~ friday december 14 2001

~ It's 4am, I played the Marquee again, actually tonight I'm wayyy drunker even than I was last night.

~ I got bitten by a dog today. Tied my bike to a rack in the Sobey's parking lot. Dog decided it was guarding my bike. I bought milk and cat litter. So of course the dog hated me. Chomp!

Couldn't get close to the bike, my ride home, blood running down my arm, went inside to the service desk and had the owner paged. "She's never done anything like this before." Sure, lady.

Well, if I die of rabies it will be an interesting final chapter in my brief biography.

~ So now I'll write a bunch of bitter, whiny songs about dogs. Pardon me, that was an inside joke.

~ Oooof, so here I am staring at a computer screen while the room spins around me. Show tonight, very sparsely attended but I got to play my music loud and I had a great time and that is as good as it ever gets. It's funny, I loaded gear into the studio after the show tonight and instinctively went and turned the computer on, I've perhaps been spending too much time online in the past week or two.

~ So, if you've been paying attention to this whole saga of Exclaim magazine talking shit about me, you might like to know that I myself got threatened with a lawsuit tonight.

Some guy comes up to me and says "I'm so-and-so from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, I noticed you used the word NASCAD in a song, well we own the rights to the word NASCAD, in fact the [official-sounding title] is downstairs, and I just told him that someone was using the word 'NASCAD' in a song," and god damn, if the guy was kidding he has a pretty fucking deadpan sense of humour, and I was joking around with him and he said "we have some pretty powerful lawyers" and he said "we don't actually use the term NASCAD anymore," and I said "So does that mean it's up for grabs" and he admitted it was "probably worth about a quarter mil," and I said "If you sued me, the publicity would probably be worth half a million, so bring it on," and it's bad enough that we've only had four hours of sunshine in the past three weeks, and all I fucking want to do is play loud music and get drunk for free, but another twelve-inch stake has been driven through my Halifax heart.

~ Leaving tomorrow to go on tour. Wish me luck everybody.


~ thursday, december 13, 2001

~ All right, I'll keep this brief because it's 4:30am and I'm looooaded.

~ If you can't watch those movies then you need Quicktime which is a free download, you lazy bastards, go get it (look ma, a drunken hyperlink).

~ Go to the Marquee tonight everybody. Sixtoo, A/V, Coping and Allison Outhit, it's Allison's first show since last winter, possibly Sixtoo's last before moving to Montreal, holy shit, just go. A/V is going to be charged up. After the show I wanna do a live PA in the Staples parking garage, fuck winter, I came to get down.

~ Leaving Friday to go play a few shows. Montreal looks in doubt for Saturday (venue problems) but I think I'll be playing with the Constantines in their basement in Guelph on monday the 17th. Yeah right on!

~ Played Hell's Kitchen tonight and it was dope. Dropped some 9Volt electro breaks, improvised a little, jammed out and got all dubby, it was a good time. Supermodel of the Known Universe was there, why does she keep smiling at me when her boyfriend's standing two feet away from her. Eventually she left... and her 'boyfriend' didn't, proving that even though trouble is my middle name I can still be a chump sometimes.

~ All right I'm drunk and talking too much. For those who care, I'm starting a secret URL where I'll be writing about all the sexual politics and whatnot, I want to expand the audience for Swordfight but some people in Halifax don't like reading about that sort of thing.


~ tuesday, december 11, 2001

~ Mondays can be great nights for music in Halifax. I started at the Pavilion for Shotgun Solution and Da Bloody Gashes; headed down to the Khyber to check out Sixtoo and The Propagator, with various guests at the freestyle finale; wandered into Hell's Kitchen to collect my paycheque, and Carlo Spinazzola was performing at the Month of Mondays series.

And I brought along the DV cam, so you can check out some of the fun via the miracle of Quicktime.

~ Shotgun Solution brought the rock.
~ Montreal's Da Bloody Gashes--the band that confused Halifax.
~ Propagator at the Khyber... featuring Eric on the evil eye.


~ monday, december 10, 2001

~ Here's what I was up to at 4am.
terrorists.mov (666k quicktime stream)


~ saturday, december 8, 2001

~ How do you like this sunshine.

~ I was pedalling my bike up Gottingen Street this afternoon, on my way to Staples.

I rode furiously up Gottingen on the wrong side of the street, bumped up over the curb, and zipped around a telephone pole onto the sidewalk.

Just before veering into the parking lot, I weaved closely around some guy who was pushing a stroller. It was one of those tot-trolleys with two or three kids in it.

"Learn to use the road!" he said.

"Learn to use a condom," I replied.

~ I sometimes wonder if nice guys have as much fun as I do.


~ My friends, there is a new home for the Pirate Club at coollist.com.

The Pirate Club is an e-mail mailing list. It's a place to discuss the finer things in life.

Arrrr, the Pirate Club wants you. To join, send an e-mail to captainahab[at]swordfight[dot]org. You could also go to http://www.coollist.com/subscribe.html, then type in "pirateclub" and your e-mail address.

2002 will be the year of the rowdy pirate. Yo ho ho!


~ friday, december 7, 2001


"A-4... miss... G-7... You sank my battleship!"


~ thursday, december 6, 2001  

~ Couple of A/V mp3s for you. The End Of Sex is a song about a relationship in which the physical spark has gone out. (Moral: life is short, go get some action.) Read the lyrics while you wait for the mp3 to download.

~ Also, an mp3 for Explode Upon Impact. This is a song about gettin' it on with total strangers. Well, it's actually about a couple of things but I'm not getting into it right now. Draw your own conclusions.

Both of these songs are fictional, just so you know. I haven't had a girlfriend in years; and there aren't too many strangers left in my little Halifax social circle.


~ It makes me laugh, all these people who complain about Halifax being conservative, and who are themselves pretty friggin' uptight. Think about it.


~ "Have you noticed that Halifax doesn't have a sky? It hasn't really been sunny in ages... but it's not like it's grey and cloudy, and it's not foggy out... the sky is just this blank white void."
"This weather sucks. I hate it, it's depressing and it makes me want to kill myself."
"Don't do that. Halifax is a better place with you in it."


~ Swordfight hits the road.
Wed. 12 December: 9Volt Sound System in Hell's Kitchen.
Thurs. 13 December: Soundmarket 10th Anniversary bash with A/V, Sixtoo, Coping, Allison Outhit.
Fri. 14 December: The Deep End, Saint John NB. A/V and Spinoza w/ Ermine, Amplenough.
Sat. 15 December: Lotus Eaters, Montreal. A/V, Spinoza, Picastro.
Sun. 16 December: Holy Joe's, Toronto. A/V, I Am Robot And Proud, Heidi Hazleton.
Mon. 17 - Wed. 19: possible shows TBA, or just hang out in Ontario and Montreal and decide how much I like them...
Watch out for the 9Volt Sound System/Ghetto Blaster Rob renegade live PA show. Coming next week to a parking garage near you.

~ So I'm in the paper and on the radio as this big website guy. Then, five days after launching halifaxstories.com, I get an e-mail from a guy who says, "I tried to visit halifaxstories, and it comes up in Netscape as a blank page." I almost started crying. Turns out I was missing closing TABLE tags... on the whole site.

Everything works fine in Explorer. Now I can see the site in Nutscrape and it looks like ass. Why is it so different. Why why why.

~ I don't suppose there are any web designers out there who can make this project not suck. I'm going to throw the computer off the bridge (the old bridge). I'm going to go back to my Commodore VIC-20. I'm going to do halifaxstories on looseleaf with a Bic pen. Please help.



~ wednesday, december 5, 2001

~ Here's a copy of a letter I sent to the Daily News.

To the editor:
I was biking up Bell Road today when I saw a short, middle-aged woman who carried a large wad of coloured paper. She was methodically ripping posters from all the poles. I circled back on my bicycle to ask her what she thought she was doing.

"They're not supposed to be there," she said. "City bylaw."

"Do you work for the city?" I asked.

"No," she said. I watched as she tore down a halifaxstories.com poster. "But I pay my taxes. And you don't."

I was livid at the arrogance of her assumption. "I sure as hell do," I said. "I'm an entrepreneur, and I contribute culturally to this city... It's a democracy, people are allowed to get their message across."

Down came a 'Free Food This Sunday' poster, as she muttered something about "taking out billboards like everybody else."

Sure, lady, that's just what Halifax needs... another billboard on Gottingen Street screaming at us in five-foot high letters to "BUY." I told her to "get a life" and rode away, disgusted.

By now, most of us have come to view the poster bylaw as a total joke. No one pays attention to it; no one enforces it. I had pretty much forgotten it exists.

But today I realized I live in a city that officially wants to take my efforts and crumple them up into a ball. That's discouraging news for me, and for a lot of people who are trying to make Halifax a vibrant place to live.

Mayor Kelly, please do away with this bylaw. It makes you look silly.

If you aren't going to get rid of it, then I say, start to enforce it. Zero tolerance.

I guarantee that my colleagues and I will give you a poster war that will have the telephone poles of this city quaking in fear.

For every flyer that gets taken down by you or your vigilante busybodies, two more will go up in its place. And when the next election rolls around a hundred thousand staples will vote you out.

Philip Clark


~ I went for a walk around the neighbourhood while this incident was uppermost in my mind. Took a few pictures; check out the photo gallery.

~ So you're looking for A/V mp3s, are you. You could always go down to CDPlus and buy the damn thing you know. Well I suppose I'll put a few more up here. Check back tomorrow.

Oh by the way, the new Rotator CD is out, 'The Twelve-Move Mate.' Swordfight Records #8.