May 30, 2004

Bel Canto

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I’ve been try­ing to fig­ure out how Bel Canto has cre­ated such ice cold music, then I real­ized that a lot of the mood comes not only from the chords, but the instru­ments them­selves. Most of them have no rever­ber­a­tion, and the ones that do begin with a stac­cato prick. On top of that, there’s no steady beat, just awk­ward, mil­i­tary style plucks. Add in some airy vocals with what I assume is a soprano sax (it’s a lit­tle too brassy to be a clar­inet, but sounds like a reed instru­ment nonethe­less), and almost any type of music would sound cold.

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May 30, 2004

A Cat’s Internal Schedule

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In the morn­ings, Dolly will wake up from my alarm. When it rings, whether she’s on my legs, on her pil­low, on my neck, or against the wall, she’ll walk to the foot of the bed and stare at the door. At night, she’s usu­ally in my room by the time I go to bed. I think she’s finally been able to adapt to my sched­ule because it’s the first time I’ve been able to con­sis­tently go to bed and wake up for more two months.

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May 28, 2004

Journey

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Thumbnail: Journey

Bus rides are always either really good or really bad.

They’re really good when I find a win­dow seat. That’s when I can tune out com­pletely, lose myself in my music, and become totally obliv­i­ous to any­thing going on around me. I get to watch every­thing pass by and drift in and out of my thoughts. It’s when I get the most think­ing done dur­ing the day (even more than in the shower).

They’re really bad when I can’t find a seat and I’m left stand­ing up. I keep my music low so that I can hear any announce­ments by the bus dri­ver, or peo­ple try­ing to get by. I’m always on guard about where I should be mov­ing or when a seat might become avail­able. And music on a low vol­ume isn’t really worth lis­ten­ing to.

One of the rea­sons why I haven’t bought a car is because I’d lose all my think­ing time. Every day I can reflect for an hour going to work and an hour com­ing back when I’m on the bus. If I was in a car, I’d be too busy pay­ing atten­tion to the road, to bad dri­vers, to traf­fic lights, to pedes­tri­ans. I wouldn’t be able to think, and I’d prob­a­bly write a lot less.

Some days, when I’m com­ing close to my stop, I wish that the bus would just keep going, just keep dri­ving, and never stop. I’d ride it from morn­ing to night, lis­ten­ing to my music, just enjoy­ing the feel­ing of going some­where and nowhere at the same time.

Thinking about noth­ing and everything.

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May 28, 2004

Rebel

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The more some­one pushes me, the more I lose interest.

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May 28, 2004

Train 48

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There are three rea­sons I watch Train 48:

  1. Zack gets into the most hilar­i­ously fucked-up situations
  2. Krista Sutton in busi­ness attire (even though her hair is sorta stupid)
  3. Only losers watch Train 48
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May 26, 2004

Seeing Through

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I hate how trans­par­ent peo­ple can be. Let me guess…you want to impress this girl, you want to talk about your­self, you want some of my fries, you think that girl has a nice ass, you love your rep­u­ta­tion as a char­ac­ter, you want me to lis­ten to this song.

I only con­sider it trans­par­ent when these peo­ple never actu­ally say what they think or what. It’s not like they begin with, “I only act this way around you cause I want in your pants”, or “I don’t really care about you but I’ll let you speak first so I can have my turn later”, or “I want some of your fries so I keep ask­ing about how good they are so you’ll offer me some”, or “You’re hot so I’m going to stare”, or “I want a crazy rep­u­ta­tion so I’m going to act crazy”, or “I want to be the one who intro­duced you to this song”.

I’ve been told that I’m very trans­par­ent when it comes to peo­ple I don’t like, and hope­fully that’s the only case for me. I gen­er­ally won’t go around telling peo­ple that I hate them, but I’d rather some­one know than not know. That way they won’t waste their time with me and I won’t waste my time with them.

Things would cer­tainly be a lot bet­ter that way.

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May 26, 2004

The Deadliest Combo

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So Tristan finally updated their site for the spring 2004 col­lec­tion. There’s some­thing about a girl in a dress shirt and a blazer. And if there’s no dress shirt involved, well…that’s even better.

I won­der if any­one else melts just look­ing at her. It’s prob­a­bly just me. I can’t be blamed though. The redhead-blazer combo is deadly.

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May 26, 2004

The Equivalent In Work Hours

2

Over the week­end I bought a dress shirt (with the lit­tle plas­tic insert things that keep the col­lar straight), a silk tie, and a pair of Quicksilver board­ies. I’ve been buy­ing more than I should. I keep cal­cu­lat­ing the price of things in terms of num­ber of work hours.

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May 24, 2004

The Perfect Temperature

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The per­fect tem­per­a­ture is when it’s warm enough to sleep with the win­dow open but cold enough to need the warmth of a nice duvet.

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May 22, 2004

Mellisonant Apogee

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I could never under­stand why some songs could make my eyes water.

  • Radiohead — Paranoid Android, with its con­tra­dic­tory chords
  • Thrice — Artist in the Ambulance, with its repent­ing, inspi­ra­tional movements
  • Dreamtheater — Disappear, as the harp leads to dis­tor­tion in a bit­ter­sweet explosion
  • Billy Talent — Nothing to Lose, with its heartwrench­ing chorus
  • Godspeed, You Black Emperor! — Hungover as the Queen in Maida Vale, right when a sin­gle vio­lin inter­rupts the sermon
  • No Motiv — Born Again, when the drums kick in heavy and lead the lis­tener to the present
  • Lovage — Anger Management, with its pin­ing soft rock melody
  • The Dears — Heartless Romantic, with its thump­ing, dis­torted bass hits against the dron­ing organ synth and dual vocals
  • Elliot Smith — Waltz #2, with its steady, but heart-breaking tone
  • Bad Astronaut — These Days, every time the effu­sive cho­rus rushes in
  • Strung Out — Match Book, in its entire ener­getic hopefulness
  • Postal Service — The Dream Of Evan And Chan, through all the open­ing lines
  • Misfits — Saturday Night, as soon as the drag­ging gui­tars kick in
  • Portishead — Undenied, with Beths frag­ile voice accom­pa­ny­ing a sim­ple, dis­torted loop

For the longest time I had assumed that it was the songs them­selves, com­posed so well with so much pain, that would blur my vision. These songs were sad, and tears were the proper response.

Then I heard some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, some­thing that was calm­ing yet lift­ing. A dreamy song by Modest Mouse called Float On, that filled me with an inde­scrib­able sat­is­fac­tion every time I heard it. And I real­ized that all these songs, as sad as they are, were mak­ing me happy.

So happy that tears are the proper response.

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May 22, 2004

Saturday Blogroll

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It’s always Saturday morn­ing when I feel like find­ing out how peo­ple are doing. Saturdays are the only time that I don’t feel rushed to be doing some­thing, so I can take my time and read what peo­ple have to say. The thing is, find­ing out how peo­ple are doing sim­ply con­sists of check­ing my blogroll, and no one ever updates on Saturday morn­ings. It’s not a very good sys­tem. I end up brows­ing though other peo­ples blogrolls until I find one that’s inter­est­ing, and that’s gen­er­ally how my blogroll gets bigger.

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May 21, 2004

Not Long Enough Weekend

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Long Weekend.

Oh Yes.

I had a spot reserved on a camp­site at Bon Echo for the three days, but opted out to work on a few small projects and errands, and take it easy. I haven’t had a week­end to myself in too long.

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May 21, 2004

What Work Has Taught Me So Far

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I’m learn­ing more things at work than I had ever imag­ined was pos­si­ble. Now I under­stand things like the impor­tance of mak­ing a bud­get, the loop­holes to look out for on a lease, the dif­fer­ence between writ­ing an asset off as an expense or depre­ci­at­ing it, or even some­thing like the eco­nomic fac­tors con­sid­ered in set­ting monthly goals. There are also gen­eral work things I never knew about, like how to deal with sales­men, how to leave mes­sages, what’s con­sid­ered a good health plan, gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions vs. union reg­u­la­tions, etc. I’ve even had to learn how to be a print pro­duc­tion coor­di­na­tor for marketing/PR mate­ri­als. Then on top of all of this, I’m learn­ing about the entire eso­teric den­tal indus­try, from the per­son­al­i­ties of den­tists and den­tur­ists to the man­u­fac­tur­ing process of every­thing from crowns to cast par­tial den­tures to haw­ley retain­ers, just so I can under­stand the tar­get audi­ence and under­stand what I’m marketing.

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May 19, 2004

Secret Group Hugs

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Every so often I’ll read a con­fes­sion on grouphug.us that will make me think of one of my friends, as if he or she may have been the one to write the it. And even more rarely, I’ll read one that makes me think that I wrote it, even though I know I didn’t, and this is one of them:

270642834: i wear my retainer, even when i don’t have to, cuz it makes me feel nerdy, and nerds turn me on.

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May 19, 2004

Hairmark

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My boss walked in to my office the other day and intro­duced me to the newest hire, a tech who also hap­pens to be a very com­pe­tent artist. The man tells me that he occa­sion­ally sees me on the bus in the morn­ing, so I ask him if he’s sure that it’s me and not some other Asian guy. He tells me with no hes­i­ta­tion, as if he’d been wait­ing for me to ask him this ques­tion, that it was my hair that gave me away.

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