Looks like we’ve been found out, and we’re most likely going to be punished when Pat gets home. Oh well. He’s going to have his hands full with Francesco anyway. I’m not dealing with that surly raccoon again.

And apparently I forgot it was Kip’s birthday, which is a cardinal sin or something, but that means Kip is as old as me now, so sinning should be fine at this point. For him and for me. Because we’re old, or something. Older than Pat, now, but his birthday is also this month, but he doesn’t like announcing that fact, so this is probably going to be censored. Boo! Censorship for censorship’s sake! Just because he has a printing press and I don’t. Totally not fair.

And I also don’t know when he’s coming home, because he told me the eighth before he left, but I found out that Terry will be home on the tenth, and Pat was coming home with him (but not on the same flight or something), so I may get a couple more days out of it? Maybe? It would be good since I am still trying to clean up parts of the apartment, but it’s been slow going since the vacuum became a teenager, or something. It just refuses to pick up stuff. Needs a new filter, or something. But darn, if I don’t like rearranging things. Also forces you to clean up, really clean up. Or something.

Be kind to children and small animals,
–me.

Yesterday was Canada Day, and Pat is still in China, so to celebrate these three nations we’ve decided to combine them all. Somehow. I’ve yet to determine how this is going to be a good idea, but whatever. In fact, I really have no idea how to include Patrick into this as a nation, other than this being his co-opted website, but hey, keep watching.

• The Canadian Open (golf tournament) + Chinese Checkers = one messed up game. Think about it.
• Chinese fire drill** + Canadian goose = watching a bunch of geese in a flying V going south for the winter: stopping in mid-air, loop-de-loop and circle around each other for ten seconds, then getting back into formation and flying off as if nothing happened.
• The Canadarm + “China has a space program?!” = the Chinarm, wherein we can now have gigantic robot arm wrestling in space. The future is sweet.
• China Syndrome + Canadian whisky = alcohol so potent, it burns itself into the ground. They probably have that already. I wonder what they call it.

Wow. That was harder than it looks, and I’m fresh outta ideas. Not to mention, I couldn’t figure out a way of including Pat in there. Sorry, country-dude, but you need to beef up your exports, or something.

** For the record, Wikipedia says “thus the expression ‘Chinese Fire Drill’ is the act of a group of individuals accomplishing nothing.” I beg to differ. Whoever happens to witness such an event would (hopefully) be amused, or confused, or both. That’s gotta be worth something.

Celebrating the world,
–me.

Just thought of something. I have made a lot of weird little rinky-dinky PHP programs over the years that do something random: create a new name for you out of your original name (like those ones that give you your gangster name, or stripper name, but cooler than those things); randomly displayed images based on certain criteria (or, just completely random images, I like random image scripts); or … a third thing.

But what if I write a script that randomly creates recipes? Would anyone be amused by that? I know I would. It would be even more amusing if somebody tried one of them out, just for kicks. It would be downright hilarious if they didn’t know it was randomly created, and thought it was a legitimate recipe for actual foodstuffs. I wonder how gross it would taste. I can imagine it tasting pretty gross.

Just thinking out loud,
–me.

Hello. It is me again. Getting sick of me yet? Yeah, me too.

So, I don’t know how late I am to this party (note: not very, it seems), but there’s this guy who goes by the name Girl Talk, and he put out this album that is almost entirely samples, just bits and pieces of all kinds of different music. It’s called Feed The Animals and it sounds amazing. I mean, Jay Z rapping over Radiohead? That blew my mind, maan! And, I mean, even if it’s not your kind of thing, you really can’t deny the amount of work that went into something like this. In one interview I read, he said it took the better part of two years, mostly trial and error to get things right. That’s a long time for a project like this.

There are also some naysayers out there who, even if they do acknowledge the work involved, say that music like this is on the wane, but I’d beg to differ. Last summer, Daft Punk put out a live album that pretty much took everything they created up to that point, and mixed it all together into one sweet cacophony of house, synthpop, and rock. It’s like they really are robots, and they didn’t need to spend ten years to make three albums, but chose to in order to build up our tolerance slowly, so that our brains wouldn’t fry and we would be unable to see them taking over the world. Robots are totally awesome like that, you know.

The year before that, Cirque du Soleil put together a show based on Beatles tunes, and brought in their original producer, George Martin, and his son to mix and remaster all their old tunes into this album called “LOVE”. It was something to the extent of 130 individual songs were used to create this bed of sound, and it’s nothing short of amazing. The story they get into in the booklet makes this big deal about combining the singing of “Within You Without You” to the rhythm tracks of “Tomorrow Never Knows”, which is great and all, but I personally love the way they put in “What You’re Doing” and “The Word” to the song “Drive My Car”. I can’t sing it any other way now.

So maybe the point of it all is that because it’s becoming more mainstream these days that we’re going to lose out all the underground creators, the inspiring innovators, but more and more people are accepting this kind of music and enough “regular” producers are going to push a little bit more into this territory. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing, or that everything like this is going to sound good, but I can’t see it dying off at this point. I just can’t.

Thanks for watching!
–me.

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends, we’re so glad you could attend, come inside! Come inside! Is … is that right? Well, it’s actually Emerson Lake & Palmer, but because this is the digital age I can take whatever I want and make it my own and I don’t have to credit anybody or pay a thing! Take that, stupid record companies! (Disclaimer: I’s just quotin’, yo.) (P.S., now they can’t touch me! I win!)

Anyway, it’s me again, Patrick’s roooommmmate. Not Patrick. Maybe you didn’t notice the defaced header image up there. I’m taking over for the time being. Hopefully without his knowledge still. I’m also cleaning the apartment without his knowledge, and probably without his consent, too. It’s amazing how much there is to do. There’s no way I’m living like this when I move out. Unfortunately, I’m not exactly a clean freak either, so am I to blame for letting him get away with it? Hmm, conundrum.

I was seriously considering cleaning up his room, too, just to mess with his head, or do something like rearrange it, like I like to do with my own room every now and then. But then, like, the day after he left I kept hearing somebody rummaging around in his room, and it was totally messing with my head because he was supposed to be gone, right? Turns out a raccoon has currently taken up residence in his room. He wears a bowler hat, and talks with an Indian accent, and his name is Francesco. I’m letting him stay for the time being, but he really has to be gone the day before Pat gets home. So far, though, Frankie’s made some nice changes of his own, but the room is still generally a mess, so nothing has changed, I guess.

He also hates being called Frankie. And I’m not trying to be deliberate about it, but it slips out sometimes. Sorry, raccoon dude.

Before I forget again, I have to thank my good friend Colin for turning me on to ELP. It’s just one of those things, y’know? I never really heard of them up to that point, and they’re just amazing. Thank you, Colin!

Grand Sincerities,
–me.