CARCARCAR

For all that don't already I know, I am now a full fledged motorist. I bought a 1988 Volkswagon Fox on Friday. It's small, economical, and a standard so I feel like a fucking race car driver. FUN!!! I'll post pictures later.

Where the hell is Dunster?

On Sunday my entire day was devoted to driving to and from Dunster for the purpose of attending and performing at the Robson Valley Music Festival. This was both lame and awesome at the same time. I was playing cello for Halijo Webster, a local activist and musician. Her music isn't really my thing, and I'm pretty sure her message was lost on most of the veiwers, but thats fine I guess. Everyone there was stoned anyway.

So my day started at seven, and I drove to town to meet up with Hali and drive to Dunster. I took one look at her car, a buick la sabre, and realised that thing will cost about $700 to fuel, and offored the use of my Volkswagon for the sake of economy. Hali jumped at the idea of not driving. I was excited, my first roadtrip with my new car, but I didn't plan on driving for 10 hours.

I had no idea where the fuck Dunster was. It turns out its a little ways east of McBride, which itself is like 3 hours away. The drive was pleasant enough I guess, saw a deer, looked at pretty mountains and listened to OK Computer on repeat. We made it to Dunster in one piece, and started scoping out the festival grounds.

It was happening on a commune owned by members of the band Mamagaroove (I think I fucked up on the spelling) and it was a total hippy fest. I was the only person wearing a shirt (everyone else, man or woman, was either in a dress of some sort, or topless) and nothing I was wearing was made of hemp or tie dyed, so I already stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone there was pretty cool, very friendly, and fun to talk to. the food there was amazing too, the great thing about hippies is most of them are vegetarian, so I had lots to eat, and bands got free food, so I was pretty happy.

So after getting introduced to countless numbers of random dreadlocked henna tattooed bohemians, I sat down and watched a few acts. I didnt pay attention to the first four of five solo acoustic guitar playing women who all managed to sound and look like Joni Mitchell, but I made the mistake of perching myself infront of the stage right when a slew of hip hop acts took the stage. Now, I've got nothing against hip hop, per say. There are some great hip hop acts, but it's not my favourite genre of music. But these guys were pretty bad....

...now I hate bashing performers, and I avoid it when I can, but this guy was comic gold. The second, and mercifully last, rapper was a kid, probably about 17, from Valemount (a small city Southeast of McBride). He "produced" some of his own beats, and "samples" a few from some rapper who's name is escaping me at the moment. It was funny though, he was using a remote control to a CD player to decide what beats he was using for which songs, and kept fucking up with the remote and then trying to freestyle about his remote not working. But this is hardly what made him endlessly entertaining to watch.

It wasn't his oversized jersey, or his "bling" or his hat that made me chuckle. Or how painfull pail he was. I mean, I went to public school, I've seen my share of wangsters, but this guy...was a christian rapper. SO Christian. Not that I have anything about faith based rappers...well actually... I just find the jewish rapper Matisyahu pretty fun to listen to. But this kid from Valemount....man oh man. His first song was supposed to be about life in Valemount. It started out like it was going to be about that...sort of...? He started yelling something along the lines of "GO DUNSTER, GO V-TOWN, GO DUNSTER...GO!GO!" and then began saying how the streets are empty blah blah blah. Seemed like an average lame rap song, until he started saying:

"You gotta be smooth to spread the good word, Lord Jesus is my saviour, he died for you, foo'!"

I dropped my sketchbook and almost almost coudn't contain my laughter. I mean, rap alone is pretty comical, especially when done by some lame white kid from Buttfuck, British Columbia, but when he throws jesus into the mix, it turns into the things dreams are made of. It was truely comic gold. I guess growing up on the mean streets of Valemount really hardedned him. His next song started out with:

"The bass goes POW! Your face goes WOW!"

So....okay.....he repeated this like 15 times, and then went back into the whole Christ thing again.

"Christ is the savior, something something something, If you don't accept him, then death is the end"

I couldn't take this kid seriously to begin with, and then he throws in Christ Chex for good measure? I mean, hip hop is probably a really hard genre to break into, especially in a place like Valemount, but seriously...what the fuck.

There were some good acts though. This fantastic gypsy-punk band called the Plaid Tongued Devils played. They had a violinist, and kicked majour ass. I bought their CD, and talked to them after the show. They were pretty cool guys. Good fun dance music, and they had a very blatant anti-corperate stance in their music. I guess they were sort of like add busters with shred violin solos.

Also, the performance with Hali went well I guess. The audience seemed to enjoy it, and I got complimented on my guitar playing by the bass player of the Plaid Tongued Devils, who were up right after us. Hali's nerves were bad, but she did well.

The drive home was long though. I wound up giving my friend Torie a ride home, as well as a friend of Hali's. So my little VW was packed to capacity. We also had a great supply of brownies, cake, and cinnamen buns from the festival (donated by the nice hippy cook lady who was sad to hear we couldn't stay for supper). The drive went pretty smoothly, but I wasn't in control of music for the ride, which drove me nuts. It was too dark to see in the car, and driving a standard and handling CDs is a bad idea in the dark, so Torie took over. It would have been okay, but I was pretty annoyed for some reason at that point, and just wanted to listen to fast loud punk to keep me awake. Everyone else in the car was more into Pavement, and Elliot Smith though. So it was dark, the music was strange, the conversation in the backseat was about TV shows I never watch, and it was too noisy to talk to Hali, so I wound up just fixating on the road for three hours. It was great once I dropped everyone off though. I popped in De-loused in the Comatorium, and sang all the way home from town. I got home at 12 30, fell into bed, and didn't open my eyes til 2 30 pm. Lame, but sleep = awesome so it was okay.

Wine and Cheese

So I was invited to a wine and cheese formal by Chrissy Bowman last night. I was instructed to bring wine, cheese, and a friend. Being too underaged to bring wine and too lactose intolerant to bring cheese, I brought a friend who brought both. Maybe it wasn't both, maybe just chesese, I don't remember. I know she brought cheese, because it was bree, and me and some dumb broad bunched it into a small ball and flung it at Cal, and our hands reaked of bree for the rest of the night. But I'll get to that later.

I didn't know who was putting on this shindig, and me and Diondra (the friend I brought) were stupid enough to arrive early. We arrived dressed pretty (I wore my grad dress again, and a pair of mismatched argyle socks. Classy) Everything got off to a slow start; Cal arrived shortly after we did, and two strangers, and we wound up drinking wine, eating carrot cake, and being pretentious for a good two hours. Then I had to drive Diondra home. Just as we were leaving everyone else decided to show up. Some dumb broad, Chrissy, Chrissy's boyfriend, some guy named Ed, and various other people. After watching Josh (the host, who's last name is escaping me) fondle a hedge hog, i drove Di home. But, at some dumb broad's insistance I drove back to the party, because as she put it "I DON'T KNOW ANYONE HERE YOU BETTER COME BACK!"

So I drive Di home, and expect the rest of the party to continue in its slow fashion, until I drive up to the house again to find Josh and this random guy talking about good places to blaze, and I then realized the formal aspect of this party probably flew right out the window. I walked inside to be greeted by Some dumb broad and a bottle of Strawberry wine she proudly declared only cost her $5.99. Some dumb broad also had brought a small asian girl with her, who proceeded to get royally drunk and talk about how her ultimate dream in life is to become a witch. According to her, her dream became a reality when she found out her host family, Some dumb broad's, owned a black cat. She was extactic.

On the topic of foreigners, there was a girl from Germany who spent the entire night taking shots, and drinking strait vodka and ice from a brandy glass. She was generally pretty angry in a sort of cheerful way, and though her drinking habits should have made me worry slightly for her sake, she assured me she spent time in Russia and can drink like a pro. I took her word for it.

As the night went on, the party gradually became louder and louder. What started off a quiet poppy indie music playing the background, turned into horrible dance remixes of Pixies' songs. This was the fault of Ed. Ed decided that this party needed to become a dance party. He rigged his Ipod to the stereo and subjected all of us to his terrible taste in music, and ecclectic dance stylings. Some dumb broad and I watched with glee as "busted moves" and complained at the overall lack of dancing on the part of every girl a the party.

It was this point, and i found a slightly melting chunk of bree, and proceeded to roll it into a ball. I stuck it on the end of a knife, and aimed it in Cal's direction. Some dumb broad began beckoning me to fling it, and not wanting to dissappoint, I proceeded to fling it at Cal. It stuck to his shirt, and the host proceeded to eat the bree and continue drinking. At this point Moonshine had been added to the drink roster.

Shortly after, some dumb broad and I had a long discussion about how terrible this guy's (Ed's) music was, and i conceded that "this one dance remix has destroyed almost every song I love by sampling it" (there were at least 5 or 6 different samples of great songs, put to shit by this failed house music). That same dumb broad then had a revelation:

"Go tell him his music sucks"
"No, you tell him, I"m not telling him."
"Just tell him already!!"
"But...I flung the cheese..."
"You did fling the cheese..."

So some dumb broad stood up, meandered to Ed, who was still boogying by himself in the living room, and the dumb broad said, ver batim:

"Can we change this music, Naomi said it ruined every song she's ever loved"

Great...! Not that it mattered, this guy introduced himself to me four times, and still didn't remember my name. He even devised some method of throwing something at me and, so I'll catch it, and that way he'd ALWAYS remember it. His system failed...for him at least.

So, that music got replaced by Weezer, and the noise of the party went up another notch. So dumb broad and I stepped outside for her to smoke, and I began a lengthy conversation with a guy named Eric, about the wastefulness of the North American life style, politics, environmentalism, religion, soil depletion, and various other topics of that sort. It was very interesting, especially for drunk conversation, but Eric had to leave to use the washroom, and I was left alone on the...with Ed. Ed had caught the last bit of our conversation regarding soil depletion in the prairies, and decided he could but in and continue the conversation. He started severely back pedalling and reiterated an over simplified version of topics we'd already covered twenty minutes before. But he didn't seem to notice or care. So I ran and hid in a bathroom with a weed dealer, Eric, some girl I was in a choir with, and two random pot heads that were all smoking hash. I chose to abstain, but refused to relinquish my hiding spot for fear of being cornered into conversation by Ed again.

One of the girls smoking hash left momentarily to use the washroom downstairs, and came back confused and afraid because she was convinced two people were having sex there. I was completely sober and decided I should probably help her, and we meandered to the basement. I opened the door a crack and then heard a THUMP. It had hit someone's head. I squeezed in the door, and found the German girl laying on the floor unconscious. Her friend Darcy then was excited to have had found her, and they took a cab home.

I eventually got sick of smelling hash and returned to the kitchen to talk to Cal. Cal immediately asked me if Ed had been hitting on me, to which I replied "fuck I hope not" Cal then chuckled and told me they'd sent him on me when they noticed I was alone on the porch. At this point Ed came up to me and said:

"I have something I have to say to you......

.......
.....
...
..
.

Nice socks.
Wanna fuck?!"

Everyone around burst out laughing, probably because they'd been planning it for a while. Then dumb broad started a gang, and we decided to have a rumble, though it never actually happened, much to my dissappointment. I spent the rest of the night talking to the asian girl dumb broad brought along, but then they all left.

Then the bottle of moonshine resurfaced, and three people kept daring each other to take the last shot of it. That stopped being amusing after about 7 minutes, so Cal told me to come to the basement and jam. We we "jammed"....we had a slow jam in the basement with Ed and Josh and Cal. It was very slow. It wasn't so much a jam, Ed and Josh playing flaming lips and shins covers they both knew, but no one else did, and me and Cal were expected to feebly follow along. I didn't feel like following chords so I decided to play annoying masturbatory leads until someone took my guitar away, but it never happened. So me and Cal looked at each other and somehow at the time said "wow, it's late we should really be going..." and managed to dodge having to play anymore Shins covers. Then I drove home and it took me 45 minutes. OH! but it was in my own car, which was cool. I've never owned a car before. Pretty sweet I guess. anyway, that's the long boring tale of the wine formal.

Naomi feebly dabbles in photography:

Most of these were done witha 35 mm pentax, or disposable cameras. Enjoy.

Marcy:

BRICK TREES?



SCARY TREE


Enlightened


snowtreebuildings?!!?!

Trent:

















Josh: (his shirt should be green...like bright green...stupid camera.)






















I have many more to post, as soon as I get the hang of the stupid method for inserting pictures.

Big clocks and viking helmets?

Topic of Discussion: Flavor Flav.

Up until two mornings ago, I had never heard of him before. I like to think I had a very fufilling life up until that moment, but as I learned, that was not so.

Tess and I watched an episode of his show "Flavor of Love" and honestly I was baffled. Now it was more than just the absurd misuse of viking helmets, and grillzzzzzzzz. It was the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I could not find a man as cultured, sophisticated, and succesful as Flavor Flav at all attractive. Call me crazy. The only thing scarier than his mug, were the crazy women pawing at him on that show. One of the more heated moments of the episode involved the seasoned television dating veteren Pumpkin, (who after finishing on the show, married an apparent lesbian lover). She got so emotionally distraut when she was not chosen as one of the top two candidates, that she spat in the face of her opponent New York. (Oh, it should be noted that all of the women took on psuedonyms.) The entire episode consisted entirely of New York rambling, eating, screaming, and putting on make up, Hoopz, the other contestant, pretending to not be a crazy weirdo, and Pumpkin looking confused. Honestly, if I were ever put in a position where I was expected to make out with Flavor Flav, I would be confused too.

What makes this show fantastic is the fact that people really are this stupid. I'm pretty fucking dumb for watching it. I'm even stupider for eventually getting accustomed to the fact that he generally walks around wearing a giant viking helmet and sporting HUGE clocks. This may sound strange to some of you, but to me this is a completely alien concept. Entertaining none the less. One of the parents of the contestant, and possibly the only sane person on the show, thought the exact same thing I did. what. the. fuck. WTF> ?! How these women allow themselves to be subjected to being fondeled, caressed, kissed, and even seen in public with him amazes me. And I love it.

I love it, because this show just proves to me that American's will pay for anything. They'll pay for a skinny black man with a top hat and a huge clock to ramble like Charlie Murphey on valium, or for some poor guy to get dropped in the middle of the woods and survive for a week with nothing (oh Survivorman, you're amazing....!) they'll pay for a transvestite, a porn star, the singer from Smashmouth, and Mr. Jefferson to live in a hotel together.....and I'm glad, if not a little afraid. Because, when you think about it, Flavor Flav, and all of his counter parts, serve a great purpose in society. He's a huge distraction. For example, while I was watching that show, I could also have been reading about Castro's hospitilization, the current status of the war between Isreal and Lebanon, hell, while I'm writing this useless shitty blog I could be educating myself on the status of that huge apparent terrorist plot uncovered in Britain that threatened to potentially kill several thousand people. But, C'mon! He's in a fucking viking helmet! Who can say no that.

When I was in Law 12, I was asked on a test if I thought serial killers, mass murderers, and spree killers (such as Dahmer, Bundy, and the like) were a great threat to society. I said no, they were important. They kept the gears turning, and the front doors locked. Sure, they're dangerous, but how many of us are going to be raped, eaten, dissolved in acid, with our skulls kept in the closet of some lonely kid's tiny apartment? A few. Very few. And, in the eyes of the media, and the government, those few are a worhty sacrifice to keep us from taking note of how many schools are closing, how many casualities there are over seas, and how fat everyone is getting. Big news is always better than bad news. But we already know that...

EVERYONE LOOK!!! NAOMY JUST TURNED INTO ANOTHER PRETENTIOUS BLOGGER!!!

Sorry.

Today I bought polo shirts and a sweater vest, and posted 3743 times on a forum. I think I'm turning into a strait up nerd. I'm 1337.

FUCK

I wrote an epic long blog about economics, religion, and me being emo as fuck because I suck at relationship things, and then this compuer repair man came into my mom's office to check the server, and then RESTARTED THE COMPUTER before I'd finished my blog, and now it's lost forever. Somewhere in the ether of the internet. I'm way too pissed to rewrite it. Maybe later. As if anyone reads this anyway. It was a good rant. Long, but with flow. It was amazing. And it's gone. Fuckity.

Communism + Porn = teh AWESOME

http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/perversion_for_profit.htm

Everyone should watch this. It's almost as good as that religious movie Daniel made me and Leni watch.