#5.) Ben Kweller is not from the UK.

#4.) This guy is cool. Not Elvis (Presley or Costello) cool, not Oceans Eleven cool, but indie cool. And everyone knows that that’s the only thing that matters.

#3.) When you are sad (or wasted), “Wasted and Ready” or any of his other upbeat songs will cheer you up and get you going. Ben sings about the craziest things, but it all seems to be relevant.

#2.) He’s friends with Ben from Ben Folds Five and Ben Lee. Together, much like Devastator from Transformers or the robots from Voltron, they are The Bens. Honestly, I can’t make stuff like this up.

#1.) You can snag some sweet sweet Ben Kweller mp3age here.

Oh, and if I didn’t mention it before, his website is at benkweller dot com.

Contrary to popular belief, I did not make a time machine to go back to 1967 to start guerilla warfare in Bolivia, nor did I get assassinated by CIA backed Nationalists….Anyways with summer fast approaching, people are going about their lives away from school/University, and unfortunately I have become a victim to the jobless coup-d’etat in Ottawa, thus forcing me to go back to Belleville to an old job that I have both despised and enjoyed working at.

Well what’s my job you ask? It’s at this quaint little thrift store located in downtown ‘Vegas called St. Vincent de Paul, where the price of merchandise actually puts companies like Goodwill, and Value Village out of business…Corporate bastards. Anyways, my job consists of going around town in a semi-dilapidated truck/cube truck picking up donations from random places all around the area, it varies from small things like board games, to the larger items like big ass 200 pound sofa-beds made of 1970’s steel. Oh yes, the herniated disks are on the horizon, the job could get boring at times for a person of my intellectual capacity, it also becomes a hell of menial hard labour camp type work. But besides that the job is quite nice, there’s always new “treasures” to look through each day, and it gets me out and about, which slows down the boredom process. (This is me trying to convince myself that everything will be Okay). After working there for two summers I thought to myself that next year, things have got to change…well, things are exactly the same as they were before(joy!).
I guess that it’ll be nice going home seeing some familiar faces and getting some decent nutrition for a change. I’ll keep an update on crazy things that happen though, cause last year, a lot of crazy stuff happened, and I meet a lot of strange people, so that’s entertainment as well.

Yes, my summer will be what I just coined up as “Hell in the Bell”, yes as I write this post, I have resigned myself to pure defeat, knowing that my attempts to become somewhat self-dependent has failed. If you want to know how I feel, the sensation is like flying your B-52 heavy bomber over Hanoi carpet bombing the hell out of the city, killing thousands upon thousands of those commies, then suddenly having your left engine blown up from Soviet made S.A.M.’s (Surface to Air Missiles), ejecting, evading the enemy for days without food or water, getting caught by enemy forces, then spending the next several years in solitary confinement in a POW camp somewhere deep in the jungles of North Vietnam……Yes, those wounds run deep, and sometimes you just got to make the best out of those repeated beatings.

It’s all about the “Hell in the Bell”, and no it’s not Taco Bell….but I can sure go for some Combo #3 from there right about now.

But hey, it’s summer and there are four whole months to squander at my own discretion. Things might turn out awesome. Or terribly shitty, I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

I wish that I was or knew a pot dealer, so that every time someone asks me where they can get pot, I could hook them up.

(This might need clarification: the reason I wish this is because I don’t do drugs, and I never will. Yet somehow, people who want drugs are drawn to my presence.)

The prerequisites of a good night. Colonel Sanders proudly looks on.

I should have written this last night but I was preoccupied with laundry among other things. Side note: Laundry is awesome. Not so much the act of throwing clothes into a machine with the accompanying detergent but the joys of basking in clean clothes. Especially when they are a subset of the essential domain of socks and underwear.

Picking up from where I left off on my last post a couple of days ago, I proceeded to meet Tony and Nana at the Rideau Centre at the food court. While standing in line at KFC debating on what to order, it dawned on me, or rather, I saw the huge banner being proudly displayed declaring that today was “Toonie Tuesday.” Like a hammering gavel resolutely declaring that a decision had been made, we knew what we had to do. 6 Toonie Tuesday meals. For those that are unaware or do not dare approach KFC with a 50 foot pole, a Toonie Tuesday meal is a harmonious union of a drumstick, a non-drumstick piece and succulent french fries. One could argue that 3 whole chickens had to die for our cause. Their deaths were not in vain. Total cost: $13 and some change.

Given that it was like 8:45 pm and all stores(including The Beer Store and LCBO) close at 9 pm, we were pressed for time. While I engaged the ordering of our KFC, Nana went off to the LCBO in the mall but shortly came back to report that they did not have our required Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Fortunately The Beer Store was just down the street so Nana set off to pick up the beer. We met back at headquarters AKA Nana and Tony’s apartment. We wanted cans of PBR to maximize the enjoyment factor(not related to flavour) however The Beer Store only stocked bottles. Total cost for a 12-pack of PBR: $13 and some change.

After unloading everything on the table, the ground rules were laid out. 12 beers, 12 piece of chicken total = 4 per person. Consumed chicken and beer counts could not have a difference of greater than 1. We shortly proceeded to getting drunk off the PBR all the while indulging in the gluttonous love of KFC.

During this night I came to an astounding conclusion. Pabst Blue Ribbon is good shit. It’s shit but it’s good shit. Given that I’m no beer flavour connoisseur, I could find no discernable difference between PBR and another tolerable low-end beer like Canadian. In fact, from now on I think I’ll be getting PBR instead of my usual Keiths given the cheap price.

In any case, for under 10 bucks a person it was most definitely a Good Night. Enjoyment factor was on maximum, hunger was satisfied, and good conversations were had.

Mission accomplished.

Two posts ago we had our 50th post. I don’t expect anyone out there to care about that, but I like noting our milestones for posterity.

Yesterday night I had a discussion with my roommate, Tony T. Tran the THIRD, about giving out free music (on of all places, the intarnets). My argument was based around the fact that if a band is going to give out a free song, then there should be no restrictions on the useage of the song. By this I mean that the song should not be in a shitty format like *.asf, and it should not be encoded at a shitty bitrate, like 96 kbps. I believe that if a band is going to give out free music, then it should be at the standard bitrate, and the standard file format (so, it should be at at least 128 kbps, and in *.mp3 format.)

To provide a real world example of this, I give you Audioslave. Audioslave are a great band. Audioslave also live up to their name by enslaving their music, restricting the useage of it online. They have released their song in a format which has some sort of timer or something encoded into it. When the timer has expired, the song will no longer play. The only way to “unlock” the good version of the song is if 1 million people download the crappy version. You can take a look at the page here. (note: I know that the song was “unlocked”, but its still a dumb idea, so there.)

My reason for thinking that this is a ridiculous idea is because if I want a song, I can go through other avenues to get it. Here’s where things get interesting.

Tony disagreed with me, and he gave various reasons why, which I of course deflected easily because I am a lesser-god* of reasoning. But then he ended the conversation with this analogy. “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk.” Upon hearing this… CUTE analogy, I began to have uncontrollable fits of laughter. I’ve never read the book where this is from, so the lesson “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” teaches was entirely lost on me. I think that what Tony means is that Audioslave should stop feeding biscuits to rodents, but I don’t know how that will help the filesharing problem.**

*not true

** THIS IS A JOKE, I UNDERSTAND WHAT HE MEANT, LOL K THX, NATF I HAVE A PET EMU THAT RUNS REALLY FAST CALLED HEEMO

Ok I’m still here. Really! Everyday I tell myself “ok you have to write something” and I can usually think of things that kinda come to mind but my perfectionist mind/laziness prevents me from actually writing a post. I promise I’ll work on that.

Anyway, for those that aren’t down with everything that’s happening in this world (it’s ok, I forgive you), this is my last week working at Natural Resources Canada and thus my last week in Ottawa.

Speaking of work, today I was sitting at my computer at work doing what I normally do at work everyday when I looked out the window and noticed some thing off in the distance. My spider-sense was tingling. Well not really, but I sometimes pretend that I predicted something was going to happen after the fact. There was a fire. A big fire. I’ve never actually seen a building on fire before but I definitely got my fill today. It was a biiiiiiig mother of a fire. I was told it was some old warehouse or something.

There really isn’t much more to that story, but at least it had some sort build up of excitement. That pretty much sums up office life. A lot of times I will try to spice up things at work. Anything that doesn’t happen on a daily basis has potential to become an exciting event and then later a story. For instance, there was a printer that once kept getting jammed over and over. To the ordinary worker it was a piece of machinery that required maintenance. To me, it was an overworked member of a team charged with a critical mission to save humanity. Horrified onlookers watched on as good samaritans tried desperately to save their fallen comrade with no success. Finally after 15 excruciating minutes of unbearable drama, the professionals arrived to work their miracle.

Soooooo anyway….back to the topic at hand. This is my last week in Ottawa. This term has been fairly quiet as far as going out and other rambunctious activities so I decided my last week needed to be optimized to allow for maximum enjoyment before I am gone. I’d love to come back in the fall but who knows where my next job will be. They want me back at my current job but given that I’ve already worked there for 2 terms I’d like to try a different job and more importantly work in the private sector. Government jobs are great but I can only handle so much of it, and wouldn’t mind being paid a bit (read: a lot) more working for private companies. But you can bet I’ll be applying to as many jobs in Ottawa as I can.

Thus far, this past weekend consisted of 2 back-to-back all-nighters. The first one wasn’t so much an all-nighter, it was more of a little brother of one. As usual, Friday after work I went with a bunch of my coworkers to Malone’s, a bar on Dow’s Lake which is right across the street from where I work. Some of us ended up going to one of my coworkers’ place after work because he had a keg of beer ready for our consumption. Anyway, I ended up leaving around midnight or something but when I was about halfway home, I saw two people walking on the street ahead of me. At this point, I was on my rollerblades and I was still somewhat drunk. My immediate analysis of the two figures I quickly approached was “I see a shifty looking guy walking with some girl with rollerblades in her hands.” As I passed I heard “Hey Hiro!” Then I turned to realize that in fact the two figures were Nana and Tony(with rollerblades in his hands). True story.

At this point we decided to go to McDonald’s and then I ended up hanging out at their place…until around 7:30 am. So I got home at 8 am and immediately crashed. I then woke up at 11:30…..pm. The sleep clocked in at a beautiful 15 1/2 hours. At this point I was kinda torn as to what I should do. I had to work on Monday so I would have been screwed if my days and nights were flipped. Therefore the only logical solution would be to pull another all-nighters. Nana and Tony ended up visiting me that night and this time they chilled at my place until around 7 or 8 am. On Sunday I managed to stay up for a ridiculous 26 hours straight and finally went to sleep around 1:30 am I think.

Yesterday a bunch of us went out to Minglewood’s for wings. Mmmmm wings. You really can’t go wrong with cheap wings. Definitely some of the best wings in town there. I’m told Honest Laywer’s is really good too but I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.

Tonight Tony, Nana and I were supposed to go to a party at a friend-of-a-cousin’s-of-a-friend of our’s place but the party didn’t end up happening. We had been planning this for later this week but we’ve decided we’ll do it tonight instead: KFC and PBR.

The premise is simple. Buy tons of KFC chicken. Buy sufficient PBR(Pabst Blue Ribbon beer). Consume both at the same time, preferrably in a location that emanates a sense of low-income and/or student housing. Tony and Nana’s pad is perfect for this.

I am now off to go meet them to acquire the required ingredients of a Good Night.

Today was the day of my second last exam of the year. Last night I went out drinking, thinking that it was at 2:00 pm. However, when I got home I realized that I made a mistake and that I’d have to cram a bit before the exam, which was actually at 9:30 am. This morning I woke up at 7:00 am, and chose to forgo showering for the extra 10-15 minutes I would get in cramming time. I ended up leaving around 9:15 am for my Social Psychology exam, and made it on time.

A little bit on Social Psychology. This was one of my wild-card classes which was mandatory for my program, but was one of many choices. I ended up choosing it because the other choices were full, but it’s not something I regret in the least – and not just because the girl:guy ratio is something like 15:1. I learned a lot in this class, and I’m betting that it’s mostly because of the professor. He would stress to us the importance of non-conformity and show us the inherent problems with authority based institutions, like universities. For example, we put authority into the hands of authority figures, despite the fact that they’re really no different than you or I. Also, grading and testing procedures in universities have no inherent meaning other than working as a sifter of people. An “A” is just a letter; it doesn’t actually mean anything. The professor wasn’t an anarchist or anything, (although that would have been awesome if he was, since I’ve never met an anarchist. I imagine they’re roguish and avant-garde and stuff… I love that word, avant-garde.) but social psychology is about looking at what makes society tick and picking it apart, peering at it’s underbelly, moist with dew like a homeless man who has been sleeping outside overnight. Anyway, I recommend that you all try and take a social psychology class, or just pester me to yell things at you that I’ve learned over a pint someday.

So back to the exam. There were four questions, each one worth 10% of our grade. The first one was on conformity. “To conform or not to conform. That is the question.” Easy, I thought. I then began to write down my brilliant answer. The other questions involved aggression and stress and stuff, and I finished them pretty easily as well. The entire exam took approximately 2 hours for me to finish.

After I was done, I set my paper down and went to talk to the professor, who was actually standing outside the classroom. Another note about him: he believed that if you could cheat and get away with it, then you deserved the grade that you got. He also didn’t really believe in supervising us during tests, because he trusted that we wouldn’t just copy off of each other. I love this guy.

So I went outside to talk to the professor and thank him for a good semester. I learned a lot in this class, and I’ll never forget many of the things that were brought up. I’ll also never forget what he said after I thanked him.

“How did you like the exam?”
I replied that it was fair, but that I would have probably been better served in writing a paper (we had a choice between a paper, oral exam, and written exam).
“Ah, I see. I’ll let you in on a secret. Do you see this first question?”
(He pointed to the question on conformity)
“‘To conform or not to conform. That is the question.’”
My heart sunk as I realized what he was saying.
“You didn’t have to write this exam. That is my last lesson for you.”

After a whole semester of learning about conformity and other social pressures, I succumbed to my basic social “sheep” programming, and conformed. I didn’t think about what was written on the page – I simply did as I was told and wrote the exam. Luckily, this isn’t one of those exams where you get a zero for doing that, but this experience really drove home to me the lesson of conformity. It’s one thing to learn something in your class, but it’s another to understand what you learned and incorporate it into your life. It’s one lesson that I’ll always remember.

Okay, because of the time we live in I need to put up a disclaimer: I am going to poke fun at a public figure. This is something that has been done many times over the course of history. I am not the first person to do this. Pleasant Interruption is not trying to make any sort of religious or political statement (in this case). I (Nana Adu-Poku) am not trying to make any sort of religious or political statement (in this case). I have no hidden agenda or any sort of weird scheme to dethrone the new Pope (although I could, because I’m awesome). I like Star Wars, and I like comedy. I found this picture, and I thought it was funny. I did not make this picture, and I will not take credit for it. Make of it what you will.

I went to a concert on Thursday night. Hot Hot Heat were playing. The opening acts were Louis XIV, and The Futureheads. It was an awesome concert.

Louis XIV: I didn’t get to see their set, because I was late for the show. But I “have” their album, and I like their sound. The songs are full of sexual energy and cockyness. They have a music player on their site, so if you’re interested take a listen to Louis XIV.

The Futureheads: I heard one of their songs on The OC (”Decent Days and Nights” is the name of the song), but apart from that I had never heard any material. I love these guys now. They have so much energy and stage presence, and the band seems to have a sort of wild chemistry. There are some downloads on their site, so take a look around.

Hot Hot Heat: The headliners of the show. They didn’t disappoint. I wanted to dance to their awesome hit “Talk to Me, Dance With Me”, so I moved up to the front of the crowd. BIG MISTAKE. As soon as the song started, everyone’s arms went up, and the smells came out. I made my way to the back of the crowd again in a drunken stupour (yes, drunk on noxious smells!).

Hot Hot Heat played all of the songs that I loved from their EP and from their previous album (except for “Cairo”… bastards). Their light show was amazing, and really set the mood for the set. My friend Mark rightly commented that they were 70% Hot Hot Heat, 30% light show.

The lead singer, Steve Bays, has this enormous growth on his head that is supposedly his hair. It is larger than life in person, and adds to the notion that he is a diva, along with the band’s scarves and ultra tight pants. I make fun, but these guys are cool. Also, their drummer is 11 feet tall and wore a mustard yellow shirt with a black tie. I imagine that he clothes himself with a crane of some sort.

#5.) The Decemberists are from the UK.

#4.) Their new album, Picaresque means:

• Of or involving clever rogues or adventurers.
• Of or relating to a genre of usually satiric prose fiction originating in Spain and depicting in realistic, often humourous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society.

I fancy myself a rogue.

#3.) Their songs are about trysts and debauchery: taking people in fields to play with their naughty bits. You feel like you’re listening to some sort of folk songs from the 1700 or 1800s or something. It’s an awesome sound. Plus, with songs called “Eli, the Barrow Boy” and “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”, you just can’t go wrong.

#2.) Their first single “The Engine Driver” is about a guy who drives an engine (it’s a bit more complex than that, but whatever).

#1.) You can get free songs (legally) here and here.

(two weeks of doing this, and both of the bands I’m talking about are on Abercrombie and Fitch’s website. I’ll just say right now that I’m not getting paid for any of this. To prove it, I’ll say that Abercrombie are one step removed from the devil… like the devil’s neighbour, or gardener or something.)