My holiday gift to you

I hereby give you...

My humiliation.

For your enjoyment.

You should probably be ready with earplugs so that you don't bleed out.

The champ

Six hours into this day I have:

• slept in magnificently
• brushed my teeth
• made a coffee
• took my pills
• went for a walk
• solved a crossword puzzle
• created a crossword puzzle for my collection
• read a chapter of Dark Tower book 8
• met a new dog named Tonks and told her pet human Tabatha the Tale of the Squirrel Invasion
• took in recycle and trash bins
• made pork chops, tomatoes and tator salad for dinner
• checked email and messenger, charged phone and updated calendar
• watched a documentary about the America's Cup
• won a game of chess
• may or may not have lost a few games as well. Shut up.
• listened to two Lemon Jelly albums

How's that for a list of accomplishments? I'm probably the champion of the world now.

A Symmetry of Thumb

So this is my proudest moment.

I have used my amazing all-star creative and influencer powers to bring together some of the most brilliant minds in music today to produce the next We Are The World basically. I'll include brief bios below but they're redundant. These are household names of the highest echelon okay.

The project is called A Symmetry of Thumb and if that title doesn't quite seem grammatically sound to you, that is only because WE ARE ALL SO MUCH SMARTER THAN YOU! Anyway, enjoy. 

The Symmetry of Thumb Collective:

Jens Lekkman

Songwriter, storyteller, shit-kicker and honey-lipped vocalist. Sweden's answer to ABBA.

sssnacksss

Wielder of two opposable thumbs and YouTuber of sixteen years with 1,401,735 views. Hey. You could be the one million four hundred and one thousand seven hundred and thirty sixth. What are you waiting for?

Reprise

Tiefling, ranger, beast-master, revenge-conspirator, cat-lover, sexual legend, alcoholic and friend to children and other smallish people everywhere (except dwarves). All this before the age of seventeen!

Julie Andrews

Actor, singer, author and official Disney Legend. Fifty-ninth Greatest Briton of all-time and Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year for 1983; the same year Queen Elizabeth II went into space, only to be replaced by the alien doppelganger who returned in her place. COINCIDENCE ??  

Rick Astley

Dancer, Internet prankster, two-thumbed guitar enthusiast, man who will never give you up and presumably one of the top 68 million Britons.

New Day Rising

Video editor, Crip, Gordon Ramsay fanboy, competitive eater, laundry-day nudist and guy who doesn't actually realize what "Crip" means.

 

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2022

Those smug old boys in Cleveland are at it again and you too can cast your performer votes; up to one ballot per day until April 29th at vote.rockhall.com!

And this year, if you're a particularly nasty little insectoid maniac you can even vote for - well, I can't bear to say his name but - the creepy caterwauler sometimes known as Slim Shady. Yeah. I was afraid he'd show up this year. On the bright side I've been on the Commodores/Lionel Richie campaign ever since Radiohead ascended, And look who showed up! I suppose I can call it a fair compromise. The White Banshee was inevitable anyway.

Working Town

Here's a song I wrote about twelve years ago after finding the courage to give up a lucrative I.T. career and moving back to Scooterville in order to begin a life of mindfulness, creativity, charity and guidance... so I thought. Immediately there was resistance. The song was in reflection of that, an observation; in no way a rant. At least that's how it is in my memory.

I was knocked off course, though, and never really got back on the same track. I've become better at some things and worse at others, and never regained so much focus again.

The theme for poetry club this month is transformation. So I dusted this off and compiled a proper video. Looking at the result, song and video arranged over a decade apart, I can see a difference in attitude. I look back at that time with more love and forgiveness. If I was trying to blame others before, that was unwise, and I'm not anymore.

Fried: On the Beach

Perhaps Jane Stewart is too common a name for a Canadian musician trying to make it in the realm of art-pop? For whatever reason, this particular Jane took her maternal aunt's married name and began crushing it as Jane Siberry. 

in 2005 the Canadian Council for the Arts bestowed the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award upon her for "outstanding artistry in her mid-career." She responded by questioning if her career should continue: she changed her identity, both on stage and off, to Issa, a feminized version of Isaiah, and then immediately wrote thirty-three songs in thirty-three days with a process she described as slowed-down: choosing a note and then waiting patiently to discover the next one.

In 2010 she became Siberry again. 

Spotify has somewhere over half of her material available, up to 2017, under both (separate) identities. Her first two albums are missing, the second of which contained the song Mimi on the Beach, the first of her songs I ever heard, still my favourite, and number three on my Spotifried playlist:

Fried: Hiroshima

Gary O'Connor was the son of Canadian Jazz musician Billy O'Connor. Following in Pop's musical footsteps he played with bands The Synics, The Spasstiks, Cat, Liverpool, Aerial and Kid Rainbow before going solo under the name Gary O' in 1981. By 1984 he'd managed two albums, a handful of modest hits, and captured a Juno Award for Most Promising Male Vocalist. He wrote songs for 38 Special, Molly Hatchet, Eddie Money and others. Spotify appears not to know he exists.

One of the last songs he ever wrote and performed for himself concerns the slaying of Japanese at Hiroshima. To this day I'm not sure how I feel about his approach to it, but in high school I loved this song for its sound and I still find it captivating. It's with Shades of 45 that my Spotifried playlist was born.

Walking the line

The theme at Poetry Corner this month is dreams and plans. This is a song I wrote eleven or twelve years ago; a time when I was reconciling the plans I'd been pursuing, and acknowledging my outer limitations, and wondering where I was going, inwardly, if anywhere. Today I still occasionally wonder.

I edited a new video for the song, and ditched the old version from youtube.

Cats Can Fry

I've started a playlist which will probably not grow very large. Only one in every five hundred mainstream songs I look for on Spotify is not found. That's a 99.8 success rate! As for these rare rejects (just six so far), they are mostly Canadian one-hit-wonders.

In 1971, four dudes at Ella Middle School of North York formed a band called Ethos with three guitars and drums. Only bass guitarist Peter Alexander would survive the two name-changes and cycles of roster changes over the next fifteen years which were highlighted by Canadian talent-search winnings, an EP release, contract with CBS Records and opener tours with the likes of Burton Cummings and Level 42.

In 1986 Alexander, now on keyboards and backing vocals, with his latest mates, struck the big time with hit Flippin' to the A Side on their self-titled album and a Juno Award nomination for Most Promising Group (won by Glass Tiger), and were then promptly snuffed out of existence in the wake of a Sony Music Group Takeover.

I call the playlist: Spotifried. And since you obviously can't find it on Spotify, I'll see that you can find it here. 

Anyone remember Cats Can Fly?

My friend, the Ponderer

 Just a shout-out today, to one of my fave pals, The Ponderer, and her favourite band:

Covid19 Survival Guide: Page 11

For those times when you just can't bring yourself to be productive, or to engage in a creative project: Twenty links with excellent distraction power. Don't wait. Add them to your bookmarks at once! 

http://drawing.garden/

https://alwaysjudgeabookbyitscover.com/

http://www.omfgdogs.com/#

https://www.mapcrunch.com/

https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/#

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

http://whitetrash.nl

http://www.stuffonmycat.com

http://simonpanrucker.com

http://www.omglasergunspewpewpew.com/

https://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

https://neave.com/

http://www.patience-is-a-virtue.org/

Bad Lip Reading

https://www.boredpanda.com/

https://theoatmeal.com/

https://asoftmurmur.com/

http://theonion.com

https://www.ted.com/

and finally:

https://theuselessweb.com/

... for a random useless web site.

A Fool's Gold

When I was a kid a found tennis ball was gold. It meant insurance. It meant we'd be able to play more sacred street hockey once the current ball got lost or fell apart. Yes they fell apart after awhile. Quicker if it was a newish ball when we'd obtained it and were forced to puncture it in order to tame it a little. Too much bounce was not good for a hockey ball.

But as we grew our boundaries grew and we enveloped a couple new kids who were serious tennis players and then we had all the balls we wanted and then we hit high school and grew deeper pockets and bought proper hockey balls.

A song you loved was gold. You'd wait a week before managing to catch the song on the radio when you were ready with a blank cassette tape to record a crackly version, the intro missing or dulled under a DJ's chant. These days kids grab any song they want, I guess, from the internet.

A James Bond movie was gold to a young kid. And once or twice a year City TV would host a James Bond festival. Two or three a night for a whole week! It was paradise. These days kids grab any movie they want, I suppose, from the internet. I don't know what they do for gold.

Once every couple months I would manage to scrape together eight or ten bucks plus bus fare and journey to the mall.  I might get a vinyl single or an album or, right across from the A&A was the hobby store, Leisure World. And there they had the Dungeons & Dragons campaign modules; at least a dozen to choose from at any given time. I would peruse each one at great length, just the front and back covers through the clear plastic wrappers. The art work; the synopses; titles like The Curse of Xanathon or The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh!

I collected about a dozen of these over the course of my entire childhood and adolescence. As the Dungeon Master I'd study these adventures carefully and then creatively insert them into the ongoing campaign which my friends; the players always enjoyed.

In the last three days I acquired... two hundred and forty more of these modules... and counting. All the classic modules from the eighties are now available on the internet, downloadable for free.

It's raining gold. An embarrassment of riches. I don't know what I will possibly do with them all but knowing they were out there and for free... I couldn't possibly not have them.

Gold

Help Helen Naslund, victim of abuse... and the justice system.

Christmas gifts for my Minecraft friends

Out-foxing youtube

Here are three little improvements in my life right now besides the solid health enterprise: I'm blogging fairly regularly. I'm exploring music regularly on Spotify. Music that is new to me along with dear old songs from the past that did not make it in to my personal collection as yet. And three: I'm putting a social consciousness to work much more regularly. And as a bonus the mindcrack addiction is a little more under control.

As you can see I've been folding this recipe together with useful petitions at the end of my posts. These are worthwhile movements which I have supported with an easy few clicks of a button.

The youtube links are songs which I have listened to recently on Spotify and which lyrically say at least a little about a subject at hand.

If you're following the links and getting ads then please make that stop. My method is by using Firefox browser and employing a Firefox add-on ad-blocker. If you have any trouble finding or downloading this excellent free add-on please leave a comment and I will post precise instructions! 

Shock the Monkey

Save forests and caribou

Custom noise

Another aid which is now helping me sleep on occasion, such as those in which I expect significant dog and house noise, is the delightful website mynoise.net; the Cadillac of white noise providers. 

It cites various focuses and maps each to a collection of worldly (and some other-worldly) sound environments for which high-quality sound recordings have been gathered. For instance, weather and wildlife sounds and many body-of-water effects. There are also random melodic generators.

Among the focuses are treatment for ADHD and tinnitus; aids for sleep, meditation or for focus in places too noisy or too quiet, and accompaniment for meditation or to spawn inspiration. There are even background soundscapes for roleplay gamers.

Every individual track has its volume control. With an upgrade purchase you can even control frequency. I like to open multiple environments in separate tabs and choose a variety of tracks to produce my own custom environments.

Here is an example from the I Need To Calm Down focus. Japanese Garden features such tracks as wind, stream, waterfall, birds, cicadas, windchimes, rustling bamboo leaves and a Shishi Odoshi.

This is a fun site and useful to almost anyone for at least one reason or another. I hope you check it out: https://mynoise.net/

Xanadu

Save some foxes!

There, Here & Everywhere

Hey hey, it’s T-day, ready or not. I am tired and trippy and trapped on the night shift, to be followed by much sleep I pray, so there is no putting this off. I will type a tiny tumble of text and let you get on with your day!

Today’s topic is thrown to us by the tidy, talented, talkative, tasteful, tactful and tactical; the tireless, tenacious, trustworthy and true, and a tad tubby; the thorough-thinking Thoughtful Educator, and it is:

Turtles

With tin can in hand I attended Poetry Corner. Such a fine variety of creative projects were shared, and then my turn: I held the orange-striped tin before me.

“I am going to creatively eat this entire box of turtles,” I said. The crowd seemed nonplussed. My god I think they believe me.

“Just kidding.” I popped off the lid and revealed 192 colorful cards inside; no chocolate caramel pecan funny-business. I explained the game I had invented. Here There & Everywhere it’s called. And there is a card for every Beatles song on every Beatles studio album.

Some of the cards are special: hero, place or widget cards, which reflect the nature of those special song titles. The hero cards have unique special privileges: Mean Mr. Mustard, Lovely Rita, Eleanor Rigby and Polythene Pam for instance. The widget cards have special powers: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer for instance. And the place cards (how lucky that the numbers of total cards and of place cards worked out so perfect) randomly placed, form the diamond-shaped array on which all other cards are stacked, in essence forming the game board.

Its a bit like the game of Concentration where you are turning up cards looking for the ones you want, but you win by collecting all the cards (songs) which complete one of their albums.

There are a few interesting parameters but that’s the gist of it. I would just like to find a way to make the game conclude a bit faster without changing its nature too much. The group was actually useful in making a few suggestions which I have written down for later perusal. I just might Get By With a Little Help From My Friends…

On tour

Hey-O folks. I’m getting an early jump on “O” day finally, where my organized, orderly, observant, openhearted, owlish but not overly-owlish occasional writing buddy, the Outlier, has offered this for our consideration:

Opportunity

I earlier A-to-Z’ed (that’s a verb right?) on the subject of board games and my own creative endeavors and here I shall briefly outline another category which is… unexpected opportunities:

Of the board games entirely my own conception, two have accidentally become market-relevant. I originally had no intention to sell anything. I just wanted to add to the fun within the realms of my various board gaming circles. But these games I’m working on do seem to potentially fill a gap in the commercial gaming landscape out there. Their working titles are Prestige and World Tour. They are both - how shall I say - career macro games.

In the first you build a career as a fantasy adventurer of a chosen class. You contribute to the building of a map of the realm, you place campaign sites, claim (unique) campaigns (as you collect the needed qualifications), complete them and reap the rewards, and possibly take some losses in the endeavor. It is sort of a deck-building game with resource management. You collect treasures, magic, wealth, allies, (tax-paying) followers, and a stronghold which all act as assets to avail campaigns of higher demand, risk and reward. It is Dungeons and Dragons at the extreme macro level. You win by gaining the most prestige.

The second is a little bit like… all of Rock Band in a session: You acquire creative ideas, produce songs and albums and go on tour and the cycle repeats with the stakes increasing. Producing albums generates income and fans. Fans avail greater, more-lucrative venues. Touring produces income and “ideas” or “inspiration” which you later convert into songs. Money lets you invest in larger tours. You win by hitting a target fan count. An interesting component is the way that you pass the turn marker as you begin your turn and then carry on working independently until your turn is done and the marker returns to you. You share your results, announce your next intention and then pass the torch and carry on again. This way multiple players may be engaged in their turns at once.

I feel that the first one, Prestige most definitely belongs in the market place. I’ve told a few big-time gamers about it and they seemed quite intrigued.

We’ll see.

Jingle jangle

Hey-o folks. It’s J time here at the A-to-Z and this little jewel of a topic comes from a very fine man, a bit of a jokester, a joyful and jovial Jamaican-dreadlocked white dude; a very fine judge of music and talent and a wicked musician himself; the Jazz Lion. And the deal is:

Jamming

Now I’m not a musician. I dick around on the guitar and keyboard. I’ve written a dozen songs at least. Maybe closer to twenty. They’re pretty basic usually. I’m not a performer. I’m certainly no singer. I’m good with the lyrics though.

Jamming is not really an option for me. I have zero ability to play by ear.

There were two happy occasions though. Once at the farm that Jazz Lion rented for a while; a kind of informal drop-in centre for youth like himself. He was deeply connected. Dullards my age would have called his crowd hipsters. They would not have. They were wonderful kids and too good for labels.

We brought together a fine meal one night. I had much wine and they had their own sacrament.

Lion monkeyed with his guitar tuning; got some rich India vibes happening. We played whistling water bowls and the like. It was very ethereal and atmospheric. I went for the simplest thing available: a length of chains.

I rattled them at patient intervals; only when the improvisation begged for them. The master approved. It was clear on his face.

Fine times.

There was one other, but I’ll save it for later.

An influencer and her impersonators

Hey hey A-to-Z-ers. I’m almost keeping up with things! Today’s instruction is from a very intelligent, informed, imperturbable, irreproachable (and currently impregnated) individual; my only in-law, the wife of my brother. And the idea is:

Inspiration

A new person of interest to me… (did that sound weird? I’m not investigating a murder) is Miranda Sings; the 2008 creation of then-22-year-old Colleen Ballinger, a multi-talented writer/performer who is currently touring before all-age audiences, many, if not most of whom dress up as Miranda look-alikes, but who is most-known as a youtuber with millions of followers.

The Miranda character is basically a terrible person; self-centred, delusional and talentless. Her singing is notoriously dysfunctional.

Forbes names her the 5th ranked digital influencer in the world. I only learned of her existence in 2018 seeing her guesting on Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which closed with a brief appearance of the real Colleen. I have slowly been drawn in by the humour of it, despite initially thinking it was the kind of novelty likely quick to dissipate. As of today she has become the most common contributor on my youtube playlist as I gradually explore her massive back-catalogue.

With all this influence it’s great to see that Miranda champions the most kind and socially responsible views; she just does it in some accidental intellectually ass-backwards way, in keeping with her standard comic duncery.

While she is notorious for gathering youtube and twitter comments both adoring and hating (prompting one of her main trademark expressions Haters Back Off! - the title of a two-season Netflix series), much or most of the hate mail is likely intentional baiting and meant for fun. In her semi-weekly vlog she shares her favorite fan mail (from her Mirfandas) and favourite hate mail. Getting your message chosen, regardless which category, is almost certainly any Mirfanda’s wet dream.

And speaking of wet dreams; the Miranda comedy material is a curious crossover of the traditionally-kid-friendly and traditionally-adult, and as times have changed and the internet has made superstitious over-protection of children next to impossible, it’s still a little eye-opening for me to see no apparent concern over this would-be transgression.

But Colleen has revealed that some of the early hate mail was decidedly real and severe, which prompts me to ruminate: I think that whether or not your sense of humour intersects with Colleen plays a part, certainly, in whether you’re a fan or not. But as for the deeper inclinations of love or hate, I suspect much has to do with this:

Miranda is clearly broken, and completely without empathy. And I think that her brokenness attracts people who possess much empathy, while people lacking it, are in a way threatened by her, the way that the deepest-closeted homosexuals of the previous century were so often outwardly the loudest homophobes. The game that non-empaths must play… Miranda is breaking all those rules. To some that can be infuriating, I think because it brings an unwanted mirror into play.

It does not seem that Colleen designed this paradigm. She just started mimicking annoying shallow peers, perhaps hyperbolically, and eventually on video for the benefit of her friends. And like most youtube sensations (while the corporations have not figured out how to contain the platform) her popularity just grew.

For some reason in my life, I have been deeply drawn to people with an ultimately alarming lack of empathy. And there I have generated pity and love. This has happened to me within the categories of friends, lovers, and in life-coaching relationships.

It is… hopeful to see young people so loving toward the broken Miranda, who is so easily detestable. Pragmatically though, I am inspired when I see how a simple sense of humor can reach people and open a conduit for healthy higher-order ideas.

For a couple years now I have wanted to explore youtube as a creative outlet, with comedy being the hook. Some day when I’ve taken control of my health and productivity I’m sure I will.

For now I’m taking some lessons from Colleen’s creation, and I’m ready to be called a Mirfanda.

Fiendish demons

Hey my fine feathered friends. We’re still at it over at the A to Z. And today the friendly, frugal, feminine, foofoo dog-friendly... Foreign Correspondent has forwarded the following word for us to fiddle with:

Flossing

Now it was many many years ago when I discovered the fabulous rewards of procrastination and ever since then I have continually made solid plans to one day visit a dentist again - who knows - maybe next month or definitely probably maybe next year at the outside. The biggest reward in this case is that I have not had to tolerate a masked monster or his evil minions (called hygienists) prying my mouth open and jabbing all my tenderest bits with sharp bloody instruments of torture - for years. Pretty nice really. And apparently when you’re an adult there are no police forcing you to go or fining you for not going. So yeah. Screw it.

I know I know. How could I not be all in for such an experience? Why am I not on the sidewalk in front of his office every six months just shaking with gleeful anticipation before they’ve even unlocked the door in the morning? Yeah I’m weird that way.

And another thing I haven’t had to do is mislead said monster and/or minion with regards to my flossing habits or future flossing habits or a complete and utter lack thereof. They know how to avoid the utter awkwardness around this. They wait until your face is stretched to hell and they’re rooting around in your mouth searching for the most delicate nerve within reach to gouge the hell out of when they ask you about your flossing and remind you to floss a little more often. This way the patient’s answer - whether it is “Oh yes, I love to floss and I can’t wait to get home and really have a good long session” or else, “Sorry I keep forgetting to do that. I’ll put a note in my calendar” or else “Go to hell you fiendish bloody demon. I’m going to follow you home and run your car off a cliff” it all sounds completely ambiguous. It all comes out “uiouoiyuiooaeeaeaeaiuiouoiuoaeeaeuouououogh” which they hear as “Yes Ma’am. I promise to do better.”

Now I don’t know if this is what Foreign Correspondent had in mind or if she was thinking of the “Backpack kid” who I learned about by youtube searching the word flossing:

This backpack kid is frankly amazing. For one: he has learned to survive with milk in his arteries instead of blood. (he’s pale… is what I’m saying.) And two: he devised this dance which he can perform to a 4/4 time signature though the dance - which is called flossing, I understand, has an awkward six-beat cycle, and yet appears natural and easy when he does it. He also does it SO FAST that people think it’s a sped-up video but it’s not. If my arm could move as fast as his I’d never leave the house…

(that joke works better in times of non-quarantine)

Anyway… I got up and tried the flossing dance and I’m sure I looked like a complete and utter idiot.

So yeah. The kid’s a star. Good on ya kid! Keep kicking ass.

Flossing. So there.

Dance and Trance

Today’s direction was doled out by the dear, dependable, doting, devoted… Dog Whisperer! And she has determined that the dissertation of the day shall be:

Delirium

Which is a state of confusion which I tend to dabble in thanks to regular sleep deprivation. But I’ve written about that quite enough, thanks, so how about we fudge one letter:

Delerium!

That’s better. Now, back in high school some of my pals would talk about this new Canadian band, now referred to as “industrial dance pioneers,” called Skinny Puppy. I never once looked into them which in hind sight might be a mistake. One of Skinny Puppy’s premier regular guests was Austrian-born Canadian Wilhelm Anton “Bill” Leeb who is probably most famous as the founder of group Front Line Assembly.

But Bill Leeb is also the founder and constant component of a long evolution of partnerships who passed through blended phases of industrial, trance and dance  recording projects under the commercially successful brand Delerium.

Leeb and his Delerius partners have produced fifteen albums since 1989, more than a dozen charted singles, twenty music videos and two Juno awards; the last in 2000 for single Silence with vocals by Sarah McLachlan. It charted number three in the UK and number one in both Ireland and Scotland and it’s in pretty much every conversation about best trance songs of all time along with best dance songs of all time.

Rockin’ Roddie put me on to Delerium early in the millennium and I really dig them for all the same reasons I dig Enigma. Though I’ve never been a dance music guy they have many songs I just straight-up dig, and partly for the ambient ethereal qualities which have been a regular component through the decades, to varying degrees, and which makes all their music (like Enigma) very prone to the sci-fi, fantasy and mystical moods which make these two groups constant features on almost every writing project music playlist I ever throw together. I often write to music.

Here are some great lesser-known offerings from my fave albums if you wish to sample:

Consensual Worlds from Semantic Spaces, 1994

Tectonic Shift from Nuages Du Monde, 2006

Chrysalis Effort from Music Box Opera, 2012

And of course: One of at least 60 remixes of word-wide hit Silence with vocals by Sarah McLachlan: