Dessa - Fire Drills


Phrases I dislike include "gentle reminder," "how are you," and "ask" used as a noun. None of em grind my gears like "stay safe." Yeah, I know it's never meant maliciously - quite the opposite. But how is anybody supposed to live inside the boundaries of safeness?

One of the assessments that my kindergarten teacher made was that, although I was great at reading and writing and numbers, I needed to learn to take risks. That is something that does not come naturally to me. Being safe is easy. Taking risks is hard. But staying absolutely safe would mean I never climbed an 80 foot tree, whizzed down a county road on a bicycle at top speed a hundred kilometers from home, or met some of my best friends. 

Rather than wishing for someone to "be safe", I'd rather wish them a life full of risks worth taking. 

 Soooo kinematics was a long time ago. But something moving me forward is, by definition, accelerating me, right? Or at least counteracting frictional forces? 

This song challenge is getting easier because there's only one song I can pick for this slot: 

Susanne Sundfor - Accelerate 

Accelerate is an audacious, gothic, 100% certified banger. Despite (because of?) the organ solo right before the final chorus. This is the feeling of running headlong into a snowstorm at night, of freefalling through the nine circles of hell, of giving in to the inexorable march of progress. Just give in and lose yourself to the megasynths. 

Goo Goo Dolls - Iris

3:12:05 PM - 1 - k another song
3:12:10 PM - 1 - lol this song is too cheesy
3:17:31 PM - 2 - goo goo dolls: iris
3:18:34 PM - 1 - never actualy listened that song befoe
3:22:36 PM - 1 - aw the song is cute
3:23:01 PM - 2 - because it's not nearly angry enough
3:23:19 PM - 1 - aww ur inlurrrveee :P
3:23:36 PM - 2 - ok

I couldn't have picked anything else for this slot. Not Samson, not Jolene, not even Mr Brightside (maybe Tam Lin, but only because I love fairies.) This song spoke to my angst-stricken teenage soul from the very first time I heard it. It will forever remind me of those years when I was first discovering music by myself, documenting all my overwrought emotions into a butterfly notebook, and quietly freaking out over the Kinsey Scale article on Wikipedia.  

Also, it was in 3/4 time, which I dig.  

Lorde - Writer in the Dark 


One of the last conversations I had with my brother was when we were talking about music, and he said he liked this song from Melodrama. It was the summer, and I think we were walking to P-mall. My whole family was going, actually - but I don't remember what for. 

I didn't follow up on the question, though I'd not pegged him as a fan of white-chick-on-piano ballads. Was it just one of several that he liked, or his favourite from the album? Was there something about this that spoke to him, or was he trying to pick something he thought I liked (I do like it, but predictably I prefer Perfect Places)? Did he know he was gonna kill himself at that point? Was it too late to do something about it? Should I have known from this weird choice of song recommendation that something was wrong? 



I'll never know and it's gonna haunt me forever. 

Ghost Love Score is the Stairway of symphonic metal. 


Really! It's old enough to drink in Quebec, it goes on forever, it's overexposed, and it's worth every bit of hype it gets. 

Somewhat tragically, I didn't really grok the song til I heard the live version. I consider the Bueno Aires 2012 version to be the best one. A lot of people say that the Wacken rendition is the definitive one, but I prefer the Bueno Aires performance where Floor just starts floating over the rest of the mix at the climax. 

And it's not even my favourite Nightwish song - that'd go to Last Ride of the Day (amazing momentum that never lets up) with Bye Bye Beautiful (I appreciate overpersonal lyrics that are deeply embarrassing in hindsight), Nemo (I used to think that the first line was "This is me, falling forever," and by the time I realized what Tarja was actually saying, it was too late and this song was already a favourite), and Scaretale (downright unsettling) rounding out the rest of the top 5)

Just because you can do a cover doesn't mean you should. 

Case in point, Exhibit A.  The original "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is a blown-out affair, with three hooks, and a call-and-response duet sprinkled throughout. It's big, it's bombastic, and it's not gonna get any bigger or more bombastic by giving it to a metal cover band. Nobody asked for this. 

There's also such a thing as completely missing the point of the original, as per Exhibit B. I'm trying to detect the irony here and not seeing it, probably because Rachel/Lea Michele are as earnest as theatre kids get. But it's too minimalistic to be camp, or fun. And fun is the entire POINT of the original. Strip that away and what's left is nonsense words and a vague sense of sexual aggression that, in the cover, is shared between a mother and her long-lost daughter. 

Similar point in Exhibit C, possibly the worst cover ever made. Robyn's original is about the contrast of DANCING while being SAD and maybe also a little GAY. Calum Scott has doubled down on SAD and GAY at the expense of DANCING and ended up with a dirge for drinking alone in a bathtub, and isn't that what we keep Adele around for?   

Anyways there's lots of great cover songs that expand upon the original in some way, and we all already know about them, so that frees me up to pick this one for day 15. 

Vienna Teng - Ain't No Sunshine/Lose Yourself


A downtempo acoustic cover that uses the residual aggression of Lose Yourself to tame the monotony of Ain't No Sunshine. Is much as I like Vienna Teng, I didn't expect this to be successful. Also, it was the first time I'd ever seen anyone use a loop pedal. 

 I love Say Yes to the Dress Lancashire but I'd never get married. It's too performative and goes a lot easier when you can fit nicely into the shapes of "bride" and "groom" and all that entails. I mean, we've been together for seven years, what would I be trying to prove? 

Also work has been kicking my ass lately because we just got a comment log from parks & rec dept about how much they hated my construction access presentation and that's why i haven't been able to read Rhythm of War 

So here's the fill for #14 for a hypothetical wedding (not mine). 

Halestorm - Here's to Us

Again, not my favourite song from this band (my top three would be "I Like It Heavy", "Familiar Taste of Poison," and "I Miss the Misery") but i think it fits what a wedding song ought to be - waltz-danceable tempo, short, happy, and completely unironic ride-or-die theming. 

 So I was fooling around with Omegle about twelve years ago. You had a pretty good chance of having a meaningful conversation back then. One that still sticks with me is this hour-long chat with a guy from South Dakota going to school in Indiana, who graduated high school with a 99% average. He'd be 32 now, I guess. 

Anyways, he recommended Zombieland as a good movie to watch (and it was good) and mentioned that No Quarter was his favourite Led Zeppelin song. (My favourite Led Zeppelin songs are The Rain Song, Achille's Last Stand, and Stairway.)

No Quarter - Led Zeppelin

I made the mistake of revisiting Omegle recently, just to see what had changed. It my first time at the site in ages, barring the one time that my shitty university roommate nominated me to show my tits to the guys on the other side of the webcam. Anyways, the interface is just as charmingly ugly as before, but now with even more horny dudes, bots, and pedos. 

Hope you're doing well, guy from South Dakota. 

As previously discussed, I was a musically deprived child. I think I heard this song in elementary school, as part of some lesson. I don't remember the class or context. I wasn't aware that this was a parody. I wasn't even acquainted with Star Wars at the time. 

Yet this is my pick for day 12. 

Weird Al - The Saga Begins


Latter-day Star Wars has been disappointing, but latter-day Weird Al continues to be a consistent source of joy. My three other favourite Weird Al songs are probably White and Nerdy (I am nerdy, though not white), Hardware Store (I have always loved hardware stores), and Foil (this one is self-explanatory). 

Speaking of latter-day, I'm still bitter Shivani told me that Brandon Sanderson is a mormon and that's why I'm stuck a third of the way through Edgedancer. 

 Lana Del Rey - California 


Yes, for this slot I picked a Lana Del Rey song. Open up a separate page for the lyrics, and then let me explain why this song makes me sad. 

Now, I'm Canadian, but Dude Boy'd landed a job in California before he killed himself. I regret that we drifted apart in later years (if I was even allowed to say that at age 25). I don't have much of an excuse for that - I could have reached out more, and my reward for that was that he didn't even mention me in his suicide note. He mentioned my parents, he mentioned his friends, he mentioned the computer club was president of - but not me. 

Anyways, one of the things I'd been thinking about before he killed himself was that it'd be nice to have some all-you-can-eat sushi in my shitty town, because you can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle themselves at all-you-can-eat sushi. We'd never really done anything together (and without anyone else) as adults. But I figured he'd have more time on his hands after graduating.   

So if, as Lana explains, if Dude Boy were ever to show back up on planet earth - in California, in Ontario, whatever - then I would like to take him to sushi. Or go biking at the park, or watch Stephen Chow movies all afternoon, or anything else. I'm not picky.