BOMB!

Bonjour! I'm going to start blogging more regularly again, as I now have myself a handy dandy laptop that I can lug around with me. My old EEE Netbook just wasn't cutting it.

Firstly, I recently stumbled across Quote Unquote Records! They do that whole "Download music and then donate if you feel like supporting the musicians" thing that seems to be hip with the kids. They've got a pretty good lineup of indie bands that don't suck, so if your a little short on new (good) music you should drop by. I'd suggest checking out the new Bomb The Music Industry album, Scrambles. And if you haven't heard of BTMI before, you need to check them out. Now. It's some of the best not-really-for-profit music I've ever heard, and it's really motivational to me as a musician.

Pretty much, let me lay this out for you. BTMI isn't a regular band. It's a dude. And his friends who often change. They make music, play shows, whatever. Here's the thing: Want some merch? Cool, bring a T-shirt and one of the guys will spray paint it at a show for you. Want to hear a song live? Cool, bring an instrument to the show and jam it out. How sweet is that? They are all about DIY, and so am I. Become their fan.

Anyways, that's that.

Obligatory Holiday Entry

Happy holi-oli-olidays!

Things have been hectic as always. Neaaaarly done moving in to a new house (I got the master bedroom. Fook yes.) I made a tower of boxes:

It's pretty nice though. But a bit messy. Kristyn (le gal-pal) hasn't moved in with moi yeeet, but I have things set up. I made us little work stations (mine's the left) because I'm sooooo professional like that. 

...However I did scratch up my nice 26" Dell LCD something awful. Fuck.

Interesting trick though! Instead of looking at the scratches for the net four years, throw a little petroleum jelly (Vaseline) on there and you can't even see the scratches. Turns out the jelly has damn near the same density as the plastic used in Liquid Crystal Displays. Who knew? =D

I has a walk in closet (Soon to be overtaken by girly clothes):

And my own bathroom! The curtains have fish on them. Fucking sweet.

..But the mirror is a little dirty. Gross. But yeah, I'm stoked on this room. I actually even stole our old kitchen table to suit my drawing needs. Hoo-rah. 

I hope everyone's having a good holiday season. I drove 16ish(?) hours to Saskatoon in Oliver this last week to have Christmas with Kristyn's family. I learned several important things:

1. 24 year old vans arn't the warmest places on earth. Even with three pairs of socks and thick boots, I still got frostbite on my feet. Totally worth it, but this leads to important thing number two:

2. Opposite of America, Canada gets MORE hick the farther you go north. Example. I stopped to see if I could find some glove warmers to shove.. all over my body (you know the kind that are just little pouches that supposedly heat up and thus keep you warm) and I was met with this greeting: "Daym! Look at ch'yall! Dun even got none snow pants er nothin!". Made my day, even though I didn't find glove warmer things. His suggestion though? "Blast sommathat heavy metal music you like and rock out the whole way!". Needless to say, we're friends for life now.

3. Those glove warmer things I was just talking about? Fuck them. They don't work. I bought six pairs for myself at Walmart for the return trip. Nope. Four pairs failed to heat up even slightly. And other two pairs were day-old-soup warm. IE: not very.

Does three things count as several? Hm. Anyways, knowledge is power and now we know. My trip was swell otherwise, and life is pree alright. Off to the coast after boxing day. We'll see how that one goes. 

Oliver

I just wanted to post one of the first pictures I have of Oliver, my 1984 VW Vanagon:



He's the Tickets To Touring Van. If you know what I mean. He set me back just under four grand that I didn't have, but so far there have been no regrets. Though I did find out the hard way that there's only three other seatbelts...

...And that's me (of course) in front. With my Nepalian monkey toque that I got today. It sort of suits me, I think. He's not really happy or sad, he's just kind of there hanging out, doing whatever your doing. I like his ears.

Picture Dump, October 8th

The night of October eighth lent itself very well to some indie rock action, and for once I wasn't stuck driving to the show. This meant I was very very drunk, and had a very very good time. And, being a visual arts student, I naturally had my Olympus E-420 glued to my drunken face all damn night.

There were actually several occasions where I forgot to take the lens cap off and couldn't figure out why everything was black. I never said I was suave.

So here we are about a month later and I just randomly found my drunken shots. I forgot about them! So I picked some of the better ones, did just basic Photoshop adjustments and cropped a few down. I have all of these images uncompressed in camera raw at stupid high resolutions if any band wants them.

And if you use these, go right ahead. Just please give image credit to me, Sheldon Stenning. Thanks a bunch.

So without further adieu, here's about seventy reasons to come out to local shows.

Kick ass local Jackson Gardner getting mad bitches:




My ex pop-punk band, The Box Policy:





Moments Of Brilliance. I remember thinking at the time that they all had the same hair:






Along Way Home know how to pose for a camera:





Conversation sucks:
(I'm kidding, that's what their stickers say)



And then I remember being pissed off that my memory card was full.

I'd say that night was worth paying ten entire dollars.