Man I've taken a lot of heat for this obsession. Make no mistake; Garbage is my obsession. Back in ’ 94/95 I finally get the job that will get things going career wise. I pack my bags and move into the company's HQ offices and start with a new boss and a whole new team. This job stuff - its all geek meet alpha geek stuff. Eventually I get a copy of the manual that comes with version I-forget of a new language dropped on my desk and the boss says "can you learn this right away?" This being an actual boss/employee thing, the only reasonable reply is "sure".

I'm writing multiple thousands of lines of code in a new-to-me C++ / Script hybrid language. I mean its cool but it took a little "life on hold" attitude. Oh yea, my first son was born about 3 days after starting this new job...

Ok so that’s the scene. Now along comes Manon. An especially nice young woman working as a translator that lives under a pair of headphones plugged into her PC while she translates technical documentation (everybody yawn at once). She sits on the other side of the Dilbert-esque cubicle baffle that may or may not have the piece of cheese that everybody who works here is sure exists somewhere on our floor. She (Manon) is a very happy person... I ask her about that. She points to the headphones so I borrow a cd (actually four: Melanie Farmer, REO Speedwagon, Boston, none of which turns my crank, and a pink one) she tells me I may not like the pink one but suggests I give it a try. The rest is a cliche.

Leaving out the obvious links between the fact that I'm debugging a billion lines of code (ok so its not a billion) to tunes like "Fix Me Now", I go for this cd in a really big way. I get some good headphones, load up "the pink one" and crank it up to just shy of distortion. Actually, if you crawl - literally - through www.rollingstone.com and look at the comments for the Garbage self-titled, you'll find my comment that it is essentially two cds in one... one at 10 (or 11 if you enjoyed Spinal Tap) and something equally enjoyable but markedly different at around 4-5. Ok back to 'shy of distortion'...

Every day for close to a year I entered an arena of white noise, at least once a day that arena was Garbage - the hands down winner for best album of the day. This became my blurring noise... Try "My Lovers Box" as loud as the car stereo can pump it out or under a good set of headphones.... Yes yes, this way lies total and complete deafness, but better to have loved and lost as they say. The work I was able to do while tuning out the universe was awesome. Turning it down becomes essential but none-the-less this became my preferred method of tackling complex problems.

Somewhere in all this I realized that I was part of a movement; Garbage fans are legion and vocal. None of the legion worked in my area, on my floor or anywhere in the mouse maze. I had to seek the fandomonium online.

Early on in all this I see the band on TV... the VH1 Fashion Awards are replayed on a Saturday morning. There I am with a baby still not crawling, up way too early on a Saturday morning (letting baby's mom get a well deserved rest), furiously cramming a tape into the VCR. They just said "and next up Garbage with their hit Stupid Girl"... then they go on about how Shirl is nominated for "Best personal Style" - she didn't win, I forget who did. Now this is where I get a little personal, you see up till this point I had no idea. I mean my head had been in a vice since I was about 25.

Miss Spent Youth, that's me. All of it so much fun I would never even entertain the idea of trading it in but that all ended when I got the career bug. This is something else I wouldn’ t go back on... I can't decide which has been more fun: going mental (out-of-control but out-of-jail) from grade 8 until the end of University or going crazy from then until I had the career path made in the shade. The bottom line, however, remains that I did not have a clue anymore. MTV, Much, were just sampled, never searched... now here I was wondering if Garbage would ever release a video. THERE WERE LIKE FIVE! All out of rotation because I came on board after the first wave. I have yet to see a commercial broadcast of any of the Vids from Version 1.0. Yes I have the QuickTimes but basically they suck in contrast to a 32" stereo TV and a decent VCR.

So there I am without a clue and Shirley is hammering in my head to get one. It's been a great ride so far. No Doubt, Artaficial Joy Club, Hole, Joy Drop, Holly McNarland, and the list goes on. The career is still getting better, family got larger, and I've dragged my wife to some really great live music in the last year or so.

Oh yea, get this, my sister comes home for a visit - she lives in Scotland. The family gets together at our parent’s house and I take a little ribbing on the idea that I am a psycho fan of this band 'Garbage'. Sister pipes up - and to this day I can still see her actually saying this - "Oh, them, hey, at the opening of our festival (Edinburgh International Festival) exhibition (Patriothall Gallery and studios), she was there...". "Who?" I say with a tiny little bubble forming somewhere in the pit of my sole. "That girl, Garbage, umm, Manson, Shirley Manson, she lives in Edinburgh you know. Yup, she was there with her mum and kid." ('member that bubble!) I calmly review in my mind that I have told my sis about my obsession... and I even gave her a camera for her birthday last year, so I pipe up. "Umm, and what did she say when you asked her to pose for the photographs and scrawl her name on every piece of garbage you could find?" "Hummm" says sis, "No, I didn’ t say anything, ... I did not want to seem too, you know, American tourist." (bubble = POP) Well, lets finish that part with a clear image of me extracting all manner of guarantees from sis to ensure that this will never happen again!!! However, it's not over yet. Seems that she - sis - is also friends with some guy that is the brother of one of the original Mr. McKenzie. So sis's marching orders include promises to get the momento rail car packed up and shipped back to Canada.

So there you have it. This site is my ultimate fan site to Garbage and Shirley Manson and I call it Blurring Noise because that is the drug she brought to me. That noise has pulled me through raising babies to toddlers, doubling my income (absolutely way WAY too much overtime!) and becoming a UNIX freak.

The HTML was created using Allairs' HomeSite and the graphics were made using Adobe Photoshop 5.0 with the Alien Skin Eye Candy plug-in. Most of the content was written on a really cool HP Jornada 820 during the daily commute.

There is no question that the little java applets and page designs on this site perform better when viewed with MS IE 4.x+ (and I am usually a Netscape snob!).

p.s. Did you have any fun last week?

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