blogosphere!?

i'd forgotten this existed.

complaints

life keeps rolling on. somehow, more than half of another quater has passed me by and i don't know where it went. i'm feeling a little peeved today after scraping together to not-quite-finish this beast of a homework assignment. i hate feeling so lost that i just stumble through my technically-demanding but conceptually-light homework without comprehending a single bit of the significance of the damn equations i'm laboring over.

i feel like i'm in p-chem all over again, blindly creating more entropy in another disheveled excuse for a textbook (actually 300 photocopied pages of a course reader [with terrible hand drawings!] that cost way too much), doing pointless homework assignments for a similar-looking and surprisingly lovable teacher who i resent anyway, and probably with even worse senioritis. and i'm not even going to say that it won't happen again next week, because it will.

other complaints. seriously, does anyone remember last year when i ranted about the stupid rodent who lived on my bedroom roof and made annoying skritchy noises at all hours of the day, and made me install a high-frequency noisemaker and bang on the ceiling with a broomstick? well, those were the days, because now i have a similar problem except instead of rodents it's humans, and instead of skritchy noises it's sex grunts and bad renditions of yesterday's top 40 at all hours of the day.

a silver lining followed by more complaints. the rose lights album tracks are finally on this side of the rockies, and they're actually coming together rather nicely. there are some logistical nightmares which will probably take till like 2015 to resolve, but i'm actually excited to be working on this stuff for once. stay tuned. :)

i just wish i didn't spend every moment in the mixing studio (read: bandmate's generously loaned iMac in a cold, dank basement with a tiny, ineffective space heater, where my only reliable source of warmth is my own body heat generated by banging away at the drumset every half-hour or so) knowing that i should be somewhere else, working on the notes i'm behind on, or putting in greater than zero hours at my job.

which leads to another complaint. my workplace officially can't get it together. it has been literally an entire semester here, and i have not gotten a single sliver of legitimate data to work on. i know it was my fault when i just gave up for a month or so and refused to communicate to the extremely large and frustrating IT operations group. i guess it wasn't really productive to enter into a resentful stalemate like that after a few work requests slipped through the cracks. but you know what, i used to think if i'd actually spent 20 hours a week there actively trying to make things work, maybe this would have been resolved by november. but now, i'm pretty sure i would have just sat at my desk doing homework the whole time, because even when the IT guy actually shows up in person, shit still doesn't get done in the bureaucratic underworld. i've actually been trying for a good while now, and what have i gotten done besides listening to three or four albums all the way through on bus rides to the damn place? yeah, you guessed right. absolutely jack shit. oh, and by the way, your entire front entryway area smells like piss all the time. maybe one of the people in the IT group who do nothing but redirect my help tickets and get them lost should transfer to being a janitor because you seem to need more of those around.

this pointlessness of my "research apprenticeship" (read: free money i should be thankful for, but which i hope you can understand is still exasperatingly unfulfilling), combined with how behind i am in stats class and how pointless everything seems, is making me want to drop out. along with half my entering class, of course, because everyone talks about not making it their first year. but i worry sometimes. my friend wondered why i didn't just drop out of school and become a musician. i'm starting to wonder why myself.


P.S. last (sort of) one: i wish i didn't become an immoral malicious asshole when i'm frustrated or generally upset. i don't know if you know who you are, but i'm sorry for what i've done. i hope to someday be forgiven.

don't touch me, i'm a real live wire

impersonating david byrne appears to be highly correlated with shit going down.

i'm not sure which way it runs.

words i made up when i was little

- owzeeka

- dong-dong

- basklklklklklkl


my mom finally finding those old tapes we'd converted to DVD was probably a mixed blessing. i think i've regressed a few years already.

woozy stuff

i just published a couple of back-entries from china where i couldn't access blogger. it's not much, and i haven't posted pictures yet although if you're my friend on facebook you'll probably have seen them already. perhaps there will be more to come later, when i feel like moving my pictures onto picasa or something.

i did this by hand because the (entirely user-coded) utilities that exist for moving from LJ to blogger still don't work. it's because i love you guys that much.

i'm super jet-lagged (i think the extra two hours from being in seattle kind of seal the deal) and i haven't eaten lunch for two days. grarrr. my friend says it's because my liver hasn't caught up to me yet. i'm just going to go to class and then go home and pass out now.

various highlights from the yunnan trip

some combination of the good, the bad, and the fairly amusing:

- christmas day: eating a dinner of wild mushroom fondue and local delights such as tiny mangoes, a strange fruit called mangosteen, and albino pomegranates.

- the weather: i miss it already, dammit...sitting in this arctic bedroom it's hard to believe i deluded myself into thinking it was spring for a few days.

- it's true: there actually is only one time zone across all of mainland china, which means that in the southwest the sun doesn't rise until 8 am, and sets close to 7 pm, whereas here in shanghai it rises almost at 6 and sets before 5.

- the tour bus: we got awoken at the rude hour of 6 am every day (remember, 2 freaking hours before sunrise)...but to make up for it, our first guide was an absolute storytelling machine. i'm pretty sure i never heard the word "um" come out of his mouth. major props.

- jade dragon snow mountains: not only were they above 15,000 feet in elevation (there was a stand selling mini oxygen tanks and everything), they were damn beautiful and the weather was perfectly sunny for pictures, which will come tomorrow hopefully.

- the terrible food: for some reason, along the way, the trip planners decided to save money and take us to restaurants where they would order some seriously uninspired junk...not joking, i could probably make a better lunch if you gave me some vegetables, a pot of boiling water and salt. as of our travelling mates complained: "we wake up earlier than chickens and eat worse than pigs!"

- the rampant commercialism: another reason i think it would significantly less lame just to plan your own trip to kunming - after a few days of being fed thinly veiled advertisement to buy overpriced silver, jade, tea, medicines, and whatever else they had the opportunity to pitch, it just got old. i mean there is something seriously wrong with a trip where you get herded through the historic district of Dali on little cars in like half an hour, missing any opportunity to take good pictures, but then stay in an obscenely huge gift shop for 3 hours full of things you don't need to buy.

- the old cities: one of the nights we weren't being taken to bad restaurants or advertised to, we got to roam around the historic district of Lijiang, which was really quite picturesque, with a merry street full of pubs that you get to by taking tiny bridges across the characteristic moats that run through the historic streets of old Chinese cities. unfortunately my family has become a little too lame to go prowl the night with, but this would definitely be one of the places i would come back to if i were to visit the province again.

- the tea garden: some beautiful and exquisite architecture and fine art was on display at this private estate in the Dali prefecture that apparently cost 80 million RMB to make, one of the few places we visited where there weren't any blatant attempts to sell us shit. the tea was also really fun, served in three courses, one full-bodied and bitter, the next milky and sweet, and the last filled with the most confusing combination of spices. also pictures to come soon.

- the rock forest: one of china's national "geoparks," full of interesting stone structures left over from an age of being part of the sea bed. again, this would have been more fun if we hadn't been hurried along with a giant gaggle of people but we did manage to get some good pictures in.

- the flower market: the culmination of trying to sell us shit was the last day, where we were brought to Kunming's local "market..." at first I was thinking "oh cool, we're getting a tour of the local artisan trades" or whatever...but it turned out to be another giant gift shop arranged like a maze so that in order to get out, you literally had to pass by every single product that they were selling.

- and of course, the awesome english translations on signs...including gems like "no burning," "please don't fall in the water," "do not tock the gondola," and "be careful of landslide."

Eleven in Twelve: a year-end list in song

Well, I’ll admit to jumping on the bandwagon: I made a year-end list and everyone is about to see it. Being a former radio DJ with fingers itching to make another mixtape to share with the world, I figured I’d let some musical memories speak for me this year.
So I put together twelve songs (one for each month of the year) that were loved, mulled over, sung out loud at random, and put on replay for weeks at a time. They bring back memories in a way that no words could, in a year full of change.
These songs span a year of mercurial relationships, friendships, and alliances, and saw my transition from college life to graduate school. They were listened to obsessively in two cities across the United States I called my home, and culled while sitting in a tour bus in the middle of China. Push play below, or on this nifty website, and enjoy.






P.S. The cover art was nabbed from Flickr under the Creative Commons Licence, and was taken in 2009 by Martin Cathrae.


Playlist:


1) The National, “Runaway” (High Violet, 2010)
            A warm companion to a long nighttime drive through snowy nothingness.

2) Deerhoof, “Behold a Marvel in the Darkness” (Deerhoof vs. Evil, 2011)
            My favorite spaz-rock band calms down a little with some profound musings about love. I’m still pondering that very subject, as well as wondering why the chorus riff sounds so damn familiar.

3) Local Natives, “Cubism Dream” (Gorilla Manor, 2009)
            A few shivers hit me as I contemplate the words of this song while staring out the airplane window on my second or third foray across the nation, on my way to visit new places where my future life might be led.

4) The Strokes, “Under Cover of Darkness” (Angles, 2011)
            Part of me ached to leave everything behind for some worthy, far-off pursuit, exuberantly shaking off the dust of former friends and foes. But meanwhile I suppose I could be satisfied with just hitting play on the iPod and singing along like an idiot.

5)  Sleigh Bells, “Rill Rill” (Treats, 2010)
            The excitement of an unfamiliar and wondrously dark world, of love affairs entangled in mind-blowing and sinister drug plots, of driving through the Nevada desert in a Cadillac with the top down...obviously not exactly what I was doing, but this song calls these things into mind and sometimes it’s fun to live vicariously.

6) Fleet Foxes, “Helplessness Blues” (Helplessness Blues, 2011)
            I often long to sit leisurely in the car alone with a friend, moonbeams palely illuminating our faces and the sound of crickets saturating our ears. i would just pour my soul out while those harmonious voices ring in my ears, delivering verse that reads like philosophical prose but sounds like pure poetry when sung.

7) Jhameel, “THC” (The Human Condition, 2011)
            Not that I spent much time toking up last year, but it was at least more than I had before (which was basically zero). Jhameel also became an unexpected, unofficial summer favorite and that wicked beat conjures up the best of impulsive trips to the beach and basking in the precious Wisconsin summer.

8) Cee-Lo Green, “Fuck You!” (The Lady Killer, 2011)
            It’s a wonder that I’m not as tired of this song as everyone else seems to be, considering how many instruments I’ve played it on, of course belting it out in that ridiculous yelp at the top of my lungs every time. A popular singalong at many a raucous summer party on top of my favorite slanted balcony, and I'm pretty sure we even got applause from the porch across the street, dammit.

9) R.E.M., “Ignoreland” (Automatic for the People, 1992)
            Fun fact, I apparently got into R.E.M. approximately one day after their breakup. They were the soundtrack to a new home, a new school...and "new," cheap-ass furniture fresh from our local Goodwill! This probably didn’t actually save me from any road rage, pounding through the speakers of my rented pickup truck as I begrudgingly helped my new roommates haul a ton of semi-necessary secondhand shit across the interstate.

10) Sufjan Stevens, “Now that I’m Older” (The Age of Adz, 2010)
            Woozy from a weekend of last-minute concert planning, strutting around in a toga and general Wisconsin-style Halloween debauchery with my favorite people, I was startled by the weird beauty of the stuff Sufjan has been doing recently while stumbling through Chinatown on the way back home.

11) Belle & Sebastian, “I Want the World to Stop” (Write About Love, 2010)
            These guys make some fantastic rainy-day music, in my opinion, which was perfect for the rainiest month of the year in Seattle. I wondered quite often why I’d never gotten around to getting a decent pair of rain boots.

12) Deftones, “Minerva” (Deftones, 2003)
            When there are lots of things in life to be bitter about, I find that listening to ridiculous heavy metal helps a little bit. These guys have the talent of fulfilling that urge, while still being able to make some earnestly beautiful music as well.

...so God bless you all, for the song you saved us...



And a happy 2012 to everyone!