Do You Wanna Be Somebody Else?

So here is one I have been ready to do for a little while now. It's Post 11 "A song from a band you hate". I am actually really excited for this one since I am very opinionated when it comes to music and there is tons of stuff I dislike and even despise but there are very few artists I hate. In order for me to hate something there has to be no redeeming qualities or merit to anything the group has ever put out and there is only one group I can truly say this applies to.

I feel gross just putting this video on here. My blog has been violated!

My problem with Simple Plan boils down to one simple point. They are the biggest posers in the world. If you look and listen to what they do you see they release an album of music that is whatever is popular at the moment. Their first album was a cheap Blink-182 or Sum 41 rip off and had all their albums been that I wouldn't have that much of a problem with Simple Plan. Heck even on their second album which was a bit darker and sounded exactly like Billy Talent wasn't too large of a departure. Then they officially become shape shifting clones after their third album when they went almost complete pop because that's what was selling at the time. Simple Plan is the equivalent to guy who cheers for whatever won the Superbowl or respective championship and completely denies and forgets cheering for a different team the year before. We all know that person and we all have utter disdain for them since they have no opinion/style of their own and that's Simple Plan in a nutshell.

So I'm back home for a few weeks and I decided to not tell anyone except for a select few that I was returning and so far I am glad that's how I decided to handle it. Usually whenever I come home my phone goes off constantly and I find myself running all over to please everyone. This time I have spent two days at home relaxing, recharging, and recuperating. This does not mean I will not tell my friends and acquaintances that I am in the area since that would mean I would end up on the opposite side of the scale and see no one which would be no fun at all.

I've come out of internet exile and am now checking Facebook at least once a day just to see what everyone is doing. When I was in exile I nearly went insane a few times since I have a compulsive need to know everything about everyone which is rather inconvenient when you know people are telling and keeping secrets but I digress. I did go on Facebook a few times during exile to find out required information for a few events and to fulfill social customs and wish friends Happy Birthdays. I'm glad I went into exile for a little while since I now no longer feel the need to check Facebook every hour. The same applies to Twitter which I haven't returned to except to delete all links to my blog since I have decided I don't want future employers and random followers knowing most of the things I talk about here.

Why Don't We Just Give Up And Go Away?

Time is confusing. When I say that I don't mean the concept of time and the linear aspects of it I mean how time is perceived and how it relates to everything. As of yesterday I have officially been out of High school for two years now but it still feels like I was walking the halls and sitting in class a few days ago. On the other hand in two days I will have been living in Yorkton for a year and it feels like I have been here an eternity. I think Einstein explained why this is however I never learned this in my formal education so I can neither confirm nor deny this.

So in the two years I have been out of the public education what has changed about me? There are some obvious things such as the fact I'm at least 20 pounds heavier, my hair is shorter, and I now receive paychecks instead of report cards. Those in themselves are not big changes since at least one of those changes has happened to every graduate in the history of education. There are also some other changes that aren't as easy to see but are definitely more important. I can now admit that I am wrong. The inability to admit that I was wrong or that I possibly had made a major mistake led to me nearly failing at least one class and alienating numerous people. Even though I am still socially inept I can at least talk to people without breaking into a cold sweat, and most importantly, even if you don't agree with what they say or if you think they are 100% wrong  listen to your boss and do what they say. Usually they turn out to be right and even if they aren't the only way you can show them that they are wrong is to do things their way and let the chips fall where they will. It's not earth shattering stuff but it's stuff I never learned in school.  

There is a second reason I'm focusing on graduation today. On Thursday my younger sister will graduate and she will officially be better than me. This isn't an opinion it's a fact. Just focusing solely on education I graduated just outside The Honor Role thanks to Math B30 and after grad I went and received my diploma in broadcasting after a 5 month stint at a broadcasting college in Saskatoon. In a few days my sister will stand behind a podium and deliver the valedictorians speech and then go to U of A for a few years to get a degree in pharmacy and most likely make more money than me for the rest of my life. Despite the fact that I will play second fiddle from this point on I wish her nothing but success seeing as how the more successful she is the better the house I will be visiting when I take my vacations in future years.

You Say You Got A Real Solution Well You Know, We'd All lLove To See The Plan

For some reason I thought my next post was supposed to be a band I hate. I spent a few days thinking about which artist I absolutely despise and came up with a definitive answer only to discover this post is actually Day 11 "A Song From Your Favorite Band". This is a much more enjoyable post to write since I can think about nice things not wretched things. To make this easier for myself I am interpreting the title as bands only not artists so that I can come to a decision much faster. At this point in time there are two bands that are more or less tied for being my favorite and only one of them has been featured so far so it's time to say hello to John, Paul, George, and of course Ringo.

If I remember correctly this is the third song I sang in front of an audience. Not by myself of course that would be horribly awkward there was an actual rock band involved.

 O.K. so I'm going to have ask you to bear with me for a second because I'm about to say something that will sound incredibly odd/wrong but don't worry it will all make sense in a few minutes.


We are wasting all our compliments on dead people. Think about it dead people apparently told the best jokes, were the best at (insert activity), did the craziest things, and in general were just the best people ever. I am not going argue whether all these statements are true but how much to you want to bet that when they were alive people said they told bad jokes, wasted all their time doing (insert activity here), did the most idiotic things, and were in general a giant pain in the butt. If you ever have the misfortune of going to a funeral you will hear everyone praise the recently deceased and remark and how much they will be missed. How often do you think the deceased's friends and family gave them these compliments when they were alive? Probably not nearly as often as they should have. 


A few years ago I read Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom. It's actually quite a good book and I would suggest it if you're looking for a nice light read. Anyways in Tuesdays With Morrie I first heard about "living funerals" The whole idea behind a living funeral is that funerals are wasted on the dead since they can't hear the nice things being said about them and being a corpse and all it's quite difficult for them to converse with all the friends who have traveled to pay their respects so why not have the funeral shortly before you break on through to the other side? Of course this only works if you know your going to die shortly and in a perfect world there would be no need for a living funeral since everyone would tell you how much they appreciate you and how important you really are to them on a regular basis so that should the unfortunate happen both you and they will have no regrets in that regard. 


Just to clarify nobody I know has died recently this is just on of those things my ADHD filled brain decided to stop on a few days ago and for no reason whatsoever it incubated into a full fledged post/thought. So in conclusion if there is anyone who is important to you be it parents, friends, or partners etc. tell them how great they are I'm sure they would appreciate it and it might just make their day

When The Day Is Long And The Night, The Night Is Yours Alone

It is starting to become glaringly apparent that there are certain things I simply cannot do. Actually I should rephrase that since I can theoretically do everything, there are certain things I simply cannot do well. This list includes but is not limited to sitting still for more than two minutes, keeping a normal sleep schedule, intimidating others (I still don't get why people laugh when I get genuinely furious seeing as how I am 6'2 and manage to yell even when I'm calm), complex math, and the latest addition to this list is play baseball. There are a few reasons for my general lack of skill in baseball starting with the fact that not only do I have no experience playing the sport I am also horribly out of shape. I may have never been the epitome of physical fitness but there was a time when I was halfway decent at most sports. Currently I can more or less hit the ball. There is a 30% chance that if a ball comes in my direction I could catch and there is 10% that any ball I throw will land within 5 feet of it's intended target. I would say I throw like a girl but that would be incredibly insulting to females everywhere especially the ones on our team who throw the ball quite well. That being said I am considerably better than I was in the pre-season game but I still have a ways to go if I want to say I am even "decent" at baseball. Also for some reason it took 4 days to write the first segment of this oh the joys of ADHD

Ok time for Post 10: A song you can fall asleep to. I'm going to skip the intro and just lay it on you today

I'm not a huge fan of the video since it makes the song depressing instead of soothing

So I went with R.E.M.'s Everbody Hurts for a couple of reasons. It's not overly loud and it's not so quite that you have to strain to here it , it's not upbeat but it's also not so slow you think your at a funeral, plus it's long enough that you can fall asleep before the next song starts and forces you start the process all over again. Everybody Hurts is a different kind of song compared to most of R.E.M.'s other work and the only other place in their catalog where you will find similar songs is on the 1992 album from which this post's song came Automatic For The People. It's also worth noting that the string arrangement on Everybody Hurts was composed by none other than Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones who was the Led Zep's "Quite One" mainly because he did his job well without fanfare and didn't subscribe to the theatrics of Jimmy Page, John Bohnam, and Robert Plant.

My Daddy's Sleepin' And Mama Ain't Around

So last time I talked at length about what was going on in my little corner of the world and then put the song challenge result up. This time I'm going to switch it up by talking about Post 09: "A Song You Can Dance To" first. This is another hard one due to the fact that I can't dance unless copious amounts of alcohol are involved. I don't particularly enjoy dancing and when I dance it looks like someone having a seizure and a heart attack at the same time. That being said a select few songs have the ability to get me out of my seat even when I'm stone cold sober.

Did you really expect to see something hot and new here?

This is pretty self explanatory. It's a novelty dance that doesn't require more than one move and it's catchy as hell and it gets played at almost every wedding. This could possibly fall into the category of guilty pleasures as well. 

So who want's to come to Yorkton to go and see Gord Bamford next Sunday? I hope somebody does because our sister station GX94 is having a backyard concert and Gord Bamford is the main act. Even though this is a GX event Fox employees are allowed to go and since I happen to not be at work during the backyard concert I signed myself up to go along. Unfortunately I made a mistake when doing so and added a plus 1 beside me name because everyone else on the list had as well. It wasn't until this morning when a co-worker asked who I was taking to the concert. At first I thought he was mocking me then I realized I had inadvertently said I was bringing someone to the concert. I went to quickly remedy the situation then I realized that this was perhaps a great opportunity to invite someone to go along. I quickly remembered that I don't know anyone in Yorkton who doesn't work at the station but now that the idea has entered my head I want to take someone along. This is of course very unlikely since the show is in 7 days and I will probably just white out the plus one when I come to work tomorrow but stranger things have happened. So if you or anyone you and I both know want to see Gord Bamford let me know!

It's These Expressions I Never Give, That Keep Me Searching For a Heart of Gold

I am not dead. I am aware that I have chosen a very odd statement to start this off with and I am sure nobody actual doubted my vitality but it has been said if you don't have an online presence you aren't really alive and at the moment I have no presence. In fact this is the first time since last Sunday that I have posted anything online at all. I also haven't seen what others have posted except for the blogs I subscribe to. Its a state of self exile that came to be for two reasons. First in the span of two or three days I had 5 things happen that on their own are inconsequential and would be almost non-issues but combined in a short frame of time made it so that I was better off not having a way to spew words forth to everyone I know. Second I noticed that the only reason social media exists is to make points and argue about stuff. I have enough stuff to deal with without arguing everything from which kind of ice cream is better to the various political ideologies. I will admit from time to time I enjoy arguing but that's only when it involves people who are articulate and knowledgeable in the topic at hand or at least can add something to the conversation. This is not the case with 98% of the arguments so for the time being I shall remain in exile except for blogs.

This is post 8: A Song You Know All The Words To. This should be incredibly easy seeing as how I know the words to a bunch of songs. However it's a case of I have too many to choose from so I decided to go with one I can play and sing and that always seems to get requested when I whip Neil out. Considering my guitars name this song is fitting

This song also comes from my second favorite Neil Young album

This is also one of the few songs I don't mind playing when it's requested since it's actual quite enjoyable to play. It is easily recognizable, it is mainly chords but also has an easy fill, and everyone knows it. When I first learned how to play Heart of Gold I could also sing almost exactly like Neil Young. This is no longer the case but I still break it out whenever I get the chance.