5fourteen

wake up in the morning with a head like whatcha do...

2006-11-23T01:50:00.000-05:00

This song makes me happy. As does thinking about stuffing my face with Thanksgiving food, and having two days off this long weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

i don't trust myself with loving you

2006-11-13T00:51:00.000-05:00

Since the end of the year is quickly approaching (you pooh pooh, but it'll be here before you turn around), I think it's about time I did my top albums of 2006. I don't think there's any albums that I want coming out in the next 6 weeks, so I'm feeling pretty confident that I can make my list without leaving anything out. So, without further adieu, here's my top 5 of 2006 (more or less in order):

1. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins-Rabbit Fur Coat
2. Neko Case-Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
3. Pearl Jam-Self-titled
4. John Mayer-Continuum
5. Nina Gordon-Bleeding Heart Graffiti

The Pearl Jam and John Mayer albums have both grown on me a lot since I got them. When listened to Continuum for the first time, I thought it was too mellow (which seems to be the compaint that a lot of people had with it), but after I listened to it a bunch of times, I realized that, yes, it is mellow, but the songs are still great. And Pearl Jam's new CD is the best they've released since No Code. PLUS, I got to see them tour this year, and any year when I see Pearl Jam live is a good year as far as I'm concerned. 2003, when I saw them twice, was an excellent year.

I'm nowhere near ready for my book list, since I have to read 6 more books to get to my goal of 25. Last year I did 40, but for whatever reason I haven't read nearly as much this year. Not because of lack of time, although I have been busy. More like lack of interest.

I will try harder next year, I promise. Not that next year is going to be any less busy for me.

Even though I have almost no money, and I don't ge...

2006-10-29T21:13:00.000-05:00

Even though I have almost no money, and I don't get paid until Friday, I stopped by Borders today and bought Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman. Basically, he goes to all these different places where rock stars died, like where Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down. It sounds really morbid, and it kind of is, but Chuck Klosterman brings humor to it, which sounds wrong, and maybe it is.

In other news, if, for some reason, you have not seen Duncan, here he is:

public service announcement

2006-10-16T22:39:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah, I have a website. I forget sometimes.

I'd just like to take a moment and pimp out Thunderbird, which is Mozilla's email client. I have been a long time user of Outlook Express, and lately the amount of junk mail I've been getting has been so ridiculous that I was having to check my email multiple times a day in order to avoid getting slammed with 500 emails at once. I tried changing the Outlook Express settings to block certain words in email subjects that appear often, and whaddya know, IT DIDN'T WORK. Thunderbird's brilliant junk mail filter saved the day, and they imported all my email settings, which was nice of them.

Plus, it looks better in my start menu than Outlook Express.

I am so boring that I talk about email clients. Deal with it.

addicted

2006-09-19T00:08:00.000-04:00

I'm really behind in terms of what websites the kids are into these days, so I hadn't been on You Tube until a few days ago, but I'm already addicted. I think that any mid to late 90s music video that I could possibly want is on there. I don't really care about watching people do stupid stuff, I just care about seeing Chris and Eddie frolic in the tall grass. Because sharing is caring:

Temple of the Dog-Hunger Strike

waiting on the world to change

2006-09-07T01:02:00.000-04:00

I KNEW IT!

Jessica: I'm not dating John Mayer

I am incredibly excited about John Mayer's new album, Continuum. If the first single is any indication, the album is going to rock. As far as the new single is concerned, I'm really glad to hear someone close to my age singing about their feelings on the war in Iraq. He just brings a point of view that I don't think that people like Eddie Vedder or Neil Young or Bono can.

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could
Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
It's hard to beat the system
When we're standing at a distance
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would have never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

That's why we're waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
It's not that we don't care,
We just know that the fight ain't fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
And we're still waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

this was the year

2006-08-10T02:23:00.000-04:00

After going back and forth on whether or not to buy it, I went to Borders yesterday and purchased Nina Gordon's new album, Bleeding Heart Graffiti, and I'm extremely glad I did, because it's a great album. I was worried about being disappointed, but there was no disappointment at all. Worth the 6 year wait? Maybe. I've been listening to "Bones and a Name" pretty much nonstop all day, and it is such a sad song.

New music, when it's good, is one of my favorite things on Earth.

take to the sky

2006-08-02T23:35:00.000-04:00

HOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHIT.

A Piano: The Tori Amos Collection.

I can't even read the tracklisting for this thing, THAT'S how good it's going to be. It's going to retail for $74.98, which means I need to start putting money away now. I would seriously cry if I didn't have a job. I'd have to sell major organs on the internet or something.

Watch me get fired next week. Just kidding, of course.

tell me what you don't like about yourself

2006-07-30T02:03:00.000-04:00

Oh yay. New season of Nip/Tuck premiering September 5. The new season of House also premieres that night, so I will have a hot date with my couch that night. I have to be old school and tape House because I have a night class, and we don't have anything hi-tech like DVR or TiVo.

On the music front, there are some good things happening. I need to save my sheckels for the new Audioslave, John Mayer and Nina Gordon CDs. So much music, so little time. I really feel that way. I'd love to have a job that pays really well so I can buy CDs until my heart's content. Probably a lot of people want to make lots of money so they can buy expensive clothes, but for me it's music.

This is normal, right?

6 months

2006-07-21T00:45:00.000-04:00

I changed the header graphic. Other than that, nothing here is new. I have no tricks up my sleeve. Why don't you check out Lisa's website?

So I didn't get the new Douglas Coupland book. In...

2006-06-13T23:59:00.000-04:00

So I didn't get the new Douglas Coupland book. Instead I went to Sephora and spent money there, and somehow I ended up with $30 in my checking account. I don't know how.

I did, however, just finish a wonderful book called Sister of My Heart. So so good. It was really kind of a criticism of the gender inequality that has been going on in India for so many years. Like if a woman's husband dies, she isn't supposed to remarry, ever, because it's thought that her bad luck brought about the death of her husband. However, if a man's wife dies, he can remarry as soon as a year later. It really brought all of these injustices to the surface, and even though the book wasn't really like another book I read this year, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, it was somewhat similar in the way it discussed how women are/were treated. The thing that I didn't like about Snow Flower, though, is that the women in the book never bother to ask themselves if how they're being treated is fair. They just accept it, which I guess is normal, but I couldn't get behind that aspect.

I should also mention that I have no idea what the role of women is in India currently. I'm sure that in the more modernized areas things are a lot different than they are in the remote villages. I thought I'd mention that before I got any angry emails.

So now I'm wondering what to read next. I have The Namesake and Brick Lane, both of which are by Indian authors, because I seem to be on an Indian kick. And I know that The Namesake was made into a movie, but movie versions of books really do not interest me that much.

adventure without risk is disneyland

2006-06-07T22:56:00.000-04:00

So the new Douglas Coupland book, JPod, is out, and I don't have it yet for some reason. I've read mixed reviews on it, but I guess there's nothing out there that everyone likes. I've read that it's an update of Microserfs and I've read that it's a worthless pile of crap. I'm not expecting it to be as good as Microserfs or Life After God, but I like everything he's written to some degree.

I actually haven't bought a new book in a while, and I get paid Friday, so perhaps I will treat myself.

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Fresh's Cannabi...

2006-05-22T00:04:00.000-04:00

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Fresh's Cannabis Santal scent and how pot cologne was pretty much the stupidest thing I'd seen in a while. And I've seen some weird stuff. Kabbalah candles, $11 spray bottles of Evian water, etc. However, today the Cannabis Santal was dethroned by...

Pet cologne. Cologne you spray on your pets. There is a perfume kiosk directly outside the store where I work in the mall, and every so often I'll take a look see there, and whaddya know, pet cologne.

Officially the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

graphic design vs. web design

2006-05-20T22:41:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago, I started doing a booklog, and it was quite fun. I am bringing it back soon. I'm pretty much finished, the only problem I'm having is the same problem I had with this website, which is that I can't get my stylesheets to look right in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. And yeah, I know there are other browsers like Opera and such, but if I thought about those, my head would probably explode. The rumor is that the new IE browser will correctly interpret stylesheets, but it's not out yet, and it'll be years before use of it will be widespread.

I recently had a project that I had to print out for one of my graphic design classes. I'm NOT a graphic designer, but I take graphic design classes so that I can apply certain aspects to web design. Plus, I like to fool around with Photoshop more than any normal person should. Anyway, I had to print out this movie poster, and I realized that graphic design is a huge pain in the ass. I hate printing stuff out, and I usually end up ruining stuff when I'm trying to mount it, or when I'm hunched over the desk with an X-acto knife trying to cut something out. My poster had a big glue thumbprint on it, which I tried to rub off, but I just made it worse. I got points off for that.

What's my point? Well, with web design there are all sorts of annoying things to worry about, like what browser the person is using, and sometimes something will look perfect on your monitor, but on someone else's monitor, it'll look like shit, because all monitors are different. Graphic designers don't have to worry about this shit, but they have their own annoying shit to worry about, and quite honestly, I don't have the patience to do half the stuff they do on a regular basis. Package design? You mean I have to painstakingly cut out stuff with an X-acto knife and hope I don't slice my finger off? No thanks. I'll stick to staring at hundreds of lines of code, trying desperately to find one tiny typo.

Graphic designers, my hat's off to you.

misc.

2006-05-14T02:26:00.000-04:00

Dude, WTF is up with this? I saw something about it in Nylon recently, and my brain must've blocked it out. As someone who works in retail, I can attest to the fact that there is some weird shit out there, but this really takes the cake.

In other news, I have three library books waiting to be read, and here I sit, in front of the computer. I have been totally stinking up the joint as far as reading. I'll be lucky if I get 20 books in this year. And it's not like I haven't had the time. I'm working now in addition to going to school, but I still have plenty of time that could be spent reading. However, I have Running with Scissors, which I had to put down during my afternoon class because I was laughing too hard. I know that James Frey has made a lot of people question the authenticity of memoirs, and I could care less if every word that Augusten Burroughs has written is made up, because he is damn funny. But I have a feeling it's not made up, unless he is just a sick individual. Like who would make up eating dog food pellets? No one. Therefore, it has to be true. That's my weird logic. No one would be sick enough to make this stuff up, so it must be true.

Works for me.

Oh yeah, and it's my birthday. I have to work later, so I should be getting to bed.

So OK, what is up with semi-aging rockstars ditchi...

2006-04-30T15:00:00.000-04:00

So OK, what is up with semi-aging rockstars ditching their wives for younger, prettier women? This seems to happen a lot. I won't name names, but it seems to happen all the time. I'm sure that there's all kinds of stuff that goes on within the sanctity of marriage that we the public are not privy to, but when the marriages dissolve, why do these men NEVER date someone their own age? It's like someone your age is fine when you're Joe Nobody, but once you're famous and have tons of money, that just doesn't cut it anymore. It's sort of sickening.

That's one of the reasons I really respect Bono. He's still with his high school sweetheart. I also really respect him because he's willing to put personal politics aside in order to promote what he thinks is important. A lot of people would probably blow off Bush or Blair because they didn't like them, but Bono thinks it's more important to get his message across.

That said, I also respect people like Thom Yorke, who recently turned down Tony Blair's offer to meet and discuss a cause that Thom is involved in. It sounds weird that I respect both points of view, but I think they both have their merit. I'd probably end up taking the Jessica Simpson route and telling Bush to fuck off, but that's just me.

I am super duper excited for Pearl Jam on Tuesday. The newspaper here gave it three out of four stars and said that the sound is more like Vs. and Vitalogy, so I am excited about that. Their last two albums didn't do much of anything for me.

cemetary where i marry the sea

2006-04-29T23:45:00.000-04:00

I'm listening to "Otherside" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which is such an amazing song. I forgot how good. I would like to buy Stadium Arcadium on the 9th, but we will see, I guess. The new issue of SPIN has gotten me excited about the new album. They're also touring this summer, but I don't think I could ever see them again, after being in the front row for one of their shows. And it was a small place, so it wasn't like being in the front row where you're 10 feet away. Oh no. I was like 2 feet away, at most. Directly in front of Anthony Keidis. How can you top that? And they did effing "Sir Psycho Sexy," and you can definitely NOT top being 2 feet away from Anthony Keidis for that.

Did I mention it was free? Oh, I didn't? Well, it was. Those were the days.

In other news, my birthday is in two weeks, so you could buy me Stadium Arcadium and save me the trouble.

howie sometimes finds that he and american airline...

2006-04-26T20:50:00.000-04:00

I'm so very clever. Hey Howie, how about not locking anybody in the bathroom or harrassing flight attendants for awhile, mmkay? That said, I would not have refused sexual advances from Mr. Day. Not that I would've been in a position to recieve them. I saw him after a show once and I just sort of stood there. I feel kind of weird about violating a person's personal space, even when said person is famous, and it's directly after a show, when said person doesn't really have any expectation of privacy. This is what passes for news in my world right now.

BOSTON (April 26) - Pop singer Howie Day won't face any jail time for his rowdy
behavior on a Boston-bound American Airlines flight in December.

Day, 25, was ordered on Wednesday to serve one year
of probation on a charge of interfering with a flight crew for his behavior on a
Dec. 21 flight from Dallas to Boston.

Day, of Brewer, Maine, was returning home for the holidays on
American Airlines Flight 2250 when prosecutors say he became verbally abusive to
the flight crew.
As conditions of his probation, Day must write letters of
apology to American Airlines, as well as the passengers, captain and an
attendant aboard the flight. He must also complete an alcohol counseling
program, said David Procopio, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Dan
Conley.
Day's attorney, Paul V. Kelly, said Day took a sleeping pill to help
him fall asleep aboard the flight, then had a couple of alcoholic drinks.

He disputed prosecutors' description of what happened on the
plane, saying it was "inaccurate and overblown."
Prosecutors said he smoked a cigarette, kicked the backs of
chairs and was verbally abusive to the flight crew. Kelly said he did not smoke
and had a loud altercation with a passenger, not the flight crew.

If Day complies with the conditions of the probation, the
charge of interfering with a flight crew will be dismissed.
"There were no injuries, the operation of the flight itself
was not disturbed, so we feel this is an appropriate punishment," Procopio said.

It wasn't Day's first brush with the law.
In March 2004, Day was arrested in Madison, Wis., for
allegedly locking a woman in the bathroom of a tour bus after she refused his
sexual advances. He then broke the cell phone of another woman who tried to call
police, according to the criminal complaint.
The singer-songwriter received critical acclaim for his 2003
album, "Stop All the World Now," which featured the hit song, "Collide."

the new jew review

2006-04-17T18:10:00.000-04:00

I went to Barnes and Noble today to look for a magazine with good ads for a school assignment (I didn't really find one, but I bought Nylon anyway, because I always find it inspirational from a graphic design perspective [I'm not a graphic designer, though]), and I ran across this magazine called Heeb, subtitle: The New Jew Review. I really absolutely HAD to get it, and I thought my dad would find it funny, but I think he was offended. Oops.

There is really nothing offensive about it, like if you've ever seen the movie The Hebrew Hammer (which I'm going to take a wild guess and say you haven't, because no one has. Except me), it's pretty similar.

I find it funny, which I guess is all that matters.

by the way

2006-04-16T23:23:00.000-04:00

I'm listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which I haven't done in ages. By The Way and Californication are both excellent albums. "Otherside" is one of those songs that I will probably never get sick of. I always enjoy rediscovering albums I haven't listened to in forever. There is a new Chili Peppers album coming out in a few weeks.

More exciting than that, however, is the new PEARL JAM album coming out in two weeks. I get all teenybopper when it comes to Pearl Jam. My teenybopper tendencies are not nearly what they used to be, though. They were on SNL last night, for the first time since 93, I think, and ten years ago I would've been in front of the TV and taping that shit. Now I can take it or leave it. I used to have to get albums the day they came out, now I feel fine waiting a day or two. It's probably an age thing.

Either that, or music just sucks now. Probably both.

north american opossums

2006-04-08T00:18:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Augusten Burrough's Magical Thinking, which I devoured in two days. There were a couple of really good passages from the essay "I Kid You Not," which I feel are worth sharing:

"As a rule, gay guys do not make bad parents; they make excellent parents. Because unlike straight people, gay people can't have kids by accident. Only by power of attorney."

"Let the people who want to have kids, have them. And let the rest of us spend the extra money on ourselves. Being gay doesn't make you a bad person. Not wanting kids doesn't make you a bad person. Perhaps crushing the bones in one little girl's hand makes you a bad person, but that was an accident."

I absolutely loved this book. I checked it out of the library on a whim, knowing nothing about it. I knew it was a memoir, and I was familiar with his other books, Running with Scissors and Dry. I find that I sometimes enjoy books even more when I read them on a complete whim, because there are no expectations. It's sort of like a blank slate. I definitely want to check out the other two books.

You can always tell how much work I have to do for...

2006-03-18T14:28:00.000-05:00

You can always tell how much work I have to do for school by how much I post here. Which means, the amount of work I have right now=a lot. I don't know how I'm going to get it done. I always wait until the last minute, because that seems to be the only way I can get anything done. I really need to break that habit.

Yesterday I finished the new Sarah Dunant book, In the Company of the Courtesan. It was OK. It wasn't so bad that I stopped reading it, but it wasn't paticularly compelling, either. It took me about a week and a half to read, and it was only 360 pages, so it didn't exactly have me hooked.

I'm now reading Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund. I have been going back and forth on this paticular book for about two years, and I finally picked it up and started reading it a few weeks ago. I'm about 50 pages in, and the jury's still out. Nothing has really been grabbing my attention lately.

Now, unfortunately, I really do have to stop procrastinating.

reasons to be beautiful

2006-03-17T21:15:00.000-05:00

I meant to post about this yesterday, but I got distracted.

Find out how your state rates on choice.

My state got a B, which was better than most, but worse than I hoped. Washington state, where I plan to move in the future, got an A+. So that is somewhat reassuring. What isn't reassuring is the number of women who live in states that got Fs that don't have the option of moving to A+ states. The fact that, in 2006, women's civil rights are being threatened, is really really scary to me.

I used to think it wasn't so great here, but then I discovered that it's 10 times worse other places.

no day but today

2006-03-17T00:48:00.000-05:00

I am incredibly emo. I finally saw Rent, and I almost cried like a baby. Damn them. I have a total crush on the character Roger, but probably every girl does. I love that wounded rock star with major baggage thing that he has going on. He has trust issues, I have trust issues. If you haven't seen the movie, see it. It's different from the play, but still excellently done. Probably the best movie I've seen in a long, long time.

I had a whole political entry typed up, but then my sister called. I'm too tired for politics now, unfortunately. Maybe later.

woohoo!

2006-03-06T00:41:00.000-05:00

Um, YAY.

SEATTLE -- Seattle rock band Pearl Jam announced Wednesday that it will release its eighth studio album — and first since 2002 — in early May.

The self-titled CD is also its first release on its new label, J Records.

The album's first single, "World Wide Suicide," will be made available to radio stations March 8, and the same day the song will be available as a free download from the band's Web site, http://www.pearljam.com.

Tour dates in support of "Pearl Jam" will be announced later this month, the band said in a news release.

Pearl Jam was formed in 1991 and rose to prominence during the Northwest's early 1990s grunge movement. The band has sold nearly 60 million albums worldwide.

I will have to download the new single from their website, because rock radio hardly exists at all in this city anymore. This is the case in a lot of cities, I know. I just read (I forget where. Spin maybe?) that K-Rock changed formats recently. How sad. I stopped listening to the radio about 6 or 7 years ago, but it's still sad.

I keep forgetting I have a website.