It’s 3:15 am, my time.

Andie is a little buzzed tonight, a bizarre combination of rye and Tim Hortons Coffee. Oh Tim, if you weren't a corpse, probably no more than bones at this time, I would make sweet sweet love to you. A little buzzed and very cold.

The baseball banquet was more fun than expected, dinner surpassing dessert in the yum category, chicken covered in all manner of seasoning, and broiled potatoes with a tangy lemon suggestion. There was dancing and door prizes. I'm the proud owner of a glass cutting board and insulated wine bottle. Being a woman's league, there was not an eligible male in sight, with the possible exception of the DJ, and both K and I commented on his gawkish cuteness, but neither bothered to investigate further. Oh, the road not taken.

We coffee, and convinced by my good friend Danno, we are guided to the entrance to the very pit of hell, but in P-tang, they call it Yorkies. There are bars that girls drag their boyfriends to, and this is a bar that guys drag their girlfriend too. Or in our case, their very understanding female friends. or as K put it, their awesome understanding female friends. As I then said, their 'going above and beyond the call of duty awesome understanding female friends' *looks pointedly at Danno*

For a bribe of two rounds, we keep him company. The band is alright, but I've heard better. They can handle Stevie Ray, which is admirable, but then proceed to eff up something as simple as Third Eye Blind. "might have been a request" I surmise. A man who smells of onions .... yes, ONIONS.... says he heard a rumour we could dance ("it would be awesome, if we could dance... "it's been running through my head all day). Dan gets the kiss of death (the kiss of death is chaste, given to the foreheadal area) and I say 'Never again."

Sit in Timmies parking lot, Bob has joined us. It's cold but conversation is plentiful, even for almost 2 am. Watching police pulling over errant drivers, I'm glad my car is at home. It gets colder, coversation dies down, as the caffiene rushes rush off. We part ways.

At home, I have two messages, both from sam, one is the boy, one is the girl. My cat is being nocturnal and chasing imaginary ghosts, perhaps evil spirits dragged from the bar called Yorkies, but I call sketchy. I'm cold and tired and tomorrow is another day.

The Art of Axl (originally posted @ Mog.com)

Artist: Guns N Roses, Alice In Chains, Tragically Hip, Velvet Revolver Album: Use Your Illusion One, Use Your Illusion 2, Publisher Demos, World Container Track: Pretty Tied Up, Don't Damn Me, Knockin on heaven's door, the real thing, Fly Other Tags: Quirks, observations


Axl – Acl-suhl – To Pull an Axl – The act of shouting random unrelated shit at the end of a song

the act of inserting Unrelated machismo-tainted spoken word portions into a song, usually during the outtr0.

Does it drive anyone else nuts when Musicians do this? I've dubbed this act 'Pulling an Axl' as Mr. Rose seems to be one of the worst offenders. They range from semi-weird to the inconceivably inane. Think of the particularly line part in 'Pretty tied up'; "Cool Ranch Dressing"

WHAT . THE . F$&%. (my now-reading-age kid is in the room). Cool Ranch Dressing?

He pulls a double-Axl (smirk smirk) at the end of 'Don't Damn Me' off Use Your Illusion I. At songs end, he blurts out "Smokem if you got 'em!" for no particular reason. Maybe he thought better of it, because then – possibly forgetting that they were still RECORDING – he declares "ALL RIGHT ! THAT SUCKED !"

The other Axlism, is to add weird rambling spoken word parts to otherwise decent songs. I won't even get into them, but they are usually tinged with some kind of hostile machismo, but it's really hard to tell, because he's pretty much just blathering and spewing profanity.

He's not the only one guilty. In the publisher demo release of Alice in Chains 'The Real Thing' Layne, possibly (no, probably) under the influence of some sort of narcotic, sings loud, sings proud 'Sexual Chocolate, Baby!' Maybe he was practicing to be the first singer for GNR II … I mean, velvet revolver.

We have our own offenders at home here, including one near and dear to my heart, Mr. Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip. Although he's well known for his intensive monologuing during live shows (which I don't count as Axlisms, since 1. They tend to form some sort of narrative, rather than random verbal threats to no one in particular and 2. They're darn entertaining.

however, Gordie's picked up a disconcerting habit of adding bizarre little qualifiers to lyrics, such as his excessive use of 'That's right' in the song 'Fly'.

Does anyone else have some examples of gratuitous 'Axling?' Especially those committed in a studio, rather than onstage? The onstage Axlism is a teensy bit more forgivable than the studio recorded one. I mean, hey, who doesn't get a little excited in front of crowd, right?

Most embarassing moment.

Again, I'm finding stories I told people a while back, and since I'm bored I feel like posting random shit.

I once, in an incident I must have repressed for many years because whenever I guess asked my most embarassing moment I forget about this one, was thrown cartoon style from a tread mill.

It seems I am unable to walk at a speed of 6km an hour. News to me, wish someone had told me before hand.

Now wait, it gets better. I Wasn't thrown right away... No, I had had the foresight to grab hold of the handle when things started to get a big dodgy... thing is, I was still holding on when my feet came out from under me. So I am still holding on to the bars though. Picture me if you will, going 'fwap fwap fwap against the tread. Yup. Feeling intense heat growing against my shirt-front, I decided it might be a good idea to let go before I set myself on fire. Whoosh.

Now because this is me, this doesn't happen in the privacy of my own home where I can look around and say 'Oh thank GOD no one saw that'. No, fate doesn't like me quite that much. THis happens at the local Y. On one side of me, my friend and workout companion laughing her ass off like some kind of retard, not trying at all to do something logical like help me. On the other side of me on a stationary bike, one incredibly handsome man, looking like he just witnessed an antelope being devoured by a pack of jackals. Just horrified.

Intro to Myspace

I found this story in my MySpace inbox from a while ago, explaining to my friend Michael, the story of how I got mixed up in this crazy universe, and I thought "This shit is pretty damn funny!" so here it is..... a little flashback....

Picture it... december 2005....

Okay, so here's my story...

As you already know, I set myself up a bullshit profile called Joe Blow -- I'm a mecca of originality -- so I could check out my friends music site. At the time I had the hots for this guy john (number 1 on top 8) and a couple weeks after I had made the fake profile, I recieved an email saying that John wanted to add me as a friend.

Was it the same guy? I was pleasantly surprised to find it was, but a little confused as to whether he knew it was me, and if he did, how he knew. So I added him and sent him a little message that said the following...

"Hi, I'm not really Joe Blow. He's hiding somewhere in border region of Afghanistan. Delta Force may have already killed him"

Charming and cute right? That's what I thought.

So anyway, since I was bored as fuck that night, I decided what the hell, I would set my profile up proper, adding pictures and my actual name (at the time I went by Andie on here). So as I am setting up, I see this handy little option allowing you to import your address book. So I figured, 'ahh that must be how he knew I was on here.'

So import my address book, and since it automatically sent it to everyone who had an account, I came to the horrifying realization that He may NOT EVEN KNOW I WAS ON HERE!! So now i am panicking, thinking back to the message that sounded so cute at the time, but is now sounding completely random and frankly, a little psychotic, especially considering that by this time I had erased all evidence of the existence of my alter ego, Joe blow.

Dear God, I thought to myself. So I did what any woman in a crisis does, I phoned my best friend and told her of my stupidity. Tears of both laughter and humiliation were streaming down my face as I contemplated how completely psycho I was going to come across.

Her advice to me, god love her, was to just come clean and explain what happened and hope for the best. So the next day I wrote him a long email saying pretty much what is written here, adding that I really like talking and hanging out with him, but if he was uncomfortable with that now, that I would understand, but that it was really just a harmless misunderstanding. I ended by asking him to get in touch with me, and that if he didn't I would take the hint.

A day and a half later I was greeted by an IM saying that I was indeed crazy but also really funny. I'd like to say that we ended up hooking up after that and lived happily ever after, but we have forged a great friendship since.

Yeah, so that's my Myspace iniation story.

Internet=Serious business, indeed (R.I.P. Erika with a K)

Authors Note:  This was posted after hearing of the passing of a good online friend of mine.  The intended audience at  the time of writing were the other people in the group of friend through which I had met Erika.  She had touched many before her untimely death, and is still missed - Andrea 05/15/11

I'm not going to go to a great length eulogizing, because most has been said before, by those (Erik, Paul) who are much more qualified to do so than I.

I will say, however, and I'm not proud of this, but in the beginning, I was prepared to dislike Erika. Why? Because she was young, fucking GORGEOUS, and got all the attention, and I can be a jealous, petty woman.

Guess what? Didn't work. Why? Because along with being young, gorgeous, and charismatic, she was also Smart as hell and ridiculously funny. Despite myself, I liked the hell out of Erika. That was cemented with a mutual love of Chuck Klosterman.

I was surprised by the force with which the news of her death hit me. I've had relatives pass away who garnered no more of a reaction than 'oh, I'm sorry, that's so sad'.

It's made me think about my relationships with my online friends. The honest truth is, I don't get out much, and I communicate with many of you more than my local friends (a much nicer term I think than 'IRL' friends). It's a bizarre dynamic though, because of distance and the ability for people to come and go, and disappear into the maze that is the internet.

In high school I was assigned to read "The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham. In this book there are a group of characters who are able to communicate telepathically using 'thought-shapes'. They talk to each other, and know each others thought intimately, despite having never met (with the exception of two of them). At one point, one of the group suddenly stops communication, and it's not until a few weeks later they find the boy has died in an accident.

This part of this particular book has been floating around my head for the past week or two, oddly enough, and had me wondering, what if something happened to one of us? In this situation that wasn't the case, but it's obvious by the way everyone has reacted, the shock and the sorrow, that it's not JUST the internet, we make friends, we lose friends, sadly. The relationships we form here can be just as binding, just as meaningful as any friendship with physical proximity.

I think in the wake of this tragedy, and it is a tragedy when anyone is taken so young (although I often forgot she was only 19, she was wise beyond her years), it becomes plainly clear that we need to respect each other here as we would anyone IRL, because behind each profile there is a living breathing person with thoughts, feelings, hopes, aspirations, insecurities, fears, hearts and minds.

P.S. I don't want to be one of those people who disappears into the interweb, so I'm leaving you all my number... anyone I trust enough to be on my preferred list, I trust enough to have my number. Use it any time.

This weekend I...

...Stayed in to get a good nights sleep, and stayed up chatting online.

...Drove two and a half hours to a to a used bookstore to take a chance on the possibility of something special, and found out something special doesn't work that day.

...travelled facing west on a freeway during 5 pm rush hour, into the setting sun, for two head-throbbing hours, in the name of friendship.

...Swore "Never Again!" to organizational responsibility, then two hours later, volunteered for next year.

It's been a full weekend.

irkage.

I went and got my cheap DVD fix today. Sometimes I like to hunt the bargain bins to see what interesting tidbits I can come up with. I picked up three flicks today:

Beetlejuice - I love, love LOVED this movie as a kid. Entertainment for family company was getting little 7 year old Andie to recite entire scenes of memorized dialogue from this film. It also was the catalyst for my love of Harry Belafonte.

The Chiefs - Is apparently a documentary about a semi-pro hockey league out of Laval Quebec which was/is notorious for its in-game violence. Tagline: The Hanson Brothers have nothing on these guys (those familiar with the film Slapshot will get the reference)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: Loved the book, and the movie was five bucks. Nuff said.

I've discovered a huge pet peeve in this world of cut-rate cinematography --- the two for one packages. Not just 2 for 10 bucks, but the ones that come wrapped together, or the box sets, or the 3 movies/1 Dvd deals. It's really just a scam to get rid of overstock.

It's like they're saying to me "Here, you can have this halfway decent movie for a pretty good price. Come on, you know you want it.

Ahh ahh ahh! There's a catch. To get the half-way decent film (or even enjoyable on a camp or kitch level film) You gotta take this piece of crap affront to the film business with it. Eg. Grease & Grease 2. What is worse, is people buy these, take the crappy movie to the Hock shop, and the Hock shops sell it for 10 bucks, when the original two-pack cost 8.99

The other ploy is the 'So-and-so Collection'. I saw the Jennifer Aniston Collection in Future shop one day. It didn't even have the Good Girl on it, which was the only film she ever got any acclaim for. Let's not even get into the question of WHY someone would want a Jennifer Aniston collection (Not that I dislike her, I took her side in the Brangelina debacle) but it seems kind of arbitrary, doesn't it? It'd be like having the 'David Arquette Collection'... just Huh? wtf? or the Brittany Murphy Collection. People who tend to do good supporting roles, but can't really carry a film on their own.

*sigh*

Reflection on long weekend grocery Shopping.

People amaze me, you know that?  The Stupidity, I mean. Today on my break I took a jaunt over to the GCSS, as it's friday, and friday means sushi day.  The place was a friggin madhouse.

Anyhoo, it inspired me to compile a list of simple rules for grocery shopping.

- First and MOST IMPORTANT.  If you lack the mental faculties necessary to grasp the subtle intricacies of the Self-Check out, then please, for your own health and safety, move over to another check out and let a TRAINED PROFESSIONAL help you. It's what they're paid for.

- I don't care if it says 1-8 items, 1-10 items or even 1-16 items.  If you have enough groceries that you feel it necessitates a cart... GET THE HELL OUT OF THE EXPRESS LINE.

- Bulk items are complicated.  All that weighing and typing of numbers at the check out eats up precious time.  So instead of going to the bulk aisle to buy SIX FUCKING M&M's*... Throw caution to the wind and buy a bag. 

*Combining this with irresponsible use of the self-check out nearly resulted in grocery related homocide today.

-Don't be a Hero. Don't invite people from other lines in front of you.  No matter how nice you're being to that person, you're still a jerk to the 17 people behind you.

-Tourist dollars and local economy be damned.  If you're a cottager, do your damn shopping in the city BEFORE you come here.

The wild are strong, and the strong are the darkest ones

Occasionally, just once in a while, it's fun to have a blog title that has nothing to do with the blog itself. I just happen to have that particular song in my head right now.

I had a pretty fantastic birthday, went out to Shananas with some good friends, as well as my sister and pseudo sister, let loose for the first time in quite a while, and then got to drive to Port Perry the next day whilst hungover to go wedding dress shopping with the sisser(s) and de mudder.

My actual birthday was pretty quiet, although I did get cake as the communal office birthday party was that day. Four out of five august birthdays were amalgamated into one to save on cake costs and time spent away from the desk (the fifth one was the bosses, so he got his almost-own party... although it was a shared birthday/going away party for another co-worker). So that worked out nicely for yours truly. Helps to have a sister as an a office manager ;-)

Thursday night I went to Tonys to pick the girls and got the shock of my life. In a moment of frustration over the prospect of another year battling headlice from school (what happened to the days when kids would get sent home?) the boy got creative and shorned the children. To his benefit, he made an effort to make the girls new haircuts at least stylish, if really really short. So after my initial shock wore off, I had to admit, they look pretty darn cute. Little punkish pixieish type cuts he gave them. Just wish he would have warned me, I could have done without the coronary.

That weekend was the big family birthday party for me, Reagan and Dad. It also marked the beginning of me getting sick as hell for the next week. I was felled by a throat infection, ear infection and eye infection all at the same time. It was not pretty. Now that the eye infection has mostly gone away, I only have to deal with being unable to wear eye make-up (similar to taking heroin from a junkie) and being asked constantly if I am stoned.

Got better in time to play in our year end baseball tournament, and WE WON! We won the semifinal game 26-7 and the championship game roughly 9-3. Went out to the bar that night with Kaylee and Lisa, and the next day made the long trek downtown to get my car.

Oh, an update on the school thing. My OSAP funding got cut in half, so I've decided the stress around going to U of T (not to mention that less OSAP meant that I couldn't get the new vehicle necessary to get dwon there) is too much, and I'm going with my original plan to return to Laurentian PT and I'm staying on at Labx to work my way through the next year. Booyah.

Night all.

Cue the Go-Gos Day five and six

Okay, so Monday was pretty uneventful. I get up, say my goodbyes to Sammi and Anthony, and head off down the road so I can return the rental car. Place isn't open yet, so I go grab a starbucks (okay, but it's got nothing on my timmies) and drive around looking for a gas station. By the time I do all that, the rental place is open.

I get to the airport to discover I miscalculated when my flight left, it was at 11:20 instead of 10:45. No biggie, just meant I had an ass-load more time to kill. I almost got in shit at Customs because I claimed to have no liquids of any sort with me, but I forgot about two tubes of lipgloss and a thing of wedding bubbles. I didn't get in any trouble for it.

While I sat at the gate and read my book, I was witness to a older man in a nice suit going to sit down and missing the chair altogether. It was funny and disturbing at the same time.

Flight was long, needless to say. Someone fainted while on board so they had the attendants all up and down the aisles for the last hour and a half of the flight.

Got back into TO and back to my car and set out to find a hotel room for the night, which I eventually did. After checking in and calling my mom to let her know I was alive and well, I went out to eat. I could have ordered room service but it was from MR. Greek, and A) It looked Expensive, B) I'm not big on greek food and C) I had the kind of hunger on that could only be satiated by hard core fast food.

While on my way to find a McDonalds, I observe that the car in front of me is very loud. I figure this is on purpose, since it appears to be one of those souped up little civics. Then I realize, that's not the car in front of me.... It's ME.

Now, when the bearer of a loud effin engine is some sort of cherried out hot rod of some sort, it's cool. When the bearer is a rusted 91 Sunbird, it's merely another thing to draw attention to how fucking shitty my car is.

I get back to the hotel and look under, and sure enough, my muffler has detached from the exhaust pipe. Not cool. I'm in Toronto, I still have to go to U of T the next day and I'm thinking it's gonna be at least a 500 dollar repair.

The next morning, I head down the 401 to the University, and my motor is drowning my already poor stereo that is no longer enhanced by the power of my missing MP3 player. I can hear the clank of metal on concrete every time I hit a bump, and in my rearview, I can see the look of terror on the drivers face, as I am sure that I am sending up sparks with every bump.

By the time I get to the Campus, the metal on concrete clanking is almost a constant. Pulling up to the parking arm, I am appalled to see that the fee to get in the lot is TEN EFFIN' DOLLARS. I pull back, throw my hazards on, and take a look under the car again. Sure enough, now the muffler is hanging on roughly a 70 degree angle from the car. It is at this point I sit down on the curb and weep, while rummaging through my wallet, hoping to god almighty that I have ten bucks in change. When I put my 10 dollars in, nothing happens. A campus cop comes up to me and asks me if everything is okay.

I LOST IT.

"NO! EVERYTHING IS NOT OKAY, I JUST PUT TEN DOLLARS IN HERE AND THE ARM WON'T GO UP AND MY MUFFLER IS HANGING ON BY A THREAD. EVERYTHING IS NOT OKAY!"

To his credit, he calmly says 'I'll lift the arm' and I start through. There is a beep behind me, and I notice the conspicuously absent clanking noise. Looking back, there is a sad little rust-brown heap in the middle of the road, the pathetic remains of my muffler. I park, and walk back to retrieve it, as I hate to litter.

Incidentally, the fact that it fell off in the parking lot and not on the 401 was not only a possible lifesaver, but it also allowed for the little bit of comic relief when I finally got to my mechanics place, walked up to the counter, plopped the piled of rust down and said 'JiM! I think there's something wrong with my muffler!"

Yeah. 260 dollars (thank gawd it was so much less than I had anticipated) and a visit with my friend Becky to kill time later, I finally got my kids from their dads and got home. I delivered souvenirs to the family and went to bed.

Thats my story. Cheers.