Guess I've Got That Old Travelin' Bone,

Let's just cut to the chase. Post 18: "A song that you wish you heard on the radio"

I want to learn the saxophone for the sole reason of playing this solo

It's a great song, it's slow, somber, but not overly sad. I'm sure I could here it if there was a dedicated classic rock station. Of course here in Yorkton there isn't one. CCR is one of the few groups that I can honestly say doesn't have a bad song. Are all of their songs great? Definitely not but there isn't a rotten apple in the barrel, However in music like apples if you don't like the taste of one you won't like the taste of any. There are two other musical groups who have the same distinction in quality, The Band, and Foo Fighters. This is also on the short list of songs I would want played at my funeral, One of the things I do when I want to kill time or focus on something unimportant and un-troubling is make playlists for every event. I have shared my thoughts on funerals here. I actually polished the second portion of that up into something much better for a SYP article I may replace the original or make a new post with the update.

I find more in more in my life I explain my actions and describe my personality, by talking about the various people in my life as I grew up. I come from a very large family of mostly healthy people so I have all kinds of influences to draw from but as I grow I find there are two people I am most like. One is obvious and makes a lot of sense which is my Father. For a small glimpse into the kind of person he is you can check out his Twitter. From being around him my whole life and being his son I have picked up a lot of his mannerisms, sensibilities, and ethics among other things. The one thing most people notice and comment on when first meeting the other after knowing one of us for awhile is how we basically have the same odd sense of humour that I really can't objectively describe. The other man I find in myself is my late maternal grandfather Arhibald "Archie" Locke. We were never particularly close but from sheer luck, some good some bad, and genetics, I have picked up quirks that are seemingly unexplainable and his personality.This is basically due to my picking up some of his undiagnosed minor mental disorders that are absent on my dads side of the family but seem to be lurking just under the surface on my mothers. However in my case these things didn't stay under the surface and are actually noticeable enough to be diagnosed. At one time I hated it and what it made me, but as I grow I am becoming at peace with it and can accept that it is an integral part of who I am for better or for worse. They are both a little quieter and a lot calmer than I am but I'm still a work in progress and I hope to one day be a bit more like both of them.

Indecipherable Korean, and Song About Boys

Post 17:  A Song That You Hear Often on The Radio

This is actually pretty hard since I generally spend 6 hours a day listening to and talking on the radio so for simplicity's sake I am excluding anything heard on the station I work at, This leaves me with the station I used to work at and there are two songs that I always seem to catch and they are both awful.

Seriously name me two current songs that are worse.

I have nothing to add for Psy, Taylor Swift on the other hand I have many negative thoughts about.

When is Taylor Swift going to grow up and sing songs that grown ass women would sing? Has she ever released a single that's not about boys and how much she likes them, or dislikes them, or how relationships are so haaaaaard etc.? Seriously she's turning 23 in a few weeks and still sings songs for 15 year old girls who have pictures of horses on the walls! When she started out it all made sense but thematically she hasn't progressed as an artist at all. Yes she has changed musically to keep with the times and is moving away from the very little bit of a country sound she had and is recording pure pop and asking some poor soul to lay a banjo track so her songs can torture me at work. I feel no ill towards Swift and she seems to be someone who isn't a horrible human being but unless she starts to write songs for her own age I never want to hear from her again.

I Am Tired Of Waiting

Usually I go on a tangent and then talk about the song choice but today I'm doing it the other way around. It's Post 16: "A Song That You Used To Love But Now Hate"

Beep Beep Motherfucker

This is the first Beatles song I was ever really aware of thanks to the "Beep Beep Yeah" being used in a radio jingle. The Beatles are great but this song isn't, I have no real memories good or bad associated with this song it's pretty boring and bland which are really the only things a song shouldn't be. If it wasn't for the album appearing as the default image for the video I wouldn't have remembered what album it was off of or if it was even on an album. All that being said I don't really hate this song, I am just indifferent to it iTunes says I have played it 6 times since January 2010. I also never really loved this song either I just enjoyed it a lot, I ended up choosing it because I don't have any strong negative feelings towards anything I have loved including music. Drive My Car just happens to have the largest gaps between how highly I used to think of it in the past and how ambivalent I am to it now. I also couldn't find any lyrics from this one to use as a title.

I can't think of a decent segue to my next topic and I don't want to beat around the bush so I will just come out and say it. I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND AND IT'S AWESOME!!! 
O.K. I'm glad I got that out of the system, I haven't gone and shouted this from the mountaintops and this is the public place I have put this statement out on so far. I am purposefully keeping this on the down low and on a need to know basis since it has always annoyed the hell out of me when others constantly crow about how awesome their significant other is and how theirs is better than yours and if you don't have one then your really up shit creek. Plus it is always fun to see people's reactions when they find out you have kept this kind of information from them. Still I will admit that it's hard not weave in mentions of the fact I have a girlfriend into every single conversation I have, but for the most part I have managed to avoid it, for now.
For some strange reason I find it easier to type out my thoughts and feelings in a semi-public place than it is to tell them to another human being in private so I apologize in advance for the inevitable posts about first world problems and the mundane aspects of relationships, I am almost certain the next post will address the fallacy that is normality, that being said plans were made to be broken.

Oh Dixie Land, I Hope You Understand

Blah Blah Blah, here are a couple tunes I'm really digging at the moment

This song makes me wish I was born in the southern U.S.

Or The 20's/30's Yeah I'd Be O.K. With That

I've been singing this one loudly and off key for a month

And to because 4 is better than 3 to wrap it up a song introduced to me by my best female friend 

I'll send this one to the one who calls me Nichimoose 

I have no intelligent comment to add to this. I will hopefully post another song challenge post next time but there's no real guarantee.

When It Starts To Fall Apart, Man It Really Falls Apart.

I am painfully pitifully out of shape, I am almost a gelatinous mass, I could be one of the people living in space in WALL-E. This is not an opinion or something up for debate, I am very much over weight and and it's my own damn fault. This sounds bad and it is but it has to be said in these terms otherwise I will just allow myself to become even worse. Now there is some good news, tonight I took a small step to becoming a not disgusting human being. I found a buddy travelled around Yorkton and found myself a full set of hockey gear. Buying the gear isn't enough though so I also went and played rec hockey tonight and you know what? I was awful, I forgot that most people can skate in more than direction and know how to stop, however for this being the first time I had been on skates in over 5 years and only the third time I had used a hockey stick while on skates it wasn't too bad and had I have been an in shape person it could have even been upgraded to O.K. This was not the case though and I was damn near dying before the opening face off, I soldiered on though and made it to the final whistle with a lot of time spent on the bench compared to my team mates but there was a noticeable improvement in my abilities and I even got my stick on the puck a few times. I'm currently a little sore and very tired and it feels great, I had actually forgotten how  good it feels be physically tired at the end of the day. I can't have been the worst person to lace up the skates because I got an invite out to play more rec hockey and I'm most likely going to take those offers up because there's no way more ice time will do me any harm.

This hasn't been a new revelation for me I have known for some time what I am and what I need to do  but I finally have a catalyst to make this happen. You see after going almost 4 years without going on a single date there is a member of the opposite sex who is interested in me. There interested in what I am now flaws and all but this person is drop dead gorgeous and frankly it wouldn't be fair to stick them with the dead weight I currently am. This won't be an overnight thing and I have enough positive qualities to carry me through until I am something I wouldn't mind seeing in the mirror. Right now this looks like something pretty hard to screw up, but I do have knack for messing up sure things and even if I do I'll be a better off than I am now. And yes, I do realize I somehow managed to post two blogs in one week.

I've Always Been Crazy, But It's Kept Me From Going Insane.

I have never claimed to be a man who could focus on one thing for very long, this why I am still working on a 30 project over a year and a half later. Had I been diligent I would have been done in January of this year with one post a week, August with two posts a month and with just a single post a month I will be done November of next year. Should this be done by then I will be surprised but one never knows, sometimes I will focus and put all my energy into something unimportant for a few months at a time which is what happened when I started this blog way back when. Anyways let us celebrate the half way point with...

I would pay good money to have facial hair like that.

 Post 15 "A Song That Describes You" That's about as accurate as any song can get, the title hits the nail on the head and lyrics such as "I can't say I'm proud of all of the things I have done, but I can say I've never intentionally hurt anyone" are as true a statement I can make. I wouldn't quite go as far to say it's my motto but sometimes life is best lived outside the lines.
      It also helps that this is a great tune by a country outlaw legend. I'm slightly dissapointed I couldn't find a studio version of the song, the one plus is that the old timers sound almost identical live as they did on pressed vinyl.  In the words of my father "The fact that Willie is still alive and Waylon isn't is proof there is no God" I wouldn't go quite that far, but it is unfortunate that most people only know Waylon for the Dukes of Hazzard Theme, one of my favourite shows to watch when I was in elementary school along with The A-Team which I am watching as I write this. Back then I watched both shows on Showcase Action and tonight I get to watch a thousand bullets get fired and 20 cars flip without anyone getting injured thanks to Netflix.

I Started Thinkin’ Bout The Rest of My Life

I Hope the Rest Of My Life Involves Long Scarves

Thinking about the future is one of my least favourite things to do but I seem to end up doing it all the time. Usually when I should be doing more productive things like sleeping or focusing on my job. I would probably be on much better terms with the future if I had more control over it, or if it happened to be just a little bit more clear.
     As someone who can't competently plan what will happen tomorrow let alone years down the line the future fills me with a sense of unease. There's also the fact that I am far too young to be concerning myself with such things but here I am none the less. If I were to fathom a guess as to why my future frightens me it would be because both my near and far past are filled with mistakes and regrets and after crunching the numbers it appears what is to come will follow the same trend of that which already is. There's also the fact that I am resistant to all change even that which would make my life better and all the future contains is an endless amount of change.
    As Joe Strummer once said "The future is unwritten" sadly my writing is illegible. 

Girl Look At That Body

I'm a pretty straight forward guy when it comes to most things. I make no claims of being a enigma wrapped in a mystery, I have voiced my opinion on pretty much every thing I have encounter and I've always held the belief that if your comfortable asking the question then I should be comfortable answering it. That being said there are anomalies in everything myself included my musical taste which brings me to Post 14 "A song that no one would expect you to love". I don't necessarily "love" the song that I chose but in terms of songs I shouldn't find any enjoyment at all in listening to, this is the one I like the most.

I'm not really that attractive don't worry I am already aware.

It's hard to attach anything of significance to a post with this song, so I have nothing more to add to this one other than it gets the floor packed at weddings and despite the poor lyrical quality it's catchy as a cold in the wintertime.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

Earlier today I was at work and say a link to a video entitled "Kony 2012" I clicked the link and watched for a minute or two then realized the video was 27 minutes long and there was no feasible way for me to watch it in it's entirety. Feeling that maybe this was going to be important since in the space of 5 minutes I saw it pop up two more times I googled Kony and found out who Joseph Kony is and saw what an awful person he is and learned of the evil things he was doing. I really didn't have time to throw my whole heart and soul into the plight of the child soldiers of Uganda seeing as how I had to do what I paid to do and whatnot. However it seems most of my friends had a lot more free time on their hands.

As of this posting 25 of my friends have posted the video and at least twice as many have made some kind of comment about them. In the last hour I've seen 5 different friends create groups dedicated to the plight of the Ugandans and the eventual downfall of Joseph Kony and have been asked to join two of them. I very promptly declined not because I don't care but because the events/groups were in cities that I did not live in and could not travel to on a regular basis and I would be doing a disservice to the group by joining and not participating. That being said I'm not jumping on the Kony 2012 train.

So hears the thing with these kind of campaigns. They get instanly huge crazy exposure right out of the gate, however due to the way they are delivered and the media they live in they inevitably die out since the collective population of internet has ADD and moves on quickly unless there is instant progress in whatever they are doing or if whatever it is they are working on gains more exposure. Seeing as how Kony just blew up in such a huge way it will reach it's saturation point in 2-3 days at that point some of the early learners who were drawn in but weren't really involved in the cause will get sick of seeing it so often. A day or two after that people who were so moved by what they saw and heard to join the cause after just a minute or two will suddenly find they have Jobs, and families, and things that are closer to home and much more urgent than the far away child soldiers who despite all the coverage will still be soldiers at this time next week.

Grouped in with the people who get distracted by their lives will be the Horror of the week club who will be on to the plight of someone else who is new and happening instead of the yesterday news citizens of Uganda. With those groups gone the people who got involved because their friends were into it will also leave and so the trend will continue until we see that those still fighting for the lives of child soldiers and their freedom will be the same people who were doing it before the videos went big.

It's no specific persons fault and I'm not going to belittle those who do get caught up in the whirlwind for however short a time since it is a good cause and for the most part their hearts are in the right place. The same thing goes for any similar campaign. A certain part of me wants to say don't do it unless you plan do it for the long haul but that would be wrong since you can't ask people to commit to something they don't know the second the try it. I'm sure a portion of the people posting the Kony 2012 videos will still be working for the cause next year it's just that the majority won't.

One of the main problems with these kinds of "events" is that there is no real direction just an end result. Every single group and video poster has said something about raising awareness, mission accomplished I'm aware now what? This has been a problem for the unofficial movements for ages from the post a colour and a country for cancer crowd to look at what your government is doing to your rights and freedoms groups. The few successful groups have managed to turn awareness into momentum by striking when the irons hot, but in today's instant access no wait times environment the iron will be cold in 48 hours.

If you are passionate about Kony or anything similar good for you, I hope you stick with it and accomplish all the goals involved with your movement and that you manage to stick through with it until the end. If you don't that's O.K. your not alone and if your movement dies from underneath you don't get discouraged just take what happened and learn how to ride the next wave of publicity to your goals.

UPDATE


Finally found time to watch the video, My feelings are still the same however I am glad to see it has a part two to it's plan that being said there are still some other flaws. I'm also pretty sure I'm being more sceptical towards this project than I should be but I just don't trust film-makers. I feel I may make a second post about this in roughly a weeks time.

I'm Gonna Be a Pirate On The River Saskatchewan!

So now I am back for Post 13 "A Song That is a Guilty Pleasure" I am aware I planned on making a new post sooner rather than later but life managed to get in the way. I picked up a second job which halved my free time and made it so I barely had time to eat and sleep let alone write anything that was more than a few sentences long. Even when I did have the urge and the time for making a blog post I found that I had to write stuff for Saskatchewan Youth Parliament, but that is now done and I have some free time this morning so here I am.

Personally I think the easiest way to describe a guilty pleasure or at least my definition of a guilty pleasure is anything you wouldn't tell your friends/family about. Even if it is non-typical of the things you usually enjoy or embarrassing but you still willing tell people about it then whatever it may be doesn't make you feel all that guilty. For me, my guilty pleasure is something I started listening to when I was 12 years old sometime during grade 6 or 7. Despite not always being funny I have always had a sense of humor so it almost makes sense that the first CD I bought with my own money wasn't from one of the well known names myself and almost everyone else would appreciate at some point in there life but instead was a live Arrogant Worms album.

I Know the song and the post title aren't the same but methan gas comes out my ass doesn't make quite that good a title. Actually on second thought it does and it's kind of true.

My first introduction to the group was the above song being sung by my counselors during  summer camp. Then one day I did a KaZaa search and downloaded all the different songs I could find and over the course of a few months managed to memorize the words to most of them. Then one day I found out the Worms were coming to Prince Albert so of course I had to save up a few weeks allowance so I could go and check it out and then spend another two months allowance on three different CD's. Even back then I didn't go around mentioning my enjoyment of the group and shortly after seeing them live I more or less grew out it and I doubt if I still have those three CD's and if I do I have no idea where they are. That being said should someone begin singing most of their songs I will quickly join in and all of their good songs are still on my iPod and I only occasionally skip them if no one else is around to hear them.