embraced the ice, and lie us down,
let us stay like this forever, once and for all...

anyone want to be in a band with me? i want to call it Mighty Mitochondria. i need someone who looks geeky-sexy with thick black-rimmed glasses for the lead. the "sexy" aspect is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, but if you have other musical skills, you will go far, as well.

anyone? anyone? bueller?

ok, you don't even need to be in the band with me, just let me know if you use the name. and send me some stuff! i want to know what a band called mighty mitochondria would sound like.

i went to see jorge's revenge in the hub last night, with mixed results. this student comedy troupe is pretty popular for some reason--i imagine a fairly sizeable chunk of that reason can be attributed to the free aspect of the shows--but they kind of fell flat for me. there were a few good bits--piano ventriloquism, hee, and i like to watch other people play video games for some reason--but some that were just... awful. there was a "haw haw, rednecks!" sketch, complete with every idiotic stereotype about rural southerners that exists. i have been friends with becky too long to let that sort of shit slide.

my parents came and hung out with me most of the afternoon and into the evening, too. that was fun. i love my parents. they brought me a burrito heaven burrito! and then we looked at crackheaded garden displays at the convention center, followed by a yummy, but extremely filling, dinner at a nearby italian restaurant. food is not exciting me as much as usual lately. but yeah, my parents are cool. they nevel fail to amuse me, except when, you know, talking about your basic serious parent-to-child stuff.

i feel like practicing karate a lot more. i suck ass at it, so i could use the practice, but beyond that, it feels -good-. the only thing i don't like about this class, really, is that we don't learn to fall, or really any self-defense techniques, which i KNOW is NOT the point of the class, but they seem like they are helpful for people just starting out. my teacher explained that we don't learn to fall because karate is the art of hitting people (hehe, no matter how serious, that is an amusing thought) and falling is part of a different, but related, art, and that samurais used to train in all of these, all day, every day. he tried to give us an example of a samurai's day [not an exact quote]: "get up at dawn, practice katas, eat breakfast, maybe practice fighting with katanas, do some calligraphy, have lunch, practice shooting arrows from horses, have dinner, maybe do a little more calligraphy, then go swimming while wearing armor." at any rate, the idea of the division of all these aspects of martial art that i could potentially learn someday excited me, and the description of a samurai's day cracked me up, although i don't think it should have.

i need to do some crazy creative writing soon. i never do that stuff, and it is within me. i want to tell you a story, like my life, only interesting and coherent. i'm not really using this blog for its intended purpose of writing down little ideas nearly as much as i should be. it's just journalizing, making note of the minute details of my daily life, which is unexciting, for the most part. (i suppose i could write a cookbook, though, heh.)

until then, i must do morning things and go to work. happy fucking saturday.

listening: the clash - spanish bombs

i think i need to go listen to records. they are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

oh shit.

why must everything be attached to memories of something else.

these memories won't wait.

listening: the crappy morning radio show that someone else is listening to in the shower

why don't i get to sleep enough? fuck you, body, and your little sore hip, too!

time to pop another ibuprofen and be lazy until i have to go to karate and die.

listening: nothing, but it should be faithless - insomnia

i'm feeling fairly awake today, if aimless and sore, despite not actually sleeping well at all. maybe i'm just getting used to the <7 hours of sleep my body permits me these days. don't they say your body requires less sleep as you get older? i don't think i'm to that point yet, though.

today in poli sci, we were discussing how people felt about bush's reaction to everything post-september 11. i hate these discussions. my only reaction to september 11th besides general sympathy for victims--i am not so cynical that i could not even feel that--and irritation at having to take a greyhound home from phoenix was a sudden inability to read news. last year, i was crazy about the freakin' news. i was an npr addict; i read the newspaper daily--i still subscribe, but i do not read much national news at all; even letters have lost some of their charm--i dunno, it just mattered a lot more to me to be informed of stuff. but then that whole thing happened and it was too much. so instead of trying to reform my beliefs so i could wrap my head around it, i just turned it off. local politics? i'm down. i care about initiatives and who's the mayor of seattle and public transportation and the environment and all those issues that seem more important, because learning more about international stuff and our national government just... makes me sad. deeply sad about everything. because we're fucking creepy. and people everywhere are fucking creepy. i just feel so small, and having an opinion on military action in afghanistan and whether the northern alliance or the taliban are in control of kabul is not going to change that. it's just something i can do fuck-all about, so i can't deal with it. it is like sports to me now: i glaze over.

sad, i guess. but what isn't anymore.

i also found that a lot of satire didn't get me like it used to. oh, if only some of you knew me then... i read the onion devotedly. now there are weeks that i skip it entirely. stuff just isn't as funny somehow. i don't like taliban or osama jokes. i don't think this stuff is funny. i like funny stuff so much, and... i don't know what happened.

i try not to think about it.

so my class was having this discussion and i just couldn't contribute. couldn't say anything. all i thought was, "i don't like bush, i don't like what he says or does or anything about this at all..." but i couldn't tell you why. i couldn't explain it. i don't know. my mom once repeated to me a famous quotation, though i don't recall who said it, and it's something that always stuck with me as justification for not speaking up in class more often: "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." i can't vouch for the logic of the "better" there, but it's pretty stuck in my mind, despite many points to the contrary.

hmm, gee, how many of these sentences have begun with "i." puke.

i swear i had something else to talk about. guess not. it's another cloudy day.

listening: pink floyd - interstellar overdrive

i (heart) the brunching shuttlecocks.

guys should wear kilts more often. specifically, a guy should wear a kilt for me. that is all.

listening: radiohead - dollars and cents

dinner time. about to walk up to trader joe's, pick up some groceries, and have josie pick me up with the goods. i am such a trader joe's junkie; i don't know how to do a complete shopping job anywhere else anymore.

people here are planning ahead. they're planning for may birthdays and valentine exchanges. i'm planning to send aja a birthday present, because i can't say anything else. i just think she deserves a smile, no matter how silly it is.

i want a boy to play with. one who lives here. i want to share music and messing around. i'm not feeling so much lonely as i am... well, maybe i am feeling lonely. but not empty. no, not at all...

show me something no one else has seen.

it's hard to differentiate myself in a way that's empirical.

i'm really digging the 20 minute loop cd i bought at the show. it's groovy. i put it on sammy's box, so people who know sammy might leech it if they want.

i feel like rearranging things in my life, as if some sort of outer change will inflict inner change. or is it the other way around: i have already rearranged inside, and now need to refit my exteriors?

kk has four of my cds. i want them back. i don't think it's going to happen, considering we don't and can't talk.

off to trader joe's, i guess.

(this entry was originally handwritten while sitting in my living room, listening to the velvet underground. it's, um.. a little pretentious. typing it now, i keep wanting to make little remarks to preserve my usual tongue-in-cheek nature, but i may have actually been serious about this. hee.)

early february--i think the groundhog saw his shadow, but today feels like spring anyway. the mountain is out, the sun is shining, and it's hardly cold. i'm sure we've got a good 45' out there, which is a definite pleasant change from the windchill bullshit. snow is pretty, but it's not worth the cold and associated bullshit. i'd rather the weather hovered around 50', nice and sunny with tons of dramatic clouds in every shade of gray.

it's weird now to write in pen anything unrelated to classwork (this includes doodles and random acts of poetry and lyric-quoting). but here i sit, listening to old music and contemplating a past so rich that i'm too young to tap into. wishing life were a little different, more exciting, more creative. wonderinf if it could ever be that way. writers romanticize the lives of poets-cum-prophets who seem to live in extraordinary ways, and i can't help but fall in love with the dream of that representation. at the same time, i know there are consequences for that life, ones which i likely couldn't tolerate in reality. what do you have to give up to live like that, what do us regular folk take for granted while secretly dreaming of fame? what plagues those with such deep inspiration for art that it inspires us all? such beauty cannot spring from total bliss.

at the same time, is art forcibly created, or does it just happen that way? certain it is honed, practiced, and such, but can you create an artist out of an engineer, or was it always there? that spark of creativity, lying dormant underneath the veneer of order out of chaos--carefully planned stress fractures--minor adjustments of code and calculation? does it have a mind of its own? does it settle down forever in some tortured soul, or does it linger and fade when it feels it's done all it can? is art, like people, constantly moving, changing, and unpredictable? can we weigh the consequences of our discretions in terms of art lost?

can you make it happen?

is there some path to follow, lined with depression and addiction, to throw yourself into the pain of beauty to create what's worth remembering?

does anything "just happen"? consider that. does everything have a purpose?

some things:

i need an adapter for my headphones (from small to big) so i can listen to records in the living room without blaring it all over the whole building and making my roommates try to talk over the din of my enjoyment.

next place i live in, i need to keep my stereo in -my- room. and i need a disc changer. i will load everything up with music and not annoy everyone with my shit. well, they will hear it through the door, certainly, but i won't feel so invasive.

i should spend paychecks on music while i can still afford the disposable income. heh. ok, no, i *shouldn't*, but i'm tempted to. music is expensive, but oh so pretty. mm, vinyl. mm, cds. mm, variety that doesn't need to be weeded out for completeness and bitrate.

i could listen to music forever and hardly ever get bored.

listening: terranova - never

i left the house yesterday. by myself. and DID stuff. seriously. i was good! i didn't sit at home and mope about how i could only watch tv because i had fuck-all better to do, knowing that fuck-all meant i was too chickenshit to actually leave the house and do something on my friggin' own. because i should know by now that no one really ever wants to do shit with me; they'd rather get drunk. wooooo.

(no, josie, if you're reading this, it is NOT a pointed remark towards you. merely stating facts--not whining, or not meaning to--that people with whom i am acquainted do not consider doing random activities of dubious merit and minor cost worth their time and would rather spend it doing something almost guaranteed to be fun. for them. anyway.)

i think i actually prefer doing things alone, once i get over the fear of feeling like an idiot because i'm not socializing or whatever, because then if i am the one to initiate the activities, i don't feel obligated to look out for my companion's enjoyment of them. if i take a friend to a show and i'm loving it, i hold back on enjoying it fully if i'm not sure the other person is. i get annoying and keep asking, "you ok?", "having fun?", etc. the same goes for a movie, to a lesser extent. i always feel sorry when people don't like stuff as much as i do. i don't know why i do that, cos it's fucking stupid, but it is what it is.

anyway, i went out and did a little shopping, then decided to go to the show at the paradox. i ended up wasting too much money on two records that i -think- i shouldn't have to spend as much as i did to get, but the store that is reliably inexpensive never seems to have them when i go... velvet underground's loaded and the clash's london calling. mm. they're in excellent condition, too. the store had so much stuff i wanted, but it was all expensive, some of it even new. but man, now i know where to go to get that sealed radiohead amnesiac double 10" set. heh. $27. jesus. that would be cool, but $27. $27 makes me queasy. i am a cheap vinyl junkie. and i need more variety in my collection. it's a small, stupid collection, anyway, but it's mine.

so yeah, i went to that show. the one with that one guy, uhh, umm.. no, that was his name. :) and the drama, 20 minute loop, and aveo. the first three were random people from california, the latter from seattle. i had actually caught a song or two from aveo's set at bumbershoot, so that was the only one i knew anything about, but i still showed up early. i had nothing better to do, really. there were a few girls, i'd guess younger than me, standing around the entrance to the theater, waiting to get in. they seemed excited for the show, but i could only tell which band a few of them were going to see. two girls said something about knowing the drama. soon, two of their friends showed up--gay boys with stylish hair and tight shirts--and started hugging and talking about other people they knew. one of them said something like, "brian's back!" "oh, how is he?" "oh, he's still gay!" apparently his parents sent him off to some christian rehab clinic, á la but i'm a cheerleader, and it didn't take. it astounds me that people actually DO that.

later, inside, some more people showed up and joined that group in the seats. "brian!" someone cried out. hee.

nothing quite like people-watching to get too much information about strangers.

an acquaintance, jesse, was working at the paradox last night, so we hung out a little. we were both majorly impressed by that one guy, due to both the quality of his music and perfomance. he had this insane homemade instrument which he played with his whole body. crazy cool. he also wore a tshirt for a restaurant in maui that my mother raves and dreams about, which made me smile.

the drama, we also agreed, had the most attractive drummer ever. she was this very slight punk girl with pink hair, very cute, and she was a good drummer to boot. her drumkit was black with red flames on it; they almost matched her hair. the lead singer was very suitably indie rock--actually, both the singer/guitarist and bassist were--in dyed black hair, all black clothes, including the one-size-too-small button-up longsleeve shirt to emphasize his tall, skinny frame. the music was all right, too. lyrical formula was a little laughable--pick one line (e.g., "i can't believe this is real"), repeat throughout the song with variations almost exclusively on tone, emphasis, and emotional delivery. sometimes, he helt his hands, molded into fists of desperation, up to the side of his head and closed his eyes, moaning the lyrics as if to improve the emotional punch of his delivery. they were pretty gosh-derned rockin', though.

the next band, 20 minute loop, was five people--two guitars, bass, drums, and a little keyboard synth--with some harmozed male-female vocals. they were very tight, musically, and the music was pretty. i bought their second cd; they sounded like they would best translate into recorded music of any of the bands i'd seen last night. and it did. neat stuff.

aveo played last. aveo had some fangirls up front, looking at each other, grinning, and boogeying upon recognition of each song they chose to play. the singer asked for "a slab more vocals" during soundcheck, then turned around and said, "a slab? what the fuck? what the fuck is a slab?!" anyway, it was pretty indie rock stuff, they rocked out and whatnot, but i was exhausted. i stayed for the end only because, as i turned to leave, they said they would only do one more song. they did at least two more, but it was ok. i just sat in the back, then stood in the rain for 20 minutes, waiting for a bus so i didn't have to walk 15 blocks home in the middle of the night.

anyway, i have come to the conclusion that going to shows equals good, so i'm going to have to make the effort to do it more often. even when i don't know the bands playing. especially when i don't know the bands playing. fuck other people; i can have fun alone. but next time, i'll bring a notebook and pen.