Sweet Emotions…?
I’ve been an Aerosmith fan as long as I can remember. The 70’s just wouldn’t have been the same without Aerosmith, one of the most successful and long-lasting Rock bands in history. But sometimes fame, money, and egos can ruin the most beautiful art form of all and leave five talented musicians bickering at each other as if they were in a 10th grade highschool band fighting over who the band leader is.
If you don’t follow music news you may not have heard of the constant state of drama that Aerosmith has been in. 2009 was set to be a busy year for the rock super-Gods with a new album in the works and an as-usual heavy touring schedule, but as the year wore on so did the tensions between the band, specifically speaking frontman Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. On the surface, everything seemed fine up until an unfortunate accident in August of 2009. During the Sturgis motorcycle rally, Steven Tyler took an unfortunate fall during “Love in an Elevator” while he was dancing mid-song on a catwalk. The stage was reportedly still wet from rains earlier. This was the last time the band was seen together performing (except for one instance which you’ll see later in the article) as the rest of the tour, including all Canadian dates, had to be canceled due to Tyler’s injuries (a broken shoulder, stitches to the head, and other fall-related injuries).
Roughly a month later, Perry began to publicly express his frustrations with the tour cancellation and about his long-time band mate. In an interview with Perry, he stated that “he [Steven Tyler] and I haven’t written a song together alone in the same room in over 10 years, so there’s been some changes in paradigm of what Aerosmith is.“ It would appear as though there have been issues in the recording studio as well as Perry then added “The bottom line is that every hole that Aerosmith left, I filled.”
As time went on, the distance between the two only grew. By the end of September, the two still hadn’t talked at all or had any contact whatsoever. Rumours began to fly that the band was breaking up, but Perry stayed adamant that the band wouldn’t be split and that they would continue as long as they could. The rumours, however, would not go away, yet Perry continued to publicly state that the band has been through many ups and downs and would not disband.
Chris McCandless – A Reflection
Most of us live our lives tightly woven in the embrace of modern society. There are people like me who do manage to get away a few weeks in the year to the wilderness and throw off the shackles of technology and the conveniences of indoor plumbing and soft memory-foam beds, but even I am guilty of punching the clock and watching the world go by. Chris McCandless was an idealistic young man who shook off his shackles for good and set out to find himself and ultimately meet his end in the place he held so high.
Many of you will have probably read the Jon Krakauer book or seen the Sean Penn docu-drama film “Into The Wild” and know the general basis for this article while some of you may be reading about this for the first time. This amazing story (the film being based on the book) chronicles Chris McCandless from his comfortable suburban life and University education and follows his travels across America. Having given all of his money to charity, abandoning his 1970s Datsun B210 after it (and nearly he) was washed away in a flash flood, he set forth to his ultimate destination of Alaska. It was his ambition to live a period of solitude in the Alaskan countryside before returning to his life in society. Chris had no survival experience, very little money, and no means to get there. But that wouldn’t stop him.
Chris, renaming himself to Alexander Supertramp (a direct reference to the 1908 book The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by William H. Davies), would make his way on foot to the far North. Along his way he would take any opportunity for exploration that he would encounter, almost always going into dangerous situations (such as canoing down the Colorado River into the Gulf of California) with very little preparation, experience, and equipment. For a time he worked in South Dakota in a grain mill where he began to prepare for his final destination and acquiring hunting and meat preservation tips from local hunters and friends. Having prepared, at least in his eyes, for his “Alaskan Odyssey,” he set for Fairbanks, Alaska where he bought a Remington Semi-Automatic .22LR (with 400 rounds), some very basic camping supplies (such as a sleeping bag, cooking pot, etc.), and a book on the local Alaskan flora and fauna.
Conspiracy Theorists Require Reality Check
Let me start this out by saying that I think everything coming from anyone should be questioned. Not because every story from the government is some kind of cover-up or because Jesus really did have kids, but because everything needs to be investigated fully so that we can understand things fully. With that being said, the so called “conspiracy theorists,” or as they themselves prefer, “truthers,” need to understand one simple fact. Not everything under the blue sky is a damn conspiracy, and if you were wrong, man up and admit it.
The eight anniversary of the September 11 attacks passed yesterday, and it’s a day that should always be remembered and honoured. With any large scale event not caused directly by nature, people will question it and develop theories, some more believable than others. Television isn’t one to pass up on something that’s close to people’s hearts and gladly ran a two hour 9/11 conspiracy special. Naturally I watched it, I always love to see what people are saying about things like this, JFK, the moon landings, or whatever, and I can honestly say I was disgusted with these so called truthers.
The special (aired on the Discovery Channel and History Television in Canada) sat down with several truthers as an expert panel and sought to quell some of their notions about that day. Like I said, things should be questioned, and I for one believe that there was more to the 9/11 attacks then is public knowledge, and I’ll address this later, but questions do receive answers. It became painfully obvious to me that dedicated truthers don’t care about answers, or even science for that matter. Several topics that were raised by people who think there was more to it all were addressed by experts in the matter. For example, there are many who believe that both of the twin towers were brought down by controlled explosives, there are even a handful of witness reports stating that they heard a series of loud “cracks” before the towers collapsed, and this coupled with the rather neat way they fell into their own footprint is what brought the topic up to begin with. I’ll admit, it’s a strong argument, especially with the fact that both towers fell in a similar way (into their own footprint as opposed to falling sideways or partially collapsing).
Gold Star Restaurant Doesn’t Receive Namesake
Usually I’ll take every new restaurant I try with a grain of salt (yes, the pun was intentional), but there’s only so far my taste buds and my patience can be pushed. Today my darling Gillian and I went out for a nice Sunday lunch at a place we haven’t tried before. We drove toward Coldbrook, Nova Scotia to try out one of the numerous restaurants we pass by when we drive toward the Coldbrook Drive-in Theatre and decided to stop off at The Gold Star Chinese & Canadian restaurant. We’re both huge fans of Chinese food and can never pass up a buffet. This place didn’t offer a buffet, but like I mentioned we were looking to try something different.
From the outside, The Gold Star has a rustic small-town kind of feel to it, something we both look for and enjoy. This wasn’t on purpose as when we walked inside, it’s as though we walked into 1977. But I’m not so superficial that I won’t eat at a restaurant because it hasn’t been renovated since it was built, but the immediate vibe I felt wasn’t a good one. Still, it’s only the look, so it doesn’t really matter that there was wooden “mack tack” (plastic sticky sheeting) everywhere and the bright red seats were held together by duct tape.
The waitress was the first issue. When a restaurant of any caliber has daily specials, the best way to let the customer know about them isn’t “the specials are in the menu.” That doesn’t sound very special to me, don’t you think? When she did take our orders, she did bring our Pepsi in only a minute or two. The Pepsi, straight from the can, came with one straw… We ordered two, but only one straw. I don’t drink with the straw anyway, but it’s not really her place to assume I don’t.
At every Chinese restaurant I’ve eaten at in my entire life, it’s never taken more than ten minutes for our food to arrive. After the first ten minutes of waiting, I received my egg roll as an appetizer and Gillian received her store-bought bread roll. The egg roll was older than myself, hard as a rock with one bite worth of cabbage on the inside with enough beef to take up the space that the end of my pinky finger does. We proceeded to wait another fifteen minutes as two other tables who came in long after we did got their food, one gentleman who came in five or seven minutes after we did ordered, ate, paid, and left before we got our “main course.”
A New Look
While browsing around the myriad of WordPress themes at wordpress.org, I came across what you see around this text now. It’s called Technical Speech, a theme by Suhaib Khan, and I couldn’t help but think it seemed to fit what The Soft Parade entails and my background as a journalist.
Why was I browsing themes, you may ask? I was thinking about starting a new site dedicated to the paranoia… You know, aliens and all that stuff. Yeah, I believe in aliens and I think there’s something fishy about the Kennedy assassinations, but I’m not a nut about it (man did land on the moon, damnit). But instead of splitting my resources between one area of the web and another, I’ll just post such things here when they come to mind.
So what does this mean for the future of The Soft Parade, you may ask? Well, not a whole lot, really. The site looks different, it has more practical features than it did before (namely the navigation and the crunched posts), and that’s about where it will end. If you happen to think there’s more to certain subjects then authorities will initially have you believe, then you’ll probably appreciate when my paranoia sense tingles and I decide to write about it.
So keep reading, start commenting, and let the good times roll. But of course if you don’t like this new look and prefer the older (or something different all together), then leave your comment and give your suggestions. When I get bored I alter, so some direction wouldn’t hurt at all.
Update: A few of my buddies and myself all agree that the last look of the site (the one this post is dedicated to) is devoid of any personality. Until I can design or find a new WordPress theme more suited to my personality, we’ll stick with the classic theme that’s up now. It’s damn pretty, so maybe I’ll just update this one, so stay tuned for further developments!
Hurricane Bill Precautions & Tips
Hurricane Bill is shaping up to be a strong storm by the time it hits Nova Scotia and the rest of the Atlantic Sea Board. At it’s peak, Bill was a Category Four hurricane (on an overall sale of one to five) with winds reaching upwards of 220 kilometers per hour. At this point, the hurricane has died down to a Category Three as it passes around the island of Bermuda on its North Western journey, and as it hits the even cooler waters of the Northern Atlantic it will continue to lose force.
But that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods, in fact it’s quite the opposite. The North American “jet stream,” an invisible stream of air in the atmosphere, will interfere with Hurricane Bill and effectively steer it up the coast line and toward Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. At this point it’s far too early to predict where the hurricane will strike, which even with the difference of a few degrees can make a very different impact, but all models point to the hurricane getting uncomfortably close.
The hurricane is expected to get within striking distance in the morning hours of Sunday, August 23, with large swells (two or three meter high waves) reaching the coastlines on Saturday. The heaviest rains in the hurricane are to the left and closer to the eye (center) of the hurricane with expected amounts ranging from 50mm in the more distant reaches to up to 150mm the closer to the storm you get. Different sources are citing the hurricane may die down to a tropical storm level (much weaker winds, but still significant), but may retain a category one or even category two force of winds by Sunday. With having a hurricane at this point in the hurricane season (which officially lasts from June 1 until November 30) with the warmer waters and coupled with the more active weather we’ve been having as of late, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility to have the more powerful of the possibilities.
Hearts of Iron III Fallout
I’ve always been a huge fan of strategy games and actually prefer them to action games and shooters. So when my old buddy Plexis from my modding days got me playing Hearts of Iron the better part of a decade ago, I fell in love. When Paradox Interactive says that HoI is a grand strategy title, they do mean grand. In all three iterations of the games (not including expansions) you can play as virtually any country that existed between 1936 and 1948 and either follow the annals of history or rewrite it. Research technologies, manage your industries and production, ensure your population has what they need to survive, and wage war or, if you’d rather, stay completely neutral and watch the world destroy itself. Sounds fun, huh? Well, that’s because it is.
When Hearts of Iron III was announced and more and more media came flowing on to the Internet, I was tickled pink and I simply couldn’t wait to get my greedy little paws on it. Hell, I even pre-ordered it so I could get the bonus Sprite Packs (German and American specific unit icons). But when it was released, as with virtually all Paradox Interactive titles, it was riddled with bugs. Every game upon launch essentially since 1998 will have bugs due to the complex nature of modern games (especially so with Hearts of Iron), but in this case it was a little extreme.
I’m not one to call out developers on releasing bugs with their games as a huge majority of release day bugs are either hardware specific or wouldn’t have been immediately noticable during the beta testing phase. In the case of HoI3 though, there were performance issues beyond belief, numerous and common crashes, glitches, memory leaks, poorly programmed A.I., and other issues. I’m always the first to defend developers and bugs as it comes with the territory when you work in the gaming industry, but I find it hard to defend these bugs and the release of this game. Paradox Interactive has a very bad reputation for releasing games far too early, so this is very much their fault and it’s very clear why there are so many people who are very upset with the company and the game.
But there’s another side to this. Paradox isn’t a money hungry company that ignores their community and conducts business as they see fit, it’s actually quite the opposite in their case. The company head is very active on the community forums and interacts almost daily, and he and the company itself are known for giving support where support is needed. Even before the game was in the hands of the mass public there was a patch released followed by a hot fix followed by a slightly larger patch. Even as we speak (and for the next two weeks) Paradox is programming a comprehensive patch based on the feedback from their community. There’s nothing bad you can say about that, this is really a company that cares about the people that keep them in business.
Sad & Lonely People Need Lives
I always thought I was safe here at The Parade from the headaches caused at work (i.e. the Planet Half-Life Forums), but it’s the Internet, you’re not safe anywhere. I’m all for people disagreeing with my opinions, this is a free society (unless you’re visiting from China or something), so by all means, disagree and state your points. But people that find it necessary to get into fights over the Internet, let alone on some obscure personal blog found by some obscure RSS feed or something, are just sad.
Now I’ll admit, once upon a time I was like that. I was an angry little 14 year old once too, and I’d get into fights with text on the screen coming from some other anti-social little 14 year old. But then something happened… I grew up. No longer do I find it necessary to go to forums, IRC channels, or today’s new blogs to fight with people. That’s why I started The Parade. It was simply to be able to rant, post my opinions, or whatever and not have some little piss ant tell me how wrong I am, that I should grow up, and that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Here, of all places. At most I’ll get 2 or 3 dozen people visiting the site a day, most of whom are either coming from Wikipedia links or people I know clicking it off of my MSN status or Facebook page, so it’s exceedingly rare, but I guess it was bound to happen.
Lately, I’ve been trying to get rid of “john,” someone who made up a fake name and an obviously fake e-mail address (really, who could have been lucky enough out of millions of people to register “john@hotmail.com,” unless he [or she] is really that old) simply to tell me I was wrong about Michael Jackson. Time after time I’d respond to his grammatically incorrect comments, and time after time he’d come up with something else he’d call “proof” to show me how wrong I really was. So I told him (or her, I know one or two girls who wouldn’t be above going this far to argue with me for ‘ole time sake) that I was “fucking sick and tired of hearing about MJ,” and amongst other things I didn’t care. Guess what. “john” replied! He or she told me that “you seem to be getting agitated, you don’t see me getting that way. Grow up.” This person who comes to a scantly updated website who claims not to be a Michael Jackson fan daily to post arguments supporting him thinks someone else needs to grow up?
Well, “john,” and to everyone else who spends more time at a computer fighting with people then they do interacting with people outside of their basement, I have grown up. The only reason I replied to “john” is because, well, this is my site, it’s my duty to interact here. I don’t sit at my computer hitting the refresh button for “john” to respond, I go about my day at work, or spending time with my beautiful girl friend, or going out with my buddies for whatever activities seem fun at the time. If I want to get into a debate, I’ll do it face to face with someone, because people aren’t made out of electronic components with an LCD monitor for a face. The sooner people like “john” realize that, the sooner the obesity rate in North America will go down and people like me who work on the Internet can go to work without dreading what idiotic petty arguments people are going to engage in. So “john,” grow up. Go outside, I’m sure it’s a beautiful day! If you don’t have any friends to go have fun with, then go talk to your parents or siblings at least. Computers aren’t analogs for human beings. I learned that, why can’t you?
His War: One Man’s Journey
I’ve been doing some research into the Italian campaign of the Second World War as of late for a project I’m drafting, and it got me thinking about something a little more personal. My grandfather, Elmer Ernest Mahar, was a soldier of the Second World War and he fought in Italy, recieving a shrapnel wounds on May 19, 1944 in the Liri Valley, Italy.
So I thought I’d write down what I discovered about this quiet, unassuming, but patriotic and brave man. My latest full-length article, His War: One Man’s Journey traces my grandfathers steps from recruitment to garrison duty in Newfoundland to the landings at Sicily, Reggio, and through the Ortona campaign and to the Adolf Hitler Line.
My grandfather wasn’t some super-soldier that they’re going to make a movie about, he was just a rifleman who wanted to do his duty. He was two years under aged when he enlisted, and he sacrificed his hearing and suffered wounds to his right arm. He was a soldier, and why he may not have been a Sergeant Major who won a Victoria Cross, he was still a hero, just like all other soldiers who fought beside him.
So if you want to experience a story about a soldier, someone similar to your own father or grandfather, then you should read the full article by clicking right here. The article is as accurate as my research allows, based on a handful of books, websites, and documentation and war diary entries from his combat unit, The Carleton & York Regiment. If you’re interested in learning more or would like assistance in tracking down some war history pertinent to your family, don’t hesitate to contact me for some help.
He’s Dead, Get Over It
If you use Facebook, you’ve by now noticed that four out of five of your friends mentioned Michael Jackson in one way or another, most of which are respectful of his death. He touched children, and that deserved respect? When did we as a society get to the point where if you’re a pop singer you can molest little boys and still have the love of the entire world?
It sickens me, it really does. Yeah, he had a great musical career and has millions of fans (I’m not one of them, his music sucks to me), but that’s not reason enough to overlook the deeds he did. Apparently it was enough for courts to overlook, because “oh my God, Michael Jackson is in my court room!” or “wow, I can’t believe I’m on the jury of my idol, he’s innocent for sure!”
A good example of how idiotic these fans are is Hitler. I’m not saying that this pedantic little jackass killed nine million people in mass genocide, but both men did something horrible to defenceless people who had nobody there to protect them. Hitler was a brilliant industrial leader who took Germany (democratically, mind you) from essentially a third world country after post WW1 hyper-inflation and the Great Depression and turned it into a world power in only six years. So we can overlook mass genocide because Hitler helped out Germany and effectively the entire world with his technological programs? No, he tried to wipe out an entire race of people and killed or enslaved anyone that didn’t fit his ideal view of what a person should be.
So why Michael Jackson? If you do anything to a child, you’re sub-human in my book. These kids don’t know what goes on when an adult touches their special areas and are taken advantage of in the worst of ways. If you can overlook that fact and cry over his death, then please stay away from my children and from all play grounds and elementary schools, because that’s the kind of mentality that he had. Jackson is now paying for his sins for all eternity, and I take solace in that.
