I caught you a delicious bass...

So there I was, sitting at the back of the room watching Evan Dando, alone with just a guitar on stage, singing The Lemonheads' greatest hits. All of a sudden, who walks by but Molly Parker? Twitch City is one of the best Canadian TV shows ever.

And if that wasn't enough, it turns out they know each other - what are the chances? It was so cool.

It seems US secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a little upset about some of her staff and US journalists getting physically pushed around in Sudan. CBC Reported on the incident, noting that she said "they have no right to push and shove."

My immediate reaction was, "I wonder how Maher Arar feels about that," what with him having been pushed around by the US (and Canada as well). Then I remembered this link of all the countries the US has pushed around since the end of World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._foreign_interventions_since_1945

The answers are now posted in the comments section. Have a swell day.

I went to Grand Beach Provincial Park last weekend. It is a nice looking park, but completely filled with the kind of Budweiser drinkin', cartoon pants wearin', hat-on-backwards kind of yahoos that I try to avoid most days.

It was also the worst-kept provincial park I've ever been in, too. Lots of garbage in the sites. I left my site at 7 am and returned at noon, and the people across from me (who played lots of bad Hot AC music, which annoyed me because it meant I couldn't hear the classic rock from a few sites down the road) had left a GIANT pile of trash behind. Why can't people cart their crap out?

It was heartening to hear the people next to me get kicked out at 10:30 pm, but the Park officials stood there for an hour making them clean up their drunken party and taking their camp down. The only thing I wondered about was who ended up driving that night.

Most parks in manitoba are really nice, I have discovered. But this one was really disappointing. I won't be back there anytime soon...

What is a meme anyway? It sounds like a fancy word made up for the computer age. Oh well, please enlighten me. While I'm waiting, I'll pass on this thing that some folks I know are doing. Pop culture junkies...

Five things I just don't get:

1. Complaining about the weather.
2. Why green olives come in jars but black ones come in tins.
3. Muchmusic.
4. Why so many passed balls are scored as wild pitches.
5. Right wingers.

Five things (other than money) I wish I had more of:

1. Socks.
2. TV channels.
3. Aeroplan points.
4. Musical talent.
5. Beer.

Five least favourite words or phrases:

1. Irregardless .
2. Van (as in "couver") .
3. It's (when you mean "its").
4. Asterix (when you mean "asterisk").
5. Meridian (when you mean "median." One time when I lived in Vancouver I was forced to phone the U News at 11 people when the anchor said something about a car crashing into the meridian on the Upper Levels highway. When I pointed out to the guy that a meridian is a big imaginary line that circles the globe, he told me the anchor had actually NOT said the car crashed into the meridian, but rather was hit by another car and forced into it. I then said "well, even so - if a car hit or was forced into a big imaginary line that circles the globe, it wouldn't really be news, now, would it?" and then he hung up on me).

Five famous people I've spoken with in person:

1. Joe Strummer (he bought me a beer and invited me to sit with The Pogues.
2. Brian Mulroney (he also put his hand on my shoulder...ewwww!) .
3. Gene Hackman (he said "'morning boys!" to me and some others on Rodeo Drive in LA. We all said "Morning Gene!" back to him).
4. Bob MacDonald (I also bought him a Bushmills in return for his renditions of Monster Mash and Moondance).
5. Norah Young (the only woman who ever left me speechless after only a couple of words).

Five things I do daily that I don't enjoy:

1. Get out of bed.
2. Talk about money.
3. Wonder why my shower is so slow to drain despite my repeated attempts to clear it.
4. Fail to watch Seinfeld.
5. Restart my computer due to a crash.


Five things I wish I had the chance to do more often:

1. Travel.
2. Play music.
3. Climb mountains.
4. Speak French.
5. Take courses - you know, generally improve myself.

Five favourite movie, TV or literary quotations:

The object here is that you're supposed to guess the sources, and I'll post the answers in a day or so.

1. Books, movies, tv -- these things matter! Call me shallow, it's the fuckin' truth!
2. When you become thawed out your love will swamp the tracks, and my heart will be restored with virgin blood.
3. I believe in this and it's been tested by research, he who fucks nuns will later join the church.
4. That's when I whacked him with the olive loaf.
5. What do you mean, like laundry?

Five things I have done that sound like lies:

1. Thrown up in church.
2. Surfed on a moving car like in Teen Wolf.
3. Been in Times Square for New Years Eve, 1999.
4. Been hit by a car and not told anyone about it.
5. Kissed former NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin on the cheek while dressed as a sailor.

I got tagged by Sunny to talk about books. I'm really more of a magazine guy, but I do from time to time read those things that are bound together with glue rather than staples. So...

Number of books I own: I counted 199 on the shelves last night, though that includes some really old textbooks that I was planning to get rid of. So I guess my laziness makes me look more intellectual than I really am.

Last book I read: Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson. I have recently discovered Bryson and have really enjoyed all of what I have read so far. This one was a travel diary of England by public transportation.

Last book I bought: Game Time: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell. Angell has been writing about baseball for The New Yorker for over 40 years; this book is a selection of those essays. Interestingly enough, his mother Katherine White was also an editor at the same magazine, as was his stepfather E.B. White, who also wrote Charlotte's Web and co-authored The Elements of Style.

Five books that mean a lot to me
(in no particular order, and not including the phone book):

- High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Music nerd has lady problems.

- Klondike by Pierre Berton. The Yukon is cool.

- Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony by David C. Woodman. First book (of many) that I read on Franklin's lost expedition.

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Regular nerd has lady and interplanetary travel problems.

- Memoirs by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Handsome nerd has Canadian unity problems.

I'm now supposed to tag someone else, but since no one ever reads this but Johnny Nemo, I'll ask him for his input.

I'm currently staying in a four star hotel. Since I smoke, I have a smoking room on what I assume is a smoking floor. Now, I know that smokers tend to smell the effects of their addiction to a lesser degree than non smokers, but when I stay at the Super 8 in a smoking room I don't get reeked out by it the same way I do in a posh place.

I got off the elevator yesterday and immediately noticed it. I stayed in a five star hotel a couple of months ago, and it was even more pungent there.

So essentially, the stinkiness of the hotel is directly proportional to the amount of money it costs to stay there. Wild.

Happy Canada Day.