Bon Soir mon amis!



It's a lovely night here in Halifax, and it's time for a delicious TonySays update!

Before I get started, I have to cover two things:

1. I should have brought my camera out last night

2. I need to take more pictures

ok maybe one more...

3. I'm sorry for that picture Porty, but it had to be done.

I'm going to work on number 2. I really need to. A lot! FOR YOU! THE BENEFIT IS FOR YOU!

I also should have brought it out last weekend to Chuck's show at Argyle Fine Art. I'm a damn fool. He looked super cool playing in the art gallery in his dirty NOFX t-shirt. I'm trying not to get into too much of a rut in terms of not taking pictures, but now I'm thinking that it's starting to happen.

NOTE: I'm starting to feel that this post is going to be more and more disjointed.

Ok... ok ok ok ok ok....

I got some fun stuff in the mail a few days ago. Of course, I was asleep when Canada post came, so I had to walk my butt to Fenwick to pick up my package. Are you intrigued? Do you want to know what it is????

I got the new Of Montreal album, Skeletal Lamping. I guess it's not much of a surprise. Even less that I got the limited, 2 record, gatefold 180 gram version. Because it's not a record purchase if you don't REALLY get the whole thing. I was so stoked when I opened up the package though, because, as usual, Polyvinyl sent me extra stuff. They love me. I order so much stuff from there. Actually, now that I think about it, I have to put pictures up of the singles Danielle surprised me with a few weeks ago. I guess that's another day. But back to the record.

Here's the wrapped cover (it came with a free digi copy of the album):



This is the "insert" for the 3 song BONUS download that I got for the pre-order:





The Extras (two stickers, and a button, the cd sampler is standard, and the card thing is my download code):



Everything:



Inside cover:



Rear Cover:



Insert for the album:





Record Sleeves:



Ok, so you probably thought all that artwork was pretty cool.

All of that stuff was pretty cool I guess... but I was curious about this:



Ok, so what the fuck was it? Well I unfolded it and it revealed:



WHAT AN AWESOME/FUCKED UP POSTER!

I loved it. I'm trying to think of a place that I can hang it that it won't scare the shit out of me if it catches me off guard.

Right now, I'm listening to the 5th track (my second spin of the album, the first was on the vinyl, and now I'm onto the digi so I don't disturb Danielle's homework), it's called "An Eluardian Instance", and it's got a great opening. I'm so hooked on this album. I mean, parts of it are pretty fucked up, but you really can't expect otherwise from Of Montreal. I'm dancing in my chair. You'd love to see it. It's ok. You can admit it.

Haha.

Ok, so what else is going on these days?

OH! I had an "interview" at EB Games for a holiday retail position. Yeah, I know it's a step down, but I like games, I'm not getting much from stats can (in terms of hours[and a bunch of other crap I don't feel much like writing about here, ask me if you want the whole story]) for the next month, so I picked up something easy to keep me from being crazy. I like to think I know a lot about gaming, and I'm not too bad at customer service, so it seemed like a good fit for something temporary that will let me work at stats still. I should look for a real job. HAHAHA. Maybe. I'll let you know how things go when I get started. Come see me at the mall when I get started. I'll be the sharply dressed dude named Tony.

HA!

Check this shit out. This guy is fucking CRAZY.



Confused? Well, it seems that this guy thought it was a good idea to mimic a music visualizer (you know, the colourful, moving images that you can watch along with your music) with electrical muscle stimulation and his FACE. HIS FACE. Anyway, it doesn't seem like a good idea, but it freaked me out a bit, and I wanted to share.

Alright, now that all that fun is out of the way, it's time to talk about the weekend. On Thursday night (after work), Danielle and I had a bit of a family thing here because her cousin Jen was down from Toronto. My sister came over, along with Jen, Josh, Tara, Christophe, and his girlfriend Kaitlyn. Danielle and I made some delicious orange slice jello shooters (the night before) to celebrate, and they actually turned out really well. As you can tell, we just kind of hung around, talked, drank, and played singstar/buzz/CATCHPHRASE. It was a really fun night. Danielle will attest to the potency of the shooter slices. I took some photos!









Lookin cool



The shooters:











I love this one:





















Right on.

Yesterday, I had my interview, and was supposed to jam with Christian and Omar. That didn't really happen, but I ended up hanging out with Omar for the afternoon, and then Danielle picked me up so we could head home, make some supper, and then get ready to go out to see Snow Picnic at the Seahorse. Dan Rodgers came over to hang out before we left too.

Who is snow picnic? Well if you don't know check out his myspace and offical site.

Gordon played a kick ass set. I love the way he fuses his beats with fantastic harmonic elements. And oh GOD the bass lines are great. It was fun to watch him manipulate some of the songs so that they deviated from what he has up on his site, but he really kept the place bumpin'. I should have brought my cam. After the set, we headed out (after about half an hour of figuring out where the hell we were going) to get some food at Willy's. OH GOD WHAT A BURGER. Again, WHERE WAS THE CAM. It was even more necessary when we got back to Chris and Jess's place to hang out. There were sooo many cheetos. Once we got back there and had eaten, we hung out, talked, and listened to some music. Eventually, we flipped on Conan, and Danielle and I checked out after the monologue. We got home and crawled into bed, which was excellent. I was beat.

Today, we went CHRISTMAS SHOPPING (THAT'S RIGHT! TWO MONTHS EARLY). I felt the need to get started early, so I'm not strapped for $$ all at once, when I can't find anything for anybody and resort to terrible random crap. I'm also trying to use the internet to grab some stuff. I love giving cool gifts. Because I'm cool. I also got a few shirts for myself. I'm greedy like that.

We went for supper with Danielle's parents/grandmother/uncle/brother/his girlfriend. We had Oktoberfest foods at the church. MMM SAUSAGE!

After Danielle and I got back home, we cleaned up a bit, and then took a necessary but important break, and then I got my butt on here and started listening to the Of Montreal album again and blogging. But that's it for me tonight. I'm pretty tired.

GFY,
Tony I

Election Post

Hey there,

I hope you all voted today. It's been kind of a hair-raising day, with all of this election action going on. I'm watching the election coverage, and it's kind of worrying me. It's not that I don't believe that this whole process isn't important, but I don't really know why this whole election even got called. It seems that the end results are almost the same (barring a conservative majority, which in my opinion would blow massive balls) on the grand scale of things, save that the NDP has actually gained some strength nationally. I'm not going to go into who I voted for, but it's obvious that I didn't vote conservative.

I'm not really writing here to make any kind of political statement. I'm just making an observation of what is going on. I spent a lot of this campaign reading, as opposed to listening; I feel that what the leaders of the parties were saying on the debates/in their advertisements was really negative. I hate how the advertisements highlighted nothing about the advertiser's campaign, but rather how much of a butt-gobbler the other guy is (save for the Green Party). It really put me off. I read more about what was to be going on, what the parties were offering, and was able to weigh my opinion based on something other than slander/hype.

Anyway, I'm hoping this all turns out as a minority so that Canadians can see how much of a mess and a waste of time this whole election was. We'll be seeing Dion leaving the leadership of the Liberals (based on what I've been hearing from the "experts") at the end of all this, and maybe a fresh face will take over and bring some new ideas to the Liberals. The big dink that's the PM will face a lot of fire about his calling this thing. The mustachioed avenger will come back stronger next time, and the greens will be happy with their results. To be honest, I'm glad this whole thing is almost over.

GFY,
Tony Important

WOO-HOO UPDAAAAAAATE!



and I'm SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGING!!!

WOO!

So, I'm sitting here next to smelly-Danielley (she's "doing homework", which I think is code for surfing facebook) and I'm thinking that it's time for an update. I'm thinking that this update is a few days overdue. But that's small potatoes at this point.

Where do I start? Well, the jam sessions have been going really well with Omar and Christian. We've been recording using my computer through a rather complicated set up. Obviously, as I said, things ultimately end up on my computer but we start by mic-ing up the drums, guitar, and bass and running them through a mixer, much like this one.



For the drums, we have a mics on the kick, under the high-hat and snare side, and over the ride cymbal/floor tom. So three tracks. We level those out, so that I'm not crushing the other tracks with volume. Then we mic the bass amp and the guitar so we get sound from everyone. Awesome. Then, we run the mixer (as left and right channels) into this little device...



which is called a MobilePre. It's basically an external USB sound card interface that allows you to input various audio sources so that you can record through the USB ports on your computer. So with the mixer hooked up, we just plug it into my computer and use an audio recording program to capture the delicious sound.

Yeah we've got quite a bit of stuff that we've recorded so far, and THIS Friday, we're going to try and go over everything and see what we can make of it all. I've got some homework to do. HA!

Now for something completely random...

DON'T SHOOT THE PUPPY. Enjoy.

HAR HAR HAR HAR.

What else has been going on......

LittleBigPlanet!!!!!!



WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW! IT IS A FANTASTIC GAME. How do I know? It's not out yet. OH! I got selected to participate in the beta test for the Game, which means that I got to play the game early and test it for bugs/slowdowns/whatever might effect the gameplay (the beta has since expired, as the game comes out in a week or two).

The game itself is part platform/adventure game and part CREATE A GAME. That's right, within the game itself is a VERY complex and involved level editing program. I had a chance to sample it, but without all of the tutorials in english (because that's just how the beta worked) I wasn't able to to everything that I wanted. However, there were some really nice user generated levels that were made by other people that had me really excited. I think one of the best things about the level editor, is that you can control the various music tracks within a level, and by that I mean you can create your own mixes of multi-layered level tracks, mixing in various bass, drums, lead, and even ambient tracks at different levels and sound types. It's SO VERY VERY DEEP. I can't wait for the full retail version of the game to come out, because I think I'll have a lot more to say about it then. WOOO.

On top of all of THAT, I got an iPod this week. This is actually my first iPod, but I'm very excited because I need it for the gym (my 512 MB player had to be changed out too often), and I like to have something to listen to while I'm driving. It's great. It's a 4th Generation iPod Nano with a 16GB of storage. I pretty much have it filled already. AND my coverflow is fully operational with no DOUBLES and no missing album covers. I took some shots.







it says "Tony iPod". Isn't that awesome. I'm so fucking cool.



RIGHT ON! WOOOOOOOOOO!

Okay, so on Friday after the jam, Danielle and I had people over for some drinking and hangouts. We sat around for a bit and talked and listened to records. I drank a bit, and had a chance to talk with peeps. It was a good time. As things got later (and I more drunk [probably everyone else too]) we decided to bust out the Buzz! game for some quiz time fun. Also, we had some delicious chips. Some of the pics...















SALAD FINGERS?





YOU PIED YOURSELF!







After everyone had a round at that, we fired up singstar! SINGSTAR! It was great. I guess I'm pretty good when I'm drunk. Here are the last of the photos.









Bad ass dance moves?





Mike passed out after 6 beer. He left his tampons on my counter.



Cute















I'm such a ham.



That's it for Friday. It was a really good time, but a few people couldn't make it out. Omar was missed but he made it out for a visit on Saturday, and, at one point I was talking to Steve on MSN, and he wanted me to say "Hi" to everyone, and that he misses us out there. Cool. So I guess that wraps it up for me tonight. HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

GFY (the return of),
Tony I