Renegade

Have you ever bought an album based on the fact that you really love one song off of it, but you don't really know what any of the other songs are like. It can be dangerous. I remember buying Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere for the song Crazy, needless to say I was sorely dissapointed. This past weekend, however, I bought two albums where the opposite was true. I was in Nanaimo for a CFSBC conference and just down the road from the hotel where we were staying there was this epic record store. It was kind of like Zulu Records, but on a smaller and not quite as awesome level. I was ridiculously sucked in and bought a vinyl (Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot) and four other albums (Surfer Rosa by the Pixies, Stereo Type A by Cibbo Matto, Beautiful Freak by the Eels, and On The Beach by Neil Young). The reason why I bought so many is because most of those albums I couldn't find anywhere else (I'm sure I could buy them at Zulu, but it's just too dangerous and expensive for me to go in there), and all are awexome to the max albums. Surfer Rosa and Beautiful Freak really surprised me though. For Beautiful Freak I had only listened to the song My Beloved Monster and really loved it. When I listened to it in the context of the album though, I was amazed that it wasn't even the best song there. The rest of the album was as good if not better than it and My Beloved Monster wasn't even the focal point or the climax of the album. Something similar happened with Surfer Rosa (from which I had only heard Where Is My Mind) the album simply blew away my expectations. I have put off buying the album for a long time for certain reasons, but I can't help but wish I had bought it sooner, it's really an achievement. Very few of the songs are as polished as Where Is My Mind, but they harness a raw carelessness that in this instance manages to produce some sweet tunes. Also it's great to listen to the album and try and find the parts of it that all my favorite bands took their influence from, it turns out the Pixies were more influential than I realized.
Anyways, just a couple stores away from the record shop was a used and antiquarian bookstore so I had to spend some time (and money) in there. Although I still claim that the bookstore in Penticton is the greatest ever, this one manages a close second. While a lot of bookstores succumb to stocking piles of pulpy fiction and harlequin romances, this bookstore steered well clear of anything to do with that. If the standard good to crap ratio for your average second hand bookstore was 3 to 7 (it's probably much less), I would say the ratio for this one was about 7 to 3 (I know, that's a pretty epic achievement). It was like concentrated awexomeness. There was a whole tall shelf double stacked with poetry and two or three of the same entirely dedicated to boats, seafaring, and voyages (along with a large number of charts). The size of what would normally be taken up by the fiction section was taken up by the classics section. The sci fi and fantasy sections were really small, but they still managed to stock all the really great authors like Bradbury or Adams (although my one gripe was that there was no Heinlein). Anyways the books that I bought were: The Vintage Bradbury by Bradbury of course, Captain Cook's Voyages Of Discovery (abridged for the Everyman's Library or it would have easily been half a dozen volumes) by Cook himself, Goblin Market And Other Poems by Rossetti, Of Mice And Men and The Grapes Of Wrath by Steinbeck, and The Sound And The Fury by Faulkner. The best part, of course, was with the exception of Cook they all cost me 3 or 4 dollars apiece so I came out of there relatively unscathed.
The actual weekend in Nanaimo was in itself pretty interesting. The CFSBC is the BC component of the Canadian Federation of Students (although technically they are seperate and autonomous) and it's composed almost entirely of NDPers. Kwantlen's delegation was probably the most diverse group there, we had a Liberal, a Green voter, an NDPite, and of course a Conservative (yours truly). The other thing was that most of the other delegations and the CFS staff really dislike Kwantlen and are super hostile. This is partly to do with the fact that last year Kwantlen held a referendum to try to withdraw from the CFS, but it's also to do with the fact that unlike most of the other delegations (which are mostly composed of hacks that follow the CFS line without thinking) Kwantlen has traditionally been very critical of the CFS and their policies. I think I was fortunate to be part of the Kwantlen delegation because it enabled me to see just how undemocratic and partisan influenced the CFS actually is. We had committee meetings where we dicussed policy and changes, plenary sessions where we all got together and voted, and speakers on stuff like the STV system and student debt. Some of the speakers were really interesting (like the one on STV), but some of them were straight up recycled soft-communist rhetoric (Like the one on raising taxes). As for the committee meetings all our delegation members in their respective committees got horrifically shut down on any ammendments they brought forward and the same followed with the plenary session where motions were voted on (Which was a really disturbing experience). It was also really disturbing to see only one other member local in the whole organization really have the guts to go against CFS line. Overall, however, it was a really educational experience and quite enjoyable, participating in debate and even bringing forward an ammendment in the plenary session (even though it was madly shut down by the hacks). So that was my weekend. Keep it pregnant dudes.

Park Ranger