A Pale Graduate

knee deep in hell

2006-12-08T11:04:00.000-05:00

I never would have thought i'd be defending my work this early. I was expecting at least april, if i was lucky. I watched others defend in april 2006 and thought to myself, wow, that'll be me a year from now. Yeah my ass.

the good thing about the work itself is that it's pretty substantial. I'm not just "bla blaing" through it, as my advisor put it, but there's real, usable content in there. Which i suppose will make the two years worth it.

Frank says i should blog more, but who wants to hear the bitter ranting of another grad student.

I found out some good news recently though, that the beloved legendary indie-rock god/like band CHAVEZ is touring again after 10 years. The decision must have come after a box set encompassing most of their work was recently released to high acclaim in the uber-indie critic world circle.

Also, i don't really care what everyone thinks about the Silversun Pickups, but it's great gym music. It's comfortable music for me, and that's good enough right now while my fat ass is peddling on the stationary bike for an hour a day.

Another half-dream came true too when i saw Cat Power in montreal a couple of weeks ago. Mostly it made me interested in finding out what she was going to do next. But until then, i've got Neko Case to keep me obsessed about chicks who play guitar.

current top 10 on my list:

"Tomorrow" - James (Whiplash)

"Well Thought Out Twinkles" - Silversun Pickups - (Carnavas)

"Long Hard Road Out Of Hell" - Marilyn Manson - (Lest We Forget: The Best Of)

"Aliens Exist" - Blink-182 - (Enema Of The State)

"Pretty Girls" - Neko Case - (Fox Confessor Brings The Flood)

"At The Hundredth Meridian" - The Tragically Hip - (Fully Completely)

"Are You Qualified" - Lazyboy - (Lazyboy TV)

"Let Men Burn Stars" - M83 - (Before The Dawn Heals Us)

"Moonage Daydream" - David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars)

"Objects In The Rear View Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear" - Meatloaf - (Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell)

The rotation on my ipod is pretty static recently, as it has been for the last year.

I guess i just don't have the energy to be pretentious anymore.

The Cunted Circus (An Arabian Nightmare)

2006-10-09T23:25:00.000-04:00

After 10 years, 6 LP's and 2 live albums, one of my quintessential favorites threw in the towel. Earlier this year, Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat released "The Last Romance" and shortly thereafter called it quits under the Arab Strap moniker.

Who knows what they'll do next, and there's a good chance I won't follow any of it.

Here's my top five fave tunes of the last decade and why (chronologically):

1. Deeper from The Week Never Starts Around Here:

My early favorite. Mostly spoken word with an acoustic and some drums, most of the song is a fragmented narrative with instrumental passages. One of the most sexually charged songs i've ever heard, and what an ending. Punches you right in the gut.

2. New Birds (live) from Mad For Sadness:

I like the live version better. I don't know it's just so much damn darker and visceral and once Malcolm starts rocking out towards the end, i'm in another place. The drunken sprawl of the narrative about the ex-girlfriend you haven't seen in years and suddenly she's there, in front of you with her arms out, waiting for you. And of course you refuse. Bring on the distortion.

3. Fucking Little Bastards from Monday At The Hug And Pint:

When I first moved out from residence and into my own apartment right outside of campus, I never realized how late I worked. The dorms were essentially attached to the lab, so whether it was 6pm or 2am, everything essentially looked the same, bored and broke undergrads hanging out and getting high in pyjamas, fluorescent lights buzzing incessantly and clean, well lit campus trails. But only when november and december starting creeping around in that third year did i realize that the York campus is an extremely quiet, desolate and large place with many creepy corners. Walking home alone, the only way to suppress the fear of the unknown was to turn up the tunes louder than ever and hope no one hopped out from behind a tree to steal my shit and eat the leftovers from my dinner.

4. Afterwards (live) from Mad For Sadness:

Once again, live is better. Maybe it's the full sound thing, maybe it's Aidan Moffat bitching about a one night stand after 4 pints on stage. Plus, it's the last song. So it's about right where you realize you have to press the play button again.

5. Girls Of Summer (live) from Mad For Sadness:

I recently found out that this song is from an early EP from back in '97. Even after i heard that version, it never surpassed the live version. Spouting rhetoric about getting drunk in the summertime watching chicks go by in short skirts. All the while, the guitar is screeching away in the background and the drums kick shit in your face while you try and flag down the waitress for another pint. Then it all slows down for 4 minutes of jamming that builds until the whole thing crashes down as Aidan describes the next morning where he (and us) is about to do it all over again. Fucking transcendent.

So yeah, check it out.

Oh right, top 10 (well 11):

David Bowie - The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars

Seriously, i've been freaking out over this album for at least a month and a half.

tick, tick, the noise in my head

2006-09-01T21:21:00.000-04:00

So it's official. I'm defending my research in december. OH. MY. GOD. * spastic freak out*

So this essentially means tons of music and time alone justifying 20000$ of funding for my research already spent.

Oh, and Sleater-Kinney, (pronounced SLAYter-KENney) called it quits after a decade of angry vagina music.

Words And Guitar:

Do What You Have To Do - Sarah McLaughlin (Surfacing)

Teardrop - Massive Attack ( Mezzanine) - sidenote: addicted to "House". As you should be.

Angel - Sarah McLaughlin (Surfacing)

Hey Now Now - The Cloud Room (Cloud Room)

Little Mouth - Sleater-Kinney (Call The Doctor)

Haemoglobin - Placebo (Black Market Music)

Knot (Live) - 7 Year Bitch - Hype!

Everything Means Nothing To Me - Elliott Smith (Figure 8)

Tumble In The Rough - Stone Temple Pilots (Tiny Music...From The Vatican Gift Shop)

Butts Wigglin - Tragically Hip (Brain Candy OST)

This month in phil's ipod looks like a thorough re-evaluation of the entire Sleater-Kinney catalogue.

What are you rocking out too?, i'm the only one putting out here.

Research in July

2006-08-10T13:25:00.000-04:00

With summer kicking me in the face, i've been working from home on my brand spanking new macbook. Sitting on the balcony, rocking the shit out of tunes coming from my tiny speakers, i've realized that I will probably never go back to the lab. I'm ok with that. I'm too pale anyways.

The Funeral - Band Of Horses (Everything All The Time)

Insistor - Tapes 'n' Tapes (The Loon)

Country Mile - Camera Obscura (Let's Get Out Of This Country)

Hate To Feel - Alice In Chains (Dirt)

Haemoglobin - Placebo (Black Market Music)

I Gave You - Bonnie "Prince" Billy/Matt Sweeney (Superwolf)

Skink - Sonic Youth (Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star)

The Oscillator's Hum - Frog Eyes (The Folded Palm)

Like Herod - Mogwai (Young Team)

Did I Step On Your Trumpet - Danielson (Ships)

Month of Mike

2006-07-07T16:09:00.000-04:00

Most of what i've been listening too this month is from Mike. Mostly because Frank has cut me off from tunes because he's too busy (or so he says). He's working a lot(which i think is because he's trying to hide the fact that he has no friends), or he's being a bitch.

Anyhoo, onward christians!:

Would - Alice In Chains (Unplugged)

That Teenage Feeling - Neko Case (Fox Confessor Brings The Flood)

And It Rained All Night - Thom Yorke (The Eraser)

Pictures Of A Night Scene - Pretty Girls Make Graves (Élan Vital)

The Empty Threats Of Little Lord - Sunset Rubdown (Shut Up I Am Dreaming)

Intimate Secretary - The Raconteurs (Broken Boy Soldiers)

Playhouses - TV On The Radio (Return To Cookie Mountain [leaked])

Happiness - Elliott Smith (Figure 8)

Hold On, Hold On - Neko Case (Fox Confessor Brings The Flood)

Pyrite Pedestal - Pretty Girls Make Graves (Élan Vital)

Neko Case is wicked. Not PJ Harvey/Cat Power goddess stature though (yet). Check it out.

Almost a year later (part deux et demi)

2006-06-01T11:40:00.000-04:00

Another milestone has been living alone. My conclusion is that everyone should try it once, but don't get attached to it. Especially in a new city. Living alone means you have to accept a couple of things.

One.

Yes, you will start talking to yourself. Now I can't say it's completely natural, but it is therapeutic. It's more frequent on weekends than during the work week. The major cause is that the voices in your head get loud. You might say it's schizophrenic, but you do it too, only it isn't as obvious because you block it out by bitching at your roommates or partner.

Second.

You're a messy pig. All that hair in the bathroom? Yeah all you. The dirty dishes in the sink, rotting veggies in the fridge, the gross smell coming from the garbage. You. The "love juice" on the keyboard. Yeah, that's yours too. And all of it is a bitch to clean up. It's even more disheartening when no one comes to your place anyways, so you're just cleaning it up to make a new mess.

But you're living alone. Ain't it grand?

Walk around naked in your apartment whenever you want, listen to any music you please, have sex as loud as you want anywhere for as long as you want, keep the door open while you shower so you can rock out. No one breaks any of your shit, when you clean up, you don't find any surprises in the kitchen when you get home like a new pile of dishes that no one claims responsibility for. You can sleep at all hours of the day, and live in complete solitude when you're about to rip out the jugular of anyone that gets in your way. You answer to no one.

It should go in this order. Live with parents, live with roommates, live alone and then live with significant other.

And if things go wrong, repeat.

Almost a year later

2006-05-03T10:19:00.000-04:00

In february 2005, I had to make a decision. I was coming down from four years of drunken debauchery and general irresponsibility that accompanies any wholesome undergraduate education. One night, after several beers at the pub with a fellow degenerate undergraduate friend, it came to me as a revelation.

I was going to apply to grad school.

Three months later, I found myself sitting in a new apartment deep in the heart of Quebec suburbia, Quebec City.

In the next few posts, I hope to guide you through my adventures immersed in one of the most mysterious tribes populating our fair northern landscape. Quebecers.

Now, i'm not talking about your french montrealers, those islanders who have for centuries established themselves as a European nation in both mentality and drinking habits. No. I'm talking about those patrons who have lived deep in the woods alongside the wild boors and those gentle extinct creatures, the majestic wooly mammoth.

Euh...

Anyways, the cultural shock here has been the most significant. I concluded early on that there's a force field surrounding most of quebec that filters out any American, and thus Canadian music, movies and language. For a pop culture fiend, I have freaked out about this on many occasions. Weeping in dark corners, breaking glass, yelling at mirrors, self-mutilation, etc... And I refuse to be assimilated.

The only type of music for some reason beyond me that leaks through the invisible fortress is heavy metal. Last summer, Iron Maiden was in town. Event of the century. Everyone, from all age groups, was there to rock out. The next day, I saw a man in his mid 40's, briefcase in hand, blazenly showing off his new Iron Maiden t-shirt. Surreal.

I was privileged in Toronto. Every band made a stop. From major selling acts to guys who still live with their parents but for some inexplicable reason have released immensely popular (well for the relevant sub-culture) album or albums. Picking and choosing concerts based on my own tastes and price left me ignorant of the poor suckers who could only watch in a jealous rage (here's looking at you, Frank). Now, I can't even get anyone to go see a show with a ten dollar cover charge unless they were relevant back in the 70's or sing in french, have long hair and sport half-formed beards.

On the upside, working at a desk for eight hours a day has allowed me to listen to more albums than the last four years combined. I've unearthed stuff that i've owned for years but never listened too. Also, with a conveniently placed public ftp (shh!!!), albums can be exchanged freely and quickly. This alone has allowed me to hear new stuff without all the bother of actually downloading it myself, or god forbid, buy it. Especially since I don't have the internet at home.

Also surprising is not seeing a movie in theaters here. I never know what's playing anymore, mostly because I don't have cable. Maybe i'm afraid that it will be in french. Not the cool sub-titled french like when I used to "watch" french tv movies back in Ottawa, but like overdubbed european parisien shit. Who can understand that? Another reason is the name of my local theater, "Le Clap". I don't know about you but to me that sounds like a weird sexual disease and I want no part in that...

Unless it comes with a free beer.

APRIL Fire trUCKING SUCKS

2006-04-30T13:00:00.000-04:00

"Rough Gem" - Islands (Return To The Sea)

"In The Morning Of The Magicians" - Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots)

"Turn Into" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Show Your Bones)

"World Cup Drumming" - McLusky (My Pain And Sadness Is More Sad And Painful Than Yours)

"Sound Travels From The Snow To The Dark" - Frog Eyes (The Bloody Hand)

"Lightning Strikes The Postman" - Aereogramme (Seclusion EP)

"Rockets" - Cat Power (Dear Sir)

"Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt.1" - Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots)

"Apistat Commander" - Xiu Xiu (A Promise)

"Fucking Little Bastards" - Arab Strap (The Cunted Circus)

Everyone send out good vibes to frank so that he passes med trauma.

And congrats to the guys at York (Andre, Cale and all of you's out there in 4th year) for graduating (or soon to be so)

The Tommyknocker man

2006-04-03T11:38:00.000-04:00

To come down from a grueling 5 day stint in the lab translating dense research papers on reference systems and their realisations into a brief 30 page french summary, I had made plans to get thoroughly hammered on friday. This never materialized.

Instead, the obligatory end of month department happy hour concluded with me polishing off 3 beers without eating in a half hour which left me exhausted, starving and disoriented. Lucky for me, I got a ride home afterwards. I had big plans of doing laundry, cleaning my kitchen, cooking some chicken, making some salad and settling in for a night of That 70's show reruns. A take-out order later, i'm cracking out the latest tome i'm reading (Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope). I managed to read the chapter title and the intro paragraph before I passed out.

Also, I had made an early decision on friday not to go into work on saturday because 1000 lines of code to debug is not appealing way to spend a saturday afternoon. Instead, I settled in for a long haul of back to the future. On my day off, I managed to read two novels and watch a trilogy of films. I also dropped my tome and reverted to an old favorite, The Tommyknockers by Stephen King. I have a tendency to read all 800 pages in one sitting.

I must gush out my love for Stephen King novels at length here. Not only have I owned at one point or another all of his novels, i've read all of them twice, and count among my favorites the stuff he wrote as an undergrad under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. A self-confessed coke addict and chronic alcoholic, his brilliance has often been overshadowed by diarrhea of the word processor and incessant addiction to publishing like a madman, whether the book is good or bad.

In The Tommyknockers, the lead actress trips over a protruding piece of metal and is compelled to dig up what ends up being a flying saucer. King explains in his biography the writing of the novel.

"In the spring and summer of 1986 I wrote The Tommyknockers, often working until midnight with my heart running at a hundred and thirty beats a minute and cotton swabs stuck up my nose to stem the coke-induced bleeding. The Tommyknockers is a forties-style science fiction tale in which the writer-heroine discovers an alien spacecraft buried in the ground. The crew is still on board, not dead but only hibernating. The alien creatures got into your head and just started...well tommyknocking around in there. What you got was energy and a kind of superficial intelligence (the writer, Bobbi Anderson, creates a telepathic typewriter and an atomic hot-water heater, among other things). What you gave up in exchange was your soul. It was the best metaphor for drugs and alcohol my tired, overstressed mind could come up with."

One of his other more famous book, Cujo, about a rabid dog he doesn't even remember writing. My suggestion to you, if The Tommyknockers (which isn't one of his most celebrated) is too heavy to begin with, is to start with another favorite. The Shining, about a recovering alcoholic writer who takes a caretaking job in a plush isolated mountain resort closed off in the winter season with his son and wife. But the hotel has a mind of its own, and it wants the son with telekinetic powers. Or again, you could go with a failsafe and read Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption, yes that Shawshank Redemption.

Or at least read something outside the political realm.

Keeping me awake in March

2006-03-31T14:34:00.000-05:00

taking a cue from frank, here's what i've been rocking out too this month.

tunes..it's all relative.

"Joining You" - Alanis Morissette (Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie)

"This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed" - The Mars Volta (De-Loused In The Comatorium)

"Going Underground" - I Am The World Trade Center (The Cover Up)

"Hotel California" - Gipsy Kings (The Big Lebowski soundtrack)

"Tomorrow" - James (Whiplash)

"50ft. Queenie" - PJ Harvey (Rid Of Me)

"Fill My Cup" - Gomez (Out West)

"Favorite" - Neko Case (The Tigers Have Spoken)

"I Was Hoping" - Alanis Morissette (Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie)

"Mary-Christ" - Sonic Youth (Goo - Deluxe Edition)

April will hopefully bring an end to my potentially disturbing Alanis Morissette addiction.

A metaphor of my existential crisis

2006-03-29T11:20:00.000-05:00

So I woke up last tuesday morning only to realize that I was an hour and a half late for a three hour class. Considering that it takes me forty-five minutes to walk to the lab, I needed a faster alternative.

I went to Canadian Tire and bought myself a bike.

I was in a hurry to get to class so I didn't really bother checking the condition of it. I just paid it with my credit card and headed directly to the dungeon. It was about halfway towards my destination before I realized that my tires weren't inflated properly, which meant I was pedaling like a madman uphill against the wind four times as much force for the same amount of traction I would be getting with optimally inflated tires.

Not only that, but the nut that prevents the wheel from turning in the complete opposite direction as the handlebars was loose. It came quite as a shock to me when my wheel went in the opposite direction that I was guiding the handlebars. All in all, a pretty good start.

So I try tightening the nut myself but only manage to eat away at the notches. In the end I brought the accursed thing back to Canadian Tire to get it fixed. This was wednesday. I get the bike back on thursday night and the nut had been tightened and everything was great.

For about two days.

I'm biking away (uphill of course) when all of a sudden my seat starts going back and forth depending on whether I put my ass on the front end of back end of the seat. At first i'm thinking this is a new "comfort" thing to prevent the dreaded "sperm count depletion" caused by my ball sack being crushed between my thighs and the seat.

Yeah, banish the thought Phil.

Of all the goddamn tools I got for christmas and the ones i've bought for various broken things, I don't have the one sized Allan key to tighten one bolt so that my ass doesn't go flying off the seat. And of course Canadian Tire didn't have the individual sized key, so I had to buy the whole damn set.

Finally, last evening it was working fine. I went to the lab around 8pm and left my bike next to me while i worked. As i'm about to leave around midnight, I noticed something absolutely spectacular. My front tire had completely deflated itself after coming in contact with...absolutely nothing.

So here's my theory. Every three days, something will come loose or break, something just major enough so that it needs to be taken in for repairs. These repairs will last two days. Then, as soon as I get the bike back, a short period of time will elapse (about a day or two) before the cycle begins again. This will last until the warranty through Canadian Tire expires (in 90 days) at which point both tires will simultaneously explode and the bike will burst into flames.

Oh, and yeah, I walked this morning. Well, that is until one of my boots disintegrated into thin air after coming in contact with the asphalt.

Segway

2006-03-27T09:49:00.000-05:00

Sunday is both a blessing and a curse. If you're anything like me, you treasure weekends for the freedom of sleeping in until lunch. How I long for the chance in the middle of the week to sleep until my back aches and I have fitful nightmarish brief dreams in which i'm either being eaten by something much larger and with bigger teeth than me or in which I do something so ridiculous that I thank myself I didn't really do. Like yesterday, when I woke up gasping thinking I had lost my ipod (again). But then comes the dreaded sunday evening/early monday morning where the thought that I have to be up in 4 hours is making it even more impossible to relax long enough to pass out.

Do you ever feel like everyone else is doing so much more on a daily basis and are having way more fun than you are?

"So what did you do this weekend?"

"We went to (state town here), got drunk, went to a rave, took some E, made out with two girls at the same time and didn't go to bed till 9am"

Like what the hell?

"Oh not much...hiked through some mountains, stayed overnight in an igloo, wrote an award winning opera and learned three african dialects from our guide"

"What about you Phil?"

"Well...euh...I read a bit...made some food. Passed gas"

How hard must it have to not point out the irony, or, "that's what I was going for dumbass"

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/26032006/2/world-gunman-opens-fire-rave-party-killing-seven-injuring.html

Facts

2006-03-15T10:58:00.000-05:00

I was inspired to start a blog by three people.

1) www.phdcomics.com

"Piled Higher and Deeper" is by a former grad student for grad students. It's great. So great that i bought both books. I'm thinking of getting one of the mugs.

2) www.ifrank.net/fblog

Back in 2002, one of my buddies had the audacity to create a webpage about his life. Who the hell cares about what someone does on a daily basis?. Of course, i have been addicted to it since the first post. (secretly of course). Crap.

3) http://themovement.info/2006/03/get-blog-i-will-help_06.html

I just thought it was well said. That's all.

ok...i guess i'll see you later maybe.