Category — That’s Kyle this is Stefan

At the end of one of Kyle’s post he takes a bit about the whole Tocchet gambling ring in hockey and how he hopes that it is the final straw for US hockey viewers. I don’t understand Kyle’s pent up anger against the US liking hockey however, the only thing I can come up with is that he sees it as a final loss of sovereignty, that final definition of what makes us Canadian. Hockey in the US is not big however, you can tell by going to espn.com. Along the top you will see all the sports listed from left to right. The further left the sport the more popular it is. As you can see the NHL is ranked less than then NFL, MLB, NBA and Nascar. What is even worse is that two of those sports are not even active right now. That goes to show how much Americans care about hockey. Now this is a generalization, because there are fans in the US who do like hockey, and those that do tend to know a lot about the sport. Go into any US NHL team message board and you will generally find a very dedicated group of fans who are as knowledgeable (or more knowledgeable) than a lot of Canadian bandwagon jumping fans. Personally I have nothing against the US liking hockey, why shouldn’t they? It is a great sport. Yes I would like to see more teams in Canada, but realistically not many more Canadian teams could support an NHL team. That is my take anyway.

As for the whole Tocchet investigation it seems a bit odd that Tocchet funded a gambling ring run by organized crime bosses. I never knew Tocchet had that kind of money. Also the whole smearing of Gretzky’s name is a joke. I don’t really see him as the type of person to be involved in any of that type of activity.

Back to politics it seems this Emerson issue just won’t go away for the Conservatives. People are campaigning daily in Vancouver for him to step down, and the Liberals finally have a new breath of life in their party, feeling energized being able send out some attacks regarding ethics rather than always fending them off. A lot of people keep saying though that if Emerson can solve the softwood lumber dispute then they don’t care if he is a Conservative or a Liberal. The sad thing is I think the only way the softwood lumber dispute will be solved is if Canada bends over and takes it up the ass, similar to the way we are currently taking it.

Kyle in his post on February 2 eluded to the fact the Conservatives are thinking about removing estate tax on inherited belongings/wealth. While in some ways you can see the benefit of such a tax break, as for people who inherit some property or items who do not have a lot of wealth themselves it can be a bit daunting to have to deal with all the taxes they would have to pay on those items. However the true reality is that in general wealth inherits wealth, meaning poor people general don’t inherit a lot of wealth. So who is this tax break aimed at? The families of the very rich who do not want to pay taxes to support the betterment of Canada.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to proposed tax cuts from this government. The worst in my opinion is the removal of capital gains tax on money that is reinvested. Again this is a tax that will mainly benefit people with a lot of money to begin with, mainly because people who are being taxed heavily on capital gains are people who make a lot of money via stock markets or other investments. Another example of how the conservatives of this country following the lead of the US neo-con ideals are trying to provide a culture where the very rich are the major recipients of the benefits of the country while the poor are slowly pushed further down while more burden is put on the shrinking working middle class. This suites the wealthy just fine, because they don’t want to see an equalization of wealth as in such a situation they likely see their wealth decrease. The best case scenario for a wealthy person is for an extremely polarized population between rich and wealthy as this ensures they stay on top.

But hey maybe I would think differently if I was extremely wealthy… and lacked a social conscience.

In the news lately has been the story of a private clinic being run in Vancouver that charges an initial enrollment fee and an ongoing annual fee. The BC minister of health after knowing about this clinic for over a year finally said publicly that it was violating the Canadian Health Act, only after the Ontario government threatened the same clinic with legal action if it were to expand into Ontario.

This is much like the Liberal government of BC to let it slide up until now. Since this minister has come out openly against the clinic they have now restructured their fees so that the $1,200 initiation fee is merged into the ongoing yearly fee of $2,300. Seeing that the Liberals are on par politically with the current Federal Conservative party of Canada, what does this mean for the future of health care in Canada?

I see the Health Care in Canada going the way a womans right to choose is in the US. That is in the US they will never overturn the landmark case of Row vs Wade, however what they will do is continually lesson the effects of the case. What this means is in the US while it is still legal to have an abortion, the criteria for a person to do so is a lot stricter, and will continue to move in that direction. Under a conservative government you will see a similar thing happen to the Canadian Health Act, except that instead of getting stricter you will see a loosing of the Act.

The Conservatives could never simply abolish the Canadian Health Act, much the same way the Republicans could never overrule the Row vs Wade case, doing so would be political suicide. What they will do instead is become even more lax on upholding the act, and strive to find more loopholes that private clinics can take advantage of, and in doing so riddling the act useless. This is a slow process, but as you can see over time it takes effect. 10-20 years ago to even speak of a private clinic in Canada was unheard of, now they are popping everywhere. So the real question that is in front of us, is will someone finally stand up for health care in Canada? Or will we continue to see the degradation of a once magnificent social system.

9:56 PM, Sunday 26 June 2005

So the latest in the news has the Conservatives giving the Liberals shit for doing deals with the Bloc now. What is funny is that the Conservatives were the first party to make deals with the Bloc, I guess it is OK for them but not the Liberals. I think the Cons are on their way out now, which is good if a lot of their supports shift NDP. Layton has really started to pick his battles lately and has shown he can be a viable person in Ottawa. At the start he was getting a bit annoying always being opposed to anything the government would do, now at least he is picking his battles a little more.

Was at a barbecue yesterday talking about the whole Live 8 thing and some of the bad press it has been getting. The topic slowly came around to foreign aid and how much each countries were doing. Someone said well you know at least we are doing better than the States. I objected to this comment, for two reasons. One we are not doing better than the US and two we really shouldn’t take solace in the fact we are simply a little better than the US when both countries records are pretty piss poor. Anyway someone else responded saying that they are happy with the way Canada is taking their approach and that being so close to the US it is the only way for us to do it. He concluded that for use to have to hit the 0.7% that is recommended the money would have to come from somewhere, be it more taxation or government cuts to programs. Anyway what is your take on foreign aid and the whole Live 8 thing?

On the message board you asked about the LRA in Uganda. I had no experience with them as they were based largely in the North. While Uganda is a very small country it seemed quite large (probably due to not having a good road infrastructure), and you wouldn’t know for a second living in Kampala that Uganda was fighting a war in the North if it wasn’t in the papers or on the radio. As for Kony and his rebels, they are a bad bunch. Most of what is on that website is pretty truthful. These guys are ruthless, they capture children when they are young, brainwash them, then get them to fight and perform gruesome acts on the people they capture (such as cutting off jaws, feeding body parts to people etc). The women they capture are made into sex slaves and other terrible things. The word on the street about them is that they could have been stopped early on when they began fighting. However from what I hear fighting was prolonged with them to suck more foreign aid out of the western countries. The longer the war went on the more the LRA turned into the monster it is now, something that the government cannot control. I guess you can say the governments plans somewhat backfired. Granted it is a lot easier to rule when your people are in constant fear, and as it looks Museveni will get re-elected once again, even despite him vowing last election that no person should rule as long as he has/will.

Stefan

9:28 AM Monday 27 June 2005

Everyone in Canadian politics (or politics anywhere, really) is a complete hypocrite on some level. The Cons are the lamest of them all so it makes no surprise they’d say something like that. Of course, I’d like to believe the public at large has a memry span of longer than a week, in which case they will see right through it. I think a lot of that western protest vote may go; I don’t think that the Prairies are necessarily left or right as they are anti-Ottawa (like every non-southern Ontario part of Canada).

I think it’s pretty fucking pathetic that we have a surplus this big and still only spend 0.7% on foreign aid. Between Canada, the US and the EU, we can wipe out third world debt for about $200 a piece. I say just put a fifty dollar levy on every working person in the first world for the next ten years or so and boom! Then we’d only be in debt to each other and a few oil countries. It’s a pretty petty sacrifice in the big picture. Of course, as a whole we are so wrapped up in our own self-interest it’s scary. As for Live 8 I think most of the public are looking at it like they did the Tibetan Freedom Concerts: ‘Wow, there’s a lot of good bands playing!’. They could care less about debt relief. Despite the good intentions involved, it’ll be out of the news the day after it’s over. the donations might get a week’s supply of food to a remote region of some country and that’ll be it.

LRA look like some scary dudes. And the worst thing is nobody knows or cares this is happening (or Darfur, Sierra Leone, Congo, Zimbabwe, Burma, Nepal, Liberia, etc.). They’re too busy watching ‘Dancing With The Stars’ and round-the-clock coverage of the Runaway Bride story. Oh, inverted world.

Kyle

10:01 PM, Monday 27 June 2005

What is sad is that we don’t even spend 0.7 %… 0.7 percent was the number set out by Pearson that if every 1st world country would contribute could end world poverty. Sadly Canada contributes little more than 0.25 per cent. How fucking sad is that? I read an article today that said for $1.23 per person per year we could save 6 million children from death just by providing the proper health and medicine as they are growing up. 90 percent of children deaths (under 5 years old) happen in 42 countries. Of the 90 percent about half of them happen in like 6 countries. Yikes… I like your idea, 50 bucks a person, not a lot of money to most people…

To switch off a bit, I just watched a documentary called Dig! which basically followed The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre around. I guess these two bands became friends and started a sort of rivalry. Anyway the Dandy’s took the corporate route and got a big record deal etc. While the BJM were lead by Anton Newcombe who hated everything about big business and the big evil music industry decided to do things his way. In some parts of the movie it makes Anton look to be the most brilliant person in rock, other times (and more often) they really paint his character to be a fucked up drugged out psycho. Anyway Anton has put out an insane amount of music, I think he made something like 5 records one year. People have compared the BJM as being the Velvet Underground of the 90’s. Anyway what is cool is that Anton still lives to his word, if you goto their website you can download every single album of theirs, which is pretty damn cool. While most of the band members of the BJM are no longer with the band I guess the soul behind the band is Anton, and I guess they (more like he and whoever will play with him) are still touring and making albums.

Stefan

10:53 AM Monday 27 June 2005

Yay! I’m sicker than fuck right now; it hit me like a brick just after noon today and I’m going through toilet paper like I had seventeen assholes. I also have to breathe out of my mouth, which sucks because now my throat’s all dry and scratchy. I also have to somehow get two interviews transcribed between now and noon Wednesday, which is just going to be lame. But on the bright side, it means not having to go to school tomorrow, which means I can do all of my work all day sitting awkwardly upon the laundry tub I use for a chair in between vomiting. I hope I’m alright by Wednesday afternoon so I don’t wind up emptying the morning’s oatmeal all over my interview subject. “So, what community facilities were present in Sinclair Mills while you were- BLEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHCCCCHHH”

Bush and Rummy keep talking about their heroic ‘freedom fighters’. If crime fighters fight crime, and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?

And this just in: Tom Cruise is a complete fucking nutjob. Seriously, this time next year he’ll be parading naked through downtown Los Angeles…

Debt relief is ONE part of the solution, but most African countries are still be ruled by dictatorship or corrupt one-party states left over since the collapse of colonialism. Those regimes will also have to fall. But how? We can’t just run in and invade/depose; that would defeat the whole point of self-determination.

BJM has had something like 40 band members in 15 years. But they’ve picked up a big following. I can see the VU comparison as they have been likened to many of the early-90’s shoegazing bands. And, of course, just from the name, a big stones influence as well.

Well, I wanted to pull an all-nighter but I’m having trouble making it through this email. Time to pull an Elvis and die on the toilet. Hopefully I will be reborn sometime before tomorrow night’s email.

Kyle

8:08 PM, Tuesday 28 June 2005

Kusch sorry to hear your so sick, a stomach flu going around at school or something? Who is this your interviewing?

Dictators are not all bad. My boss always likes to say, the best leader is a benevolent dictator. In a lot of ways he is right, I mean a dictator has free reign to do what he wants and if he truly loves his people he will help them do well. Granted the far opposite approach also works, look at the state of Kerala in India where they often elect a communist government and are very very active in their community. It has paid off to… What generally is the problem with removing dictators is that the people often don’t want it to happen, or they do but they know when it happens it usually means war and a lot of death. Look at Uganda, most (not all) people would be happy if Museveni would stay in power, why? because they fear what happens when leaders change. They all lived through the war and the terrible acts the last time it happened, and now they have someone who is doing a relatively decent job and they don’t want to fuck that up…

I think I am going to download a bunch of BJM and give them a solid listen. I seem to remember downloading some stuff a while back and I had this strange thought that they were really metal, aparently I was totally off after I heard a few songs last night.

Same sex passed today, so no more chances to overthrow our government… will be interesting to see what happens in the fall. Actually I am interested to see what happens after the Gomery report is completed, and if Martin will actually call an election…

Have you heard about the new “integration” plans between Canada/US/Mexico? A nice 40 point plan to further turn Mexico and Canada into the US’s bitches… Anytime our government is taking advice from the Council of Chief Executives you know there is trouble.

Stefan

9:23 AM Tuesday 28 June 2005

Nah, it’s just a mild case of the flu. I feel a lot better today although my nose is quite plugged. Hopefully will be fine. As for who I’m interviewing? My research involves looking at the major factors influencing migration in the Upper Fraser, so I am talking to various former residents over the summer and getting their input. Hopefully I can get about 30 interviews or so before the end of summer.

Dictatorships can only work when the vast majority of residents are supportive; if they aren’t then it simply becomes oppressive. Hell, a dictator can have total support and still be oppressive. Baby steps, I guess.

Gouk will not be running again for MP next time around; hopefully this opens the door wide open for Alex Atamanenko who only lost by 600 votes last time (remember, he would have won last time had they not fucked around with the boundaries and threw Princeton of all places in with the West Kootenay and removed Nakusp).

Integration isn’t really integration when you have the world’s largest economy dominating the agreement. This is assimilation. I can only hope enough people throw enough hissy fits to ward this off.

What is a neo-liberal? Sounds like a free market advocate that glows in the dark, doesn’t it?

Kyle

9:54 PM, Wednesday 29 June 2005

So how do you find people who have migrated from the Upper Fraser?

Sounds like Larry Campbell could possibly quit as Mayor of Vancouver. I think he has been the most popular leader this city has had in years. He says it is a health thing but most people speculate it is because of all the internal fighting. I wonder if he will then make the jump to federal politics. Granted I don’t know what party he would fall under, mainly because he is the type of guy you would want as the leader of your party.

2.6 billion dollar surplus announced for BC. It is pretty easy to do when it comes in transfer payments from the federal government. That is not the way it will be put I am sure…

I don’t have anything else to say… I want to write more but have nothing more to write. Sorry Kyle, for my lack of enthusiasm, but I am really drawing blanks here. Maybe tomorrow will bread more thought.

Stefan

8:24 AM Thursday 30 June 2005

So how do I find people from the Upper Fraser? I find them to be very nice, ha ha ha. Seriously, we have a list dating from 2000-01 of people previously interviewed; I’m interviewing those people again but focusing the interviews more closely on migration and ethnicity. The way those original names were found was by finding a couple of people you know from the area and getting them to give you names of people who can find you more people and so on. This is called the snowball technique (as opposed to the type of ’snowball’ you’re used to, ha ha ha. Seriously though, I don’t judge. And I should stop making gay jokes; they’re too cheap and easy. And, no, I’m not going to make a ‘cheap and easy’ joke).

Speaking of Vancouver civic politics, looks like they voted down Wal-Mart 8-2 with only Campbell and the NPA supporting. I think this is good, of course; what do you think? I imagine you agree with the decision. The one councillor wants to pass an amendment getting banning all big box stores, which is fine by me.

Of course the surplus didn’t from transfer payments! It came from the healthy investment climate created by the BC Liberal government! Sillyhead! Okay, and maybe the boom in Chinese resource demand had a little to do with it…

I sure hope tomorrow will ‘bread’ more thought. Maybe it can crouton more thought, too; that way the thought won’t get so soggy in salad dressing.

Kyle

10:59 PM, Thursday 30 June 2005

I am sorry to do this Kyle but I can’t keep this up. At least not a daily thing. With the summer coming I don’t have the time to put the thought into writing decent replies as you have likely noticed by this week. I know you’re busy too, and you have made an effort, but I really don’t want to do this if it is going to be half assed.

Stefan

12:15 AM Friday 1 July 2005

Well, Klopp, I can’t say I’m not dissapointed. As conversation on Glasnost frequently grinds to a halt with talk of computers and music bands I half-like, this thing with you was basically the one thing keeping me in real touch with my old friends from home, and, as usual, I am the one left holding the bag while all of our old relationships and friendships fall away one-by-one until we all wind up like Joern. It’s kind of sad that you can’t spare the ten nimutes a night (or every other night, even) to say a few words to your old friend Kyle. What a sad, sad day for us all. With all of the ‘effort’ we’ve all been putting into our mutual relationships over the past couple of years, I think it’s pretty obvious that our circle of friends has dissipated to the point where we’re just uninterested with each other. Good for a beer or two once or twice a year but not much more. We’ve grown up, moved on (well, some of us) and made new friends, new acquaintances, new lives. We’ve all left our little ‘Hinterland Oblivion’ of the West Kootenay behind. How fitting that it all goes out with a whimper and a couple of terse paragraphs. And the sad thing? I don’t think any of us will really notice. Or care.

Kyle

10:27 PM, Monday 6 June 2005

When I was updating the most recent hockey stats I noticed how I really haven’t updated my site in a while, and that you’ve only done a couple of updates yourself lately. Maybe it’s time for another one of these babies. I figure I’ll start off by critiquing your courrent top 50 on your Audioscrobbler (ten bands each day); feel free to do the same.
1. Pearl Jam- Well, this was to be expected from a diehard such as yourself. And, how could I disagree, really? They’ve put out some really great stuff consistently over the years. I must admit, though, when I play a Pearl Jam album, I wind up skipping about 70% of it just because the more straight-ahead rock stuff and slower numbers just do not appeal to me; they all run together. This is probably why I don’t share quite the same enthusiasm that you and Joe do for them. But they are still one hell of a band. I would kill to see them live.
2. Queens of the Stone Age- This comment may get me lynched on Glasnost, but QOTSA has gotten worse with every album. Granted, still really good and better than about 97% of the bands out there, and there’s a couple good shitkickers on the album, but I just don’t see how they’re this wonderful saviour-of-rock band. The sad thing is, three or four years ago, I used. ‘Monster In Your Parasol’ still makes me shit my pants in glee every time I hear it. One thing I thought was funny: May Days 2003, Logan and I listened to Songs For The Deaf at the campfire. We each really liked half the album and were indifferent to the other half. Things was, we each liked the opposite half. To this day, ‘Go With The Flow’ is one of my least favourite songs ever. QOTSA kick ass for the most part, but I’ll take Eagles of Death Metal anyday.
3. The Dandy Warhols- When I saw these guys at NUMBER THREE on your playlist, I was shocked. Back in high school, I heard ‘Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth” and thought it was brilliant, so I checked out their other stuff. God, was I ever dissapointed. Other than ‘Junkie’, there is not one other song of theirs I can listen to. Period. Needless to say I was quite dismayed to see them number three. Guess we can’t agree on everything.
4. The Mars Volta- Now HERE’S something we can agree (I should hope so, you got me into them). A fucking brilliant band who isn’t willing to sit on their asses and stop experimenting and pushing. A shame they aren’t bigger than they are, but that would almost ruin it in a way. There might be one or two songs of theirs I can’t listen to; the rest is awesome. One of my favourite bands on your list by far.
5. Air- Better than most electronic acts out there. Some of their more ambient stuff I can’t get into (too mushy), but in general I’m down with Air.
6. Ben Harper- Ben Harper is who guys tell their girlfriends they like so they can seem deep and sensitive when they’re trying to get laid. All of my friends, both back home and in PG seem to like Ben Harper and I cannot figure out why. He’s a good singer and decent guitar player, but his songs are just so overwrought and pithy. Basically, I find him boring, sappy and unchallenging (and don’t even fucking get me started on Jack Johnson, who I see you have at #41; that will be Thursday’s rant).
7. The Beatles- Everyone and their dog knows I’m a massive Beatlephile, so I will just compliment you for playing a lot of music from the most influential popular music act of the 20th century and ask you, “What Beatle tracks do you listen to most?”.
8. Soundgarden- Ah, what a great band. I liked their louder and/or dirtier stuff more than I liked the softer stuff so I tend to stick to earlier Soundgarden (although there are tons of gems on every SG album, really). Great band, legendary guitar player, awesome singer (too bad his new band isn’t that great- that rant comes tomorrow). From “Jesus Christ Pose” to “The Day I Tried To Live”, one of the most important bands of the past twenty years, hands down.
T9. Pixies- Brilliant but overrated. When taken in small doses, this is a fucking awesome group with a massive legacy (easily the best band ever out of Boston). But I could certanly never just listen to the Pixies all day or even for an hour straight, I don’t know why. I get bored of them quickly, stop listening to them for a while, then start listening again and think they’re brilliant. Still, easily one of the great underground bands of all time and I’m still pissed I didn’t get to see them in Vancouver last year.
T9. U2- I find a handful of their stuff absolutely brilliant and the rest treacle. I also haven’t gotten into anything they’ve done in the past decade and Bono kind of scares me at this point. Still, those few songs I do like (mainly the early ’80’s and early ’90’s stuff) are enough to make U2 worthwhile for me.
Tomorrow, I will go through the next ten on your list. I can see already that my list is a bit more avantgarde and probabaly a lot louder than yours. I also don’t have as many new bands as I’d like to, but it’s getting there. Write back with your comments and disagreements on my thoughts and perhaps what you think of my top 10.
Kyle

11:30 AM, Tuesday 7 June 2005

Okay, Part II of my dissection of Stefan’s Audioscrobbler Top 50:
T9. Audioslave: Take 3/4 of the greatest rap-metal band of all time (the ONLY great rap-metal band of all time, really) and one of the most dynamic vocalists in all of rock, and what do you get? A merely decent sounding band whose parts are greater than their sum and generally fail to do anything spectacular like their predecessors. I can see glimmers of their past greatness but I can’t help but feel that Audioslave is one of the greatest wasted talents around today. Mind you, I must admit that have not heard enough of the new album to really judge it and I still hold out hope I will be pleasantly surprised by the rest of it.
12. The Doors: Simply outstanding. I can still remember our extended jam version of ‘L.A. Woman’ on the Burton rink bench a couple of years ago. Some of their stuff is overwrought (Morrison simply wasn’t as deep as he thought himself to be) but their legacy is solid and I actually think they don’t get the credit they deserve. Awesome, awesome band. And I’ll just keep pretending they didn’t release any albums after Morrison dies, or that there wasn’t a half-assed reunion last year.
13. Beck: When he’s good and going all over the place from acoustic to hip-hop to avant-garde, he’s great (see first three albums). When he’s not, he’s repetitive and boring (see: Midnite Vultures). On Guero, he seems to be spinning his wheels in a failed attempt to recreate his late-’90’s sound. And I wish he would just shut up about bloody Scientology already. But there’s enough amazing stuff in his huge catalogue that I still must admit I like Beck in general.
14. A Perfect Circle: Absolute DRIVEL. Basically Maynard’s romantic side manifesting itself to the detriment of society in general.
15. Tool: There are a few songs I can get into, but the rest I can’t. Don’t know why and couldn’t explain it to you. I just find them really hit-and-miss. Love their politics, though, and any band who dedicated an album to Bill Hicks can’t be all bad. To me, among our group of friends, the most overrated band I can think of. I’m not saying they suck (they don’t), just not my style, I guess.
16. The White Stripes: When they first came out, I got swept up in the bandwago for about two months without having listened to them properly. I’ve heard every song now, and I don’t think there’s a single one I can actually stand to listen to now. I actually went t the trouble of deleting every Stripes song from my computer. I find them incredibly dull and overhyped (along with all of the other ‘The’ bands-Strokes, Vines, maybe not the Hives so much).
17. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead: Haven’t heard enough of them to really judge properly. I remember seeing them on some show where they completely trashed the set and thought that was pretty cool. Definitely have to hear more of them.
18. Rage Against The Machine: One of my favourtie bands of all time. I could listen to them all day. There will never be anything like them again.
19. Red Hot Chili Peppers: I liked a few songs from their earlier albums. Another one of those bands that gets worse with age. The last things they wrote that I could listen to were ‘Aeroplane’ and ‘Warped’, and those were ten years ago. One of John Frusciante’s solo album is better than any RHCP album.
20. Alice In Chains: I don’t have anything against Alice In Chains, really. It’s just not my type of music. Except maybe ‘Man In The Box’.
So, feel free to respond anytime. – Kyle

9:41 PM, Tuesday 7 June 2005

Good idea on getting this going again. I have been meaning to email you about this, but kept on forgetting. As for your critique of my music, well here are a few rebuttals…
First off let may say that that list doesn’t represent my top 50 artists, it is more like the top 50 artists I have listened to in the last month or so. I can’t believe how high some of those bands are. Actually I think a lot of the rankings of certain bands has a lot to do with me going to their concerts in the last few months, which often gives big boosts to a band.
Take U2 for example, I very rarely ever listen to U2, but since I was shelling out 65 bucks for their concert I decided I needed to beef up my song knowledge before going to the concert, thus skewing their numbers high.
The Dandy Warhols, who I actually think are pretty fucking brilliant are largely skewed by me going on a big fix of them lately, and the fact it is one of a couple cd’s I have at work. Regardless I still really dig them, especially the album “thirteen tales from urban bohemia”.
QOTSA are far from the saviour of rock, however I can’t agree with you that they are slowly getting worse. There new album took a few listens to get into but after I got into I love it. This is a band that no two albums are the same, they keep on re-inventing, or rather changing their music and I find each time has been just as good.
I don’t care what you think of Ben Harper, he can play a slide guitar like no other, has an amazing voice, and like so many other bands I love he puts on one hell of a great live show. Jack Johnson is like a watered down surf version of Ben Harper, utter trash if you ask me. Plus he has none of the soul or the gospel that Harper has… a lot of why I like Ben Harper so much… must be my Lutheran upbringing.
Well on to email number two…
Audioslave, myeah you take what you can get. They are not Rage, and definitly not Soundgarden, reason they are so high on my list is they just had a new album out and I tend to listen to new albums over and over again to get a feel for if I like it or not. This also explains the high ranking of Beck. Personally I think his new album is somewhat of a change to the better, a lot more rockin’ and fun, over the mundan sleepy Beck albums. Granted the last album wasn’t bad either, just not the Beck of old.
Burton hockey doing LA Woman will forever be in my memory, that was too fucking awesome. Speaking of the Doors, did you see they are tour now as “The Doors of the 21st Century”, with the lead singer of the Cure? They couldn’t use the name The Doors because John Densmore refused to join them and threatened to sue them if they toured with that name. Good on ya John.
APC I listen to more for the mood they create than the lyrics. At times they are very ambient, and I can work easily to them in the background.
Only reason Red Hot Chilli Peppers are on so high is because a long time ago I downloaded their entire catalog and whenever I have poker nights I end up having my player on random, since there are so many RHCP songs it comes up often. I think I am going to delete a bunch of the albums I really don’t like. To tell you the truth I only really like about 10% of the stuff I have of theirs.
OK I think I have spent enough time defending my list. Time to move on to yours. You’re right I don’t know a bunch of the bands on your list, so in those cases I will make something up totally random, whether it fits or not who knows.
1) The Beatles – Argueably one the best and most influencial bands there has been in the last century. What Beatles song do I listen to most? Norwegien Wood maybe? HA!
2) Public Enemy – I am really not a huge rap fan (besides my somehow strange like for the Wu Tang Clan’s first album) so all I can say is “Flava Flav shake your booty!” haha
3) Butthole Surfers – Hum, I seem to remember this time in highschool when we were arguing over … hahaha. I can’t say I am a huge fan, granted I really don’t listen to them much.
t-4) Radiohead – I don’t mind Radiohead, however I really find them to be too ambient/moody, and almost hypnotic (not necessarily a bad thing) at times. It is the major reason I can’t listen to Coldplay. Listening to thier music is like having a huge black cloud over your head that is about to rain. Not to say I don’t like their stuff (their early stuff is much more accessable listening wise) it just does little for me… I hear they put on a good live show though, but I wouldn’t spend the $60 it would take to see them.
t-4) Negativland – Too many beeeps and booops for my taste in music. Electronic music is on it’s way out, and Negativland never had a chance.
6) Joy Division – Might as well call them Joy Union. Their music is so sappy it makes my ears bleed. Who the fuck is writting those lyrics anyway, almost as bad as Sixpence None the Richer.
t-7) Big Black – For a metal band I find them quite intelligent. If you can make out the lyrics through the death chants and the screams you realize these guys spent a lot of time coming up with what they wanted to say.
t-7) Ween – Another band I haven’t really listened to a lot of, isn’t Ween synonymous with smoking big ass joints though?
9) Jimi Hendrix – I think what I love most about Hendrix is that Raw rock feel you get from his music. The massive reverb, that sandy snair drum, and the low vocals that don’t even really need to be there because the guitar does more of the singing them Jimi does.
10) Sonic Youth – Another band I have never really listened to and don’t know why. When I think of Sonic Youth I think of that stupid Simpsons episode with Peter Frampton freaking out because Sonic Youth’s in his cooler.
There is your top ten. I didn’t have a lot to say but whatever. I think you will be able to tell the ones I had no idea about. Anyway I will try to get to your next 10 tomorrow.
Just to switch topics momentarily from music, I wanted to know why you were so fucking quite during election time on Glasnost? I found there were a lot of discussions, mainly concerning the Liberals and STV where I was sure you would have had an opinion on and would post, yet you kept totally quiet.
Also this May Days you were sorely missed Kusch. Doing the super session without you was tough. Fuck we missed our first 3 games due to shitty stat keeping. Plus it just isn’t the same without you there with all the different stats you go running through your head. Don’t get me wrong it was still fun as hell, just not the same…
Anyway how are your classes going and shit, what are you up to these days? I don’t think I have heard from you in a few months now, give me an update on life.
Stefan

1:36 PM Wednesday 8 June 2005

Oh, God, how I love musical discussion! This is great! Thanks for the return email, I love getting into these kinds of topics.
I can totally understand how the list is not totally representative of one’s musical tastes (why, for example, is Jefferson Airplane anywhere near my top 50? I think because the same two songs keep coming up when I stream last.fm). Just wait until next week when Pink Floyd shoots to number two on my list (just ripped three albums off of my officemate Adrian). Unfortunately, my small database of music and lack of an Internet connection viable for streaming radio at home means I mostly listen to music at school, explaining why I have less than half the song plays you do. Still a lot, though, compared to lots of people.
Let’s rebut some of your comments here. U2: entirely understandable. Warhols: different strokes for different folks, I guess. QOTSA: I like the fact that Josh Homme refuses to pigeonhole himself. And I did not mean to make it seem like the new ablum sucked or anything, I just don’t find it as enjoyable as the previous ones. Ben Harper, again, obviously massively talented. He just makes music I simply do not care for. What’s hilarious is that everyone I know likes him. Maybe it’s because it’s actually authentic and organic. It’s just a type of music I could care less about. Totally agree with you on Audioslave. I almost brought up the 21st Century Doors in the last mail but got so mad I couldn’t bring myself to type. Talk about a pathetic money grab. John Densmore rules simply based upon that. APC: I do not enjoy music as a background setting or in ambience. Even so-called ‘ambient’ tracks I may listen to, I listen to like any other: headphones, full-on. Perhaps this is why I cannot get into APC. Very monotonous to me (and not in the fun, experimental way). RHCP is understanable (since most of my songs are Beatles and now Floyd, they always come up on random and their numbers get skewed).
And now, defending my top ten against your comments.
Beatles: BEATLES! And you’re right, ‘Norwegian Wood’ is good (HA! not withstanding), probably their first modern song.
PE: I can remember you and Watsy in Grade 8 art class quoting Method Man all day so the Wu-Tang admiration does not surprise me. 1988-92 era PE is loud, frenetic, politcal and angry. So I like it. I don’t listen to a whole lot of rap (more than you do, evidently), but PE’s numbers aren’t skewed; I just listen to them that much.
Butthole Surfers: I think most people from our group seem to know the song ‘Pepper’ thanks to Joern (and my fucking-up of the lyrics). By the time that song came out, though, the Surfers’ late ’80’s-early ’90’s heyday was long past. If you were to get into those albums, you would find the most fucked-up, psychotic music ever. Which is why I love them so.
Radiohead: I like the old stuff and new stuff. Weirder the better, I say. Coldplay is what Radiohead would sound like if Radiohead sucked. I detest Coldplay’s music so much (like their politics, though). Radiohead doesn’t stick to a formula and is always willing to do something different even if their fans don’t like it, and that’s fine by me.
Negativland: Are we even talking about the same band here? With a writeoff like that, I have to assume this is one of those ones where you made up a totally random comment because you never heard of the band. Negativland is not an electronic band, and I beleive their total record sales equate to about 85,000 lifetime. As one of the pioneers of sound collage and plunderphonics back in the ’80’s (which is where their best work resides), I can’t imagine you have heard very much of them. Not that you’d like them, anyway. They are the acquired tastes of all acquired tastes and I very much doubt anyone I know could get into them. Still (judging at first glance on your post) the fact that you thought they were a modern electronic band makes me laugh.
Joy Division: Again, are we talking about the same band here? They certainly were depressing and bleak (actually voted the most depressing band of all time, Leonard Cohen came second) but hardly sappy. I should hardly think any band named after prostitutes in a concentration camp with a lead singer who fell into epilectic fits in the middle of concerts is sappy. Mind you, after Ian Curtis hung himself the band of the band did form New Order, who are godawful outside of ‘Blue Monday’.
Big Black: I think you summed up my feelings about Big Black exactly, except they were never a metal band (rather, a post-punk band with a drum machine). I like the lyrics AND I like the clang-bang and screaming.
Ween’s probably more synonymous with acid and hallucinogenics, as shown in their music which refuses to be categorized, but stoners love ‘em, too.
As nothing needs to be said about the genius of Jimi, I will just suggest that you should try to get a hold of some Sonic Youth (especially their late 80’s-early 90’s albums). I honestly have no idea how you would to them. I just hope you like feedback. perhaps wean yourself into them with ‘Teen Age Riot’, ‘Kool Thing’ and ‘Bull In The Heather’.
Now to your bands 21-30:
T21. DJ Shadow: Haven’t heard enough of him to judge fairly; there’s been some stuff I really liked and some that was just blah. Will need to hear more before passing total judgment.
T21. Death Cab For Cutie: Generic. Do nothing for me.
23. Billy Bragg & Wilco: I respect both artists. Woody Guthrie is cool. I like leftist politics. So why doesn’t this ongoing collarboration really catch me? Don’t know. Maybe I’m just not enough of a folkie. Me not caring for this music is more my fault than theirs.
24. Sneaker Pimps: This from the guy who said electronic-based music is on it’s way out. I sincerely hope this is one of those ‘I hit random and it just keeps playing them’ cases. What’s next, Morcheeba?
25. Zero 7: Honestly never heard them, but again your electronica comment comes back to bite you in the ass yet again.
26. Mogwai: Why would a band need words when they could just kick ass already? Such is the brilliance of Mogwai. Supposedly a great live act as well.
27. Nirvana is self-explanatory. I actually prefer In Utero to Nevermind (hey, depressing is good!).
28. The Arcade Fire: Easily the most overhyped, overrated band of 2004 (and carrying on into 2005, I see). A couple decent tracks and the rest is filler. Basically it’s another over-sensitive indie pop band, just with a violin. A fourth-rate flaming Lips without the synthesizer.
29. Wilco: See comment, number 23.
30. Nine Inch Nails: About as mainstream as industrial music gets, but still good. Reznor is best at his most abrasive. Get rid of the more radio-friendly stuff and the catalogue is brilliant. Mind you, Big Black gave him about 3/4 of his ideas.
31-40 will come tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s answer your questions. Why was I quiet during election time? Two reasons: Grad school has you working about fifty to sixty hours a week, so that’s one. Two is a much bigger reason, and that is simply that you guys were basically expressing what I was feeling and there was really nothing I could have added that would have improved the conversation any better than you guys were already doing.
Oh, how I miss stats. By the time I get back home at the end of July, it will have been eleven freaking months since I have done them. I can’t fucking wait. I was kind of pissed that I couldn’t come, but it just would have been impossible. Hell, taking a week off in July probably isn’t the smartest thing right now, but I’m doing it then simply because I have the ride with one of my friends from here. And I made sure it was after the Music Fest; I don’t like being in town when massive things are going on.
The life of a grad student is fast-paced and non-stop. You have work up to your neck and you alost start drowning in it; you’ve got a million things on your plate at once. On the other hand, the sheer amount of people I’ve met makes it worthwhile. Lots of new friends. Grad school is also extremely leftist in attitude in the NRES program because it’s so geographically oriented. Lots of potlucks and going out, so I’m having a busy but good time overall; no regrets whatsoever. One thing I noticed here: no one in university listens to the radio (thankfully- no Lorne Music!) A lot of my friends listen to lots of acoustic shit and sensitive balladry and classic rock. The classic stuff I don’t mind so much (and my officemates Adrian and Sarah feed me a lot of punk and indie, so that’s good), but the rest, while not commercial, is very unappealing and I find my tastes getting more extreme and abrasive as I go on. Aren’t I supposed to mellow as I age? Instead I’m feeding myself 300 bpm hardcore techno Spacemen 3 and Cabaret Voltaire albums. Such is life, I guess. At least I’ll never be accused of being a sheep.
How is yourself doing these days? Your blog doesn’t get too personal so I don’t really have a clue.
Kyle

9:41 PM, Tuesday 7 June 2005

Well the bands I ended up making shit up about were Negativland, Joy Division and Big Black, 1/3 isn’t bad. Anyway I am not against electronic music, as you can see from my sneaker pimps obsession, zero 7 (although they are much like Air), DJ Shadown and other such bands… Alright just to shore up a few things about your latest critiques, Death Cab for Cutie is on there because I was giving them a chance, to be honest they bore me. The Arcade Fire, again like DCFC I was giving them a listen because I had heard a lot of good things, they haven’t hit me like they have other people. Not to say they are not good, I think they are talented, just hasn’t made me go “wow”. Aparently they are a good live act though… NIN, I have a buddy who loves them. Personally another band I have a really hard time getting into. I try really hard (as you can see by their ranking) to like them, but when you can’t get into something you can’t help that.
OK on to your list… I THink things have shuffled since last time so I will skip Sonic Youth and go straight into…
t-12) Beastie Boys – I find it is really hit and miss with the Beastie Boys for me. With that said the Paul’s Boutique it such an great album…
t-12) Nirvana was one of many great bands of the early ninties that ended like most of the bands of the early ninties, in a heroin induced death. I think a lot of the problem was that people made Cobain out to be more than he was. Fuck he was just some shit kid from a small logging town in Washington who could express his angst really well, and people were making him out to be a God.
t-12) The Velvet Underground I haven’t really listened to much. I have some album of them with Nico called “Remember Two Things” or “Buy Andy Warhole” not sure what is the album name. Anyway it is not exactly what I expected them to be, I always thought they were a lot more fucked up.
15) I love The Doors. Morrison did think he was more than he really was, but he had pretty good reason to have such an ego, he wrote some amazing music. The Soft Parade still blows my mind!
16) The Pixies, what can I say they rock. Cobain was quoted as saying something to the effect smells like teen spirit was a blatant attempt to rip off the Pixies. Seeing Frank Black’s intensity and getting to hear Kim Deal sing In Heaven made going to Pixies last year all worth while.
t-17) I don’t mind the clash, I almost laugh sometimes listening to the Clash, though. I am sure back in the day they were all bad ass and controversial, but now listening to them, they sound… I dunno hokee? maybe that is the wrong word. This is a public service announcement… with GUITARS! haha I love it.
t-17) Ol’ Dirty Bastard… hum see my comment about rap. I suppose he is funny at times… This ain’t the ohhh dee beee, this is the NEW DB..
19) Led Zeppelin. Page and Plante. One hell of a band. I wonder how many bands we listen to now were influenced by Zeppelin growing up? The girl who I did the Pearl Jam tour with in California said that when we reached the middle of the desert between LA and Vegas we had to listen to Kashmir… Awesome.
20) Well my coworker would be happy to see the Dead Kennedy’s on your list. He is a huge punk fan, who goes to shows like Mr. Plow and Stinkmit. He has a particular liking to Jello Biafra… Anyway he recently saw the movie Terminal City Ricochet staring Jello, which he said was really funny because they didn’t even try to hide the fact they filmed the movie in Vancouver… He said in one scene there was this giant post of Bill Vander Zalm in it.
Wow Kyle has a life… I guess it was to be expected… Sounds like your busy though, I guess it is a good busy.
As for me, I don’t even know what is new with me. I spent way too much money on Pearl Jam tickets. At least now I am commited… After this tour I think I will cool the jets on Pearl Jam. Nothing will be able to top a Canadian tour anyway… Other happenings, Joern is moving to Vancouver… or he already has, who knows nobody tells me anything these days anyway. I am growing a garden on my balcony. Peas, Beans, and loads of tomato plants and a few flowers too… wee… Other than that nothing new. Work is work. Poker on the weekends. Brother on my couch.

11:02 PM Wednesday 8 June 2005

Just as a comment: it makes you look reallly bad when you make up shit instead of just admitting you don’t know it. I used to do that a lot trying to sound smart and I just came off like an ass. I don’t know how sarcastic you were when you were making those comments (so many things get lost in translation on the Net) but a simple ‘Haven’t heard them’ would have sufficed.
Responses to your critiques: (FYI, Floyd shuffled into the top 10 so that can be sort of an extra critique for tomorrow if you want; they will be second when the next rankings come out due to the three hours of music I got off my friend Adrian.)
Beasties: I like the second, third and fourth albums and that’s what I stick. The rest don’t do much for me. There isnt enough experimentation or attitude anymore from them.
Nirvana: You summed it up perfectly (I think that’s how Kurt would have summed it up, too).
Velvet Underground: For all intents and purposes, there are four Velvet albums. Velvet Underground and Nico alternates between dark love songs and seedy underbelly stories (very groundbreaking for 1966 to be singing about S&M and heroin). The next two albums get freakier, and then the fourth sees a straight-ahead rock approach that still sound different than anyone else. Definitely worth some exploration as you see how so many bands got their musical ideas from these albums.
The Doors: We both love them, no further comments needed. Same with the Pixies.
The Clash: Unlike other punk bands, they tried to mix it up a lot and not stick to a sound. Sometimes it didn’t work but most of the time it did really well. London Calling is in Rolling Stone’s top ten all-time albums for a reason, although it definetely exists in a late-’70’s British landscape.
ODB: Absolutely insane. Listening to him is like listening to a train flying off of the tracks at 300 mph. Very messed up but quirky enough to make me come back for more.
Led Z: I probably only like about 1/4 of their songs (pretty much all of those are from pre-1975), but the ones I like are SOOO good. SOOOO good. ‘Dazed and Confused’? Still blows me away 36 years later.
Dead Kennedys: But what is your opinion of them, I wonder? Hyperpolitical (Jello Biafra even has Chomsky making spoken-word albums on his record label) and musically advanced. Unlike other punk bands, they didn’t mind songs that went four or five minutes. There are actual chord changes and everything! I think you’d really like them.
Good to see Joern get out of Cowtown. Is anyone left there, I wonder? And what will he do in Van for work? I told a bunch of people at school about my crazy friend who bought tix for 15 Pearl jam concerts and they are all jealous of you, so enjoy, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Now, for 31-40 on your list (I see your list has changed slightly at the bottom today but didn’t change the aforementioned top 30):
T30. Muse: Boring. No matter the song.
32. Tosca: Only the second band on your list I haven’t heard (both of those electronic, interestingly), so I can’t pass judgment.
T33. The Clash: Guess we talked about them already.
T33. At The Drive-In: Their brilliance is self-explanatory.
T33. Modest Mouse: Of currently active indie-style bands of the past ten years, this is basically my favourite. There might be one song I don’t like out of the entire catalogue. Just awesome. Isaac Brock has that really weird voice that sounds cool no matter where you put it. I still can’t believe they were actually on SNL earlier this year and I missed it.
T33. Screaming Trees: Probably a bit lower on the overall hierarchy of the Seattle. Decent but not outstanding.
37. Radiohead: Best band of the past decade. Yup, you read that right. Best band of the past decade. No band has been able to push boundaries while still maintaining a consistent level of popularity like Radiohead. It’s almost anti-rock.
38. Jimi Hendrix: Already discussed.
39. Xavier Rudd: Is that some sort of computer glitch that put him on this list by accident?
T40. David Usher: (laughing followed by sigh, followed by sadness and consternation, and then laughing again)
Your turn!
Kyle

10:00 PM, Thursday 9 June 2005

21) Pearl Jam. As everyone knows I am an pretty big Pearl Jam fan. I think what I like about the band goes beyond the music (which by itself is wonderful), into the politics, the band members’ attitudes, the way they treat their fan base and their ability to put on an amazing, unique show every time they play live. I love this band.
22) Devo. Whip it good? Come on Kyle I know you like the odd, but Devo?
23) Modest Mouse… Yawn… They did a bunch of shows here recently and a couple of my friends wanted me to come. I listened to their cd’s over and over again. In the end I didn’t goto the concert, their music was just total miss with me…
24) I am amazed I don’t have The Who higher on my list, I really need to copy some of my cds back onto my playlist. The Who like The Doors and Zeppelin belong to that group of bands during the 70’s that totally changed the face of Rock.
25) I like the Talking Heads in small doses. David Byrne is pretty cool, and his music is pretty funky. Maybe someday I can trip out on acid listening to sugar on my tongue.
CCR. When I think of classic rock I think of CCR, they are like the epitome of classic rock. The dude abides.
t-27) David Bowie… Another artist I really don’t listen to. I mean I don’t mind some of his stuff, but not something I will actively listen to, or seek out.
t-27) Spaceman 3 … I am too tired to come up with anything about these guys.. I got nothing.
t-27) The Stones. Much like Bowie, I don’t mind the Stones, but again not a band I actively listen to or seek out.
t-30) Kraftwerk. Definitely the way you like your music, fucked up. I suppose they are German, so I will give them some credit… plus that boing boom chuck song is kind of catchy.
t-30) Cabaret Voltaire is another band I have no idea who they are and am too tired to come up with something about.
Stefan

10:08 AM Friday 10 June 2005

Let’s review some critiques of yours here; this seems to be the the part of the list where you’re wading into unfamilar territory. Pearl Jam is self-explanatory. Everybody knows ‘Whip It’ from Devo and basically nothing else because that was their only crossover hit so they basically get cast off as a novelty act rather than as one of the first band to actively use synthesizers and for their ongoing stance than humans are de-eveolving back into apes (hence the band’s name, they came up with the concept because they were going to school at Kent State in 1970 when the shootings happened, i.e. CSNY’s ‘Ohio’). I’m surprised you’re not into Modest Mouse, but can’t win ‘em all, I guess. The Who are legendary, of course. The good songs are brilliant but they stayed around too long and got too heavy into synths at the ends, deemphasizing the rock. But the good stuff is so good, who cares about the rest? Talking Heads (not THE Talking Heads), their first four albums changed popular music; the first mainstream acts to incorporate African rhythms into music on a meaningful level. John Fogerty was CCR. Brilliant stuff. What’s sad is that a couple of the other band members still tour as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, basically a tribute band to themselves destroying a great band’s legacy at NASCAR venues and country rock festivals everywhere. Pretty sad. Kind of like the 21st Century Doors. David Bowie was brilliant from 1971 to 1980. You can ignore everything else. I don’t think you’d like Spacemen 3. Feedback and droning. Music to my ears, noise to yours. Stones are self-explantory. I like early Kraftwerk. Nowadays they are basically a bunch of 60-year-old playing ambient techno. I was already tuned out to them by the time ‘Boing Boom Schack’ came along. I stick to ‘Trans-Europe Express’ and ‘Autobahn’-era stuff. As for Cabaret Voltaire, quite simply, they were the first industrial band. I leave you to dig them up and find out the good news.
To the list! 41-50:
T40- The Tea Party: I like the first two-and-a-half albums and then it’s nothing but interminable generic crap. I guess Jeff Martin thought he was being pigeonholed as that guy who sounds like Jim Morrison and decided to go corporate. There was something organic and experimental and exotic about the early stuff that dissapeared over time. These guys just wanted to be rock stars and live the life, I guess.
42- Jack Johnson: Absolutely boring, but every 19-year-old female undergrad seems to like him, sensitive surfer boy. Yawn.
43- My Morning Jacket: Wow, you’re really into your alt-country, aren’t you? I have nothing against alt-country (at least people are trying in alt-country!), so I’l just commend you for looking for bands that not everybody else listens to. I personally have to hear more of this band before making up my mind.
44- UNKLE: As UNKLE is sort of a fluid set of collaborations, the music tends to jump around a lot on me. Some songs are great and some aren’t.
T45- Neil Young: We all love Neil’s music, no critique necessary. (I don’t like the slower stuff so much, though.)
T45- St. Germain: I’m hoping you just recognized the name from the football stadium you saw in Paris and took a chance. Other than that, I’m dissapointed.
T47- Led Z: Self-explanatory. Just don’t listen to ANYTHING past 1975.
T47- Interpol: A couple good songs but pretty one-dimensional after that. The songs tend to run together, and you can tell in their interviews they think they’re pretty hot shit. Way too overhyped.
49- Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals: Already explained.
50- Sparta: I love when bands spilt up and one half goes on to kick major ass while they other guys just keep trying to do the same thing as the old band and fail miserably.
There’s my summation. I can tell that I have a lot of avant-garde leanings that you don’t. I guess I’m just eccentric.
Kyle

9:40 PM, Wednesday 15 June 2005

I told you I was going to make up stuff about the bands I didn’t know, I am pretty sure you could have figured out which ones those were, so bite me, I could care less what people think, and you know pretty well I don’t really make stuff up, and really have nobody to impress.
hum as for your critiques of my last couple numbers…. I am kinda too tired to give a damn right now so I will jump into your list… starting with I suppose Floyd…
2) Pink Floyd hit the whole psychedelic music on the head. Some pretty brilliant stuff in there, some not so good stuff. I know this might get my chastised but I actually really enjoy Division Bell, it is so mellow and takes you on to a dream world almost. When I used to have trouble sleeping I would often put that on and it would get me there… Of course dark side of the moon, pulse and the wall are all brilliant…
32) Cream, the only thing I really know about the band is that it had clapton in it and one song White Room.
t-33) Pavement – not enough info to comment.
t-33) Lou Reed – again not enough info to comment.
t-33) The Mars Volta. Cedric and Omar are the Mars Volta. They have gone from doing a experimental concept album to even more experimental and crazy concept album. Their music is wildly complex, and I love it.
37) Soundgarden… humm what to say, they were awesome… At the time Cornell’s voice was in such good form, Kim Thayil incredible on guitar, and mother fucker could Matt Cameron ever pound the drums (something I find PJ underutilized). One thing my brother once pointed out to me was that Soundgarden while quite heavy, had generally quite slow melodic songs. Anyway I have been on a huge SG kick lately at work, Down on the Upside has been on constant rotation.
t-38) Metallica is a band that I enjoy listening to when I am in someone else’s car, or hanging out etc, but have never really gotten into actually listening to them at home. Why? who knows. There older stuff is the goods… Anything after (and including) re-loaded is pretty shit.
t-38) The Beach Boys… humm surfing USA?
t-41) Blur is so Song 2 to me. Anytime I hear anything else from them I think of it and can’t get it out of my head…
t-41) Queen, david Bowie… again meh… I suppose it is kinda funny on Wayne’s world or at a hockey game, other than that, I think I will pass.
t-43) The Streets – not enough info.
t-43) I really haven’t listened to too much Mudhoney so I can’t really comment on the music. However I do know that several of the members were former members of Green River which of course is Stone and Jeff’s former band. Also Matt Lukin is in Mudhoney which connects again with Pearl Jam via the song Lukin. Also if it wasn’t for Mudhoney being formed and causing tensions in Green River Jeff and Stone may never have gone off to join Mother Love Bone, or ended up forming Pearl Jam.
45) Shellac – NC
t-46) My Bloody Valentine – NC
t-46) Beck… I still remember buying Mellow Gold. I loved that album, would listen to it all the time, very excellent. Actually I really enjoyed Odelay as well. Mutations was alright… however he has taken a slow change… granted I think we already talked about this… Anyway the new album is ok, better than the last few I think.
t-46) Tenacious D. The musical stylings of Jack Black and Kyle Gass. I used to listen to these guys so much it wasn’t even funny, actually it was funny because they are fucking hilarious. Jesus Ranch has to be one of my favorites… Funny stuff, just wish I could have went to one of their concerts, and gotten a cum rag!
t-46) Ciccone Youth… NC
t-46) Rage Against the Machine like you said were the only good rap/metal band. However I wouldn’t even call it that, Zack was more yelling screaming and sometimes singing, I suppose you could call it rap. Regardless they hit a cord, they were highly political, pushed a lot of good causes and a solid message. I think often their message was probably lost on a lot of people who just liked the heavy sound, or the crazy riffs but all in all an awesome band I am sorry to see go. I think I enjoy every album they have done, including Renegades. Watching some of the live DVD’s makes me sad I missed seeing them live…
Well there you have it… eat that shit up!
Stefan

10:39 PM Wednesday 15 June 2005

First of all, I have no problem with the concept of making shit up if it’s either funny or biting. Unfortunately what you did was neither. I think a drunken, punderful Isaac last May Days at Madden’s cabin was on more of a roll than you were with your corny-ass shit. So go eat a peach.
Now, to the critiques:
Floyd: Yeah, Division Bell puts me to sleep, too, but in the negative coxtext of the phrase. Pink Floyd ended for all intents and purposes in 1979. Of course, pretty much everything they did before then was fucking brilliant. ‘Jugband Blues’ could be a Kyle Kusch theme song at this point.
Cream: Were only together for two years, but what a two years it was. Three albums that changed the world and invented the power trio in rock. Basically it was the best drummer, best bassist and best guitarist in Britain getting together to form a band. Sickeningly good (although some of the more druggy songs have pretty cheesy lyrics, but that’s minor).
Pavement: Nothing of theirs is outstanding except for maybe ‘Stereo’. Good filler music to pass the time, though.
Lou Reed: To this day, Metal Machine Music still stands up as one of the most melodically diverse albums ever made. (Ed. note: Now that’s sarcasm.)
Nothing more needs to be said about the brilliance of the Mars Volta, and we’ve done SG, so we’ll move to Metallica: First three albums ONLY. I can’t even listen to the Black Album, let alone anything post-Load.
Beach Boys: This is such a weird case. Teeny-bop boy band suddenly matures and puts out the greatest album and some of the best songs yet produced by man, then leader becomes a recluse and band becomes adult-contemporary laughingstock your parents feel nostalgic about. Everything between (and including) ‘California Girls’ and ‘Good Vibrations’ is insanely good. The rest you can easily find in the 69-cent bin at the supermarket.
Blur: One of the saddest days of my life was hearing ‘Song 2′ for the first time. Easily the worst song Blur ever made, it was considered a throwaway track on their 1997 album to the point they didn’t even give it a proper title. Dumbass Yankee DJ’s and sport-team PA operators like the ‘Woo-hoo’ part and so it gets played to death. Three brilliant albums and at one point the best band in Britain, and all anyone on this side of the pond knows them is the interminable piece of Hepatitis-C- infected monkey crap known as ‘Song 2′. (A full length version of Kyle Kusch’s ‘Song 2′ rant can be purchased at independent book retailers everywhere.)
Queen: See the last line of the Pavement entry. Stay away from anything after 1980.
The Streets: Nothing I feel like explaining right now. Look it up yourself.
Mudhoney: Stuck to the stereotypical ‘Seattle’ longer than anyone else. Probably the loudest Seattle band after maybe the Melvins.
Shellac: Steve Albini’s band after Big Black. But what’s Big Black, you say? Oh, Jesus…
My Bloody Valentine: The top band of the turn-of-the-’90’s shoegazing movement in Britain. Basically droning, hypnotic guitars and soft-spoken vocals that basically produced the equivalent of listening to music underwater.
Beck: All over the place. Hard to get a handle on the guy.
Tenacious D: Come on, they invented inward singing. What more needs to be said?
Ciccone Youth: A one-album Sonic Youth-Mike Watt collaboration that made fun of Madonna and pop culture. Notable for a karaoke version of ‘Addicted To Love’ and a track consisting of a minute of silence.
RATM: Fuck, yeah.
So there you have it. Our synopses are complete. Can’t wait to hear your responses. Been listening to ‘Revolver’ all day. God, how awesome. I also played PF’s ‘Echoes’ and the Avalanches’ ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ fifty million times. Who needs drugs?
Kyle

10:21 PM, Thursday 16 June 2005

Responses, I don’t have much to say. Just that I am going to have to check out some Cream, and am going to eat a peach. If you were to suggest the best 5 beach boys songs what would they be? Lastly I figure I might as well say what I am listening to now. I have checked out the Bloc Party, heard they were good. They have some quick ass drums, might be from a drum machine and a very English feel to them. I have also been listening to the Doves a bunch. Not sure how to place them, at times they have very dreamy vocals and other times they are all out. Anyway I am quite enjoying them, and think I may check out their show next month.
Stefan

8:56 AM Friday 17 June 2005

The five best Beach Boys songs? For a sampler, I’d check out ‘Good Vibrations’, ‘God Only Knows’, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, ‘Here Today’ and maybe ‘Do It Again’ or ‘Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow’. Or, better yet, just get the whole Pet Sounds album (preferably the stereo version). Pretty good production for any era, let alone 1966. Bloc Party I’ve heard a couple times but not enough to pass judgement. The Doves seem like a watered-down, poppier version of the shoegazing-era bands (see My Bloody Valentine, Lush or Spacemen 3/Spiritualized for the real thing).
Your turn to start next week. Maybe we can get some political discussion going.
Kyle

9:36 PM, Sunday 3 April 2005

You can start us off if you want…

Stefan

11:48 PM, Sunday 3 April 2005

Holy shit, Klopp, grad school is the toughest thing you will ever do in your life, bar none. Right now I am in the beginning stages of an all-nighter trying to pump out an essay on migration for an independent study course worth 100% of the course mark. Tomorrow I have to go in front of my supervisory committee and defend my thesis proposal; their job is to completely deconstruct my entire work plan and all of the theory behind it, it will be annihilation. The goal, of course, is to see whether or not I have the balls to stand up there and take and say some coherent in return that makes it sound as though I am ready. I also have a 30-page report for a rural and small town studies course due Thursday that I haven’t started yet. I don’t know how it will be done and I am sure I will be working on it right until the deadline but I will finish it and it will get done, there simply is no other option but to do so. Grad school is very much a high risk-high reward venture. I have almost broke down a few times and thought about quitting but, damn it, there’s just too much riding on this. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done but it’s also the best thing I’ve ever done and I don’t regret it for a second. Just all the people I’ve met up here makes it worthwhile.

If we were having our conversation last week, I probably would have said something like, “It’d be nice if the Pope would just die already so that we wouldn’t have to go through all this bloody media coverage anymore”. Be careful what you wish for. He’s dead! we get it!

Watched that charity game in Hamilton last night. Pretty funny to see all of those guys trying to play in driving sleet. Good stuff for what it was, though.

There are two sides to Canmore: there’s a vibrancy and culture there that’s very surprising to see in Alberta. It also reeks of overdevelopment and environmental degredation. It’s what Whistler would be like if it was allowed to mutate and fester. Just the idea of golf courses as wildlife corridors makes me sick but yet it’s still hard to hate the place.

I think a weekly caramel Dairy Queen Moolatte is going to become ritual from now on.

Burton hockey has outgrown us. We left, it didn’t die, it grew. One day very soon it might not even be ours.

It’s official, I think I’m going to wake up at about one in the afternoon tomorrow, just enough time to wake up, shower, get to my office at school, run through my presentation once or twice, grab the computer/projector, take it to the meeting room and start praying.

Get any chocolate for Easter? We had at potluck at my friend Sarah’s house. Nothing like a bunch of 30-year-olds running around a house looking for Kinder Surprise eggs.

Giants are out (ha, ha, Brule!). Eerything is shaking down nicely for a Kelowna-Cranbrook semifinal. As long as either Kelowna or kootenay win the Memorial Cup I’ll be happy. I guess one good thing about living halfway between them is that you get to adopt both of them as your team. Hockey bigamy at it’s finest.

No one tried an April Fool’s joke on me this year. Well, unless you consider grad school an unnecessarily cruel joke.

Sign on the College Heights Baptist Church: ‘God loves you – whether you like it or not.’ I’m not usually one for religious sloganeering but that one was pretty good.

Unless we get lots of hockey in or Lee and Seamus are around a lot I honestly have no idea how I’m going to spend 10 days at home this month with no one else coming in without getting ridiculously bored like I was at Christmas. Thank God (or Bell) for satellite television.

I have one of those ‘Perfect Pancake’ pans that cook on both sides and flip easily. Good idea, except who in the hell makes ONE pancake?

Mitch Hedberg died this week, one of my favourite comics. Do you remember him from Just for Laughs? Check Shaun Majumder’s website, it’s pretty funny.

Brian Wilson’s SMiLE is stuck in my head. Not as good as Pet Sounds (what is, really) but certainly better than anything the Beach Boys did as a group in the past 37 years.

Well, this entry was obviously a product of excessive caffeine use. All it takes is one Pepsi nowadays to get me friggin’ buzzing. Probably a result of not drinking thirty cans a day like I used to, plus I’m not used to being this small (I have ribs?) so I guess my body can’t handle quantity like it used to.

How is the office atmosphere down there at Car Rental Express? Seems pretty laid-back, probably right up your alley. Are you happy there? Any complaints? See yourself there for a while or are you getting the travel bug again? I’ll leave you with a shot from a recent travel of my own, this is a photo of our delegation to the WDCAG conference in Lethbridge standing in front of Crowfoot Glacier: http://web.unbc.ca/geography/whatsnew/misc/WDCAG_2005_Glacier(HiRes).jpg Note 1. my pretzels, and 2. Roger Wheate (one of my committee members) with his aviators on doing the bunny ears on a couple of the profs.

Adios for now, I must get back to work while I’m still wired.

Kyle

7:49 PM, Monday 4 April 2005

We have a guy who works part time for our company and he says Law school is also the toughest thing you will ever do. You are always behind in your reading (no hope to ever keep up), you have to balance your work, your studying and everything else. Anyway I imagine grad school is quite the same. Does it piss you off when you have to mark assignments or deal with students when you know you should/could be working on your thesis?

I think you will do well on your presentation Kusch. Just stay calm, despite what they are saying and take a second or two before responding to think over your answer so it comes our clear. BTW yo usay you are defending your thesis proposal, so basically you haven’t started your thesis yet then? How does grad school work then? you come up with a proposal, then you propose it to the head teachers, then if they think it is good you can actually do the thesis?

Other than seeing a bunch of articles regarding the pope on my yahoo, I really didn’t get too much of the news buzz. Granted everything is kinda like that these days. Probably because I don’t read the newspapers in town, nor do I watch the news on tv.

What the hell were you doing in Canmore? and when did you go there? Nice picture btw, damn you are getting skinny. In that picture you look kinda like Forrest Harding, just night so bright red hair! haha.

Yeah too bad about Vancouver. I was hoping they would go through just so I could see another game or two. I really enjoyed the game, can’t believe it was the only one I have seen this year.

When I make pancakes I can only cook one at a time as well, I put the finished ones on a plate in the oven to keep them warm. Granted I don’t see the need for such a device. If you can flip your own damn pancake I don’t think you should be making pancakes. I love all these new contraptions that are suppose to save you time and energy and all they do is cause you grief and waste time. Like those sidekick meals. Wow eat our special rice (which tastes exactly like riceroni) which is made in minutes. Well guess what I can make a bowl of fucking rice in the same amount of time and it will probably taste a hell of a lot better and be a lot fucking healthier. The only two devices I use is a mixer for making cookies and cakes, and a popcorn blower, and I have been considering replacing the blower with a old school stovetop one. Popcorn comes out a lot less dry that way!

You know the one thing that has really stood in my way from going forward with a brand new site for burton hockey (besides lack of time) has been that exact fact, hockey HAS outgrown us. I barely even read over the recaps or the stats anymore, as sad as that sounds because I don’t even know half the people who are playing anymore. I suppose if I still lived in the valley it would be pretty fun as it sounds like they have a lot of people to setup sessions with but alas I live in Vancouver and the reality is I will probably play at most 3 sessions this year (and that is being overly optomistic).

Our office atmosphere is pretty excellent Kusch. It is a tiny company (like 6 people in our office, 1 remote, and 1 dog and 1 puppy) with an almost family feel to it. I am happy here, mainly because I get heard, I am in a position to grow, and am doing what I really like. Some days when I am overly tired it is hard to concentrate on a screen for 8 hours, but sitting by a windows gives me the opportunity to take a break and look out at the park, or laugh at our resident thug. The job itself I think is pretty long term. The owner comes from a bricks and mortar background and values dedication and commitment. When he hires someone it is for the long term. As for me and my plans? I don’t really know, I want to ride this out a bit, I think we have an opportunity to do some really cool stuff, and for the company to do even better. I have been getting a bit of an itch to go travel, and haven’t really been taking too much vacation time. Maybe next spring I will goto East Africa for a month or two, not sure need to discuss it at work first. However Pearl Jam is likely to tour soon and I might just have to do another tour. Either that or do 5 or 10 weekend shows, if I can afford it.

Well again best of luck tomorrow, and let me know how everything turned out.

Stefan

11:07 PM, Monday 4 April 2005

Seeing as how law school IS a type of grad school, then, yeah, it’s exactly the same. I am lucky in that GIS is pretty by the book, so questions are best handled during the lab time when people can actually see what they’re doing right in front of them. Marking is straightforward; you can fit it in in an evening easily. As far as TA jobs go, it’s pretty slack as far as the out-of-class stuff goes; it’s the barrage of questions and constantly slow servers during class that fuck you up. I have friends TAing biology classes spending up to thirty hours a week performing TA duties so I don’t complain about twelve, especially since I had a lot of the same students this semester I had last semester so I’ve spent so much time with them that they actually became friends and I looked forward to going to lab. The labs actually broke up the monotony of thesis work.

Did my defense today. It passed with minor revisions, which is the best you can ask for. I was very lucky to only be in that room just over an hour. After five years at the Infocentre I am a fairly decent public speaker. Summer with be busy, though. How does grad school work? Here it is in a nutshell: The year before you want to start, you start contacting various professors performing research in areas you’re interested in. You give them your credentials and background and express your interest in their research, giving them a few topics of study you’d like to delve into in any work you might do. Once a professor agrees to take you on, you meet and discuss the feasibility of those topics, refining your ideas ito something basic. The first semester is course work and the compilation of your literature review to familiarize yourself with other research in your field (a good review will have about 50-80 references). The second semester is when your lit review is completed and you have a better idea of what is feasible in a two-year Master’s program. that’s when you work on your proposal. My proposal was about 35 pages plus a bibliography, budget and timeline. Everything must be taken into account right down to the amount of money you’ll spend on labels for folders. Summer and early autumn are your field seasons where the actual research is completed. In fall you compile your results, in January you present them, and the rest of the semester you finish off the actual thesis (which you would have started writing as soon as you get actual results in back in June or so). A thesis will clock in about 200 pages or so. I am expected to defend the thesis before August 2006. As far as my defense today, I was in a meeting room with my supervising prof and the two others profs on my committee. They had a week to read my proposal. I gave a 15-minute talk and then they threw their comments and questions at me to make I knew what I was doing. It went well.

We stopped in Canmore on the way back from the Lethbridge conference (the same conference we took the photo). Yeah, I can’t even bring myself to buy a belt because in the back of my mind I still wonder if I’ll gain the weight back one day. I would guess I’m about 130 lbs. or so.

In my world everything revolves around the Foreman and the toaster oven. Anything that can’t be toasted, grilled or nuked just won’t be made, that simple. My favourite new device is the Thunderstick Pro, the hand-held blender. It’s so fast it actually can whip whole milk into a light froth you can eat with a spoon. That’s nuts.

I’m very interested in what will happen to Burton hockey. One, because I’m in charge of stats and so I’ll always be a part of it in some convoluted way. Two, it’s not like no one we know plays anymore. Lee, Seamus, Chris and Ollie are still there and it’s failry evident they’re going to be around there for awhile. But I’m sure for the likes of you and Joern it isn’t the same with the young chaps as it is with the original group. What do you think of Lee’s website?

That sounds like an excellent workplace. I only hope I wind up somewhere half as cool as CRE sounds. I get very jealous of people who travel even a quarter as much as you do. Since my research is right around here in PG, I’ll be here while a lot of my friends get to travel to lots of crazy places. My friend Mahrusa (from Crescent Valley!) is going to northern Russia while my friend Sarah will spend two months on a houseboat researching grizzlies in the Khutzeymateen. One day, my time will come! If I stay in academia, that’s almost guaranteed. Of course, I’ll then be so busy ‘ll never have time to enjoy it when I do travel.

Kyle

10:37 PM, Tuesday 5 April 2005

Well congratulations on passing your defense today, sounds like you were well prepared for it. Was there any questions that stumped you, or threw you off at all? When you TA do you get paid for it? and how much do you get paid? How does UNBC compare to the rest of BC in terms of TA’s pay?

Yeah it is not as if nobody I know is playing hockey but I think almost all the originals are gone now. Not to mention that there is basically nobody left from either Burton or Fauquier who actually plays anymore, unless of course you count Chris but he I would consider a Nakuspian now. I remember way back when I was lik 8 or 9 learning to roller blade at the Fauquier rink, playing hockey with Brian Coates, Shawn and Ryan Struck and a few other local kids. Good times. Then the sessions we would hold in Burton up on the school basketball court, everytime you shot and missed the net you would have to chaise the ball down. Or the time we had our first super session down in Fauquier like in grade 10 or something. Joern drove his truck down with a bunch of stuff with lorne steve and andrew. I think we even taped our game. Man I must have spent hours at the Fauquier rink playing hockey either by myself or with the Strucks and Coates and Jim Cameron. Good times… Actually I even remember our first import player (ie nakuspian). It was during a Fauquier session, Ryan Struck since he played goal for the Nakusp hockey team had invited his new friend Logan down for the weekend. So technically I think Logan was the first ever import. Granted that was Fauquier hockey which was a whole different world from Burton hockey. Burton had it’s games, almost every Friday actually, it was always a competition of who was playing and who wasn’t. At least we could always say we had the better rink, and laugh at those Burtoners for having to play on a basketball court. Jealousy then took them by storm and through the help of influencial parents a burton rink was spawned and the rest is history. The Fauquier rink was forgotten, Nakuspians could be forced to drive the extra 10 minutes to Fauqiuer and eventually that became the death of Fauquier hockey and the birth of Burton hockey. Ohh and not to forget our statistician, who ultimately created the motivation for a lot of the people to want to play (except of course a couple of the originals who simply play for the sake of playing hockey). Who actually was the one to invite you to Burton hockey Kyle? I can’t even remember if I was at the first stats session.

Today in the mail I received a nice booklet from Mr Campbell, blowing his own horn about how good the Liberals have done in the last 4 years. “The next 4 years will be focused on Education and Health care”, well that is easy to say after you have closed schools and hospitals, raised tuition and started the wheels of privitization. I think you mentioned this in one of our installments in the past that it is easy to create massive job growth if you first lay off hundreds of higher paid workers first and replace them with underemployed workers. I think same goes with these statements of focusing on health care and education. Wow you just took everything away from me, and now you are giving me back a few crumbs and telling me that these things are getting better? How Orwellian is that. Sadly I think my riding is of Mr. Campbells which according to this website (http://www.thetyee.ca/Election/Battleground/) is a likely win. Either way I shall cast my vote, if only to get a vote in for SVT… Hey how long does one have to live in BC to be able to vote? My brother just moved back from Germany start of February, is he able to vote, or is that too soon?

What do you think of all this sponsorship scandal stuff? aparently these media block testimonies are blowing the roof off the liberal party. I am actually a bit worried now. Despite how terrible the crime the Liberals did, if they go down in flames that means the conservatives are a shoe in for government, which would not be a pretty picture…

Anyway I best be off.

Stefan

9:48 AM, Wednesday 6 April 2005

I didn’t go a great job of addressing the difference between central place theory and migration theory. Everything else I did well on but I fell short there, hence the pass with ‘minor revisions’. Other than that it was great! I finished an enormous essay last night as well so I’m feeeling good.

The whole point of a teaching assistantship is to help pay for school. UNBC TAs get $4,000 a semester. Based upon 192 hours a semester, TAs here average $21.33 per hour which is incredibly low compared to the rest of the country. UBC and SFU get around $26; U of A and Calgary make well into the $30’s. Tuition has gone up 60% since the opening of UNBC in 1994 yet TAs make the same $4,000. Unfortunately the government is more focused upon building new buildings here than paying attention to the students. UNBC gets per-capita funding slashed every year. That’s unfortunate because it’s a good school. Luckily research assistants make $6,000 so my summer will be a bit more profitable.

Why, it was yourself and Joern who invited me to Burton back at Christmas 1999. I kept stats but they weren’t formal. I remeber you actually had me play a couple games in the hall and I hated playing. Luckily Bernadette and Logan showed up and took my spot. I remember the Koth-Kappii, Watty, Lorne and Chris being there as well. When you guys played the first session of the new year (2000), Joern brought me along, I kept a detailed stat log which I put on the web the next day and the rest is history. You were definitely there that day if you look at the shots on goal.

You have to have lived in BC continuously for six months previous to the election date so unfortunately your brother will miss out this time. He’ll get to vote in the next federal election, though, once the government collapses, ha ha. I am very excited for next week when the official campaign starts so that we can get some real opposition advertising going. The province is still quite polarized, with the Lower Mainland, Peace River and Okanagan aligned with the BC Libs and the North, Vancouver Island and Kootenays aligned with the NDP. These numb ers have been entrenched for quite a few years and probably won’t change drastically unless something huge happens. Say, if you live in El Gordo’s riding, can’t you sneak onto his property and plant some syringes in his garbage or something?

Well, the Liberals are now disassociating Kyoto from the budget, which sucks for the future but allows the budget to get passed and staves off an election. The federal political scene is so depressing right now. I just hope the NDP gets their shit together long enough to start assaulting the media channels like the Conservatives are so good at and start building some momentum for themselves.

Kyle

9:16 PM, Wednesday 6 April 2005

Ahh I remember that session dude, you sat back on defense for most of the time you were playing, and kind of shyed away from the puck. Very Kyle of you to do. Anyway you make a better stats man. I do remember our first burton session too, I can’t believe how many shots I had on goal. I think I must have had Cherry in my mind or something “Just put it on net, you don’t know what will happen”. Well a 12% shooting percentage is what happens. At least I was top 3 in scoring. If I came back and played right now I doubt I would crack 10 points a session. Hell even Ollies point production has dropped quite a bit.

So next week the campaigning starts hey? well about fucking time. The Liberals have been promoting for the past 2 months it seems, indirectly I suppose. I hope the NDP comes out swinging. However there is one issue the provincial (and federal for that matter) NDP need to address, the issue of money management. There is this stigmata about the NDP that they are incopetent with money, and that any government under the NDP would be helplessly in debt. The NDP needs to go back to their roots of old Tommy and his years of balanced budgets and full health care. If the NDP could every get passed that hurdle of money management I think you would see a lot more votes going there way.

Too bad you’re not going to be able to make it back in March Kyle. I think I am going to take an extra day or two and head back over the long weekend. Bernie, Lorne and me have been talking about aranging a session for the Friday, and then another for the Saturday. Joern is also considering coming in that weekend as well so it would be back to the original mix. I think most of the people who play hockey are realizing how shitty may days has become and would jump at the chance to play. Plus they could still go party wild on Saturday night after the session if they wanted. What days you going to be back again, you will be home this month right?

Last email you asked me what I thought of Lee’s website. Well I like it. I mean it is a standard deviantart website, which is more of a blog/art posting playground, but like you said, it gives him a creative outlet, which is a good thing to have. Helps a person vent frustrations, and otherwise just be an outlet to the world.

Anyway got an new dedicated server today… or rather I order the damn thing almost 2 weeks ago, it was finally setup properly today. Once I get it all setup and I have moved all my sites over to it I will have a LOT more freedom over my sites as I have access to the server they are on, which hopefully means big changes to some of my sites. More specifically Okanagan Auto, and possibly a new site for those damn Burton Socialists.

Tomorrow night I will be going to David Usher. Next Monday I will see Wil. Next Wednesday I will see Queens of the Stone Age. The 28th I will see U2. Turning out to be not too shabby a month.

Stefan

9:53 PM, Wednesday 6 April 2005

Yeah, I wasn’t too excited that you guys made me play; I was having plenty of fun watching when you guys dragged my onto the floor. Luckily the other people showed up so I didn’t have to be out there long. According to Lee Oliver’s been quite good this year, just concentrating on defense.

Yeah, the NDP has to try and position itself as a populist movement, OF the people. They have the socialist stigma and the Glen Clark union blow job stigma to deal with. If they drive home the issue of money management they will be looking a lot better.

I think you meant May, not March. It will be impossible for me to come back then (it would be especially impossible to come back in March, ha ha). I am housesitting for one of my profs until the 20th of this month so I will probably leave then and stay until the 30th. When you guys play, it will be in Fauquier, of course; the Burton rink will be in use. Hopefully you won’t get any bitching about a 10-minute fucking drive like last July. That was sad. Are you going to try to make it a supersession with nine or ten games under the lights?

I still find myself checking out Okanagan Auto for no reason at all except for the fact that it’s a Klopp thing and it’s fun to look at Klopp things. Is your brother pleased with how it’s been going so far? It’s been about a year or more since it’s been up so I’m wondering if it’s lived up to expectations.

I had (I guess I still have) the oppotunity to go to a Blue Rodeo/Matt Mays bill tomorrow night. I really don’t feel like shelling out $40 for MOR country rock. My buddy Mike’s excited because he grew up with Matt Mays back in Cole Harbour, NS and a fair amount of my friends are going but it’s just not my style of music. Speaking of music, I love Audioscrobbler/Last.fm except for one thing. When I use the Last.fm radio my pop-up player never shows the title of the song. Once the second song starts it’s fine and I can listen all days with no problems, but then my Recently Played Tracks list shows a completely different song for that first one than the one I listened to, which means once in a while my profile gets filled with crap like Iron Maiden or Belle and Sebastian. Does this happen to you when you stream Last.fm?

My buddy Dave’s band the Cutbank Cats plays here in PG on Friday, then a grad potluck on Saturday and a camping trip to help send off my friends Leah and Simon on their way back to North Van after the school year’s out. Things are looking good up here, too.

Kyle

7:29 PM, Thursday 7 April 2005

Yes I did mean May. Hopefully we can make it a super session. I think if we get support from guys like Joern and Bernie everyone else will be into it, seeing as they haven’t seen those guys in a while. So yeah 9-10 games under the lights I would look forward to. Realisticly though if we could get 6-8 in that would still be pretty good. Too bad you are house-sitting, would have been cool to see the Kuschmiester. You should make it out to Vancouver one of these days dude. How long a bus ride from PG is that? Maybe if there is a really really good concert you can come down, or something.

Okanagan Auto is doing quite well right now. On google if you search for “Kelowna ” we usually show up in the top 10, which is pretty money. It means my search engine marketing is working. Once I get my new server I have a few other tweaks I am going to do to get it firing at 100%. We are actually looking to start branching out now as well. Maybe start a Vancouver Auto, a Calgary Auto, possibly a Kootenay auto. We shall see though. would need people to run those sites for us.

Well looks like the LIberals ship is sinking very fast, and rightfully it should. I mean fuck they stole directly from the taxpayer. Not much worse a thing a political party can do then steal from the people it is suppose to represent. I really want to see the LIberals fall for this, however in the back of my mind I know all too well what a conservative government can do in 4 years. I wonder if disgruntled Liberal supporters would more likely vote conservative than NDP? probably both, which would probably mean a conservative majority. yikes… Regardless this sponsorship scandal is deep it seems, and runs all the way to the top of the liberal party. Don’t know how Martin can get out of this saying he knew nothing. “Mr Martin where did that extra million come from in campaign donations.. Humm I am not sure… “.

Anyway off to the show.

Stefan

11:39 PM, Thursday 7 April 2005

I’m housesitting THIS month, moron, read your emails properly! I won’t be coming in my because that’s my field research season as I’ve mentioned about fifty times. Still, it would have been awesome to get together with yourself, the Hornster and Bernman. Alas, it cannot be. I would love a Vancouver trip, but the only way that could happen would be if I had to make a trip to the BC archives in Victoria or something reasrch related, be a one-way bus ticket is about $100 for a 12-13 hour ride, plus it would eat up a lot of time I simply don’t have (hence why I can’t come home for May Days). Perhaps if I hitched a ride down in early July or something with my friends when they move back to North Van, but my supervisor probably won’t be happy with me taking off for a few days in the middle of field season. If it was a long weekend, though, who knows, I could pull it off. But it’s very doubtful.

Good to see OK Auto doing good. I, for one, would loves to see the mass assortment of pickups and old vans that would be posted on a Kootenay Auto website. If the world was just, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper would be living in vans right now.

Kyle

10:18 PM, Sunday 13 March 2005

There once was a man from Geneva who lived in the best city in the world. He had a friend in Zurich, who also lived in the best city in the world. Then there was a man named Stefan, who only lived in the 3rd best city in the world. So new rankings out, Vancouver placed 3rd again following the two Swiss cities. All Canadians cities placed within the top 25 or so. Pretty impressive really, whatever the hell it means. I guess you need to pay the big bucks to read the actual detailed report. Then again I suppose it is pretty easy to see, our cities are very safe, for the most part clean, quiet urbanized, and not that poluted. Not too much more one could ask for. What do you think about stats like this Kyle, do you think these ratings mean anything? Is Vancouver really a better city than say Sydney? and where the hell is Prince George on that list!

So welcome back from your trip to the 51 state. I hope the border guards didn’t give you too much trouble. How was it to be back in the gracelands of Alberta? Any thoughts of moving back? HA

New reports out saying the Himalayan glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. They say if the trend continues China and India and surrounding countries could be faced with massive flooding followed by terrible droughts. I think the signs are getting clearer and clearer, will we react, or just keep on pretending as we continue to fall farther down this montain pretending we are actually flying… What is funny is India has given a big Fuck You when it has come to reducing polution. In some ways you can’t blame them. First we tell them they have to become modernized, they have to become like us, we put them into big debts, then when they try to follow what we did to get where we are we tell them no no you can’t do that, you can’t waste energy and polute the world like these. What always gets me about all this shit is that from what I have read CO2 emmision take roughly 30 years before they make their impact on the ozone layer. Thus right now we are seeing the effects from the 1970’s. Can you imagine what things are going to be like in say 2035… Yikes… I read a book back when I was at UVIC called The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability written by Paul Hawken. It was really an eye opener to a lot of things, but even more importantly it was also provided a lot of very practical ways in which to change things, I highly suggest you read it if you haven’t already.

Whoever gets Sidney Crosby is going to be one lucky hockey team. I just read his stats, and for a 17 year old I can’t believe what he is putting up. In 58 games this year he has something like 61 goals and 91 assists, the next nearest guy has something like 106 points, and Crosby has missed 6 games this season. On top of that he recently had a 7 point night. Yikes… Maybe this is the savior hero the NHL has been looking for…

Stefan

10:39 AM, Monday 14 March 2005

Lists like that are almost totally useless. You can’t use quantitative values to measure qualitative things. I think people know what the better cities are and that Canadian cities are right up there. To actually rank them is silly, but you can certainly group them, and Canadian cities would be in that top group.

Lethbridge is a pretty nice city, much nicer than Calgary or Prince George. Their university is quite big and nicely designed. The city is attrctive and has lots of trails around to walk on. But step into a bar and you barely make it through the door before you’re overwhelmed by smoke. While ULeth is a fairly progressive fine arts university, you can also tell that good ol’ Southern AB culture is still prevalent (especially when undergraduate conference presenters who don’t know better actively insult BC in the middle of their presentations). It’s nice but nothing is BC, we know that.

Attending that conference, we listened to a lot of presentations that demonstarted the effects of pollution and ignorance on everything from tree growth to glacier ablation to water supply. Very depressing. Makes me a lot more pessimistic about the world.

I can’t wait for this lockout to end just so we can see this guy in the NHL. Maybe if Rimouski gets upset in the playoffs we can see him at the Worlds.

Kyle

10:38 PM Monday 14 March 2005

So did you go out to the campus bar then at ULeth? Also how were they insulting BC with their speach?

Today at work our new programmer was talking about how he was at a conference over the weekend for western canadian university news papers. He did a seminar on photoshop and photo enhancing, then took part in a round table discussion of all of the university papers. He was saying that the top 2 papers where the SFU paper and the U of A paper, with a very strong showing from Cap College. He then said that the worst paper he saw there was the UNBC paper. He said the layout was complete trash, their formating was terrible (no indents, no parigraphs etc) and so on. He even hated the name of your paper. So I just wanted to see what you thought your school paper, and if this guy is actually talking the truth. What is it’s name by the way?

I can’t see Rimouski getting upset that easily, aren’t they undefeated since December, set to break all kinds of QMJHL records?

So John Manley of late seems to be on a huge campaign to integrate Canada and the US (and possibly Mexico). He is calling for a completely open border, single currency, integrated military, and north american passports/identity cards. I can’t beleive this guy was ever deputy Prime Minister. Have these people zero shame for trying to sell out this nation like this? I don’t get it I really don’t. I really wish I could sit down with some of these guys and see how they justify their actions. I also can’t see how people like this are ever elected. They are suppose to be fighting for the best interests of all Canadians (or at least the majority), yet all they ever seem to want to do is dig us into a deep deep hole.

Stefan

11:18 AM, Tuesday 15 March 2005

I didn’t go out to the campus bar but I did hit a few other places that were in Downtown Lethbridge. Because Alberta still hasn’t banned smoking in enclosed public establishments, even the nicest pubs smell really bad. The first night we went to this ‘Irish pub’ that wasn’t remotely irish except for the name, O’Riley’s. They didn’t have one single Irish beer advertised on the wall. They had Pabst, Pace and a Budweiser logo inside a shamrock. The next night we went to this hotel across the street that had a martini bar. Pretty funny to be in a martini bar, especially for me, but it was the only non-smoking place we could find. Also new for me is drinking with professors. That’s very trippy. As for ‘BC insults’, there wasn’t really a lot of that going on, actually. It was just this one undergraduate presenter who hadn’t quite realized the level of formality you are supposed to convey at an academic conference. They weren’t really insult but friendly jokes at BC’s expense. In a classroom that wouldn’t even have been thought twice about. Still, that’s a no-no at a conference and all the BC delegates ripped into him. There is a conference in June in Smithers on rural resort amenty migration issues. It’s really tied to my research but because I come from a town where it’s such a huge issue I feel it would be important for me to go and get as much information as I can. For $25 registration it’s worth it; non-students pay $200! BTW, our family’s letter about the name change got in the ALN. From what we’ve heard it’s gone over really well. Reading the latest valley voice, it looks as though Councillor Curran has his reservations as well, basically leaving Bill Cowan on his own on this one. Hopefully we’re realizing the end of the topic, but you never know.

Unfortunately that’s a fair assumption of our paper, which is called Over The Edge. It’s quite small inside and concentrates mostly upon album reviews and comics. You might have two actual stories in an issue. This has changed a bit in the past months as the paper has now incorporated itself independently from the undergrad society. They have broadened now to publish a magazine, brilliantly titled ‘Edge’. It’s almost impossible to tell it apart from the paper except for the lack of headlines on the front. It’s such a small school with almost no fine arts and no funding for things like newspapers so it’s hard to develop good content. It sucks, but it’s improving. Also, no ads, which is nice. As far no indents or paragraphs, I have to disagree there. It’s actually laid out more attractively than, say, the Arrow Lakes News or the Prince George Free Press or basically any Black Press/BC Newspaper Group paper. So, yeah, I’m loyal to it.

Speaking of newspapers, I guess CanWest Global didn’t feel they monopolized Lower Mainland media enough so they had to create another one, Metro. Have you seen it and what do you think of it? lots of people are wondering how much market share Metro will take away from the Province since they have a similar tabloid format. Not that it matters because it’s still the same company. Apparently they’re having another one on top of that soon marketed to youth. Jesus Christ, I think it’s time for the government to step in because this is ridiculous.

Rimouski’s on a tear. I’m just faintly hoping that they get knocked out so that it makes the road that much easier for Kootenay or Kelowna.

People like Manley think money equals progress. Sovereignty is irrelevant if you’re rich. And of course they have no shame. Who needs shame when you have power?

Kyle

10:36 PM, Tuesday 15 March 2005

So Kyle in all this bar hopping did you have a drink at all? or was it soda’s and juice for you? I thought you were going with fellow students not faculty. What was it like hanging around with university instructors? Also where did you stay?

Glad to hear your family letter is getting good press and people are starting to realize the full implications a name change could have. It is funny how they would want to change the name of Nakusp without any statistics or research into the result such a change could do. I mean for all they know it could kill tourism, all they are going on is a hunch… funny how small town politics works. I noticed on arrowlakesnews.com they have a poll about the name change and so far disagree is way in the lead. Seems like quite a hot debate that is going on that is for sure. Maybe you can have a talk with some of the folks there when you go back about the full implications of a name change, I would imagine you would be a lot more informed on potential effects to a community such a change would do, or possibly even talk to some of the instructors up at UNBC and ask for their opinion on it. From what I read though at least the villiage is starting to look into the potential costs of a name change, if there is one thing to deter people from doing something it would be cost.

I talked with the guy at work again today and realized he wasn’t talking about your paper but rather the Omega out of Kamloops. He said your paper was actually pretty decent, except that since they have nowhere to print it (I think they get it done in Williams Lake) the paper itself comes out a little bad looking, despite the content. Anyway the paper that was trash was the Omega out of Kamloops, they were the ones who didn’t use a margin nor did any formatting whatsoever.

Ahh the Metro, I noticed the paper box for the first time yesterday while waiting for a friend coming off the skytrain. I read over the first page and thought it was kind of trashy, trying to zero in on the under 35 party crowd. What is sad is that Metro like you said has a partnership with Canwest which is also doing another paper called Dose. In addition to Metro and Dose there is also suppose to be a 3rd new paper coming out called 24 Hours. The problem with all three papers is they are entirely just fluff. The papers all have skeleton staffs in the city and rely mainly on router or Canadian Press stories to fill space. They are just branding these papers as being ‘hip’ or ‘cool’ so the yuppies will read them. Well this yuppy will stay away. If I am going to read a local paper that is outside the realm of Canwest I will stick to the Georgia Straight or the Westender. They at least have local journalists and actually have good and insightful articles, not to mention some very good reviews (of concerts, albums movies etc) and carry a lefter opinion. Only problem is these two papers are weekly’s and not dailies. Anyway I barely read the paper anyway so it doesn’t really matter.

One last thing on papers, The Tyee a pretty decent online BC paper has a pretty decent article on the new papers up at: http://www.thetyee.ca/News/current/ThreeNewDailies.htm .

Stefan

9:22 AM, Thursday 17 March 2005

No, I didn’t have drinks, of course. Just water. And I was with fellow students AND faculty. Because we’re grad students, all we do is talk about school and politics anyway so it’s a much more erudite conversation then talking with normal people. We stayed at the Lethbridge Village Inn (recently divorced from the Travelodge chain). Decent hotel, close to everything, nice beds. Basically it’s a good, cheap place to crash after a night out.

You can tell people really care about this name change issue when arrowlakesnews.com get more than ten votes on one of its online polls. The vast majority of people I know don’t even know they have a website. If they did, they might be less inclined to pay $1.10 an issue. The Valley Voice, being free, puts the entire paper on PDF. So I’m glad I can still keep in touch with both of my local papers from far away via the Internet. Talking to people at UNBC I think they’re agahst that a town with the amenities and fortunate situation Nakusp has would want to try to and be like every other town, make itself generic. There is a conference in Smithers in June on resort towns and amenity migration. I’m interested in going just on a personal level as a small town guy looking for input on how we can develop ourselves in a proper manner rather than the typical golf course/strip mall route.

Yeah, like I said before, if our paper had more funding they’d be a lot better. They make do with what they have but they only have so much. Sometimes you’ll get some decent stuff but a lot of their stories are just ones pulled off of the Canadian Student Press newswire. If they really got into attacking the university for its faults (which they are starting to do more) and affecting change then it would be a pretty decent paper. Right now it’s adequate.

Thanks for that link to the Tyee article, I like checking that site out. So CanWest will have four out of five dailies. Even one they’re supposedly in competition with (Black Press’ Metro), they have a working agreement with to share staff. Lame! So don’t read them unless you want an opinion of your own. I like how these new papers are 20-30 pages long with condensed little blips of news just like the Westcoast Reader they used to hand out to Grade 2 kids and ESL students. That’s a real lack of respect for your reader. It reminds me of the Ministry of Information in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four where the Party kept control of the ignorant proletariat by placating them with cheap entertainment and pornography, and any information that wasn’t acceptable to the party line either rewritten or incinerated.

Doing anything for St. Patty’s? It coincides with one of my friend’s birthdays so I will be going out. Glad I don’t have classes Friday morning.

Kyle

9:28 PM, Thursday 17 March 2005

While the online version of the arrow lakes news does have the headlines it still lacks all the extras the actual paper has. However it is still a good way to keep current with what is happening back home. I never realized the Valley Voice was offered online in PDF, that is pretty awesome actaully. I will have to check out their archives.

I have been thinking more and more about this whole name change business and it really got me pissed off. How could the village think a little gimmick is going to bring in more tourist dollars. It is sad. There are so many more tangible and cheaper ways to bring in more tourist dollars, all that is really required is a bit of research and some work to do it. I really wonder how this Village is run if the people who are in control think that this name change is their saviour, especially come olympics time. As 2010 comes closer and closer every town in BC is going to be viaing for the tourists, and it is going to be the towns who present themselves professionally and show off all of their aminities that are going to be the ones who do the best. Granted I am no Mayor so what the hell do I know? Maybe Fauquier should change their name to Fauquier Golf Course to try and cash in as well…

Yeah the daily papers in Vancouver suck. The Province is practically a tabloid, the new dailies are even worse, and the Sun while not as bad as the Province, is still pretty sad. Hell when your two major papers are run from out of the same damn building you know that their is something wrong.

A new poll out today says that the Liberals are up ahead in the polls for a first time in months. Aparently they had been in a dead heat for the past few months with the NDP, but now with the recent job increase and tax break announcements they have pulled ahead. I think it is time the NDP actually starts making some noise, up until now I haven’t heard anything from them, let alone who is running these days and what they represent. Hell not even that ad I loved about the teachers was from them, it was paid for by the concerned teachers association. Also despite that one info package I have not heard anything regarding SVT. I really hope they start marketing this soon.

Just to go back to Fauquier Golf Course, try searching google for those three words, see what pops up? If that ain’t great marketing I don’t know what is… Maybe in a few months when I am a little less busy I will make them up a professional looking website, so when people search for the course they aren’t presented with pictures of a crazy local making the ball cleaner come.

Stefan

9:45 AM, Friday 18 March 2005

Because they have such a small site, they only put the last three months up at a time in PDF. Not that that matters, really, as long as the most recent one is up. But in any event, it looks like we’re being heard: http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?articleID=1868234&pageID=community/arrowlakes_archive It’s pretty funny that the ALN has had all of these letters against the name change and not one single letter in favour of it. I think that’s pretty awesome and speaks to how out of touch people get when they’re in power, even if it’s someone from your community.

A lot of this anonymity of the NDP has to do with the new fixed election date. It allows the Liberals, as the government, to spend the past five months putting out all of these good news press releases. Since it’s all government-related, they don’t violate any election campaign rules. Meanwhile, the NDP can only depend upon interviews with media. Since the election hasn’t officially started yet, they can’t advertise or campaign. This is what fucks up the US electoral system (88% of incumbents get reelected). We’ve got two months, the NDP better get their shit together. It would be so easy to pick apart the BC Libs but it’s almost as if they’re not trying. Also, the public at large still has no idea who Carole James even is. You need a marketable face to do well. Say what you will about El Gordo, at least he’s out there. Fuck, NDP, get some protests going, have some town hall meetings, something! Another thing that would be lame would be people voting against BC-STV just because they don’t what it is or because they don’t understand it. Cynicism is healthy, but apathy is deadly.

Yeah, those crazy Fauquier people must have nothing better to do than cream a ball washer. That’s pretty sad that our site comes up second. Actually, they used to have an arrowlakesgolf.com site that was actually just the Nakusp course site with a little Fauquier info on it but that seems to be defunct. It’s such a great course but no one knows about it. You’d figure they’d try to do something about but I suppose the club is pretty strapped as it is.

Kyle

11:30 PM, Friday 18 March 2005

It’s funny actually because it is not like Nakusp is such a big place that if you do find yourself in a place of power you could just dissapear or move into different social scenes. I think that with all this public outcry though it is pretty obvious most people are against this name change and realize it for what it is.

Yup if there is one thing Gordon Campbell is good at it is getting his name out there, along with his party. Shit yeah I keep on forgetting that the election campaign hasn’t officially started so the NDP can’t actually campaign, is that right? Anyway your right though, I don’t even know who the fuck Carol James is other than the NDP leader.

I love the Fauquier Golf Course, haven’t played it in a few years now but it is still such a fun course to play. I would love to do its website actually, could be my way of giving back a little.

Anyway my mom is coming into town for like a week so next week is off for me. We can start back up the week after I imagine.

Stefan

9:55 PM, Sunday 6 March 2005

Well, a new F1 season is upon us and Schumacher didn’t even finish the first race. Good start, then. Tiger Woods back to number one in the world in golf. Not so good. C’mon, Els!

This weekend has been very constructive for me. Friday night was the Grad Pub Crawl. 47 drunk grads on a bus and sober little me. Scary at times but fun, especially when grad society execs are puking in urinals at elegant English pubs. Now that’s a party! Good deal; $12 got you dinner, appys, a mug and cab fare home. Plus there were door prizes! I won one of those big things that go around your neck that you hook your keychains too. I won’t wear it but it was free so rock on! It all coincided with my buddy Marcel’s 32nd birthday and so we made sure he had a good dose of alcohol poisoning by the end of the night. Saturday was Aussie movie night (one of my friends is here from New South Wales on a work visa) but the highlight was cranking SNL’s best of Will Ferrell DVD. Watching that Robert Goulet sketch makes me shit my pants every time I see it. and, of course, his GWB (‘I’m gonna be on the job 24/7. That’s 24 hours a week, seven months a year.’) Today saw five of us take advantage of all the free things going on in celebration of the city 90th anniversary of incorporation. We even went down to the rail museum just to get free cake and ride the kiddie train. Good weekend, really. Now it’s just holding on for four days until the Lethbridge trip.

Cellucci’s mad! Canada misled him on missile defense, oh no! Let’s all have a nice cry on his behalf. And while we’re at it, poor Condy Rice. We should feel really guilty for making her feel unloved. That’s just too bad, isn’t it? Darn. actually, my favourite Rice clip of late was he statement regarding the situation in Lebanon. I guess she was reading talking points off of cur cards or something because her speech ended abruptly with, ‘Lebanon free.’ No, Condy, you’re supposed to talk about Lebanon being free, not just say the words on the card. Silly Condy. To think she taught at Harvard and that’s considered on of the best schools in the country. I’m glad I’m at here at UNBC if that kind of stuff represents the height of American post-secondary education.

Deane Horning. Nakusp. Brier. Rock on. If you don’t watch curling normally, I guess this would be the week.

Why would anyone buy one of those easy-flip pancake makers? Who makes one pancake?

Looks like there’s a whole bunch of outrage back home over the name change with tons of opposition and now national media coverage. Councillors Hamling and Dahlen (the rational ones) would like to see the people decide, not Council. Bill Cowan said a referendum would cause too big of a rift in the community (because apparently wthat’s going on now isn’t a rift yet), so Council should take it into their own hands. Good to see him stand up for democracy like that. You can read council minutes at nakusp.com.

Kyle

10:00 PM, Monday 7 March 2005

Well Michelson still has more earnings than Tiger this year and I think Vijay is still a better golfer. Plus Tiger is too busy now with his girlfriend to care about golf. Granted he is playing better.

I think you should wear the keychain Kyle, have it hang out of your capenter pants all hip like, maybe even get yourself a all white fitted baseball cap and wear it backwards, now we are talking trendy. Well sounds like you had a more eventful weekend than I did. Like I told you I got sick Friday, actually I think it was more of me just burning out. Too many nights up late, or working too many hours (8 at work then coming home and working on websites for another couple hours). I am feeling better today though, and I think tonight after a good sleep I will be back to normal tomorrow, I hope.

Yeah I don’t know how many times I can keep on calling Cellucci an idiot, but he really is. I love how he is even using the Fox jargon and saying that Paul Martin “Flip Flopped” on missile defense. You know you are talking to an American when they try and simply something down to two words. Flip Flop, I thought they were shoes anyway? the stupid plastic things you wear to the beach that you can buy for 4 bucks at Walmart. Flip Flop, pfffft.

Condolica Rice scares me, she looks like she has been indoctrinated in the neo-liberal ideas for far too long and is completely brainwashed. Whenever I see her I see little red and white pinwheels spinning where her eyes are…

Well the Horning name sounds familiar, I have no idea who he is though. Was there a teacher at Nakusp Secondary School who had the name Horning? I think I remember a blonde teacher by that name. Anyway that is pretty wild this guy is competing for BC at the Brier. Go Nakusp. Do they mention Nakusp when he is playing?

I was reading the Nakusp minutes and someone brought in a petition with 100 signatures in favor of the name change. A whole 100, wow I thought Nakusps population was around 2000. That means that 5% of the population supports this idea, good for you guys. Did you or your parents get any of your letters published? how about a response from any of the council members? The more I think about this issue the more and more I see how stupid it is. Once I get a few free moments I will take the time to write my own letters.

BTW who does the nakusp.com website? it is ugly, and could really need a facelift. Actually Nakusp could really use an informative website about it. If I built one would you do the content for it? Actually I doubt you have the time with school and everything. However it has been something I have been thinking about for a while. Most people before traveling somewhere will look a place up on the internet these days. If all they find is some half ass website about the town, which outdated bad quality scanned images they will be turned off. Maybe in an attempt to get a few more tourist dollars they could think about building an internet presence for themselves rather than put their hope in some pipe dream that changing your name to include hotsprings will make your town prosper. What a load of horse shit.

This week I saw another new ad from the group of concerned teachers of BC. This one showed a bunch of different shots of children with little text titles saying stuff like “103 schools closed”, “5300 teachers laid off” etc etc. Anyway was another excellent ad against Gordon Campbell. It even showed a poor little girl on a school bus who had her school closed in castelgar. I think these ads will work well, they are very powerful.

So what do you think about this 3.5 billion offer to the NHL? I think it is garbage. Yeah lets sell all the teams to one owner, hey then maybe we can start fixing games, or rotate who wins the cup every year, hell whatever boosts the ratings and earns us as a whole more money. You might as well just sell the league to the WWE and calling it XHL.

Stefan

9:42 AM, Tuesday 8 March 2005

Earnings aren’t really a great way to judge player rankings because a crappy player can have one fluke week and take home $1.5 million. For recent play, just look at the ‘points gained’ column on the official world golf ranking. Of course, Mickelson’s ahead of Tiger anyway in that category. But Mickelson would have to be playing at his best for the next eight months or so to take No. 1 because he’s starting from a bit of a disadvantage compared to Woods, Singh and Els. And Tiger’s acdtually more tournament in the past year-and-a-half than he usually does. The Bay Hill Invitational will be one to watch because all four of them will playing and you could see some big changes in the rankings. And Weir’s down to 11 now.

Yeah, and I should end every sentence with ‘Word Life’ or something like that. Does making websites on the side make you good money? If so, then who cares if you’re sick? Seriously, though, everyone needs a break and this might be your opportunity. If it only lasted a few days then it was probably fatigue-induced and not too serious. My break is coming in three days! Lethbridge, MF!

And the implication is that ‘Canada’ flip-flopped. No, we didn’t, we were always against it. Martin realized this, saw it would be the end of his government and made the decision Canadians agreed with. If not being bulllied into a decision is flip-flopping, then let’s all strap on our plastic sandals of sovereignty and have a beach party on Parliament Hill. You may like to check out the article on bctvkootenays.com while it’s up about the ‘wonderful’ MP Jim Gouk’s poll he conducted polling constituents on the issue. One, it sent him the message that most people are opposed to this thing. Two, it shows how retarded that redrawing of electoral boundaries was last election. Gouk himself points out how different the South Okanagan and Similkameen are from the West Kootenay-Boundary. They think with their wallets, we think with our brains.

Neo-liberal, kind of sound like a liberal that glows in the dark, doesn’t it? You know anything with ‘neo’ in front of it can’t be good. In practice there is almost no difference between neo-cons and neo-libs. Republicrats and Demicans all. The only difference is religion in the operation of the state. Other than that, it’s all about liberalization of the market and offloading of social programs to private interests.

You must remember Leslie Horning, the Grad 8-9 PE teacher. Deane is her husband, he’s an accountant at P&T and he actually taught Math 8/9 for a little while back when we were in Grade 12 so we never had him. They have a little box that pops up where they say “So and so, Wherever, BC, occupation, like to say hi to whatever kids I have”. So nakusp gets mentioned quite a bit, even if it’s just to say where he’s from and not anything else.

I sent the letters off last week so if they’re not in this week’s papers then the’ll be in there next week assuming Mom sent them off properly (we’re writing in as a family). I saw one of those petitions hanging around on the desk at NAPA for at least two years so that’s how long it took to get 119 names. As for councillors, it seems Karen Hamling wasn’t even at the meeting where there was ‘unanaimous’ support for the idea, and Janis Dahlen wants to get more feedback from people before she goes one way or the other. Wally Curran and Bill Cowan are totally sold on it. I have no idea where Len Heppner stands.

The official tourism website is nakusparrowlakes.com. It’s actually pretty decent compared to most other sites. It gets a lot of traffic via government tourism publications and so luckily most people go there. For others who just look at Nakusp on a map and instinctively type in nakusp.com, they’re in for a major dissapointment. There are no graphics, little info other than council minutes and it basically looks like those first sites we built back in grade 11, it’s really awful looking. I think the Village does it in house which would explain a lot. A crappy site is a really good way to turn people off. The Village didn’t even buy nakusp.com unti last year which shows you how savvy they are with these things. Of course, this is the same village that thought they would make a killing by only letting people using official Village of Nakusp garbage bags get garbage pickup at two bucks a shot. Naturally, everyone just started drving to the dump instead. Not only was it cheaper instead to do so, it meant the RDCK got all the money off garbage and not the Village. Brilliant.

I hope those ads work. BC’s government wants us to be exactly like Alberta so that means paying off the debt is the first priority instead of servicing the people. I like how even that Alberta is out of debt they’re still not returning services to previous levels or going through with even little things like taking over ambulance service as in BC like they hinted at. Dumb.

You sound really mad about that $3.5 billion as though you actually take it seriously. This isn’t an individual sport where one guy can be in charge. No matter how good anyone’s intentions are, you cannot have a sports dictatorship. Basically you wind up with things like SlamBall or IROC that just look like a joke compared to mainstream sports. The XFL is just that latest example of that.

Kyle

10:58 PM, Tuesday 8 March 2005

I can’t believe we are talking golf. How far we have progressed. Have you ever played golf Kyle? I know your dad always goes out, do you ever go with him, or your grandpa?

Sweet off to Lethbridge with a bunch of married woman doing masters in geography WOO. I think by the time you get to Lethbridge your hairs going to be braided, nails painted, and your going to have makeup on. Word Life indeed!

Heaven forbid our Prime Minister works in the interests of the Canadian people. I find it funny how American journalists and polititions say Canada is doing a mis-justice to it’s population by not signing up to protect them. Last I heard most Canadians were against this. Oh but I guess the politions know better than the people and should act accordingly. BAH “Had there been a vote on this subject, I would have voted against Canada’s participation — in keeping with the results of this poll,” looks like everyone plays the polls.

Yeah I have always wondered what the difference was between the two neo’s. They both seem to like big cuts, smaller government, and less social programs. Can you picture Stockwell Day and Steven Harper in hot pink biker shorts? ohh yeah neo-conservative convention here we come…

Yeah I totally remember Mrs Horning. That is very cool. Who has been the most famous Nakuspian would you say Kyle? and I mean real Nakuspian, not just someone who has Nakusp on their birth certificate…

nakusparrowlakes.com seems a little better but still could be so much more. It is very… static. Granted they do have a Fauquier sections, so I give them full marks for that, even with the corny: “Folks are folkier in Fauquier” I have never heard anyone say that before, maybe it is what they say behind our backs.

I don’t take the offer seriously, just a little angry that they are even entertaining the offer. Obviously too many teams would put in a resounding no to the offer, however even the thought of the full league being owned by one group would be stupid.

So when are they going to legalize dope so our officers can spend their time better than being shot and our tax dollars don’t have to be wasted on inforcing a rediculous law? It really makes no sense to me at all why they would not legalize marijauna. Hell tax the fuck out of it, put it out there, let the US deal with it. Actually I imagine that is the problem, what our southern friends think on the issue.

Stefan

10:52 AM, Wednesday 9 March 2005

I have never golfed. Mini-golfed, even putting coursed, but never did an honest-to-God round. Never really wanted to. Always more fun to watch. I’d get so frustrated with it, what would be the fun?

Don’t worry about the estrogen content, the faculty coming on the trip are both guys who I know decently (one of them is one my supervisory committee) so I’ll get my sports in. YEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHH BOYYYYYYYYYYYY

I love how politicians, whenever they don’t get a vote on something, immediately say, “Had I had a vote on the subject, I would have voted according to my constituents’ wishes. Bad, bad government for not letting us vote.” Ha! ‘Ha!’ to you, Jim Gouk. When the government falls and we have another election I can’t wait for Alex Atamenenko to take your job.

For some reason I can picture Stock Day in a hot pink wetsuit…try erasing that image out of your head! Stupid, sexy Flanders!

Most famous Nakuspian? Slam dunk, Bert Herridge. Long time CCF/NDP Member of Parliament, was the NDP house leader for eight years under Tommy Douglas back in the ’60’s. Did a lot for the area, his family is still huge in town, and he built Shoreholme! The only Nakuspian in the Encyclopedia of British Columbia.

Stefan, if you saw our old website we had to work with at the Chamber you would kill for nakusparrowlakes.com. It’s not outstanding but it does the job (just like the Chamber). You’ve never heard that ‘folks are folkier in Fauquier’? That’s an old one, I guess people don’t use it too much anymore but that’s how lots of people I know remember how to pronounce the place’s name properly. Less common puns are oldtimers’ laments about the ‘Needless’ ferry (the old campaign for a Needles bridge forty years ago). Did you guys down there always call it the Needles ferry or the Fauquier ferry? It always called the Needles ferry in Nakusp (probably a cultural relic from before the flood when Needles was a sizeable town).

Klopp, if someone threw $3.5 billion on a table, no matter how stupid the offer was, you’d at least look at it.

That’s totally what the issue is. The US government is paranoid that legalization of pot will mean Canada becomes this giant drug haven and we will be exporting all of this new legal pot to the States and create more crime down there. If I was a potgrower in Canada I’d be against legalization, too. The corporation would just in and take over. How many independent tobacco companies do you see? Just legalize it, tax the fuck out of it and only sell it in government liquor stores or agencies.

Why do you have so many problems spelling ‘ridiculous?’

Kyle

10:04 PM, Wednesday 9 March 2005

So lots of talk recently about when people are going back home. I talked to Joern and he is worried that everyone is falling out of touch and that hockey is going to start fading (at least for the original crew) to a once a year event. Bernie is contemplating doing the May days as the hockey action, you are thinking April. I myself am still unsure. It is obviously easier for me to get back over (notice how I don’t say down, Fauquier is not DOWN from Vancouver) to Fauquier over a long weekend, as I don’t have to take any time off work. Granted I could also work a long weekend and simply take the day off another time. Is there any holidays in April? From my Calendar it doesn’t look like it. Also what date range were you think of heading back?

Some farmer today douced himself in gasoline and then lite himself on fire in Ontario today at a protest. Those farmers are crazy folk it seems.
Link

Actually I do remember the chambers website before the remake. Compared to that this new site is miles ahead. Your right it is nothing fancy but it gets the job done, usually what you want out of a website anyway. Definitly a lot nicer than nakusp.com, that site is so ugly I can’t bear to go there anymore… So the BB website is finally done, you can check it out at: http://www.aldercreekfarm.ca. It is also simple, but hopefully clean and concise. I am pretty happy with the way it turned out.

In Fauquier we usually just call it the ferry, or otherwise the Fauquier Ferry, I think only the really oldtimers call it the Needles Ferry. Plus being in Fauquier there is a bit of pride thing too, since the ferry is just as equally ours as it is Needles we would much rather call it Fauquier Ferry. I don’t know about others from Fauquier but I have always had a lot of pride for my town, something about a town being so small yet having so much to offer.

Are there even any Canadian Tobacco companies? I don’t think so, they have all been bought up by British or US interests. While there is a strong oposition against marijuana in the US there is also a strong movement there to legalize it. Hell in the last election they even had it on the ballot for several states. I think in Alaska it was a close vote, something like 60/40. In California don’t they have medicinal marijuana? Times are a changing…

Why can’t I spell ridiculous? I don’t know, probably the same reason I never used to use apostrophes, or the same reason I can’t spell beautiful. I blame it all on spell check actually.

“there’s a thousand points of light for the homeless man”

Stefan

12:03, Thursday 10 March 2005

I have to be here at least until the 18th because that’s when the course I teach writes its final, so I would probably come during the middle of that week and stay until the 25th or so. If there was enough interest in May long then I could try to move it ahead one month. The poblem is that grad school is a very tight ship and I’m not sure how hot my supervisor would be on taking a week off in May right in the middle of field work season. We’ll see how my defense goes in a couple of weeks. I would love to have people come back in April but that’s completely unrealistic, I know. Easter is March this year so there are no holidays. Not to be cynical but I thought hockey had already faded to once or twice a year for the ‘originals’. But it’s always important to keep in touch and hang out so if there’s enough people interested in May then I will try. But no guarantees.

Farmers aren’t crazy, it’s just one nutjob who happens to be a farmer.

Looks like a pretty good site there, Klopp. Good work. I always love the ‘This fine website has been brought to you by Kloppmagic Design.’ As opposed to ‘This adequate website’ or ‘This utilitarian website’. Has anyone ever asked you what ‘Kloppmagic’ means, anyway? I guess if they weren’t around NSS in Grade 11 they would just get confused!

Very few people in Nakusp call it the Fauquier ferry. I always found that funny, especially seeing as how Needles isn’t even a town anymore. That would be like calling the highway to Revelstoke the Shoreholme road. granted there a still a couple of houses and a campground in Needles, but you know what I mean. But you should have pride in Fauquier because it’s a pretty nice place. Much nicer than stinky old Burton, ha ha ha. Burton’s nice, too. Just not Fauquier nice.

There are no Canadian tobacco companies, and that’s the point. We’d lose control pretty quick, I bet. But this issue of getting rid of crime is more important, and that’s why it should be legalized. Restricted, but legalized. as for those referendums in the States, they all got crushed except in Alaska. Ten years from now maybe one or two states will legalize it but for now don’t bet on it. And medical marijuana is a far cry from total legalization.

Watched the ‘Shake Hands With The Devil’ documentary on Tuesday. Reading about what happened in Rwanda doesn’t prepare you for the actual pictures of what happened. And then to watch 90 minutes of it. Very powerful and taxing to watch. And just looking at Dallaire and how he shouldered this whole thing, and the clip of that Belgian senator assaulting him for not visiting ten soldiers’ widows (there’s about 800,000 widows he hasn’t visited, sorry if you’re not the priority, there). And the shot of people begging to Belgian shoulders for help as they evacuated their compound and the Belgian shoulder yelling back ‘It’s up to you to solve your own problems.’ And the soldiers cutting their green berets apart as a rejection of the UN. And the dead bodies. Everywhere. Wow. What I couldn’t believe was two girls in the back row talking and laughing throughout the movie. There’s people in the audience fucking crying and these two are gabbing away in background. Dumb.

Well, you’ll have to finish it off early this week with one more reply as I leave for Lethbridge and won’t be back until Sunday night. It’s also your turn to start next week. Good tidings.

Kyle

9:30 PM, Thursday 10 March 2005
Yeah hockey has fading to a once or twice a year for the originals. Actually I think Joerns comments were even more skeptical saying that the original friends are even fading to 1 or 2 visits a year. While the interent keeps us in contact (you and me even moreso) it still is hard to keep things up. There needs to be an effort, but after time it is hard to write emails/etc when it has been so long, and really you are living a different life. Hell I haven’t seen or heard from Watson in almost a year, Joey I can’t even count. Lorne and Bernie living here in town is a bit different as I usually see them at least once a week at poker, but everyone else, I don’t know… Maybe everyone just needs to move to Vancouver.

As for May, while I am not the biggest May Days fan (I usually end up staying up all night hoping something exciting will happen yet end up sleeping in the back of the blazer in disapointment) the chance of getting some hockey action is definitly enticing. Plus it wasn’t THAT bad last May Days. Was the first time I had seen Lorne drunk in a LONG time at that point. Plus I as getting pretty jolly myself, likely why you begged drunk Seamus to drive you home. I can’t see why you didn’t stay though, there was a bunch of people there you knew, myself included. Plus we really hadn’t hung out much for a while then… Anyway I still say the beach was better than up in Nakusp… Nakusp was simply too puntastic to handle.

I am about 3/5 done now with Shake Hands With the Devil (the book). I still haven’t seen the documentary, but will seek it out once I am finished reading the book. From reading this much of the book I really realize how fucked up the UN really is. I always had this wonderful vision of all the good it does, but after reading this book I have realized how bad it really is. I had read a book called A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali (or something like that) by this reporter from Quebec. In his book he totally blasted Dalliare for his lack of action and help provided to Rwandans. He was so wrong, I realize that now, Dalliare made it his mission to try and do everything he could for the Rwandans, but the UN shut him down at every turn along the way. It would have only taken a minimum of around 5000 well equiped soldiers to stop the massacres, but the UN diddled and doddled, asked for one report after another, sat back and made impossible preconditions, and then doddled some more. What was even worse was that a Rwandan was on the security council at the time and he was a total hardliner, he would send the UN security information back to the extremists in Rwanda. Dallaire was saying that the UN was probably the least informed group in Rwanda…

Anyway have a great trip tomorrow, and do go too crazy in Alberta….

Stefan

10:28 PM, Sunday 27 February 2005

Today while surfing channels I stopped briefly on the Oscars, not that I care about their opinion but nothing else was on so I watched for a few minutes. I was just in time to catch best actor and see Jamie Foxx win for Ray. Was a little disappointed that Don Cheadle didn’t win for Hotel Rwanda, looks like the academy could care less about Rwanda like the rest of the world did in ‘94. Anyway back to what I was trying to talk about, and that was during a commercial break there was a commercial that had some mock award ceremony giving away different awards. The commercial was paid for by the teachers association of BC and was basically giving awards to Gordon Campbell for cutting our educational system. I think the last award was something like “Million Dollar Babies, because if you’re not one good luck in trying to get an education in this province.” Anyway I thought it was a great well timed ad.

So Lemieux speaks out against the players misleading him into thinking there would be a deal on that dark Saturday and the ducks have been sold for the same price they had to pay to enter the NHL. Meh, when will the NHL just die. I mean I don’t want to hear anymore stories from the NHL anymore unless it is, “Deal reach”. I really can’t wait to see the Flyers in action, they have some much talent that is on the verge of starting, it is exciting times. Also I think it is about time I go to a WHL game. Even if I have to drag either Lorne and Bernie to it and pay for their damn tickets.

So tomorrow night I get to attend a YES reunion. YES being the Youth Employment Strategy, those wonderful tax dollar givers that sent me off to Africa. Well hopefully the food and drink are good.

Stefan

9:08 AM, Monday 28 February 2005

Well, Klopp, as much as I’d love to see the Academy make a nice political statement, the award was for best acting performance, not most politically important performance. Based upon that criteria, this award could have been predicted six months because appently Jamie Foxx is just uncanny as Ray Charles. Also, the fact that you even took time to mention an award show in a post is hilarious because it’s trying to quantify a subjective artistic experience. Who cares? It’s a bit different with a sports award or something because you can quantify a sporting acheivement.

As for the ad, sounds like that’s a pretty good one. Not really being around a TV I’ll probably never get to see it. I love how all of the Lower Mainland MLAs are all up in arms over the mismanagement and corruption in the Fraser Health Authority. Wait a minute! Weren’t they the ones that created the Fraser Health Authority in the first place? That would be like a chef baking a bunch of pies, telling you for years how great his pies are and then suddenly saying the ingredients in these pies are all rotten.

I can’t believe you have dragged those guys to a game yet. It’s a good, cheap time. Why not? Are they that lazy? If they miss hockey so bad, why don’t they friggin’ watch a $15 game? As for the lockout, whatever. I mean, I’l always be scanning the newswires and looking for new developments just because I’m a dedicated fan, but I also don’t really care which side ‘wins’ or who screwed who. I just want it over. As for Anaheim, I thought that was hilarious. I hope lots more american teams get devalued and/or folded. Just one more step on the path to the destruction of hockey in the United States, which I am all for!

A Yes reunion? That’s awesome! I hope Rick Wakeman does one of his awesome synthesizer solos! ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’, rock on! Oh, wait, not that ‘Yes’. Are you looking forward to it, or is it just going through the motions out of some obligation towards them?

Kyle

8:48 PM, Tuesday 1 March 2005

Kusch,

I guess I really can’t compare Foxx’s performance to Cheadle’s as I have not seen Ray yet. However I will say this, Cheadle did an amazing job, and I am not just saying this because of the movie, he really hit it perfectly.

What is this about the Fraser Health Authority? Must be out of the loop, I didn’t hear anything about this. Is this the Liberal MLA’s who are talking about all the problems with it, or the local guys here in the Vancouver city council. What exactly is the Fraser Health Authority suppose to do?

Yeah it is pretty sad I haven’t been able to get them out to a game. Actually I kind of gave up after nobody was remotely interested in going to the all star game. That was the epitome of lameness, and when I decided I would stop with the invites. Maybe I will pick a Rockets or a Ice game and try once again. Did you read the story about Clarke saying Goodenow has ruined the game of hockey for everyone?

So the reunion was really excellent. There was over 100 people there, lots of free wine, great finger food and some interesting conversation with fellow interns. I really had a great time, plus I got to see a few people who I did pre-departure training with. It is interesting to hear all the different stories and compare with your own and how easy it is to relate. Makes me realize how small this world is and how the same we all.

Have you ever watched the TV show Corner Gas? I finally watched a full episode the other day and laughed my ass of. This show is basically the Canadian version of Seinfeld, very very funny. I think I might start tuning into it more often.

Ohh and by the way watch out for the hippos up in Prince George, I hear they can be a bit dangerous: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=515&e=1&u=/ap/20050302/ap_on_re_af/hippo_attack

Stefan

10:41 AM, Wednesday 2 March 2005

Put it this way: Jamie Foxx wore prosthetic eyelids so as to actually make himself blind for the movie filming. Plus he sang, not lipsynced. But it’s all opinion. And basically anyone who even gets considered for a nomination does an amazing job.

You haven’t heard about all the shit going on at the FHA? The fact that people are dying because they’re turned away from acute care b eds, or that there’s a disproportionate amount of infections amoung women with C-sections, or that the recently-fired CEO has been throwing $100,000 office parties at taxpayer expense?

I still can’t believe that those FUCKING LOSERS passed up the Top Prospects game. How the hell do they even call themselves hockey fans? Call them what they are: opportunists! Remember when the Canucks sucked and Lorne ‘didn’t really follow hockey?’ I wonder what Bernie would do if Colorado started sucking?

Did you read the story where Clarke was the Philly GM for fifty years and never won a championship and the team never progressed with all the money in the world but somehow he kept his job because Ed Snider’s dick is in his mouth? Again, who cares what people say at this point, it’s coming out of bias, anger and spite and none of it is constructive. It’s only funny because you get to watch the same slow-motion train wreck get replayed over and over again. Not that I’m not a Clarke fan, at least he says what he thinks. I really liked how he brought attention to the plight of Canadian teams instead of southern US expansion markets. And for having nice dentures. And for sta nding up to Karl Lindros. But he does a lot of dumb shit too, like with Roger Neilson. Hard to get a read on the guy.

Well, it’s cool that you got to meet up with all your old friends, stuff like that is always fun. ‘and how the same we all.’ Truer words have never been.

As for me, it’s an interesting time ahead. Next weekend is the Western Geographers Conference in Lethbridge, a 13-hour bus ride. There’s 24 of us renting a bus for the trip so it’ll have that road trip mentality. It’ll be good. The week after that will be a return visit to the Upper Fraser, first time in five years and a good way to get reintroduced to my case study area.

I watched the very first episode of Corner Gas last year and was hooked. It’s fucking hilarious! ‘Oh, no, marijuana! Next thing you know we’ll be listening to that crazy jazz music.’ Or ‘Where do Eskimos go to the bathroom in an igloo?’ ‘Inuit. The proper term is ‘Inuit”. ‘Okay, where do Eskimos go to the bathroom in an Inuit?’

Ah, stories about stupid dead people are always funny.

Kyle

10:42 PM, Wednesday 2 March 2005

So I just watched a home video I took from my trip to Italy and France when I was like 15-16. Where you in my class when I showed it at highschool? It is too funny. I think I must have said beautiful about 100 times. “Look at that beautiful CHURCH!”. What a dork I was, pudgy, with braces, all I really needed more was a pair of glasses. However you could see the beginnings of my long hair in the video. Very very funny stuff. In all actuality though I did see some amazing things during that trip. Captured on video over 10,000 years of civilization in a little under 2 hours. HA

The Flyers have not won a cup yet but they are close. With the roster they have now and the new talent working through the system they are going to be pretty amazing soon. I just hope they can hold onto their junior talent and don’t end up trading it away for 40 year olds at the trade deadline (Oates).

All the way out to Lethbridge hey Kyle? that is a long journey, is there going to be booze consumed on that bus trip? I think you should eat some pot brownies and go crazy, let your colleages deal with you then! oh boy. The upper Fraser hey? who lives there? who were the original settlers? what type of people are they?

Headline today “Bush won’t call Martin”. When the fuck has he EVER called Martin, doesn’t the press realize that it is a long distance phone call? That would require Bush to be able to enter 10 digits consecutively into a telephone; that won’t happen soon. In all seriousness tough before the missile defense decision Bush and Martin were not talking on the phone, so why would people expect any different. A state of the media we have these days.

What do you think about the Federal Government and the Ontario Government putting down 435 million dollars towards upgrading plants and funding research? The final clutches at jobs that are flying south to Mexico maybe?

Peacekeepers were killed in Congo, so they decided to fight back, took out their assault helicopter and gunned downed 60 rebels. I am just at the part in Shake Hands With the Devil were 10 Belgians where slaughtered in Rwanda. History Repeats itself, and it seems that it repeats now on faster and faster intervals. What used to be a cycle of 100 years is now 10, go figure.

Stefan

9:37 AM, Thursday 3 March 2005

Oh, yes, I very much remember watching that video in Hobson’s class. ‘And there’s Mom!’ ‘Hello, Stefan,’ she says like she’s embarrassed you just put her on camera. ‘And there’s the field where Paris St. Germain plays!’ Yeah, you were a funny looking kid back then. Too bad you weren’t wearing your 1994 BC Lions shirt! I forgot just how fucked your teeth were back in Grade 8. Who’d have guessed you’d become this tall gangly guy? And long hair really doesn’t work for you, you looked like a deformed Steve Nash. Which reminds me, I really need to get a haircut tomorrow. This eight loss is really disorienting. I haven’t been this skinny since about Grade 7. I forgot that I actually had ribs. Because I have that Kusch barrel chest like the rest of my family, it actually looks like I have upper-body development now-until I take off my shirt. Then it looks like I could be in one of those Save The Children ads.

As Philly is one of the American teams I have a soft spot for (San Jose, Boston, the Isles), it would be really cool to see them keep that young team together and watch them develop into a dominant team. And Adam Oates wasn’t a bad acquisition. It’s just that FIVE players for Adam Oates was dumb, especially when he was a free agent three months later. Oh, well, at least Clarke won’t be getting rid of his goalie again this year. Mind you, with all of this animosity between players and execs and Esche being a player’s rep and all…

Since we’re all adults on this trip, I bet there will be some booze at night once the main conference is done. But not for teetotalling Kyle. Plus, there is a disproportionate estrogen content on this trip which means if anyone does get drunk it’ll probably be off of Sour Puss or something lame like that. Yeah, just show up at the conference on mescaline or something. Turn into Fear and Loathing in Southern Alberta. Hey, the trip means more brochures, anyway.

The Upper Fraser (http://web.unbc.ca/upperfraser/) is a region consisting of 34 communities that grew up as rail sidings. The entire region is completely forestry dependent and has been bypassed completely by the Yellowhead highway. Other than McBride, the communities are rapidly dying out (only 14 are left). So it’s important to research that area now while there’s still actual people there. Most residents are elderly hangers-on and back-to-the-landers at this point. You can check out some cool photos on the website. My actual area of study is geographic modeling of migration patterns within the region. Badically I’m looking at different ethnic groups and why they moved to the area and moved around the area. It’ll mean lots of interviews with people this summer.

CanWest Global likes American policy because they want it implemented in Canada so they can make more money via deregulation. Because Global is so prevalent a media force, whenever they make up some bullshit story everyone else will pick up on it. Ever since Bush got into office he’s ignored Canada, so why should we care if he’s still ignoring us? It’s probably a good thing because the only countries he pays attention to are the ones he blows up.

I think that we could have saved a lot of miney and a lot of jobs if we hadn’t signed onto such a stupid deal as NAFTA in the first place.

In today’s age of mass communication, culture accelerates at a much faster pace. This is why we have such a huge generation gap. This is why countries rise and fall so quickly. This is why economic booms and recessions happen so quickly. And this is why we have really, really short memories and forget our mistakes so quickly. Where were these peacekeepers from?

Well, the Nakusp name change debate has reached the national media. It was all over CBC radio yesterday. Unfortunately I missed the feature in-depth report when I was teaching yesterday but I guess they talked to one girl who said, ‘It’s just the old people who are afraid of change’ and then they immediately played clips from three young people who were dead set against it. ‘Why don’t they call it Nakusp Logging then, it’s more accurate!’ So hopefully that report educated a few people.

Kyle

11:21 PM, Thursday 3 March 2005

If I would have been wearing my 1994 grey cup champions, or wait better yet Property of BC Lions tshirt that would have topped it. The Kamloops Blazers hat was just as well however. “Beauuuuutiful CHURCH!” oh boy.

Yeah you have been getting skinner kusch, you finally starting to look like your pops now? grow some upper body strength, then you will be picking up the ladies. Seeing that your bus trip will be with a bunch of women, I think it is then you can make your move. Must be a few single girls going to lethbridge, you can get all crazy with your herbal tea.

I think the long term effects of NAFTA are finally being realized now. We have an economy that is almost completely dependant on our southern neighbors, and a continual push for integration. What better way to take over a country, start with economic dependance, then work on cultural assimilation, then after a while a full elimination of borders will seem like a fitting idea.

Exactly why the CBC is so crucial to Canada, it is not being governed by big money. I think I have said it before but I will say it again, there are certain things that despite sometimes being wasteful or not financially smart, need to be in public hands and not be governed by how good a quarter it is having. Things like health care, education, social services, fire and police protection, the courts, government, etc. These programs were put into place to look after the people no matter how rich a poor a person is, so that we are all just simply people of this land who are all looked upon under the same light, rather than having a privelaged few and a majority of have nots. The further the US slides into this realm the hard they will fall. I think eventually their will be a revolution, people will wake up and realized the dream is dead, they were being deceived, and they will revolt. Granted I think things will get a lot worse before things will get better…

What if Billy Joel never sang uptown girl? Would she still be living in her uptown world?

Stefan

7:24 AM, Friday 4 March 2005

Actually, the funniest thing, never mind the braces or the pudge, was when you started dropping all of that weight and gained it back in hair. When you came back from summer for Grade 11, that was priceless. Shoulder-length and everything! After about two weekes you got the hint and chopped it off. A close second are the frosted blond tips from when you first moved to Vancouver. I don’t know if you remember from Aunt Flo’s Sunday School my wonderful spiked hair. I’m sure you remember my old Coke bottles that covered up half my face.

Herbal tea? Are you telling me to dose them? That’s horrible! Leave it to tolerant, worldly Klopp to recommend sexual assault! Seriously, I already know a lot of people on that trip. All of them are involved. This school is amazing for the lack of single people there are.

NAFTA is just one link in a long chain of US manifest destiny. It’s amazing we’ve held out this long. I am hoping that more people will realize in the next few months the damage NAFTA has caused and and lobby for its dissolution.

One of the things that has changed in the last thirty years is that government believe it should be run like a business instead of as a service provider. While it’s good to be fiscally responsible, ethics and the desire of the populace must be taken into account as well. Business ‘ethics’ would see a completely market economy and citizens worried more about keepig what they have rather than trying to change things for the better. That would ultimately lead to something like Bismarck-era Germany, a capitalist monarchial dictatorship.

Still a uptown girl? Hard to say. But I’m certain Billy Joel would still be a downtown man (that’s what I am).

Kyle

10:56 AM, Saturday 5 March 2005

Yeah I chopped off the hair not because I really wanted to but because I was facing pressures that my grad photos would look stupid a few years after then. So I gave into the pressure, had my hair chopped down. I was a bit like Samson actually the longer my hair grew the taller I got. While Samson grew muscles when his hair grew I just got taller… I do remember the wonderful days at Flo’s Sunday School. You, Jen and Me. You had the spiked hair and over 4 watches on your arms. You were definitly a strange one I thought. Come grade 8 I was like “Hey I know that wierdo kid”. That was the start of my rise to #2 on the friend list… I never cracked # 1 did I? poor me…

Herbal tea is what you can drink, I wasn’t suggesting you drug these woman, just woo them with your worldlyness. ha

I used to have a cat named bismark, not sure if we named him after the ship or the man. I do remember being in Germany though when I was a kid and we hiked up to the top of this hill and there was this big statue of a leader on a horse and my dad asked me “Stefan who is this person?” and I replied “Well that is Bismark of course!”. My Uncle was so amazed, little did he know about my cat…

Anyway I think I am sick, no wait I know I am sick. My head all day yesterday and today has been floated off all disconnected. My body is starting to ache now, at least my sniffles are gone. Hopefully this won’t last…

Stefan

11:39 AM, Saturday 5 March 2005

Well this will be one of the quicker replies yet since I’m here at school working on my third thesis proposal draft. Dr. Halseth is brilliant but really demanding as a supervisor. It’s a good thing, though, because it means that my learing curve is really steep and when I’m done I’ll be really good at whatever it is I wind up doing. I’d much rather have someone like Greg keeping me on task all the time because it means it don’t waste much time. Plus he’s got this funny sardonic wit so that even when he’s disspointed in something I did or didn’t do it goes over well. Nothing wrong with a guy that makes you work hard.

Good to see our peer pressure worked. In retrospect you must admit the hair was quite funny. As for the friend list, the only explanation I can have for it looking back on it was that I have an insatiable need to quantify things and rank things. Since I was never big enough to play sports, I had to make up for it by learning everything I could about them, and out of that came a need to turn everything into a competition, even if was just for my own personal amusement. By about the end of Grade 8 I think I realized how incredibly petty it was to rank your friends on a daily basis (the funny thing was that for a while I got other people to start doing it, too!). Now I’ve just got ‘people I know’, ‘friends’ and ‘really good friends’ just like anyone else. It would be so weird now to actually try to pick people over other people. Chalk it up to being a stupid 12-year-old, I guess.

Do you remember anything about Sunday School other than having to dress up and sit there? I know I don’t except for the fact that we had to think of stuff to pray for.

Everyone’s been sick up here at UNBC, too. Just when you think you’re going to die you wake up the next day and you’re fine except for a really runny nose. Hopefully, that’s all this is. I’ll start us off again tomorrow night!

Kyle

12:41 PM, Monday 21 February 2005

Well, Klopp, as Hunter would say, ‘Mahalo’. I don’t know how into HST you were (always seemed to be more of a Joe/Bernie thing) but that’s just nuts. Mind you, knowing his love of guns, it’s strangely appropriate that he used his beloved .44 to take himself out. No matter how much of a self-parody he was at times, his influnece has been felt throughout the entire journalistic field and he was always very entertaining.

A quick question on how you think Burton hockey will turn out this year. Or do you feel so out of the loop that you just don’t have any idea? Lee seemed to take pretty good care of it whi;e I was gone and I hope he’ll do the same. I assume there are no plans to start any games in Vancouver, ha ha ha.

A fun link for you: www.illmitch.com.

Do you even care about those silly Bush tapes? ‘Oh, no, he smoked pot!’ Yeah, and he did a truckload of blow, too. Who cares anymore?

You can check out this week’s Valley Voice and read all about Nakusp council’s stupid, petty, pathetic plan to change the name of the town to ‘Nakusp Hot Springs’ in a pathetic bid to cash in on 2010 hype. Nothing says ’small-town ignorance’ like a plan like this. First, let’s ignore the 115-year history of the town and change the name for some stupid marketing scheme. Hey, just because there was a town called Nakusp years before white people even KNEW there were any springs doesn’t mean anything! And, hey, we’re trying to diversify our economy, so let’s just change the name to highlight one tiny facet of the town so that one day tourists can look at a road map and say, “Ugh, another trendy resort town. Pass.” Yeah, let’s just stereotype our town even further with a dumb name. The only reasons you have towns with names like Radium HS and Fairmont HS is because the springs came first and towns grew up around them. Also, those places are entirely dependent on tourism and have no industry otherwise. As a moderate regional centre I should hope Nakusp should be trying to aspire to something bigger than that. And they all think that somehow 2010 is going to be this big huge cash cow, totally swallowing the Campbell Kool-Aid. His wonderful ‘Heartland’ strategy. Because two weeks of perhaps-break-even sporting events in Vancouver is really going the economy in Houston or Golden or 100 Mile House. Fuck, whatever. The worse thing about it is apparently the council can arbitraility change the name themselves without any consultation from the public.

Stefan, I tell you this right now. If those fucks change the name of my hometown, then my hometown no longer exists. It’s one thing to change the name of the town when you merge with another one or when the people vote on it or it happens naturally within the culture. But to do it just because you might draw a couple dozen more tourists for a couple of weeks five years from now? Lame. I don’t want want to even be associatwed with a town that would do that. Here me now, if that ever happens, then I will become Kyle Kusch from Glenbank, and trendy little NHS can fuck itself.

Kyle

9:44 PM, Monday 21 February 2005

I can’t say I was a huge Hunter S Thompson fan, I tried reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail but I think eventually just gave it to Bernie. I did know he was a big gun buff, and found the movie quite awesome. I wonder actually if he left a note for his family or his fans.

I have no idea about Burton hockey, I have been so out of the loop it isn’t even funny. All I know is that Robert seems to be the dominant one these days, and that Lee just keeps on getting better and better. I really wish I could come back and play a full summer one last time, or at least a few months. I think we really need to get Vancouver hockey going, even if it is 2 on 2. I mean I don’t give a shit about the stats but just to keep my skating and skills up. Skating around the seawall really does nothing for hockey skating. Speaking of Burton hockey I really need to get back into redoing the site. It looks pretty dated now and the code (especially the admin) could use some rewriting. Plus I have a whole bunch of new ideas for the site to make it that much better!

That is a pretty stupid idea of changing the village name to Nakusp Hotsprings. You seem really passionate about it Kusch, I guess I would be to if I was actually from Nakusp. I think you should write a letter to the editor actually of both the Arrow Lakes News and the Valley Voice voicing your opinion and telling them exactly why it would be such a bonehead mistake to change the name. I think people would listen to you, I mean you carry a lot of clout when it comes to history, facts, and town pride. If you want write two letters, I will send one in, that way there is double the exposure in the papers! HA

Stefan

10:17 AM, Tuesday 22 February 2005

No note from Hunter that we know of. I do know that Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro are reprising their roles from ‘Fear And Loathing’ in the movie version of ‘The Rum Diaries’. It was just such a weird way for it all to end, especially when you read news stories where they interview his friends and half of them say, “Yeah, that’s exactly the way I would have expected him to go” and the other half say, “I would never have expected him to kill himself.”

So, what did you think of ILL Mitch? He’s very ‘fast and danger’. I sure don’t want to sit on his ‘anger sword’, that’s for sure.

The stats are secondary, it’s the camaraderie and tradition that are important (although stats are really fun!). Hopefully you can get it going back in Vancouver or maybe next time you’re back in Fauquier. What would you like to do with the site? Maybe a little snazzing up of the graphics are in order, the features are great but the background’s a bit bland. Also remember that the official title is ‘Burton Socialist Hockey’ now. I still can’t believe people actually voted for it but, hey, cool with me! A real awards section is what’s most needed. Assuming a healthy dose of sessions this year, he could set some records, I think.

Actually, I was talking about the whole Nakusp name change thing with my mom last night. We’re going to send a letter as a family to both papers talking about what a stupid idea it is. Seeing as how one of our extended family memebrs is the mayor, it should hopefully have a lot of impact. I hope a lot more people voice their opposition to it as well.

When do you think you’ll be back home next? I hope to make it there April sometime after the semester finishes for a week or two. A couple of my friends up here are actually doing field work in and around the area so I’d like to show them around and give them the real West Kootenay experience.

Kyle

10:43 PM, Tuesday 22 February 2005

ILL Mitch was kind of funny, but I think I have probably seen a hundred of sites like just with different people pretending to be something funny.

Yeah I don’t think hockey will ever be a go in Vancouver, the best I can hope for is to play a bit of 2 on 2, or maybe shots on a goalie, or possibly playing the dicks down by English bay. The have a little rink down close to English Bay by the aquatics center downtown (right under burrard bridge). The rink has mini nets and is meant for street hockey. I went down there a few times (once with Isaac) and played. Basically they would play one goal, winning team stays on losing teams rotate. The guys that played down there were the biggest assholes I have ever met. Actually I would enjoy going down there now with Lorne, cause I know we would likely roast them. A friend of mine wants me to go out to UBC and play sticks, skates and helmets. I think I might actually give that a go. I have never really played hockey on ice before (other than the shinny games we would play in the winter in Fauquier) so I think it would be a real hoot to try it out.

As for the hockey site it needs a lot of work. One I would like to rewrite the code, make it more portable and possibly give it away for free for other people who want to setup league sites. Two I want to do a redesign, the site looks kind of like poop these days, and no site of mine is allowed to look like poop! Third I want to add a bunch of new features, like charts and graphs, goalie compare, better records handling, pictures and videos, personal bests, and awards. These are just some of the ideas but I am sure I will come up with more as I start work on it again. Also if you have any ideas (I mean ANY) you think would be cool, I can probably make it happen. Actually what we should do is start a wish-list so to say of all the stuff we would want this site to do. Then I will have something to go on!

Hey do you have email addresses of the news papers and the council members in Nakusp? if so you should send them all emails, also send me their addresses and I will write to them as well. You seem very passionate about this and I want to help out. “Change don’t come at once it’s a wave, building till it breaks.”

Did you read our new ambASSador today? “Canada already is a part of the missile defense program”. I hope the cocky fucking Liberals loss power over this issue. Latest polls show they are slipping and NDP has gained a bit. Sooner or later the Liberals will be forced to show their true colours.

When will I be home next? that is a good question. I get bugged at work as well for when I am going to take time off, but I don’t really know. I would imagine probably for one of the long weekends. Maybe May long if hockey could happen? or Easter? I don’t know yet. Actually I have been kind of thinking of touring again this summer if Pearl Jam does another tour, but we will see about that. Last time it worked out so well as I had a wonder young lady who I could stay with and who chauffeur me around to all the shows. This time around I am not so sure that would work again. I do have a buddy here in Vancouver who has voiced some interest in doing some touring though, so maybe… Anyway if I don’t do a week or so like I did last year I will just pick like 3 or 4 good weekend shows and fly out and do them, that would work well too I think. Plus I could likely get cheap cars in any major city I visited! HA

Stefan

11:40 AM, Wednesday 23 February 2005

As far as fake rap artists go, I think I prefer MC Hawking. Just the idea of Stephen Hawking bragging about drive-bys and shouting ‘Fuck the creationists!’ is pretty funny.

You have to try and find a place to play where no one’s going to be (I know, it’s hard in Vancouver!). Playing to one fucking goal? That’s incredibly lame. You could just take a slapper from centre and score and suddenly it’s over and the other team’s fucked. Yeah, sounds like tons of fun. Just like the asshole holding the table at a pool hall. At least you can get some shinny in. I’m assuming this will be on artificial ice as it’s Vancouver!

Yeah, that poopy site. I know I just think ’stinky dookie’ every time I look at it. In all seriousness, that list you have of things you want to do sounds pretty good. I wouls just advise you to not automate rookie records unless you can figure out a way to separate rookie goaltending sessions from rookie skating sessions, which can be hard in cases when they’re the same things or when they’re five years apart.

Alright, Stef (and for anyone else reading this, this is VERY important!), here is a list of all the councillors’ and newspapers’ email addresses. Just remember that newspapers like letters 500 words or less (but you can let the council have it!)
Mayor Bill Cowan (cowan@nakusp.com)
Councillor Wally Curran (curran@nakusp.com)
Councillor Janis Dahlen (dahlen@nakusp.com)
Councillor Karen Hamling (hamling@nakusp.com)
Councillor Len Heppner (heppner@nakusp.com)
Arrow Lakes News (newsroom@arrowlakesnews.com)
The Valley Voice (valleyvoice@netidea.com)

I’m happy that the government looks to be staying out of the missile defence clusterfuck. This just makes McKenna look that much stupider. His role as ambassador is represent the Canadian government in Washington, not the other way around! Hopefully he’ll fuck up and couple of more times and be fired. You say you hope the Liberals would lose power, but think about the consequences of that. Who is the only other party even close to a position to govern. God forbid Harper ever becomes PM. Let’s get the NDP some more seats first. Right now if we had another election, we’ve have another minority government and be right back where started. As long as the NDP and BQ hold the government to check, we’ll be decent. Not great, but at least decent.

Come home earlier! I’ll be long back in PG by May long (and fuck May long, by the way. Burton May Days is such a complete waste of time at this point it isn’t even funny). Try for April sometime. But whenever you go back, get some hockey going! Of course, PJ is also an important priority. Anything to get out of the office, really. One things I would like to do is get some of my UNBC friends down to Nakusp. Two of them are doing field research in the area this summer so I’d like to show them around. If I can get them to bring their blades and sticks with them, so much the better!

Kyle

11:18 PM, Wednesday 23 February 2005

Well the one goal is because there are usually so many people who want to play and the surface is only big enough for at most 3 on 3. Also taking a slapper from center is hard to score as the nets are small, like real small, the size of a milk crate. I think the rink is designed after traditional street hockey where people would use a milk crate or a garbage can as the goal because they had no goalies. Anyway I don’t mind the structure of that hockey just the people who play.

Rookie stats I can leave if you want me to, however I have the stats all separated in the database, player from goalie. The only thing that they share common is their player id. So I can tell from the database when the player played his first game as a forward, and when he played his first game as a goalie…

Yeah I am glad to hear the government is staying out of missile defense. Even if it is because the Conservatives waffled on the issue and that the Liberals have lost all their support in Quebec. I just hope it isn’t like Bernie said and that there is some hidden agenda where we are sucked into the program without the public knowing it. However I think it would come to light if that ever happened, I mean this is becoming a big issue here in Canada. In the US on the other hand nobody knows about it, other than the government is soon to be able to stop missiles dead in the sky, like shooting a bullet with another bullet… The American girl in the office said she was in Seattle the other weekend and was talking with her friends about how Canada just adopted Kyoto, and she said her friends (who were all quite liberal minded and somewhat on top of the news and social issues) had no idea what Kyoto even was. Goes to show you how different things really are in the US, and how much Media can play a part in shaping a nation.

I guess your right though, if the Liberals lost their wouldn’t really be much alternative… What do you think about Justin Trudeau Kyle? He seems to be as passionate as his father, and has been very socially active in Canada. There always seems to be little whispers that when he gets older he will run for Prime Minister. Think he ever will, and would it be a good thing?

Once I get a bit of free time I am going to email everyone on that list. As well I will considering coming home in April. Granted there aren’t any long weekends in April which makes it kind of tough. Maybe I will work Easter, but I think that would be a little sacrilegious…

Stefan

11:58 AM, Thursday 24 February 2005

If you can separate rookie stats, then by all means do it. Just make sure that some of the bugs that are afflicting the current site like leaving out entire years when calculating session highs and glitches like that are done away with! Exclamation point!

The US doesn’t have media, it has corporate propaganda agencies working for the government- the ultimate private- public partnership! And what a great defence system it is. Testing reveals it works 62.5% of the time, meaning there’s only a 37.5% chance you’re going to die anyway! Brilliant. Hopefully the government just doesn’t go in through the backdoor via NORAD or something. That would be mucho lame. We pretty much are ‘involved’ via NORAD even if it is just the US doing what it wants to anyway. The important thing is the maintenance of sovereignty we exert when we stand up to Washington, and even a simple ‘No’ can help that.

Justin Trudeau would be an interesting choice for a politician. He is certainly a leftist but his family ties might obligate him to the Liberals, a party which he certainly doesn’t fit in with (his dad left the tiny NDP of Quebec to join the federal Libs). If he was to enter politics, he would certainly represent a much-needed progressive element within the Liberals. he seems to be content with private life but if he ever entered politics I’d be all for it. Plus he’d be representing BC!

If you come home in April we should try to coordinate our arrivals so that we can be there at the same time to get hockey going or just to hang out. Maybe some hiking or something rather than just watching TV at my house like at Christmas.

Kyle

10:16 PM, Thurdsay 24 February 2005

62.5% against one incomming missile. Granted it hasn’t had a successful test in over 2 years, and even then it had a gps installed in the missile and it knew it’s exact flight path. So that 62.5% is heavily skewed. Also to note that is one single missile, guess what happens to that number when lets say 20 missiles are sent (some real, some decoy). You end up with one fucked country. Anyway the missile defense isn’t about defense, the only countries capable of actually attempting anything against the US would be Russia and possibly China. This Korea and Iran talk is such bullshit. If Korea ever considered launching their one nuclear weapon at the US there would not be a Korea anymore, it would be suicide of an entire nation. They would be whipped off of Asia. Just look what happened to Japan after they bombed Pearl Harbour. Aparantly by the time the US dropped the bomb something like 50% of cities were burned to the ground due to their firebombs. Now times that by 100, and you would have the present day reaction. Anyway good that Canada is staying out, and with the new money in the budget going to defense maybe we can finally upgrade our forces to be somewhat respectable on the global stage.

What do you think of the budget anyway? At first I thought it was a good budget, but then realized it didn’t nothing for students, nothing for affordable housing, and worse of all allows you to now invest in foreign RRSP. Nothing like supporting your OWN country for once. I think the only thing that is truely worthy in the budget is the money to the military (granted if they didn’t receive that I doubt they would even have enough duct tape to keep on going) and the money for daycare, however it is still very unclear whether we will actually see a national daycare program or not. Not that it matters because by the time the kid hits 17 the parents won’t be able to put him through university anyway.

Sorry for my ignorance but why would Justin represent BC? does he live here? I read an article yesterday saying he was a at Cap College recently as they are now giving credits for a program Pierre started and that Justin is on the board of. It is a program that was suppose to build unity in Canada (Trudeau didn’t fuck around with golf balls), by bringing Canadians from across Canada together and making them live in a house together in a city or town they have never been to. They get a their living expenses paid but have to do 35 hours of community work a week towards a project or goal. It actually sounds like a pretty cool program.

Ta Ta for now…

Stefan

9:36 AM, Friday 25 February 2005

Ah, the politics of deterrence. Remember how well that worked in the sixties? Oh, wait a minute…

The budget is very inconclusive. It’s a compromise between the Conservative and NDP agendas basically as a ploy to not be defeated in a confidence vote over the budget. They sill don’t have any conclusive direction or anything. The daycare program looks about as well thought out as the gun registry at this point. ‘We have a bunch of money we’re going to throw at it but haven’t actually thought about what we’re going to do with it.’ Also, it helps when your social minister is a lawyer and sports executive on the right-wing of the party (Dryden).

You didn’t know Justin Trudeau was a teacher in Vancouver? Trudeau’s wife was from North Van so the kids spent a lot of their childhoods there and Justin and Michel stayed permanently (Michel was working as a ski patroller in Rossland when he died in an avalanche in Kokanee Glacier). I cannot wait until Trudeau makes a run for office, although he may have too much of a social conscience to ever do so!

Don’t know if you ever listen to Sports Talk with Dan Russell but, fuck, that got really heated between him and Brian Burke last night (Burke standing behind Bettman with Russell assailing him). Almost painful to listen to at times with the two of them arguing like that so vehemently, especially knowing they have a pretty good relationship personally and to hear them absolutely assualting each other like that, good radio!

Kyle

9:27 PM, Sunday 13 February 2005

Well this past week has been one busy week. My brother Rob arrived from Germany on Sunday and stayed with me all week. Having someone live with you is a bit stressful, plus consuming, not to say I don’t enjoy having my brother who I never see stay with me, I do, it is just tiring is all. Plus work just keeps on getting busier and busier. We have so much on the go it is crazy. I am slowly getting through my 2 page to do list of stuff I have to do, without adding too much more to it. To make things more crazy this week the other programmer came down with bacterial pneumonia, meaning I had to pick up some more slack. If I wasn’t busy enough with everything else going on I decided this week that I would also build a website for a bed and breakfast out on salt spring for someone who wants his site up quick. Well at least our new programmer starts work Monday so that will hopefully start to ease the load a bit.

So Kyle is now 24, welcome to the club. How do you feel, older, wiser, more sprite, ready for a girlfriend? Happy Birthday regardless. On my 24th birthday I bought $20 worth of sushi/Japanese food, a lemon meringue pie from Safeway and went home and mopped. I have since gotten over the fact we are all getting older and there is nothing you can do about except take advantage of the time you have. Granted that is often easier said then done.

Kyle were do you envision yourself in 10 years, what do you see yourself doing, where do you see yourself living? When I try to think of that I get nothing, other than the overly optimistic “laying on a tropical beach with two chicks and a margarita”.

Well I got nothing else to say, I am still tired, going to go to bed now, and hopefully the dentist will tell me something nice tomorrow.

Stefan

9:55 PM, Sunday 13 February 2005

Living with people is fine, just as long as you can give the other person space and that person gives you the same. I’ve noticed that I’m rapidly falling into the ’single guy hanging out at his married friends’ place’. As almost all of my friends here are in some sort of relationship, it’s very weird sometimes. I keep thinking that they’re just going to get sick of me at some point (couples need time alone, damn it!) but, fuck, I even got asked over to one of my coupled friends’ house tomorrow night. Fucking Valentine’s Day! Well, hey, if they’re silly enough to waste their time hanging out with me, then I’m silly enough to accept the invite!

Are you going to kick out the jams on this B&B site? Are there any sites not linked to Kloppmagic/OK Auto/SchoolNet you’ve designed that we should know about?

I don’t really feel older right now if only because in grad school the ‘peeps’ (I’m still hip!) you hang out with are usually older than you anyway (I’ve got a fair number of friends here who are 30-plus). In relation to them, I’ms still way young. Yeah, a girlfriend would be great (especially with most of my friends being in some sort of relationship already) but I don’t know what I’d have to offer at this point just because I’m so caught up in schoolwork and don’t hae a set future plan. Once this master’s thing works itself out and I start to get a real grip on what I’ll be doing for the next ten years then maybe the time would be right. But if any girl out there didn’t mind that and went for it anyway, then, hey!

As for where I see myself ten years from now (you must have been feeling very philosophical this weekend), I’ve got to say it would probably something academic. Assuming I can actually pull this Master’s degree out of my ass, I would imagine I would start my doctorate soon after that, assuming my financial situation cleans up alright. Maybe start out as a research assistant, pay off the loan, get some background info and head into another thesis. Teaching post-secondary somewhere is an option; I don’t think I could handle a regular 9-5 shift in some office somewhere.

Until next time, keep it in your pants, you sick freak.

Kyle

P.S. I Have no idea what I meant by that last line.

9:09 PM, Monday 14 February 2005

Yeah I have nothing against living with other people, it sure makes things less boring that is for sure. Plus when you have nothing to do you have someone to go do shit with. Yeah a lot of my friends are all hooked up as well. I get invites to peoples houses all the time, but often it isn’t just me but a lot of people over at the persons house, which makes it a little less awkward I suppose. How was your valentines date, did you have fun? ha

Yeah I am going to kick out the jams on this BB site. The clients are really easy to work with, they are clear about what they want which makes it easy for me to do. I have done sites for people who don’t know what they want, but they do know what they don’t like, so they keep on saying something doesn’t look good but never give you any info on the way they want it to look, I hate that the most. Anyway most of the sites I have ever done should be on my portfolio at: http://portfolio.kloppmagic.ca. The last couple sites I have churned out were Serenity Natural Foods and Boutique Boo.

I know what you mean about not having a plan, and having everything kind of up in the air. It is how my life has been for the past 3 or 4 years now. I guess I am not much of a settler. I suppose I kinda am now, but still, somewhere in the back of my mind I don’t see anything as permanent you know? i see life as constantly changing for me, and on the verge of change all the time making it difficult for me to commit to anything!

I do a regular 9-5 shift in a office somewhere, HA but I actually don’t mind it. Actually being in the High-Tech industry and not having to do MAJOR unpaid overtime (like 3 or 4 hours a day) is kind of nice. I like my job and the people I work with, which makes working in an office (one with dogs woof woof in it) a lot easier. What would you like to teach if you had the choice? I take it something related to geography. BTW how is your thesis coming along, what interesting tidbits do you have to share?

Stefan

1:19 PM, Tuesday 15 February 2005

The Valentine’s thing actually didn’t happen. I stayed out all night instead- at the laundromat. Yay. Laundry. Wooooo. It’s a 45-minute walk with two loads in a duffel bag. You can imagine the joy.

Boutique Boo. That’s a brilliant name. How do you hook up with these people to do the site? How long does it take to build? And did you laugh out loud when you first heard ‘Boutique Boo’ or were you simply enthralled by the idea of working with pictures of scantily-clad women?

It’s never good to tie yourself down because anything can happen. When life starts getting to good, that just means it’s going to go downhill that much faster. My advice is when you finally acheive your dream in life, get some hookers and a giant mountain of coke and just snort and fuck until you have a heart attack and die because it’s all down hill from there.

Yeah, I’d be teaching some sort of geography, whether social, human or GIS. Anything with maps and people. As for my thesis, my proposal draft is due Friday. Basically I’ll be looking at patterns of chain migration in the Upper Fraser in an effort to look at how ethnicity and religion played a role in the development of that region. Field work will start in April. Hey, now I’ll get to present at pretentious conferences and make demonstration posters!

A last-minute deal between the NHL and its players? Could it happen? With everything that’s gone on today, you never know, but I don’t want to get my hopes up, either.

Kyle

9:31 PM, Tuesday 15 February 2005

You serious spent the entire night at a laundry mat? like not go home after your laundry was done? yikes… What did I do? I spent my valentines working on the new website, equally as exciting as your night.

Boutique Boo. Yeah the dude who’s site it is is a friend of Tracy Marcheschucks, who I had beers with one night in August with Amanda her sister and a bunch of other folks. Anyway she told me of the guy wanting to do a website, he called me up and we went from there. Personally I could care less about the scantily clad women on the site. Anyway I think the site turned out somewhat nice… despite it’s lack of content.

Tying oneself down is not a good idea, just makes a person less likely and able to change. Also makes a person less likely to take or accept new opportunities. Thinking like that is likely the reason I am single… No the reason I am single is because I hardly meet new people (let alone court-able females). Life is how you live it however, and I am not about to go slutting it up in clubs so I can tell my friends I have a ‘girlfriend’. Not that I would meet any date-able girl in a club anyway, but that is a whole different issue. Now how did I get started on this issue? Man I guess valentines really did get to me…

Well the two sides are still a world apart. I mean it seems like 6.5 million, but really it is 6.5*30 = 200 million. Unless the players accept something like 43-44 million this season is dead. Not that it would really be an exciting season anyway, I mean wow a whole 20 games followed by 3 rounds of playoffs. I suppose it would be hockey non the less.

So I talked to the dentist yesterday after having a full scan of my wisdom teeth. It looks like the nerve is on the inside of my jaw but still close to the root. However this is a pretty good result in that what the dentist will do is cut out a bit of the bone on the outside then slide the tooth over so it doesn’t touch the nerve, then pull it out. Sounds like fun hey? At least I will be high as a kite on a general anesthetic. I asked the dentist how I would feel after the operation, he told me “I am not going to lie to you Stefan” (he says this before a lot of sentences actually) “You’re going to feel like crap for the next 5 days. I mean your having surgery on jaw for god sack.”. At least he keeps things honest.

“Little Man. He lived in a caravan. Dum dum.”

Stefan

9:14 AM, Wednesday 16 February 2005

Not the whole night, you moron. It’s a fucking laundromat (BTW, I love you called it a ‘laundry mat’ like a six-year old). But two hours there plus 90 minutes of walking is more than enough. And how could you not care about scanitly clad women? Ha, ha, ha. That just reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Moe is hooked up to the lie detector and eventually is forced to admit he’s going home to beat off to the Sears catalogue.

Just admit it, Stef, you’re a big softie like the rest of us. Awwwwwww…. No. It’s just that we’re single guys living in a married world where everyone wants to shove their ‘happiness’ down our throats. Remember, the only goal of life is to procreate and multiply so find someone quick before you become an old maid. How else will we maintain population growth to fuel the glorious, benevolent machine that is capitalism?

Well, I still think that one hour from now, Bettman will announce the season is cancelled. I beg to differ on the excitement issue, however. A 28-game season means every game is drastically important and anyone has a chance to make the playoffs. And it’s FOUR rounds of playoffs, moron! It’s been four rounds for 25 years! It would be way more exciting than a typical season. It’s just that no one will be watching it. Whenever they do go back to a full sched, I really don’t want them to alter the length of a season. 82 games is fine. You certainly do NOT want anymore. But it also gives each team three games a week, minimum, for six months. That’s great for fans. With so many games on TV nowadays, you don’t have to feel guilty about not buying tickets. So much to choose from. Plus, teams need gate revenue to feed those salaries, even ‘reduced’ salaries. if the players say that they’re tired, tell them they’re avraging $1.8 million and shut up. As if they’re going to be less tired after 70 games than 80. After a point, you’re just tired. More games keeps fans interested.

I am not going to lie to you, Stefan. That’s hilarious! Oh, well, at least you can get addicted to DayQuil and keep yourself nice and numb for a few days. Or just don’t open your mouth during that week! Breathe through your nose and communicate with a combination of messengers and hand signals.

‘Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, happier than you and me. Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, and it determined what he could see. And he wore a hat, and he had a job, and he brought home the bacon, so that no one knew. Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, his friends were unaware. Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid, nobody even cared.’

Kyle

10:56 PM, Thursday 17 February 2005

Yeah lets all procreate and overpopulate this world even more. Lets see what happens when we reach the limits of this earth, should be a fun ride down, oh wait we have been falling all this time, I guess that means it is going to be one hell of a splat.

The season is canceled, people are saying, “Man 6 million is what they arguing over?” well actually it is 200 million. Yeah I suppose it would be exciting, but not the same, it would seem like such a farce, bunch of greedy players being paid by greedy owners and no one gave a fuck about the fans. All they cared about was making a buck or two this year. Yes Kyle a regular season has 4 rounds of playoffs, but if you did any reading on how this shortened season was going to play out you would have known that the plan was to have 3 rounds instead of 4. They were also considering other options too, like round robin.

I am not going to lie to you Kyle, I might just have to invite Bernie and Amanda over and purchase some herbs to get me through the pain. Actually I think the T3’s with codien should be sufficient enough to take the pain off. I just can’t wait to see my chipmunk face. I always laughed at poor fuckers who had their wisdom teeth out and looked like Alvin or Theodor. To tell you the truth though I could care less about the pain or how I look, I just don’t want to lose the feeling in my gum or lips. That is my #1 goal.

Anyway looks like my internet is back, check out my blog for the story on that. Man calling support is such a pain in the ass. So are these stupid promos. This is the last time I take a free month, something stupid like this always seems to happen afterwards when you go to cancel the service. BAH.

Man we have been having some awesome weather lately. Sun sun and more sun. Not that I get to enjoy this sun, I suppose the few rays I catch from my office window will have to do, plus it is nice not to walk home in the dark rain. All this sun though makes me think of a Who song Blue, Red, and Grey. “Some people go for those sultry evenings, cocktails in the blue, red and grey, but I like every minute of today…”

What the hell is that Mongoloid quote from? Yikes!

Stefan

7:55 AM, Friday 18 February 2005

9 billion of us by 2025, think about that! It’s going to be a fucking gong show! We are so incredbily, edibly, fucked. and it’s really too late to do anything about it. What we need to start doing now is preparing ourselves for the big splat’s aftermath. Kyoto is really about one-thousandth of a percent of what we need to be doing, but as long as Reverend McDumbass keeps running things into the ground down south there won’t be much we can do. Barach Obama in ‘08!

Well, none of the posturing and hypothesizing over a season matters at this point, ’cause it’s all over. Blame has been done to death so let’s just look at the bright side of the lockout. We’re weeding out all the fairweather American fans! Amercians (if they didn’t already) won’t give two shits about hockey once this is all played out. Crappy teams like Phoenix and Florida and Carolina will fold. The game will die outside of the North and Colorado. Hockey will mean nothing to America, and that just means less competition for Canada. That’s right, Stef! I’m actually counting on this lockout to significantly diminish or kill hockey in the US so that places who actually care about the game can exert proper influence over it. won’t it be fun ten years from now to see the US get destroyed 11-2 in every World Championship game and battle for relegation against the likes of Austria and Italy? Well, it won’t get that bad, of course, but maybe it can relegate them down to the level of, say, Slovakia. If you get rid of the American influence in hockey, you get rid of the desire to have salries comparable to those of the NFL or NBA. You get rid of the desire to expand to money-losing market where hockey is foreign. You open up the possibility of expanding to Europe. Ideally, there would be an NHL with a North American League and a European League (kind of like the CHL with its three leagues). Except for the All-Star Game and a couple of weeks of interleague games, they wouldn’t see each other until the playoffs, making the Stanley Cup final that much better. The North American League could have Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, San Jose, Colorado, Minnesota, Winnipeg, Chicago, Detroit, Philadephia, Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, Buffalo, New York, Boston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Hartford and Quebec. The Euro League would have CSKA, Kazan, Dynamo, Davos, HC Bern, Frankfurt, Sparta, HC Slovak, Jokerit, MODO, Linkoping and whatever other strong club teams would support at least a 13,000 seat arena. You could even introduce relegation rounds where bad North American teams get sent to the AHL and bad Euro teams get sent back to their national club leagues. Fuck me, I’m brilliant! Of course, this would only work if salaries plummet by about one-third in order to get smaller hockey markets like Quebec, Pittsburgh and Hartford back in.

In this case, who cares what you have to do to relieve the pain? If you feel pain, at least you still know you have actual feeling in your gums and lips!

You mean a massive monolithic corporation like Shaw didn’t pay attention to your needs? Well, I, for one, am shocked. Next you’ll be telling me Telus has bad customer service or there were lineups at the CIBS this morning! BTW, really liked your Kyoto column. When you brought up the high school debate it made me flashback to the last BC election and Chris Delaney of the Unity Party. Someone asked him about women being paid less then men to do the same work and he inexplicably replied with, “Well, they had pay equity in the Soviet Union and look what happened to them.” I thought uninformed fringe parties weren’t invited to televised debates! I laughed really hard at that comment and then felt really sick. Speaking of elections, Campbell was just here at UNBC yesterday plugging his government throwing $32 million for a new teaching lab and library renovations here at the school. The renovations will coincidentally be finished right before the election! What a maroon. We’ll all enjoy our 9 ft x 9 ft, 4-to-a-room grad offices as TA wages are frozen for the thirteenth year in a row. Just for that I triple-dipped the pastry buffet at the press conference.

‘Mongoloid’ is an old Devo song. It’s a pretty good but menacing tune. Remeber, ‘Devo’ is short for ‘devolution’, so to write a song about a retarded guy who blends into society perfectly because the rest of society is becoming retarded is pretty good social satire. ‘Beautiful World’ (covered by RATM on the ‘Renegades’ album) is another satirical Devo song that’s pretty good.

Kyle

10:53 PM, Saturday 19 February 2005

Kyoto is like you said, just a drop in the ocean. I was actually discussing the population problem with Lorne just the other day. He had finally read Daniel Quinn’s book “The Story of B”, but had some reservations about Quinn’s views on our way out of the population mess, and how we got into it to begin with. Regardless Quinn has an excellent parable regarding the whole population overload that goes like this:

The ship was sinking—and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, “We’ve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.”
But the crew said, “First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we’ll take care of the lifeboats.”
Then the women said, “First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.”
The racial minorities said, “First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly.”
The captain said, “These are all important issues, but they won’t matter a damn if we don’t survive. We’ve got to lower the lifeboats right away!”
But the religionists said, “First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats.”
Then the pro-life contingent said, “First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else.”
The right-to-choose contingent said, “First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we’ll help with the lifeboats.”
The socialists said, “First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that’s done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.”
The animal-rights activists said, “First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can’t let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats.”
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned.
The last thought of more than one of them was, “I never dreamed that solving humanity’s problems would take so long—or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.”

Anyway I think that parable is somewhat fitting. Shows we are focusing on the tiny problems when the global problem which is threatning our humanity is not being dealt.

So talks are back on with the NHL and NHLPA. Who better than Gretzky (the greatest English hockey player of my time) and Lemieux (the greatest French hockey player of my time) to bridge the gap. A lot of people might say that they have vested interests being owners or players. I don’t think that is it though, I think these guys seriously love the game of hockey and don’t want to see it die. While Gretz maybe the biggest sellout lately (commercials wise) and a strong conservative (supports bush and harper) I can’t take away the fact he loves this game and will do anything to save it. Looks like they are still talking right now, but hopefully by tonight we can all rejoince in the fact hockey is back!

I think you should change your thesis to deal with the geography of the NHL. Then write up a thesis on how to further the game, and project it into new markets that WILL take to the game. Would be an interesting topic to do it on.

Anyway poker and tennis on the agendy for this sunny day.

Stefan

3:05 PM, Saturday 19 February 2005

It’s hilariously coincident that the two things we’re talking about, namely the population problem and the NHL lockout, will both be solved by the same terrible solution: ‘Blow it up and start all over again.’ For a relatively miniscule problem as organized sporting entertainment, fine, whatever. But the fact that the whole WORLD is headed toward that same outcome is fucking terrifying. I’d suggest saving up now for a 160-acre stake in the middle of the Stikine and builiding a little tiny cabin away from the rest of society because when shit starts getting blown up everywhere else then the absolute fucking middle of nowhere is the only place you’re going to be able to get away from anything. At the very least, you won’t have to see endless coverage of Paris Hilton’s latest shopping spree/drinking binge.

Much kudos to Monsieurs Great and Magnificent for their attempts at saving the season, but it fell through just as expected. Even though the majority of both owners and players wanted a deal done, the vocal minority was large enough (remember, it only takes EIGHT owners to reject a deal) to say ‘No, thanks’ (or was it ‘Fuck you, too?’). As much as I wanted it to happen today, I knew there was no way. deep down, we all knew it, I think. Again, let’s look at the positives: Gretz and Mario back for the Worlds in May, the end of hockey in America, the incredibly exciting clusterfuck of a new season with younger players and failing American franchises.

I actually would like to do some sort of social geographical look at hockey in Canada one day. But that would be years away, and what I’m doing now is perhaps even more important and quite interesting (although, let’s face it, all geography and social research, especially hockey-related, is important and interesting!). Let’s wait until I’ve finished my doctorate before I get to the point where I candetermine my own research; I’m not even a quarter of the way through my Master’s yet!

Well, it will be my turn to start it off next week. But, before I go, that Daniel Quinn parable was spot on, really. I wonder if Tom Waits was reading that same passage:
“I’d sell your heart to the drunkard, baby, for a buck. For a buck! If you’re lookin’ for someone to pull you out of that ditch, you’re out of luck. You’re out of luck! The ship is sinkin’. The ship is sinkin.’ The ship is sinkin.’ And there’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room; the poor, the lame, the blind! who are the ones that we left in charge? Killers, thieves and lawyers! God’s away, God’s away, God’s away on business.”

Kyle

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

9:42 PM, Sunday 23 January 2005

Well here goes week two of what you so lovely coined That’s Stefan This is Kyle or what I renamed That’s Kyle This is Stefan. I was pretty tired this weekend and couldn’t come up with anything more original.

Anyway this week has seen a lot of talk over the whole gay marriage debate. The National Post declared front page that legal gay marriage would mean legal polygamy. This oddly all-coming right after the conservative party announces an ad campaign against gay marriages. I find it all so funny how so much time and energy is being spent on something that doesn’t even affect the people of this country. I mean if two guys (or chicks) get married what harm does it do to anyone? Despite my own personal opinions on homosexuality I still cannot see what people are getting all crazy over. There are bigger problems in this country then two people getting married. I mean there is a massive homeless problem in our major cities, missile defense something that could considerably change the security of this country is being swept under a rug, universities graduates cannot find work, I mean is gay marriage really the top issue in Canada right now? Am I missing something here?

I was watching some political show on CTV today and they were saying how the Liberals stated the meeting with Bush during his visit to Canada was purely coordinal and that missile defense was never even discussed. However now according to a US paper the Liberals talk quite a bit with Bush about missile defense. Apparently Bush told Martin that he couldn’t see why any Canadian would be against making their country safer. He also went on to say that some future president (not him of course) might one day be under the attitude of “Hey why are we defending Canada anyway?” That sounds like a threat to me, and in my eyes I think Canada would be a lot safer staying out of the missile defense and needs to realize that the biggest nation we need to defend ourselves against is the US. Did you catch any of the inauguration BS this week? “I have 4 more years to spread Greedom And Democary.”

Do you like how Phil Esposito called out the players this week on the salary cap? Or that guy who died just recently (famous guy who’s name seems to elude me right now) saying how the greedy players and league robbed him of watching hockey in his last year of his life. No season this year I guess. I suppose I will have to resort to watching football, maybe the Eagles can bring a championship back to Philly for the first time in a long time.

So Kusch I want to know really how much work a masters program is? Is this night and day compared to your undergrad or is it easier than you thought? Also how are your TV habits, what are you watching these days?

Hey I saw that you got audioscrobbler working. It was pretty easy to setup hey?

Stefan

9:17 AM, Monday 24 January 2005

That’s exactly what I hoped you’d name it! Yeah, I couldn’t think of anything good either. When in doubt, keep it simple.

Gay marriage is probably about 999th on the list of our thousand biggest problems. It’s not the government’s position to legislate morality or be a babysitter. People decide moral standards and the government simply reacts to them. It’s obvious the people want, or at least are indifferent to, gay maariage. It’s Canada, you should be able to marry a fucking desk lamp if you want to. I mean, when Don-fucking-Cherry comes out on national television and says he’s not opposed to gay marriage, then I think it’s time we accepted it. While homosexulaity is always going to be weird and foregin to me and I’ll never understand it, it also doesn’t take away any of my money or hold up the line at the post office. It’s not hurting anyone. It’s not as if the rest of the country’s going to become gay by osmosis or something.

With no TV (more on that later), I managed to avoid all the inaugurational bullshit. I didn’t even know it had happened until I heard about the Condoleezza Rice confirmational hearings on CBC. Canada should be courting the EU and Asia instead of constantly trying to appease the States. My old history prof at Calgary, the brilliant Doug Francis (my favourite prof there), put it this way: Canada’s old name was British North America. The first part of our history, we emphasized the ‘British’ part. The second part of our history, we emphasized the ‘America’ part. If we want to succeed in the future, we should emphasize the ‘North’ part.

Phil Esposito is renowned in the hockey world for being remarkably out of touch with reality, so I don’t listen to anything he says unless he talking about anything before 1984. I made up for my hockey fix in part by going to a PG Cougars game with my buddy Mike Hurley on Saturday. $11 for eighth row tix. I love junior hockey. They were playing the Hitmen so we wanted to check out Getzlaf and Ladd. Calgary won 3-1, pretty lacklustre game. We had more fun making fun of everything at the game, especially the crappy music on the sound system. I think they just grabbed Big Shiny Tunes 9 and DanceMix ‘97 and just started alternating between the two. The Hampster Dance? Come on! Also, all the free giveaways just went to the same three section on the other side of the Multiplex. Lame. The best part was the Timbits game in the first intermission. This one kid just kept crosschecking everyone in front of him and pounding people. Hilarious!

Grad school is everything you think it is and more. I’m here at school either in my office, in class or in the library about 50 hours a week and I’m still falling behind slightly. Throw in teaching two GIS lab sections and it’s fucking hectic. It’s totally worth it, though. I get to work on stuff I’m really interested in (small town geography) and I’ve made so many friends here it’s insane. Every day is jampacked, so at least I’m never bored. As for my TV watching habits, I don’t have any. The only TV I’ve watched since I’ve been back was the World Junior Finals and SNL (which was fucking horrible this week) two days ago, both at Mike’s house. My landlord has a dish but I don’t go up there very often. It’s amazing how much I don’t miss TV when I don’t have it. If it’s not an option, you don’t consider it. But I do miss Family Guy and Chapelle’s Show. Other than that, it’s probably a good thing I don’t have it; I’d be too bust to watch it anyway. How that’s for an answer from the guy who used to watch 70 hours a week?

Audioscrobbler is very cool. I’m just worried I’ll start skewing what I listen to in order to make sure one band or one song doesn’t get too far ahead on the charts. I finally ripped some CD off my friend Alan this weekend: Beatles’ White Album and Rubber Soul, Public Enemy’s Fear of A Black Planet, Metallica’s Ride the Lightning and Beasties’ Ill Communication. That probably explains the skewed statistics. I need some new music to balance out the old stuff but downloading at school isn’t an option. Have you heard of the band Clinic? I’d like to get my hands on that.

Kyle

7:58 PM, Monday 24 January 2005

From 70 hours a week down to almost zero. That is quite an accomplishment for you Kyle. I would have never expected it. So does that mean you left your TV at home in Nakusp then? I personally have also written off TV, well at least for the most part. I can still watch TV on my computer but the amount I actually watch is very minimal, less than 10 hours a week that is for sure. I find it refreshing not having TV, plus I find I read a lot more and right now I have a pretty big booklist to get through. Currently I am reading The Da Vinci Code to see what all the fuss is about (and because it was a Christmas gift). After that I will likely read Shake Hands With the Devil. What have you been reading lately; I imagine just all school related stuff.
It is also good to hear you have a social life in PG Kyle. I mean last time you were up there you didn’t really hang out with anyone did you? Have you started a new friend list? Top 10 friends in PG and pit them against your Nakusp friends? Haha, ok I will stop now with that nonsense.
That instructor of yours Doug Francis sounds like he was a really good instructor. I like his saying, and agree 100%. Did you see today that Canadian Postal Workers and the Council For Canadians have challenged NAFTA saying that the agreement goes against our constitution? It will be interesting to see the outcome of this court case. Regardless of this case though I think a lot of Canadians are realizing how bad NAFTA really is for us. A lot of people who I have talked to who I wouldn’t normally think would be against NAFTA actually realize we are getting fucked and are against it. Time will only tell I suppose.

So today I had a CT scan done. I need to have my two bottom wisdom teeth take out, however on the x-ray it shows that my wisdom teeth roots are at the same area as my nerve. Without knowing where the nerve is it is possible they would rip the nerve, which would make me lose all feeling in my lower jaw. Thus the CT scan was done to get an idea where the nerve is in relation to my wisdom teeth and whether or not they can pull them out. Losing feeling in lower jaw would suck, thus I am somewhat happy the oral surgeon didn’t just go right at it and rip those suckers out, even despite the $300 charge the CT scan cost. Granted I think my medical will cover that for me, lets hope.

Stefan

9:17 AM, Monday 24 January 2005

I brought my TV not knowing what the situation was (landlords had a dish and not cable), so basically it’s just sat on the floor unplugged for five months. The old VCR has found some use though; I use it as my laptop desk on my bed. Unfortunately I have virtually no time to read anything that isn’t school related. Therefore, the most recent book is a historical geography of Finns in Greater Sudbury. I do manage to read my National Geographics from time to time; I’m almost caught up on them. Funny story a few months ago on Point Roberts, WA in which the author called Tsawwassen across the border a ’strip-mall hell’. Needless to say there were quite a few letters in the next issue from Delta residents taking offence. What is the Da Vinci code? I see it everywhere but have n idea what it is. If it’s one of those stupid ‘parable of life’ books like Ishmael or the Life of Pi then it probably wouldn’t interest me. Say, I hear that Dianetics is a great book!

Yeah, the first time in PG I made no friends (None. At all. Zero.) so my entire time was spent in my room. It was horrendous. Compare that to now where I’m coming home at 1:30 every weekend. Lot more fun this time around. And, yes, I have a PG Most Popular list now. And I will pit them against the Nakusp list in my next story where everyone fights in a 60-minute Texas Death Sexual Endurance match. I will use the word ‘fuck’ 377 times and someone’s clitoris will be punctured! (sarcasm)

Didn’t have time to catch the radio this morning so I didn’t hear about that, but it just goes to show how nonconstructive NAFTA really is. Who’d have though Ross Perot was right? Anyway, just read the story you liked to on your site, and it’s just more proof of the idiocy of NAFTA. Basically, UPS wants all mail delivery privatized. That would be like suing for the right to print your own money because the Canadian government unfairly subsidizes the Royal Canadian Mint. Fuck UPS. If you’re going to go with private couriers, we’ve always gone Loomis or DHL. But Canada Post should be left alone. If the government back down on this, we’re in big shit.
I’m very lucky that my wisdom teeth never came in. But my molars are beginning to deteriorate (took 24 years but I finally have cavities!) and I have no coverage. My parents and I are discussing solutions. My friend Leah from North Van just got hers removed in December and it took almost a month for her gums to heal. So have fun with that. Or at least enjoy the drugs you’ll be on.

Kyle

9:41 PM, Tuesday 25 January 2005

The Da Vinci Code is a novel about a secret society and deals with controversy with the church. The novel is fiction, however many people who have read it have been taking it as fact, while a bunch of what the author has written is fact a lot of it is not, or is being represented out of content. This makes for a bad combination as most people reading the book are going to think that what they read is true. Apparently churches in Paris and Italy have had to put up signs telling fans of the book to stop snooping around for clues from the novel. Anyway it is a thriller and is pretty exciting and if you take it for what it is (fiction) then it is a fun read. I read a really good article on the book in MacLean’s that you might be interested in reading to get a better idea: http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/article.jsp?content=20041220_95307_95307
I am planning to have my wisdom teeth out on a Friday, that way I can take loads of codeine and fly all weekend. When I had my top ones out I was better in a day, however the top two had room to grow out and had already poked through the gums. The bottom two are a little more… tricky. As for your molars do you floss? Or is it just the sheer amount of sugar you consume that has final gotten the best of them? I can’t believe these are your first cavities, I mean you probably take in twice as much sugar as I do; hell you should see my x-rays!

Anyway looks like I spoke too soon on the whole electoral reform. Today I got in the paper a nice little pamphlet explaining what had happened over the last while and why this new system is good. I think if every BC voter reads at least the first page or two of this they should be convinced.

Today you posted a comment on my site concerning Nakusp turning into a resort town. Thinking of where Nakusp is situated and the emergence of Revelstoke and Rossland as huge ski villas with major money backing them trying to rival Whistler do you think there is any hope? The one problem I personally see with hills in Revelstoke and Rossland is that they have no access, or limited access. The type of clientele they are trying to attract are not going to be people who will want to drive in, they will need some type of airport if they expect to make it. I suppose there is an airport in Castelgar and Rossland is close to the border but still, how are the people going to get to these hills? Granted when I went to Calgary over Christmas I couldn’t believe how many Albertans I saw in Revelstoke, I think the population had doubled over Christmas. There was a snowmobile and truck with Alberta plates parked on every logging road between the ferry and Revelstoke. So maybe the investors are going by the “if we build it, they will come”. Another fear is that if Revelstoke starts to make it big and attract a lot of attention it will bring a lot of attention on Nakusp and the hotsprings. Sadly it would only be a matter of time before a private investor would give the town an offer they couldn’t refuse.

Stefan

10:24 PM, Tuesday 25 January 2005

Read the Maclean’s article. Well, as a piece of fiction and knowing that some of the pacets of the story are created for the story, I don’t know if it’s a book I’d be interested in. I’d much rather read a non-fiction book based upon the same context. Sorry. Just not a fiction person, especially dramatic fiction.

I resent the sugar remark. Since I’ve been here I pretty much have no sugar other that what’s in the four cookies I eat every other weekday in my lunch. If I have two slurpees a month that’s amazing. I had my molars sealed at the age of 12 to protest them from cavities. After about 10 years the sealant wore away and the teeth degenerated pretty rapidly. Mind you, all those slurpees I drank in Calgary probably helped wear down the sealant pretty good. But I’m certainly not a sugar junkie. At least not anymore. I can’t even get through a one litre Pepsi without getting at least a small headache. Unless it’s chocolate and someone gave it to me, I really don’t eat sugar anymore. (No TV? No slurpees? What’s next, conversion to Pentacostalism?) At least you get to be high for once, a good excuse for drugs for a non-imbiber like yourself.

The day after we had the electoral system talk I saw ads in both PH papers from the Citizen’s Committee. I hope people will go for it. It would really fuck things up for any party looking for a slam dunk electoral victory (just ask the 1952 Coalition government). Look it up.
Dude, the Village has been trying to lure developers up to Nakusp Hot springs for the better part of a decade. They really are sold on this boundary expansion idea that would see Nakusp reincorporate as a district (bypassing town and going right to district is a big step) and take in the entire lakeshore up to Halcyon to generate tax revenue and start putting in resort development. I worked at the Chamber of Commerce for five years and saw the stats firsthand, the Albertans are coming and they are buying vacation properties. Ever looked at a property map of Trout Lake? The shoreline is about 40% Albertan-owned. Trout-fucking-Lake with the gravity-fed gas pumps. Trust me, it’s coming. we won’t notice it for a few years yet but we will. And between Mt. Mackenzie and Red, that’s $400 million in investement, an absolutely egregious number. Something’s going to happen. And let’s face it, Nakusp needs some to jumpstart it. But once it happens, don’t expect it to be the same place we grew up in. I don’t want to have to start telling people I’m from ‘north of Nelson’.

Kyle

8:12 PM, Wednesday 26 January 2005

Well I looked up the 1952 coalition government and see that you must be talking about how the conservatives and liberals formed a coalition then instituted a new electoral system to help defeat the CCF. Then in ’53 Bennett seemed to abolish the alternative voting system. That is pretty interesting stuff. What was this alternative electoral system, how did it work? It looks like after the 1950’s the Liberals were basically non-existent until the early 90’s. It is also funny how many scandals we have had in BC politics since the early nineties. This Liberal government has run a pretty tight ship (granted Campbell did get drunk in Hawaii), they have done almost everything they have promised. Granted they didn’t have to say much to win the last election. Hey, how many former premiers have made there way into their position by way of Vancouver politics (by either being mayor or a otherwise). Also do you think Larry Campbell will ever go Provincial? Most everyone in Vancouver loves the guy.

I remember reading in the Arrow Lakes News that at one of the town hall meetings some members wanted to officially change the name of the town from Nakusp to Nakusp Hotsprings to try and cash in further. Man I really hope things don’t get over populated, over run in our valley. I think most of the beauty of the Arrow Lakes is the fact it is so uninhabited and pristine. I mean I could get into a boat on a weekday in Fauquier, go south and probably not see a person or another boat for my entire journey. When I was a kid I used to dream of Fauquier becoming a big town, I had it all planned out where the arena would be and the big mall and the apartment buildings etc. It is funny but now I kind of would like to see Fauquier and area preserved in its raw state, there is something tranquil about being in a completely remote setting.

Speaking of Nakusp is it any wonder that the attempted murder was on Ken Janzen? I mean how many times has this guy been in drug related busts and shootings? Yet he always seems to get off, come back and do it some more. I guess some things about our lovely valley aren’t all peaches and cream.

K-l-o-p-p yeah you know me…

9:50 PM, Wednesday 26 January 2005

The alternate voting system the Coalition government put in place was a pure STV system. Each party had a candidate in a riding like normal but you ranked them 1,2,3, etc. Related to the BCSTV the citizen’s committee wants in, only instead you’d be voting for multiple ridings at a time (and thus multiple party candidates) adding a bit of proportionality to it. Basically, Bennett left the Conservatives and started the Socred party. Everyone laughed him off kind of like Paul Nettleton nowadays and went on with their lives. The Coalition figured all of the voters who didn’t want the CCF would just rank the Liberal and Conservative candidates 1-2 and that those who did vote CCF would be forced to put a Coalition candidate second. This way, the votes would transfer and the Coalition would win. Had the regular ballot been used, the CCF would have won and the Coalition knew that would be the case ahead of time. What they didn’t count on was the huge number of second-place votes the Socreds got. Even though the Coalition had been around for over a decade, people who voted Liberal federally sure didn’t want to mark the Cons as their second choice provincially and vice versa, so they put the socreds as their second choice, as did basically all the CCF voters who would rather have a ‘fringe’ party as a second choice rather than the capitalist mainline parties. Thus the Socreds snuck up the middle and won. Bennett then junked the system as there was no use for it since it killed the Libs and Cons in BC pretty well permanently (it took 40 years for the Liberals to be a factor in politics again under Gordon Wilson; the Cons never won a seat again and don’t even exist provincially now; that’s why Campbell and what was left of the Socreds in ‘95 had to hijack the Liberals from under Gordon Wilson).

The Liberals did everything they promised and a lot of stuff they didn’t as well. It’s that stuff (BC Rail, health care and social cuts, replacement of good-paying jobs with underemployment they can call ‘new job growth’) that the NDP must capitalize on. Right now pundits are saying 45-34 for the Liberals, a big chunk taken out but still a landslide. In three months when the election begins we’ll see how well the new NDP does. Are you registered? Not being a Vancouverite I have no idea what Larry Campbell is about other than he was the coroner they based Da Vinci’s Inquest upon, he belongs to COPE and he brought in the safe injection zones. What do you think of him?

It wasn’t even a town hall meeting, it was a council meeting (we don’t have town hall meetings; I think the last one was 1999 when the bypass was approved). And it wasn’t community members, it was Mayor Cowan and councillor Wally Curran (who’s lived in Nakusp just over three years). I remember seeing a bunch of petitions in stores that went almost totally unsigned. No one really bought that idea (remember, there was a town of Nakusp quite a while before white people even knew about the hot springs; it’s not like Radium, Harrison or Fairmont where the villages grew up around the springs. Fauquier is a very pretty town and it shouldn’t be changed abit except for maybe the addition of a slurpee machine at one of the stores and the purging of a certain motel owner (having dealt with him on the phone at the Chamber I can emphathize with you down-the-lakers).

I had/have no idea who Ken Janzen is and that’s probably a good thing. My mom sure does, though, and she wasn’t surprised by that happening at all. Still, Nakusp is now approachin 15 years without a homicide. Even most other towns our sizes can’t say that.
A-R-I-B-A-Z-Y, it rises to me.

Kyle

8:57 PM, Thursday 27 January 2005

“Replacement of good-paying jobs with underemployment they can call ‘new job growth’”
That could have been taken out of 1984. You’re right though it is totally BS. One thing I totally hate on TV are those stupid BC ads about “Your Hired, your hired, BC has the largest job growth in all Canada blah blah blah.” All the while showing shots of guys like Jim Pattison shaking hands or hiring people. I suppose it is the least the BC millionaires could do for their buddy Gordo for slashing all those wonderful taxes on the rich and putting the brunt of the provincial tax burden on the middle and lower class citizens. What was it, something like a 30% tax break to the top 3% of our population? Of course you will get the extra right wing defense that by keeping taxes very low for the rich you promote the rich folks to move here, buy up our homes and give us great jobs. Hell why don’t we lower the minimum wage while we are at it, maybe we can lure some more call centers here.

I was just looking at the NDP roster for this year and noticed that the guy running in Columbia River Revelstoke’s name is Norm Macdonald. I mean with a name like that and a few good jokes this guy could slide right in. Think Suffredine will win our home riding again this year, or will people be fed up enough over the whole hospital amalgamations and closures to vote liberals? Our riding is Nelson-Creston right? I think there are a lot of lefties in those parts wouldn’t you say?

As for me being registered I am not sure. How do you do that? I thought I was registered by doing my taxes and such, or do I have to do something special? I guess I will find out as the time gets a little nearer. I will be voting though that is a fact, especially with the whole electoral reform issue on the table.

To switch things off politics for a minute, there was big talk this week about Neil Young playing the Juno’s with The Hip. Don’t get me wrong I really like Neil Young but I don’t know if I can really consider the guy a Canadian anymore. I think he is a Californian now. Granted he did go to a bunch of Sharks games in the playoffs. Regardless the guy can be seen at many political and social events that concern the USA however when something similar happens in Canada he is nowhere to be seen. Hell the guy has enough pull behind him that he should be the guy to organize or arrange for similar things in Canada. I think he just doesn’t care.

Stefan

8:28 AM, Friday 28 January 2005

Of course BC has the largest job growth in all of Canada! When you hit rock bottom like we did in 2002, there’s nowhere to go but up! Yay, Wal-Mart! Yay, LiveBridge! Notice the explosion in campuses of Sprott-Shaw Community College? Everyone will be making 410 an hour while we export our natural tesources and all of their accordant profits out of the country! What a wonderful fucking economy.

There are certainly a lot of lefties in Nelson-Creston. Not so much next in Columbia River-Revelstoke (Alberta resort country-notice how the NDP candidates almost always come from Golden, a mill town, or Kimberley, a mine town). However, Wendy McMahon is so universally reviled there that Macdonald has a really good shot (we can just give him Kimberley right now after the hospital closure). As for Nelson-Creston, it all depends on whether or not Corky wins the nomination. The name recognition factor alone should help. On the other hand, he carries a lot of baggage from the last time the NDP was in power. With less of a Green Party presence this time around, there won’t nearly be a smuch vote splitting. I expect a close one between him and Blair.

You fucking dork! You don’t know how to register? If you didn’t vote in 2001 then you probably aren’t. You can make sure by heading down to your local voter registration office or by going to the Elections BC website to see if you’re on the list. If you aren’t, you can just register online with your driver’s license. I’m lucky, since my driver’s license is still registered with a Nakusp address I can vote back home with an absentee ballot.

I remember very distinctly when Neil Young did a MuchMusic Intimate & Interactive show and he was asked whether he feels attached to Canada, to which he replied that he considers the whole continent America so it doesn’t feel any different. Wow, fuck you, too, Neil. Let’s face it, he’s a Yank. They guy hasn’t lived in Canada for almost 40 years since the old Buffalo Springfield days. And if anyone’s still paying attention to awards shows at this point, that’s sad. It’s so fucking arbitrary. You can have the ‘greatest’ music (and you need time and influence to properly gauge that, like about five years minimum) but you can’t quantify the ‘best’ music, it’s too subjective.

Kyle (some people call me Maurice)

10:27 PM, Friday 28 January 2005

So Kusch I was going to send you a wonderful final reply, however today my computer crashed and I have been spending the last X hours working to get it back. It is finally booting now but far from restored. Looks like you got the last word this week as well.

Stefan

Recently my friend Kyle approached me to start a column, or dialog if you will between him on a weekly basis talking about politics, sports, and life in general. At the end of the week we would post our dialog to our respected websites. I agreed to do this with him and see where it will go. This week we had our first attempt at it and I think it turned out pretty good. I have left it unedited for the time being, however in the future I may decide to change that approach if the dialog gets hideously boring or off track! Well without further ado here is the first installment.

7:41 PM, Sunday 16 January 2005

Well, here goes…
Congrats on the new blog site, very nice. Although all the computer talk is amusing; do you have a lot of people that visit your site just for computer advice?

Just looking at your site today, I first must start off with the Fauquier bridge post. Not the actual bridge itself (we know whay they’re starting in May, it’s quite obvious) but your comments about the Fauquier-Castlegar highway, an idea first proposed back in ‘61 and which almost got built in ‘72. Here’s a reality check.

NO ONE HAS TALKED ABOUT OR EXPRESSED ANY INTEREST IN THIS IN THE LAST THIRTY YEARS.

Other than at a pipe dream level or maybe as part of some of those ultra-vague, highly speculative proposals about a superhighway from Spokane to Alaska, this will never happen. Ever. At least not while we’re young. Where is the real incentive? The money in the West Kootenay is in Castlegar, Nelson, Trail, all in the SOUTH. If they want to improve transportation links with the West, they’ll just enlarge the crowsnest instead of spending the billion dollars it would take to blast a highway over the power line access from Appelgrove to Passmore. It took 45 years for a bridge, do you honestly think a highway is coming? This is really a Fauquier pipe dream if anything. Plus, any highway on that route would be bad news for Nakusp, Kaslo and the Slocan as it would divert traffic away from the northern West Kootenay and with suck away valuable tourist dollars that will eventually be the only thing that keeps those areas alive.
Frank McKenna as ambASSador to Yankeeland. Well, our interests might be sold out even more to Washington after this but at least ol’ Frank gets to work on his golf game.

How pathetic was it that we couldn’t get hockey going this Christmas (first time since ‘98)? Maybe Burton needs a ‘Lazy Stoner Award’ or something.

How are all the Lower Mainlanders dealing with the past two weeks of weather? Must be hell for them in Vancouver with their four snowplows in the enitre city. ‘Minus ten? Oh my GOD!’. ‘Cause it wasn’t cold up here at ALL, nope. Business as usual in PG at -37.

According to BC Stats, Nakusp lost two people in 2004 to stand at 1,765. Biggest gainer again, though, is Radium HS with another 9% increase in population. Nakusp is flat now but it’s only a matter of time before the invasion begins. Then it won’t be home anymore and I won’t even want to go back to my hometown. How sad is that?

Well, let’s see tomorrow what you have to say in response. Looking forward to it!

Kyle

9:17 PM, Sunday 16 January 2005

Well one of the reasons for the blog was to have an outlet for myself, for all areas of my life including technology. A lot of the posts in technology so far are more for myself so the next time I need to do something (lets say use xargs) I won’t have to go looking all over the net to figure out how to do it. Also while none of my friends (you guys) probably won’t give a damn about the topics you would be amazed at how many people on the net are looking for answers to similar problems. Just as a example the Using Xargs post is my 2nd most visited post on my site, and when you search google for “using xargs” it is the 10th listed site. So you can see there is an audience for the technology.

The road to castlegar I agree, will likely never be built anytime soon. For most people from Fauquier this is more of a dream than anything, however I think most applegrove folk would be well against it. I just see it as creating more opportunity for the valley and for my community. I don’t think it would hurt tourism in Nakusp either. I mean they said the truck route would destroy Nakusp and look at how much of an impact that has had. Nakusp as a town is really a gorgeous place, while the local populace seems to be imploding on itself I don’t think having a road to Castlegar would put much of a dent into the vacationers. To reiterate though it won’t happen anytime soon, when you look at the province there are a lot more pressing needs like say a better bridge in Kelowna, or how about another or better bridge to the North Shore from Vancouver, or even more lanes on the road to Whistler. These areas probably see more traffic in a week than the Fauquier bridge would see in a year.

Not only is Canada now going to have to deal with hearing a loud mouth Ambassador from the USA tell Canada that we need to ‘integrate’ ourselves more closely with the US, we are now going to get a sellout Canadian Ambassador telling us the same shit. Like Jon Stewart said Crossfire is hurting America, these guys are hurting Canada. The more people hear over and over again that Canada is better off integrating with our friends the US the more the population is going to believe it. What is still refreshing is that with every dispute, be it trade or foreign policy, it appears that the % of the general population of Canada IS against further integration with the US, and it appears that percentage is getting bigger and bigger. What I don’t understand is how Canadians continue to put these people into power, despite the fact these people are selling them out.

No hockey over Christmas was pretty disappointing. I was really looking forward to it. I remember the year before I was so hung over playing, that I one point I thought I would throw up if I played another shift. Now those are good memories for me, because that was one hell of a fun session, especially the shootout at the end. Maybe come spring we can get some game on…
Most people in Vancouver are enjoying the weather. I mean this is a city in Canada that maybe gets snow once a year. Most people living in Vancouver are not born and raised here so when there is snow everyone seems to get into it and really enjoy it. When it first snowed, you wouldn’t believe how beautiful the city looked, now it is all slushy. The one thing though that Vancouverites don’t understand about the snow is driving. Most people have summer tires on and don’t understand that they won’t be able to stop at stop signs etc. Thus they don’t realize that MAYBE they should take the bus to work. Last week walking to work down 4th ave I probably saw 2-3 different accidents (however small they may be) of people just not being able to stop and dinging someone or something. The best though was when I saw this ugly blue Miata trying to get out of their apartment buildings underground parking, the damn spun the whole way out JUST barely getting out of the parking lot.

How long has PG been steady at -36? The reason I ask is that I have been hearing many times that what we need in BC is a really cold winter to kill all the pine beetles. I remember seeing a map of BC and the effected areas marked in red, I couldn’t believe how much forest has been killed up north by the beetle. They say even if every logging company in BC logged non stop at all the dead pine they still would be able to cut it all down in time before the wood has been ruined.
Radium HS is the biggest gainer? is that population increase or per capita increase? Also I wonder if the people moving there actually live there, or only resort there… As for Nakusp do you think things have changed there? or do you think it is just you who has changed? For me personally I think it is a little of both. Nakusp (or the arrow lakes) used to be my life, even after SAIT when I just started at ecmarket my social life still revolved around Nakusp. I think that has changed now. When I go back now I don’t even care to go to parties there anymore. I go to see my friends and my family and that is it. However I must say that when I have gone to parties or social gatherings recently things have changed dramatically. In the past you would get a sense that people were optimistic, they were happy, they were having fun. Now I find there is a strong underlining depression, a dark cloud is hanging over everyone.

So the union the other day told the players to go find jobs else where and to prepare for a long dispute. When do you think this could end? Most people are now saying not till the end of next season, I sure hope not. Also do you think the WHA will get off the ground? they are now aiming for a 2005-06 season.

Stefan

10:50 AM, Monday 17 January 2005

Yeah, I figured there must have been an audience for it if it was going up there, and to be tenth on Google is no small acheivement (my link to my buddy Mike’s hockey league back in Nova Scotia, the BGHL, is first over and above their link! Ha ha!). I can totally understand the ‘posting for yourself’ argument as that’s all my site is for the most part. I never thought anyone would ever pay attention to Asbestos or the Periodic Table or anything like that. What do you think of the New Asbestos (even though it’s really just beginning)? It’s certainly a lot more provocative, if not abstract.

The truck route around Nakusp and a highway that would miss Nakusp by 60 klix and cut 170 km off the Okanagan-South Kootenay route are two different thing. You have to remember that even though the truck route ‘bypasses’ Nakusp, you still travel through parts of the town and Nakusp is the only settlement of any size for 100 km in any direction; if you want servies and you’re travelling on Hwy 6, you have to come into town. Also, the signage is so confusing (on purpose) that many people wind up driving into town anyway. But just like the highway is a pipe dream, maybe I’m just being paranoid.

Unfortunately we will be stuck with unimaginitive sellouts in power as long as Canadians perceive that 1. only the Liberals can acheive nationwide support and 2. the NDP will spend us into oblivion. Opposition parties just do not have any presence outside of leadership or election campaigns. The left in Canada has to grow some fucking balls for this to stop happening. Too many pussies and concilliators willing to tag along in some faint hope of Liberal coattail heat. More of the Blaikie/Evans type of New democrats are needed.

I very much remember your hurting state last Christmas at the Hall. I really liked our annual shootout tradition (bot the team and individual competitions). I won’t be able to make it home until April when the semester ends. Hopefully we can coordinate something. If not, at least send me some stats and shootout details.

Vancouver, I can understand because they haven’t adapted to snow conditions (stupid consumer society, use some fucking transit for once). What I couldn’t understand was in Calgary. People just had no clue how to drive in winter there. I think it’s just a city thing in general where people are used to frequent braking and acceleration, stop/go driving, and just can’t get it through their heads that, sometimes, ICE IS SLIPPERY. I can’t help but think that city dwellers just think everything is going to be done for them (like snow removal).

We had one bloody week of cold. Today the temperature shot right back up to zero. Other than that it really hasn’t been ultra cold in a PG sense. So we’re stuck with the beetle. Armageddeon awaits!

RHS is the biggest per capita gainer, of course (it’s only 750 people! Still, that’s 200 people over the past eight years which is crazy for a town that size.); Surrey and Vancouver, as usual, are the biggest net gainers. I don’t think I’ve changed too much (I did just spend a year-and-a-half there, after all). I’m just talking about the fabric of Nakusp in general. Like teen vandalism. That just never happened before. Ever. Now it’s quite out there. And who is it? It’s the kids who just moved there in the past few years from the city. That’s where Nakusp’s new population is coming from. That citified influence is what will change Nakusp. It is in the very beginning stages of a transition from resource-rural to a cottage-country/urban retreat area. It’s necessary for the survival of the town but it definitely will make not the same place I grew up in. As for parties, parties have always been lame to me so that doesn’t bother me. This is the first semester where I’ve ever actually had friends outside of Nakusp so I can’t honsetly say I’ve totally divorced myself from the idea of being a Nakuspian in the social sense. Glasnost doesn’t help!
When will the lockout end? Well, when’s the next terrorist attack? What’s the economy going to be like next year? Who knows? It’s all conjecture. I hope it ends soon, but fuck, it’s just ensconsed in so much BS that it could go on forever. And piss on the WHA. They’ve had 2 1/2 years to get their shit together and nothing’s happened other than franchise failures and delayed start dates. Go watch the AHL or Europe. Piss on the WHA.

Kyle

10:02 PM, Monday 17 January 2005

The new asbestos to be blunt is hard to read. It has so many paths I don’t know where it is going, or where it is coming from… abstract is right, but hard to read, very incongruent… I am sure there is some secret to reading it, but maybe not, this is your mind…
For Christmas I gave my mom and dad a DVD player and the dvd set of Greatest Canadian. During the time I was home over the holidays I watched every episode, and learned actually quite a bit. Watching the videos of Tommy speeches were probably some of my favorite moments. The guy could speak, he knew his shit, and wouldn’t take any bullshit from anyone, and that included doctors and other highly important figures. That is what we need in a leftist party, not a bunch of sissies. Nobody wants to vote for a prissy little schoolboy, they want to vote for someone who can run a country, be tough when needed to, be able to back up his ideas when needed, and believe in what he stands for. This is not to say to start negative campaigns but rather to show some backbone. I agree the NDP for too long has thought that the best they can do is simply to be a voice in a minority government. That won’t get them anywhere though, as the Liberals can align more closely these days with Conservatives than those leftist fruitcakes and there strange smiles.

To continue on with politics I want to bring up the whole electoral reform in BC issue. Just what I had thought would happen is happening. The reform committee came out with a new system, new ideas, the Liberals put lots of money into the prelim stuff but ZERO into the promotion of it. When was the last time you heard about the electoral reform issue in BC? Hell there is only 4 months till the next election/referendum and there has been no word about electoral reform. If things continue along these lines I am sure it will be voted against, just like wards was rejected here in Vancouver. People will not vote for something that they don’t know what it is. They would much rather stick to what they know. Lets hope the electoral reform committee gets there ass in gear and starts to do some promotion.

You really think Nakusp is changing that much? I think we are just starting to go full circle. I remember hearing stories from my older brothers of the shit that would go on in Nakusp and it all seems similar. Your right though vandalism is stupid. I mean do you have no respect for where you live, do you shit where you sleep? It comes down to a loss of community, a disconnection of the youth.

Yeah the WHA is stupid, but I still wouldn’t mind a hockey fix, in whatever form it comes. I don’t get any AHL games on TV or euro… Plus Pacific Coliseum is kinda far for me to goto giants games… meh I suppose I will live…

It’s funny, today I took part in a survey on household spending done by stats Canada. It made me realize how little money I spend on consumer items. I think my biggest spending category was on flights online or something stupid like that (besides rent and groceries of course). Even when it came to the purchase of alcohol I could barely say $30 a month (if that). Going through all the categories though really made me think of how lucky I am not to have to be caught paying for stuff I don’t need. I wonder how my numbers would compare to the average 24 year old yuppie living in Vancouver…

Stefan

8:35 AM, Tuesday 18 January 2005

Well, the New Asbestos is certainly designed to be challenging in the sense that it’s bombarding you with imagery (especially religious imagery). It’s not supposed to be coherent; it’s absolutely stream of conscious. It’s supposed t make sense as much as it’s supposed to create a mood or feeling. Maybe if you look at it that way instead of trying to decipher things like in the Old Asbestos then it might be more user-friendly.

I was very happy when Tommy won TGC. All my friends were pissed off up here because they were pulling hard for Terry Fox; I think really that they just weren’t old enough to understand as they did start to get won over by George Stroumboulopoulos after a while. Terry was a great person, a great athlete. Tommy was a great Canadian. It’s the same in the States as it is here in that the left really needs to grow a pair. Say what you will about ol’ Svend but at least he tried to push buttons. That’s something the right does very well that the left should really pick up on.
The electoral reform promise was just a bone thrown out in the 2001 election along with getting rid of photo radar to give people an actual reason to vote for the BC Libs instead of just voting against the NDP. As if the Liberals really want reform in the electoral system. They have 74 of 79 seats! Mind you, this isn’t the States. Under BC and Canadian law, actual electoral campaigning cannot begin until five weeks before an election, which is good. In the states, election campaigns start as soon as the last one ended and it’s pathetic, all money driven. I think that may be a reason we haven’t seen any ads. But we need that new system. It’s not perfect but better than what we have.

Remember, your bros had all those years of stuff to ball up into stories. Did you remember any vandalism when we were in school? Didn’t think so. The problem is, most adults look at youth as scum and would rather have someone else like the cops fix everything. If we had more than two at a time on duty for 110 km maybe that might happen. In some magical fairy tale world where the rivers flow with wine and magical fairies drop orgasms on every doorstep.

Listening to the Velvet Underground right now. What an amazing band they were. Do you know their music?

Pacific Coliseum is too far? If you’re going to spend $16 on a game you may as well spend $2.50 on a bus.

I’m always shocked at how little I spend compared to my friends. I went to the MEC site and did the ecological footprint test. I came out at 1.8 Earths (compared to even the most conscious of my friends who came out in the 3’s). Cars make all the difference, financially and environmentally.

Kyle

8:25 PM, Tuesday 18 January 2005

Well I just decided to retake the 1-tonne challenge as I had forgot what my actually tonnage per year was. As it turns out I use about 1.76 tonnes a year. Most of that comes in the way of garbage I throw away. The average Canadian produces over 5 tones. You’re right though the car makes all the difference. While it can be a bit of a convenience having a car (just ask me how well my bus trip to Ikea went this weekend) it is totally not worth it. I mean what other investment you make decreases in value once you invest in it? Let alone continue to decline in value and continue to cost you money. At least apartments increase in value. I think it has a lot to do with our society and convenience. Society in that by driving a car (more so for new or nice cars) makes you more important. Also it is the convenience, why would someone want to take the bus to work when they can drive and get to sleep in 15 minutes longer. I think there is a quote on my website somewhere from Daniel Quinn about how if there is a revolution to change the world for the better it will have to be a positive revolution, one in which a person does NOT have to give away these little conveniences. I think that is so true. Most people if you talk to them would be happy to help save the world, as long as they don’t have to change the way they are doing things, or it inconveniences them. The one problem most people don’t realize is that it is not the forests, the oceans, the rivers, the fish, the monkeys that we are trying to save, it is ourselves. Everything in the world is connected, so if the fish start dieing today, then tomorrow who is next, is it us?
Velvet Underground I know of, but haven’t really listened to much. They are somewhat wild a crazy no? I mean there music is, really messed up at times?

Also the reason I don’t take the bus to pacific coliseum is that by the time I have taken 3 buses to get there it would probably have taken me close to 1.5 hours… I can drive from Fauquier to Nakusp and back in that time frame… Maybe I should just buy a car.

Stefan

10:49 AM, Wednesday 19 January 2005

Interesting how we’ve been talking about cars and weather, etc. and I figured now that the warm weather’s back it would make things better, figuring it would get back to -8 or something like that. Instead we get this tropical punch that wipes out a neighbourhood in North Van and closes UNBC (which is why I am writing to you from someone’s wireless connection I’m picking up in my bedroom and not my grad office). It was fucking nuts last night! I get out of class at four and go up to media services to return a projector I was using for PowerPoint and some guy comes up and says ‘Classes are cancelled, eh?’. I didn’t believe him, I knew they were in Quesnel but not in PG. I get back to my office and my friend Laura sees me and immediately tells me not to walk home and to get a ride quick because the buses are cancelled. Holy shit! Sure enough, on every grad’s phone there’s a message from UNBC saying the the roads are impaassable to buses and driving is dangerous and that the school closes at 4:30. So I rush around to the other offics and tell my firends and we all go down into the Agora and the place is packed with stranded students. We knew traffic would be horrible with everyone trying to get home (there’s only two ways to get to UNBC so it gets clogged pretty quickly). We hung around in the Wintergarden cafe/bar for an hour (the only place open on campus, everything else was shut at 4:30) and then went home after the roads calmed down traffic-wise. It was scary shit out there. It took five minutes to walk across te parking lot which was a solid sheet of ice. There were 18-inch deep puddles on the road and it was crazy. The roads are still shit today so no school.

Yeah, I came in at 1.25 tonnes, all garbage pretty much. Unfortunately my landlords are pretty lax on recycling so I wind up taking a lot of junk to school and recycling there. Recycling is something that really hasn’t caught on up here and it’s sad because coming from Nakusp and being schooled in Calgary everyone is recycling in those towns. When a village of 1,800 is kicking PG’s ass in recycling, that’s sad. So how was your trip to IKEA? That must have been fun carrying giant boxes of wodd and particle board back on the bus with you. Still beats the crap out of shelling out money for a big drain like a car. People and their inconveniences. Fuck ‘em. Wait until the Greenlandic ice cap starts melting. THAT will be an inconvenience.

The Velvets were probably about ten years ahead of their time musically. When the Beatles were singing ‘Yellow Submarine’, the Underground were singing ‘Heroin”. The first two albums are very experimental and dark cand challenging. Their third (last with the true lineup) marked a 180 in terms of content, much more rocky and straight ahead but still amazing. Check ‘em out on Allmusic or something. My friends Simon and Leah up here have a sizeable vinyl collection we like listening to. I have to come along with them to the used record store to critique their choices, which is fun. But I don’t know if they’ll ever play Trivial Pursuit with me again.

Of course you should buy a car! Such a car-friendly town as VanCity practically requires it!

Kyle (the one with the peanut on top)

9:09 PM Wednesday 19 January 2005

Kyle that is crazy? 18 inch puddles, like 1.5 feet deep puddles? I hope you brought your gumboots up to Prince George because that is insane. Did you lose any houses up there? Apparently a couple houses were destroyed at North Van, and our wonderful Premier has declared a “state of emergency”.

Hey did you hear that the ferries to the island are going to be implementing a class system? So if you don’t want to have to sit with all the ‘untouchables’ you can pay a little more and sit the in VIP area. How fucked up is that? We seriously seem to be digressing back to the middle ages.
Velvet Underground I will have to check out. Lately I have been listening to the new Mars Volta. I got an advanced copy (sound quality is a bit shitty) and it is pretty wild. I mean they have gone even more complex, and mixed in a lot of latin influence into their music as well. It is another concept album, 5 tracks long, last song over 30 minutes. There are areas of songs that the band just jams for like 5 minutes, which personally I think could have been left out, but overall I like the album. It didn’t grab me the way the deloused did, but it has it’s own appeal.

Speaking of music I found this website called audioscrobbler that after installing a plugin will track what you listen to, and how often. It then compiles stats on the songs and artist you listen to most, and then can match you up with people with similar tastes, or recommend music you might like. Anyway I thought it was cool, since they allow syndication I was able to add my last listened to tracks to my blog (under the pictures). Man technology is wild.

Stefan

11:31 AM, Thursday 20 January 2005

Yep, 18 inch puddles. It’s still icy as shit on the sidewalks today although the school’s open so I swallowed my pride and bussed it. A few mains burst around here and there are always a few places where water piles up normally so put in a good day’s worth of torrentials and you’re fucked. No houses lost here due to slides because YOU NEED HILLS for that kind of stuff (Interior Plateau, not exactly mountainous terrain).

That ferry shit is just another money grab for something that by its nature can’t make money and shouldn’t be trying to make money. Ferries are an essential service and the government should be prepared to swallow what they cost no matter what simply as a public service. Spinning them off into another corporation was dumb in the first place. Now we’ll have the ‘velvet curtain’ on the ferries, too. Watch this fail miserably.

Of course, I’ll never get to listen to that up here in PG. Sigh.

How many MBs is this audioscrobbler? Maybe I should try it (not that it matters so much if I don’t download anything).

Kyle

9:06 PM Thursday 20 January 2005

This ferry shit is totally a money grab. You’re so right when you say there are some things you can’t and more importantly shouldn’t try and make money doing. The movie The Corporation talks a lot about this. It talks about how not too long ago things like fire stations were run privately. You had to have a special plaque on your wall to get service from a specific fire station; otherwise your house would burn to the ground without anyone to help you. Things like ferries, fire protection, HEALTH CARE, governments should not be run simply to meet the bottom line, or for profit. There is a reason they were made public it is because by their very nature they are there to be a service to the people and NOT to make money. When corporation first came into being they were much like this too, they had to serve the people, and when their service was done, or they no longer were needed they would be broken up. It is funny how life just goes full circle. I remember watching an interview with Chomsky and him talking about how today’s corporations and media are trying to make you think only about yourself. Their ultimate goal is for you to be in the mindset that you don’t give a damn about anyone or anything that doesn’t affect you. So who cares about the lady across the street that lost her pension, who gives a damn about the single parent who has to pay for his child’s school fees, or the guy who needs to have an operation? As long as your own wealth is secure why should you pay for these other people? Anyway I thought it was a really telling interview about the current state of things right now. What is funny is that when I was in Uganda it was much the same largely due in part by the IMF and World Bank making them privatize EVERY state owned business. The people on the other hand were the exact opposite, it is a big community where everyone helps each other out.
Anyway this about wraps up our first week of this Kyle vs Stefan business. I think it went over pretty well, I am not sure what I will do with it, I think I might condense it to some of the more intelligent parts, but I am not sure yet, maybe I will just post it whole in its entirety who knows, see what works best I guess. What were your plans for this?

Also the audioscrobbler is really tiny dude, WAY less than a meg. I wrote a little article on how to get it up and running on my website, check it out.

Stefan

8:29 AM, Friday 21 January 2005

This is why auto insurance and power were nationalized; market pricing is inherently discriminatory against the young and elderly. I think the American dream is to have enough money where you can do what you want, fuck everyone else. It’s that kind of mentality that’s wrecking society. Who said unbridled capitalism was good? Just because Washington thinks so doesn’t make it so. The US always touts itself as having the second highest GDP per capita at $34K. Yet, look at how that’s distributed. The average person there sure as hell doesn’t make $34K.

My idea for this was to just put it every week as a weekly column, so it’ll probably be up tomorrow. I guess it’s your turn to start it off next Sunday night!

Kyle