November Playlist:

God. Would you believe I haven't done a playlist in months? What the hell is wrong with me? Anyways, here's my playlist for November. It's a bit dark these days, with a heavy dose of blues and what I'd call "Musicality".

1. Dan Mangan, "Jeopardy"


2. Geinoh Yamashirogumi, "Mutation"


3. Imaginary Cities, "Ride this Out"


4. Black Mountain, "The Way to Gone"


5. The Cave Singers, "Haystacks"


6. Radiohead, "Give Up The Ghost"


7. The Mountain Goats, "Michael Myers Resplendent"


8. Hey Rosetta!, "Bandages"


9. Laurena, "Permafrost"


10. Arcade Fire, "The Suburbs"

National Music Archive

Here's a neat site. It's a national archive of old records that have since entered the public domain.

I kind of wish Canada would do something similar.

Finally! Someone made a youtube video about me!

Yes, I occasionally do vanity searches...

Why do you ask?

Rue, I say, RUE!

The internet is a lovely place.  I'm quite the big fan of it, if for only one reason:  the internet reminds me that I'm not the only fucked up person out there.  The internet is your gateway to untold millions of people just as messed up as you.

I mean, do you know how lame it is to be sitting around in your home city, wondering to yourself if you're the only person out there who thinks barley is better than rice?  Do you ever find yourself wondering if you should tell people your deep dark secret, regardless of whatever persecution you might face?  Does your preference of barley make you feel like a freak?

Luckily, the internet has made me realize I'm not the only person with this problem.  *

We are not alone, people.

However, the internet is also filled with unscrupulous folk, folk who will offer free advertising, and then turn down hard-working bloggers simply because their site is too "mature" and not "family friendly".  I mean, the gall of some people, not giving away free advertising because they disagree with the ads they are placing! 

Didn't we win the war?

I am referring to my friend, Lola Lakely, who has recently had to endure seconds of hardship at the hand of internet dastards.  Her hopes of free internet advertising were dashed against the rocks, like a ship, being, um, dashed against the, well, rocks. 

But I'm here to help her fight!  Because, dear reader(s), I am going to do what those internet dastards refused to do.  I am going to go out of my way and give Lola free advertising.  Because I am just that nice of a guy.

Here is her site.

Go forth, my minions, and spread the word.  Let those family friendly internet assholes rue the day they messed with us barley-eating freaks. 

Yes, I realize that link is about the best grain used to feed horses.  But, really, petty details, people.  Petty details. 

Yeah, this is awesome:

I'm a music nerd.  And I fully believe that music is universal - it belongs to every culture, every people.  And I find it amazing that people just naturally sense music.  There are only eight notes in music - and those notes are not arbitrarily determined... they are found cross culturally.  And that, to me, is fascinating.

So while this video blows my mind, it really doesn't surprise me.  It's just one of those things that stands to reason.

Enjoy. 

Whoops!

Just realized I forgot to include a link to Carbon Dating Service's webpage, where you can download their album Reliquiae absolutely free..  Fixed it.  I do recommend people give them a listen! 

Weekly Haiku #45: Fridge Haiku, courtesy of Happy Apple

I didn't write this one.  So if you have complaints, send them to Happy Apple.  Me?  I think it's hilarious.  But then, I'm a bad person.

End to the Year Thoughts

I kind of like the idea of reflection, so I figure I'll finish this year with a recap of some of my favourite and most note-worthy posts. 

• Starting up, we have a real-life event that staggers the mind.  Imagine, hipsters that work at a record store, being completely in the dark about Radiohead! 
• Next up, we have another true story - an overheard conversation between two co-workers.  They spoke the truth:  death knights are the worst. 
• I have no idea why this is, but the number one search topic that brings people to my blog is "pterodactyl porn".  Which brings people to this post, which is still one of the most visited pages on my site.  People are very, very strange. 
• This post, I just find very, very funny.  So much so that, after just re-reading it, I am chuckling like a fool.  Which pretty much sums up my usual frame of mind, more or less. 
• Does anyone remember the blogoff?  This was a challenge to see who would have the title of "newt", when I randomly challenged another blogger to a "blogoff".  I wound up losing, but it was still a lot of fun.  The blogoff begins here, although many of the posts from both participants were great fun.   
• And then there were the Olympics, not very far from my little corner of the world.  I tried to capture the experience during a day trip down there.  I wound up just making stupid faces when I actually overheard a woman say "oh my god, that torch is on fire!" 
• Ah, Day as Night.  I love making them, but they take just too damned long.  This one happens to be my favourite. 
• The Crazy Newt Customer Illegibility Scale was something I secretly hoped would catch on.  Mostly because at the time, I was spending almost twenty hours a week listening to people mumble into a phone.  I guess I was the only person who found it funny - which is pretty much how these things go.
• I love haiku wednesdays.  They're fun to write, but they're rarely funny.  This one, based off a real conversation I heard at work, is actually kind of hilarious.  You can be the judge. 
• July was an insanely hot month.  So much so that I would frequently spend the night lying in bed while covered in a sheen of sweat.  Occasionally, I'd hallucinate.  But really, who doesn't? 
• I like to make wry observations.  I'm all about wry observations.  It's my purpose in life, really.  Unfortunately, I rarely make wry observations.  So when I do, I'm rather proud of them.  Apparently, I also like to say "wry observations".  Wait, does that last sentence count as a wry observation? 
• I took point notes about a night on the town.  I thought the post was actually really funny.  However, everyone who read the post decided it was "bad" or "ugly", so I guess I was the only person who thought it was funny.  Which is generally how this blog works. 
• And then there was this.  It won an award for "funniest blog entry to include the word 'samosa' in the punchline".   Okay... it actually didn't win the award.  It would have... but the awards these days have become so political, man. 
• This was another post based on an overheard conversation.  Kate was right, though - I should have cut it off a little earlier.  Damn me and my attempts for accuracy! 
• I submitted a post to reddit.  It got this blog a huge number of hits.  For about three days, I thought I was about to be famous.  Then reality slapped me in the face.  But still - it was a pretty funny post. 
• And then, finally, there was my in-depth coverage of Rifflandia.  Probably a little too indepth.  But I was pretty obsessed with the music.  And why shouldn't I have been?  I mean, the Dodos are pretty fucking awesome. 

And there it is.  2010. 

Bring on 2011!

Ten Best Bands?

Went out and did a bit too much drinking after the Sharks vs. Canucks game (holy crap was it a blowout.  Unfortunately, it blew in the wrong way.  6-1 Canucks.  Gah).  It was, all in all, an awesome night, involving yours truly getting a free San Jose Sharks jersey.  However, at ten am in the morning, yours truly is a bit too hungover to fully write an engaging post. 

Whoops.

Anyways.  The Times Colonist (Victoria's newspaper) went and put together a list of the city's ten best bands.  It's a great list, with live videos of each band. I paraphrase for posterity:

1. Wolf Eyes
2. Cobblestone Jazz
3. This Old Town
4. Vince Vacarro
5. Acres of Lions
6. Maurice
7. Jets Overhead
8. Aidan Knight
9. Current Swell
10. Jon and Roy

It's come to my attention that I've only seen five of those bands.  This needs to be rectified... have some work cut out for me over the next month, eh?

Angry Face!

Well, this pisses me off. 

That, for those that don't want to check the link, leads to crazynewt.blogspot.whatever.com.  You see, I wanted to change my URL, because I sort of want to drop the whole "crazy thoughts from a..." part of the URL (too long!). 

And yet, the name's been taken.  And not touched since 2006.  And it's just a bunch of dead images and links to pictures of animals.  Gah!

Redesigning your blog can be difficult. 

Sad face. 

Hunh

There was a murder a block away from my house today.  Less than 24 hous after it happened, I actually walked right past this building (it's on a sideroad, on the path of my nightly insomnia-inspired walks). 

Kind of creepy. 

Film Friday: I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes....

I'm a big fan of movies.  But I absolutely *hate* watching movies on TV.  The reason is pretty simple - the movie has been edited, often heavily, to fit TV censors.  Sometimes, the censors will even cut out vital scenes which are referenced later in the film.  Last week, I saw a short film on the independant movie channel that had the entire LAST SCENE cut.  You know, the important scene that closes out the film? 

But language censors are the best.  You know, those movies where they do a voiceover, so that instead of John McClane saying "Yipee Kay Yay, mother fucker" he says "Yippee Kay Yay, Melon Farmer"?

That stuff is golden.  Case in point: 

(warning - SOOOO not safe for work!  So many curses, so little time!)

Whoa, this is cool....

I'm not always a big fan of putting links in my blog - it seems very counter-productive to say "Hey, go somewhere else!  Anywhere but this blog!".  But sometimes, it just has to be done.



That, my friends, is the new music video from the band Hollerado.  You may remember that I wrote a rather passionate blog post about them only a week or so ago.  Or, maybe you don't.

Anyways, about a week after Rifflandia, they released this video, which is going viral on youtube and is already being described as the "Next O.K. Go".  Since the music video is awesome, and the music is definitely better than O.K. Go, things are looking pretty damned peachy for Hollerado. 

Seriously, check them out, buy their record in a bag, and listen to rock and roll the way it should be played. I actually picked up the album last week, and it's amazingly fun - not only does the album come with a list of ways to recycle the bag ("Put your lunch sandwich in it!") but it also comes with temporary tattoos, stickers, fortune cookies (bring them to a live show and they'll give you presents, apparently), and confetti!  Which is pretty damn nifty.

Whoa...

Okay.  You have to check this site out.

It's a game of Twenty Questions - you pick something, and the computer tries to guess who you are.  It didn't guess Firefly's Mal Reynolds in less than twenty questions (it took 21), but it did guess Futurama's Bender in nineteen.  It took 26 to find Lionel Hutz, attorney at law, and it didn't guess BladeRunner at all.

Seriously, it's a lot of fun!

On Guitars (with a LOT of links!)

I don't really talk about it much in this blog, but I love playing guitar.  It's a fun, relaxing thing to do on a chilly october afternoon, and there are few things more rewarding than sitting on your couch and writing a song.  Really, we're all defined by our interests - whether it's crafting, writing, dressing up as an elf and pretending to cast spells at fat people in a school soccer yard, or full contact feng shui.   

Learning the guitar has been one of the most rewarding things in my entire life.  In fact, just yesterday, I found myself writing a song that was, as I described it at the time, "Really fucking awesome".  As I sat there with a notepad on my lap, ready to write lyrics for a song that was - no joke - good enough to be on a CD, I realized just how close I had been to missing out on all this.  I wound up playing the guitar as a fluke... a happy accident. 

I first picked up a guitar in the second year of high school, and I did it for two reasons that, at least on the surface, had absolutely nothing to do with the guitar:

1. I wanted to learn how to play the drums
2. I had a crush on a girl

I know.  It makes no sense.  But allow me to explain:

First, about six months before I picked up a guitar for the first time, I really started getting into music - the drums in particular.  I am still something of a drum fanatic, and when a drummer plays with skill, I am entranced.  My jaw goes slack, and I space out as intricate rhythms are hammered into my skull.  When I listen to Jimi Hendrix, I'm really listening to Mitch Mitchell.  When I listen to Led Zeppelin, it's all about John Bonham.  And the only reason to listen to The Who is Keith Moon - this is scientific fact.  And yes, I know all three of those drummers are now dead.  When I found out Mitch Mitchell had died, I let out this long sigh, as if an era was no more.  Like how John Hughes must have felt at the end of the 1980s. 

Anyways, in the tenth grade, I wasn't listening to - y'know, good bands -  but rather to the drummer from a canadian band by the name of Our Lady Peace.  For some reason, I couldn't get his drum beats out of my head, even though, looking back, they are a little simplistic.  On a whim, which is how I made decisions in the tenth grade, I decided I wanted to be a drummer.

Turns out there were a lot of people in my high school that wanted to be drummers, which probably had something to do with unchecked hormones, aggression, and the abundance of sticks and dead animal skins in rural B.C.  I was told by the music teacher that there was no room for me in the band program, but if I wanted to learn the drums, learning the guitar might be a good way to start.  After all, one instrument is much like another, right?

This made no sense at all to me.  It'd be like saying "You want to learn how to rap?  Learn to knit, first!"  Or like trying to learn karate by waxing some japanese guy's car.  Because I was in tenth grade and, therefore, knew everything, I may have said something to this effect to the teacher and walked out of his class.  And my guitar "career" may have died then and there, were it not for part two.

See, like most boys twelve years and older, I was absolutely in love with women.  And by "was", I mean "am".  And by "am", I really mean "wholly and irrevocably dedicated to observing their every move".  Of course, being a shy, nerdy, ginger kid, I didn't really have much in the way of confidence.  So I'd talk to these girls - shyly, of course - and worm my way in, hoping one day that I could get close enough to sort of become their boyfriend without their realizing what I had done.

In short, I was Ducky from Pretty In Pink.   

Imagine this scenario:  there is a girl that young Dave has a crush on.  Young Dave has liked this girl for at least a year, if not more, but he is too much of a wuss to do anything about it.  Young Dave, in fact, has no idea how to even initiate or approach the situation.  Like the underwear gnomes in South Park, Dave knows what phase one is, and knows that phase three is a good thing, but has no idea what the hell phase two is, or how to get there. 

Then, Young Dave's crush decides she wants to take guitar classes.  Young Dave had already been considering taking the classes, and now there's one more chance to be around this girl that Young Dave is stalking hopelessly devoted to interested in. 

Young Dave started taking guitar classes, spending hte first few weeks splitting time between making moon eyes at his crush, and the drum set in the corner of the room.  The few times he paid attention to the guitar, it was to make fun of an instrument that had - and I kid you not - a "G-String".  However, by the time Young Dave had (mostly) forgotten about that drum set in the corner, and his cute young crush had decided that maybe guitar wasn't the thing for her, Young Dave was busy learning about just how awesome an e minor chord can be. 

And that, dear friends, is how Young Dave wound up learning the guitar.  It is also what lead to Young Dave asking out said crush, and getting hilariously rejected.  And, later, it would lead to Young Dave realizing just how shitty a band Green Day is.  And from there, it would lead to Young Dave writing awful song lyrics, working as a music reporter for a local magazine, and Young Dave learning about just how bloody expensive a hobby music really is.

Eventually, it would lead to Dave picking up the guitar at around noon yesterday and writing a song that sounded "really fucking awesome", with Dave playing it for the better part of an hour and even beginning to write lyrics before he realized he had just written The Cold War Kids' "Robbers". 

Yyyup.

You know what I hate?

When someone hasn't posted on their blog for a few weeks, and then after only one post, they post a link to some stupid youtube video.

It really butters my biscuit. 

Why, if I had a dollar every time I -

It's not a pacifier!

Oh, yeah.

This?

Probably the cutest thing in the world.

Just thought I'd let you know. 

Ten Tracks for July....

I'm channeling Scientific Culture here, because when people have a good idea, you need to rip it off give credit where credit is due.  Essentially, she likes to give each month a sort of "playlist".  And I'm all for it. 

So, here it is:  ten tracks for July.  Crazynewt's random and weird playlist;

1. "Hold me now" - The Polyphonic Spree
2. "Paradise by the dashboard light" - Meat Loaf (no idea why I like this song right now!)
3. "To the Beach" - Jon and Roy
4. "Psychotic Girl" - The Black Keys
5. "Horse with No Name" - America
6. "Gallows Pole" - Led Zeppelin
7. "Shine a Light" - The Rolling Stones
8. "Back in the U.S.S.R." - The Beatles
9. "Japanese Cigarrette Case" - Spoon
10. "Wait for Me" - Kutiman

Ear Wigs.... Ugh.

Those who know me are aware that I'm phobic of ear wigs.

Seriously.  The little fuckers scare the shit out of me.  Once, a few years back, my girlfriend at the time saw an earwig in our bed.  She told me of this, saying something along the lines of "It was crawling in our sheets, but I couldn't find it.  For all I know, it's still in there."

I slept on the couch for a week. 

People tease me for all sorts of reasons, and I'm cool with that, but if someone brings up ear wigs, I freeze up and get anxious.  They know not to press the subject.  In fact, if I see one on the pavement, I'll usually jump back, and cross the street to avoid the thing.  It's quite shameful, really.

So, I'm at work today, and I'm perusing old medical blogs - because this is how I pass the time.  I'm strange like that.  Of course, I read the blogs for self instruction reasons, and not for erotic reasons or anything creepy.

That's what crime scene photos are for.

Anyways, I'm perusing Your Er Doc's blog, and having a pretty enjoyable time as I'm reading his back posts.  They're both entertaining and informative. 

Then I come across this post.  Essentially - an ear wig crawled into a patient's ear.  The patient flipped out.  When I read it, I didn't know what a "pincer bug" was (we don't use that term in my neck of the woods) but when I used google to look it up...

Let's just say that I still feel sick to the stomach.  Totally scared the shit out of me. 

Okay. This is just pure awesome:

I mean it.  You have to check this video out.  Laughed my BUTT off, while also thinking it was pretty damn awesome of the kid.  What's not to love about a korean kid in diapers playing an oversized guitar while singing "hey Jude"?