Quick Update: Benrik Bookclub?

Okay, I’ve been terribly behind on this. I’ve completely fallen off my posting streak. I’m pretty sure many of you thought I had died or that time had perhaps been changed. I’m not sorry about it since I’m very disappointed that no one tried to get a hold of me to make sure the universe was running properly and I wasn’t dead. You are all horrible people for not doing so. You are all going to have to live with that knowledge that you are truly awful and selfish.

Anyways, the point of this is Book Club. THE FURSHLUNGINGER BOOK CLUB IS HAPPENING! I should of posted it earlier since I think some of you subscribe here and do not follow on Facebook. This is my first time attempting to organize this type of thing, I will make mistakes people. I WAS VERY NEARLY DEAD IN YOUR MINDS UP TO THIS POINT! I demand sympathy for my error! Anyways, the book chosen is “Ready Player One” By Ernest Cline. It has already been declared by some as the GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN IN THE HISTORY OF THINGS WRITTEN BY PEOPLE! I am not unlike a GOD when it comes to picking books! Clearly everyone should be excreting sexual juices out of their pours with want for this book! My copy hasn’t arrived yet. It will be hillarious if I find it awful and judge everyone harshly for their terrible taste. See, you absolutely want to be part of this watershed event! We will be discussing as of July 1st. Here’s the link for the Facebook Group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/402236773134564/#!/events/384990741535975/

And more importantly, so important you should all be very grateful to Vicki, here is the link to the DISCUSSION THREAD ON NOT BENRIKLAND!

http://notbenrikland.proboards.com/index.cgi

Look, I don’t care if you hate books and don’t want to join book club. Books are stupid old things that require work and initiative and we live in the day and age of television and the Kardashians, enlightened times where our base needs of entertainment are pandered to. I get it! However, if you don’t join and play around in not benrikland, by the power of my evil eye I will HEX THE SHIT OUT OF YOU OLD SCHOOL DRUID STYLE! Fact!

In other news, not much going on. I didn’t really do the other tasks. Personal things came up and have me in a real quandary about some of my choices. I’m mostly posting this to distract myself from having to turn down a friends request to borrow money. The whole situation is bugging the shit out of me, I had to make a choice, and the choice was this. I have no idea how it will effect our friendship, and part of me is okay with it being a negative effect.I’m in a weird place where I should be enjoying a new relationship and working on old ones, but I find myself just wanting to hermit.

Oof! That’s enough of that, enjoy the weekend and read something, anything!

Self Helpless

So the rails pretty much came off. Two weeks of regular blogging, it was a pretty good run. I have not been a reliable person for quite some time, maybe not ever. So two weeks was more than I expected. As far as last week goes, I rate it a 5. Incredibly shit with an awesome Saturday that mostly has made me melancholy since I don’t really have a lot of awesome days. Which leads us to this week.

Self Help Week. This can potentially lead to the type of post that I’ve avoided writing. I’m going to skip that post. I’m not a great believer in “self help” and self analysis and all that. It seems to lead me on a treadmill of indulgent self pity that’s just shy of being a bad poetry sprouting asshole. Fuck that. I’d rather just move on and get over things. I prefer to learn through experience. While I’ve racked up more regrets then rewards, I have come to terms with were I am in life and accepted it. I’d prefer that place to be better then it is, but then who wouldn’t really? My trick is to get out of my head and remember, hard as it is to believe, that not all things revolve around me.

Done. No books necessary.

If I can be arsed I might consider looking into developing a new skill. Not very likely though.

To not leave this as a downer, which it really isn’t, here’s something that got me thinking this past weekend. I watched a documentary on Beatle George Harrison. It’s called “Living in the Material World” if you’re interested and with Martin Scorsese you should be interested. There was a bit where they were talking about his song writing. At the time of the Beatles the band was basically considered (and probably still is) to be the Lennon and McCartney show that had two other guys. History had declared, and still does that Lennon/McCartney are one of the greatest song writing teams of all time. There’s an archival clip of George being asked what it was like having to compete with that. how do you pitch songs to the greatest song writers of your generation? His response was great, and was basically “Remember, I’m in the same limo as those guys. I figured if they can do it, it can’t be all that hard to write a song so I just did it.”

It’s not an earth shattering revelation. It just struck me that everything in life, and I mean everything, is about how you perceive it. How you perceive things can inspire or cripple you. The things themselves are meaningless.

I don’t know why this troubles me. I guess this was not as up beat as I thought it would be.

The End

Hard To Handel!

IT SNOWED AGAIN! It’s supposed to be spring but we keep getting snow every weekend. It’s ridiculous! The silver lining is the snow turned to rain this time and washed the accumulated snow away so I wont have to shovel later. Still, snow every weekend that only lasts the weekend is a whole new level of bullshit around here!

Time to catch up on the past two days of tasking. It has not gone well my friends.

Liszt

I was familiar with Liszt from before. He was one of the first composers to have adoring, screaming fans. He was a real heart-throb and blessed with a gigantic penis.

Sorry, this blog might not be safe for work.

Lizt would later rage war with his rival, Nazi Wagner (who rode around on a organ powered tank smashing things that I can’t find a picture of) over the love of a Queen or someone royal.

The “W” logo is for Wagner, not “Weezer”. Anyways, it’s a bit hazy since it’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie “Lisztomania”. It’s way better than that “Amadeus” and batshit crazy, so check it out if you can find it.

As for the music, I downloaded some blasted solo piano. Some bits I recognized, but most of it was pretty angry and by 4pm I HAD HAD ENOUGH! In fact I believe I exclaimed “Fuck! This fucking Liszt! ENOUGH!” So yeah. I’m not huge on classical piano music with no backing instruments.

Today was Handel and I have nothing more to say. That will make for a boring blog though so I will say something. I listened to some kind of complete orchestral works set. It was at times pretty and often times completely un-noteworthy. It constantly made me think that “Masterpiece Theater” was on the verge of starting up. Oof! I think this music was used in another great movie “Barry Lyndon”, but I can’t be bothered to look it up to see if I’m right. As it is with Handel.

This is it for me with this task. I have stuff to do over the weekend. Meaning I have to escape my house due to shit head relatives watching their dumb shithead motor sports. So no more classical music listening for me. Plus I recieved all the awesome records I bought for record store day last week so any home time spent listneing to music will be spent listening to them.

So here’s a recap of my feelings for the week:

• I mostly don’t like classical music. Look, I can appreciate it’s importance and all that snooty stuff. Bottom line is it mostly bores me. It’s dead. There’s a reason everyone moved on, and that’s it. Modern music is more interesting.

• I really don’t like piano instrumental music.

• I really like movies. Everyone should see “Fantasia” since the classical music is really good and the animation is fantastic.

Not a single thing I’ve listened to this week task-wise has equaled the majesty and power of this:

(Give it until about a minute)

The End

 

Bachtoven!

So Monday night on my way to vote I saw a monkey in the alleyway that ended up being a cat. Tuesday morning I was awoken by what sounded like a goose versus crow battle outside my window. Today has been normal SO FAR! Let’s keep this easy and steady!

I listened to Bach yesterday. I meant to take notes but I forgot. This is a good thing since it saves me having to explain space and time again. This blog, the one you are reading RIGHT NOW, is being typed as I think it in my present! 

So Bach. I listened to something called “Harpsichord Concertos”. Before I started I thought “Oh no, not more piano solo music! Yeash!” This had violins and stuff on it though to back up the harpsichord so it was much more enjoyable. The harpsichord is a pretty cool sounding instrument (it’s sounds like a computer) that does not exist any more since we killed all the Harpsichords and they can no longer be found in the wild. It’s Sad! My first thoughts on listening to this was that Bach was ripping off Mozart since they sound kind of similar. I looked up Wikipedia and saw that Mozart came after Bach so my guess was Mozart is a reincarnated Bach. Then I saw a page that claimed that Mozart met Bach when he was little, so obviously they are Highlanders and Mozart absorbed Bach’s soul when he cut his head off. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE! So yeah, Bach is pretty good and I’ve heard a bunch of his music in cartoons as well as Mozarts, so thanks dead guys for providing my Saturday morning soundtrack!

Beethoven is currently on right now and my first thought is to drink some milk and beat the shit out of someone. Beethoven is used a lot in the movie “A Clockwork Orange”, he’s Alex’s favourite composer for inspiring the old ultra-violence you see. There is no reason for any of you to have not seen “A Clockwork Orange”, so run along and do so after reading this! DO IT! For Beethoven I’m listening to the Complete Symphony Collection 1-9 by the London Symphony Orchestra.  I’m finally listening to a symphony! That said, I’m mostly thinking about how good the Wendy Carlos stuff from the Clockwork Orange soundtrack is. Man, I love that soundtrack! She did the music for Tron too!

The other thing with Beethoven is that it’s a bit too familiar. Having taken music in school I’ve had to play “Ode To Joy” on every instrument I could put my mits on. I’m sure I could pick up a penny whistle or recorder and play it still. It and “Hot Cross Buns” and “Three Blind Mice”. I am truly a genius musician!

To recap, yeah, it’s alright but so far this classical music stuff isn’t a wild hair up my ass.

The End

Mozart? More like “Blowz-art”!

Right, it’s Monday! All of the day’s of the week have played out accordingly and none of us have died so we’re good for tasking this week! Huzzah!

(One day I’ll stop blogging about the existence of days, I promise)

So HappyJoel came up with a bunch of tasks and no one did much and then it was decided that it was classical composers week. That’s how it went right? Now I’m a day behind. I do not task on the weekend. I have things to do during the weekend (I’m actually lying my pants off saying that), and tasking is not one of them. I am sorry, but I’m a 5 day a week life change kind of guy.

Please take a moment to compose yourselves after that revelation.

So out of all the tasks, this one is pretty good, though a bit of a bugger for me. As mentioned before I am already in the midst of a massive listening project. I AM STILL DOING THIS TASK THOUGH! In true Benrik tradition, I’m modifying it to suit my needs, and that means I’m listening to the chosen composers, but not all day. Again, you will all have to deal with this. I’m still going to be listening to something I haven’t before, and that’s on top of the 1000’s of other things I’ll be listening to. I’m good on the listening front.

So Chopin and his butchery music can go fuck itself (Chopin sounds like a guy who chops and I don’t care how you’re supposed to say his name) since it was yesterday, today was Mozart! I know Mozart! I saw the movie “Amadeus” a few times years ago! As a result I know he was a boy genius at composing, and this caused his rival Sauron to get really pissed since he had to train so hard at it. They constantly had battles to see who was the Greatest Composer. Eventually Mozart trained so hard until the tutelage of the Turtle Master that he was able to reach a Super Saiyan state with his Chi and defeat Sauron. This caused them to become friends so they could unite and face the vile Demon King Piccolo who was stealing all the good composing jobs.

So it was with great excitement I went into today’s task. I was ready for my cape!

I didn’t like Mozart. I am not a classical music guy. The closest I get is Frank Zappa and Edgar Varese. As a result I have had to download all of the composers requested for this task. So for Mozart I got something called “Piano Sonatas” by some guy named “Zoltan Kocsis”. I picked it because his name reminded me of this:

That was about as good a movie about Dracula’s Dog as you can hope for (which means it’s not very good). This music was much better then this film. My problem is that it all started to sound the same over the 3 CDs that contained it. The only bright parts where when I recognized something from cartoons. These parts weren’t actually bright enough to make me look to see what these compositions were actually called though. Then it was over and I put my player on “Shuffle” and listened to some Aqua. It was way more enjoyable.

This is my main problem with this type of music. How is one to know which version is the best to listen too? It’s so dependent on the conductor. Even then, who knows what they are bringing to the table that wasn’t intended? This is why Rock and Roll is so much better. I know what I’m going to get when I pick up an Elvis Presley or Sam & Dave record.

I shall continue though! Tomorrow is ______! Yay! I love his stuff! I think. I can’t remember. I will look it up and blog about it when it is appropriate.

Maybe I’m just sour because it’s provincial election day here. The main parties that are going to win is either something called the Wild Rose Party that features a guy who has said that he’s a better choice to lead because he’s white and speaks to all people as opposed to a brown person who only speaks to brown people, or the Progressive Conservatives party that thinks all homosexuals will burn in a lake of fire. Both want to strip out government programs that actually help people and push through privatized medicare. I’ll probably vote by fucking up the ballot in protest.

The End.

Oh Fuck it’s Friday!

Guys, I nearly forgot to post today. Everyone would of thought that I was dead, or that Friday in fact DIDN’T happen and that they were ghosts. Like Bruce Willis in that movie. The Sixth Sense. When you think about it, seeing dead people shouldn’t be a “sense” but a “power”. The Sixth Sense should be something like, being able to get through a maze blindfolded using the hair on your arms. What’s that? You don’t have hairy arms? Sorry ladies, but you will die in the maze! Man, it’s just like Friday didn’t happen! I’m referring to anyone who shaves their arm hair of as a “lady” regardless of gender by the way. It seems like a lady like thing to do. The only reason to shave your arm hair off is so it doesn’t get caught in your opera gloves right? I think we can all agree that shaving arms is a lady thing to do.

Right, two blogs of dealing with the terror of a non-existant Friday is three blogs too many so lets get on with it.

By on with it I mean that I don’t have much more to add.

Tomorrow is Record Store Day in Edmonton. No, we all don’t get our own personal record stores, don’t be stupid! It means that local independent record stores get exclusive releases and I’m in a froth to get to my fave store early so I can buy the ones I want. Your town might have such a thing too so you should check that out HERE. Support your local stores already! What is this, 1992, why are you not doing this yet?!?!

Right, here’s my current candy situation:

Roca Cola Jawbreakers and Soap Candy. This is my old fashioned candy favourite. The combination of the two in a closed container makes it smell like vomit though. I wont be combining these again.

Jelly Belly, the worlds greatest jelly beans! There about 5 different assortments in this bag. It’s fucking delicious so I have it hid in my desk drawer. The people I work with can eat the vomit smelling stuff!

Chocolate in my other drawer. These were uneaten after my night of going to the movies way too much week and make the perfect back up to the vomit candy.

Honey and Chocolate Chippy flavoured Teddy Grahams. Technically this is a biscuit and not a proper candy. I’m an idiot and bought these as a healthy choice to all the other candy I have in the office. If you look closely you might see granola bars under these bags. Yeah, like those are getting eaten any time soon! In your stupid face granola! (The granola bars have dark chocolate chips in them if I’m being honest.) There’s also a toll free number for my work. I have no idea if it works internationally. how do toll free numbers work? Is it a flat fee my company pays or are they charged per call? Well I get fired for racking up massive phone fees from all of you calling? How about we don’t experiment with this yet okay? Let’s learn more about international toll free phone calls first.

And I am EXHAUSTED! Three blogs in one week? SO MUCH WORK! Next week we might have a task. That’ll be exciting right? this is still exciting I hope? No? Yes?

Is it sad that I want to see “Chimpanzee” before seeing “The Hunger Games”?

The end

It’s Wednesday!

Right, I’ve played around with the settings on here a bit and I think I have it figured out. Does it look okay? Are we good here?

So it’s Wednesday for me today. Since this is a “return” to Benrik, I figured I would attempt to post on my Benrik schedule of Monday, Wednesday and Friday. DO NOT EXPECT THIS TO BE THE NORM! I mean, there’s a great chance Friday wont happen. Fridays post I mean. Friday the day will certainly happen. Hopefully. If you miss it you will probably be dead. This is turning into a sad blog about future dead people who will miss Friday! Argh! Let’s be realistic people! Friday the day will certainly happen but my blog post on Friday might not happen and there is a very good chance you will live to see the day so let’s not be down about it!

Phew!

Reading update blogs from fellow Benrikians has been pretty wonderful. It’s also made me question what the hell I’ve been thinking participating in this stuff! Seriously, everyone seems to have moved on with degrees in things I don’t understand with letters behind their names that make my eyes crossed. As a barely educated hillbilly from Bumblefuck Canada, I really do not belong in present company. Don’t get me wrong, you’re all amazing, wonderful, talented people, I’m just not sure what exactly I’m bringing to the table other then spoonfuls of dumb. I can’t believe that many of you actually invited me into your homes and had conversations with me. It’s crazy. A few nights ago I was having dinner with my folks and the topic of retirement came up. They asked me about my plans and my answer, without a shred of irony or sarcasm was “Sell everything and walk the earth.” I am life-fucked people. Don’t let me bring you down! Keep rising like a Phoenix doing what ever Phoenix’s do! And not the X-Men one either, I think that Phoenix went crazy and got killed. I’m not really sure, I don’t read X-Men comics.

The topic of candy has come up. Probably since I mentioned my old candy blogs. I was going to post pictures of my current candy situation here in the office but I can’t figure it out on this new site. I have no idea what my old Photobucket account was. Does Photobucket even exist?!?! And this site doesn’t seem to let you upload directly from your PC to the blog. WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO BE SO HARD!?!?! Is this why we all left Benrik in the first place? How did all of you pull this picture stuff off?

That’s about it. Wednesday is now New Comic Book day for me. NOT X-MEN COMICS THOUGH! I’ve already covered this. I’m not talking fancy graphic novels either. I’m talking about stapled pamphlet superhero horse shit comic books. I love them. I can’t defend them other than to say I enjoy the OCD of it all.

Comic books and candy…  I’m 37 years old now. I did mention I was barely educated and life-fucked right?

The end.

Life Since Benrik

That’s the task right? We’re tasking again?

Before we get started on that. I’ve read two post-Benrik blogs by others mainly to find a link to join this site so I could start my own blog, and it took ages for me to figure it out. Why can I not find any links to start a blog? What is going on? How did these people get this thing to work? Clearly this is not going to go well when I’ve already had this issue. Simply joining the site was troublesome. Now that I’ve joined, it’s very easy! This just might work! And look at the buttons for linking and all that! Wow! It’s like, the fucking future on the internet!

Right, on to the task as set forth by I think Abestos, though I’m not really sure. Facebook is hard to follow via email notifications. Are we using Benrik names here or real names? This is so CONFUSING!  Can it be both? Real and made up names? Has someone done a “Rules” blog?

Right:

What have I been up to since Benrik?

Nothing. My situation is exactly the same, only more so.

Ummm.  FAVE BLOG!

Seriously though, nothing has changed since I stopped blogging on Benrik. I stopped blogging on Benrik for the same reasons everyone else did I suspect. The site went really shit. I’ve tried blogging elsewhere, but just can’t get in the swing of things. I was never great at tasking, and suspect I will continue to not be, but I do miss the community and well attempt to participate here.

I’m not sure what I’m going to blog about since I don’t feel I have much to say anymore. My last blog was a listing of reviews of The 1001 Albums You Should Hear Before You Die, and I bailed on posting. I am still listening though! I’m up to album 721. It’s one of the few things I haven’t quit these past few years.

I’ve made it a point not to read any of my old Benrik blogs. The last time I did so was over a year ago and they scared the shit out of me. I don’t recognize that person anymore. It’s like Earth 2 or something. Who’s that guy and why is he eating candy for 30 minutes on Youtube? Jesus Christ….

That’s about it I guess. It’s not “moany” right? I don’t want this to be moany. I think of many of you Benrikians often and I really look forward to knowing you better through this endeavor then I do via stalking you through Facebook and Twitter.

The End