when girls just want to be your friend and can't tell you're trying to have sex with them. If someone asks for your phone number at a bar, it should be assumed that he's looking for more than a game of Monopoly.

Or Bibleopoly.

Love at first sight is a
dangerous thing.

Too often your heart's
imagination runs faster
that love can keep up.

And so love runs itself
out of breath, forgotten
and lost behind.

Patience is of the essence.
Accept every stage of the process.

All mountains have only one top.

-Trevor

CHRISTMAS HAVOC AS AIRPORTS, LANDMARKS CLOSED
____________________________________________
Downing of unidentified aircraft heightens terrorism fears.
Reuters/Mondo

Airports and public landmarks in the United States are on the highest alert since the attacks of September 11th, following the destruction of an unidentified aircraft in the skies over Lake Ontario two hours ago.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Defense and Early Warning System of NORAD in the high Canadian Arctic alerted the air forces of both governments to the approach of a high-velocity unidentified flying object. Canadian officials confirmed that the aircraft appeared to have originated somewhere north of Ellesmere Island, the highest point in the Arctic.

“At this time, we are not ruling out the involvement of the Canadian government,” Rumsfeld said. “Those bastards have had it out for us ever since we told them to scrap Avro. Not to mention their hippy pot-smoking and civil liberties and whatnot. Pinkos."

The radar return of the aircraft was long and elliptical in shape, changing orientation with each directional variation in-flight. For example, upon a right turn south-by-southeast immediately before penetrating U.S. air space, a series of eight blips appeared to veer away from a larger ninth radar image at the tail.

At 0345GMT, the department of Homeland Security raised the terror alert to condition Red, the highest it’s been in over two years. Ten minutes later, witnesses in Rochester, NY and Toronto, Canada reported seeing a large fireball in the skies over Lake Ontario, followed by a hail of debris, most of which have appeared to be packages of varying sizes. FBI, CSIS and HAZMAT teams quickly closed the shorelines of New York and Ontario and stopped shipping on the Lake in order to assess the potential public risk of these unidentified packages.

The pilot of the craft is reported to have survived the impact and has been detained by New York authorities. The man was observed to be dressed in a red jumpsuit and a red hat, and is at this time en route to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"These evildoers must be stopped. The threat has never been greater than right now during the holiday season," Rumsfeld continued. "And as a sidenote, other than the red suit and whatever, I've never seen anyone better fitting of the Al Quaeda profile than this guy. I mean, no self-respecting American would wear a beard like that."

As the suspect is en route to Guantanamo Bay, or "Gitmo", eight large mammals are being tested at the crash site for BSE, otherwise known as "Mad Cow Disease".

"You just know they're from Calgary again," President Bush added during a White House press conference. "Tainted beef that flies. It figures. " Mr. Bush would not confirm remarks made later about an invasion of Canada, allegedly intended to root out these newfound weapons of mass destruction.

In an unrelated story, Evan Dickson, Editor-In-Chief of Winters College's Mondo Magazine, offended religious groups for the third year running by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. Todd Aalgaard echoed his sentiments, adding "And a happy New Year to all", a move sure to provoke a relatiliatory response from the Chinese.

********************

Kwazy Kwanza, everybody!

Love,
Todd

I used to hate Steam Whistle beer. "It tastes like a steam whistle!" I'd say and congratulate my wit. Now I really like it. Like, a lot. Delicious. And I'm fond of telling the story of how I came around to enjoying this beer. There's a free quarterly magazine in Toronto called Rosco that used to be a student paper for Winters College at York. They went indie and I now edit the new Winters paper, MONDOmagazine. Rosco got sponsorship from Steam Whistle and thus free beer at parties. Which led to me getting fucked up on free beer at parties. Which led to me, yessir, developing a taste for Steam Whistle which I am enjoying at this very moment.

I said I like telling that story and when I say it out loud in real life it takes under thirty seconds. Now that I've typed it out it seems really, totally bland and yet I gave it a whole paragraph. Whatever. The point is MASH, the movie is on TV right now and those guys drink all the time. So I was inspired. To drink.

I am all that is slack. There's all kinds of stuff I've been meaning to tell you about and I've had days and days to do it. Instead I've been sitting on my ass--often stoned--watching TV. Or lately, engaging in my newly discovered pasttime, Yahoo games. I linked to them from this crazy blog, raymi the minx. It's another good example of what I was talking about earlier. A lot of people congratulate Raymi on her writing, but I dont' think that's the real source of her success. And I'm not just talking about her tits, which are very nice. Raymi's appeal isn't her writing style exactly, it's what she writes about: being young and angsty and running around living the life of an angsty young minor celebrity. That combined with nudity equals a popular blog. If we had breasts you'd probably have heard about us way sooner.

I found out about Raymi because MONDO's arts editor, Steve, wrote about her once. She came to our release party and I got the impression that she was as unimpressed with us as we were with her. Nonetheless she mentioned us on her site here and here (you'll have to "find" the word "mondo", because those are long blog pages). I don't really go there much anymore. Steve said, after meeting her, "She's just a hipster."

These days Trevor seems to like citing evidence of how "hip" we are in the things we do. In that spirit I bring you our hipster inventory of the moment:


1 I have to stop posting in my blog to...

2 have a philosophical discussion with Trevor...

3 who is wearing a trucker cap while...

4 we listen to the Dears and...

5 get drunk on Steam Whistle and Budweiser.






I also got the Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD which grabs more ass than you have.

The Internet has been around for a while now. I think I've been online for about ten years now. That's just insane.

I keep forgetting how completely wicked the whole thing is. I mean, there's just so much stuff out there.

So in celebration of my wired decade, I've decided to share some of my favorite websites. I've seen all of these so many times, I almost forget how incredibly awesome they are. But they really are hilarious, so here you go (in no particular order):

The Smoking Gun
The Freedom of Information Act, exploited for entertainment. It's an awesome site, with real copies of police reports and court documents for all of your favorite celebrity arrests, nuisance lawsuits and leaked starlet sex tapes. Check out the Backstage Pass section which features contract riders from some major bands. Did you know Eric Clapton tours with a Foosball Table?

Bert Is Evil
Yeah, well we all knew he was gay, but what's with the Evil? The thing that makes this site so awesome is that a picture of Bert with Osama Bin Laden actually made it into an AP news photo. Think I'm joking?

Eric Conveys an Emotion
This guy's been an internet celebrity for so long, he makes the Star Wars Kid look like, well, a kid. Work with me here, it's the internet so everything goes faster. Anyway, if you've ever wondered "What does Eric look like when he just took a pill, and it could be aspirin or cyanide, but he doesn't know which?" Then this is the site for you. Eric shows us a different surfer-submitted emotion every day. Or every once in a while anyway. It doesn't really matter, he's got a huge archive that'll occupy you for as long as you want it to.

What's in Jeremy's Wallet?
This site is from 1996. That's so ancient in internet time! It's like... way old and stuff! This was the first 'nothing' page I ever found. I think it really captures some essential quality of the internet. Where else would this much effort and attention be put on someone's wallet? You'd never waste the time or the ink on making a pamphlet about a wallet, but in virtual space everything goes. Class A Vintage Internet, right here.

TheSpark.com Science Section
In the same vein as The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project (also hilarious), TheSpark.com Science Section features documentation of some ostensibly scientific behaviour in side-splitting detail. There's the Fat Project, where two people eat like mad to try and gain thirty pounds in thirty days. Or the Date My Sister project which is the guys who run the site trying to fix up one of their sisters. My personal favorite is the Stinky Feet project, where they deliberately try to induce a severe case of athletes foot with liarous consequences. I'd advise the weak-of-stomach to avoid the Stinky Meat project. That's all I'll say about it.

And I'm done.

-Trevor

The future is right now.

I'm taking Audio Production at school, so there's not a day where I don't hear how the Internet is changing everything. And it's true.

I think the music industry is just the canary in the cavernous mine of content delivery. Decentrilization is the fundamental idea of our generation. We could debate the causes for hours: technology, the co-option of rebellion by mainstream culture, or a societyobsessed with youth . But for whatever reason, we just can't take orders.

If technological development and broadband internet saturation continue to increase at the current rate, (and there's no real reason to expect that they won't) then it won't be long before we Kazaa DVD-Quality feature films back and forth faster than we trade White Stripes MP3s now.

But for now the phenomenon is confined, for the most part, to music. It's inevitible that this will destroy the current music business. There's no hope for those companies to make the type of money they need to survive in their present form. And with the internet providing the artist direct access to their fans, the major labels have become redundant. The middle man, or rather middle men are being eliminated.

The problem is that most people confuse the music business with the music itself. Music is not a product, it's an idea or an event. CDs are a product. For all of history, recorded music has been tied to its physical medium of delivery. Why do we still call a four song album an EP, even though 95% of EPs are released on CD? Because the media has dictated form for so long that we are no longer even aware of the limitations.

With internet delivery, this connection is broken, and songs once again exist in their own virtual space. You can consume them in any way and any place you want to--MP3s on your hard drive, burned on a CD in your car stereo, or if you're a lucky bastard on a sweet-ass iPod.

The length and scope of the work is no longer dictated by the limitations of the physical medium. On the internet you can release single songs as MP3s, group them in albums or even have an always-on radio station featuring constantly changing computer-generated music. It's ideas like the last one, ideas that are completely outside of the current paradigm that will set the tone of this coming century.

Advances in technology have always spurred new developments in music. The 12" Vinyl single spawned the disco revolution, and with it all of todays dance music. To reach further back in history, just look at the effect that the invention of the piano had on music in its time.

The same is true for all of the arts. Modern materials science has enabled the tower-of-glass architecture that dominates our urban centers. Digital cameras and photo editing have revolutionized photography. The camera itself completely changed the course of the visual arts, freeing them from literal representation.

At each of these junctures, the people with the most invested in the old way of doing things cried foul, and bemoaned the death of their art. Think of how film studios reacted to the introduction of the VCR. Or even how the music industry reacted to the growth of radio. We hear those same dire prophesies from the RIAA today. "We have to kill MP3s!" they cry, "Or we'll disappear and there will be no more music." They're wrong on both counts.

First, there's no way that the majors will go under. They're going to be vastly reduced in size, for sure. But they still own the rights to 95% of the music that we know today. That's the complete libraries of Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra, and every other artist you love. They still make money every time Born To Be Wild is used in a movie. I mean, come on, there's no way that the people who own the rights to Dark Side of the Moon will ever go bankrupt. Not as long as there are hash brownies to be eaten.

Second, even if they did disappear, there will still be music. There was music long before Thomas Edison made scratches in a wax cylinder, and there will be music forever more. The RIAA's claim is proved doubly false by the glut of affordable recording equipment availible at your local music store. For less that $2000 you can turn your living-room PC into a Digital Audio Workstation capable of producing CDs good enough to sell. You can do it for less than $1000 if you're not fully committed to legitimate software licensing. Artists no longer need to beg to be loaned the money to make an album. They're making more music for less money and in less time than ever before.

So don't worry about the musicians, they'll be fine. Maybe not everyone--artists who have already signed major label deals are probably in for a rough ride. But then you should always check the hull of the ship for holes before you agree to go sailing.

The indie acts, though--you know that band you love who's going to be big that no-one has heard about yet--they're doing better than ever. Everyone is getting equal access to the playing field, and the best man or woman is going to win, not the best-looking.

Download MP3s. By the millions. Scare the shitheads into changing their ways. It's about fucking time.

-Trevor

wiggaz.com

For reasons that should already be apparent.

I don't get money. I just fundamentally don't get it. Not in a "Capitalism is so arbitrary" sort of way, but in a personal, "I'm just not sure exactly how to get money to work" sort of way.

Tonight my friends started talking about mutual funds. "I'm investing in bonds," offered one friend, "I like the security of a guaranteed return."

It's like greek. I can't imagine saving money for beer on the weekend, let alone a time in the future when I'm too old to work. Or at least, old enough that I can afford not to.

I suppose that's why I'm destined to be a world-famous rock star. It's really the only course of action left open to me. I'm far too irresponsible to have any sort of normal job, and I'm exceptional enough that other people can make a living off me.

So I'll just get them to take care of me. And I'll trade them ideas for hotel rooms and thoughts for cases of beer. I don't want money, I want to never have to see money again. A guitar, an audience and a place to sleep, what more could I ever need?

-Trevor

I get the feeling my new camera will usher in an era of arch narcissism for me. I'm not worried, though, because that sort of thing is apparently forgiven, even encouraged on the hipster internet.

I've been wondering over the notion of the "hipster", because I think it's a social archetype that radiates genuine power. Right now I can think of specific people I know who think there is some other world of coolness that they don't quite have access to. I myself buy into it all the time. Because who's to say whether or not there's anything behind the image?

A lot of critical theory I've been reading attacks cultural trends that can be very basically summed up by the old injustice of style being valued over substance. Everybody judges the book by its cover. It's a problem that's often linked to capitalism. Capitalism, whether or not you agree with the ideology, ignores the use value of commodities in favour of their exchange value--the price they'd pull in the marketplace. That's how totally useless shit can still be worth bags of money, just for its look or its rarity. Exchange value is heavily biased in favour of style. We're more willing to spend big money on something that seems like it's going to be great , regardless of how completely shallow and stupid we are for doing so.

I think much of "hipster" culture--and I'm thinking specifically of electroclash and Vice Magazine when I say this, but there are all kinds of examples--is a symptom of the eradication of use value. As long as something appears to be cool, it probably is. As long as a person exudes disdain for everybody else, they're probably better than you.

Jean Baudrillard wrote a whole book about how appearance and actuality are effectively equivalent because you can't tell the difference between the two. There's no difference between looking hip and being hip. Not on the internet, anyway. Not in photography.

Today I present a few pearls of random linkage. Seems every time I turn around the internet gets weirder and weirder. It's like the human subconscious magnified, distorted and projected on a million screens at once. Very meta.

The Doba - http://www.thedoba.com/
Oh you love the Doba. Everyone loves the Doba.

Engrish.com - http://www.engrish.com/
I lived in Japan for two years, and this site brings back some memories. So-hilarious-I-wet-my-pants kind of memories.

Text Based Pong - http://www.karber.net/textbased/pong/
The game for people with really, really crappy video cards.

-Trevor

I remember when the Dears were the next big thing. Now they're no big thing, what happened?

I guess Murray never really got his shit together in the studio. Somehow the albums always lacked the excitement and vibrancy of their live performances. Now they're back to playing bars in and around Montreal.

Must be harder than it looks.

-trevor

Watched Catch Me If You Can tonight. Made we want to start writing bad cheques.

But then I do enough of that already.

Funny how people will take you at face value like that. Wear the uniform and no-one looks twice.

A friend who did graffiti understood this well. Not run-of-the mill "Kilroy was here" sort of graffiti, really interesting prints that he'd wheat-paste in out-of-the-way spots.

"Always wear coveralls," he told me, "And if anyone looks at you funny, just start scraping off the last poster you put up."

Who's going to bother the janitor? There are so many people in this world that we don't see. If you can convince someone that you're one of them, then you're practically invisible.

How many people and things in your life do you see? How many do you pass over?

I'm still amazed by songs that I've been listening to for five years, some twist of lyric or harmonic shift grabs my ear and my brain reorganizes itself around it. That chord progression has been the same since I first heard the song. Only my understanding of it has changed.

Recently I had the understanding that the whole of the universe is like this. We can look as deep as we want into any one thing. And it never ends. It always is just as it is, at every level for always. It's just sitting there waiting for us to make up a question.

The universe in a blade of grass.

-Trevor

You know what's awesome?

Girls Gone Wild.

Oh yeah.

An open letter to god:

Dear God,

Great show tonight! Thanks for Broken Social Scene, they're awesome. I guess thanks for guitars too. Guitars are awesome.

But why God, why must you torture me with indie rock girls? Why do you make them so plentiful and gorgeous and beautiful and unattainable? Why have you created this special, delicious agony for me alone? I guess it's because you love me and I enjoy it. But, it's killing me, really.

Otherwise, though, bang up job with the universe. Really top rate work.

See you everywhere,

-Trevor

Oh yes. Oyez!

Soon our close and personal and talented friend, Chris Henderson will be drawing comics exclusively for awesomejumbo. We haven't hammered out the details regarding characters or subject matter or frequency yet, but soon... soon we will drink beer with Chris and make those decisions based on what our pretty waitress thinks.

Stay tuned... that is, come back to this site a lot. Bookmark it!