Not much to say...its very hard to look at the young beautiful faces of the victims of the VT massacre..so much to live for...makes me sick

why do we have guns?

Aswell as going on rants last night i did a wee bit of music composing aswell it was one of those long overdue solitary nights just a bit of red wine cigarettes my guitar and my thoughts...i like these nights.

movie review

The U.S. vs John Lennon - see it!

im not sure exactly what im supposed to be....i mean i do things ...lots of things....things that may make me "cool" to some of you and others that probably dont...are we defined by what we do...seems that way...i like doing everything and want to do/experience everything i can in this life...like writing things like this..so random fuckin strangers can either say im crazy or loveable smart or stupid or well what ever they want really...hopefully you random strangers have at least considered and contemplated stuff....one clone of a man with my own personal options thoughts.."one of a kind" oh what a marvel wouldnt you say only a billion or so more just like me in almost all ways except not.....have you ever...well....i mean......i sometimes think to myself im the first to drive down the street in my big van with a blue t-shirt on and chuck taylors on my feet smoking a brand new du maurier thinking about my friend who told me he used to sing back up for paul anka all the while worried as fuck about everything going on around me like money and my mom my sisters my brother my nieces and nephews and why did my dad have to die and why does anyone die or why does anyone live and will i ever really love like i did that one time and why is george bush running the free world, and why are "grown ups" liars and have i fed the fish...why do i even have fish.....im pretty sure that although im just like everybody else physically (you know what i mean) everything counts! every thought every word that i say or someone says makes us different and maybe just maybe theres a pin hole of light out there that i can stick my finger into it when it i see it and pull the it wide open (the blackness that is) and expose whats behind this mystery...yeah i know im dreaming right now youre saying either that or you think im fucking crazy...both are probably true but its my life and if this is what i think or even have somehow concocted these thoughts then...maybe....just maybe i can...i dont want to live a life unexplored and want answers i want expansion i want the truth...no i just want to think freely and play like ace freely(i think thats how you spell his name)or something i dont know , you know ? this is living...i think

Well thats all for my favourite writer...Kurt Vonnegut is Dead...i cant say im that im sad really ...cause i would be lying(people are coming and going all the time in this world..one in one out one in one out etc...thats protocol)...i do however feel sympathy for the people who were close to him for thier loss...but you know i didnt know him personally so im not sad...read on please...i am grateful as all hell to have been directed to his writing though .....i think Slaughter house 5 was the first one i read about a decade ago or so i didnt really start to enjoy reading until i didnt have to do it...ask me to read something then and it wouldnt happen... life has been like that for me i kinda like to do things on my own terms and because i want to, not because somebody else wants me to...i think alot of people suffer from this same sort of thing...anyway i was looking a for a good book to read and i was friends with a local teacher who i used to drink pints with down @ my local pub and he suggested sh5...fucking loved it.....i have another friend who is particularily well read and i discovered that he too was a big fan of K V aswell and had pretty much every KV book written aswell as essays...so he used to lend(lend meaning i still have them..oops) them to me and by now i think ive absorbed 7 or 8, my fav to this point was breakfast of champions...funny a couple of months ago me and a friend of mine were sitting around my kitchen table with a bottle of wine smoking cigarettes and i was reading her b.o.c aloud cause i was right in the middle of it (basically thinking about it al the time jones to get back to it)and was telling her how great it was so thats how we spent our night, wine ,cigarettes and vonnegut...makes for a goodnight....b.o.c. is my favourite to this point...im actually gonna use something in that soon in my music (its a secret..sorry)...well...we all must die one day...we all know that..."so it goes"....i guess what im trying to say is that this guys writing really made sense to me...i got it..you know?...for me as a musician i can only hope (as i do) and strive (as i will) to achieve that with my music make a connection...have someone get it....make sense to someone.....like kv did to me. if you have never read anything of his i think you should...so below is and article to give you some idea of what this guy was all about(i though it was pretty good....im going to read now or perhaps write something amazing myself(with some wine and cigarettes)

ciau

Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes


Those three famous words from Slaughterhouse-Five hold the key to understanding the humanism that underpinned the late novelist's work

Alex Clark
Sunday April 15, 2007
The Observer

'If i should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say "Kurt is up in Heaven now." That's my favourite joke.'
Jokes and death - and specifically jokes about death - are perhaps the simplest way of summing up the life and work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, who died last Wednesday at the age of 84, some weeks after suffering a fall. The truth is necessarily more complex, but Vonnegut was a writer whose insistence on straight-talking - despite the superficial tricks and elaborations of his novels - became a central credo, a way of registering his anger and bewilderment at the harm visited upon innocents by nations, governments and corporations seeking to shore up their power through obfuscation and cant. If one of his aims was to provide a voice for those innocents, his method of making himself heard was both courageous and effective; he told us the hardest of truths, but in the gentlest, funniest and most amiable way he knew how. He was, to use his own word, a 'sap'.


Article continues

But he was a sap who had seen and survived dreadful events. In 1944, just a few months after his mother had committed suicide, he was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge, where he was serving with the 106th Infantry Division of the US army. He was sent to Dresden and put to work in a factory that manufactured vitamins for pregnant women, and there he stayed until the Allies bombed the city in February 1945. Vonnegut escaped death by hiding in an underground meatlocker; when he emerged, he and his fellow prisoners were set to the hideous task of disinterring innumerable corpses from the devastation. It was, he later remarked with characteristic irony, an irony that dares us to be appalled by mere words in the face of truly appalling suffering, 'a terribly elaborate Easter egg hunt'.
It was also to provide him with the basis for his most celebrated novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, which appeared almost 25 years later and contained the phrase that became most closely associated with him and that could most fittingly serve as his epitaph: 'So it goes.' The words recur throughout the book each time a death is recorded and what they imply lies at the centre of any understanding of Vonnegut's work: fatalism, stoicism and the acceptance that no use will come of shrinking away when the worst has happened. Questioned repeatedly over the decades about whether he thought Dresden should have been bombed, Vonnegut's most significant response was that it had been bombed; the question for him was how one behaved after that.

Slaughterhouse-Five, whose alternative title is 'The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death', rejects a conventional narrative, presenting its episodes in deliberately jumbled and fragmentary fashion and introducing the perspective of the inhabitants of the planet Tralfamadore, for whom time is not linear; our ability to properly apprehend events such as Dresden, Vonnegut suggests, is hampered rather than enhanced by our insistence on placing them in a historical framework.

Vonnegut's influence was not confined to Slaughterhouse-Five, nor to his at times uneven attempts to weave elements of science fiction into mainstream novel-writing, as he also did in works such as Cat's Cradle (1963), his favourite of his own novels, and Breakfast of Champions (1973). He presented us with a determinedly humane, cheerfully pessimistic and fearfully optimistic vision of American society as seen by an outsider; by a man whose family had emigrated from Germany in the middle of the 19th century and whose fortunes, both financial and emotional, had been shaped by the best aspirations and worst excesses of the American dream. He could not have been less precious about his writing, even creating a fictional alter ego, science-fiction hack Kilgore Trout, whose prodigious output was doomed by his incompetent choice of a pornographer as a publisher. 'What is it about blow jobs and golf?' is Trout's bemused comment on the American national character.

Writing, Vonnegut said when reminiscing about his career as a youthful journalist, was just something he found he could do easily; and when he looked back at his books, he couldn't quite imagine how. In the late-life columns he wrote for the magazine In These Times, many of which were collected in his last book, A Man Without A Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America (2006), he sounded a cautionary note to the younger generation: 'If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.' It seems unlikely that Vonnegut wished to cause anyone hurt, nor that he lacked nerve, and he went into the arts with a bang. Now he leaves them. But certainly not with a whimper.

Vonnegut: 'Our Voltaire'

He said: 'I think novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as the Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.'
A Man Without a Country

'New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.'
Breakfast of Champions

'My motives are political. I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. Mainly, I think they should be - and biologically have to be - agents of change.'
Playboy magazine

They said:

Graham Greene: 'One of the best living American writers.'

Michael Crichton: 'He writes about the most excruciatingly painful things. His novels have attacked our deepest fears of automation and the bomb, our deepest political guilts, our fiercest hatreds and loves. Nobody else writes books on these subjects; they are inaccessible to normal novelistic approaches.'

John Irving: 'He is our strongest writer, the most stubbornly imaginative. He is not anybody else, or even a version of anybody else, and he is a writer with a cause.'

Tom Wolfe: 'As a writer, I guess he's the closest thing we had to a Voltaire. He could be extremely funny, but there was a vein of iron always underneath it, which made him quite remarkable.'

Jay McInerney: 'He is a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion.'

Gore Vidal: 'He was imaginative; our generation of writers didn't go in for imagination very much. Literary realism was the general style. Those of us who came out of the war in the 1940s made it sort of the official American prose, and it was often a bit on the dull side. Kurt was never dull.'

It really is awesome to have the fans we do....we really didnt expect to have people come down to the edge studios to see us play but sure enough you guys were there...it really makes us feel what we are doing is worthwhile most of you came to both shows that night too fucking good!.....in short thank you so much!

and

just wanted to talk to you all about whats is and what has been going and what will be going on....so.....first of we just came back off a little tour with a band called "The Marble Index" which was a lot of fun theyre pretty cool dudes and write some great songs that seem to stick in your head forever (thats what happened to us "figure it out" .....) were actually heading up to Ottawa to play with them on the 26th of this month being April..cool.

Video

So we shot the video for "calling all cars" about ...well almost 5 weeks ago..so where is it? Thats what weve been saying almost everyday to our management..the stock answer was that oh they are tweaking it to perfection...ok? You know you can tweak something to perfection ones whole life but who wants to do that?...anyhow so the latest answer is that the editor in charge of cutting wasnt fulfilling the directors vision so they have asked someone else to cut it....fuck sakes! the old editor the guy they let go was a friend of mine too i dont think they know that anyhow it seems a bit of a mess and im not sure the director knows what he wants himself...i hope im wrong cause hes a cool dude but i must admit im a bit scared and on top of that i do know what i want being the fact that i wrote the song and know more of the feel/look that should be employed(you know what i mean)..yes i am ranting a bit im sorry i just feel that unfortunately im not being heard on this one....so give it a week or two and we shall see what we have lets keep our fingers crossed

Band

Since Todd parted the band due to being a Daddy we were delighted to find probably the most brilliant drummers in the city if not the country...i cant tell you how many shows weve played with him where fans and fellow musicians alike are in awe of him...oh yeah his name is Paul Barry and we are really excited to have him join us he along with precussion duties is a great arranger with a great ear for melody, highly creative and with him on our team we feel theres no stopping us..yay!
About the time Todd left we decided that the bass player who was with us at the time Since Chris's Departure due to babydom wasn't quite working out for whatever reasons these things are hard to explain all we can say about this matter is is that he wasnt the right guy for us albeit a top bass player and great guy in general. Sooo i went out on a limb and called an old friend who played bass with the now defunct band "Shaker" his name is John Dolinar and after just a few practices we all new he was our guy...he brings probably the best attitude to rehearsals everyday and his outlook on life his humor and work ethic and of course his skill as a player and performer made our decision simple.
Now that the band is rounded out and everbodys full and undivided attention is focused on writing great songs and giving great performances everytime we play and striving to blow each previous show out of the water we get ready to embark on a tour to the u.k. which from all accounts (yeah youve probably heard all this before) is going to happen in July.

fuck yeah!

oh and


check this out seems were giving stuff away this is up on the bell sympatico homepage


Enter to win a TNG Scooter from Sympatico.MSN and the Dunes!






Enter to win!



dont forget..if you love someone...tell them..life is short...

adios

Oh yeah to simplify my life i am no longer using a cell phone get in touch with me @ kevin@theduneslive.com and i will call u back.

lifes more peaceful this way

So im running a little late to pick up the guys for our little northern tour/expedition last Thursday its about 9:30 am i get to the bank but its not open yet i dont have that much gas in the van but i figure i can make it...i still have to go down to the office to pick up a box of cds to sell whilst away....hit the 407 no problem...hit the 404 and its really busy im eyeing my gas gage and it doesnt look pretty the highway is crawling but i ride it out im almost @ the 401 now the office is @ queen and carlaw so basically ive just got to go straight down the dvp....its at this moment i make a decision that im gonna run out of gas my only option to get off the highway now is to take the car pool lane onto the 401 ...not the direction i need to go but ive got to get off the and get gas somehow even if its out of the way so i veer off the 404 at the very last moment in to the carpool lane go through the tunnel and guess what?...yip cops ...waiting for people who are driving alone...fuck!
ok ok i say yeah you got me i know im not supposed to be here im not even going this way i tell the officer i point to my gas gage and give him my story which is the truth...he listens then points out im not wearing my seat belt...fuck!i give him my license and insurance ...couldnt find my ownership he says to look for it and bring it to him when i find it ..i do so i bring it to him...i reach the car and hand it to him he says "theres another problem" i say "great, what is it" he says "your license was suspended two days ago for an unpaid ticket"....i say "fuck!" he says "yip" ....................he tells me to go wait in the car and that hes calling a tow truck because im not allowed to drive from here with a suspended license .....im internally losing it im pleading with the guy no fucking dice though....he comes back to the van as im fuming says "bad day huh?" i didnt have much to say then he hands me 3 tickets no seat belt/using the car pool lane/ and driving with a suspended license....then i get towed and have to pay $100 to get let off the tow truck all this before 11am the boys met me and thankfully 2 of them have thier licenses and it was off to the north...thats my all time worst thursday morning story ever....

to add insult to injury i went and paid the fine yesterday but they tell me the courts and license office computers are not even linked up? what the fuck? like they cant do that? only everything they do coincides? what the fuck am i paying taxes for? so even though its paid i cant drive for four days all this because i didnt want to run out of gas and block traffic on one our highways ....bullshit!

Well the tour was really good supported the marble index good guys good songs there are a few funny stories but for now after telling the above i dont feel like telling them....in short stay of the logging roads.......we felt really good and sold more merch and stuff then usual i think we all finally feel like a band should which feels good.

remember i said i think aliens are trying to communicate with me through spam emails disguised as poetry intersecting my own thoughts advertising either viagra or windows software...good well heres a few of these weird poem things that im gettiing......


Not daring to oppose
Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
Event, the end of the painted road ends up
End of the comedy.
At San Biagio, in the most intense room
People might see to be the opening
Dismal, endless plain—
Blurring the terrain,
Is the moon to grow
Stunned in their voiceless way to be alive
This gap in time, this season not their own,
Amid the gloom, there, on the pole, stands black
The edge of that other square cut from the right
Sphinx of questioning substance, or a sort
Among us, only Alberti, then Sangallo,
Sought to contrive, intending to express
I. Arctic Scenery
Empty streets I come upon by chance,
Trampled snow is the only rose.


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What the Fuck? See what i mean...good news is they seem to be friendly aliens...in this gibberish lies the answers to unlocking all the secrets in the universe!......or maybe not

Saturday night we are EDGE STUDIOS 228 YOUNGE STREET 9PM SHARPE and THEN @ 10:45 we will be @ the OPERA HOUSE IN SUPPORT OF GERMANS AND THE JIMMY SWIFT BAND




www.nufunk.ca presents
Saturday, April 7th
The Jimmy Swift Band
OPERA HOUSE - 735 Queen St. E
w/ Special guests 
Germans
www.myspace.com/germans
The Dunes
www.myspace.com/thedunesrock
DJ ?uesquecest
$12 Advance
TICKETS OUTLETS:
Soundscapes- 572 College, 416-537-1620
2 The Beat- 161 Spadina Ave – (416) 598-8120
Play De Record- 357A Yonge Street - (416) 586-0380 
Rotate This- 620 Queen St. W – (416) 504-8447
Shanti Baba- 546 Queen St. W - (416) 504-5034
Sonic Temple- 5165 Yonge St - (416) 835-0035
Advance tickets also avail online at: www.nufunk.ca

The Jimmy Swift Band have been forging their own path in Canadian Music for the past seven years. During this time their energetic and improvisational live show has helped the band develop a cult like following throughout Canada and the U.S.
They have performed 200 + shows a year for the past three years, selling out venues and packing dance floors across North America.
The JSB sound is so original that critics and fans have come up with a new genre to define it - Rocktronica. Coming out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, JSB consists of Craig Mercer on guitar, vocals, and effects,Aaron Collier on keyboards and effects, Mike MacDougall on bass, and Nick Wombolt on drums.
Each member brings their own strengths to a powerful sound which is greater than the sum of its parts. Their influences range from Daft Punk to Pink Floyd to Guns and Roses, and they meld aspects of these sounds together to create their original Rocktronica. 
JSB are currently touring in support of their third studio album, Weight Of The World. For more check out:
www.thejimmyswiftband.com

also

Germans
www.myspace.com/germans

The Dunes
www.myspace.com/thedunesrock

SEE YA