Installment #3

9:12 AM, Monday 31 January 2005

First of all, feel free to reply to anything you didn’t get the chance to last week when your computer crashed. How is the weather down there? I am actually starting to think winter is over already! Yeah, it’s not even february for another day yet but it just has the April feeling to it outside right now and it hasn’t been below freezing in about two weeks. In Prince George. What is wrong with this picture?

Quick music question: what was the last album/piece of music you downloaded/bought, and was it worth it?

Here’s a great op/ed column from the PG Free Press yesterday: http://pgfreepress.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=26&cat=48&id=367169&more= . This just goes to show you how fucking ridiculous privatization really is. That’s a record-breaking profit for CN based entirely upon something that the public should still own. As BC taxpayers we should all be pretty choked right now.

What’s crazier, the fact that Kristian Huselius is destroying the Swedish Elite League, or that Shawn Horcoff is still in second?

Kyle

11:08 PM, Monday 31 January 2005

Well I finally have a somewhat functional computer again. It only took me until Monday night 3 days since the crash. What is funny is that when it went down on Friday it seemed like I got hit with every possible problem I could have. The initial problem I faced was a corrupt windows registry hive, the next problem was that my floppy drive stopped working (I use a boot disk to boot into windows 2000) and lastly when I finally recovered the registry hive and installed a floppy drive from my other computer I noticed my system had all of a sudden gotten a few viruses and a whole lot of spyware. At that point I decided I was too pissed off in trying to fix my system and went out the next day and bought myself a new hard drive and a dvd burner. Spring is coming, and the winter is over, at least here in Vancouver. The tulips are starting to push through the ground, the crocuses are in bloom, and the pussy willows are budding. I am so fucking glad it is getting to be spring, I have had enough of walking home from work in the dark. Something that is changing now, It is finally light now when I walk home. Also I can’t wait for this constant rain to end as well. I need to start doing some outside activities besides walking.
The last piece of music I downloaded I think was an album by some girl called Jem. I heard a small sample of her song on some TV show and thought it sounded really cool. Was it worth it? It wasn’t bad but nothing to get excited about. The best part of the song was the small bit of it that was sampled, so meh.

Nice article. I think most people knew before the sale that it was a stupid idea. The government saying they were losing money with BC Rail is like NHL owners saying they are losing money with their teams, it all comes down to faulty bookkeeping. BC Rail will continue to make CN very rich. I remember when the sale was about to happen that the only person voicing any concern was Joy MacPhail saying that BC Rail was actually making the province loads of money. Anyway I loved how right after the sale of BC Rail they put in a new connection straight across the border to Chicago, then used that video clip in every “Liberals are the best” commercial afterwards.
That is pretty impressive by Huselius, the Panthers are going to be happy to have him in their lineup when NHL finally resumes. If this strike drags out a long enough time you are going to see a lot of teams with some looking quite different I think. All the teams prospects are still growing better and better and there could be a real influx of really talented rookies when the season finally takes place. I can’t wait actually, the Flyers have some really excellent prospects waiting in the wings!

Anyway I need to get off my computer.

Stefan

8:59 AM, Tuesday 1 February 2005

At least when you walk home in the dark you still have street lights. I have three kilometres of darkness and the occasional speeding car. Brilliant move, building the university on a hill way outside of town and cnnecting it to town with a 3 km road with no sidewalks or street lights. And yet maybe a couple hundred people actively take the bus (you can count on your hand the number of people who walk, myself included). At $1.50 a pop it adds up but if you can swing a $105 semester pass at the beginning of the year then you basically can anywhere aas long as it’s not a weekend; I don’t know why more people do it (unless they’re broke like me, then I understand completely!). You should start hiking in North Van or something, take the bus up early in the morning and hike all day.

Just looked up Jem on allmusic.com (at first I thought you were talking about the ’80′s girls’ cartoon, which would have been scary). She’s a Welsh chick who worked for a record company and start pissing around in the studio so they gave her a contract.

Yeah, gotta love that rail system. I love they think that Rocky Mountain Railtours’ new trip from Golden to Nelson is going to make all this crazy money off rich Europeans and kickstart tourism, blah blah blah. After all, why come to North America for a couple months, rent an RV and actually get into the back country once in a while dictating your own schedule when you can spend two days on a train looking at the highway right beside the train tracks looking at the bottoms of trees and various small town industrial parks? All for $2,000 a pop! PG’s had Rocky Mountain Railtours for years and look how well it’s done here-wait a minute….

It will be quite jarring for hockey fans when the league comes back because none of the teams will look the same. Tons of rookies and ex-AHL’ers, lots of washed-up veterans gone, 400 free agents. Very disjointing. But still better than not playing. Philly looks scary on paper right now, don’t they? richards and Carter alone make you a lucky bastard.

Kyle

9:27 PM, Tuesday 1 February 2005

Sounds like the UNBC campus is like the SFU campus. I would hate to have to walk up that hill every day if I lived in Burnaby. I don’t know if that would be possible, I suppose you would be one fit person that is for sure. So I take it they do not include a bus pass in your tuition? All the universities here in town and at UVIC do that. I think it is a great idea personally. Make the car drivers pay for the bus takers bus fair! As for hiking in North Van, yeah I probably could, and should. Once the rain stops I will start getting more active. I will be able to go blading again and play tennis.

So the Rocky Mountain Tours is just going to follow a highway? That is pretty sad. I am not sure about all Europeans but I don’t think Germans would go for the train idea. When they think of Canada they think of driving an RV through the rockies, stopping when they want to, taking as many pictures as they can and doing it at their own command. If they want to take a train they would do it in Europe. I think the train rides have more allure to local tourists (ie other Canadians). Oh the other thing that German tourist all really want to do is go dog sledding in the Yukon or NWT.

So the Iraq elections appear to have been a success, at least that is what the people at work and the media tells me. Something like 60% to 70% percent voter turn out. However that maybe out of registered voters. Everyone is saying it was a success, however what does that mean? I think it means that Iraqis just want the tyrants out of their country. For the other side of the popular media ZMAG is always there: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7152

Anyway I am going to a public forum with Naomi Klein tomorrow downtown so I am not sure if I will be able to reply to you. Hopefully I will have some time to do my reply after work, but if you don’t get one that is the reason.

Ta ta for now,

Stefan

8:32 AM, Wednesday 2 February 2005

Even at U of C they gave you a bus pass in your tuition for $56. Here you can BUY a semester pass for $105. Total crap. That’s one of ghe things that pisses me off about UNBC. Luckily, they have a PIRG here where each student just pays a $5 fee that they can even opt out of. They tried putting one in calgary for a $2.50 fee and people voted against it. Lame asses. Mind you, Calgary is one of the most apathetic, uninvolved campus you will ever see. Tey only time transit is ever full in Calgary is right before and after hockey and football games and downtown in the free fare zone. Other than that there’s always more empty seats than full. Here transit gets used pretty decently so I see no reason why the drivers should chip in. Air sucks enough here anyways (not as bad as the Lower Mainland but it has that pulp mill smell) so why not make the drivers pay a little? It would bring down the cost of a pass overall.

Rocky Mountain railtours’ Kootenay run will follow Highway 95 all the way from Golden to Yahk, which is about 250 km. mabe it ill cross to the other side of the river once in a while but it’s not as if you’re getting into any wilderness that way. Then it would follow Highway 3 to Creston. The only ultra scenic part would be Creston to Nelson since the rail goes on the unsettled part of Kootenay Lake. I think the fact that it will be a luxury tour and wil have at least moderate scenery along the way is supposed to be the enticer. A train trip across Canada is different since you actually through national parks and high passes and wide open prairies. This is just lame. Having worked at the InfoCentre all those years it obvious people want the real wilderness experience and want to control their own tour like you said. Other Canadians are the same, they want to get away and go into the woods. Why would they pay thousands of bucks for a train trip when they can spend a couple hundred on gas and drive anywhere they want?

It means people in Iraq want to move on, take control of their own country for once. It means fuck Bush, fuck Al-Qaeda, fuck you all, we want the power we deserve and we want it now. But since Bush just asked for another $80 billion, that doesn’t appear likely and everyone will still be fucked. There is $9 billion completely unaccounted for that was spent in Iraq, all that money just dissapeared into the hand of who knows who. Good accounting, guys.

Have fun with Naomi, sounds like a good time. Something tells me your next reply will be really cynical (and that’s a good thing!). You have her books, right? Get her autograph on them, at least.

Kyle

11:29 PM, Wednesday 2 February 2005

Hey Kusch,

Naomi Klein was really excellent tonight I am very happy I went. I wrote a little review on my site, check it out. She talked about that 9 billion that is missing, however as I understood it, it was 9 billion missing from US funds but rather Iraqi funds. Aparently it went into paying off politicians and the like in Iraq. One thing Naomi was saying was that emediately after the US has moved and and occupied Iraq all over the country democracy started to sprout up. In cities and in areas people were electing mayors and representatives. The people really wanted to take control of their control and begin ruling for themselves. What is sad however is that the US ended up nullifying all of these homegrown democracies for their true Red White and Blue this is how we do things elections.

Anyway I am really tired and need to sleep, but just wanted to say the the Players Association are idiots. The new deal from the league seems pretty fucking good to me, I mean there is even a minimum team payroll that all teams have to meet, there is revenue sharing at 50%, even an increase in minimum salaries up to 300,000. What the fuck more do they want?
alright hopefully a little more for you tomorrow.

Stefan

7:32 AM, Thursday 3 February 2005

Reading your blog just makes me more angry at the US (and makes me appreciate people like Naomi Klein that much more). I found it very interesting that they held it at a Wesleyan church. if the US rally wants to save lives they should just announce their exit strategy now and get out within three months. Of course, come State of the Union time, Bush will just ramble on about preserving freedom and staying the course, our resolve is just, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, etc. Meanwhile Halliburton rakes up the cash from Iraq’s national resources and the Iraqi people get screwed out of their own money. How many people were there last night? Was it a crowd that was already predispositioned to her opinions? Preaching to the converted doesn’t do much.
Stefan, today or tomorrow the PA will come up with a proposal that’s different but just as good as the owners proposal. The owners why vote against it and we’ll all be fucked still. I don’t even care about sides anymore because they all can suck my dick. I just want some hockey already. Did you hear about that UHL player who was pissed off at Hatcher, Chelios and Draper joining the league and stealing jobs? Pretty funny (and much better than Corey Hirsch’s whining).
Thoughts while reading through this month’s Exclaim magazine:

I hate, hate, HATE Bright Eyes. Why does every fucking piece of media blow their load over Conor Oberst like he’s the Second Coming? He writes this pussified, sappy-assed music that would be adequate as the soundtrack to a 12-year-old girl’s diary. I hated Bright Eyes the first time they were around, you know, back when they were called BELLE AND SEBASTIAN.
New Trail of Dead album cover looks good, takes you back to the old ’70′s covers. I’m assuming you’ve heard it, how is it?

The Arcade Fire. I see they’ve been played a lot on you Audioscrobbler. Must be good. But I hate the stupid comments record companies feel the need to put on every single ad. When they aren’t calling some artist the greatest something-or-other, they’re calling them the next something-or-other. Why can’t just put a picture of the album and say ‘In Stores Now?’. Makes me appreciate this Trail of Dead ad even more. Simple and to the point.

Alexisonfire is a horrible, horrible band who grow tiresome to listen to after about 15 seconds of the lead singer’s pointless screaming. Who’s dick are they sucking at MuchMusic to get played?
Speaking of BS, looks like a poll just named them the best Scottish band of all time. List> Magazine. To put Del Amitri ahead of Nazareth or put Jesus & Mary Chain anywhere outside the top five makes me wonder if it wasn’t just one of those stupid Internet polls.

Low, a very good, very SLOW band from Minnesota. Check out their older stuff, pretty good.
Is there one negative review in this entire magazine? God, they fucking fawn over every single band like they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. This is getting really hard to read. It’s not even remotely objective.I find it really hard to take this magazine seriously. I like that I get to read about a bunch of bands I don’t usually hear about but there’s not one negative comment in this whole thing past the letters to the editor page. I’m sure I’d listen to about 95% of the bands in here and think that they suck. Looking at the back page for instance, there’s an ad for ‘The UK’s top sellers of 2004.’ Keane, Scissor Sisters, Snow Patrol. I was excited to hear all of these bands. What happened when I did? I hated every single thing I heard! (I especially like the comment for Keane: “Reminiscent of bands like Travis and Stereophonics.” You may as well have just said: “Do not opearte heavy machinery while listening to this album”.

One good thing inthis month’s edition was putting The Streets on their top five hip hop list. Pretty cool. The most fun I had listening to hip hop this hyear was an album by a skinny English white kid who basically just does stream of consciousness stuff about everyday life and barely even stays in tune! Pretty good stuff.

Well, there’s my popular music rant for today.

Kyle

8:48 PM, Thursday 3 February 2005

Well I am not sure if the church was a Wesleyan church, the name of it was St. Andrews Wesley church, or something like that. Yeah Bush will tout his own horn and say he was right to go into Iraq blah blah blah, but in reality when the Iraqis wanted an election they didn’t get it, instead things were dragged out longer and longer so the US could get their bases covered, and their friends taken care of. One of the speakers (can’t remember which) said it is funny how history keeps repeating itself, after WWII it was the commies we had to worry and protect ourselves from and the means to justify wars. Now we just replaced the word commie with terrorist and off we go running again. The church was pretty full last night, I would say 80% of the pews were filled, and this is a big church (right downtown on Davie and Nelson). To be expected the crowd had I would think mostly left wing folks inside, however I think there were a good number also who know of Naomi and wanted to hear what she had to say. One idiot there was all dressed up in white with a stupid hat on and he carried around this homemade green Canada flag with a pot leaf in the middle. Whenever someone would ask a question he would sit behind the person, trying to draw attention to himself. I just don’t understand fools like that, what the hell they are trying to prove.

I just read the UHL associated press article, pretty funny stuff. ”’I don’t think those guys have ever wondered about working a day in their life,” he said. ”They probably make more in a week than I do my whole season.”’. That was a whole lot better than the Cory Hirsh story, you tell ‘em Kerr.

So who is Bright Eyes Kusch? I have no fucking clue who that is. You are the first reference to him, or them or whatever they are. I guess that tells you how caught up on pop culture I really am. I think it is good not have a cable actually. I don’t get sucked into watching crap music, shitty sitcoms, or sensationalized newscasts. Just looked up Bright Eyes now on allmusic, seems like this kid was some Indie star when he was 14, singer/songwriter sensation? I will pass.

The Arcade Fire are pretty decent, I think they are from Montreal. I wouldn’t say they are better than sliced bread, but I will give them a listen here and there. The new Trail of Dead I have had for a good while. It is pretty wild stuff, especially since they have a second drummer on this album. Some of the songs have some pretty stupid lyrics, but for the most part their music has progressed and I like it.

Today at work I found out how fucking awesome Audio Scrobbler really is. I realized that that little personal FM in the top right of your profile will stream music to you from your list it has databased. Thus I listen to music at home from my catalog, it gets logged. I goto work where I don’t have any music, but I do have an internet connection. I goto my profile, click my personal FM and BAM I am listening to music I listen to at home. How fucking cool is that? Sometimes technology blows my mind.

Stefan

9:34 AM, Friday 4 February 2005

I think I’ve actually seen that idiot with the pot leaf flag on TV. Remember how we were talking about gay marriage and how unimportant it is to society as an issue in reality. The pot debate is even LESS important than that. Who gives a shit? I don’t.

Naomi Klein apparently is married to Avi Lewis, son of David Lewis (only NDP leader to get the party to the top of the polls nationally EVER back in the late ’70′s) and former host of the New Music. Pretty cool.

Kevin Kerr is my new hero. What about Roenick? I agree with him, too. Whatever the next offer is, put it to a vote already. Let’s let the players decide for themselves instead of three guys in a boardroom doing it for them. Roenick said he’d accept a really big salary cap, too ($60 million, maybe!).

Heather started telling me about Bright Eyes a couple years ago. So I checked out a few song and it was ghastly. Oberst is this underground god signed to this indie label who got hyped by the underground media to the point where he had a top 10 album last week. Yet he still exists outside the mainstream (even if you had cable or were totally hooked up you’d never hear of him, definitely not MuchMusic or radio material). At least he hates Clear Channel just like PJ hates Ticketmaster. That’s about all the good things I can say about him. I laughed my ass at the allmusic review of his two new albums. After reading the blow job they gave him in Exclaim, it was pretty cool to see both of his albums getting two stars out of five and allmusic calling him a poseur and an untalented version of Paul Simon. Awesome!

Trail of Dead are decent, they seem like one of those bands that are far better live than they are on record. I found some of their lyrics a bit awkward myself.

Audioscrobbler is pretty cool like that. I don’t really listen to the station they provide, though, because I bring my laptop with me to school every day. Thus, all of my music travels with me. When I get more music (I only have maybe 160 songs), maybe I’ll start listening. I have Launch radio from Yahoo!. It takes a couple of months for it to really get smart about what you like to listen to but now that I’ve had it since September it’s getting really good. Just yesterday, I heard Negativland, Camper van Beethoven, Spacemen 3(!), Ween, Joy Division, old Modest Mouse, Hendrix, Floyd, etc. Really good stuff.

One more from you and then I’ll finish it off for the week!

Kyle

10:17 PM, Friday 4 February 2005

That pot leaf dude was a retard. Bigger issues in Canada right now than worrying about people smoking a bit of dope they can get anyway. Looks like a lot of Conservatives are voting in favor of gay marriage, was impressive of Harper to let his party have a free vote on it. I was reading a Calgary MP Jim Prentice’s website and he has a statement on why he is voting in favor of the bill. I fully agree with most of what he said, not often I can say that about a Conservative these days. Anyway here is his statement: http://jimprentice.org/Documents/Feb2Statement.htm I never knew Naomi was Married to Avi Lewis, however I should have guessed it seeing they did that documentary together, The Take. Did you end ever make it into theaters in PG? It was really good. It was about how in Argentina taking back factories from companies that left when all hell broke loose. They would infiltrate the factories and start making things. All the profits would be shared by the workers, and decisions would be made democratically amongst them. It was put together quite well, and contained that witty Naomi Klein touch to it.

Looks like the season is over, unless both sides are doing some really good acting jobs. The league won’t budge on a salary cap that is clear, will the players? Maybe after another year playing rec hockey in Detroit being a target stealing working mens jobs will they decide they didn’t have it that bad after all. The way Roenick said he would accept a cap, and that the league is WAY far off the figure he would accept would lead me to believe you are probably pretty close to his figure.
I never got into the Yahoo launchcast, mainly because you had to pay for decent quality bitrate of music. That is what makes Audio Scrobbler so awesome, the quality that is streaming is really really good. Man I noticed they had a posting for a job on their website for a position that would fit me like a glove, if I didn’t love where I worked I think I would actually have applied to work there.

Another week down it seems, next week I may not be able to participate as my brother is coming back from Germany on Sunday and will be staying with me. I will see how it goes however and let you know Sunday night either with our 4th week topics or a message saying I don’t have the time.

Ohh and I think you might like this article, out of Alberta no less, he actually writes a bit like you:
http://www.gateway.ualberta.ca/view.php?aid=3866

Stefan

10:23 AM, Saturday 5 February 2005

I love how Conservative rhetoric about free voting in Parliament is going to shoot them in the foot and wind up defeating them on their own platform. At least the system works in that respect. Good to see Prentice on the rational side of things. Especially since a lot of non-cabinet Liberals won’t be in favour of it.

Would a movie like that ever make it into PG? Ha! Prince George has ONE FUCKING THEATRE. 80,000 people, one fucking theatre. And since it’s famous Players, that means you only wind up seeing half of the mainstream hits even make it into your town, let alone all of the major studio releases plus the independent ones. It’s sad. Basically you have to hope that one of the colleges or the university brings it in. Or wait for it on video. Not that a movie like that would ever make it into Rogers.

The season is over. It has been for a long time and we’ve all known it. Let’s just focus on the excellent race in the WHL between Kelowna and Kootenay, and look forward to a lot of NHLers in the worlds this May for once.

Actually the version of Launchcast gives you ‘medium’ bitrate. It’s not quite CD quality but it’s quite decent and it only play a big role when you’re listening to some obscure ’80′s live track. Other than that I have no qualms with it as it gives me access to a ton of bands I’d never hear otherwise.

Loved the U of A article. University newspapers are always so leftist, it’s brilliant. I just can’t believe that student newspaper groups didn’t check what they guy was going to say beforehand or that the people in audience were so ‘in awe’ of this speaker that they just lobbed him a bunch of softball questions.

Your turn to start whenever you feel like it!

Kyle