It’s not a bad relationship. It’s a happy relationship. I like it. She likes it. It’s comfortable. Others are more leery of it. Maybe it’s not the smartest thing to get into a relationship or whatever at this stage, but… I dunno. I generally just let things come to me when they do, even if the timing isn’t the most convenient. It’s always worked for me. But… yeah. I see their point, but whatever. I like it.
I’ve also been watching Mortal Kombat 9 fatalities by the guys at Rooster Teeth on Youtube. They’re really cool and BLOODY. Gory as hell. I dunno. They’re entertaining in a way. *shrug*
I’ve also started playing guitar. It’s been about a week or so since I’ve practiced, but I’ve been learning how to do chords and stuff. It’s been a bit easier to learn since I know how to play violin and I already know about some music theory, so that helps too. I’ve been learning how to play some Radiohead and Iron and Wine songs. I’m still not really good, but it’s become easier for me to shift my fingers and pluck the strings and stuff. It’s fun.
And… yeah, that’s about it. My life’s not all that interesting. :/
So, I found out today that the deadline for submissions to the student film festival will be on March 31st. This gives me just about 2 and a half weeks to borrow a camera, film something, slap some audio together, edit it, and submit it. Even then, it might not actually get shown during the festival, but I think it’s the process that counts.
What I’m thinking about doing is setting a video to a song in either Japanese or French. This way, the lyrics won’t matter as much, but the music will set the mood of the video. I can’t imagine that it would be too difficult to film something, but then again I’ve never really done it before so I wouldn’t know. I think I might abandon the idea of cutting the film into individual frames and setting them to a beat because it would only have worked for this one song I had in mind (“Foundations” by Kate Nash) that had a very strong beat throughout. A lot of the other songs I had in mind were different in that they weren’t as strongly electronic and didn’t have the same sort of definite beat throughout.
So, that’s the good news.
The bad news is that I still don’t really have a definite idea of what I want to do. I’m sure it’ll develop over the course of filming though…
So… yeah, I joined the Sierra Club today. The UNC chapter of the Sierra Club. Basically, our goal is to replace the coal plant on campus with one that’s… not coal. I dunno. The specifics are a bit gray and non-specific. In essence, the goal of the club is to get rid of the coal plant (one of many that emits copious amounts of CO2, arsenic, and other bad shit into the environment) and replace it with clean energy. Natural gas has been proposed as an alternative for the now, hopefully followed up with a renewable energy source, which in my opinion should be one of the primary goals for the US regardless of other shit that’s going on. However, the feasibility of such a task is… questionable. I’d like some more specifics on what we’re going to replace it with and a cost estimate, but we haven’t got any at the moment.
To a certain extent, I’d like to keep the fervor of student organizations but also temper it with some numbers. In general, people with money and power are more likely to listen to you if you have some numbers, like a cost estimate, the difference in power, new jobs that would be generate, a timetable, etc. Otherwise, most of them kind of just tell you to fuck off.
But, maybe that’s not the point of a student organization. Maybe the point is to galvanize the student body, raise awareness for projects and initiatives like this, and maybe eventually, when those students have money and power, they will keep those sentiments in mind.
On an entirely separate note, I found this song about pandas.
Near the end of the school year, my computer decided to crap out on me so I had to wipe the entire hard drive since I was under the impression that most of my data was backed up on an external hard drive at home so I could restore the lost data with ease. It was a couple days before my last exam, and most of the notes were posted online, so I didn’t think it’d be a big deal.
As it turned out, however, I hadn’t backed up ANY Of my music, so I had to rebuild my music library through… less legitimate means. IN ANY CASE, I got most of the music that I can remember liking back. Before, my music library was about 12 GB, and now it’s almost 6.5 GB, but I think that has more to do with the fact that I didn’t download some stuff that I had never listened to before.
In my musical journey, I found an album by Explosions in the Sky (my favorite post-rock band) that they released for free over the Internet. It’s called “The Rescue”, and as an early Christmas gift to those of you who read (?), here it is:
If you’ve never heard of Explosions in the Sky, I really recommend it. I think almost everyone who gives them a try will like it.
On an entirely different topic, Hulu has music videos and concert performances by Muse, another one of my favorite bands. The picture they have of Muse’s frontman, Matthew Bellamy, looks a lot like Ethan Hawke. That is all.
“Up here, up on this hill,
Up here, where no one will,
I’ll take a crack,
At a load of smack.”
… I thought it was funny.
Come to think of it, I’ve never been very good at writing poetry. It’s probably because I never liked it. I always thought poetry was a crock of shit, and anything worthy of poetry ought to be made into a song. I wonder if I would like some of The Arcade Fire’s lyrics if they didn’t play music over it. I think not.
Maybe I should think about writing songs or something. I’m not much good at writing music, but I suppose I can write lyrics. There’s 3 or 4 guys on the hall who can play guitar. I don’t know if they can write music, but it’d be an interesting thing to play around with. We could start a band! YAY!… Hahaha… but I have no time. It sucks.
Anyway… I’ll probably post up another podcast sometime today or tomorrow. So… yeah, to anyone who actually reads these ramblings, I’m a bit sorry they’ve been so short… but I’ve been out having experiences and studying… and whatnot. So… yeah, really busy. T_T
It’s 1:06 AM in the morning and I’m finishing my physics lab. It’s my last assignment before the weekend, which I’m eagerly looking forward. Hopefully this time tomorrow night/early morning, I’ll be completely off my tits and have an absolute drummer Saturday morning. BUT… that’s only if I can finish my physics lab… which I should be able to, seeing as how I’ve only got 2 more questions to do.
On an entirely separate note, I sorted my iTunes according to play count. Here’s the list:
“Yellow” by Coldplay
“Love Vigilantes” by Iron & Wine
“Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners
“The Scientist” by Coldplay
“No Surprises” by Radiohead
“Countdown” by Jupiter One
“I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz
“Re: Re: (Yokohama Arena)” by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION
“Wake Up” By The Arcade Fire
“A Rush of Blood to the Head” by Coldplay
“Spaceman” by The Killers
“Mad World” by Gary Jules
“Lose You” by Pete Yorn
“Komm, Susser Tod” by Arianne
“Viva la Vida” by Coldplay
“Wish” by Arashi
“Death and All His Friends” by Coldplay
“Road Movie” by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION
“Daidai” by Chatmonchy
“BUS ROMANCE” by Chatmonchy
“Gravity” by John Mayer
“Falling Down” by Oasis
“Yasahisa” by Chatmonchy
So… yeah, that was completely pointless. It’s now 1:12 AM.
I’ve recently started expanding my music collection. Or rather, I’m listening to some music that I got a while ago that I just never got around to listening to.
First is Wolf Parade. They’re a Canadian indie rock band that formed…. 5 years ago? I don’t remember. I was first introduced to them when their song “Dinner Bells” was used in a gameplay video for “Assassin’s Creed”. I really liked it, even though the vocals took a bit getting used to. My favorite song by them is “I’ll Believe in Anything” on their first album “Apologies to the Queen Mary”.
I still don’t get what the video’s about… but they have dueling cannons. Which I thought was awesome.
I’m also listening to the Arcade Fire. I got their album “Funeral” sometime this summer and I just never got around to listening to them… but WOW. I really like it. One of their songs, “Wake Up”, was used in the trailer for “Where the Wild Things Are”. For some reason, whenever I watch that trailer, I get a little sad. I guess it’s because I know I’ll never get back to that point.
This is a live performance of “Wake Up” at the Glastonbury Music Festival in 2007. What’s amazing is that their live performance is even better than their studio recording. They just have so much energy.
I’ve also recently started reading Calvin and Hobbes again. A couple years ago, my brother borrowed a Calvin and Hobbes book from his school library. I really liked it, so he borrowed the other books when he got a chance. We’d read them together and they were some of the only times we were quiet when we were together. Now that my brother’s moving into the double-digits age-wise and I’m legally an adult… I dunno. It’s the end of something. It’s the end of childhood freedom, I guess. Sometimes I wish I could return to such a carefree time.
It was also a bit rambling… I don’t feel like it’s nearly as interesting/funny as the others. Also, the sound quality is a bit crap. I think I increased the volume on my mic too much… it doesn’t drown out Ben’s voice, but my voice pops and my heavy breathing messes with the sound.
This is going to be a bit of a shorter post because I kind of want to go to sleep soon… I need to wake up at 7 to go to class everyday… so it’s a bit of a bitch. On the plus side, I’m done with everything at 11. I still need to do massive amounts of studying for other classes though.
I’ve recently started listening to electronica and indie pop, so here’s some stuff that I’ve dug up from Youtube. The first is “Destroy Everything You Touch” by Ladytron. It’s an alright song… I don’t really think it’s anything special, but I like the PV.
The second song is “Bruises” by Chairlift. It was on an iPod commercial at some point in the last two years. I recently found it again… and now it’s mine… YAY! I really quite like this song, but I couldn’t find any sort of PV for it, so here it is without any sort of kickass animation.
These next two songs are a bit different from the two before it. They’re both post-rock, which is basically crazy spacey (usually) lyric-less instrumental rock music. Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky are two of my favorite post-rock bands, and I’ve recently started listening to This Will Destroy You and The Album Leaf. Post-rock tends to be a bit longer than most other songs and they also start out much slower. You really have to listen to the entire song to get the full feeling. The two songs that I’ve posted here is “I Believe in Your Victory” by This Will Destroy You and “TwentyTwoFourteen” by The Album Leaf.
So… yeah, that’s about it for tonight. I’m going to sleep now…
Uwa~… I’m not doing as many blog posts as I used to. I think I’m going to try for at least 3 or 4 a week. I think that’s a good number… enough so that I don’t get bored.
Anyway, seeing as how it’s summer, I’ve got a bit more time to devote to hobbies and stuff now. Lately, I’ve been listening to more music and watching more movies and TV than I have before. So, I went on a bit of a music, movie, and TV binge… it’s fun! And not nearly as unhealthy as a food binge! YAY!
So… some of the new music I got included (what I think is) the entire Coldplay discography, the entire Ellegarden discography, the entire Explosions in the Sky discography (up til now), Mogwai’s “Mogwai Young Team” album, “Hey” byPixies, some classical music (Liszt, Mendelssohn, a ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION albums, the entire Chatmonchy discography, and three albums by the Shins (“Chutes Too Narrow”, “Oh, Inverted World”, and “Wincing the Night Away”). And I’ve listened to hardly ANY of them… hahahaha…
I’ve put all my Coldplay music on Shuffle and I’ve played through about half of them, which means that I probably haven’t heard… about half of them. I should probably get around to listening to more Coldplay at some point. I think my favorite Coldplay song at this moment is “Swallowed in the Sea” on the “X&Y” album. It’s a sad, melancholy sort of song, like most of Coldplay’s music. Most of it is about forgiveness and acceptance.
Explosions in the Sky’s and Mogwai’s music is a bit harder to write about because they are almost entirely instrumentals. They’re… awesome. That’s really all I can say. My favorite Explosions in the Sky song would probably be “First Breath After Coma”. It starts out slow, but then builds to a fantastic climax… before receding back to being slow. It’s atmospheric. There’s really no other way to explain it. As for Mogwai… haha… I actually haven’t heard listened to much Mogwai… so I can’t really say much about it. It’s good, but I don’t like it as much as Explosions in the Sky. Explosions in the Sky is sort of like a modern-day progressive rock orchestral piece. Their songs have to be taken in one piece. Otherwise, it kind of loses its effect… so if you listen to any of their songs, listen to the entire song.
“Hey” by Pixies is also a good song. I don’t really understand the lyrics, but I like the instrumentals, especially the bass throughout the song.
Chatmonchy is probably my favorite band. It’s a three piece (guitar, drums, bass, and vocals done by all three) Japanese girl rock band. They’ve had quite a bit of success in Asia, but I don’t think they’ve ever topped the Oricon Top 30 Singles or Top 30 Albums list, which is basically the list of the top 30 Japanese singles/albums sold in the week. I think the highest they’ve ever reached is #2 on both charts. ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION/アジアン・カンフー・ジェネレーション is another of my favorite Japanese rock groups. Their music tends to be heavier than Chatmonchy’s songs, which often leaned towards more bubble-gummy pop but lately has been a bit heavier too. My favorite Chatmonchy song is “Last Love Letter” and my favorite ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION song would probably be either ”Re:Re”, which has an awesome guitar and drum intro, or “After Dark”.
NOTE: The video of the PV is kind of weird.
As for The Shins… truthfully, I haven’t listened to any Shins music except for what I already had… so I can’t really say much about the new stuff.
On a sidenote, I’m self-teaching myself Japanese! I dunno if it’ll turn out to be a good idea or not… *shrugs* Either way, I can get Daryl to help me when I get back to college in August… or September. I can’t remember which.
