Africa, Unite!

Why do I always get myself in these situations?

I cut down my Facebook friends' list from 5000 to 3500, and still I'm left with idiots strangers I usually completely disagree with.

Case in point:

Like, how is sympathizing enough when they are fucking staving to death? Are you eating popcorn while watching them die as entertainment?

In any event, here's what I wrote as a retort - honestly, I thought I was just going for one paragraph, didn't think it'd get this long:

I know I was wrong to use what I perceived was racism on their part to reverse-argue with them using false-racist analogies. And I didn't go any further on there because it already seemed like a long blog post.

This is what I was alluding to in my last post. Well, not really, but it's fuel to the fire. People are cruel, insensitive, self-centered assholes who care about no one but themselves. If it doesn't affect their own little fucking world, the want nothing of it; but when it does hit home, then everyone should come knocking, and there better be a fucking telethon on every TV station in the world, broadcast live on fucking YouTube, 'cause shit is BAD and they need help!

This is what governments should do: take part of your money to offer services which wouldn't make sense for you to take care of on your own, shit they have a better system in place to assemble and get going: emergency relief, streets and infrastructures, schools and education in general, hospitals and health systems, police and national defense and prisons, fireworkers - anyone covered by 9-1-1 - and helping folks like you live their fucking lives - on your street, in your neighbourhood, in your city, your State/province, the whole country. And making mutually beneficial deals with other countries, and helping some of them out when they're in trouble so they can help you out when you're in trouble.

The minute it stops working and your money goes to shit (or corruption), what should happen, is the system should come to a complete halt, and folks should get to decide whether it's time for a re-haul, a reboot, a new philosophy, or none at all. If it's ''none'', then you shouldn't have to pay a penny more in taxes, and there should just be two laws: 1. don't steal; 2. don't kill. Everything else should be free game. Sounds like a Republican wet dream, a Libertarian manifesto? Think again - it's from every  anarchist handbook. Funny how it makes more sense than the shit we're living in every day, doesn't it?

''Why don't we take care of our own problems first?''

Yeah, every time we try, we're either screwed by politicians or by some of the folks we're trying to defend:

Montréal:

Hiding their identification numbers

Turkey:

Occupy (Oakland and Wall Street):

Once again, Yan (and countless others) is right: this world isn't worth saving. The minute you're out of line, they will break you away from their system, and shove you into the correctional system, which no longer corrects prisoner's behaviour in order to rehabilitate him back into society; no, it corrects the statistics, protects the status quo by eliminating dissidence, so that they end up getting what they want - their opinion to be the majority and the de facto Rule Of Law - even if they need to remove the actual majority to get there. Louis C.K. has this great line:

I read something in the paper that really confused me the other day. It said that 80 percent of the people in New York are minorities... Shouldn't you not call them minorities when they get to be 80 percent of the population? That's a very white attitude, don't you think? I mean, you could take a white guy to Africa and he'd be like "Look at all the minorities around here! I'm the only majority."

And we're back to Africa. Which Barack Obama said we should help feed. What a world-weary socialist.

Sure, I digressed, but I came back, didn't I? And I found a way to put colourful pictures in the post...

Fear And Loathing In Montréal

I've told you before of my friend Yan, a brilliant if at times insecure human being. Brilliant because every single one of his thoughts - be they about social issues or cute cats - seem like they were thought out for years, and are usually irrefutable.

But I don't mean 'insecure' in the 'afraid to speak his mind' way - heck no, he'll give complete strangers a piece of his mind if needed - but more in the 'I hope my friends remain friends after what I just said' way. Yet all of his friends are there precisely because we want to hear what he has to say.

That being said, he's changed the name of his blog to Une Haine Incommensurable, a French title, though he'll keep writing in English. Here's the explanation:

Even the title of my blog says a lot about my outlook on social interactions online - ''une haine incommensurable" translates to ''a hate so great it can't be measured." I changed my blog title to that recently because it’s a pretty accurate description of what I feel most of the time.

 Furthermore:

I think the problem is that I'm so overwhelmed by the shittiness of the world that I no longer believe it’s possible to reverse it. I've given up hope. All I see is willful ignorance and smug privilege and a complete refusal to even admit that there might be a problem or two with the way the world runs. And the same stupidity and cruelty demonstrated over and over and over again by countless anonymous dudebros and I just can’t take it anymore. I want all you people to burn. You're not worth saving. 

 And though I don't always see eye-to-eye with him, that is precisely how I feel about where I live (city, province, country, continent, even fucking planet) these days. And for the past year or two, as a matter of fact. The extent to which the world is a decaying, infected, all-kinds-of-wrong hellhole and the people are rotten, puss-filled, lying, twisted cancers makes me sick.

Fear And Loathing indeed.

Last Week Of June Top 10s

Top 10 Songs:

10. DON'T PLAY WITH GUNS, The Black Angels (2013)
9. SACRILEGE, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2013)
8. BROKEN PROMISE (feat. Michael Stipe), Placebo (2006)
7. THE BALLAD OF JAYNE, L.A. Guns (1989)
6. LIL WAYNE (feat. Ludacris), Eminem (2013)
5. BAD MOTHERFUCKER, Biting Elbows (2013)
4. THE CONSTANT LOVER, Magneta Lane (2004)
3. KARMACOMA, Massive Attack (1995)
2. DOOM AND GLOOM, The Rolling Stones (2012)
1. WICKED AND WEIRD, Buck 65 (2003)


Top 10 Songs I'm Listening To While Unpacking/Moving This Year:

10. SOUS UN CIEL ÉCARLATE, Banlieue Rouge (1996)
9. NO WOW, The Kills (2005)
8. A PERFECT DAY TO CHASE TORNADOS, Jim White (1997)
7. KARMACOMA, Massive Attack (1995)
6. LEVEL, The Raconteurs (2008)
5. LE VENT NOUS PORTERA, Noir Désir, (2001)
4. I DON'T WANNA GROW UP (Tom Waits cover), The Ramones (1995)
3. HOW I COULD JUST KILL A MAN (Cypress Hill cover), Rage Against The Machine (2000)
2. THE END'S NOT NEAR, The New Year (2004)
1. CHANGES, Black Sabbath (1972)

Video Of The Week: Buck 65

This week, settling in a new apartment, I reverted back to a familiar soundtrack to keep my mind focused: Pearl Jam, Cedell Davis, Bran Van 3000, Sahara Hotnights, and Buck 65. With that in mind, I decided to stick with it come time for the Video Of The Week and so, from his 20 Odd Years record, comes Buck 65 featuring Jenn Grant.

For this particular song, the ultimate Canadian baseball fan enlisted director Sophie Levy and actress Roxane Mesquida from Paris to concoct this simple-yet-effective story of lost, unrequited love, featuring the classic hobo-on-the-train-tracks seen in every band shoot and every teenage angst film of the past 100 years.

He's like that, our man Buck - turning Americana into Canadiana with a touch all his own, though I thought his Talkin' Honky Blues and Situation albums seemed more like they were from an original voice, whereas his more recent works - while superbly written - lean a tad more towards the generic.

Tonight: USA Out Of Vietnam

Picture courtesy of Meet You At The Show

Still in the midst of unpacking after a Monday move, I'm missing a show I wish I could attend, at my favourite venue in town - Casa Del Popolo. The act? None other than the mighty USA Out Of Vietnam.

For some idea on what you're missing, I'll refer you to my friend Triangles' blog right here. And he's right - $7 nets you this 60-minute opus and is a steal. Jonathan 'Johnson' Cummins always finds a way to make his projects special and different from anything he's touched previously; this one is closest to what The Besnard Lakes are doing, in that it is more atmospheric, rehearsed, structured and, well, longer in song duration than anything Doughboys or Bionic could throw at you, but its energy is no less primal. If anything, it's a lot more from the gut than the music he released in the 1980s and 1990s.

The plethora of collaborators in the studio give way to a mere 4-pice onstage, but don't let the sheer numbers fool you, this rock machine packs a heck of a punch. On a heaviness scale of Warrant to Darkthrone (or Poison to Entombed), it's a hard Kyuss. Yet, it can make a grown man cry more than watching his favourite sports team lose a championship in the final minute of a deciding game.

If you can make it, I advise you do.

Taking Matters To Heart

It's Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight, as the Chicago Blackhawks host the Boston Bruins, but one person who'll have to keep his emotions in check is Dave Thomas, who suffered a heart attack during the last game in which the Hawks lost 3 leads before winning in overtime.

(A) west suburban Oswego native and die-hard Blackhawks fan, Thomas suffered a heart attack during Game 3 and was forced to watch the Game 4 overtime thriller from Edward Hospital in Naperville.

But the scare he suffered Monday didn't stop him from getting back to his old ways when the Blackhawks took the ice last night, as he told NBC Chicago in an email.

"My heart monitor was off the charts and I was yelling like I was in a bar!" he wrote. "The whole cardio floor had the game on! I love my Hawks but guys your (sic) killing me for real!!"

So, at least one guy in Chicago has his heart racing as much as Corey Crawford...

Video Of The Week: Sleater-Kinney

With their slots opening for Pearl Jam and their own tours, I must have seen Sleater-Kinney live more than 10 times. The Portland, Oregon indie band is a bizarre beast, both over-hyped (Rolling Stone magazine would usually put their every release on the year's top-10 best, and when it came time to rank the top 90 albums of the 1990s, I think S-K had three in the top-20...) and devoid of mainstream (read: radio) commercial success, with my opinion of them ranking somewhere in the middle, closer to the top: they're a very good band.

Active 1994-2006, it will soon have been twenty years that they've made it into the regular rotation of bands I listen to on a regular basis, but when I have my fill, I do put them aside for a bit, unlike, say, Queens Of The Stone Age, who remain in my Ipod despite periods where I just skip them when they come up.

This video if from their final record, The Woods, their lone record on Seattle label Sub Pop after associations with Kill Rock Stars and Chainsaw Records. It was made on the cheap, is imaginative and fun, and is a pretty good representation of Sleater-Kinney's sound, at times dirty, riff-heavy, melodic and quirky:



The video was directed by Matt McCormick, who also directed a couple for The Shins. If you didn't know Sleater-Kinney but think you recognize lead singer Carrie Brownstein for someplace, you probably do: she is co-creator and lead actress in Portlandia with Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen, which lead to a few SNL cameos of her own.

Like QOTSA and Pearl Jam (and The Ramones, Spinal Tap as well as my own band...), S-K have gone through a good number of drummers over the years, four of them full-time, with the longest-serving (and final) one being Janet Weiss, who was born in 1965 and was therefore not named after the Rocky Horror Picture Show character of the same name.

Mid-June's Top 10s

Top 10 Songs:

10. MOZART'S SISTER, Mozart's Sister (2013)
9. WHO YOU ARE, Pearl Jam (1996)
8. WILD HORSES (Rolling Stones cover), Charlotte Martin (2004)
7. BAD MOTHERFUCKER, Biting Elbows (2013)
6. DOOM AND GLOOM, The Rolling Stones (2012)
5. SACRILEGE, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2013)
4. DON'T PLAY WITH GUNS, The Black Angels (2013)
3. THE END'S NOT NEAR (The New Year cover), Band Of Horses (2006)
2. WHOLE WIDE WORLD, Wreckless Eric (1977)
1. BEAT THE DEVIL'S TATTOO, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (2010)


Top 10 Songs I'm Listening To While Packing/Moving This Year:

10. ROAD TO NOWHERE, Ozzy Osbourne (1991)
9. WHOLE WIDE WORLD, Wreckless Eric (1977)
8. A PERFECT DAY TO CHASE TORNADOS, Jim White (1997)
7. JACKSON (Billy Edd Wheeler cover), Johnny Cash and June Carter (1967)
6. SEVEN DAYS AND SEVEN NIGHTS, The New Year (2008)
5. THE END'S NOT NEAR, The New Year (2004)
4. I DON'T WANNA GROW UP (Tom Waits cover), The Ramones (1995)
3. LANDSLIDE (Fleetwood Mac cover), The Smashing Pumpkins (1994)
2. OUR HOUSE, Madness (1982)
1. CHANGES, Black Sabbath (1972)

Amusement Cube

It's called ''Once'', and was made by the arts collective known as The Glue Society. It is currently on display in Denmark, at the Sculpture by the Sea, Aarhus festival...

 It is made of the entire remains of a former amusement park, crushed into a 13-foot cube.

Better Than Walmart?

By now, the vast majority of you have heard of People Of Walmart... if not, here's a sample:

Showing it off

Oh, we're halfway there...

Most of those are from Red States, although it's pretty obvious, I'm not sure why I even pointed it out.

That being said, the Bible Belt (for some, the only belt they know of) and The South aren't the only trashy places people do their best to look ridiculous in. Unfortunately, my hometown of Montréal has a public transit system so thoroughly inefficient and yet so much less expensive than the as-inefficient and less-taken-care-of mental institutions that somehow, sometimes, it leads to the same type of spectacle:

Dressing down for a night out?

Truth? Or dare?

I think she killed a Cougar

Elvis' youngest boy lives here

There was room to sit away from her vomit...

Not only do the trains NEVER get cleaned, but...

every day, we are but a thin layer away from privates and/or germs, if that

And so I give you: Spotted: STM.

Because the best way to get discouraged about people is to be around them, or at the very least, look at them through your computer screen, which could be safer. Unless you're doing it from your smart phone on a bus, in which case this is but a different view of what's around you.

The restoration of my faith in humanity will have to wait one more day.