Stormed In

Pit, pat, whoosh
A tingle on the tip
On the tip of my nose
A signal transmitted
To the one who knows
A sign, if anything,
It’s time to go home

Pit, pat, whoosh
And a tick tock tick;
Joined in harmony
For an experimental collaboration
For an hour or three
Drumming away
Keeping time with me

Pit, pat, whoosh
And an electronic beep!
Keep indoors they say,
As much as you can keep
Now on your telly, or old fashioned cathode-ray:
There’s a storm out and about
And it’s here to stay

Pit, pat, whoosh
And the rustling in the fridge
Make sure you got supplies!
Ice creams are for winters,
Ice creams don’t lie!
But don’t get carried away,
Get work done before the power dies

Pit, pat, whoosh
This is getting a bit repetitive,
A bit scary and boring
The rain just hasn’t stopped!
It’s been pouring and pouring,
The background while I sleep
It’s an indoor morning, and not one for exploring

Pit, pat, whoosh
Bleep bleep bloop!
Cancellations and censored swears,
Barred indoors there’s boredom and panic
Of which I’m quite aware
Looking out the window
With a sigh, a frown and a stare

Pit, pat, whoosh
More like a single long droning sound
And the whirring of cogs,
For I’ve found work to do
Indoor days needn’t be logs
The sound’s quite relaxing honestly
And there are books and books to hog

 

We genuinely do have storms, and their main risks are becoming annoying, and freezing. I have had to cancel stuff indeed, I suppose WordPress must be my sole support for the weekend. And computer science. Lots of readings. It’s surprisingly really, because I’m convinced computer scientists don’t know how to read anymore. My class and I are living breathing proof.

Have a safe weekend!

Inspiration

“Come on,” she said, staring dispassionately at my laptop screen.

A pop-up ad had decided that now was the best time to inflict its superlatives upon me, but she didn’t know that.

“What?” I said, dishing out a beat rivalling a drum machine as I clicked the invisible cross in vain.

“You can do better than that. You’re better than a inspirational quote tells you you are”, she said, walking away.

“Are YOU a college student feeling dead inside? Is YOUR 90’s website failing?? Are YOU looking for a bartender’s mixing bottle?? CLICK HERE to find the perfect solution to your life’s problems!!”

“Google, what’s this?”

“I dunno miss, it’s based on your search history.”

“And who told you you could have that?”

“Oh look dear, the cross button’s moved to the bottom left corner now.”

My search history is pretty weird and I’d like to be a fly on the wall during the thought process of whatever algorithm is trying to profile me. Bartender’s mixing bottle, magician’s hat, 90’s websites, dead-looking college students and cat’s feet are genuine searches indexed in my history now. I blame my comics and the fact that I cannot draw. Who knows what evil cat machinery Google will be trying to sell me next?

Women In Punk Music

Just an ordinary Wednesday for celebrating all the brave women in punk rock music. The playlist is one I created for our ongoing themed radio show on CFRC 101.9 FM (Or maybe not. I never get the station frequency right… give it time!)

Essentially, this is also me learning how to use technology and marvelling at how a playlist embeds… which was something I was pretty 50-50 on whether would happen or would fail and vanish midway, and will continue to be unsure of until I’ve hit publish… ah, technology, how I marvel at thee in spite of being a computer science major funnily enough.

Enjoy the music, appreciate the circumstances it was made under, and continue to cheer on the courageous women who continue to inspire the genre!

Bikini Kill onstage. Credits: Pitchfork; by Debi del Grande

(Yes, I should’ve talked more about each song and the wonderful stories behind them. I did on the show. And I will here too. I’m just a little busy gaping with a dropped jaw at the embed. Technology. All hail programmers.)

(In short, yes, this whole post was just me testing out whether I can embed Spotify content on a blog without using the new editor, or not.
The answer is a frustrating no.)

Winters

Sweaters scare me. I am genuinely afraid I’m gonna take my top off.

When people say winter anxiety is a thing, I promise you it is a thing.

The Path

Trudging down the path
The beat path I knew well
A path my shoes had smoothed over
And the lack of friction was proper hell

It seems days of walking
Had exposed something buried
And the something buried caught my eye
As along the walk I scurried

Ooh, shiny! said my brain
Let’s stop and take a look
So stop I did before the sand
And another look I took

Nothing particularly interesting
Just probably photo-worthy
For whatever it was, that faux flash
It seemed just quite earthy

But I’m on a well-worn path!
And schedule I must not betray!
Oh, can I stop and smell the rose?
Should I go or should I stay?

As, of course, Smart Alec will say
There’s nothing here to smell;
It’s a bloody sun-reflection
As a closer look will tell!

Well, tell that to my distracted soul
That’s stopped to take a snap
And just as the shutter closed once
Time sneaked up on me and gave me a smack

Heavens, where did my time go!?
The shiny thing is gone!
“Of course, you silly thing,
It only shines when the sun’s on.”

And now it’s 10:30,
And I trudge along home,
The day’s gone, but it’s too early for bed:
Just some more time to waste alone.

Sunday

There’s a boulder in my head

In the space between my ears

Just behind my temple

And I’ve never known its weight like I have on a Sunday morning

The boulder between my ears:

We’ve done some mineral analysis!

Turns out it’s shining gold,

Reflecting the amply written pages of books in the afternoon sun

The boulder between my ears,

It’s solid crystal diamond,

Under pressure, it’s on it’s way,

As the black starts to gleam, it matches the navy of the evening sky

The boulder between my ears,

It’s ferromagnetic

It draws me to my pillow,

And then disappears from sight.

 

Ladies and gentlefolk, an analysis of my brain. That is five minutes of your lives you are never getting back. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

Fromage

Les fromages, ah, ils sont merveilleux !

Le brie,

Il est ma vie;

Ni trou,

Ni fondu;

Je ne discrimine pas contre eux.

 

I’ve been thinking about cheese all day. This was inevitable.

This, ladies and gentlefolk, is the very definition of 2 AM poetry.

Sea-Change

I can’t see

What lies beneath the surface

Clean, white, pristine

Sands without a colour

But certainly not without personality.

Smooth, flat ground,

Icy slips,

Treacherous dips;

And I can’t see

So I simply place faith

And take a step ahead

Only to fall knee-deep

Into the sky’s puke.

 

It’s started to snow! I’ve already gone and fallen into a thigh-high pit of snow by walking where I thought there was ground, which is a perfect way to begin the winter season. Here’s to four more months!

Of this, just five feet higher, colder, and more miserable and devoid of motivation. Yeah, your welcome for me brightening your morning. 

An A-Mu-sing Situation

Happy Halloween! I’ve managed to be late to everywhere, and Halloween’s one of them too. At least it’s not yet December!

October’s not my favourite month. I’ve been skipping film club all month because I’m not very fond of horror films. Half the time I find stuff cheesy, the other half of the time it gets me thinking, but a little too much. It’s not like I’m afraid or anything, I just value my good night’s sleep. I’m a comp sci student at uni, there’s horror abound and I don’t feel a particular dearth!

Go ahead and laugh, I’ve got a very late comeback. Late. Haha. Halloween pun.

This should knock your socks off if you’ve had to sit through statistics/maths/physics or just generally want to be a-mu-sed.

Mu is the mean in statistics, the refractive index and coefficient of friction in physics, micro- units in measurement (10⁻⁶ anythings), just a fancy variable to impress your non-math friends, or to give your math friends nightmares.

I did a quick search to see if there was anything I missed, and the answer was a loud, resounding yes.

Mu stands for a lot of things, even within the same field, there’s an impressive list on Wikipedia!

Well. Happy late Halloween. Wooo, wooo.

Goodbye Skepticism, Hello Alt-Rock

Rock music lives in its clubs, bars and taverns. Anyone who has been to an “underground” gig can attest to that. There’s something about having a few hundred people tapping their feet to gravelling distorted sounds originating from an amplifier helped by a microphone, sounds that a little bar couldn’t possibly contain for any longer than an album or two; something about the dim, neon lights and black ceilings and dark walls; something about being so close to the ones trying to explain the inner workings of their minds on a little raised platform we call the stage, as they belt their hearts out, vocally, instrumentally; expressively. To anyone decrying the death and decline of rock music, a peek into its true dwellings would prove educational.

On Thursday, 24th October, Toronto-based alt rock band Goodbye Honolulu decided to give a demonstration worthy of representing the 2019 rock music scene as they opened their Fall 2019 tour at the Mansion in Kingston, ON.

They were joined in their endeavour by Gananoque punk rockers Figure-8, who opened the gig with a burst of energy, rocking out to a sum total of ten people as the sparse crowd got moving to fast paced, upbeat songs about growing up, tinged with a hint of Green Day’s 1994 hit Dookie.

Tour poster taken from Goodbye Honolulu’s website

 

Following them were fellow Toronto indie rockers Fade Awaays, a band with a sound bigger than the venue they filled tonight, with a tight, layered wall of sound emanating from the two guitars on-stage, occasionally doubling the rhythm section to form a formidable wall of sound. (For a band that only released their first EP this January, they have some surprisingly heavy weight behind them, having opened for alt rockstars Wolf Alice and up-and-coming Canadian rockers the Beaches.)

Fade Awaays in action on stage

Goodbye Honolulu, who had been in the crowd for most of their supports’ sets, came on stage to a well warmed and receptive audience. This band packs fully formed chord progressions and rock riffs into a neat, loud singable pop package that makes their songs so memorable. Their on-stage personality is dynamic, and guitars and basses are frequently swapped onstage as they rip through their long setlist.

 

 

 

Tonight, the band gave the crowd many songs off their yet-unreleased album, a little dose of their own political opinions, in light of Canada’s just concluded federal election (“fuck Andrew Scheer! Fuck Andrew Scheer!”), many little exchanges with the audience, and on popular demand, crowd favourite single “Typical”.

I saw Goodbye Honolulu live at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto six months ago supporting Californian punk rockers SWMRS, and had thought them to be a very well organised act. This time around, in, if possible, an even more intimate setting than Toronto’s iconic club venue, the band let loose the raw energy of a band rearing to take on the notions of what it means to be a rock band as they embark on their latest tour.

Find all three bands on their respective websites (or better yet, at a North American live venue near you!)

Goodbye Honolulu: YouTube | Spotify | Soundcloud
Fade Awaays: YouTube | Spotify | Soundcloud
Figure-8: YouTube