Kaboom! Go buy a Trans-Am.

If you can't get ahold of a Trans-Am, get a Firebird. Also not possible? Then chop the lid off your car, put this CD in the music thing, and crank that bitch until the knob falls off. Drive really damn fast and listen to Heaviside's new album, "Wasted Generation."

This thing reminded me of what music should be. The bass is fuzzed, the drums are fast, and lead singer Mitchell's vocal range can be described as nothing less than bitchin'. Johno's guitar solos sound like they were born from the song, not written. They are fluid and melodic and beautiful, and right where they need to be. The rhythm section smashes it up, blending together like gasoline and orange juice, creating a fiery napalm ocean that the guitars and vocals ride over on surfboards of iron and leather and electricity. This is a band to be reckoned with. And they're damn well ready to reckon.

We're stuck in a world of over-produced pop garbage, with layer upon layer of sound hiding what little musical value there is to be gained, and we're selling every single twelve-year-old as the next big thing, when all they're doing is rehashing the stuff that's come before them, with more sex and more technological advancement. Heaviside decided to keep the sex, and cut way back on the technology. This thing sounds like it could have travelled in a flux-capacitor-powered El Camino from 1977, bringing with it chicks in tiny jean-shorts and fluorescent bikini tops, drinking Michelob Lite out of their own cleavage with brightly-coloured twisty-straws.

Heaviside's not trying to sell you on any heavy message. They don't bog their music down with deep metaphors and soul-altering questions. They shoot you with a party gun, and bring you back to life with a rock 'n' roll defibrillator.

I had a blast listening to this album. It's the first time in years where I sat down to specifically listen to music, and I couldn't be more happy that I did. I also totally wrote about this before, see? I could hear fingers sliding on strings and breaths being taken and sticks clicking and clacking around, and it made the experience all the better for it.

I've only seen these guys live once, but they put on a hell of a show. And they get awfully sweaty. If the band you're watching doesn't get sweaty, they aren't performing right. Demand a refund immediately.

My favourite song on the album was Aurora, followed closely by Eva. The rest was all badass too. Listen to it. Do it.

Here's the website. Check 'em out. They're pretty. http://heaviside.ca/.

100 Word Story - Airplane Edition

Hiya folks!

This one is for Adrian. He wanted science, omelettes, and a crashing plane. I think I delivered juuuust fine.

“Hmm, interesting,” he said to himself, as the flames twisted over his head. “It appears that they've used real cheese, and yet they've sunk to the level of artificial bacon chunks.” The flight attendant slid by on the floor, chasing her legs, leaving a thick meaty paste behind her. “Awful!” he exclaimed, slicing through the omellette and breaking his plastic knife. “These plastic utensils simply will not do.” The plane cracked in half, and the people poured out of it, into the open air at 20 000 feet. “My God!” he whispered. “An eggshell!”

Hopefully you enjoyed this silliness at least as much as I enjoyed writing it. (Ed. Note - I didn't enjoy it. Too much violence.) Welp, send me your ideas and whatnots, and I'll make them shorter and more ridiculous than they need to be.

-V

100 Word Story - Mullet Edition

Hi everyone! Thanks for the wonderful facebook suggestions. I'll do one for each of them, I think, in time. For this instalment, I wrote about one Kurtis Mullet, and I hope you all enjoy it.

Kurtis Mullet is a bad kind of guy. His eyes glow, but for all the wrong reasons. He stomps and clomps, ruining the economy with every footfall. Women tremble at the sight of his ankles. They can't see much higher up than that, with the clouds and all. There's only one man that can stop him. He's the same size as you or I, but as strong as all of us. His power comes from within us, and Kurtis can tell from the way he uses his walk that he is Woman's Man, and he's got no time to talk.

Excellent! References from before I was born.

Ok, that's all. Please keep making whatevers, and I'll whatever them.

100 Word Story - Owl Edition

Okay, here's another one for you guys. This one is courtesy of Carrie's wild mind. It's about a lonely hooter.

Armand is a noble man. He hums and haws on his accordion all day, supporting his family with coins thrown by tourists. Others say he shouldn't be proud of being a tourist attraction, but Armand doesn't mind. His friend Louis, the Screeching Owl, sits nearby, singing along with Armand's graceful notes. The tourists come for Armand's songs, but they leave when Louis starts to sing. His high-pitched screeches are poison to the ears of tourists, and a precursor to death for small rodents. “Louis,” says Armand, “You may have wings, but tonight, I think I must fly solo!”

Ah hah! Poor Louis.

Well, as always, give me ideas, and I'll make itty bitty stories out of 'em.

-V

A Million Stupid Bastards with A Million Guns!

It all starts with information.

Information makes the world move forward. It allows us to grow as human beings. It helps us plan for future events, and understand past ones. Information protects us from poor decisions, or shows us the outcome of these same decisions. Information is the soil from which ideas grow and blossom.

So more information is better, correct?

Of course not! We have more information than ever before, and it's so readily available that with little to no effort or financing on my part, I could download and print the world's news for the past week and distribute it to everyone in my nearby area. And I could post the link to all of it on this here blog, and facebook, and twitter, and all over the damn place. I could attempt to educate the world.

And I would fail miserably, because the world is full of stupids. And these stupids seemingly refuse to be educated.

The easy availability of information does not encourage folks to do research and understand issues that they feel passionate about. They simply have an easier time finding one (usually unreliable) source and bleeding it dry, copying and pasting and reposting the information that pops up first when they type two words into the Google.

I feel that the availability is directly leading to these problems. Before the internet and file sharing and wikipedia and all that jazz, if you wanted to know about something, you had to physically research it. This involved long hours in a library, flipping through books and reference materials and microfiche and cross-referencing and fact-checking and pulling all-nighters and such. And you wanted to cover all of your bases, because one disputed fact that you couldn't account for, and you were in for another night at the library. So you became well-educated in your chosen topic, and you made rational assumptions and reasonable concessions to refuted points.

Now, it takes little to no effort to shout one poorly-articulated point, and then flood your adversary's facebook wall with link after link to supposedly factual websites by people who probably did more work than you did.

I realize this isn't true for everyone, and there are plenty of people out there that do their research and understand something before they start talking about it. And there are people (like me) who may have wrong information, and may mention it to other folks, but we're willing to own up to mistakes and admit that sometimes we just don't have a clue what we're talking about. But these aren't the people I'm talking about. And the people I am talking about have a much bigger army.

There are millions of stupid bastards out there, and they're all armed with unlimited information. And they only need a little bit of it to drive you crazy.

100 Word Story - Unicorn edition

So, I posted a thing on my Twitter, asking for a story idea. I would write it in exactly 100 words. I got fully one response. So, without further bull-hooey, here's a story for Brenna, in 100 words.

Chocolate cake is a rare commodity in the land of Rainbolivia. It is rich in nutrients vital to the wild unicorns that prance about the landscape, engaged in petty chicanery and gentle stabbing. The only obstacle standing in the way of these horned creatures are the machinations of the nefarious clownfish. He's a puddle-jumping monster, sneaking into the cakes and condemning them to disgusting flavour with his fishy scales. But there is one special unicorn. In his youth, he burned his taste buds on chocolate lave cake. He tastes nothing. He's got the fish in his cake. And he's hungry.

More to come. Send me ideas, I'll keep doing it, for reals.

V.

Shuffle Repeat. Forever.

I'm thinking back to the days before music came in readily available online doodads, downloaded from whatsit sites using Gigs, or whatever.

I used to know every word to every song on Weird Al's Greatest Hits Volume 2. Don't laugh, it was the first CD I ever owned, and I listened to it a thousand million times. The words and melodies were ingrained into my subconscious, and when provided with the most subtle of cues, I could burst into song if the need should arise. When I had enough cash on me to buy my own CDs, I listened to them constantly, to the point of burning holes clear through the discs. I couldn't afford a ton at a time, so usually there were 3 or 4 in rotation. When they died, I would get new ones.

And I learned all of those songs too. I could recite the lyrics from any song at any time. I could sing the lyrics to from one to the rhythm of another.

I also learned to appreciate music this way. I discerned quickly what I liked, and what I didn't. There was no time for messing about with bands and songs I didn't want to hear, or that I heard once and enjoyed, but didn't consider it a long term thing. I learned that I didn't like listening to sad music when I was sad, because it made me feel worse. I like happy music most of the time, and angry music some of the time. And when I listened to CDs, I could choose the tunes that best fit my mood.

Fast-forward to 2010, when I finally got an iPod, and I started throwing all kinds of music on there. A little farther forward, and I figured out what a torrent was. And now, I have hundreds of songs on a constant, unending loop playing in my car. It's probably playing right now, with no one listening to it, and no one noticing one way or another.

My appreciation for the finer things in music waned. It became background noise, a generally ignored soundtrack. Some of the songs are my personal favourites. Some were downloaded on a whim. People gave me other ones. Most of them, I don't even care about, and I skip right through looking for the gold. As I download more, the odds of me finding something I want to actually hear diminish. It's something like a 1 in 20 chance that I hear what I feel like at that particular moment. When I was buying actual physical CDs, my odds were 19 in 20.

I'm not lambasting digital media, or the ability to rip off the record industry at an alarming rate, and jacking up the price of actual physical CDs. I'm just saying it's changed the way I listen to my music. I suppose I could turn off shuffle, and take it off repeat. I could pick an album on my iPod and roll like that for a while. But it's already on shuffle. And the next tune will probably be good. Well, maybe the next.

And shuffle. And repeat.