Nimda Worm
Friday, September 21 2001
Posted by brockp

I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but the brocksongs server was hit by the nimda worm on the 18th about 7000 times and on the 19th about 8000 times.

Since the server is fortunately not running Microsmurf software I don't know how it has been affected other than to be painfully slow due to all that traffic caused by the worm trying to propagate itself.

If you are surfing on a Mac as I am, your browser will display the invisible (to PC's) attachment if it tries to infect you. If you are using any kind of microsoft operating system, you are at risk.

There are plenty of places on the web to learn about what to do if you are infected. One of them is here.

Media barrage
Tuesday, September 18 2001
Posted by brockp
I will spare you all any more commentary on the subject that has been dominating the media since Sept. 11 other than to say that if you too are uncomfortable with the tone of the reporting or endless repetition of certain images and themes, please consider having a look at some alternative media sources such as Indymedia or Refuse and Resist.

Spring Compositions Book - Intro
Wednesday, September 12 2001
Posted by brockp
The Spring Compositions Book is one of the journals I kept while on tour with the Doughboys in the late eighties. After somehow surviving our first East Coast tour with no record out and only a handful of confirmed gigs when we left, I found myself back in Montréal with no place to live and no job, considerably dazed. Within a short time I moved into an NDG appartment with Greg McClements, a high school buddy and our chief roadie at the time, and was just starting to feel sane again when John K came over and announced that we were going back out.

I remember going to Simpsons and buying an electric hotplate and a pressure cooker, which I filled up with packages of chickpeas, mung beans and various other provisions I got from À Votre Santé accross the street. It was kind of like getting ready to go off to war (and I was the mess team).

One other bright idea I had was to avoid arguments in the van by abstaining from talking. We used to get into some pretty good power struggles, particularly when driving into a new city trying to find the venue. So I stopped talking in the van and if someone asked me a question I'd nod or write a note. It seemed to work so well that I just kept it up all the time, even when we were not in the van. Looking back, it seems pretty extreme, but at the time i was kind of desperate for some way to keep my head on.

Anyway, one of the interesting things that happens when you stop talking is that people start to ignore you. Not in the same way as when a couple quarrells and stops talking to each other, but more like when you walk into a room and don't immediately notice someone standing in a shadow. People stop noticing you. This allows a certain space from which it is possible to observe lots of things about people (and yourself).

Another thing that happens when you stop talking is you hear a lot more noise, both outside and in your own head. This is probably what made me start writing—some of the things I heard seemed funny or important, or just plain maddenning.

Oddly enough, by the third tour we all had our own walkmans so as to not argue about what music to listen to (except when Skippy Smooth was driving late at night listening to David Allen Coe). By that point, nobody talked in the van much anymore.

JRobot with GoaGajah/Millipede
Thursday, September 6 2001
Posted by brockp
JRobot (aka Bond Head) will be playing live at Casa del Popolo (4873 St-Laurent) in Montreal on Thursday September 13th in support of GoaGajah (hypnotic trance). Also on the bill: Monstre, AlexanderMoskos (theUnireverse), Will Glass (Crackpot), and Millipede. More info can be had at the Monstre site.

Jon also has recently contributed to an anti-world bank dub CD by The Mossmen and is working on a new project with Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed you Black Emperor) called The Electronic Humans Guild which he plans to release on his own Robosapien Recordings. Hopefully we will have some for the online store before too long.