The majesty of prairies

[Sunset from Wednesday Oct 6, 2010]


Despite it being boring, it's rather beautiful most days.

And this is pretty much my backyard.

Layne Tribute - Nutshell unplugged cover

I decided to post post up my cover of Nutshell by Alice in Chains today. I recorded it last night with my acoustic guitar and a regular microphone in Sony Acid. The vocal/guitar balance is a little off, but it does the job.

I had the song right until in the second verse I flubbed the lyric "My gift of self is raped." when I said "My sense of self is raped." This does detract from the song, but hopefully you can enjoy it despite that.

Jarrett

Bill Hicks - Journal Entry

The other day, I wrote a part of journal entry about a Bill Hicks performance. It was his infamous Heckler video where he completely loses it on an audience member. I thought it would be fun to write about for my creative non-fiction class.

Here it is:

I watched my favourite comedian Bill Hicks all day today. He’s one of my best friends at the moment, just for his brutal honesty about everything. He tells the real truth about politics and the puppetry, and attacks the American dream and the phony war on drugs. He is my hero, the dark poet. He is frequently booed and heckled on stage because, ironically, he always ends up playing in front of the wrong audience in the States. He’s booked in the backwoods like Baton Rouge Louisiana, the places where the folks living there don’t understand his material. I watched a video today from Bill Hicks in a small club in Georgia. One drunk woman yells “you suck” at him. He ends up calling her a drunk bitch and a cunt and ends up going on a very long rant. Yet, afterwards he says with much self awareness “Gee Bill, you’re digging yourself into quite a hole here. You’ve been running around yelling: I’m a drunk cunt, I’m a drunk cunt. That’s original material Bill, never seen a comedian ever do that! Is there a punch line here Bill?” IT’S HILARIOUS. How he can sit down and make fun of himself that way.

Later another heckler interrupts him yelling “Freebird!” as a request. Bill then chastises him on how he’s getting nowhere in interrupting him and acting like a drunken idiot. Bill yells “This is where we are again! You interrupting me you fucking idiot! This is where you: the fucking peon masses, can once again ruin anyone who tries to do anything, because you don’t know how to do it on your own! That’s where we’re at! Once again the useless waste of fucking flesh that has ruined everything good in this goddamned world!” Bill is getting furious. He then screams at the top of his lungs while rolling on the ground that Hitler had the right idea, but he was an underachiever. “KILL ‘EM ALL ADOLF! BLACK, JEW, AMERICAN, WHITE! THE EXPERIMENT DIDN’T WORK!” Watching Bill express his frustrations with such eloquence is great catharsis for today. For I think like Bill sometimes, and it’s great to watch someone else say the things you are too inhibited to say.

Jarrett

Alice in Chains "Nutshell"

Okay. Just recently I have taken a liking to this song. I'm not sure if it's the melodic baseline, Layne Staley's unmistakable vocals, or because Alice in Chains has such an influence on modern melodic rock bands.

I found this a few days ago watching Theory of a Deadman instrumentally cover it before moving into one of their better known songs. Later I found Staind doing an amazing acoustic cover too.



Nutshell Lyrics:

We chase misprinted lies
We face the path of time
And yet I fight
And yet I fight
This battle all alone
No one to cry to
No place to call home

Oooh... Oooh...
Oooh... Oooh...

My gift of self is raped
My privacy is raked
And yet I find
And yet I find
Repeating in my head
If I can't be my own
I'd feel better dead

Oooh... Oooh...
Oooh... Oooh...

Nutshell is a song probably fueled by Staley's heroin addiction. The isolation, the deceit, the loneliness, the battle of addiction, this song is him in a nutshell. His paranoia dilutes his privacy, and rapes the person he is. The ending line of this song states "If I can't be my own I'd feel better dead." This culminates the struggle. He's losing himself, because heroin is eating away who he is. Death is the end of his detachment.


Video page here

I have to cover this song and post it up right away!

Poladroids?!

When reading another blogger's posts, I've recently discovered a program called poladroid. It's a realistic polaroid generator that takes ordinary photos and romance them with the subtle tints and hues of a polaroid camera. I love it! I've been playing around with it for a few days now.

Here are the results:

Yours , Jarrett

A week in review: photo chronicle.

Our vessel. 16 ft with a 70 hp johnson engine.

New $14.99 road bike: before.

New $14.99 road bike: after.

Front of Symes-Telfer block

New Road Bike!

Hey bloggers! It has been a great summer so far for me. I just graduated high school and have recently come back from a vacation to St.Lucia! I arrived in Canada a week ago and have already managed to find another road bike. Well, I guess my dad found it at a yard sale for $15.

It's a RoadKing Seville and has to be at least fifteen years old. The front wheel is a tad warped, but it doesn't interfere with the stability at all. This is a great bike because it takes no effort to peddle, and the bearings are so good you can coast for as long as you can. It came with a rock-hard plastic saddle, so I swapped that for a gel CCM. Also, the grip tape was peeling so I replaced that as well. I added the trademark cargo holder on the rear, adjusted the handlebar angle and it was ready for the road.

My dad likes this type of bike just like myself. He says it's what he grew up with. It's easy to carry, can be driven on pavement or gravel, and is very fast. He wants one now!

Original condition.

Aftermarket condition.

Jarrett

Spray paint bicycle / Dadaist anti-art machine

My bicycle

This is my bicycle that I use to get around. It's an old Norco road bike with a quick release front wheel and an aftermarket cargo attachment rack over the rear tire. I rigged up some bungee cords to hold on an old milk crate for cargo purposes. I also spray painted it tremclad fire red last week.

It was originally painted and ugly red and yellow sunburst colour, so I decided to repaint it. I was inspired by a set of pictures on flickr, called monochrome bikes of Amsterdam. They were all local spray painted bikes in the city used as free transportation. They remind me of a mix of Bohemian transport vehicle and Dadaist artwork. When I park mine, it will resemble rolling public art. It also acts as a theft deterrent because the average thief won't steal such a unique bike.

I wholeheartedly prefer the older road bike styling compared to the modern mountain bike. For one, they're faster, easier to peddle, and light enough to carry up a flight of stairs. They can also ride on other surfaces besides pavement (just watch for obstructions!). They are the superior commuter.

Jarrett

Street panormama: Voyage in inner space

Van disappearing : 3 photos autostitched, added DOF

While taking one of my many voyages in inner space, I snapped three photos of a street in the middle of the meridian. I had to wait to get the approaching van behind me in my shot. I wanted to accomplish a ghost car effect that I've seen achieved before in autostitch. So, being industrious as I am, waited patiently to snap the third and last photo in the sequence.

I was lucky. I had the van positioned in the exact place I had wanted it. So that it's partly disappearing, just partly. Sort of a Back to The Future like thing with the van just starting to fade. Like it's heading into another dimension. And in light of the BP disaster, I think that's where we should banish our oil guzzling minivans. Why can't everyone take voyages in inner space like myself?

Jarrett

Large version here
Created with autostitch

Autostitch basics.

Street in Brandon: 4 photos autostitched, B&W.

Hello out there! It seems I've found a free program that will stitch multiple photos together. It's called Autostitch and it is a blast to work with. It works on a really easy premise. Take a few horizontal or vertically stacked photos, import them into autostitch, and stitch them together!

There are a few flaws in the program though. For example: stitching two different angled photos together won't work. Also, make sure that the next photo you take in your sequence contains an object from the previous photo. Otherwise, the program won't know where to join them. Another thing to watch for is stitching different exposed photos together. It will work, but the panorama will be exposed differently in different areas.

After autostitch does it's magic, you'll have to crop the photo. You'll end up with something like this:

Thunder Bay Ontario: 6 photos autostitched.

You'll have to import it into gimp, or windows photo editor to crop it. Personally, I fiddled with mine in gimp, and added a dramatic black and white effect:

The finished product.

And there's the finished product! Happy stitching!

Jarrett

Project Canadiana #3: Chilly Beach

Chilly Beach was an animated comedy series that aired on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in 2003. It originally was a flash based website, until the CBC picked it up. The t.v. show ran a total of 65 episodes before being slowly cancelled in 2008. This was my favourite Canadian animated television show of all time. It was a sharp mix of wit and satire of Canadian stereotypes.

The show focuses on Dale MacDonald and his goings on in a failed resort town known as Chilly Beach. The fictional town itself is located on a large ice floe that drifts through the arctic, setting the series up many memorable episodes.

Most notably so, the episode called "Chilly Beachcombers". Wherein, Dale hires a Newfie fisherman to drag the ice floe closer to Iceland, to catch his favourite episode of the Beachcombers in a different timezone. This is the beauty of Chilly Beach; it is a culturally aware television show. Meaning: it mentions past quintessential Canadian shows in an effort to create a cultural mash-up of Canada.

It succeeded. That's the reason I loved this show. Each episode shows what Canadians really do. Drink beer, play hockey, watch hockey fanatically, eat at greasy spoons, play curling, get eaten by bears. The whole shebang. The characters on the show are an interesting bunch as well. They include hippies, Francophones, crazy Scots, Sikh mounties, and beer guzzling hockey lovers! It really represents the diversity of Canada and all of the different people here in a satirical way.

This show definitely had it's moments. In 2008 after three seasons it just disappeared. Which is sad, because it will be greatly missed. Great thing I found most of the episodes here, free to watch.

Jarrett

Project Canadiana #2: Robin's Donuts

Typical Robin's Donuts chain.

Yes, the time has come to talk about Canada's favourite coffee chain. NO, not Tim Horton's. Robin's Donuts. Yes, even though there is a spelling error in their company name, it's great all the same. They are a truly Canadian enterprise, built off hard work. Not to mention they can make a mean cup of coffee.

Robin's started off from a humble beginning in 1975. They owned one retail store in my home town of Thunder Bay Ontario. Through a little hard work they expanded to almost a dozen locations across the city. Robin's was so popular in the eighties to the nineties they amassed 130 stores across Canada!

Unlike Tim Horton, who tried several business ventures before succeeding in coffee, Robin's founders had it right. Offer a fresh baked doughnut, and a great cup of coffee for an affordable price. The main difference between Robin's and Timmies was, that the latter offered re-heated doughnuts. Thus, sealing Robin's market share in fresh foods. This is why Robin's stores are much larger in comparison to Tim Horton's. They have full in-store baking facilities.

Robin's interior.

Most stores offered a full deli selection, numerous different desserts, frozen coffee, cappuccino, and their trademark Robin's Eggs (like timbits).

By the 1990's Canada's per-capita ratio of doughnut shops surpassed those of all other countries. Due to the fact of Tim Horton's rapid expansion, to hopefully kill Robin's. And they almost succeeded.

When Robin's changed hands in the new millennium, the new owners slowly ran the franchise into the ground. They just couldn't compete with the big market hog: Tim Horton's. And in 2006, after permanently closing many stores, the franchise was sold to Coffee Time for an undisclosed amount.

Even though the franchise has changed hands numerous times, they have still managed fulfill a truly Canadian desire. A fresh doughnut, and a delicious cup of coffee free of nicotine. All at a great price.

Jarrett

Gord Downie on Studio Q tonight!

Gordon Downie.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The legendary, enigmatic, Gordon Downie returns to studio Q, for an exclusive interview on his upcoming solo album The Grand Bounce. The interview is starts at 10pm eastern on CBC radio one. You can listen to The Grand Bounce here. His new single "The East Wind" is my personal favourite.

Listening to Gord Downie speak about his albums or the Tragically Hip is poetry. The man always answers questions relating them to his thesis during the interview. He always has a message throughout his interviews. He contemplates his words carefully, to make them flow poetically and have the maximum effect. In his last interview with Jian Ghomeshi, he starts off with a metaphor. When Jian asks him about the smile on his face when he queued "The Exact Feeling", he immediately mentions "It's amazing, I can hear it through my coffin, through six feet of earth,"

This is a lively edition to my exam riddled week. It'll be nice to listen to the poetic words of Gord tonight as celebration of my completion. Then I'll watch the kick-off fireworks for the Brandon Summer Fair at eleven.

Fireworks emulating heaven, temporary towers soar

Yours,

Jarrett

Project Canadiana #1: Voyageur Restaurants

This will be a new segment on the blog called: *Project Canadiana*. It will include useless tidbits on the landscape and lore of Canada. First up is the Canadian phenomenon called Voyageur Restaurants.

Long since gone Voyageur in Brandon Manitoba

The Voyageur Restaurant chain was started in the late sixties by Imperial Oil (Esso). They were all attached to an Esso service station, and were famous for offering cheap good food all along the newly completed Trans-Canada Highway. This was back in the day when oil was dispensable and cheap and the Canadian dollar was stronger than the American.

Every oil company was in the market to give the Canadian travelers a cheap, home style meal. Esso had Voyageur , Texaco, had their Chicken Villas, and Shell had their 1867 restaurants.

The Voyageur Essos were a common sight across Canada, with their trademark red pointy hat. They offered home style, affordable meals. Salads, soups, pasta, sandwiches, hamburgers, steaks, chicken and Canadian beer. All at affordable pricing,

But most Voyageur Restaurants are now vacant, demolished or converted into something else. The one I fondly remember in Ignace Ontario has been converted into a subway. Who would trade a warm meal for a cold sandwich?

Former Voyageur in Ignace Ontario

I've traced down the last Voyageur on Google maps in Schreiber Ontario. I'm pretty sure it's privately owned, since the Voyageur name is long defunct. They have a convenience store, motel and gift shop. I'm glad to see someone revitalize the name Voyageur for the new generation of travelers! The red hat still lives!

Voyageur Esso in Schreiber Ontario

Jarrett

Medium vs. Message

Going back to the phrase "The medium is the message" coined by Marshall McLuhan, I made an experimental video entitled: The Medium vs. The Message. "The medium is the message" represents how a given medium can broadcast a more important message than the content itself. The medium embeds itself within the message, and creates a symbiotic relationship between the two. Therefore, If you don't understand the medium, you can't understand the message.

Example: If you were blind, and watched a television program, you're brain would only process the audio from the television set. Consequently, you would miss out on the visual and not understand the full message.

My video experiment shows how the medium can rebel against the message. The original video I selected shows an angry man smashing his office computer in a cubicle. The original message was comedic. So, I distorted the colours, chopped up the video and added ambient audio. I fucked with the medium to make the video take on a different message.

Original video here

Do the bright colours add happiness to the message? Does the hidden violin add an element of tragedy? Does the firetruck add an element of emergency? Does the repeated smashing make it center violence?

I don't know. That's the beauty of subjective ideas ladies and gentlemen.

Regards,

Jarrett

Vintage photographs and nostalgia.

I've been thinking about all the trips I've taken between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay. I've taken quite a few. I wonder what would the trip have been like twenty years ago?

Being a mixed media artist, this gets me thinking about old media. Nostalgia and old media. Say some one snapped a picture twenty years ago in the Winnipeg airport. Would they think that one day that photograph would be considered nostalgic? I think not. Like today, when we look at our old 35mm photos. At the moment we took them, we never thought that they would have a unique quality to them twenty years later. It sometimes happens that people are so stupefied by nostalgia they try to recreate the effect of old photos. I'm one of those people.

Marshall McLuhan was right when he said "The medium is the message". The medium not only broadcasts a message (the content of a photograph in my case). The medium embeds itself in the message it carries. This is why older photographs look so different. The medium broadcasts it's own technology, which, dates itself. And as time progresses the qualities of the medium changes the message.

What will the photographs twenty years from now look like? What will they think of our puny -- advanced technology? Will our photographs lose out on nostalgia? Will they desperately replicate the effect?

Original photo: Winnipeg Airport (2007)

Same photo: Nostalgiacized in gimp

Jarrett

Downed trees and puddles. Fringes of destruction.

A few days ago, Manitoba was hit with a huge storm. Torrential down-pours flooded the area, and grape sized hail clanged on our rooftops. Winds gusted at near 100 km/h, and power was lost all over our city. Trees were blown over their limbs were flailed and scattered on the lush green grass.

It was the perfect time to have guests over.

Large lakes have formed on each side of the Trans-Canada Highway (I wish I had my camera). One day later and the aftermath can still be observed, and I documented it in pure observational form. But most documentaries are glammed up. Without being too presumptuous I give you the Fringes of destruction:

No parking sign gimp'd

Curb with reds enhanced for drama.

Downed tree gimp'd

Devastatingly dry drain-curb

Puddle gimp'd

Jarrett

Garbage-Bag-Tree!

I've finally found the enigmatic Garbage-Bag-Tree! It's located in my back yard and looks beautiful and poetic. The conflict between the artificial object and the natural setting is a pretty good metaphor for our consumerist culture. As natural humans we want to conserve the environment, but yet we rape our land and consume it as a resource. We make bags!

Garbage-Bag-Tree: Trees without leaves that seem to attract garbage bags that roost in their branches.

The Garbage-Bag-Tree itself is a delicate balance. The plastic bag is just hanging on by a thread. The bag is ready to dissapear.

Garbage-Bag-Trees - Sony DSC W120 enhanced in gimp.

Bagfully yours,

Jarrett

Not-so-lost in the woods. Photography exhibit.

Not-so-lost in the woods - Shot near Camp Hughes, Manitoba

Public transport.

A slight exageration, but familiar!

Public transit is pretty terrible in my town. The bus itself is a sardine can with one exit at the front. On days when it's exceptionally full you might have to stand, which is an impossible task. The bus driver drives like a maniac! They're one of those people that learned how to drive on a farm or something. I almost fell out of my seat when the driver guns it down public streets! Then, the driver screeches to a halt at every stop, hurling people forward.

Now, you're probably saying it's a lot of fun already, but there's more. The driver felt obligated to make a prodding remark about a passenger after they left. I'm tired of people doing that! What this motivates this guy to mouth off? It makes me paranoid that someone might say something about myself!

What a character. Next, I exit the folding doors and driver feels motivated to do is close the doors before I fully make my exit. Ouch! The door hits my elbow. Great. We really need a subway here.

Respectfully,

Jarrett

Urban verse.

Lights - Sony DSC W120

Obscurity

I sit slouched over at the desk
staring at my garbled rag, my vision fading
screen barring
the opalescent prison is sunless.

My eyes divert to tubes aglow
blinded by the emanant rhythm.
My sight swirls
millions of fractals throb in disillusionment
free of quiet chaos.

I see you, like all the rest
complacent and docile
you clear your throat
speaking the absurd and hurtful
nothing is off limits.

I stand up, plod across the filthy tile
sinking in the snow
taking myself for granted.

You cross my path, barricade my plans
freeze my tracks, like some competition,
then rumble on a little.

The lights are bright, I'm barely here
goodnight.

Jarrett

The pop culture of Nanook.

Comic mentioning Nanook - The Far Side, Gary Larson

Every North American has heard the name Nanook once in their life, but not many people really know who Nanook is. Nanook of the North was directed by Robert J. Flaherty and filmed in Northern Quebec from 1920 to 1921. Flaherty travelled to the fur trade village of Port Harrison with two Akeley motion picture cameras (which the inuit refered to as Aggie) and sought to capture a near dead culture on film. What Flaherty made was arguably the first commercially successful documentary ever made. The film followed the everyman of the north, Nanook and his family. It showed the struggles, triumphs, and comedy of the north.

However, it should be noted that Nanook never existed, and that almost all of the film was staged. Nanook was played by Flaherty's Inuit friend Allakariallak (pronounced Al-ee-ook) and the family in the film wasn't his. Nonetheless, a very successful film that has seeped into popular culture.

Eskimo pies with mascot "Nanuk"


Canadian Arctic sovereignty mission "Operation Nanook"

Yours,

Jarrett

Wheat Kings - The Tragically Hip.

I love this song and have been strumming and singing it for a few days now. It's so mellow, which makes it one of the Tragically Hip's best strictly acoustic songs. The chord progression is rather simple just G, C#add 9, and D. That's why I've taken a break from playing it for awhile, because it's not challenging enough. Yet, it's a song that's really close to me.

Wheat Kings is a track from 1992 Fully Completely, the best Tragically Hip album ever recorded. The reason I like it so much, is the name of the local hockey team Brandon Wheat Kings, but the song isn't about them. The song covers the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard, and his 22 years imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. He was ordered life in prison when he was only sixteen years old.

When you listen closely to this song you can really feel the story. Gord Downie uses excellent metaphors in describing David's case. For instance the high school is the prison, and represents how he was thrown in jail at a very young age. Tonight, I plan on sitting outside, listening to Wheat Kings, and watching the sunset on my deck.

Yours,

Jarrett

P.S. Here's the lyrics:

Sundown in the Paris of the prairies
Wheat kings have all their treasures buried
And all you hear are the rusty breezes
Pushing around the weather vane Jesus

In his Zippo lighter, he sees the killer's face
Maybe it's someone standing in a killer's place
Twenty years for nothing, well that's nothing new,
besides, No one's interested in something you didn't do
Wheat kings and pretty things,
let's just see what the morning brings.

There's a dream he dreams where the high school is dead and stark
It's a museum and we're all locked up in it after dark
Where the walls are lined all yellow, grey and sinister
Hung with pictures of our parents' prime ministers
Wheat Kings and pretty things,
wait and see what tomorrow brings.

Late-breaking story on the CBC,
A nation whispers, "we always knew that he'd go free""
They add, "you can't be fond of living in the past,
cause if you are then there's no way that you're gonna last".
Wheat Kings and pretty things
let's just see what tomorrow brings
Wheat kings and pretty things,
that's what tomorrow brings.

Visual poetry.

Here's a visual poetry piece I made a few weeks ago. It represents the feelings certain words evoke within us, happy or sad, cool or hot. The coloured lights were exactly the metaphor. I was going for 1920's avant-garde and Guy Maddin put together.

Enjoy

Jarrett

Winnipeg Jets and the old Winnipeg Arena.

It has to be said. For any Manitoban to not talk about the Jets is a disgrace. So, I guess it's my turn.

The Winnipeg Jets were the major hockey team in Winnipeg, first being in the Western Hockey Association and later acquired by the NHL. The team stayed in the long demolished Winnipeg Arena. The real Winnipeg Arena, not the MTS corporate shill center. The team owned a few great players like Dale Hawerchuk, Bobby Hull and Teemu Selanne. The old barn even hosted Game 3 of the Canada/Russia '72 summit series.

It was built in 1955, by Winnipeg Enterprises Corp. a community owned organization. It was one of the smallest NHL arenas in the league with around 15,565 seats. In playoff games the whole crowd would wear white in support of the team. The Jets were loved by the city and shown wonderful patronage from 1972 to 1976. This was a working class arena. No box seats, hard plastic, and very small. It was also renowned for it's unique urinal trough in the men's room, where men would pee in a giant urinal with little privacy.















Sadly, the Jets left Winnipeg after being purchased by the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996. There was a public outcry, citizens organized a "Save our Jets" fundraiser/concert (Fred Penner on the roster) and raised 10 million to keep the Jets in Winnipeg. But the NHL had made up it's mind, they wanted a larger arena with box seats and they wanted another team in the United States.

Winnipeg was without a major hockey team and the old arena was falling into disrepair. In 2003 After years of citizens begging for a new arena with hopes of getting the Jets back, the city finally built one the MTS Center. It was a purely corporate motivated buy after the city decided to demolish the site of the former Eatons department store on Portage Ave. This architectural lie of an arena was built just under the minimum required seats for an NHL franchise. The city had no intention of bringing the jets back, because they already had an American Hockey League team in town, The Manitoba Moose. Possibly the lamest and biggest deception of a hockey team Winnipeg has ever seen. With no use left for the old arena, the city started demolishing it in 2004.

The MTS lie.















Demolition:





























Seats:
















Bare bones:















I remember passing the old arena while it stood, I would have liked to gone inside. My dad apparently caught a Jets game back in the 80's sometime. Even though the Jets are long gone people still buy reproduction jerseys and hats in large
quantity. I guess Winnipeg hasn't given up yet.

Bring them back!

Jarrett