The epic drive PT1: Departure

Golden Gaytime

An Australian Favorite.

Introducing Lucy

When I lived in Australia for a year back in 2005 I caught a redback spider and put it in a jar. She was a bit of a bitch, extremely venomous despite her size & very mean. She was fun to watch as she devoured things 10 times her size. I followed that capture up with a huntsman spider and put her in a cage. Huntsman spiders can get huge with an over a 8 inch leg span. They, too, are quite cantankerous but their bite is no worse than a wasp sting. I still didn't pick her up as she attacked anything that came near her. That's her (or him) up above. I called it Hunter...original.

I missed having a 'pet' spider so I recently went down to petland and bought a Chilean Rose tarantula. She's beautiful with a 5 inch leg span, metallic rose coloured carapace, and bristles covering her body (they're like hairs, soft, but are not the same thing). When she's scared she can flick those bristles which can cause mild skin or eye irritation...it's a pretty cool defense mechanism. She did that to me once when I startled her.

The weird thing is she is quite friendly. I can pick her up, even pet her. Sometimes she will spin silk for me as I spool it around my fingers. It took me a while to get comfortable holding her as her fangs are about 1 centimeter in length...if she decided to bite me, even without using her venom, it would hurt like a bitch.

For whatever reason I developed a healthy respect and interest in all things arachnid. They are the perfect predator, have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and have evolved the craziest uses for their silk. Some are master architects, some use their webbing to capture a bubble of air so they can swim underwater, some use it to lasso passing insects, some even use it to capture drafts so they can fly.

Not Lucy, though, she just sprays it all over her cage randomly coating everything in sight. She still rocks though.

Drunken Campfire Reflections Part 1: Awesome, Terrible

One thing I've learned over the past years getting to know Marsh is that he excels at drunken campfire reflections. I recently acquired a mini portable hand recorder so I've had the pleasure of capturing some of these moments on wax...point being I thought I'd share some of them.

The first Awesome, Terrible isn't the BEST one but I thought I wouldnt raise expectations too high by posting the best first. I'll save that one for the next post and, as a hint, it's called Piss Zombies.

So, ya, here's a little audio from a recent drunken fire session in my backyard:

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A Post for Mr Marsh

For those that don't know, I happen to be in a band called Ours To Destroy. The other main driving force behind it, Mr Steve Dodd, is a guitar virtuoso. I mean so good that he makes me want to give up playing guitar all together (if you need further proof, check out his noodling on Dread from our Canmore Hotel gig back in December -- it's under the video tab on the former link)!

So how does me plugging my band relate to Marsh? It just so happens that Steve's favourite song of all time is the BAT DANCE. And here's a 30 second audio outtake from our practice last night...

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b ..... LOG

Here I am engaging in an activity called blogging posting to a blog. That’s LOG with a b in front of it. Since this is my first post here on IceBakes, I'll share some of what creates angst in my life as a way of introduction.

I swore that I would never engage in any activity that was named as part of this twenty second century of silly linguistic wordplay. I swore off the web trends as soon as I burned out on Facebook.

I don’t twitter, facebook, blog (oops), google, digg, post ytmnd’s...

I don’t use all the trendy new words and privately giggle whenever they’re dropped, repeatedly as if repeated use will conjure their underlying meaning into existence as some secret mantra chanted in whispers during a pagan ritual.

What words? I’ll give you my short list here, this one time, and then they shall never be spoken of again:

* Paradigm Shift;

* Web 2.0;

* E-Anything: (e-enablement, e-business, etc)
As an aside if you have a friend named Elisa, her name shall henceforth simply be Lisa;

* Long Tail:
Ya, it’s a neat concept, but now everyone has a napkin plan for how they will take over the ‘long tail’;

* At the end of the day:
This is a really noticeable play for time on the part of the perpetrator as it adds absolutely nothing of value to any thought;

* Like I Say/As I Say/Like I Said Before:
This one's a little obscure, like at the end of the day it's a stall for time to let one's brain catch up to your mouth...it's especially irritating when the person doesn't always say or didn't say before whatever it is they are purporting to have said...if that makes sense;

* Irregardless:
Just because we’re too stupid as a people to recognize that adding an IR in front of REGARDLESS while keeping the exact same meaning does absolutely nothing other than make the word longer doesn't mean it should be a word;

* L33T Speech: (woot, u2, WTG, 4TW, etc.)
I HATE getting l33t speech emails, that's what email filters and auto delete is for;

* Icebakes 10.0:
Adding a 10.0 is going to make it cooler? How?!

I’m certain I missed some. I’ll add them to the comments if I think of more...