what beast would turn its life into words?

i (predictably) have not read my flist since i got back to school, but tonight i am procrastinating hardcore, so i have come crawling back! HALLOOOOO, WORLD. i have really nothing to say except that i have twelve days to write two conference papers, so i am going to do the only possible logical thing and share two songs wot i have been playing obsessively the past couple of days.


cannot stop watching or listening. it has been stuck in my head forever, so i am hoping to infiltrate your brain too so as not to be alone. HUZZAH. is also a really excellent break-up song.


this one has no video, but it is an awesome awesome song about addiction, which automatically makes it my favorite ever.

PLEASE DISTRACT ME FROM CONFERENCE PAPER HELL, FLIST. I EVEN HAVE UPLOAD LINKS IF YOU ARE INTERESTED! HERE IS "THE YOUNG THOUSANDS" AND HERE IS "SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW." PLEASE BE MY FRIEND SOMEBODY TALK TO ME I HAVE BEEN STARING AT THIS SCREEN FOR SO LONG OH GOD WHAT IS SLEEP

so, tonight i am feeling simultaneously sleepy and restless and am having difficulty reconciling the two. while i figure out whether it would be more appropriate to take a walk or go to bed, you all get to enjoy the guess-the-song meme! isn't that exciting? (random strangers who may be reading this, feel free to jump in.)

you know the rules: no fucking search engines, you goddamn cheating scoundrels.

eta: instead of striking out the correctly identified lyrics, i decided to tuck the song titles under a cut. so if you still want to play and you're late to the game, you can choose to ignore the answers. i'm so fucking courteous, i know.

( WALL OF FAME YAYE )

1. you ole fire/i'm mad with desire/you're my favorite one/got me cooking with the fever, got my love runnin' for the sun

2. and when i see the sign that points one way/a light i used to pass by every day

3. you could say i surrender on all fours/to some bright holy light from above/you could bravely be the first to spill this vile demon's blood

4. how many wasted days, wasted nights on you/i can't even count that high/haven't i tried to?

5. there are those boys with earthly eyes/their eyes are like the ground/you walk and walk, kicking up dirt/but they don't make a sound

6. on and on and on we'll be together, yeah/on and on and on we'll stay together, yeah

7. aren't you gonna come along/aren't you gonna fight/aren't you gonna hold your hands up to the light?

8. strange face with your eyes/so pale and sincere/underneath, you know well/you have nothing to fear

9. begin to hope and all the colors start to change/beneath the light, you might forget that the world's so sad

10. at the zombie dance/here's ben and betty/they tap their toes/but they don't get sweaty

11. when i'm at the pearly gates/this'll be on my videotape, my videotape

12. flew in from miami beach boac/didn't get to bed last night/on the way the paper bag was on my knee/man, i had a dreadful flight

13. give me smut and nothing but/a dirty novel i can't shut/if it's uncut and unsubt...le

14. prettiest world i know, stole away all the show/you are so easy to love/you are so hard to let go

15. out of the box, out of the kitchen/out of the world she's grown so fearful of

16. bustelo, marlboro/banana by the bunch/a box of captain crunch will taste so good

17. guardo il cielo e non vedo altro colore/solo grigio piombo che mi spegne il sole/l'unica certezza è gli occhi che io ho di te

18. here's the guy i'd like to thank/he signs the checks and leaves 'em blank/he's the one/he says, "you don't have to walk the plank/the game is rigged, go figure"

19. do i attract you/do i repulse you/with my queasy smile

20. my baby's out there/with his lantern searching for an honest man

21. it is a thursday/i get up early/it is a challenge/i'm usually lazy

22. i haven't fucked much with the past/but i've fucked plenty with the future

23. i found a reason/to keep living/oh, and the reason, dear, is you

24. my mind's not right my mind's not right my mind's not right my mind's not right

25. i'll sing it one last time for you/then we really have to go/you've been the only thing that's right/in all i've done

someday in the not-too-distant future i will make some sort of substantive contribution to this hurr livejournal. today is not that day. in the meantime, you can:

Comment on this entry, and:

❶ I'll respond by asking you five questions to satisfy my curiosity.
❷ Update your journal with the answers to your questions.
❸ Include this explanation and offer to ask other people questions.

cascades, who is an utter nutball, gave me these questions:

1. REMEMBER BLUE-SKIDOO FROM BLUE'S CLUES? when blue could transport into pictures and books? well, if you could blue-skidoo into any book, which would you choose?
NO, ACTUALLY, I DON'T, BUT I'LL FORGIVE YOU YOUR TRESPASSES AND ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION. and it's a very good question at that, i have to say. lovely variation on the usual "with which character would you most like to chill?" deal. aaaand my aaaanswer iiis...tales from outer suburbia, by shaun tan. yes, it is a picture book; it's essentially magical realism for kids. and shit-wow, i wish that description could do it justice. magical realism restores a sense of wonder, so i feel odd applying it to a children's book, because when you're a kid, magic is commonplace anyway. archy_the_roach introduced me to this book a couple of months ago, well past my childhood, and still it moved me on a very visceral level; it curled its way deep underneath my skin, successfully hijacking the place i reserve for favorite songs and uncomfortably revealing dreams.

the following tangent doesn't answer this question, but as this is my livejournal, i shall abuse my memes however i see fit. the book that most successfully translated the world i inhabit into a tangible place is palimpsest, by catherynne m. valente. it feels like my own headspace reflected back to me, in all its ugliness and desperation and incandescence. palimpsest is a part of me, located somewhere just beyond tales from outer suburbia, somewhere within my ribcage, possibly.

i also really pathetically wish i could beam myself into shoebox_project, although that's not a book at all. it feels like home to me, in only the way your very favorite stories do. yes, i know it is a fucking fan fiction, and i lose all lit cred for admitting this. i am okay with that!

2. if you could choose to live in a different century, would you? or would you rather stay in the 21st?
fuck, no. i'm not big on romanticizing the past. humans do a pretty good job of fucking up the planet, but i remain (perhaps stupidly) a firm believer in progress. i want to continue to live just where i am and do whatever i can to bring the world a little closer to the place i believe it can be. we owe the past a lot: everything we have now, in fact. it'd be an insult to want to shave off a few decades. reminds me of holden caulfield on his merry-go-round, caught in a loop and still looking perpetually backwards. to that image, i say: no, thank you. i want to go forward. because do you know what we have now? MOTHERFUCKING JETPACKS. suck on that.

3. have you ever wanted to have any kind of exotic pet? (i always wanted a wolf when i was little.)
i want a tarantula! no, seriously. i do believe that counts as exotic. and i'll be boring and confess that when i was little, i totally wanted a dragon. still do, because i am the muggle incarnation of hagrid. although the former desire is a bit likelier to be fulfilled than the latter.

4. when you retire as an old wrinkly lady, what do you want to do with your free time?
accumulate wrinkles. play bingo; use the panoply of medications i'll undoubtedly be on as markers. laugh at my hideously disfigured tattoos. have many spiders as pets. run amok. naked, preferably. be the nut in the neighborhood all the little kids are terrified of.

5. do you have any sort of ~security blanket~ that you keep around from when you were little? mine is a stuffed animal, a goat named djali. FROM THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, REMEMBER? esmeralda's pet goat. he has an earring! he's pretty bamf.
ONCE AGAIN, NO I DO NOT REMEMBER, BUT THANKS FOR TRYING. security blanket? you mean like a straitjacket? some of my friends would argue that i need one of those these days. i, um. don't have an actual remnant from childhood on hand? because i have no soul. well, okay, i did have this purple stuffed dog (creatively named "peace") that i used as a sort of talisman. i've yet to hand her over to the EVILS OF SUNNYSIDE throw or give her away, so that may say something about the state of my immortal soul (mostly that it's comprised of 100% pure unadulterated LAZINESS).

speaking of the sorry state of my soul, the latest regina spektor song manages to make me weep every. damn. time. and i've listened to it like twenty times at this point. it's slowly becoming tiresome. you should download it and join me in my blubbering! (and i do recognize the irony in my inadvertently prefacing this paean to childhood with an anti-holden caulfield rant. do i have my holden moments? yup. do i want to be holden caulfield? hell, no, bitches.)

( lyrics, for posterity. also because they're fucking gorgeous. )

i have tickets. to see the national. in september. brain short-circuiting from excitement. facebook status-esque, truncated sentences have ensued. somebody send back-up. AUGH *explodes*

oh yeah, and one more thing: dear f-list? can i entrust you to showcase my incoherency to the world? hook me up with some disconcertingly logical raving lunatics. or something. go! enjoy the delusion of control of my life, when in fact you serve only MY ends. that's right, bitches. world domination happens one wildly incoherent blog post at a time. \o/

OMG BE BFF WITH

it'd be nice if this post were one of substance, right? well, it ain't. i debated with myself (...and i won!) about whether to keep it private, but nah, i'll leave it public in case anyone's interested.

right, this is just a run-of-the-mill, maintaining-my-lj organization post. i'm putting all the communities i evidently "follow" on filters so i can actually keep up with them, and i'd also like to see it all laid out in one post in front of me. just 'cause i'm neurotic like that. well, all right, maybe i can't pin this one on neurosis. it's the same reason i alphabetize my bookshelf*: i like to keep my shit looking tidy. i'm a visual person. 's how i roll, yo.

and if you wanna whore yourself out to lj comms, hey, go nuts.

( yeah, all this twaddle about how boring this post is was a clever rouse to distract you from my plans to stage a coup d'etat, obviously )

and goddamn, do i need a new moodtheme/layout. right! gotta get around to that.

to make this post slightly less dull, i am going to gush a little bit about my obscene love of los campesinos! gareth, their lyricist, likes to write some pretty morbid songs, and he does so with unbridled glee. according to his myspace, his inspiration is moaning about girls and thinking about how eventually he will die. i prefer making girls moan and thinking about how eventually i will die (but generally not at the same time), but i am willing to put aside our differences and hear this dude out. did i mention his band is awesome? i think i am reasonably fond of them.



you guys, this song kills me. ah. man. i think i sort of fell in love with the character it's about, which is odd, because i don't think i was supposed to. mmmph. i'm tired. and i want romance is boring to be released nao pls.

*"bookshelf" is a very loose term. as of december '09, my bookshelf's been stacked to burst, and the path to my bed from my door has shrunk to a pitifully narrow one. but but but. my book piles are alphabetized, okay. shush. i do not have ocd tendencies.

I...just felt compelled to add myself as a livejournal friend, for reasons I am finding difficult to articulate. Uhm. Some possible explanations I am entertaining in the face of a TOTAL VOID OF LOGIC:

1. This course of action clearly promotes the illusion of self-confidence. I am even considering someday finding it a place on a shiny, shiny college resume.

2. OR MAYBE it is of a profane nature and doesn't belong in such an overwhelmingly scrupulous environment: maybe I have actually just answered the eternal question would I do me? (I WOULD, AND I DO, IN CASE YOU MISSED THAT.)

2. OR MAYBE it is actually a masochistic Cave of Solitude. HOW WILL I EVER FRIEND ME BACK? WHAT IF I DRIVE ME TO FLOUNCIFICATION? I DON'T THINK I AM BUILT TO SURVIVE THIS KINDA ANGST. D: D: D:

3. ...and now I'm too busy weeping piteously to think of any more reasons. *BASKS IN LONELY LIVEJOURNAL DESPERADO-DOM* (I am totally badass enough to be a desperado okay. I am at least an outlaw in the face of LOGIC, and no one can deny that.)

[Poll #1397035]

...my brain, sometimes ze is inane as all hell. And I mean the doctor's-waiting-room level of hell reserved for procrastinators, I guess, because otherwise the phrase "inane as all hell" doesn't actually make any SENSE, does it. Because fire and brimstone are much more terrifying and smelly than they are inane. In other, much more pressing news, tea is delicious. Do you know who is even more delicious than tea? BETH MOTHERFUCKING DITTO, THAT'S WHO. THE GOSSIP HAS A NEW SINGLE OUT, YOU GUYS \o/ \o/ \o/. If you are unacquainted with Beth Ditto, she is all you ever need to know about awesomeness, pretty much. If you need any convincing, I would like to introduce you to ishyface's kick-ass picspam from forevers ago. I would also like to advertise the fact that an earbud has just found its way nearly up my left nostril, for reasons I am not sure enough of to report (read: I AM SO UNCOORDINATED THAT SOMETIMES THINGS WOT DON'T BELONG IN IMPOSSIBLE ORIFICES END UP THERE. that sounds horrifically double entendre-y, doesn't it ;__;). LET IT BE KNOWN THAT EVEN MY BOOGERS ARE RIOT GRRRLS. Also, this entry lacks any cohesive narrative. In case you hadn't noticed already. BRAIN, DO YOU THINK YOU COULD MANAGE TO SIT STILL FOR AWHILE? I WOULD BE VERY APPRECIATIVE, JUST SAYIN.

(ALSO, IT IS FRIDAY. I NO DO THE THINKY TOO WELL TONIGHT, BUT HEY! I LIKE THIS. DOUBLEPLUSGOOOOOD.)

♥__________♥

edited for auxiliary inanity: this morning I observed exactly two blackbirds flying around in my yard and got really really irrationally excited.

I KNOW this is pretty obnoxious on account of how I just posted about two seconds ago. But. Vonnegut was such a fantastic human being whose words needs to be shared at every available interstice, I swear. Here's the full quote, because I am evidently in a sort of typing-up-other-people's-words mood tonight:

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn't be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.

That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today's war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.

And how come the people in countries we invade can't fight like ladies and gentlemen, in uniform and with tanks and helicopter gunships?

Back to music. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today--jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on--is derived from the blues.

A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.

The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country--an atrocity from which we can never fully recover--the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.

Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can't drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it in the corners of any room where it's being played. So please remember that.

And--of course--here is "Blues from Down Here," and, as is my wont, ( lookee there are the lyrics: )

In my quiet moments, I totally think Vonnegut woulda been a TV on the Radio fangirl. He would've liked that they freely admit they have no idea what they're doing and that "A lot of bands have something to say...[they] have something to ask." That seemed like a pretty bitchin'-ly Vonnegutian sentiment to me anyway. Here, let me continue this post's theme, and leave you all with another profoundly inspiring quote from the mouth of Mr. David Andrew Sitek:

"Most of the music that I like was made on dope. There is no way I could play a song back to myself 3,000 times unless I was stoned. I don't ever want to repeat myself, so I try to be not too conscious of the process...Sitting in my underwear doing bong hits is how I get a mix to gel."

motherfucking \o/!

I am--inexplicably, all-encompassingly fucking giddy right now, and I wish to tell you all about it! Really, today has just been this great long procession of tiny little lovely things that have collectively made me absurdly happy. Also they seem to make me want to blather fulsome adjective abuse into my livejournal. For this I apologize.

Just. I dunno! I didn't actually get out of my pajamas all day. There's going to be a snow day tomorrow, if I can trust the weather reports promising a blizzard of apocalyptic proportions. (Even if I end up having to wake up at 6:00, right now the snow is a pretty fabulous sight to behold.) My best friend called me at, like, the exact moment I was thinking of calling her before I got anywhere near the phone ("THAT'S SO CREEPY. WERE YOU GOING TO CALL TO TALK ABOUT TV ON THE RADIO?" which obviously I was. because we're connected at the brain). We are seeing TV on the Radio in Central Park in June, and I am going to have an excitement-induced coronary. I just realized I'm actually really pleased with my schedule for next year instead of freaking the fuck out over it (probably this will last just until my furlough from school ends on Tuesday and I go back to wanting to go join the fucking circus instead).

Speaking of TV on the Radio, I spent half the day listening to Return to Cookie Mountain. This is pretty pitiful, I think, but dancing around your room like a freak is indisputably awesome.

This is a really boring update! (I thought maybe I could salvage it with some exciting punctuation. Did it work?) I guess it's always really retarded to talk about happiness, isn't it, unless you're Naomi Shihab Nye or some shit. I guess I just want to be able to find this again, in a public post, and go, what the fuck was I thinking? this post is drivel. but I remember being weirdly enthused about it.

( also I totally have to catch up on my memes! AND NOW WE REACH THE CRUX OF THE POST, TRULY. BECAUSE MEMES ARE SRS BSNS. come listen to me ramble some more, about drag kings who happen to be superheroes and mancrushes who happen to be gods and scandalous disavowals oh my )

Just for the record:
1. HOLY SHIT IT'S STILL SNOWING! If I stand outside in it and just look up, I get impossibly dizzy, and if vertigo were that wonderful all the time, everyone would be fucking dying of inner ear disorders.
2. If I do have to wake up in three and a half hours, I'm gonna choke a bitch.
3. If you actually read all that, I AM SO SORRY. I will send you apologetic arrangements of fruit in the mail. OH BUT I CAN RAMBLE :D :D
4. Apologies for being horribly behind on flist. Will rectify tomorrow, amidst SNOOOOW YAYE.

So, I (finally!) saw Milk today and yeah, I may have cried. Just a little bit. I am feeling pretty inarticulate at the moment, but suffice it to say that this review rocks. If you haven't seen it yet, GO DO IT. If it's, um, still playing anywhere. I am always the last person ever to see movies, and this unfortunate fact is showing. /o\

(And dude, what is up with Josh Brolin, and why has he been playing so many terrifying Republicans lately?)

Apropos of nothing, my brother is on sabbatical from being an Internet Tyrant tonight! By which I mean my internet is impressively faily, by which I mean that whenever I download/upload music the internet (thereby affecting every other computer in the house) crawls along at the relative pace of a slug on weed, by which I mean that computer-addicted brother goes bonkers every time I want new music. WHICH MEANS THAT TONIGHT I HAVE THE INTERNET TO MYSELF AND HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADING LIKE A MAD THING WHICH MEANS THAT I AM ALSO WELCOMING YOUR REQUESTS WITH ALACRITY! Um, I have no formal pdf of my library, but here's my last.fm if you want to have a poke around.

Also: Y HALO THAR, NEW FRIENDS! *waves* Haven't checked my flist yet today (first impression for the ages, right), but SUP? I might write up an intro post tomorrow, but if I don't, I've got to update my user info so it says something other than "I like 'A Softer World' comics and stealing 'A Softer World' comics and putting them in my user info" pretty soon anyway, so you know. Whatever comes first.