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"