Complaints choir

Just read this story about the Finnish complaints choir (video below, and it's hilarious).



The song is made of complaints submitted by choir members. My favourite from this one is "We always lose to Sweden in Eurovision and hockey." What would your complaint be? Mine would be people who zig-zag slowly across sidewalks, thwarting my attempts to pass them.

Share - it's good for the soul.

Ministry of Music

You know, I mention a big pile of human remains two posts ago and not one of you asks what I was talking about? I need to find some new readers - you people are scaring me.

In the interests of keeping this thing alive, I've decided that rather than only writing to talk about all the glamourous, exciting places I've gone or exotic, gourmet meals I've eaten, I will introduce a new (and plagiarized from more widely-read online publications) feature that I'm sure will delight you all: The Arbitrary Theme List!

Here's the rules: I pick a topic. I then pick songs in my iTunes collection (or books on my shelf, though the former is certainly more searchable) that work with that theme. Readers (all three of you!) are welcome to suggest additions or new themes.

Today, as I am doing taxes, (and feloniously late at that), the theme is "songs related to the government." I've hobbled myself slightly by eliminating songs about revolution or law enforcement, saving those for future lists. That leaves me with four, which is probably a good thing because these taxes are refusing to do themselves, no matter how long I ignore them.

1) The obvious one is Taxman, by the Beatles. I'm of two minds on this song. It has some nice harmonies and rocks pretty hard. On the other hand, it is a song by a bunch of soon-to-be gazilionaires complaining about their tax load. I always thought George Harrison sounded like a sanctimonious SOB, turns out he was a big ole hyprocrite as well.

2) Don't worry about the government: Talking Heads - technically, I'm breaking the rules already, as this song is actually not in my iTunes, but we did own the CD. It's a lovely tune told from a bureaucrat's perspective: "Loved ones, loved ones visit the building/Take the highway, park and come up and see me/ I'll be working, working but if you come visit/ I'll put down what I'm doing, my friends are important."

3) Fortunate Son, CCR: Not about the government per se, but rather a alienation from it: "It ain't me, I ain't no senator's son." It killed me that they used this in a Levi's commercial a few years back, including the line "Born to raise the flag, ooh that red white and blue" along with a shot of someone's patriotic, denim-clad behind, but then cut out just before the "it ain't me" refrain.

4) Hmmm... this was harder than I thought. I'll throw in "Good King Wenceslas" - it is on my iTunes, and one always sort of hopes that one's government would be so hands on helpful with its taxpayers: "Hey Harper! My car's stuck! Push it out, and I'll immortalize you in a song that'll be sung exactly once a year!")

Last's year's pop-culture observations, today!

_Kaysersberg

So, we just saw off Paul, Amynah’s former thesis supervisor, visiting us for the weekend from Montreal. We took him on the usual tour of Strasbourg, drove for two hours get to a historic Black Forest steam locomotive that we then did not ride and then on to Kaysersberg, one of the prettiest villages in Alsace, (though I am more interested, probably unhealthily so, in the enormous pile of human remains in the basement of their local chapel).

Paul was his usual eccentric self. We had dinner with him and my French teacher, her husband David and their friend Agnes. At one point in the evening, David started talking about Second Life, the “virtual world” about which he’d just been reading about that afternoon, I believe because Sweden has opened a virtual embassy there. He was fascinated that the place has developed a legitimate economy, with banks, a currency and marketplace. Apparently there is even talk they may need to hire some economic expertise to set interest rates and control inflation. We speculated it would reach the point where people would actually need to do work to keep the virtual economy going.

All of which would suck, not only for the obvious reason that no one – even if they’re a purple-haired Pamela Anderson look-alike in Second Life – would sign up in order to do whatever sort of work purple-haired Pam’s do in the virtual world (much the same as in the real one, I would hazard to guess). Such virtual drudgery seems even less appealing if the only place one could go on vacation was Sweden.

Oh jeez, one of these

All right, I have nothing intelligent or interesting to write about right now, plus I should be working. Therefore I will indulge Julie, who “tagged” me to fill this out. I am not doing it in good humour, as it is 28 degrees here, forcing us to sleep with our windows open. This, in turn, means that I was woken up several times over the course of the night, the last time at 3:45 AM by a drunken Neanderthal who was yelling at the top of his lungs while walking up our street. Not yelling anything in particular, mind you, just hollering like a six-month-old that just discovered they can make loud noises with that big hole in the front of their face. So, I’m under slept and thinking unkind thoughts about humanity right now.

Three Names You Go By:
1. Mark
2. Marc
3. Mr Reynolds

Three Parts of Your Heritage:
This makes me cranky. At what point do you get to just say “Canadian?” How many Brits point to their Norman heritage and say they’re part French? Anyway, if “Canadian” isn’t acceptable:
1. Irish
2. Scottish
3. German/Austrian

Three Things That Scare You:
1. Failure
2. Internet message boards
3. Canned peas

Three of Your Everyday Essentials:
1. Air
2. Food.
3. Water.

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
1. A moccasin on my left foot.
2. A matching moccasin on my right foot.
3. My watch

Three of Your Favourite Songs Right Now:
(These are all Johnny-come-lately’s, - I’m not putting perpetual favorites up here, because what’s the point?)
1. Bleeding Heart Show, New Pornographers
2. Mes Emmerdes, Charles Aznvour
3. The Crane Wife, Decemberists

Three Things You Want in a Relationship (other than Love):
1. Sense of humour
2. Patience
3. Intelligence

Two Truths and a Lie (in any order):
1. I love doing Internet quizzes
2. I hate doing Internet quizzes
3. The first one was the lie.

Three PHYSICAL Things About the Opposite Sex that Appeal to You:
1) The parts between the top of the head and the bottom of the feet
2) The parts between the back and the front
3) The parts between the left and the right.

Three of Your Favourite Hobbies:
1. Making up answers to lists like this to make me seem more interesting and well rounded
2. Banjo construction
3. Helper-monkey training

Three Things You Want to Do Really Badly Right Now (But Can't):

1. Shoot an accordionist
2. Fairmount bagels. Cream cheese. My stomach. Now.
3. Stop that damn helper monkey from playing my banjo before the glue has set.

Three Places You Want To Go:
1. A world where I’d get the last five minutes back
2. Japan
3. Congo

Three Things You Want to Do Before You Die:
1. Make sure I’m wearing clean underwear. I’d hate to disappoint my Mom.
2. Remember that my last words have to be clever and/or mysterious. I’m thinking “Shmidt! You bastard!”
3. Umm… clean my desk? No one deserves that burden.

Three Ways That You Are Stereotypically a Girl/Guy:
What’s a girl/guy? My cross dressing days are long behind me, thank you very much.

Three People I Would Like to See Take This Quiz:
Nelson Mandela, Charles Manson, Ringo Starr