'...when I ran the Xanadu bar at the Majestic Hotel, Cleethorpes. Ah, that was the high water mark of my career. Suffice to say that since those halcyon days the tide has gone out rather further than I had hoped.' - Lillian Spencer (Corrie)

Christmas Eve. At work. Slightly hungover. Hungry. Want a burger. Looking forward to giving my girl her gifts. More than opening my own.

Strange, but true.

:-)

Xmas:

It was about eight or nine years ago. I was living with Tony in a one bedroom apartment downtown. I hadn't been dating Cornelia for at least six months. I gave her some CDs for Xmas. She gave Tony and I a gift. It was a Chia Pet. But not a pet. A Chia Xmas tree. What a fucking useless piece of shit present if I ever got. Utter crap. What a daft bunt she was.

Merry Xmas.

> If you wish to draw conclusions about music for which we have absolutely
> no sources because nothing about it was recorded in its time and
> thousands of years have gone by in the interim, be my guest, but don't
> expect me to believe you.

I never have - that would imply that you had reached the point of initial
comprehension of the propositions I have made.

> Why not interpret it on its own terms rather than forcing it into boxes
> of today's harmony?

If have forced nothing into any box of "today's harmony". You simply form
the most crass and stereotypical representations of what I say and then
argue with yourself with be occasionally trying to butt in to this autistic
shadow-boxing process.

> These things occur much more frequently in Bach than in any of the above.

That's very sweet and quite probably true but also absolutely irrelevant to
any proposition I originally made.

> Basing an interpretation on no data, or worse, on "extrapolated" data,
> is pure speculation.

The presence of seven-note scales fitting over triads is not "no data" and
the use of the combination of evidence, reason, perception of patterns over
time etc. is allowed in my world.

If you want to interpret musical history, get to
> know musical history.

There's not a fat lot of it to know that impacts on the fundamental
questions of interpretation.

The bulk of your interpretation has been that it
> has been striving towards triadicism all along.

Rubbish. This "triadicism" mantra is just your way of avoiding hearing
anything I have actually proposed and substituting a crass and stereotypical
version in it's place.

> The data itself
> indicates that music, as a human activity, has long existed with no sense
> of incompleteness or imperfection from the lack of triads.

Pure speculation on people's sense of completeness/incompleteness and
perfection/imperfection with regard to the music of long-dead people's own
time.

Adding triadic
> accompaniment to the bulk of musics of the world is simply ruinous.

This is your hobby - not anything I've ever proposed nor having any bearing
on it.

> I don't care how exceptional you think the numbers LOOK. LISTEN to
> them. Play some of your favorite music on a keyboard in Pythagorian
> tuning. Form an opinion of the sound from hearing it.

If I did - it would not settle any question I have nor contradict anything I
have proposed. It would settle your argument with yourself (between your
beliefs and your crass misrepresentation of mine).

> The harmony in Perotin is extremely explicit. And in this harmony the
> major and minor triads are restless connective sounds.

Likewise.

> It directly addresses your claim that some composers "couldn't cope" with
> later harmonies unless sufficiently well-paid. The history of music
> shows us a very different picture.

Since I have never claimed either that some composers "couldn't cope" with
later harmonies nor that it had anything to do with *their* being
sufficiently well-paid or otherwise you are arguing with yourself about God
knows what again.

> >YES - absolutely. This is the crux of every other detail. The history shows
> >this absolutely clearly.
>
> Actually it doesn't---though you can ruin lots of monophonic music by
> supplying triads.

I have never suggested doing this. You've gone autistic again.

> And where harmony does show up, it shows up for long
> periods of time (e.g. 1000 years) without the fashion for triads.
> Triads are a fashion.

More autism bearing no relation to my propositions but anyway it's absurd to
designate something which has stuck since it's arrival a "fashion". I'll
take that seriously when I see them pass.

> >> my suggestion that you get your ear around a wider variety of music
> >I'd suggest that you learn to cope with the presence in the world of people
> >who interpret the same raw materials differently. I have already laid out
> >the explanation once on this newsgroup and there was not one person capable
> >of comprehending it. They neither said "this is great" nor (as with Kevin
> >Dean) "this is rubbish" only "why don't you get a website and spoonfeed us
> >with diagrams". None of them had the slightest inclination to take a brief
> >holiday from what they considered "the known" to look at music a different
> >way - you included.
>
> Ah, if it all comes down to your persecution complex, then ta ta.

Christ knows how you manage to read "persecution complex" in the above which
explicitly states the opposite.

> Good luck.
> There's nothing preventing you from adding triads to trouvere songs,
> shakuhachi solos, Gregorian chant, Torah trop, etc. Lots of us do it all
> the time. But we recognize that we're making a new art.

Why the hell I would want to do that is a mystery to me since it bears no
relation to anything I've said but I'm glad you've won the argument with
your version of me and settled the question of whether or not it's a "new"
art. Congratulations. May you have many future triumphant victories over
your crass and uncomprehending representations of other people's
propositions.

Last night I saw Peter Gabriel perform live.

Fucking incredible.

He ran in circles, road a bike, walked upside down and sped around in a giant hamster ball.

Tony on bass, Rhodes on guitar and his daughter on backup vocals.

Played old and new songs.

Loved it.

but....

Why do people need to draw attention to themselves? Everyone there paid $111 to pay attention to Peter. So why do you need to scream, yell, whistle, dance or have long and involved converstations behind me? Is it sitting in the dark without someone listening to you for more than 5 minutes? Why do you need some of that attention turned to you? Is it a competition? If your mouth stops moving does your brain start working?

Why?

Peter kicked ass. That old man can rock.

Tammy: Ugh. Grow up. Kurt, I'll be waiting at my mom's house.

Kurt: Oh, crap. I just realized I never got my mom anything for mother's day!

John: You know what I got mine? A big box of "I didn't kill you again this year."

Q. How evil would you say you are?

A. Oh, I'm evil times five. If evil were nickels, I'd have a quarter. I'm like Hitler, only moreso.

Q. So, how would you compare your evil to, say, Garth Brooks?

A. I'm about half as evil as he is.

Q. Wow.



A. Yeah. Like I said, I'm pretty evil.

According to Erin, disabled people are not interested in pity fucks.

feh.

Tony & Cat Piss

Never believe a word I say.

It's so much easier to just not care at all.

Or, as Debbie was doing on her way out the door to work today, just sing old 80s tunes by ABC.

And smile....

When my friend Doug moved his girlfriend Linda and her family into a new house with him, something bizarre happened.

The dishwasher was still full of dirty dishes.

The washer still had a load of wet clothes.

We were able to convince them to empty the fridge.

I swear they wanted us to move the beds with them still sleeping in them.

In the late 80s I was going to school in Moose Jaw to become a Computer Technologist. I would steal toiletpaper and lightbulbs from the school to save money. So that money could be spent on more important things. Like booze and drugs. And my Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard.

Ah....the salad days.

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.

But I've learned that some stink a lot more than others.

So I just came back from Cuba. One full week in Cuba at a all-inclusive resort. Great beaches, warm water, big waves, nice people (but dirt poor), good cigars, shitty food. Did I mention the shitty food?

REMIND ME NEVER TO GO ON A ALL-INCLUSIVE AGAIN!

But about the music. Just because you are known for your latin rhythms doesn't mean that they have to be used in every piece of music ever does it? And I mean everything single thing that I heard had the same sound. Even the new hip stuff being shown on MTV-Latina, which actually plays music videos strangely enough. But one song that got played at poolside everyside has lyrics as follows:

Why don't you come, come, come, come?
Why don't you come inside of me?
I want to you come.
Come, come, come inside.
Then we will come.
When you come inside of me.

I'm not sure what it means. Those crazy Cubans.

"This world would be a lot better off if everyone was as smart as I are." -Tony O.

I stole this from everything2.com:

Dissed by a Five Year-Old


There was a fateful night one time when my best friends, Colin and Randy, were playing Illuminati with me, while Colin's son, Gabe (the same one from A Child's View of the Army) was watching The Tigger Movie. Times were hard then, I had been out of work for about 3 months, and my love life was non-existant. As is the usual custom of our games, Colin and Randy would gang up on me and I would act dejected and depressed (it wasn't a far stretch, actually). I began speaking in the Eeyore voice.

"Okay, with Randy's megabucks and my CIA, I successfully take Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow from you." Colin would proclaim cheerfully.

"Thank's for noticin' me..." I'd say in that gravelly depressed sounding voice.

Now Gabe is very adamant when it comes to certain things. One of which is that when a movie is on, you're not supposed to talk. Much less, you're not supposed to talk like one of the main characters. So he turned around and shushed me.

"What'd I do?" I said.

"You're not supposed to talk like Eeyore during the Tigger Movie!" he exclaimed angrily.

"Why not?" I said, still in Eeyore-voice. This made Gabe furious, he repeated his demand several times. It was fun watching the little tyke get so riled up about something so trivial.

My mistake. To a five year-old, nothing is trivial. He finally stood up and turned around to face me, fists clenched so tight the knuckles looked like they were glowing. You could see his battle aura building up. He screwed his face up into a scowl and pointed, shouting...

"You've got no kids, no wife, no job, and you're not in The Tigger Movie!!!

I just stood there, agape. Randy burst out laughing so hard he cried. I just looked at the floor flushed with humiliation. Colin tried valiantly to keep a straight face, but all he could manage to say was "Gabe!" before cracking up.

Randy paused only long enough to shout "Oh man, you were totally dissed by a five year-old!" then collapsed into giggle-fits before adding "...even I'm in the Tigger Movie!" which, incidently, he wasn't... but then he had a job.

It was the ultimate insult. It was bad enough to be one of the only unmarried bachelors left in my group of friends. I didn't mind so much about not having kids. The job part hurt. But adding insult to injury, I was not in the Tigger Movie.

His precious silence regained, broken only by the occasional gasp of air by Randy, Gabe resumed watching his movie. Colin and I stared at the floor for a while and eventually put up the game. Yes, my friends, a five year-old child managed to come up with the most debasing insult I have ever had in my life.

It is my sincerest hope that the child someday uses his powers for good.

Today is my birthday. And I know a little bit more about whether I'm back in the music biz. But it's like reading a magic 8-ball. So I'll wait and see.

Nov 4th 1993, almost 10 years ago, I sat in front of a 486 with 4 phone lines and turned on the Nettwerk BBS for the first time. Terry, Ric, Marc, Ralph and everyone was there to see what would happen. And some kid from New York called in, he had been trying for 3 days already. Everyone was so excited, we did a online chat with him till his parents sent him to bed. It was the beginning of a new age and a new career for me. The label was just a ragtag bunch then. It was fun. I never told anyone it was my birthday.

On another birthday a few years before my buddies had all come to Saskatoon to celebrate with me. It was a cold wintery day and we all were taking the city bus downtown to buy beer. I realized at the bus stop that I had forgotten my wallet. I ran back to my apartment (which had a shower and toilet in a closet behind the fridge) and then ran back to the bus stop. Only to see my friends waving at me from the bus as it pulled away. I was pissed.

Then a cab pulls up and the cabbie yells at me to get in the car. I tell him I can't afford a cab. He says get in anyway and we proceed to chase down the bus and he pulls in front of the bus to force it off the road. I thank him for the ride and tell him it's my birthday and he's earned some great karma. I get on the bus, pay my fare and say to the bus driver "Don't do that again".

As I had suspected. Nothing. More waiting. More meetings without me about me and more paperwork and more waiting.

The hour late conference call lasted 3 minutes.

To find out I still know nothing.

wait, wait, wait.

Sitting here at 2:17pm waiting for a conference call that was supposed to be at 1:30pm. Waiting to see what I will be told. Waiting to see if I'm going to be working in the music biz again.

Or is it back to washing dishes for this cowboy?

Time will tell.

wait, wait, wait, wait....

My first big TV interview was before the days of this wonderous thing called the Internet. Back then we were the first record company to make a real go at using computers to communicate with our fan base. And being that the Internet hadn't really hit yet, we set up a BBS. For those of you born before Star Wars, a BBS is a bulletin board system. Basically a message board hosted on a little 486 with a dozen dedicated modems and phone lines that people dialed in on. It was strictly text based, expect for the wacky colour ASCII graphics that Ralph and I used to create the menus. People posted messages discussing their fave bands and you could download discographies and GIFs of album covers. We even hosted an online chat with Sarah, which was a first as well. That reminds me, a lot of the stuff of the BBS made it into the court case dealing with Sarah's stalker Ewe (sp?). I even got mentioned in the tell-all unauthorized biography because of it.

But anyways, so Muchmusic sent this guy Dennis (who later hosted the movie nite on Space channel along with a guy with a turtle shell glued to his forehead) to interview us about our amazing use of technology. And wouldn't you know it, the night before we are robbed of every computer in the building. The VP Ric even walked in on them as they were loading up a truck. He blocked the driveway with his jeep and they drove away through the flowerbed. Ric's home was robbed day's later. This time he, I and Ralph walked in on them.

So I spent the next 12 hours frantically creating a fake working mockup of the BBS on a old 8088 notebook that had 64K RAM and an 8Mb hard drive. It worked perfectly. He never even noticed and I pulled the interview off flawlessly.

It was never broadcast and I never saw it.

But regardless, to this day, any work I've done since can be quickly replicated on an 8088 notebook computer that I bought for $50 in 1990.

No kidding.