Holy Effin Eff.

The new Holy Fuck (yes, that's their name, we all think it's cool so stop hyperventilating...) is gloriously blissful and sexy and funky and hyperactive and psychedelic and basically makes me wanna shake my booty despite my obvious Aryan heritage, and it's all done by a few guys ripping the guts out of their old Coleco systems and Texas Instruments computers and illegal police scanners and wiring it all up together and making it squeal like an electronic Frankenstein piggy on cherry-flavoured meth that watches Trainspotting seven times a day.

Goddamn; not bad for a former member of Blue Rodeo, huh?

Hey, look, they gots a video, too:

That's all for now, as I must pack and pack and pack while listening to all kindsa new music; why didn't anyone tell me that there was a new Prefuse 73, or a new Underworld, or a new Peanut Butter Wolf, or...okay, see? This is why I gotta stop. Now. Go away, or I'll punch you. I got STUFF to do.

State-Of-The-Badass-Art.

Okay, so Brandon dropped off about five boxes worth of baby stuff for when the little creature pops out and rewrites our lives, and we were going through the stuff and cooing over the little onesies and sleeping caps and booties and whatnot (Rachel was cooing. I do not coo. I roar. Because I am a MAN. Sometimes I growl, and other times I mutter, but I do not coo, and anyone who tells you different is a goddamned liar), when I found one of those harnesses that lets you strap the kid to your chest, and I tried it on, and instead of being some dumb earth-first neo-hippy-ish "lemme bathe my kid in bottled placental waters while I chow down on it's dried up umbilical cord in some lame gesture of new-age fatherhood while some guru teaches Mom how to paint visions of primal scream therapy with her own feces" sort of contraption, this thing had buckles and snaps and ziplines and mesh parts and velcro and it was black and silver, and I swear to god, I felt like one of those Colonial Marines from Aliens...

...only without the whole "getting scarred by acidic blood and ripped apart by weird pseudosexual alien critters and eventually having eggs laid inside my belly so that it can burst out when it needs to feed" trip...um, on second thought, let's hope the Crazy Lady doesn't read that part.

Anyway: it felt cool, and I felt a little better about the fact that I can still play video games and read comics and maybe sometimes act out epic sagas with my Hellboy and Preacher action figures (Lobster Johnson vs. The Saint of Killers!!! The Big Red Goon himself vs. Jesse Custer, with play-by-play commentary by Spider Jerusalem and his two-faced cat!!! The Tick vs. a Rubik's Cube!!!), while at the same time being a DAD.

Of course, I'll feel even more comfortable once I figure out a way to attach a 10mm M41A Pulse Rifle with an over-and-under 30mm Pump Action Grenade Launcher to it.

In other news: walking downtown with Josh Barsky might get you into a fight with ten guys if you're not careful, as Josh has a tendency to mouth off to anyone passing by when he's drunk ("Alla you wanna piece of me? C'mon, Chris, let's kill 'em all! We can do it, and then the monkey in my head won't tease me any more! Ya gotta silence that shit by drinkin'! Hold on, I gotta vomit..."); it helps if you just push him into a wall, because then he starts to giggle, and no one wants to start a fight with a tiny giggling Jew.

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

I must be quick. There's an extraordinary amount of laundry to be done, and all my unnerwear is at the Crazy Lady's house. Oops. Plus: I may have found a place to hide all my porn for the next six months while I wait for our little Elder God to pop, so I gotta go bribe the new landlords with cake and polaroids of myself engaging in questionable behaviour. Also with money.

As well: turns out there's still a piece of glass under my skin from where I sliced my finger open last week. Yeah, typing's fun. Ow.

What I wanted to say was that everyone should listen to this.

Les Savy Fav held a contest recently, inviting fans and other miscreants to shoot a video for the band's latest single, 'The Equestrian'; and while normally I shrivel up at the sight of precocious kids being thrust into a spotlight, I have to admit that this one kinda works for me. The kid's certainly cuter than Tim Harrington, I tell you that much.

It's the song itself, though. Holy CRAP. It's like Rocket From The Crypt never broke up, but instead killed a punch of art-punks and wore their skins as a disguise in order to infiltrate the ears of scenesters everywhere, in the hopes of getting as many people as possible to set fire to their goddamned Belle & Sebastian records. I sincerely hope it works.

Anyway: this is me shaving my beard, because no one wants to rent to a smelly mountain man.

A Message To The Crazy Lady:

If I'm not allowed to name it Bruce Wayne or Indiana Jones, then you're not allowed to name it Cthulhu.

Why Twyla Dawn will someday rule the world.

I am speechless:




All this means is that when we unleash the zombie child into the world, Twyla gets a head start.

NO I WILL NOT SHARE MY COMICS WITH IT.

Okay, so, um, there might be some of you who haven't heard yet, so lemme just clear up any rumours and state for the record: The Crazy Lady and I are having a baby.

No, really. We're preggers, and I have the most delightful glow about me, even if my boobs DO feel heavier.

I saw pictures of it yesterday as it tried to punch the Crazy Lady in the bladder. It was quite beautiful (the kid, not the punching thing, although it makes sense that the two of us would create something that was surly in the womb...), and despite my usual bitter demeanor, I was actually quite awestruck and, well, almost cried. Although I'll deny it if anyone ever brings it up ("Me, cry at an ultrasound? No way. I just cracked open another beer and asked the doctor if we could get the hockey game on her screen..."). Before anyone asks, we don't know it's sex yet, although Maxx keeps telling me that it's probably a puppy, in which case toilet training will be easier than I expected, and no one will get mad if I tie it to a tree in the backyard.

This means that I'll probably not be posting as much in the next few weeks, as now I am MOVING and EXPECTING at the same time. Still, stay tuned for news, as we're due some time around the end of April 2008, and you're all invited to come watch it emerge, all gooey and rubbery and baby-ish. I'm sure the Crazy Lady won't mind the company. BYOB.

Burn my fingers burn my toes burn my uncle burn his books burn his shoes cook the leather put it on me does it fit me or you?

I am eating five pain au chocolate's (which is pronounced "pan-o-shockalots" to those of you who are inept at all things francophonian, like me...I don't even know if francophonian is a word, so there I go making things up again, but anyway...) These things are basically croissants ("kwah-sonnnn", and you have to make a surprised face when you say that last part, otherwise the French police come and jeer at you, and then you have to punch them, because they are French.) filled with chocolate, and they are SO GODDAMNED DELICIOUS. I am eating FIVE, because Beano makes them all at the godawful hour of 6:00 in the friggin' morning, which means that by the time I get there at 4:00 in the afternoon, wading in to relieve the munchkin-like people who've been standing on top of each other's shoulders to reach the espresso machine, chewing on the money to make sure it's real currency and generally running in milk-splattered circles like the circus disaster that I know and love, the damned things have already sold out.

So when I come in to find not one, not two, but FIVE left over, well, tarnation. A job's gotta have perks, right? Those bad boys are MINE.

Beano is good these days, if a little annoying at times. The expansion into the old barber shop is finished, and actually looks nice, even though I still think Janice and Margie should've kept one of the barber chairs in the corner for me to take naps in. It's definitely become busier at nights, as the new space lights the corner up like a beacon for drunk yuppies who think it's funny to loudly proclaim they know nothing about coffee and then promptly demand soy half-caffienated chocolate machiattos, and then complain that their drinks don't taste like the whipped sugar beverages that Starfucks brainwashes y'all into drinking; yuppies are lousy tippers, too, which makes me feel justified in ignoring their requests as a general rule and surreptitiously serving real caffeine and real dairy to every timid lactose-intolerant boy-child that throws their change at me. Have fun in the bathroom, jerks. Non-fat THIS.

Anyway. Despite the alarming number of preschoolers that seem to be gathering at my place of work, the stress level is kind of levelling out. Which is good. I was afraid that with the departure of both The Mormon AND The Jew, Crazy Lady and I would end up ripping off each other's limbs and beating each other to death in front of frightened coffee geeks.

By the way: Her Craziness? Still the best thing of 2007 to happen to me. No, really.

So, stuff, music-wise:

1. There's not much I can say about the Built To Spill show; it was really good, possibly amazing. Given that they showed up in Calgary less than an hour before going onstage, I was impressed. After a couple of unenthusiastic openers that pretty much counted as their soundcheck (looking like they'd all woken up from one giant nap), they tightened up considerably and kept me from punching the crust-punk next to me who kept shaking his head in an epileptic fit to slow songs like "Liar" and "Car". They're one of the few bands that still draw from their entire discography for songs to play live. Most groups seem to have a tendency to play their current releases and nothing else, whereas Friday we were treated to a well-rounded setlist; and that cover of Brian Eno's "Third Uncle"? Holy Crap. Karma has pictures here.

Also: with his hair standing on end, Doug Martsch looks like a muppet.

I am trying to find something nice to say about Attack In Black, but really, do we need another No Depression band? I'm sure they all treat their mothers very well, but I never wanna see another bearded Springsteen wanna-be in a checkered button-up shirt. Boooooooooooooooring.

2. The new Steve Earle is, well, Steve Earle-ish. Not bad. He's the only person who can play a mandolin and NOT put me to sleep. I have to say, though: the Tom Waits cover at the end is abominable. Yeesh. I can only hope I'm still as cantankerous as he is when I'm in my fifties...

3. Jesu has a new e.p. out ("Lifeline"), and, well, um...it's kinda getting old. It's still good, it's just that the whole sonic wash/wall of feedback trick is reminding me more and more of industrail bands from the 80s that had indecipherable german names, huge impossible concept albums and no melody whatsoever.

4. I described Baroness to Josh and Sophie as psychedelic blues metal, and Sophie nearly had an aneurysm: "I can understand metal, and I get blues metal, but psychedelic as well? I JUST DON'T GET IT!" Try talking to her about time travel and you'll get the same result. "The Red Album" is really worth checking out. Not brilliant, but good.

That's all for now. I gotta get up early tomorrow and go apartment-hunting (if anyone knows of a solid one-bedroom in the area for less than a thousand, please throw a rock at me), plus I'm all outta clean unnerwear again, so this is me playing one more scrabble move, reading one more JLA comic, eating the last Death By Chocolate pastry-thing and falling asleep to the sound of cracked-out boy-whores shivering while they give head for meth in my parking lot, where I'll probably dream about midgets spraying me with chocolate espresso while they steal my wallet.