I’ve been listening to a lot of Warren Zevon lately. More than usual. His music, especially later in his career, makes me feel better about things.

On Life’ll Kill Ya he did a fantastic cover of Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life Again: Although it’s not his song, he made it his own, in much the same way that Johnny Cash made NIN’s Hurt his own. His version of the song is less celebratory, more dark and personal. These lyrics really caught me:

It used to seem to me
That my life ran on too fast
And I had to take it slowly
Just to make the good parts last

My life has become very surreal in the past week. I’d been scratching around for the right word, and (as usual) Vicki came up with the perfect one. Surreal. I’m not sure if it’s going faster or slower because I’ve been in a bit of a daze for the past week or so.

One thing I’ve always been good at is dealing with stressful situations. I just put my head down and try to be as normal as possible. It works for me, most of the time. It might not be the healthiest way to deal with things, but it works. I don’t know what will happen when the plane lands in Vancouver tomorrow.

Another song from Warren’s Life’ll Kill Ya – and my theme song for the week – is Don’t Let Us Get Sick:

Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

The sky was on fire
When I walked to the mill
To take up the slack in the line
I thought of my friends
And the troubles they’ve had
To keep me from thinking of mine

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

The moon has a face
And it smiles on the lake
And causes the ripples in Time
I’m lucky to be here
With someone I like
Who maketh my spirit to shine

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

I think it’s probably my favourite of all Warren’s songs. It’s my anchor to reality in all this surreal confusing painful helpless time, and a lovely, darkly hopeful prayer.

If you’ve only ever heard Warewolves of London you owe it to Warren’s memory to check out his other stuff. It’s incredibly good.

I’ve never seen this before, but it’s something I wish I’d thought of. I’ve always had a fascination with secrets and mail and small personal stories. Check out PostSecret and some of the comments. It’s very powerful stuff.

According to the author, this is his favourite – a secret he never received:

”...I was very excited because I too had a secret I wanted to post. I thought long and hard about how I wanted to word my secret and I searched for the perfect postcard to display it on. After I had created my postcard I stepped back to admire my handiwork. Instead of feeling relieved that I had finally got my secret out, I felt terrible instead. It was right then that I decided that I didn’t want to be the person with that secret any longer. I ripped up my postcard and I decided to start making some changes in my life…”

Now it’s my turn to send mad props out to boingboing. They recently linked to a film clip from one of my all-time favourite songs. I’ve loved this little number by the Avalanches ever since I first heard it (get this) on a Qantas flight from Sydney to Cairns. My girlfriend at the time went to Australia shortly after I got back to Vancouver from my holiday, found the CD, and brought it back for me. A full year later it was finally released in Canada.

But I digress. Check out the film clip. It’s brilliant stuff, and they did it pretty much exactly the same way I would have done, given the chance. And that, gentle reader, is why it’s brilliant. Of course.

I like to get bad news before good. That way, even if the good news isn’t that good, at least it’s a distraction.

Bad news: My brother just died. Peter was only 26, and he had a heart attack while unloading his moving truck at Penn State University in Philadelphia. He’d just driven four days cross-country to be there in time for the beginning of the school year.

Good news: I’ll be in Vancouver again for a few days at the end of the month. At least I’ll be able to catch up with some old friends.

Browsing some of my friends’ sites, I inadvertently took a little trip down memory lane, gentle reader.

L-R: Judi, Larry, Laura-Lee, Gabriel, Dax, Leesha, Chris, Ian, Sam, Mike, Sean, Me, Patrick, Kirsten.

I’m still in touch with some of you. Others have wandered off. Others still probably don’t know that I wandered off. Hope you’re all well.

Apple introduces a multi-button mouse. It’s called “Mighty Mouse”, presumably because it has one nipple and you can squeeze it, just like Might—er. Hm. I actually can’t figure out why they named it after a cartoon character.

And no, this is not some belated April Fool’s Joke