Posts tagged with "music"

First Pho, More Music, Christmas Shopping

I went for some phở with Iain, Pat, Jason, and Mike on the week-end. I had a fuck­ing great time. Mike is a great per­son to hang out with. I had Chinese BBQ pork with my noo­dles though, so I’m not sure if it can be clas­si­fied as authen­tic phở.

I met Thom, Mel, Ryan, and Mel on the week-end. I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out what I’ve done to deserve the com­pa­ny of such a great group of friends.

Thom is a good per­son to talk to. It turns out that we share the same inter­est and embar­rase­ment in solo pho­tog­ra­phy. We’ve agreed to go togeth­er some night. He’s giv­en me some Slash’s Snakepit, Theatre Of Tragedy (which fea­tures some nice female vocals), Paradise Lost, and Tiamat music to sort through.

Aaron was also able to pro­vide me with some Aphex Twin, Hooverphonic, Lamb, Morcheeba, Omni Trio, Supreme Beings of Leisure, St. Germain, Unkle, and Thievery Corporation to lis­ten to. He accept­ed my MD play­er as a gift, but I made sure that he was com­fort­able with it.

It turns out that Ryan and I share some class­es togeth­er too. He knows me as the per­son who plays GBA in class all day, and who gets dirty looks from the teacher as a result. I feel ter­ri­bly bad know­ing this. I always believed that my play­ing was unknown to those around me. I feel as if I’ve insult­ed some teach­ers who don’t deserve to be insult­ed. Of course, the major­i­ty of them deserve to have me play­ing in their faces at the front of the class with the sound cranked, but there are a few that I feel don’t deserve this. I’m still unre­pen­tant about most of the sit­u­a­tion though, since my game play­ing actu­al­ly aids my con­cen­tra­tion.

I went Christmas shop­ping with Aaron, Thom, and Mel on the week­end. An old lady told me that I looked like Sean Lennon. I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing. I found some great can­dles at the Body Shop with a scent called Snow. It’s a very neu­tral smelling scent that’s very inof­fen­sive which I’ve been burn­ing all day to aid in my study­ing.

Conditioner, Moon Mix, Test, Music

I always get freaked out when on I put on con­di­tion­er. I hear things about it being car­cino­genic if you leave it in your hair for extend­ed peri­ods of time, or if you don’t wash it out cor­rect­ly. The bot­tle says to leave it in for one to three min­utes. And what if I leave it in there for longer? Will my scalp start to sting, or my hair start to fall out? It just leaves my hair so soft and man­age­able that I can’t stop using it.

Today was the first time I got to try out my moon mix, since it got dark so ear­ly, with every­thing I looked at being lit with arti­fi­cial light. It worked so well, and I’m pleased that I was able to pick out so many of the right songs on the first try, although a few rogue songs some­how man­aged to slip in there.

I have a test in DNA Computing and Quantum Computing tomor­row that I should be study­ing for, but I don’t under­stand a sin­gle thing since the last test. Being that I have no oth­er class­es tomor­row, I plan on study­ing for the whole day until my test, which is at 5:30 pm. I hope I can under­stand every­thing by then.

I’ve down­loaded a shite­load of Dir En Grey and King Crimson songs. It’s tak­ing me a while to get a feel for most of them, but so far I can tell that Dir En Grey isn’t quite my thing in terms of musi­cal tastes, although I’ve put two of their songs in my per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. King Crimson seems to be bet­ter; it’s hard for me to tell because their songs are all so diverse (I imag­ine so after a few mem­ber changes) that it’s hard for me to decide whether I like them as a band or not. I’ve also made sure to keep a few of their songs, such as Epitaph and I Talk to the Wind.

The Feel of Solitude

The night sky out­side my win­dow burns with orange plea­sure, and I try some min­i­mal­is­tic Vincent Gallo songs to mel­low out. It’s work­ing.

Ever since my Christmas trip has been can­celled, I’ve been at a loss for things to do. I real­ly have no plans now. I think I might just spend it here, instead of going home. I think I’ll buy a pair of skates for myself as a Christmas present, and go out on the canal at night, when it’s lone­ly and chilly. The win­ter sky is always breath­tak­ing. I’ll just stay here and relax, not actu­al­ly doing any­thing. Perhaps I’ll be able to catch up on some read­ing, or I can work on some projects I’ve been mean­ing to fin­ish. Sometimes it’s great to be alone, because it’s so bru­tal­ly hon­est when one does­n’t want it to be. The stark real­i­ty allows me to real­ize many things.

Things which need clar­i­ty.

I Write This After Dinner

These titles are get­ting rather vague, which can be a good thing I sup­pose. They sort of remind me of the way Tool names their tracks (Sober, Parabola, H., Stinkfist), which is sort of an equiv­o­cal, gen­er­al state­ment on what their sub­ject mat­ter cov­ers. After all, Stinkfist is great song on fist­ing and soci­etal stan­dards. I’m still unsure as to what my favorite song of all time would be, but that one is def­i­nite­ly with­in the top 5.

I had a great night, feast­ing on Prime chick­en thighs sim­mered in a cream of mush­room sauce on a bed of rice. I tried out a new cider, called Blackthorn, which I find is very sim­i­lar to Strongbow, with a dri­er taste. I’m still fin­ish­ing my Hong Kong milk tea as I write this, made with con­densed milk, of course. Best served very, very strong. I could­n’t find any of the Rickshaw brand, so I went to a med­i­cine store in the mid­dle of Chinatown and bought half a kilo­gram there from a sweet old Chinese woman. It was the first time in my life that I had to use my knowl­edge of the Chinese lan­guage, as I guessed she did­n’t have a prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of English.

I found anoth­er Dears song called No Return, which just sounds so great. It tru­ly fol­lows the form of their “orches­tral pop noir roman­tique” style, where­as some of their songs don’t. Blood Roses by Tori Amos is pret­ty good too, as I enjoy the sound of a harp­si­chord (though my ver­sion of Aria from Goldberg Variations is piano), if it did­n’t have what I feel is too dis­so­nant a vocal part near the end.