Moving Day Reminder

Our friends at Forget The Box would like to remind folks of the yearly disaster that is Moving Day in Québec - particularly in Montréal - and how it tends to be worse for furballs than humans, seeing as they often end up discarded, thrown out, or sent to shelters (if they're lucky).

I've seen it happen too many times. And this statistic burns my soul every time I see it:

Due to the incredible numbers of homeless animals, 25 000 animals are euthanized per year in Montréal alone.

Those things are alive.

Ningen

In Japanese, it literally means ''human''.

It seems for years now, the Japanese have sighted an enormous human-like fish/human creature in the ocean and on their shores. Kind of like North Americans' Sasquatch (a.k.a. ''Big Foot'').



I think this Google Images picture shows a shark, more than anything:

But as it becomes an internet meme, hey, you decide...

Video Of The Week: Massive Attack

Yes, time for some blast-from-the-past Massive Attack, from their seminal Blue Lines album.

Although it sounds like Sneaker Pimps' 6 Underground, it actually came 5 years prior...




If you feel some familiarity with this song yet are unsure you've ever heard the record it's from, it could be because of one of the many samples used, be it the bass, guitar and drums from Billy Cobham's Stratus, other drums from Funkadelic's Good Old Music, sounds from Herbie Hancock's Chameleon, and the background vocal melody from Johnny 'Guitar' Watson's Looking Back.

Yeah, that's a hell of a lot of influences for just one track, but this is the band that started the whole Bristol sound and scene, one that also brought us the always-overhyped Portishead... Back in this era, Tricky was also a member of Massive Attack...

What Is Drugs?

This could be the trailer for an awesome movie. Instead, it's the news.

Video Of The Week: Atari Teenage Riot

Six months ago already since I last made Atari Teenage Riot my Video Of The Week...

This time, I'm featuring a video that was banned from most TV stations for being... too violent. The same TV stations that give away free tickets to The Avengers or Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer...




If you've ever worked in a cubicle, and have ever thought there could be something wrong with the world, and don't think you quite qualify to become Neo (from The Matrix), this could be the video for you.

I Found Someone With Bigger Balls Than Me

Sure, he weighs 450lbs, but 100 of those pounds are contained in his scrotum.

And if that's not enough:

Wesley Warren's breathing is laboured. He suffers from high blood pressure and asthma. He can't urinate normally or have sex. He has daily bouts of depression. Getting dressed takes nearly an hour, and then he carries the appendage around covered in a hoodie and resting on a pillow-topped milk crate.

Sports Prank Of The Day (Week? Month? Year?)

How do you mess with a New Jersey Devils fan who happened to be on vacation when they lost the Stanley Cup to the Los Angeles Kings?

Turn his cubicle into a Kings' shrine, of course!

(I'd totally work in that cubicle!)

Rodney King Died???

I lost track of the news this weekend, stuck in the middle of a lodging triangle octagon where I was moving from one place to another, storing my leftover stuff somewhere else with former roommates, who got evicted, calling in movers at the last minute with ''an emergency surcharge'', only to have to cancel them when I was offered storing space from the new tenant at the first place - who happened to be the neighbour... lost yet? So am I, kinda...

Anyway, Rodney King died. And we still haven't gotten along.

In my country, at least, police brutality isn't based on the colour of one's skin, but instead on social status: the youth, students, and people dressed in black are the targets, occupying the cops so much they haven't arrested actual criminals in 4 months...

But out of dark times always comes a better world. Problem is finding out if the hard times are counted in months, years, decades or centuries - you can never tell when in the middle of the turmoil. But decadent times call for misdemeanors.

Another Deadly Stage Collapse

No, it's not a metaphor: right before Radiohead's Toronto concert, Saturday night, the stage structure collapsed, crushing one person to death and injuring five others seriously. The show was cancelled.

A lot of that happened last year, notably at the Indiana State Fair, as well as at the Ottawa Blues Fest, as Cheap Trick was playing their one good song massive hit I Want You To Want Me.

Either gravity's pull is stronger than ever, or we're hiring crews who neglect security and cut corners to save money. But as high-end pop shows start to regularly cost over $100 to attend, everybody involved should be making enough money to be content with doing their fucking jobs correctly.

Video Of The (Past) Week: Rage Against The Machine

Yes, it was done before, for the Testify video. Same era, different record (the Godzilla soundtrack).

I find especially amusing that Rage Against The Machine would diss Godzilla - comparing it with a cheap culture that takes over all the others - with a song on its own soundtrack... even if it is censored in this version...

Godzilla pure motherfuckin' filler
Get your eyes off the real killer

Americanize, Americanize, view the world from American eyes...

Vagina. There, I sait It!

Fucking puritans. Fucking elected, Republican puritans. I can sort of understand your not wanting to hear certain words in the comfort of your 1940s atomic shelter, but if you're elected to represent people and run govern them, you should at least be able to suck it up and use the actual, medical terms for stuff. Even women's private parts.

Because it is not right to make laws on the uses of vaginas if you won't allow the fucking word ''vagina'' to be spoken when it's talked about.

Jesus Christ. Just writing this makes my brain want to explode.



That was Democrat Representative Lisa Brown.

 Here is what Republican Rep. Mike Carlton had to say about her speech:

What she said was offensive. It was so offensive, I don’t even want to say it in front of women.

Assuming he ever gets the fucking balls to speak to a woman.

Brown replied:

If I can’t say the word vagina, why are we legislating vaginas? What language should I use? “Vagina” is the “medically correct term.” We’re all adults here.

Exactly.

Pussies.

Drinking From The Cup

What do you do when you've won the Stanley Cup - the hardest trophy to win in all of sports?

You dress your kids up as Spider-Man and let them drink chocolate milk out of it, that's what!

Breaking sports news video. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL highlights and more.

Recyclables Ain't No Pollution

As usual, Toronto is far behind everyone else in environmental protection. This time, it pertains to the use of reusable grocery bags.

Except they need to be told reminded to wash the damn things every so often. Because people forget that groceries sometimes leak, that putting meat and fruits in the same bag can facilitate the transfer of bacteria, that bacteria evolve if left alone, etc.

Good to know.

Then again, to wash them, uou use clean water. And some people don't use all-natural or biodegradable cleansers, and that gets pumped the fuck back in nature as well.

No win?

Funeral For A Friend

I went about it pretty quickly a week ago when I mentioned the upcoming destruction of what is still considered the Heart of Montréal on The Main, and the ''funeral procession'' in its honour.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention those who did it better, longer, and more heartfelt than myself, as I turned my emotions ''off'' of late and attempted to coast through the remainder of the year trying not to notice it passing, faintly hoping I'd be left alive in not-too-decrepit a state when it's all said and done.

The Gazette kept it real, instilling a historical horizon on the piece of street our Mayor is attempting to nullify.

And to think merely a year ago, the mayor fooled us into thinking we had won - and the expropriation/demolition had been cancelled... after quite a few Save The Main fund-raising events.

But the most complete reference guide to the whole ordeal can be found here. Blogging at its informative best.

Mitt Romney Hates Cops, Firemen And Teachers

''Did (Barack Obama) not hear the message in Wisconsin?''

The Republicans did, and it seems they heard more than just ''let's kill unions''.

Now Mitt Romney says America doesn't need police officers, firemen and teachers. Sure, civic security and education don't matter if all you want to do is create shitty minimum-wage jobs and have people live 20 at a time in tiny foreclosed houses owned by your baker friends.

Video Of The Week: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

A month in the making, a post about the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the band I was most compared to in my NYC days (1998-99), before those comparisons turned to the White Stripes.

Jon Spencer made it big with JSBX, but older fans remember him from his similarly-styled but rougher-sounding previous band, Pussy Galore, whose records were always harder to find than the Explosion's, but are just as worthwhile for music fans.

The band has collaborated with tons of other artists (R.L. Burnside and Dub Narcotic Sound System, notably) and been remixed by countless others (Beck, Chuck D, and members of Atari Teenage Riot among them).

Bellbottoms is the lead-off track off  1994's Orange, a magnificent fucking record.

Video Of The Week: Jay-Z And Kanye West (Watch The Throne)

For the third week in a row, I'm caught leaving Jon Spencer on the backburner for something that's more ''in the moment''...

In this case, the lead-off single from Watch The Throne, the Jay-Z and Kanye West monster that I still can't listen to in one sitting but does manage to have stand-out tracks you can listen to on the shuffle mode of your favourite music player.

This video for No Church In The Wild was directed by French film director Romain Gavras and depicts riot scenes (pitting protestors against police officers) which have been a mainstay of the past 3+ months in my city, Montréal - which had its 40th consecutive all-night protest last night, its 111th consecutive ''daytime'' protests of an ongoing student strike and general discontent for our provincial government - as well as countless others around the world.

I don 't know if things will change; oftentimes, when a glimmer of hope makes it through the cloud of bullshit that has plagued human history so far, the Powers That Be have either struck down harder or gotten to make The Oppressed believe they are the inevitable link to their security (see: France, May 1968). Rarely have The People bettered their situation for a ''long run'' (say close to a century).

Sometimes The Bullies are replaced by similar assholes (see: Egypt, right now), a weaker link/puppet (Afghanistan 2003-present), visionaries with their hands tied (Barack Obama).

But more than ever, with 6.8 billion people on the planet and the ''1%'' owning all of it being closer to ''0.0001%'', the words Jim Morrison used in Five To One are starting to sound realistic:

  They got the guns, but we got the numbers.
  Gonna win yeah, we're taking over.

 But I digress. I find the following video much better than the song it's supposed to support, nowhere near as catchy as Niggas In Paris, and the lyrical content nowhere near as direct or thought-out as, say, those of Ice-T/Bodycount (Cop Killer), N.W.A. (Fuck The Police), or Public Enemy (9-1-1 Is A Joke, Fight The Power).

It is, however, a good step in a good direction, and if it gets its listeners to think about the world they're living in for even a minute, it will have served Humanity some.