We are, if nothing else, a species that is ruled by our senses.  We believe what we can see, hear, feel, taste and smell.  Many-a-times our senses engage in a little tag-team action to increase whatever awareness we are experiencing at the time.  A good example of how we know this, is why we hold our noses when we take medicine we don’t like the taste of (our smell and taste senses team up so regularly and powerful they are the undisputed tag-team champions of the world).

Another good example of how we know this is when we are walking around a store or restaurant and we see an unusually attractive woman.  Our sense of sight lets us know what’s up.  Most times this is enough to heighten ones awareness, and also to make the expedition out of the beach hut worthwhile. On occasion we walk by one of these sense-rousing creatures and we get a whiff of product.  Now our sense of smell lets us know what’s up.

You all know what I’m talking about.  Not only does the sheen of her hair make even the most professional shop job look bad, but as she walks by your nose gets assaulted by the promises of a juicy fruit-filled future.  The ocean breeze spray lightly dusted on her mane, and the coconut body butter scent takes you instantly to sandy shores (which in my case are just blocks away, but since you are freezing your ass off right now, it takes you much further).  It’s just you and her, the ocean, and an endless buffet of aromatic fruits.  Before she walks out of your life forever.

On a rare occasion, you get the aromatic attack before you even spot the vixen, we call this ‘the smell before the siting’ in the business.  This happened to me just the other day.  I was standing in an aisle of the grocery store alone and all of a sudden it hit me.  I look around and see no one, but my tag-teaming senses are telling me that just like every other time I’ve been hit with this combination attack of smells that the visual is sure to follow.  It never did?  How could I have missed her?  You thought I was better than that?  You are right, I am better than that, and I didn’t miss her.  She wasn’t there.  I was smelling….myself.

I wonder how many test animals died to bring you this image?

Behold, my army of products.  See, last month Amy, my old roommate, left town.  She had two suitcases to pack everything into, and much like the sacrifices I have made in the past, she was forced to make some cruel and unusual decisions.  One of these decisions resulted in me having more bottles of goo then I know what to do with.  What I do know is I have 3 semi-used women’s deodorant sticks, 15 bottles of sunblock, 7 shampoos, 3 apricot scented facial soaps, and a whole lot of other good smelling stuff.  What I also know is that I smell like a chick.  Waste not, want not.

For those of you not in the know, music is a big part of my life.  Not in the “I have an Aerosmith tattoo on my ass” or the “I followed Phish around for a few years” way though.  There’s nothing wrong with having band tattoos on your backside, or showing your love for a bands music by stalking them across the country for years on end, those just aren’t my style.  But I have always been involved with music, performing it, producing it, reviewing it, watching it (yes watching sound), and of course listening to it, and I’ve always been pretty dependent on it too.  Dependent on it in the way that an alcoholic is dependent on her alcohol (chicks can be alcoholics too).

Since I have lived a relatively drug and alcohol free life so far, music has always been the medium that I could use to consciously alter my state-of-being.  The occasional coke (red) has some effect, but in order to really have an effect, I’d need to binge.  Even after an all night bender, the caffeine pales in comparison to the effect music can have (I imagine the difference between smoking a cigarette to shooting some heroin).  I’m not a genrelitist (although I’ve yet to find a country song that can move me much), I am a sucker for a good song.

What’s strange about my love for music is that I ignored it for a while.  When I was little my parents used to put Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson on the turntable all the time, and I remember listening to it in the living room.  In some houses we lived in, it was the only activity I would do in the living room (in the houses we lived where the turntable wasn’t in the living room, I never went into the room). Then for a few years I didn’t listen to much music at all.  My brother always had hundred of tapes/CDs of his favorite Rap/Hip-Hop artists, but I didn’t have any music.

Until one day Seb bought me the single ‘Run-Away Train’ by Soul Asylum on tape. I think I had just gotten a tape player for my birthday or Christmas.  I listened to that tape on the hour long bus ride to school everyday, and the hour to three hour bus ride home from school everyday.  Imagine how much capacity I have to love music if I could find love in a Soul Asylum song…

Fast forward to this weekend when I happened across the album Bring Me Your Love by City and Colour.  City and Colour is the name for Dallas Green’s solo act, which he focuses on when he’s not pouring his time and energy into Alexisonfire.  Most of that won’t mean anything to you, because like myself he is a Cannuck.  That said, check your Canada-hate at the door because this album is the most beautiful twelve consecutive songs I have heard in eight years.  Every single song is a keeper depending on your mood, and if you have a free hour anytime soon, I recommend putting on your headphones or speakers, turning off the lights and just listening.  If you don’t have an hour free anytime soon, make one, because this album may change your life.

You will notice that all of my posts so far have at least one song to accompany them.  I feel that life is better with a soundtrack and that the same holds true for reading my blog.  This post however, will not have a song accompanying it.  This is because I want you to go buy this album (or steal it), and listen to it from front to end.  It will be well worth your hard-earned money, for it’s the type of high that only comes around once or twice a decade. Let me know what you think.

Lollapalooza is exciting for the obvious reasons: a long weekend, dozens of bands performing, basking in the sun, thousands of people, so on and so forth.  But it is also exciting for some less obvious reasons.  The number one less obvious reason that Lollapalooza is exciting is the food.

Now, I’m no foodie, but I do love food. Boy oh boy do I love food, all different types, from all difference places.  I like fancy foods that I can’t pronounce, foreign foods that I can’t pronounce, foods that aren’t considered food in other places, I do not discriminate (please nothing healthy though).  One particular item, an item that comes between two golden buns that may possibly have been baked in the ovens of pharaohs, an item that comes smothered in sauce whose deliciousness could bring nations to the brink of war, is an item which has the power to provoke as much excitement during this long weekend as all the other reasons combined, is the rib sandwich.

A rib sandwich? You ask.  So what? You continue.  I’ll tell you what. The rib sandwich first taste of fame was when it was released as a specialty sandwich at McDonald’s, before I was born.  That’s right, I missed it the first time around.  The sandwich would be so sorely missed by it’s fans that McDonald’s held a farewell tour for it.  Fortunately it was re-introduced several times over the past two decades as a result of a petition posted on it’s website and is currently on it’s third (and supposedly final, but please say it ain’t so Ronald) farewell tour.  The McRib has had more farewell tours then Aerosmith, and the Rolling Stones, combined. Wrap your head around that.

But while McDonald’s was toying with the hearts of so many McRib lovers around the world, two places needed not fret about its availability.  The first: Germany.  I know what you are saying, Germany?  Buy why? McDonald’s in Germany apparently serve the McRib as a regular menu item, and have since it’s initial availability in the 1980’s. It makes sense.  How else could a nation whose past was riddled with pour decisions, mainly the whole Nazi thing and being the sole financial support for David Hasselhoff’s musical career, rectify all the wrong they had done?  The second: Chicago.  The McRib was not served in McDonald’s here since it’s release, but several barbecue restaurants across the city are home to the rib sandwich with barbecue sauce that is identical to that found slathered on it’s cousin the McRib found at one of the more popular establishments, the Fireplace Inn.

Traditionally, at the mini food-cities found at Grant Park for the three day festival, there is at least one (if not more) barbecue establishments present providing rib sandwiches to thousands of hungry festival attendees who enjoy combining their love of the to M’s, music and and meat. Over the course of 72 hours a near bakers dozen will be consumed by yours truly.

Oh no, I can hear the screaming already.  How could you fly nearly 8 hours across the Pacific ocean and half the continent, and only manage to eat a dozen or so of the sandwich that some philosophers use as a proof in their ontological arguments?  Well children, I have heard your cries, which is why I will be eating dinner in only a few hours at the Fireplace Inn. What I will be ordering: “The Original Boneless Rib Sandwich”.  No reason not to start the night before the festivities.  After all, did I mention it is the original?  Rumor has it, it’s almost worth keeping your pants on for.