A Vain Stab at Insight into the Human Condition and a Suggested Remedy (apologies in advance)

We're all scared. It's the human condition. Why do you thinks I put on this tough guy façade? Now beats it! -- Sal, Futurama

Sal's propensity for pluralzing things that have no business being pluralized notwithstanding, I believe he has a point. The trouble is getting people to admit it. And I don't mean getting someone to say, "Yeah, I'm afraid of spiders," or, "Clowns creep me out, what of it?"
Try getting an average person to admit to a big, nebulous fear of everything and anything--of life. Unless that person is being totally honest, if you manage to strip away all thier pretence and pride (gin works), or if they never had any to begin with, it just won't happen.
I have a proposition, however, that may alleviate future generations of some of the stigma of admitting to fear. I'll admit, it's an imperfect scheme and I'm probably just talking out of my ass here (though it is the internet so I figure this is the acceptable place to do that) but hear me out.
I think that the following script should be read by every doctor to every baby being born today until such a time as advances (if they can so be called) in culture make a revision to the text neccessary. I think, also, that the child should be given a written copy of the script and be reminded from time-to-time to read it.
At very least, I think that someone after reading it for the next few moments will be able to admit to being afraid--and maybe, just maybe--being reminded of it enough will help a few people to overcome the fear.
It goes like this:

Hello young one. I have some things to tell you that I hope will prepare you for what's to come. I know you just spent the last nine months in near-perfect comfort; warm and safe and as close to your mother as you'll ever be. I also know that in the last little while you've been thrust out of that sphere of comfort and into a world of climate, noise, pressure changes, lights and colours and all sorts of other stressors on your senses--and I just smacked you on the butt; which makes the bulk what I'm about to tell you all the more difficult.
First of all, you'll be happy to know that you'll get used to all the stimuli. That's the easy part. In fact, you'll eventually get around to enjoying some of it. Wait til you smell lilacs--that'll just about make up for what youre feeling now.
I wish I could tell you that things get better from here but, if you look at the odds, they really don't.
Unless you were born with a certain amount of luck you don't have very much money which is a very unfortunate thing to lack. There's a very small chance you've got a genetic leg-up if you're extraordinarily intelligent, good looking or talented in some way. This isn't as good as money but it will probably get you some. Even if you have money--if your parents are well-to-do and can exceed your needs; or if you are good looking, talented and bright--it won't make you happy and it will probably never seem like enough.
You should probably do your best to enjoy the next few years. Unless your parents are alcoholics; drug addicts; abusive; absentee; very, very poor or allow people with such issues too much access to you, the next four or five years will probably be the best time you have in this life. It will be especially nice if you have a big, caring family with lots of cousins or with brothers and sisters--they can be ready-made friends and those are extremely important to have. Friends can make a hellstorm of torubles seem bearable and you'll be needing some from here on out.
Because after those first few years, you'll go to school. And again, unless you're something very special to look at, unless you have oodles of money, unless you're extraordinarily talented; there's going to be problems. And even if you're any and all of those things, it won't be perfect. Someone will dislike you for no good reason. Someone you dislike for no good reason will like you a great deal. Other kids will latch on to any pretence they can to tease you, belittle you and berate you. This is one of those times where friends come in really handy.
School will last for about fourteen years--unless you go to college and there's a good chance you won't be able to afford that anyway. In those fourteen years you'll grow a lot, you'll change a lot. Some of the pitfalls you'll have to watch out for are as follows:
First, you will eventually develop a sexual attraction to the opposite sex. At least fifty percent of the angst you will experience at this time will be related to that attraction in some way. You will have irrepressible feelings for one member or another of the opposite sex for most of the time for most of your life and far too many times that person won't reciprocate. You should probably keep how that feels in mind when you are unable to reciprocate the feelings of someone else--though you probably won't.
Perhaps the only thing worse than this hormonal imperative that sends you lusting after the opposite sex is one that sends you lusting after the same sex--and there's a roughly 1-in-10 chance that this will happen to you. If you're lucky, there will be enough people around you to support you and love you regardless of your sexual orientation. This is a good thing because there will be people, some of them outright strangers, who will hate you completely for it.
Unfortunately, sex is a lifetime thing--the issues that go along with it, the emotional entaglement, the heartbreak and everything--will continue the rest of your life. I hope you manage to find someone--same-sex or opposite--who loves you and will stick by you. But know that to get to that person, if they come, you will suffer through endless jealousy, anger, retribution, suspiscion and doubt. Your heart will break, you will break hearts. It is unavoidable.
And while we're still ostensibly on the subject of school, I suggest not slacking. If you are very bright, or even moderately intelligent, this is your opportunity to turn some of that intellect into money; which, as I told you, is very important.
Pay attention, get good grades, work hard, face forward, don't get distracted and maybe you can pull yourself up a couple of rungs on the social ladder. Others will tell you this while you're in school and the pressure will be enormous! You may well turn to drugs or alcohol to ease the stress--but don't bother talking about it. Because the same folks putting pressure on you will tell you that it's impossible for you to be stressed because you're just in school.
Chances are that someone, at some point, will talk you into doing something stupid that will become a bad habit--one that you will likely carry for the rest of your life. It is, of course, unfair as this will likely occur before your brain is fully developed and you'll be too stupid to make the right decision. Take heart in the fact that you're not the only one.
If you've made it this far, you're probably doing okay. If you finish school, good for you; if you can pull off college as well, outstanding!
It will now be time to enter the workforce. This may sound bizarre, you may think I'm playing a trick on you, but I am not. Listen: you will be expected to go to a place and do a job for about eight hours a day, at least five days a week, usually for thirty-five years give-or-take. In exchange for this, you will get some money. Not everything is equal; you may get far too little to survive on, or you may get much more than you need (and again, even then it won't seem like enough). Other people doing other jobs may seem to make a lot more for doing a lot less--this is probably, but not certainly, true.
If you're lucky (there's that word again) or if you plan carfeully and are prepared to make some sacrifices in your youth (for example, taking part-time work to pay for college, passing up parties to study) you may like your job. If not, don't worry, you are not alone. You will do it out of neccessity, you will complain about it to your friends and family, they will complain back to you about thier job.
This cockamamie scheme is, apparently, the best anyone could come up with for seeing to the needs of such an overwhelmingly large global population.
This is also about the time that you'll be expected to find that person I mentioned earlier--the one who loves you and will stick by you? Over half of the people on the planet don't get it right the first time, it would seem. So there's a better than 50% chance you'll go through what we call a divorce. Acrimony, bitter recriminations, legal hoop-jumping, asset dividing, emotional turmoil and severe depression are part and parcel with a divorce. Think of the break-ups you had as a youth as very light practice for this.
And while all this is going on--divorce or marriage or niether--you will have financial trouble. You will be expected to fill out tax forms, pay ridiculous sums of money for things you don't really need, miss a payment and be hounded and harrassed for it, scrape together enough to pay it off and then have to worry about it again roughly thirty days later. If you can maintain your health that will help as getting sick costs money--even if your government says it doesn't.
Of course, staying healthy will be difficult. There will be all sorts of tempting foods and drugs and recreational activities that will ravage your body and mind and you will probably partake for no better reason than that it relaxes you.
Somewhere in there you may have had a child or children. Whatever else you do, remember that nothing that has happened to you to this point is thier fault--they, like you, are just holding on as best they can. Love them. Unconditionally. It may be the only salvation you ever qualify for. If you can manage to do that, there's a good chance that there will be someone young and able-bodied who loves you dearly and will see you through the more embarrassing moments of old age.
Which takes us into retirement. At first this will seem like a fantastic idea. You get to stop working, you will have liesure time. The first trouble will probably be that you've forgotten what to do with liesure time. That won't matter as much once you realise how little money you have in relation to the time you have left to live--indeterminate as it is.
Thanks to advances in medicine--which is my field, by the by--we'll be able to keep you alive longer than your life is worth living. Probably long enough for you to feel a good deal of pain, long enough for you to no longer have control of your bowels, long enough for you to wonder what you're hanging on for.
The answer to that, by the way, is that we're all afraid to die. No matter what anyone tells you, no one knows what happens after life ends and it scares the bejesus out of all of us. So we cling to life no matter how objectionable it becomes.
A few other things before I hand you over to your mother so you can get to enjoying the simplicity of youth:
I have only told you about your life and what to expect in a small way. I haven't talked much about the world at large and there's a few things you need to know about it.
First of all, an incalcuable number of people you don't know will hate you and wish you dead for nebulous political and social reasons--because you dress, look, think or believe differently than they do, because your life seems easier than thiers, because they can. There is nothing you can do about this.
The economy is broken--I can say that with relative certainty if nothing else. No one, no matter what they say, knows how it works and yet it will shape every moment of your life in ways you will never be able to control. The important stuff I have already told you: money is important, get it if you can, try not to lament it too much if you can't.
There are a few people out there to whom none of what I've said applies. They have money, happiness, comfort and security and they don't give a flying fuck about you or your problems. If anyone can be said to control anything on this crazy little planet; they control everything.
You will probably work for one of them, or buy something from one of them, or be subjugated by one of them at some point in your life. Though you will probably never see thier face.
Thier names are easy enough to find, though, if you care to look for them.
There probably isn't a God. A lot of people will tell you otherwise, and hate you if you don't agree. This isn't such a bad thing, just keep doing the best you can for yourself and the people around you and after a while it won't matter and you won't think about it anymore.
Your governemnt is as hapless and clueless as you are. They're of no use to anyone except for a handful of crackpots that need someone other than themselves to blame for thier ill fortune.
People make things that can kill enormous numbers of people in the blink of an eye.
People use these things all the time.
Even if you have a very good idea about how to fix all these things, no one will listen, unless you're something special to look at, very bright or significantly talented.
The people who are something special to look at, who are very bright or significantly talented almost never have very good ideas.
Everything you see on the news is a distortion. And if it's not a distortion, it's a lie.
Virtually everything that can make your life easier also damages the ecosystem of this planet--life or conveinience: it's a trade-off.
Very few people will ever care about you as much as they care about themselves.
Finally, and this is the most important thing I can tell you about life: No matter how bad it seems, there is someone out there much worse off than you are, in much more desperate circumstances, who is about to lose thier last bit of hope. If you come across that person you MUST help them. No matter what.

Granted, it's culturally biased. It could be revised, I suppose, for other countries and perhaps even be made more specific. Or perhaps the entire thing could be revised to be more broad--I think it would be better if we all heard and read the same script. Better still would be if we could all hear and read the same script and realise that, and realise what that means. Maybe then we could all start treating others the way we should.
But I don't suppose there's much hope for any of it at all. Most folks wouldn't want this read to thier baby. I doubt very much if I'd read it to my future step-daughter. Not because I think it sounds hopeless or depressing, but because I worry that it would make her too compassionate. And compassion is a liability now, isn't it?
I tell you what though, even if she never reads these words, I hope she comes to the same conclusion on her own.
And I hope you do to.

Broken Beer Bottle Slippy-Slide

I am not an impeccable record-keeper of the shows I've attended, in fact I rarely even bring a camera because I find that cameras and booze don't mix so well. What I do know for sure about my show attendence record is the following:
1. Have been slacking the last few years.
2. I have seen a shitload of fantastic bands.
3. Many, many of the fantastic bands I saw; I saw on the stage of The Embassy Hotel in London, Ontario.

The Embassy Hotel wouldn't garner even the most casual of glances from your average tourist. Partly due to the fact that it's not much to look at, and partly because it's in an area of the city that most tourists would avoid like the plague (probably because of the high incidence of Bubonic plague there). However, for a punk rocker or a metalhead or an indie kid I doubt very much that there's a more appealing building in the entire city (with the possible exception of whatever building happens to be housing Speed City Records at that time).
Going inside doesn't solve the problem of appearances, by the by--just in case you were waiting for me to say something like, "But the grimy facade belies a..." nope, nothing like that. Inside the building is no better than the outside. What you get is a floor that feels soggy and probably has been since 1977 when it was converted to a live music venue featuring mainly country acts (I swear, I won't draw any romantic parallels between The Embassy and CBGBs).
The bar is divided in half. When you enter, to the right, you find The Whippet Lounge, a small dark room with a small dark bar (that was non-functional last time I was there) and a miniscule stage.
If you go left when you enter you come into The Embassy proper. You'll be standing right next to the stage which has been graced by the likes of Our Lady Peace, Cowboy Junkies, Jesus Lizard, The Melvins, Henry Rollins, Helmet, Biff Naked, Voivod and the Misfits just to drop a few names.
Beyond that there's the Dancefloor, on which I watched Tim Drew writhe around in broken beer bottles during his stint in Oxbaker (pictured below; that is a much-less-fit me by the stage clapping like a ninny). Come to think of it, that turned out to be Oxbaker's final show and, while sparsely attended, it remains one of my fondest memories.
Beyond the bar there used to be a photobooth. I got my picture taken with Brady Caeser of Black Cat Music (he was playing guitar in The Criminals at the time) and my friends Mike and Nicole.
Upstairs, above the bar, are small apartments. It was in one of these that the afforementioned Mike and I hung out with Blanks 77. We stayed until 4 in the morning discussing the finer points of cell phones, country music and Jenny Jones.
Probably my best memory of The Embassy though, would be my most recent and, sadly, my last. It would be the night that Steph and I saw Cursed play. It was the second last show of thier last Ontario tour before thier breakup. It was also the night Steph and I got together. Maybe it was the lack of booze, maybe it was the heat in The Whippet, maybe it was the music--but that night forever changed my life in the best of ways.
But time marches on and the good times had by a fistful of countercultre malcontents means sweet fuck all in the shadow of progress. Our capitalist overlords have decreed that The Embassy, London's best independent music venue for the last 32 years, should be torn down to make room for Condominiums. Who needs a scene? Who needs a neighbourhood? Who needs a home-away-from-home?
Lots of people. But I suppose not as much as some pepople need just a little more money. Not as much as some people feel the need to banish colourful chaos (no matter how harmless) to replace it with bland, humdrum order.
So long, Embassy Hotel, you will be missed.

Whitman Among the Corpses

Another year and another series of circumstances to which I willingly sacrficed myself. Always being willing to let myself be victimized by Fate has served me well thus far--at least insofar as it hasn't gotten me killed. (Actually, upon examining my relationship with Fate I begin to wonder just who is victim and who is victimized...)
So what in two-double-aught-eight is worth talking about?
Plenty.
Turned my back on Prince George, BC permanently. Not out of ill will or lack of respect but because I failed to embrace it and I saw no way to rectify that situation. Once a year feels wasted, it's hard to get over. Double that and tack on a few more months and you've got issues that can only be resolved by swift and immediate withdrawal. I try not to think of it as a retreat--and since I also try not to tell myself lies, I try not to think about it at all.
So leaving PG was a catalyst (to understate matters a little) to a whole lot of other shit (both good and bad). First it ended a thoroughly rewarding--albeit increasingly troubled--relationship. It set up a lengthy correspondence with a girl who reignited my passion for writing, lead to love's doorstep, and then lost it's way from the mailbox to the doorbell. (Maybe love is blind--at very least it occasionally has a poor sense of direction.)
To be fair, it was distracted by another very charming girl and her even more charming child. Then there was love again--love which cost me dearly. Not that the price was one I was unwilling to pay, I just feel sometimes like I wish I'd been able to get the senior's discount or something.
Apparently thirteen years isn't quite long enough to qualify me.
Maybe it's time to step away from the metaphors and whimsical bullshit and start talking about things less personal in a more concrete way before your faithful guide (that'd be me) gets us all lost while he smells the roses. (And there he goes again... FUCK!)

Highlights:
Cursed III is an amazing record, seeing them at the Whippet in April with Stephanie was fucking nuts and a hell of a way to start off a relationship. My ears still ring whenever I hear the duelling bass guitars of Friends in the Music Business.
Having Pike come to the rescue and give me a guitar amp when I was at the lowest point of my creative cycle was precisely the jump I needed to get working again. Playing a lot more guitar now, pushing myself to try playing in ways I've never thought to before.
Making a decision and ploughing ahead with the as-yet-unnamed Epic Dystopia is daunting but feels right. I'm still feeling it out, researching and note-taking but I'm not slowing down and I don't find myself trying to think up excuses.
Finding Steph and Gwenyth in this fucked-up mess of a world was a relief on par with finding your underwear clean after a particularly damp-sounding fart. No, better than that--but I'm saving all my good metaphors for the book. Sorry.

Lowlights:
Cursed braking up was a disappointment. At least I got a chance to see 'em--thought Steph and I were hoping they'd play the wedding...
Finding myself unable to come up with a short story idea to keep my fingers busy in between bouts of guitar playing and novel researching. It's not as though it has to be a good idea, any idea would do. Alas, I am blank.
Making too little money, doing too little work. Not that money and work make a life full, but they do make it easier.
Watching things fall apart for friends and family in various ways. Sure, it happens every year, but this year seemed especially hard on the people I care about.

Looking ahead:
The band should start coming together in the next few weeks (provided our bassist comes through). I have three or four songs set, a couple more vaguely planned in my head. CDep by year's end? We're not doing the demo thing and I kinda wanted to start with a self-released EP so it is possible.
This is the year one of my stories appears in a repuatble journal/magazine/anthology. If that sounds like too much pressure to put on onesself... let me know because I'm scared shitless that someone's gonna hold me to this one.
Gettin' hitched. I'm hoping more and more for something small, quiet and chill. I suspect that Steph is thinking more in the opposite direction. Which is fine, it's not about the wedding--it's about the marriage.
Watching Gwenyth get a little older, a little wiser, a lot cuter and a lot more expensive.
University in September, if all goes as planned. Sick and tired of wishing I'd gone earlier. Gonna make it happen now.

Global recession, economic anxiety. Underexperienced President in the US (hey, at least he's black--or he was before the election, now I guess his level of blackness is unsatisfactory for some). Unsettling orc-like person in charge of Russia. Middle East as unstable as ever. Shock after shock--both political an natural. Catagenesis on the way.
So come ahead, 2009. Your gaping black maw doesn't worry me in the least. Bring it on, motherfucker.