Kiss Me With Your Cherry Lipstick

Since September 28th and the release of Interpol's Antics, I've been living in a bleak and beautiful sonic landscape. Propelled forward by the release of Tom Waits' return to pirate music on Real Gone, REM's return to form on Around the Sun, and now Jimmy Eat World's Futures that came out earlier this week. Four absolutely freaking great albums that have made me one happy -- yet somewhat morose given the lyrical content -- music listener.

Once More Around the Sun

REM's new album, Around the Sun is out today across North America. Go. Buy. Now. They brought their A-game. It's still not to the level of Automatic for the People, but that would be like U2 producing another Achtung Baby. Think of Around the Sun as more of an ambient flip-side to their four seminal masterpieces of 90's. Mind you, of course, I liked both Up and Reveal. So what do I know?
If you're unsure, the album's currently available as a streaming feed from their website. If "Leaving New York" hasn't already made you want to listen to the whole album, just take a spin of "The Outsiders".
This, as they say, is the good shit.

The glass is half empty?

I wonder if the song "Empty Glass" from the Tea Party should just be taken as a nice tribute to Bowie, or if their lyric writing has declined to the point that they can only grab titles and lines from others songs.

shifting the heartache

I picked up the new Interpol disc today. Better than the first disc, I'd have to say. They sound even more like The Smiths on this disc, so maybe that's why I have a greater affinity to it, particularly on tracks like "Slow Hands" and "Narc". "A Time to Be So Small" and "Take You On a Cruise" are currently standing out as my favourites. The former wallowing in a nice melancholy darkness, while the latter is downright hopeful and happy for this usually downcast band.
I've also been listening to the new U2 single, "Vertigo", and um...well, it's interesting. I haven't quite fully formed an opininion on it yet. I didn't like it to begin with, but it's growing on me. I like the guitars, and it seems like they're heading in the right direction in trying to rock, but something about it just doesn't seem to be firing right. It's an alright song, but for some reason it doesn't sound like U2. Maybe I just need to hear it in context of the new album.

No. Not me. Or Anyone.

He was always amazed by how quiet a city as large as this could be at night. Where New York or Toronto never sleeps, Hamilton closes its doors and heads in for the night at 5:30 for the most part. Nine o'clock at the latest. It gave the night, in all but downtown proper, an eerie ghost-like quality. A ghost town populated by six hundred thousand people.

"Nevermind these horrid times"

I have fallen in love with the new Jimmy Eat World single, "Pain", which knowing them is not indicative of anything else on the forthcoming album. Much like "Bleed American" had little correlation to the rest of the tracks on the album of the same name.
I'm also finding that I like the new Sum 41 track, "We're all to blame", which is kind of strange because I really don't like pretty much all of their previous stuff. Maybe it's partially because parts of it sounds an awful lot like Treblecharger on speed.

Quote of the Day

"If you took all the little feelings in your heart and took all those little feelings apart. Oh well now, what’s the point in doing all of that?" (Last Train, Travis)

Today's Transcendental Thought

I picked up the From the Borderlands anthology yesterday, mainly for the Bentley Little short story -- I'm starting to wonder these days if he can write something new without "The" in the title -- and the new Stephen King "novella" contained therein, but was pleasantly surprised by the very first story and the only one I've read thus far, Rami Temporalis by Gary Braunbeck. It's good. Damn good even.

Basically, it's a little tale about one of those people who manage to get approached by just about everyone on the face of the planet. The person who gets singled out by the homeless man asking for change, who sits and listens to the sad and depressed woman telling her life story and those of her cats, and more importantly why it happens.

Plug

This month's Toro magazine (think Esquire with a dash of The Atlantic only Canadian) features a two-page comic from David Collier entitled, "David Collier's First Time". If you're quick, you can still read it at their site by clicking through the "Comics For Guys" link.

I do recommend, though, also reading the "Toro Two-Four" section this month featuring "24 Things Worth Being Anxious About". My personal favourite is Number Four: "All your smart and well-read married friends don’t want to have kids because the world is so messed up. Which means the future will be ruled by the offspring of total idiots who have no qualms about reproducing."

The Incontrovertible Didact

Dictionary.com's definition of a didact is "a didactic person". Thank you very much for that lovely piece of enlightenment. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of something that "begs the question" -- an explanation or definition that uses itself as a proof. Not, as too many people use the phrase as, something that merely causes you to ask a question or leads to a question.

"I used to think there was no future at all, I still think..."

There is nothing more frightening than a blank, white page.
How do you begin? What's the first step? The future isn't written yet, there is no past for a frame of reference, there's just empty fields of white. You're trapped in an odd existentialist nightmare of your own making simply confronting it. What do you do with it? A common turn of phrase, an introductory passage relating the setting of your work, a humorous anecdote to put the audience at ease; which one do you choose? All or none? There are more ways, of course, an infinite myriad of ways, but how? How do you choose the right step?
There is no future. It hasn't been written yet.

State of Love and Trust

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

-- 1 Corinthians 13:11

I suppose you're probably expecting som big long introductory and explanatory post giving the idea of where I've been, what I've been doing, what this is all about, and so on and so forth ad nauseum. Complete with an obligatory digression into the quote above. Well, essentially my response to the quote is: "like that's going to happen any time soon."



You have not been paying attention. There's a bunch of lemmings and ants marching around doing the same thing again and again, falling into the same depressing routine, struggling to get noticed. The blogosphere is one giant, bloated, sometimes hilarious, sometimes relevant, sometimes frightening circle jerk.



Here are the basic dynamics of the Blogo-Domino Effect:



1) A news article, book, CD release, comic book, random sound byte from some idiot on TV serves as a catalyst.



2) Five people then rush to be the "first" to comment on it, usually with some sort of grand effusive statements if they like it, or base, frank derision usually reserved for the lowliest scum of the earth and George W. Bush if not.



3) Ten more people link to each of the original five, while commenting on the "originals"' blogs with things that often amount to little more than "me too" or "you're a stinky poohead"

We'll All Float On

still have trouble of thinking of Modest Mouse's "Float On" track as actually being Modest Mouse. I've got their albums prior to Good News for People Who Love Bad News and like them a lot, but the first time I heard the track it honestly sounds so much like The Pixies that I had hoped the near unthinkable had happened. Of course, the Pixies reforming fed into that. Too bad it wasn't. Still a great track, though.

There's Always Drinks and Dancing in the Rubble

I just thought I'd throw out a non-random plug for one of my favourite Canadian singer/songwriters in that a little better than a year after releasing his debut solo album, Avalanche, Matthew Good will be releasing a follow-up in White Light Rock & Roll Review. The album itself hits June 15th and there are a couple of samples from the album up at his site. To me at least, they sound pretty damn good. Honestly, they sound like Good's decided to "rock out" again with tracks more akin to his work in the Matthew Good Band or the Tragically Hip.

Come to think of it, actually, the Hip's new album, In Between Evolution also comes out in June on the 29th. A good month for Canadian rock fans.

All Quiet on the Not-so-Western Front

No, I'm not dead.
Although I can honestly say that I haven't bought a single comic or trade paperback collection in over a month now. I'm preparing for my "big move" and coming up with all sorts of ways to update the site all the while. Expect that when d-gen comes back, it's coming back bigger.

That is all.

fragment

It all began with a lie.

Quickly told, deftly executed, but a lie nonetheless. Conventional wisdom will tell you that anything based on a foundation of lies will only be destined to failure and ruination. "The centre cannot hold" and all that other literary bollocks. I was never one for conventional wisdom or literary merit, mind. The lie was this:

"I love you, Meg."

Four simple words to make a girl's heart melt. Like putty, I was, in his arms, giving way to tender caresses and whispered platitudes. I should have known better. As my mum had told me, "Men are scum. Men are evil, Megan. Don't trust them. All they want is your sex, nothing else." I always chalked up her attitudes toward the fact that my father was an alcoholic who was known to stick it in anything with a hole in it, and on many occasions did. She'd chatter on about what he was doing wrong, how he was doing it wrong, why he was doing it wrong, and most importantly that he was a "bloody guzzling, soaking sot."

No, I'm not sure exactly what that means either, but whatever it was, my mum was intent on calling it my father. See, my parents were first generation Canadians; both emigrated from various parts of England, half the time in my house I wondered if they were even speaking English.

Things Falling Apart

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats

In Your Electric Chair

It's been awhile since I've actually checked my activity log, but it's always interesting to find out what people have been searching your site for. I've had quite a few people looking for "stand-up comics" and "Jerry Seinfeld" -- I know, that one kind of baffles me too, but there you are. Ray Tate has also apparently popped by and searched for himself -- I'd suggest some kind of philosophical soul-searching joke here, but unless it has something to do with Doctor Who, Buffy, or Scooby Doo... Maybe he just got lost? People have also been searching for "Alan David Doane" -- about six different queries for him in the last week -- and if you're looking for him, you can find him here.

Nightmares by the Sea

At CBR: "LYING IN THE GUTTERS will be published late afternoon Monday."

Not that I'm one to quibble over regularity in updating, but when you promise something, follow bloody through. It's now Tuesday here in North America, five thirty in the morning across the pond. You need your weekly fix of Rich's inane ramblings, sour grapes, and sometimes news.

Blank Stares & Nervous Glances

You know, when they say that there are only two things that are inevitable in life -- death and taxes -- they're wrong. At least, they've never met me, since I would be the third actuality; that it's inevitable that I will drop off the face of the planet for a month or two.

Um...how 'bout them Leafs?