here.

Just an observation, you may have missed it upon first glance, but he refers to HIV/AIDS as an addiction. That’s right, addiction. They just can’t get enough of it. They just can’t stop having [taking?] HIV. Maybe he’s never heard of it before. Maybe the teleprompter actually said “affliction”, but he knew the word was supposed to be addiction, therefore he decided it should be corrected. After all, he’s the decider, heh heh. Perhaps he’s illiterate. In any case, this is pretty indicative of the ‘I don’t really care about why I’m here, but I have to say something‘ attitude we see too much of from tha ‘G-Dub’.

Note: Before you get on me about “this is two years old!”, I have a quote-a-day calendar and this one came up yesterday. I’m sure many other people have already said something about this a long time ago, but since I’ve already got this typed in, it’s no turning back now.

Ok, here is the first offender. I took a picture of this while walking down Strandherd. This is a sign advertising custom built homes in Barrhaven.

Read it again. …There it is. In case you missed it, it actually says, “Why rent when you can own Own“. Maybe it’s a type-o. Maybe it’s their attempt at superliminal[1] advertising. Maybe the guy (or gal) who came up with this sign spell checked it and assumed everything was ok. I don’t know. However, what I do know is before you commit your message to a 16 foot tall billboard, get someone else to proof it! These people are selling hundreds of houses worth $200K, $300K, $400K and up. You would think that they could hire someone literate to procure their signage.

Now, alone, that sign isn’t that much to write home about. But it gets compounded by a factor of eleventy-billion when you take into account the sign 20 feet down the road:

I can’t make this stuff up. It says: “Just the around Corner”. I was dumbfounded and glad I already took the picture of the first one so I wouldn’t have to go back to get it. If it’s your job to make a sign for a prestigious contractor (i.e. Richcraft), please do your homework (and by homework, I mean graduate high school). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do, although, now that I think of it, if my job was ‘friggin’ all day (a friggin’ job), I might make stupid type-os too.

Also, see Part 1: TV, I Thought I Knew Ye

[1] For those not “in the know”, superliminal advertising is two steps more overt than subliminal advertising, right there above “liminal” advertising.

Here’s a little taste of The Pejoratives. In case you don’t know, I’m the one playing the Rhodes. This clip is from one of our more productive practices.

The title came about as I was splicing together parts of different takes of the recorded audio. Since it’s a fairly new song, we didn’t have the structure fully hashed out, so we were just jamming on a riff that Blip came up with for a while, then added a couple neat parts here and there. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a full take from start to finish, so I pulled an Edgar Winter and took the best from a bunch different takes. “Frankenstein” was already taken, so “Frank and Beans” became the title. Now you know.