The Soundtrack to my life

I've been a bad blogger. I've been inconsistent with the topics I write about. I've made promises that I don't keep. I've never stuck to a deadline or written on a regular basis. I'm sure my spelling and grammar are atrocious. And I wish I could blame that on being busy with work or school but the fact is that since starting my blog I've only written 4, and worse, I've only published 3. Mostly due to laziness, partly due to a lack of self confidence in my writing. When ideas start swirling around in my head of topics to write about they seem to flow almost lyrically. But as I go along putting them down on paper or typing them out here they seem to lose their luster. Maybe it's because the internal monologue that narrates my life occasionally speaks in the voice of either Christopher Walken, or Sean Connery (depending on the day of the week and just how much charisma is needed to get me through the business at hand) and attempting to translate that into the distinguished art of blogging seems to insult the nature of these two fine Gentlemen. And as I'm sure that both of them frequently Google themselves to find references to their names in recent blogs, when they read this I want to do them no injustice. So to remedy this I've decided to just follow the lead of pretty much every other blogger on the planet and make some kind of list.

This is the soundtrack to my life. Every time I hear these songs I'm reminded strongly of something I was doing at a time when I heard them.

1) Born to Be Wild- Steppenwolf: When I was 16 and had recently received my G1 license my uncle let me drive his brand new convertible Mustang with this blaring at full blast (as all music should be listened to). I may not have followed the speed limit. I definitely didn't get caught.

2) Your Spirits Alive - Dropkick Murphys: On my first trip to Baldwin to go skydiving we listened to the entire warriors code album and Your Spirits Alive really stuck out in my mind as I was getting ready to jump.

3) Copperhead Road- Steve Earls: My brother used to own a really nice blue truck. It was a lowered chevy s10 that had so many different motors put through it I don't even remember which one was in it at the time he took me for a drive. he put on Copperhead Road and started heading down some back roads. I don't know exactly how fast we were going because the speedometer only went up to 220 km/h.

4) Knockin' on Heavens Door- Bob Dylan: when my niece Marlee was born I made a short video of her and I set it to the intro of Knockin' on Heavens Door.

5) Rocket Man- Elton John: this brings back strong, it not hazy, memories of the Hawaiian party I threw at my house and the lovely rendition that I did with my best friends. An entire night wrapped up in one intense song.

6) My Hero- Foo Fighters: Reminds me of my father

7) Could Not Ask For More- Edwin McCain: This is the first song I ever slow danced to. It was with Jessica Lisk, who i grew up with and eventually took to prom.

8) Numb- Linkin Park: I don't know where we were going but i remember being in a car with Ted, Alissa, their friend Brent and his girlfriend Ashley and listening to Numb at full blast. It was really dark out and the inside of the car was glowing blue. The speakers were right behind the seat and it tickled me when the bass pounded. I remember we were going really fast again.

9) 3 am- Matchbox 20: We listened to this continuously one May 24 weekend while staying at Scott's grandparent's cottage at Sauble Beach. I was really sick with some kind of flue and had to go home early. A real shame since we were freezing our asses off the for the first 2 nights.

10) Comfortably Numb- Pink Floyd: This was playing on the radio while I got my first (and hopefully not last) tattoo.

11) Audience of One- Rise Against: I downloaded Rise Against's new album hours before getting on the bus that would take me to the airport to go to Spain to visit Erica and I listened to the whole album over and over again while I was there. Now every time I hear a song from it, it reminds me of Spain.

These are the ones that stick out in my mind the most. Here are a few more that don't really have a back story but that still mean a lot to me.

Nights I Can't Remember, Friends I'll Never Forget- Toby Keith

If Everyone Cared- Nickelback (I know... please don't judge me)

Tuesday's Gone- Lynyrd Skynyrd

Beast Of Burden- The Rolling Stones

Bittersweet Symphony- The Verve

Walking in Memphis- Marc Cohn

Accidentally In Love- Counting Crows

Fly Away- Lenny Kravits

Video Killed the Radio Star- the Presidents of the United States of America

Vandalism and Lemonade Pt 1

So the school year is over and I'm home for the summer. It has been an interesting year and if I were to describe it with one word it would be "enlightening". There were a lot of things I learnt this year, both academic and life lessons that I'm sure I've already forgotten due to the massive amount of alcohol consumed on my last day. I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about some of the more prominent lessons of this past year (and I may slip in one or two things from years ago). I'm going to write this in parts, one lesson today, and one each day over the next few days. Hope you like them.

The first lesson I want to talk about is a life lesson. Around Christmas I was sitting in the student study lounge (rarely frequented by students, ironically) and I over heard one of my classmates, Mary, having a conversation about life, the universe, and everything with the guy that had convinced me to join the program I was in. He was in the second year of the program, which means that he has now graduated. I'll admit I was eavesdropping for a while but eventually I joined in on the conversation to listen to what he had to say. Among the topics of discussion he talked about were God/ religion, stereotypes, technology, and life overall. Within a half hour of listening to him, I'm pretty sure I would have followed him anywhere. He had a way of speaking that made everything he said make sense. There are a few things he said that I remember but the one thing that I absolutely loved is "we're all waiting for the one big thing in our life to happen. You can live your whole life without a big thing but if you ever want to write your life story, you need a big thing. Without it, your story is just a series of anecdotes that people will read in the bathroom, and can set down at any time.... no real story worth remembering." That is something I find very substantial. I don't intend to write my life story any time soon, but even this blog is just a series of anecdotes. There's nothing big that they all centre around or have in common. They are just the preambles of a "Gentleman". The half hour I spent talking to Phil and Mary was a conversation that I think I'll remember for a long time. It gave me new perspectives on God, stereotypes, technology, and where life is going, and how you're going to direct it. It's something we should all think about on a regular basis.

It's late and i write my titles last

Here's a question of morals. Or maybe it's not morals; it's just a question. Either way it just is. I have a group presentation in one of my classes next week (it's about networking, just so you know). And the teacher tells us that we should have a question period in case anything we say isn't quite clear. He also says that there is no way we're going to cover everything that can possibly be covered and there will be questions. A thinly veiled way of saying that he's going to ask questions if no one in class can come up with one. And this has gotten the ladies in my group in a tizzy. So they came up with a quick solution. Plant a couple questions in the audience. Get a handful of people to ask questions before the teacher has a chance to. Now to me, this seems a bit off kilter. It's makes me unsettled. Rather than have the answers to the questions or admit that they don't know the answer, these people would rather withhold some information and then release it later. Personally I'd like to be an expert in the field. I'd like to know the answer to the question that they ask. I don't even think I'm a good enough actor to go through the motions of saying "Yes Jack?” "That's a good question", and "Networking means never having to say you're sorry". It is alright to not know the answer. Yes, we have been doing research on this for a month but we can't be expected to be experts about networking in that time. So your first question of the day is what should I do? Should I load a question to seem like i have an answer? To me this seems like one step above cheating. If you knew the answers before going into a test, that would be considered cheating. But on the other hand, this isn't a test. It's just a presentation. And what if i do know the answer to a question that wasn't prepared. I'd have a greater sense of myself than if I just told people what i already knew. So i pose the question to you. I have just under 2 weeks before the presentation and i'd like your help. Just do you know my stance I'll tell you right now that I'm against it but i can be swayed to the other side. Whadda ya say?

Of Simon and Garfunkle..... The one that is NOT Garfunkle

So a few weeks ago my friend Scott decides that we should start drinking bourbon. It is, after all, the drink of Southern gentlemen and we need to be more cultured.... i guess. So he does a little research and picks a bottle of wild turkey. I can't honestly say that i know the difference between whiskey, rye, scotch or bourbon, hence our need to be more cultured (If that's what makes you cultured then I would say being able to swim makes you a boat). But we have this bottle of bourbon, and we're ready to drink it, sort of. I didn't have whiskey glasses so i poured a shot of bourbon into some small water glasses over ice. This was a special occasion so Scott put on some AC/DC to get us pumped up. And I got out a picture of Sean Connery, the baddest MoFo to ever grace this beautiful planet, to make sure we were drinking in the presence of a real man (I wish i was making that part up). So there we stand, AC/DC playing, Sir Sean watching, bourbon in our hands, and we take a deep sniff (I don't know if you've ever sniffed bourbon but i don't recommend making a hobby of it) and we both think "hmmm, better have a chase". So we open the fridge..... skip the milk.... water's no good..... lemonade? It'll have to do.

It was a disgrace to Mr Connery that we couldn't finish those shots of bourbon. I can just imagine his gruff scottish accent echoing in my head. "What's the matter boys? Can't finish your bourbon, eh?" And that's what hurts the most. Letting down such a legend of a man. An actor with brilliance and class. His roles are fantastically epic. Multiple roles as James Bond, a shut in in Finding Forester, even a dragon in Dragonheart. Any one of these characters are something that you can admire and when Sean puts his own unique characteristics into these roles they become something extraordinary. Blah blah blah beats his wife blah blah....