IT'S VARGA!

Every generation has a voice.

And I truly, totally, honestly, not-even-messing-with-you believe our voice is VARGA.

Tonight I was stumbling through one of my favourite blogs: Regretsy

Basically, this blog collects all the strange items available on DIY haven etsy.com.

As you can see from the link to regretsy, they uncovered the underrated debut album of an artist named Varga. As you can hear for yourself in the samples Varga is quite original. He is also a heart throb in a sort of Ricky Gervais crossed with Yanni kind of way.

Something about the cover (which features Varga in a dirty tank doing a sit up in front of what I think is a physio ball) let's you know that this right here is baby making music.

But the fun doesn't stop there. He's got his own official website: Vargaworld.com.

He's not just a man. He's a world! Here you can read the lyrics to the "River of Love" masterpiece. Sing along with classics like "Shave My Gorilla" and "Find Reasons (To Love)".

That's not all though, there's an about section which teaches us the true meaning of Varga:
"Varga is a word you will not find in any dictionary. I have coined it as a stage name to mean " the voice which we often ignore but which is our central essence"

It's amazing what we can discover when we give ourselves over to the endless, vacuous, black hole of voyeurism that is the Internet.

I end in the words of Varga:

NOW I FIND RESURRECTION – WITH MY GORILLA BY MY SIDE
BUT THE WAY THE WORLD HAS BEEN TURNING
THERE’S NOWHERE LEFT TO HIDE

YOU WANT TO SHAVE MY GORILLA, YES YOU DO
I KNOW YOU

Personally I am inspired by his earnestness. And that's the least cynical thing I can say in this blog. At this point I encourage you to write to him and let him "know how your own Varga is progressing". I know I will.

Midtermz

I finally reached the end of the dreaded season known as "midterms".

In the one I had today I had to prepare notes for four possible topics.

The topic was memory.

I forgot that was one of the options.

Pro/Con

Sometimes I feel like I don't belong anywhere.

For 8 months out of the year people tell me I'm different because I'm American. Then for 4 months of the year people tell me I'm different because I'm Canadian. It's a situation that I can never define. Time and time again I've made pro and con lists of each country, trying to decide which direction I want to go after I finish at UBC. Is it North or South?

Usually the pro and con lists are stupid. It says things like "pro: Tim Horton's, con: No Jack in the Box". Recently I started a new pro and con list. It seemed relevant as I start to look and jobs and graduate programs. This summer the pros and cons list focused on money and immigration and citizenship. In that situation, America was a clear winner. Now I'm back up here and my pro and con list still contains a lot of those same items. One thing has changed on the Canadian pro side.

Names.


It's all names now. And not corporate names like "Tim Horton" (although, don't get me wrong, that's reason enough to stay), but actual names of people I know here.

I can't think of a single person who is a con. Like, a specific person. All 25 Bus Drivers are cons to me. I don't want to give the impression that there aren't any people on the American Pro list. But, at this point, they all seem so distant. Especially when the names on my Canadian Pro list see me all the time, look me in the eye and interact with me. They're real. And I never want to leave them.