Has Been, Yards and Archiving

My guilty pleasure this month is William Shatner‘s (He’s the actor who starred in Star Trek and Rescue 911, among other film and television hits) new album, Has Been. It’s a brilliantly produced mix of spoken word and singing that makes great use of Shatner’s unmistakable voice and the musicianship of such artists as Ben Folds, Aimee Mann and Henry Rollins. His cover of Pulp’s “Common People” is absolutely brilliant, a great tribute to the original. “It Hasn’t Happened Yet,” “That’s Me Trying,” and “What Have You Done” show a sincere Shatner sharing his life and others’ words in a rather unexpected but moving way. “You’ll Have Time” is a poignant, humourous song encouraging us all to “live life like you’re gonna die, because you’re gonna.” The album also includes the highlights “Ideal Woman” and “I Can’t Get Behind That” very amusing songs with a common theme of Bill’s likes and dislikes. It’s a great ride from start to finish, a surprising album that proves decidedly that Shatner is no has been. He is.

This weekend I did quite a lot of yard work. This included planting several staghorn trees (they are trees with cone-shaped red flowers and leaves which become very vibrant in the fall), splitting wood and transplanting flowers. I enjoy working closely with the natural world, and I’m taking the opportunities I have to be filled with it before winter strikes with its hibernation.

The other major activity of the past couple days for me was transferring the contents of over 50 CD’s onto an external hard drive that recently became vacant. It’s more of my movement toward minimalism, since the hard drive will take up a lot less space than the five CD cases I was using previously. Ignoring the bureau full of clothes and my bed, everything I wish to have with me will fit into the trunk of a car.

1 comment on “Has Been, Yards and Archiving

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.