Monthly Archives: April 2004

Guilt-Free Selfishness

I’ve been brave enough to lis­ten to The Postal Service late­ly, although my enjoy­ment is restrict­ed to head­phones on the bus. It’s still some­thing that’s a lit­tle too per­son­al to be lis­ten­ing through speak­ers, and for some rea­son, I’m not com­fort­able with oth­ers hear­ing the same songs that I do. It’s as if being able to hear the same trip­py beats and soft voic­es gives oth­er peo­ple the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence the mem­o­ries that the music brings to my mind; curves in a gen­tle face, car rides through the thick sum­mer air, ner­vous fum­blings on the couch, the scent of unfa­mil­iar sheets.

They’re all good mem­o­ries, noth­ing painful any­more, but it’s all some­thing I’d like to keep to myself for just a lit­tle longer.

Moving To Clearview

The mov­ing is most­ly fin­ished, and all that’s left is a bunch of com­put­ers and mon­i­tors from Trolley’s and Wheaties’s old place, and a small freez­er, suit, and food dish from mine. There’s still lots of unpack­ing to do; the 24-foot mov­ing van we rent­ed was actu­al­ly too small, and some stuff had to be dropped off at the new place before the rest could be fit in. The small freez­er is a bit of a wor­ry, but hope­ful­ly we’ll be able to bor­row my boss’s 4Runner and have Nick’s help to move it in on the week­end.

We end­ed up hav­ing nine peo­ple help­ing the three of us, twelve peo­ple mov­ing in total, so things went fair­ly effi­cient­ly.

One Out Of Two Ain't Bad

Just fin­ished writ­ing my eco­nom­ics exam. I found out last night that the exam was at 9:00 am instead of 2:00 pm. Usually, I make a last minute check of the sched­ule before I go to sleep the day before, so it was a shock. The last few hours before an exam are inte­gral in my abil­i­ty to pass, so my plan to study with Aaron basi­cal­ly fell through.

I have no idea how well I did though. Going in, I was think­ing that it would be a sure fail, but I end­ed up con­fi­dent­ly answer­ing the major­i­ty of the ques­tions. I only read through the mate­r­i­al once, and did­n’t do any review. If I do some­how end up pass­ing this course, than either:

  • I can remem­ber 90% of what I under­stand or
  • eco­nom­ics is a real­ly easy pro­gram com­pared to comp sci, or
  • first year cours­es are extreme­ly sim­ple after pass­ing fourth year ones, or
  • there was some sort of divine inter­ven­tion

I’ve decid­ed that just pass­ing one of my cours­es will my sat­is­fy­ing. That way the term won’t be a com­plete waste.

The Only One I Keep

I found an old receipt in my wal­let while pack­ing up and clean­ing today. It was for a VCR I pur­chased two years ago for the par­ents of an ex-girl­friend. I got the extra two-year extend­ed war­ran­ty, and even though we’ve long been bro­ken up, I still kept the receipt just in case the par­ents ever decid­ed to con­tact me if the VCR ever broke. The war­ran­ty expired this February though, so I can final­ly toss the receipt. I hope the VCR is still okay.

The Differences Of Sad Songs

I have one playlist of all the sad songs in my col­lec­tion. I named it OAC because that was the year I first made the playlist (it has since come to define that time in my life), and it’s grown from 11 songs to over 50.

I late­ly find myself skip­ping songs when I lis­ten to that par­tic­u­lar playlist, and to me, the entire point of playlists is so that one does­n’t have to skip songs. I’ve start­ed to dis­tin­guish between two types of sad emo­tions, and with this dis­tinc­tion comes the sep­a­ra­tion of two types of sad songs.

There is the “true sad”, which delves into depres­sion. Songs such as Tindersticks – Trouble Every Day, or Dir En Grey – Mushi are the per­fect com­pli­ments for such a mood. Then there’s the “hurts-so-good sad”, where there’s bare­ly any sad­ness at all, but just enough to remind one­self of what one has been through and how far one has come. The ben­e­fi­cial sad­ness, which does good and not harm. The type of lin­ger­ing, resid­ual sad­ness that almost leaves one crav­ing more of the once famil­iar feel­ing. And with this beau­ti­ful emo­tion goes songs such as Bad Astronaut – These Days, Portishead – Wondering Star, Red Hot Chili Peppers – Otherside.

I need to make anoth­er playlist.