LINNAEUS! I should've known...

wind is whipping outside right now, mixing with the rain and producing a nasty little concoction of danger!. Not safe for driving. if it was a little more forgiving, we could've gone to Chili's. maybe i might have gotten that... what did I get again? beside the point. it would've at least broken up this monotony (did she go out? yeah she went off the deck). i haven't left the house in two days, and i was planning on breaking that up, but still i'm here, passing more hours idly in front of a computer. staring... song's in the works. still need to get going on those lyrics though. also need to finish up you look like a freemason by the end of vacation. should also get on that chemistry homework you've somehow managed to put off. buffers. who needs 'em, right? determine the pH from the molarity, 5% rule... or whatever. it's been so long that you don't even know what the problems are like. (ha, ma. grammy said that american idol's on tonight, they're eliminating 4 people...) you also said you'd study for your APs, you dirty slacker. find the definite integral, the kitchen cabinet, thermodynamic properties, calligative properties, kris allen. generic mainstream pap raging on my television screen. rage, rage against the dying of the light. the dying of mainstream music.

was that... dylan thomas? or some other irish poet. DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT. huck finn. american literature. should i finish learning about the adventures of huckleberry finn or should i just sparknote the shit out of it? i know that nothing much happens. Huck probably saves Jim, Jim probably finds freedom. The duke and the dauphin. Looy the sixteenth. Shet de do'.

*cough! cough! cough!* take some decongestant, as much as the last dose didn't work. (yeah. i think it was the right choice. well obviously other people did too.) i never make eye contact with her when i try talking to her. (SEE L.A!. i really want to... *muffled voices*) i should really work on that, it's my mother for fuck's sake. you don't pay attention to your own mother when she's talking to you? avert your gaze. make eye contact. talk. communicate. it's what you were born to do. you're only gonna be in this house for so much longer, get your head out of the clouds and make conversation. not just with your mom who's been desperately trying to talk to you, who's lonely at the moment because she's not on the phone and we're the only two people in the house, who's not watching american idol like she usually does. she just wants to talk. look up now. stop typing. now.

Blog Number: Dragon

This blog needs some Rorschach in it. What do you see?

I see a lobster.

SONG OF THE DAY:

HIGHLIGHTS.
i'm wearing a dress in 2 days
i'm reading james joyce's infinitely dense ulysses at a snail's pace. call it savoring.
i'm writing a new song, scrapping some other ones. that's how i roll.
i spent this day doing nothing, as predicted. tomorrow's looking 'bout the same. o____o

and this blog is finished. these are getting gradually weirder.

~ - ~

To Vaccinate or not to Vaccinate

That is the question.

My mom, for some reason, decided that I'm getting the swine flu vaccine on Friday, months after the mass media induced pandemonium died down. "You're in the critical age range, you need to get the shot, everyone with brains is getting the shot, it'll do more good than harm." TRUST THE FDA ! THE GOVERNMENT ALWAYS KNOWS WHAT'S BEST FOR US, TAKE THE MEDICINE, IT WILL PROTECT YOU. It's like shit that's taken straight out of the pages of Brave New World or 1984, and it bothers me.

a) i am my own person.
b) i can determine what substances are put in my body. some of these substances, from what i've gathered, are dangerous.
c) less people have died from swine flu than seasonal flu.
d) i've already probably been exposed to it on many occasions.

psychosomatic.

the media is put on a loop. "this child got bullied and killed herself! this car has a mind of it's own! more fatalities in the war last night! *change the station* this child got bullied and killed herself! this car has a mind of it's own! more fatalities in the war last night!" and it evokes the same response. "oh, how awful. oh no, oh no, oh no." it distracts us from what really matters. it makes us think negatively. it plays with our sensations. it's nothing but loud halftruths. will i be any more enlightened if i know that some girl robbed a bank last night and was caught? it means nothing. it's all nothing.

so there's my rant.

i didn't
record today, because i was out of the house.
playing risk and
eating pancakes and
playing electronic drums at best buy and
answering trivia questions.
so tomorrow, i'm open all day
since bennett, the organizer,
our modern day Tom Sawyer,
is heading off to Atlantic City
with a couple people on this
spur of the moment trip.
so now there's free time to do
whatever.
like record.

SoNg Of ThE dAy!1
Strobe by Deadmau5:



I was turned onto Deadmau5 by some random person I met on Omegle at one in the morning last night. The above song was my introduction to him, and all i can say is RAVE. ON. Even though this song is 10.5 minutes, I find myself not wanting to change it over to something else, and I keep listening. It somehow doesn't require patience. it's just generally perfect background music, or foreground music if you're getting pumped for something or dancing your face off. A lot of his beats are very infectious, I also really liked FML and Soma off the album For Lack of A Better Name.

I know that Nesbit's gonna be a big fan once I show him this.
--
parents.
parents.
so much bickering as of late.
it's bothering me.
--

~------~

A Day Of Fails

In a nutshell, today was spent failing at nerf, failing at pool, failing at finishing You Look Like A Freemason, and then failing at Star Fox. I'm finding Nerf to get a little bit strange. After a few rounds of general Nerf games, we got to playing Russian Roulette and I was starting to get generally weirded out. I dunno, there's this mild air of violence when shooting yourself with fake plastic toy guns point blank and/or having other people shoot you with fake platic toy guns, point blank, repeatedly.

I dunno, I might just be insane. Actually, that's probably the case; I'm sure no one looked this far into it. But if this turns into some weird cult in the future, then I'll be able to say "i told you so" to myself.

Getting Back to You Look Like A Freemason. I'm pretty sure I've logged well over 40 hours on this song now, it's getting ridiculous. I'm worried that if I spend much more time on it, I'll consider it to be a lost cause and give up on it. Let's hope I don't get to that point, for sanity's sake.

inspeakingo'givin'up, I'm giving up on the mouse folk song. Too. much.

Right now, I'm starting to come up with titles and a general release date for an EP. I'm hoping that I'll have something done by the end of the school year, but that's gonna be a massive stretch with all the testing I'm gonna be preparing for. 3 APs and SATs. Kill me. So maybe by the end of summer would be a better guestimation.

I'm also trying to figure out how to promote more. That's always been a weak point of mine with this whole music thing. I can make the music easily enough, but it's kind of reaching an audience that I need to work on. If anyone has suggestions, I'm listening eagerly.

I moved my piano to another part of the room and it doesn't sound nearly as muffled as it did before. It sounds a lot fuller and richer and whathaveye, and I'm excited to record with it. Dogs/Worms/Everyone after I eat my free short stack of pancakes at IHOP, which i always write as iHop.

apparently Apple owns restaurants now.

i need a shave.

i don't understand how even though Star Fox 64 came out in 1997, this commercial makes it look like it came out of the 1980s. It's also fucking ridiculous.

[mrs. friend is a good woman.

A good woman is hard to find.

mrs. friend is hard to find.]

Every time the baby grins,
Give my baby another bottle of gin
That's what we do with the baby
That's what we do with the baby-oooooo/////////

Lyrical Epiphanies and MarioKartWii

Ahh. Back on track. I need to start coming up with more inventive titles for these blogs. Like, actually hinting at what the blogs are about in the title, that way I can look back at them. Like the one above, for example.

I'm so desperate to finish You Look Like A Freemason at this point that it's not even funny. I tend not to spend two weeks on a song, but this is apparently an exception.

I played Mario Kart (the Wii one) for the first time today. Verdict: I'm painfully average at it. I'm also painfully average at badminton. And eating with chopsticks. And typing text messages. And playing Nerf, which I'm doing tomorrow at precisely 1 in the afternoon with various people.

Moon was an amazing movie. I cried on the inside at the end, I'll just say that.

And as soon as I write this, I'm writing more lyrics for the mouse song. I think I know the direction that I'm going with the lyrics, which is good. The verses have been coming slow up to this point but now I think they're ready to start pouring out.

That's all I have for today. Right now, I'm just thinking in fragments. Something of more substance tomorrow, I promise. For NOW, watch this video of a cat being awesome.

Omnomnomnom.
~-~

Nuisic

a conglomeration of the words 'nuisance' and 'music'.

I'm frankly at a lyrical standstill right now with this whole tragic folk song about a mouse family. The music is finished, I just got the last bits sorted out a few minutes ago. But I only have 4 completed miniverses right now, and I reckon I'm gonna need close to like, 25 for this beast. So this song's still a long, long way from being done. But we'll get there. I just played it and it ended up being 10 and a half minutes. This is without all of the lyrics added though, so it could very well be either longer or shorter.

As for whether I'll ever record drums for You Look Like A Freemason remains to be seen. I'm still spending time mixing and remixing and remixing what I have and it's sounding better all the time, I guess.

Off to watch my weekly movie with Nezbitch. This week it's Moon. I've never heard of it, but it's apparently critically acclaimed. We shall see.

~-`

Why I Didn't Blog Yesterday.

I completely called that I would be forgetting to blog sometime soon, and it happened yesterday. Because I left home at 7:30 AM and didn't get back until 1:00 AM the next morning. Here's what happened.

7:30 AM - 2:30 PM. An average day of school in which nothing happened since it was the last day before vacation.

2:30 PM - 6:30 PM. I engage in a Nerf war with my friends. Henry's dad managed to set up these awesome blockades in their barn (where we had our barn concerts), and it makes you feel like you're actually engaged in war. It's all constructed with tarps and wood and whatever else was available in the barn. (A sled, a snowmobile, a door, etc.) Sometimes we'd get the fog machine going and turn off all the lights except for a dim red one to simulate nighttime. With modded Nerf guns in hand, we shot each other across enemy lines, made 'ammo runs', took cover behind whatever we could, and it was pretty much one of the best times I've ever had. I only got like 5 or 6 hits the whole time, though.

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM. We spend an hour in Burger King, just eating a lot of food and talking loudly, much to the annoyance to the people around us. (there was 11 of us.)

8:00 PM - 8:30 PM. We drive over to the movie theater (just 5 of us now) and get our tickets to see 'Shutter Island'. I wasn't ID'd and this made me very sad, since it was the first R-rated movie that I was to see.

8:30 PM - 9:30 PM. We kill time at Barnes and Noble until our movie starts. I pick up the book Ulysses by James Joyce, Rob Mant picks up the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I started reading Ulysses and it has yet to make any sense.

10:00 PM - 12:30 AM. I get ID'd at the entrance of the theater, much to my joy, and we enter to watch the movie Shutter Island. Talk about a mindfuck of a movie. The acting was great, the tension was TENSE, the soundtrack while a little repetitive, was very discordant and succeeded very well in setting the mood, the cinematography was beyond beautiful at points, and the twist(s) at the end just completely threw us for a loop; we were discussing it the whole way back. I strongly recommend that people see it in theaters. The only problem with it is that there's almost no replay value. It's not a movie I'd want to see again, because now I know what happens. I mean, using this logic, you could say that all movies have no replay value, but in this case, now that you know what happens in the movie, you really don't need to see it again unless you want to get a few things clarified.

1:00 AM - I get home. This is why I didn't make a video or blog yesterday.

I'm wearing a dress in my next video, and I'm blogging once more today to compensate, so that I'll definitely have 365 blogs at the end of the year. The next one will be a music update, and I think I might include my 5 favorite moments in music. That remains to be seen.

till then!?

~-~

Au contraire...

i have a feeling that someday soon, i'm gonna miss a day.

I wrote a poem in French for my French class. Here it is. I'm aware it's not grammatically perfect but whatevar. it's about valentine's day.

---
à nous, aujourd'hui n'est pas un
jour d'amour florissant.
Non. Pas du tout.
Aujourd'hui, c'est un
Jour d'amour perdu.
Oublié.
Disparu.

J'ai essayé (quel geste désespéré!)
d'étendre ma main pour vous de prendre.
Mais tu l'as dévisagée, avec les yeux fatigués,
Ta main, tu n'as pas pu me rendre?

Pas aujourd'hui? Sur cette 'fête' de Saint-Valentin?
Alors, quand?

Quand, ma chère femme de cinquante ans?
Nous somme vieuxs, nous somme vétérans!
Est-ce que nous pouvons réparer
Nos coeurs cassés?
Notre mariage sans espoir?
Ou est-il trop tard?

TRANSLATION TIME:
To us, today is not a
Day of flourishing love.
No. Not at all.
Today, is a
Day of lost love.
Forgotten.
Vanished.

I tried (what a desperate gesture!)
To extend my hand for you to take.
But you stared at it, with tired eyes
Your hand, you could not have rendered to me? (sounds awkward in english, i know)

Not today? On this Valentine's Day? (fete is in quotes because it implies that it's a celebration.)
So, when?

When, my dearest wife of 50 years?
We are old, we are veterans.
Can we repare
Our broken hearts?
Our hopeless marriage?
Or is it too late?

That is all.
~-~

Das Schnoozers

Today, I played a show with The Snoozers. And that's all my mom's allowing me to write today, since my mom's being a mom and kicking me off the computer.

Song of the day:



Slap it. trap it. see ya later. bye.

~-`

Cat and Mouse

it-is-snowing. we had a snow day today, but it didn't start snowing until after school would have ended. which was sweet. i slept in and just kind of lazed around today.

i'm nearly done with this song that i've been working on for almost a week now, but i haven't worked on it today since my mom's been home and she doesn't like when i make loud noises. like, play music. it's ok though, because all i have left to do is the drums and a little more tinkering with the tracks I already have to make it sound betta.

I really need a compression mic. my utilization of dynamic mics during recording is affecting the sound quality of these songs and it's really getting to the point where i'm getting irritated. maybe i'll get another mic instead of that digital piano i've been aching to get for such a long time now... i hate decisions. in any case, i need a job. and hopefully, my mom will be able to hook me up with one at the hospital she works at. seriously, doing janitorial work at a hospital over the summer and making $8 an hour is better than not making any money at all at this point. I just need money for music.
---
IN THE MEANTIME, I've been starting work on this new song, heavily inspired by the fact that i've been listening to a fair amount of Joanna Newsom as of late. All I have so far is the lyrical concept and about 3/4 of the music for it.

I know that it's gonna be about a mouse and his family who live in a horse stable. But a cat starts coming around and the mouse, whose name is Jefferson, decides that his family should pack up and leave. so they head for the house, which is about a two days walk for them. and on the way, his children, Amelia and Nathaniel, fall into a snakehole and are eaten up. Jefferson and his wife finally arrive at the house and set up a new home in a hole in the wall. But after a couple of days, the owners of the house find out that there are mice in the house and they set up a bunch of traps. Jefferson's wife, Adeline, gets caught in one of the traps after looking for food. Jefferson's unaware of his wife's death, sitting in their house, when an exterminator gases the hole. Jefferson runs out of the hole and narrowly escapes being captured by the exterminator. he sees an immediate exit through a window above the kitchen sink. He scurries his way up towards the window, but he falls in the sink that's filled with water, and, not being able to swim, he drowns. While underwater, he looks up at the window and sees the sun setting.



I guess this story is just a conglomeration of like lighthearted children's literature about animals (A Cricket in Times Square, Redwall) and serious literature in which animals are used to symbolize people (Maus, Animal Farm). I'm excited to put all of that into lyrical form, it should be quite the rewarding challenge. It's a lot, so it's probably gonna be a long song. A lot of the songs I've been doing lately have been long.
---
Now for song of the day so I can go eat dinner. i haven't made any new musical discoveries today, so here's a song from a guy i played with at one of the only shows i've ever played, back in December '08. I really like this song because it's all at once smooth and aggressive. It's a song that you can either bob your head along to or cry profusely at. Andrew Mello's Presently Deceiving the Past off his album "What I Say Isn't What I Mean".

Off for a Tuesday drive in the snow.
~-~

if you're still looking for a blanket

sweetie, i'm sorry, i'm no sort of tailor.

the band mewithoutYou writes songs about Jesus, essentially. but even though I'm agnostic, I love this band. The spoken-word verses that spew at you like you're being shouted at by a fucking insane minister through the loudest megaphone, the bitter emotion in the instrumentation. Here, January 1979 by them. Listen.




I can't talk about much of anything today. I have a potential calc test that I have to ready myself for. *hoping for snow day*

TOMORROW
~!~

Balentime's Day

zombieland was alright. a little formulaic, but overall very funny and very enjoyable.

completely inappropriate song of the day, since this song is depressing (but beautiful) as shite (not implying that shite is beautiful, but that the song is beautiful) and it's valentine's day. it's called Erla's Waltz by Olafur Arnalds.


Today was spent eating Taco Bell, mixing music, eating chinese food, and then mixing more music. If I had a girlfriend, this day would have been spent much more differently. But alas.

It's funny how, on this day of love, i've heard more stories of heartbreak than i have all year. funny how that works.

MORE progress on the song. the fake strings and fake percussion are currently being mixed. only everything sounds compressed and i can't figure out why. it's concerning me. i'm sending to a friend to see what they can make of it. *les doigts croisés* -- i just got feedback, she was alright with it. this is good. i just relistened and it still needs a good amount of work. but we're close! we! are! close!
---
Now time for pointless Facebook groups!

- "You had all weekend to do it!" "Oh, sorry I have a life."

be thankful you're being educated. don't take it for granted. your future depends on it.

in essence, stfu.

- Facebook is the biggest distraction.. ever.

an accurate statement, this has already been determined by every single facebook user. it's therefore unecessary to make a facebook group about it.

- If you tailgate me, I will intentionally slow down to piss you off.

this group is not only pointlessly trivial, it's reaching the wrong demographic. 8th and 9th graders have joined it. .-.

- Why do we have to be quiet during a fire drill? Will the fire hear us?

this group actually succeeded in making me rage SO hard that I joined it just to say the following:
"so there's not mass pandemonium. ta-da."
to which someone replied:
"shutup.. just shutup now"
to which i replied:
"oh yes, because god forbid i speak my mind."
to which he replied:
"yeah but ur post was retarded."
to which i replied:
"how? if people remain orderly, than people get out of the building faster. the purpose of a fire drill is to have an actual simulation, not a half-assed one."
and then came a shitton of people coming to my defense.

flame wars are fun.

running! starts! again? already? tomorrow!? BYE
~-~

a plethora of zombies

the movie i'm about to watch is Zombieland. I've heard good things and I'm excited to check. it. owt. with a w. According to the box, it's the funniest movie since the Hangover. I'm pretty sure they came out at about the same time, so that's not really saying much at all.

at the moment, I'm being watched over by Richard. He doesn't want me to use his last name in this. But it's Nesbit. Here's his very, very exciting YouTube channel. http://youtube.com/thedancingman4321

More progress was made on the song today. I managed to get fake percussion and fake strings into the mix. It's turning into my favorite song that I've recorded, just because I'm having so much go on in it. That never, ever happens.

I need to go, since I'm kind of at someone's house. And we're gonna have root beer floats. Baller status.

~-~

chaos/colors

all of a sudden, everything's circular soundwaves, bursting and reverberating as they rip through the landscape endlessly, eating up everything that ever was in their blue and orange paths.

---

i've made an incredible amount of progress on this song today. Vocals are nearly completely mixed, and I'm starting to add more layers into it. Right now, it's an electronic one. i also spent a good two hours just playing piano, starting to develop new things.

it seems as though now, all I want to do is play music. Call it going through a rough patch, physically, mentally, emotionally. That's what it is. Not depression. Just a snag. And the only thing that can soothe me is sound. escaping. forgetting. where I am, and letting. my fingers play what my brain wants to hear. And I don't mind this, really. Music is like my little, isolated cavern situated on the outside of a bustling city.

I've felt like I've been on a creative high these past couple of days. Seriously, like there's synapses going off in my head and releasing endorphins and I feel as though every time I play piano I'm reaching this high. And Every fragment of a sentence I hear turns into a song title or an album title, every sound I hear turns into something I wish I could record. This happened ysterday at the math meet, there was this awesome drone that I could hear in the background as I was taking a test. It felt like it kind of looped, and it sounded so cool that it severely distracted me from what I was doing. And that's why I didn't go to this Valentine's Day dance, because all I felt like doing was just formulating and planning for another release. I think that it can all be traced back to this snag that I'm in, and I can't tell whether to hate it or adore it. I feel like if I choose to hate it, that'd be normal. But I'm leaning towards adoring it, I adore this physical, mental, and emotional tiredness, because hey. it makes for sincere music. Now, would I cause this tiredness intentionally for the sake of art? No. But if it happens, it happens. And I'll just roll with it.

---

Gotta go. I'm actually leaving the house for a little bit. But this weekend's gonna be intense.

Song of the day, this live version of Logos by Atlas Sound, because it's longer than the album version, like it should have been on the album version:

~-~

overworked, underslept.

This would be blog #42. This blog therefore contains the answer to life, the universe, and everything inside it.

The Dumbledore's Army show suffered due to lack of crowd participation, but we performed well enough. It was hard to play these high-energy songs low-key, but we did our best. No complaints. Nun atoll.

Didn't get to work on the new song today, and I'm horribly upset at this fact. I'm beyond eager to get it finished and then head right into another.

SONG! OF! THE! DAY! Ys by Joanna Newsom will be the next album I'm getting after hearing this beauty:



Longer blog tomorrow, possibly. Maybe I'll actually make some progress on my song. buhprollynotdude.

~---~

Acrophobic Arachnids

Today is the day that I successfully recorded "You Look Like A Freemason." I'm gonna edit and produce it and yaddayaddayadda, and then record another one in the very near future. I really like the way it's sounding, it's certainly one of the strongest things I've ever committed to tape. This also means that another EP's gonna be coming soon, and I'm very, very excited about this, because I now strongly regret putting Endo Fanera out into the world, and I feel as though I really, really need to redeem myself after that.

How I feel about all this:



-
Song of the day, Cryptograms by Deerhunter, off of their album Cryptograms.



therewasnosoundtherewasnosoundtherewasnosoundtherewasnosound
-
I just spent the last 4 hours of my life typing up a horrible essay on African-American music and it's impact on American culture and literature. It hurt my head, but I got it done. Yay for me.

Also, tomorrow, Dumbledore's Army is playing an impromptu show for a bunch of little tykes at the junior high end of our junior/senior high school. Our two new songs, Save Hermione from the Troll and The Sorting Hat are both really concise, but they're the greatest things we've ever done. I expect a good response from the kids. Unless they all suck and they don't enjoy it. I'm guessing the latter. Those soulless little 6th grade bastards.

Here are some lyrics!:

I don't want to go up
I don't want to be embarrassed
The sorting hat's a mean hat of sorts
All he ever does is harass us

I don't want to find out where I belong
I just want to write awesome Harry Potter songs

(Breakdown in which we all chant things about how we really don't want to be in Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. and then...)

Everybody knows I want to be in Gryffindor
That's the only house that I'm really for
Everyone knows I want to be in Gryffindor
That's the only house that I am really for, oh yeah.

---

I must be off now. A demain.

~~~~~~~~-~~~~~~~~

is alive

and is happy about this fact.

essentially, i was in a very weird position in which i questioned whether i'd even live to see this point today, but i was also in a position where i couldn't really tell anyone. it was just bizarre. that was the last post. everything's fine now, rest assured. no cause for alarm at all.

*deep breath*
---
dumbledore's army wrote 2 songs today, and i wrote a 9minutelongsong yesterday. but it needs a little reconstruction since the end follows a pattern that another one of my songs take. might have to be screwed around with in mah editing sofwairs if recorded.

which brings me to my next point. recording. i'm gonna sit down at some point this week and come up with a recording schedule. because i'm dying to get stuff committed to tape. this is probably a lie, but i like thinking that i can get organized.

that's about it. i'm going to wings your way tonight and hoping that the trivia questions this week are somewhat reasonable. if they're not, then i'm gonna rage all over the place.

also, the game.

also,

~-~

pg dn

the dark cloud came back.
the dark cloud.
the.

~-~

This Bowl is Super.

The slap bet went down, but i didn't try. Rob got 10 numbers, Robert got 4 numbers. The end. We're done with that. Thank God.
---
So. Exciting news. I just bought a new album (well. not new. it came out in 2004) and I love it almost too much. It's called Future Perfect by Autolux. Very heavy and dark stuff, bordering on shoegaze and noise rock at points.

Here:


And here:


And certainly here:


we had our last winter track meet of the season, the state meet. the big deal. and it went swimmingly. our 4x400 team improved by 6 seconds, and a couple people placed in individual events. not bad, considering we're a small school.

GODBEWITHYOUTILWEMEETAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAIN

~-~

Calling It Off.

it's 12 minutes into today. but i need to talk.

i was thrown into this. and i played along for awhile, thinking, oh i can do this. but i can't. the fact of the matter is that i suffer from a lack of confidence. that tacked on to the fact that i feel socially awkward and, by the same hand, AM socially awkward. this therefore isn't fair to me. it's not that i'm afraid of girls, it's that i'm afraid of rejection, and a furthering of my lack of confidence and self-esteem. oh, but god forbid i back out. because then i get hurt. so the only way out of physical or mental pain is to just say i don't want to do it, and i don't want to get punished for doing it. and i don't feel like this makes me less of a man. it just means that i have this thing. it's called dignity.

The fact that I'm even spewing forth all of this drama about a stupid comical bet is ridiculous, and it shouldn't be the case. it's not fun like it seemed to be at first. at first it was a great concept. but there's been so much bickering. what's the point? it's almost gotten to the point where it's threatening the welfare of our friendship, for christsakes. And I will admit, that I've caused the most tumult. But it's for what is a morethanvalid raeson.

Either way, i'd end up damaged. so fuck it.
sorry to be a let down.
but maybe i'm doing you both a favor as well.

~-~

BOOM BOOM SLAP, BOOM BOOM SLAP.

so i started writing another song. the first part's like a waltz-ish thing and then it kind of dissolves into an ambient ending. these are the lyrics i have thus far, it's surprisingly straightforward and it's all very elementary. but i'll say that 'that's what i was aiming for':

---
i could write you a story
i could write you a song
i could write you 10,000 words
but it'd all come out wrong.

so goodbye.

standing in the shadow of a UPS truck
standing in the shadow of a UPS truck
The man in brown said 'How are you today?'
and we ran away to our mothers.

on the way down
i slip into dream
of the way
our dragons used to be.
on the way down
to tennessee
i slip into dream.

ooooon theeeeeeeee waaaaaay doooooown.

ahhh-ahhh-ahhh-ahhh...
---
in other news, i got slapped early today, because the two other competitors found out that I had made truces with both of them so that I wouldn't get slapped. I thought it was clever, but they didn't see the humor in it. Luckily, I wasn't the only one who was slapped early, because Robert was planning on meeting a girl he knew and getting one of her numbers. His slap, for some ungodly reason, was much weaker than mine was. Eliza (our slap commissioner) dealt out a good one to me, and it stung on my whole walk home.

The competition is still tomorrow, and I'm still frightened, even though I feel as though I have strategies.
- use a French accent on one girl 'Euh, pardons-moi, but i do not know where to find The Road by Cor-MACK Mack-ar-THEE.
- talk about an album and eventually my music to another girl.
- drop a bunch of stuff near a girl.

None of this will work, and I'll end up with 0 numbers, but it's wishful thinking.
---
I'm going to a friend's house. thus, i bid you farewell.

~~~~-~~~~

pas vraiment.

i only played chess once in my life and i lost.
song du jour (great video as well!!):

rob, robert, and I have a slap bet going on. As in, the losers get slapped by the winner. the bet is on who can get the most numbers from a girl in the time span of two hours. I don't expect to win. I mean. just look at this picture:


I look like I just ate a lemon and saw someone die at the same time.

This is what I expect will transpire while I try to pick up girls.:
- *walks up to girl* "Hi."
- "Hi."
- "I like the book you're looking at. It's a good book."
- "Oh really?"
- "*ahem* uh, yeah."
- "What do you like about it?"
- "Can I have your number?"
- "...wait, what?"
- "Um. It's a, it's a thing."
- "What are you talking about?"
- "Y'know." *runs away*

So, ultimately, I will end up slapped. But I don't mind, it should be a jolly good time anywho.
I shall update you in due time.

~-~
and now for my top 5 favorite lyrics (in no particular order):
5. "I'll be waiting/with a gun and a pack of sandwiches" - from Radiohead's Talk Show Host
4. "Sad I'm gonna die. Hope it's gonna happen later, later than I think." - from Pinback's Tripoli
3. "When I die, I'm leaving you my feet/ When you die, you can stand up for me" - from Wolf Parade's Fancy Claps
2. "Changed my mind so much I can't even trust it, my mind changed me so much I can't even trust myself." - from Modest Mouse's Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset
1. "We must blend into the choir, sing as static with the whole/ We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul" - from Bright Eye's At The Bottom of Everything

GOODNIGHT
~0~

February 3rd.

Is the day that this happened.



Mimas got my video and they liked it, saying 'I could be in their band'. So then they reposted it, and it got all these likes and awesome comments. This made me so happy.

That's really all I have to say. This made my year already.

~-~

Trivial.

I'm finding a job tomorrow, apparently. This is all at once exciting and overwhelming. I'm not sure how to feel about it.

The song of the day is Boyz by M.I.A. Best beat i've heard in some time. Unfortunately, I can't embed it on here. So here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBX3lo3Boxs

Today, Me (I don't care that that usage of 'me' is grammatically incorrect), Rob, Robert, and several others attended trivia night at Wings Your Way as we normally do. We were expecting to beat drunk college kids like we tend to do, but this week the questions were absolutely impossible. "How many muscles are there in a cat's ear?" "In which state is the town of Dingdong located?" I mean. Literally trivial stuff that no one in their right mind could ever figure out.



Today's been weird. It felt like there's been a dark cloud hanging over my head. I had to take a nap just to shake the cloud, something I never do. It was a conglomeration of the trivia night fail, the fact that I didn't have piano lessons as planned, the dreary school day, the semi-eye-opening eavesdropping I did today that I don't want to get into. Maybe it's the fact that I did so much yesterday and today I did nothing but just kind of idle. All of these things just added up and smacked me square in the nose.
---
Here's that third video I was in that was uploaded yesterday. Definitely one of the best things I've uploaded onto YouTube.




---
The first half is in slow-motion. It opens with a visibly bruised face looking down at her notebook introspectively underneath a big oak tree, all in color. The oak tree is essentially her one safe haven, the one place where she can be at ease. The shot focuses in on the notebook, which fades slowly into her real life, in a darkish blackandwhite. Shots follow include her parents yelling at her, her boyfriend abusing her, dropping her books. It then shows her sneaking out of her parents house at night and then arriving at the oak tree. We get her perspective as she approaches her safety net, before cutting immediately back to more black and white images of her troubled life. Then we see her sneaking out again, doing the same thing, only this time instead of the oak tree fading into color as she approaches, we see construction equipment in place of the tree.

This begins the second half, all in black and white. She screams and cries out at the loss of her home, and immediately starts slashing tires and yelling at the men working away at the trees. The men respond violently and start chasing her. The music continues building as the chase between the girl and the workers intensifies. More and more people get involved. The gap closes and closes and closes. And then the climax. She gets caught up in the wave of people attacking her, hit into submission. We see the fists coming down left and right from her perspective as they fade in and out, smattered with dream-like images, a result of her dwindling consciousness. The film ends with the crowd dispersing as the police arrive, the lights flashing in red and blue, contrasting the black and white starkly.

This is what I visualize when I hear the song 'Untitled #8' by Sigur Ros. I want to film it, but I don't have the amount of people or editing software necessary. Which is a shame, because I think it's a decent enough concept.

Time to publish. SEE YOU TOMORROW.

~-~

BUSY START TO THE MONTH.

THREE videos were uploaded involving me today, one on my main channel, one on 3kewldoods, and one on 'sekretaccount'. as i'm writing this, the 3kewldoods one is still publishing.

this first one has a little bit of a backstory behind it.
I was improvising on the piano one day and came across the melody to the song 'Dads' by Mimas, which also turns out to be one of my favorite songs period. Since Mimas, for some insane reason, do not have many fans on their Facebook page and they use it often, I told them that I had done this. I wasn't expecting any response to this, but then they responded saying "Post it then!" I freaked out a little bit on the inside. A couple days later, I film a video with me playing the song and upload it onto YouTube. I just posted it on their Facebook page, and now I'm anxiously awaiting their response.

VIDEO 1:


and VIDEO 2, that weird film I was talking about last night:


That's all I have time for today, I'm 'fraid. I need to upload the 3kewldoods video and get a semi-goodnight's sleep.

Something better tomorrow!

|~-~|