There is a bottle of Advil sitting on the kitchen counter back at my house. I’m thinking really hard about that bottle right now. I have one of those headaches that makes me think God is punishing me for being an asshole. I would like to find a construction site somewhere and lay my head down on the asphalt and run over it with a steamroller so that my skull squishes like a cherry tomato and all the bad stuff comes running out. I didn’t even drink last night, so fuck you, God, you spiteful little twerp.

Last night I did sound for the Divorce Records showcase featuring Secret Colours, Husband and Knife, Dead Wife, Grand Trine and Nadja. Secret Colours were the pleasant surprise of the night for me… I found some of the songs surprisingly pretty and poppy underneath the swirly washes of ambient sound. From there the night became progressively noisier, I loved Husband and Knife, Dead Wife and Grand Trine were chaotic and punk as fuck, and Nadja closed off the night with their deep doomy soundscapes. There was a vinyl giveaway and I came away with a free test pressing of the new Dog Day record courtesy of our good friends at DIVORCE RECORDS.

When I got off work I went to an afterparty at the Rock Garden and ate a bunch of pizza. Here is a picture of me and James Reid going ham on some Hawaiian slices.

DJ services were provided by Graham from Holy Fuck and last night’s Paragon headliner Cadence Weapon. I enjoyed talking to a few friends but I wasn’t really all about tearing it up on the dance floor. I’ve had this mindset where I’m in Halifax to work and I can have my fun when the shows are over. I’ve been invited to perform at Saturday’s afterparty, and more details are sure to follow somewhere on this Internet.

I bailed on the afterparty when Prince came on the sound system. I’m not dissing Prince but I have a rule that when the ’80s music comes on, it’s time to get the hell out of the party. Unless it’s Italo-Disco. Or Acid House. Or DAF, or Front 242. Or Devo. Or the B-52s. On second thought I am dissing Prince after all.

I’m wearing a Moneen hoodie that Dish lent me and someone told me it smells like my house in the country but to me it smells like cigarette smoke. Today at 2pm I made myself some breakfast consisting of vile spaghetti in a disgusting mushroom sauce. The crew had all gone out to eat at the Spartan and I ate by myself in silence while wishing I had gone with them.

Tonight I will be at Coconut Grove doing sound for some East Coast boy-bands. Soundcheck is in three hours and right now I am about to go have a nap in my car.

I’m sitting on Mark and Brendan’s couch listening to some Government Issue on a dreary Thursday afternoon. I’m in Halifax to do sound for a few shows during the Pop Explosion.

I start tonight but I came down last night just to hang out and go to the punk rock show at Gus’s Pub with Fear Of Lipstick, The Hemingways, The Stolen Minks and The Fat Stupids. There was tons of stuff going on last night but I really just wanted to hang out at the punk rock show.

After years of doing live sound I grew to dislike big rockstar shows, attending them as well as working them. I got sick of road manager types and huge load-ins and all kinds of bullshit attitude… I like small shows, weird shows, punk rock shows. I like a show when it’s a good mix of your very best friends and people you’ve never seen before in your life and there’s good music and a healthy degree of clowning around.

Tonight I’ll be at the Divorce Records showcase at Gus’s and it should be a noisy good time. There’s also an after-party later on with DJ sets by Cadence Weapon and one of the dudes from Holy Fuck. The cover charge is eight bucks. Eight bucks, I came here to make money, not spend money, anyway, I hear there’s gonna be pizza, I’ll probably wind up going after Gus’s.

Today I ate an apple and a can of sockeye salmon for breakfast lunch and dinner. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a “fish high” but I got all woozy and weird from putting away forty-four grams of fishy protein and sat on this couch for a long time marvelling at high-speed internet until the power went out and snapped me out of it.

I think I’m gonna go down to the Paragon and try to say hello to Think About Life before posting up at Gus’s Pub. And from 6pm on I’ll be hanging out at Gus’s Pub eating Tic Tacs for the calorie content and I think by the time the afterparty rolls around I’m going to be so hungry that I will take two slices of pizza and stick them to the windows of my car and then attempt to travel backwards in time to ancient Italy to give them the secret pie recipe for the betterment of all humanity forever and ever, because I love you.

i ate some good food today and saw some good friends. but the exuberance of the weekend is starting to give way. i haven’t slept in days.

it’s not hard finding places to stay. the hard part is having someplace to hang out in the daytime. with no home base to post up in, i spent the day dragging myself through the heat of the halifax streets.

dozed off at the corner of almon and agricola, dozed off on the wall at pizza corner, dozed off in the air-conditioned park lane food court trying to cool down.

now my car’s fucked up and i might be stuck here for another couple days dealing with who knows what expense. it’s the exhaust, it sounds terrible and i can’t really drive on it.

anyway, right now i’m going to head down to reflections and play rockin for dollars and try to bring the party and squeeze some fun out of it.

i just dozed off at the wheel of my car parked in front of robin’s old apartment. that’s not good; none of that is good. i need to get out of here.

Vickers, those are my shoes, give them back. You are a cat. They don’t even fit.

Vickers is an old man and lately he’s been having some old man problems.

He lost his appetite and all but stopped eating. When you pick him up, he feels so much lighter, with shoulder bones sticking out. Have you ever seen a skinny Vickers? This has been a matter of great concern and heartbreak.

The vet shaved his belly and gave him an ultrasound. They found a cyst on his liver. The test was inconclusive. It could be lymphoma, which is a form of cancer. Or it could be lymphocytic portal hepatitis.

If it’s lymphoma then he’s all done. Another month, maybe two at the most. If it’s hepatitis, he will be taking steroid pills for the rest of his life, and he should be good for another few years (he’s 14 or 15).

So I’ve been giving him the pills. I tried stuffing them inside cat treats, but he’s not feeling these treats. (Has anyone seen Pounce on the store shelves lately? Gaspereau Forks is dry.) I have to tilt his head back and push them to the back of his little mouth with my fingertip. Vickers wasn’t too crazy about this at first. He has gotten good at taking pills though, and lately it doesn’t even interrupt his busy purring schedule.

Anyway I swear to god he’s been putting some weight back on since we started on the steroids. I’ve also put him back on Special Dinner. We’d had him on this swirly food that supposed to be all nutritionally ideal and blah blah blah but Special Dinner is all he ever liked to eat anyway.

I’d been planning on doing some serious touring this fall but I haven’t really been setting anything up. It doesn’t seem like a good time to be travelling. Should I just be optimistic and book a bunch of shows? Or should I be pessimistic and book a bunch of shows. I don’t know. I think I’ll probably just stay home.

Vickers is my best buddy. We’ve been companions since the mid-90s and I’m used to always having him around. The house has felt a little empty, a little eerie while he’s been doing tests in Saint John.

I got in the habit of leaving items of black clothing bundled up on the floor or lying on furniture around the house. I would notice the amorphous black bundles out of the corner of my eye and for a second I’d think it was Vickers having a snooze.

Anyway he’s back home now. We’ve just been hanging out, same as always. His personality hasn’t been affected in the slightest.

You guys should come for a visit.

A\V played a show last night in Springhill, Nova Scotia, birthplace of Anne Murray and home of the Springhill Mining Disaster.

The venue, the Lamp Cabin, had a sandy beach volleyball court laid out all nice in the backyard. Spring Break 2009!

My first time in Springhill reminded me of my first time visiting El Paso, Texas. It was the summer of 1927.

There were seven roads leading into El Paso guarded seven days a week by seven deadly snakes, each of which represented one of the seven deadly sins.

Pride. Envy. Sloth. Gluttony… Lust… Avarice. And uhh… Wrath.

The only actual way to gain entrance into El Paso was to pass through the gate guarded by the snake of Sloth. Because as you entered the city, Sloth would look at you and think… ehhh, I’ll just bite you next time. I’ll get around to it.

The locals knew this. El Paso residents would all come and go by way of the road guarded by Sloth. But I was not a local. I was a stranger, coming to El Paso Texas for the first time, during the dusty drought and the boil order of the hot summer of 1927.

And so it came to pass that I was bitten by the Snake of Lust.

Welcome to the latest edition of Party In Your Mouth, AKA Cooking With Uncle Philly. Today I am happy to share with you my recipe for delicious pineapple chicken.

Ingredients:
– Pineapple
– Chicken

Serves: 2

1. Grab yourself a couple of those fresh tender slabs of dead bird and grill the asses right off them.

2. Cut up a bunch of pineapple.

3. Put the pineapple on top of the chicken. PARTY!

Enjoy this classic taste of the Far East!

Last night in Regina was our last show with Rah Rah on this tour. In the past few weeks I have run the entire range of human emotions but the one constant in life has been my enjoyment of watching Rah Rah every night. I love them. I threw a giant inflatable shark into the audience and we all fired off confetti guns at once.

After the show we went to a dance club where the DJ played songs off iTunes complete with 2-second pause between tracks. Hey guy, there’s actually a crossfade option in there somewhere. He did play Yelle and the Black Ghosts and I lost my shit for a while but then everything downshifted abruptly to Outkast or something.

Sometime in the next couple years I’m going to put all my stuff in the car and drive to Regina Saskatchewan and live there for a while. Seriously. I do like the town that much. Perhaps I can make a living as an electro DJ.

All the members of Sleepless Nights were sober on this night of farewell and bittersweet celebration because we are all broke. Marshall from Rah Rah was right loadered and it was pretty entertaining. I think somebody wound up peeing on the pizza place. A girl in there was in tears and it made me realize how fortunate I am to have embraced the single life. These two other girls made fun of her dramatics and then got on their bikes and pedalled in somewhat wobbly fashion all up and down the street.

Meanwhile here we are in Winnipeg at 4am. I’m awake but I’m too tired to do anything interesting or productive so I’m watching Breaking Bad on my macbook with the sound turned way down. I’m staying up all night so I can sleep in the van all day and then take over for the night drive. Soon we are going to leave to drive 24 straight hours from Winnipeg to Toronto because we are idiots.

Supposedly I can share these Facebook photo albums with everyone in the non-Facebook world. Here are a few snapshots from the West Coast portion of Sleepless Nights Cross-Canada Summer Rock Tour 2009.

~ Victoria, BC

~ Kelowna, BC

“It’s just a rock’n’roll show,” I said. “It’s not going to bring your family back from the dead.”

—
I just ate a bison steak in Lethbridge, Alberta.

Last night we slept on the floor of an Anglican church hall in Regina, Saskatchewan. Regina’s a nice town. I could live there, probably. I went for a stroll before our show at The Club, went to the library and a free art gallery. The streets were pretty quiet on a Monday evening. An Irish pub was playing The Notwist.

I walked through the Cancer Connections display in the Regina town square. I was thinking my problems right now are only financial in nature, for the most part. No one close to me has cancer at the moment. But inevitably it will happen. Maybe I’m existing right now in this curious window of time before a bunch of bad stuff happens.

At the show we rocked out really hard and everyone in the room was dancing.

And then this morning, I got a phone message.

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Friday was a good day. I ate squid, got stoned on cough syrup and went to visit my grandmother. Then the Sleepless Nights played a nutty rock show at the Capital with Mt. Royal and Rah Rah. I’m loving those bands.

Benadryl gave way to tequila which gave way to energy drinks. What you call “six in the morning” I call “two in the afternoon.” Lately I’ve been on a quest to see just how much punishment my immune system can take.

Last winter I learned that the number-one contributing factor to getting sick is lack of sleep. I’ve been repeating this fact to people almost as though my awareness of it automatically gives me immunity. But as we learned from The Matrix, there is a world of difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

The van speeds up to overtake a big truck. I watch closely through the passenger window. The truck’s flatbed is loaded down with crushed cars, dozens of them in even stacks. I think about my own vehicle back in Halifax where it sits in the parking lot of a North End mechanic. The day will come when it too winds up on the back of a such a truck.

I wonder what it would be like to drive my car into the crusher, straight into the belly of the machine. To feel my body compressed and cubed, flesh forced through a sieve of warped metal.

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Aaron went to Taco Bell/KFC and ordered the Famous Last Bowl. What the Famous Last Bowl is, it’s a human skull in an obsidian bowl with french fries and gravy all over it and a bunch of cheese in the eye sockets and it comes with a candle on top in your choice of colours–red, black or purple.

Once you’re done eating the eye sockets will begin to glow with a hellish orange light until twin jets of flame shoot out of them to scorch all the skin off your face, and then your skull in turn is served to the next customer.

It looked good but not as good as a couple of beef burritos.