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Selling CDs

Look at all these awesome CDs I’m selling for $5 each. Who wants?

Bad Religion – Process of Belief
Bjork – TelegramSTEWIE
Cake – Fashion Nugget
Atom and His Package – A Society of People Named Elihu
Carter Burwell – Hudsucker Proxy sndtrk MJACKSON
– Raising Arizona/Blood Simple sndtrk
– Gods & MonstersMJACKSON
– Fargo/Barton Fink
Frank Black – Frank Black
– Teenager of the YearMBECK
CKY – Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild
Beck – Mellow Gold
Big Black – Songs About Fucking
– Hammer Party WARREN
– Rich Man’s 8-Track Tape
Brazil sndtrkAARON
Crystal Method – Vegas
Failure – Fantastic Planet
L7 – Beauty ProcessMJACKSON
– Hungry for Stink
Millencolin – Pennybridge Pioneers
Foofighters – Colour and the Shape
Filter – Short Bus
– Title of Record
Kraftwerk – Man MachineMJACKSON
KMFDM – Angst
Man or Astroman? – Project Infinity
Nirvana – In Utero
Sepultura – Roots
Simpsons – Go Simpsonic (music from tv series)
– Songs in the Key of Springfield (music from tv series)
Strokes – Is This It
Sebadoh – bakesale
– Bubble & Scrape
Royal Grand Prix – High Performance
Radiohead – Pablo HoneyMBECK
Puddy – Sweet stuff
Pavement – wowee zowee
– Crooked Rain Crooked Rain
Pennywise – Full Circle
– About Time
Veruca Salt – American Thighs
Transam – Futureworld
Tool – AenimaGEOFF
– Undertow
The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving
Ween – Painting the Town Brown
Jane’s Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual
Star Wars Phantom Menace sndtrkADRIAN
John Williams – Star Wars TrilogyADRIAN
Glenn Miller – Pure Gold
Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited plays Lost TV Themes
Space Age Pop Stereo Action Dimension vol 3
London Punkharmonic Orchestra – Symphony of Destruction
Simon & Garfunkle’s Greatest HitsMBECK
Khachaturian MBECK
Wagner – The RingGEOFF

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This is what I have to listen to at work

BLACK EYED PEAS LYRICS

“My Humps”

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely little lumps. (Check it out)

I drive these brothers crazy,
I do it on the daily,
They treat me really nicely,
They buy me all these ice-ys.
Dolce & Gabbana,
Fendi and then Donna
Karan, they be sharin’
All their money got me wearin’ fly
But I ain’t askin,
They say they love my ass ‘n,
Seven Jeans, True Religion’s,
I say no, but they keep givin’
So I keep on takin’
And no I ain’t taken
We can keep on datin’
I keep on demonstrating.

My love, my love, my love, my love
You love my lady lumps,
My hump, my hump, my hump,
My humps they got u,
She’s got me spending.
(Oh) Spendin’ all your money on me and spending time on me.
She’s got me spendin’.
(Oh) Spendin’ all your money on me, up on me, on me

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What u gon’ do with all that ass?
All that ass inside them jeans?
I’m a make, make, make, make you scream
Make u scream, make you scream.
Cos of my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps. (Check it out)

I met a girl down at the disco.
She said hey, hey, hey yea let’s go.
I could be your baby, you can be my honey
Lets spend time not money.
I mix your milk wit my cocoa puff,
Milky, milky cocoa,
Mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky riiiiiiight.

They say I’m really sexy,
The boys they wanna sex me.
They always standing next to me,
Always dancing next to me,
Tryin’ a feel my hump, hump.
Lookin’ at my lump, lump.
U can look but you can’t touch it,
If you touch it I’ma start some drama,
You don’t want no drama,
No, no drama, no, no, no, no drama
So don’t pull on my hand boy,
You ain’t my man, boy,
I’m just tryn’a dance boy,
And move my hump.

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps [x3]
In the back and in the front.
My lovin’ got u,
She’s got me spendin’.
(Oh) Spendin’ all your money on me and spending time on me.
She’s got me spendin’.
(Oh) Spendin’ all your money on me, up on me, on me.

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What you gon’ do with all that ass?
All that ass inside them jeans?
I’ma make, make, make, make you scream
Make you scream, make you scream.
What you gon do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off this hump.
What you gon’ do wit all that breast?
All that breast inside that shirt?
I’ma make, make, make, make you work
Make you work, work, make you work.
She’s got me spendin’.
Spendin all your money on me and spendin’ time on me
She’s got me spendin’.
Spendin’ all your money on me, up on me, on me.

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The Veil

Ring ring! Friday night I was about to draw superheroes. But Mike Jackson called and said “help us with our Lovecraftian movie for the 48 Hour Horror Film Fest!” or words to that effect. So I went and met them at the Vineyard and helped them out of their writing slump. I think we got a pretty cool little story, that mixes parts of From Beyond with Dreams in the Witch House and a touch of Dunwich Horror. They called it “The Veil” and I also played the role of psychiatrist, which was fun (and short). The time limit for the festival is 6 minutes, but we discussed doing a longer “director’s cut” to submit to the HPL Film Fest next year. There were even real octopus tentacles. Nice ones too. I stayed to help for most of the day. Everyone was very nice but sometimes I wish people would realize that there is a time for telling stories and a time to shut up and film a scene. It was great to work with Sam and Mike again. For Taylor’s benefit, I’ll mention that I am now 2 degrees of separation from Whoopie Goldberg and C. Thomas Howell.

On Sunday the plan was originally to have Rose drive me in to Chilliwack for noon for costume fittings with the band, then practice for a couple hours and take the Greyhound back for D&D. However she had to change that, so instead I took the bus in and was to get a ride back with her at around 3:30. I got to the bus depot 45 minutes early in the morning, so I boarded an earlier bus that would get me there at 11:35 (I anticipated getting there at 11:45). The bus ended up being packed at Langley so that there were actually standees, and arrived in Chilliwack at noon. But we practiced and worked on new material. We expected Rose at 3:00 but she didn’t arrive until almost 5pm due to a traffic incident. The new costume (prototype) looks great, by the way, though it was ill-fitting. Lots of time for adjustments though. It had Jordan and Mario giggling like school girls.

So Rose dropped me off in Chinatown at around 6:15 and luckily I wasn’t late for D&D, though I didn’t have time to grab a pineapple (well I probably did but I didn’t think I did at the time). It was Kelly’s birthday so we had delicious choco-ginger cake and I had a lovely chicken dinner. We played D&D and my character Sunshine did some good killing. It ran quite late much to Michelle’s dismay, but our hours of planning paid off in the end. Paul decided that it took only two combat rounds to take a pee, which the rest of us contested. I think all characters should roll for bladder size.

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It's Impossible to Discuss the Subject Without a Common Frame of Reference

Our show on the weekend went well. We made some money. I sold some CDs. In between the time I arrived in Chilliwack and the show began I had a couple hours to kill, so I spent a lot of time at the Save-On-Foods ogling the bulk section. I bumped into Amber and she told me about the Rotary Book Sale the next morning. While I was actually looking at The Book Man window some tall lanky guy came up to me offered me a pamphlet which I refused and he said “Question for you: do you know where you’re going when you die?” There were a lot of things I could have said, “Yes, the cold cold ground; No and neither do you; It doesn’t matter because I’ll be dead.” What I did say was “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All the people in Hell do.”

I turned away from him and he walked off. First off, I hate being talked to by strangers on the street. About pretty much anything. I don’t want to be asked for spare change. I don’t want to be wished a nice day. I don’t want to be asked to join Greenpeace (I’m already a member). And I certainly don’t want to engage in religious or philosophical discussions. But even if I did want to talk to strangers, why would I want to hear your zany fairy tales any more than you would want to hear mine? If you’re not the kind of guy who, like me, believes in only what can be proved, what is the basis of Christianity besides a) taking everything you read in a book written by a host of dead guys from HUNDREDS of years ago who have no reliable references and b) hearing voices in your head, which if they weren’t the status quo would get you locked away so you couldn’t interact with society?

Yeah, so there’s this huge white guy with a beard who created the human race in HIS own image (except for women which make up more than half of the species and non-caucasians which make up like 95% of the species) because it’s such an awesome design what with the back pain and the hemorrhoids, and he lives up in the clouds with his swan-winged buddies and then one day one of the swan-winged guys shows some independent thought and he gets turned into a bat-winged guy and he gets his own realm that’s constantly on fire and if any of the human race don’t follow the white guy’s rules they’ll be tortured for all eternity. Oh yeah, and every human has an invisible, intangible version of himself which lives forever, but not animals because people are inherently superior to dogs and cats and blue whales and amoeba and even the planet that sustains them was only created by the Big White Guy for the humans to carve up like a roast. And you can pretty much be as much an asshole as you want as long as you give 10% of your wages to the head spokesman for the Big White Guy and only worship him and don’t commit suicide and on your death bed ask for the forgiveness of his kid who had magical powers.

OR

The universe was created when The Great Space Hedgehog sharted out a big rainbow and all the poop particles became the celestial bodies. The stars came from his dinner of a Red Hot Burrito and the planets came from undigested carroway seeds. The Holy Roundworm came with them and created all life on the planet Earth by sloughing off its molted skin. He gave his one species, humankind, intelligence by giving them a big old sly WINK! And then he went on the internet (just like the internet of today but much bigger and, like, totally 1000 years old, and with less popups) and downloaded a program to randomize how long everything lives. And when a person dies his left patella absorbs all the memories and feelings from his entire life and flies to the center of Neptune and there takes one of two forms: If you’ve said “yup” more than 4000 times you become a robot which will live on the bright side of the roundworm where everyone reads Time Magazine; If you’ve said “yup” less than 4000 times you become a mummy on the dark side of the worm and read Maclean’s. If you’ve said “yup” exactly 4000 times you become a bowl of tiger stripe ice cream.

Now how is one of those mythologies any more or less arbitrary and ridiculous than the other?

Anyway, back to my story. There were some people at the show who I recognized but, naturally, couldn’t remember their names. But that’s okay. So after the show I went back to Chris Woods’ and we played some Godzilla: Save the Earth on his XBox and then I became sleepy. In the morning we went to the Rotary Book Sale and I bought a book on weird insects, a photo book of birds, a huge National Geographic photo book of everything, a book called What’s What which is kind of a “How Everything Works” kind of book with illustrations, a photo book on elephants and other large animals, and a book on the atomic structure of matter — all for $12. Then we had breakfast at the Airport Cafe and I had the pie recommended as the healthiest – pumpkin. It was damn yummy.

Afterwards we rented a video game called Republic Commando which was pretty good for a first person shooter, but we couldn’t figure out how to be on the same team. Finally we went to see Magnificent Desolation which is a 3D Imax film. It was so-so. Too much filler and not enough tech talk. It didn’t really need to be in 3D, but that said – the 3D was amazing. We saw a trailer for some 3D undersea documentary and if I don’t go see that I think I’ll die.

After that Chris drove me home and we watched some DVDs here with Stewie and Darcey. Lots of fun but I couldn’t stay up too late as I had to work on Monday.

It looks like I’m going to be doing some more web design in the near future. Can anyone recommend a good online store service? You know, the “add item to shopping cart” deal and something that can take credit cards securely. Etc. Any advice on that would be appreciated.

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Thickets at the ANZA Club

Well the Thickets played at the ANZA Club last night and the question on everyone’s lips is, what is with the band lineup? And my answer was “yeah, what is with that?” I learned that Shane called Mario to say that he’s not going to play bass for us after all. So we decided that Merrick needs to step up to plate. He wasn’t in love with the idea but I think he can do it and that it will be good for the band. Also: what choice do we have?

Anyway, we played better than I thought we would have, and Jordan said that he played the best he’s played in years. So if you missed it, you missed it. But you’ll have another chance at the Pit Pub on the 29th. We tried out a new song and it went alright. We saw some old old fans – even a guy who played drums for us in the early 90’s happened by – and we got some new ones I think. CD sales were great and after the show some guy got the band to sign the wings of his Goth Cthulhu doll.

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One Year of Torlo!

Yesterday was the one year anniversary for Marlo and me. We didn’t do anything special, and we didn’t even see each other, but we did talk on the teliophone, and Marlo sang me a little song on my answering machine. I knew it was an anniversary but I didn’t know if it was 11 months or what! So isn’t that exciting!

My birthday auction is going to be on the 17th of this month. I took a poll and the most amount of people were available on that day. Sorry everyone who can’t make it!

I went out to Chilliwack tonight for band practice. It was at 6pm but I thought it was at 7. Even so, I didn’t get there until 7:23 because of the traffic. Now I know there is no way to get to Chilliwack before 7pm on a weekday even if I do get off work 40 minutes early.
But we arranged another song, more or less finalized. This one’s called The Makening. We also tried out a new bass player. He’s very talkative and he’s an old acquaintance from Chilliwack named Carry. He didn’t get there until about 8 which left us with about 20 minutes for Jordan so that was a little disappointing but not too much, since we did spend the time before that writing.

We, the Thickets, officially have a show at the ANZA club on the 5th of October. Tell your friends! Tell EVERYONE!

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Weekend Update

Last Sunday Torlo went out to Chilliwack again to visit the Woodses and to eat pie. Also we had a band practice and we worked out the final arrangement for one of the five songs we’ve been working on. We decided that, if we can’t find a suitable/reliable bass player, that Merrick will have a set of songs memorized that we can fall back on.

Stewie came back from PAX and reported. I’m obviously annoyed that we didn’t go, but with cross-border gigs there’s just so many things that can go wrong, it didn’t surprise me. We had a long chat (Stewie & I) and we decided that the Thickets needs a manager who can make all the arrangements that I myself am not very good at, despite my efforts. Things like getting t-shirts, stickers & CDs made and shipped down prior to the engagement; things like negotiating payment, lodging, food, etc. We need a Winston from Broken Roses to print out our damn maps. So the next step is a band meeting on Wednesday and an inquiry to the management side of Divine Industries.

By this time next year I hope we have a new CD out.

I’ve got a blister on my toe from my day job! It’s poopy.

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I was in the ocean

We were supposed to have a band practice today, in preparation for the big PAX show, but Mario cancelled it. Since I work Monday to Wednesday, this was to be one of those not-so-common opportunities to get into Chilliwack for band practice. His requirements to play the show was to have three practices before the show, and that reality has just been clotheslined, if he meant for the singer to be at the practices.

However, that means that I’ve saved a minimum of 6 hours out of the day and just under $30. Now I can have the time to get lunchables for my work week and go to the post office, which I have just done. I also took in some garage sales, with some awesome finds, including:

Two glue guns and a bunch of glue sticks: $2
Expired film (6 rolls): $2
A Star Wars Jabba’s Palace action figure mold (for play-dough, fimo, etc) with Tusken Raider, Bib Fortuna and Gamorrean Guard: 50 cents
Another mold with a treasure pile, giant gem, and suchlike (not SW related): 50 cents

Total score: $5

Yesterday I went for a long bike ride with Marlo and Larissa, and we ended up at Kits Beach where there were way too many people and not enough sea life. But it was very choppy and the waves were high and it was very fun, if cold. I haven’t swam in the ocean around these parts. In fact I can’t remember the last time I swam in the ocean at all. We even saw a seal swimming with the other swimmers. No killer whales this time.

Then we came back to my place and watched The Poseidon Adventure with Stewie, Taylor and Darcey. That was fun even though the movie was stupid.

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In the words of Warren…

“What is with this band?”

One of my pet peeves is unreliability.
If you cannot commit to something, say that you can’t commit – that you’re unsure – that you can’t do it. Don’t say that you can.
Once you make a commitment – you make a commitment.
Barring emergency.
Looks like we’re not going to the Penny Arcade Expo.

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I don't really care about CanCon…

I don’t really care about CanCon, but American commercials upset me just slightly more than non-American ones, so there you have it. Plus I’m a SOCAN member so I stand, in theory, to get more royalties if the Thickets music gets used somehow somewhere.

As a result of recent CRTC decisions, two U.S. satellite radio companies, fronted by Canadians, will soon be flooding Canada with American programs – only 10% of the channels are required to be Canadian. Years of effort to build Canadian programming and artists, especially Canadian music, are at risk.

SOCAN, along with more than 20 other national creator, cultural and labour organizations, has joined hands with Friends of Canadian Broadcasting to petition the federal cabinet to set aside the two satellite pay radio decisions, and to propose a made-in-Canada solution. This coalition believes that the CRTC’s decisions, if allowed to stand, will set a dangerous precedent and create a slippery slope for the future of Canadian content on radio and television – and new broadcast technologies.

If you support this action, you can help defend Canadian content by sending a message to Prime Minister Paul Martin now, urging him to set aside the CRTC’s satellite radio decisions and to instruct the CRTC to find a Canadian approach to satellite radio.

To send a message, click on the link below or copy-and-paste into your browser:

http://friends.ca/payradio-socan-g5mt2

For more information, go to www.friends.ca

SOCAN is also aligned with nine other Quebec-based artist, composer and cultural organizations to similarly request that the Privy Council reverse the CRTC’s decisions. For more information, click on the link below or copy-and-paste into your browser:

Click to access press_release.pdf