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Wednesday, December 1st, 2004
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12:40 pm - The Return of the Thin White Duke
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so, i'm working on doing a presentation for japanese class about Amano Yoshitaka, artist for many wonderful things including the final fantasy series. some may even recall he and neil gaiman created a short sandman graphic novel together called "The Dream Hunters", which i own and love. well, looks like those two are together again, according to Amano's website, and working on a fantasy project called "The Return of the Thin White Duke". the art is, of course, based on David Bowie.
how can i resist a combination like THAT? i oh so want it and it doesn't seem to be currently available. naturally. thank god for Amano's website gallery, at least.
so yeah, end of yearning post.
current mood:  impressed
current music: David Bowie - Station to Station
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| Wednesday, November 17th, 2004
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10:09 pm - my mysterious love of phil elv(e)rum
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it's been a few months since i wrote about the microphones/mount eerie. and it's still important to me, so here i am writing about it all again.
nothing else is like this music. not any other idol of worship has come close to the eerie intimacy of these songs. eerie's really the word...how did he know that too? i don't know, i'm ever renewing my bafflement. he's singing about his life, clearly...but he's singing about my life in ridiculous detail. images that convey so much no other image ever has by mere coincidence...in song. but that's not all.
i've listened to all the songs we have. all the microphones and mount eerie records. and yet, no song reaches me before it's supposed to. songs i've listened to, and know some of the lyrics to, will go by without notice until the exact time they are "supposed" to be noticed. and the level of importance is direct and eerie. the first time i heard the song "i felt your shape", actually HEARD it, not just listened to it, was the day after my birthday. the song contains the lyrics "yesterday, on your birthday". eerie. that's just one example.
so, yeah. i can't help but be amazed by this little man whose name i'm not even sure how to spell correctly (it appears both with and without a second e on different albums). i keep a picture of him next to my computer because...it inspires me. he's standing next to a person in a giant monkey costume in the snow in japan. it's perfect. perfect for me, specifically.
and that's something i felt like sharing.
current mood: in love
current music: the Microphones - Great Ghosts
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| Friday, November 12th, 2004
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8:18 pm - if wishes were horses, i'd have a pony!
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sometimes i wish i had "girly" handwritting. it can be very pretty. nothing too ornate, just...you know, handwritting that when you see it you can tell a girl wrote it.
my writing is legible, but by no means a work of art. my cursive and printed handwritting are equally bad/good. with more focus, i can write with some semblence of style, but it's not often that i try to do so. and don't even ask about my japanese handwritting. if you thought it was hard to write quickly and neatly in englsih...oy (oi).
that ends this random thought.
current mood: messy
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| Sunday, November 7th, 2004
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9:43 am - it's a special number, it's a special day!
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there's an adorable boy asleep in my bed who just turned 23 today.
happy birthday love. you're special everyday, but enjoy this one especially. i mean...23, after all. a sign of things to come just by being. good times.
wish him the happiest of happies with me people!
current mood:  happy
current music: birthday
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, November 6th, 2004
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12:18 pm - the little joys
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i just gave a little chinese girl, probably about 2 years old, a balloon. she bowed to me to say thank you, and her mom explained to me that she was saying thanks, because for all she knows, i know nothing about bowing. it was the cutest thing ever. had she been japanese it would have been even better though, as i could say your welcome in her parent's tongue (and i would look cool). sadly, i know zilch of the chinese. still, it made my day.
current mood: perked
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10:42 am - rant two: the work rant
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i love it when customers tell me to stop talking so they can complain more about the thing they want me to help them with, and ask me questions that, had they let me finish, would have been answered for them. just by listening. it's not like i'm asking them to look it up in a book or something HARD.
and they treat me like i'm the one being rude to them.
customer: "can you let me talk here?"
no. because, you see, you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, and it wastes both my time and YOUR EVER SO PRECIOUS SHOPPING TIME to listen to you bitch. do you not realize it's my job to know what your stupid problem is, so that i know how to answer your questions? i do it to pay my bills. i'm not being unfriendly, i'm just trying to do my job and help you if you'd let me. and i'm still using a polite tone of voice and a smile, so why are you so offended?
People need lessons in adult manners and common courtesy before they should be allowed out of the house. a couple doses of brain power probably wouldn't hurt either.
**despite all my complaining this morning, i'm really not in a bad mood. i'm just really into expressing whatever frustrations float by because i'm tired. i babble when i'm tired, but it keeps me going.**
current mood: amazed at stupidity
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10:14 am - movie and trailer rant
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we went and saw The Incredibles yesterday, and it did indeed live up to its rather lofty title. pretty good as a straight comedy, satire, AND action flick. worth the price of admission for sure. i don't want to give out too much info on it and spoil it for anyone, but i enjoyed it tremendously.
but i wish i could get all those minutes of life wasted watching the trailers before the film back. not only were the films they advertised horrendously bad-looking, but the trailers themselves irritated me to no end. these trailers force me to see a movie i didn't ask to see. brandon and i complain not infrequently that trailers get worse and worse all the time. it's not just giving away the ending anymore...they tell you nearly every moment and plot point (and joke, if it's a comedy), both onset and resolution in something like 3 minutes...if you're lucky and they're short. the worst ones just go on and on and on.
even good films can be victims of bad trailers. pleasantville, for example. i remember the trailer was something around 5 minute long, and it just wouldn't stop, telling you everything that happened. at the time i first saw that trailer, i remember having said, "well, no point in going to see that. that was the whole film". i only actually saw it a couple years after it came out, when i had fortuantely forgotten said trailer. having watched it again on the dvd after i saw the movie, i still agree that it was the entire movie in five minutes. it didn't really leave anything out. i mean, i thought free willy was bad showing the whale escaping in the preview, but the pleasantville on really takes the cake on spoilers.
good trailers do still exist. the ones that make me anxious to go to a good movie. eternal sunshine's trailer comes to mind as an example. maybe it's my true calling--to make good trailers for the world to see. or not. but i'd like to not have to suffer as harshly as i did last night.
current mood:  tired
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004
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4:00 pm - fucked up surreal thing
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i voted Tuesday afternoon. and it was fucked up. here's the story.
i wasn't going to vote for president in this election. i really wasn't. i was gonna vote for all the other positions open for me in the state of connecticut, but i knew my vote for president wouldn't count for too much. connecticut is not a swing state, its gone democrat for every election i can remember, including the last one in which i'd voted. i'd voted for gore, like the majority of the state (and hell of a lot of good it did us). such is the electoral college here. a kerry vote would be a drop in the bucket, and anyone else would be a drop that missed the bucket.
but i saw my mom the weekend before the election, and she told me how disappointed she was that she wasn't going to be able to vote...she was flying out early in the morning on tues. to colorado, because her best friend from nursing school is dying. and so i said to my mother, "who were you going to vote for? i'll vote for them for you." she seemed kind of taken aback, and didn't believe me at first. i told her really, by not voting, she would be like me, and i would stand in for her to vote for president. so she told me what i figured she would...she wanted to vote for bush. and i told her okay, because i knew it wouldn't sway the electoral college of ct either way. i knew at least half the kids on my campus alone were gonna outweigh it, let alone the rest of the state.
so, when it came time to vote, i knew what i was going to do. i walked into the voting booth (which by the way are very easy to use, mechanical things without paper involved) and pulled down all the little levers for the things like state representative and senator, voting mostly democrats. and then i stopped and looked at the levers by the names of the people running for president. and i just stopped for a little bit. could i really do this? could i pull the lever for the guy i wanted to kill innumerable times in the last four years? i looked at kerry's name, and felt no spark calling me to choose his. the rest of the state was doing that for me. i was doing this for my mom. my vote was a no vote for this one. so i pulled down the tab for bush and threw the lever to cast my vote.
by far, this was the most surreal thing i've done in a damn long time. but i still live in a blue state. so i have no guilt. all i have is amazement so many other people in the middle of the country chose that same lever. what a weird fucking world it is.
current mood: weirded out
current music: Guided By Voices - 10-Mix Up The Satellites
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| Sunday, October 31st, 2004
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5:23 pm
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i think i saw all of one home-made halloween costume this year. the rest were clearly purchased at a halloween shop or the disney store.
that makes me sad.
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2:25 pm - i hate maul-idays
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what am i for halloween.
AN IRRATE BUNNY.
i was just a bunny until i got to work this morning.
current mood: angry!
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| Saturday, October 30th, 2004
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2:02 pm - doing homework sometimes makes me think
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what makes you the expert in something? when you site yourself in your footnotes?
still, this* is probably one of the best "dry" history texts i've read. well written, good seperation of facts from the author's theories, and lots of info that, well, nobody else seems to have compiled, since no one cares much about Korea. if there's one thing i've learned from this class, it's that the western world knows JACK about Korea, except what they learned from M*A*S*H*. and half the people who watched that thought it was set during the Vietnam war. then again, most people in this country don't seem to know much about anything at all anyways, so i don't know what i was thinking.
*Korea's Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings
current mood: bitchy?
current music: David Bowie - Life on Mars? (imh)
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, October 25th, 2004
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4:11 pm - ai don niida skoor eniiwei!
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i learned all about tax law...in my sleep!
seriously, brandon was listening to it as i slept, and i dreamt i was at a new job where i had to learn it. so i paid attention to it, even though i was sitting next to another new guy who was really cute. see what a good pupil i am?
does the real presentation have burn victims and horses in it though? the horses, of course, were part of a metaphor...they were jumping fences and things to illustrated the viability of some parts of the law...or something.
current mood: informed
current music: elton john - rocket man (brookstone's music)
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, October 24th, 2004
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12:31 pm - a chance to use these new icons has arrived!
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so i shelled out the $10 for the david bowie reality tour dvd. i was happy because it was so cheap. well, you get what you pay for sometimes.
the actual sound on the dvd is pretty good. there are some excellent performances of some songs i'm really glad to have. songs like "under pressure" and "sunday" are just amazingly good at the show they were recorded at, and if i had better speakers that supported 5.1, i'm sure it would sound incredible. it's also nice to see songs performed live that i hadn't heard live, like "never get old" and "five years". there are other songs that i thought were better when i'd seen him live, and the performances on the dvd were, while not bad by any means, a bit disappointing. the performance of "ziggy stardust", for example, doesn't rock nearly as hard in dublin as it did in d.c. last may. there are also some songs i'd liked to have had live, like "china girl" (which he did at nearly every show), that aren't even on the dvd. all in all though, having this much music (30 songs) performed live is a great value at just $10 dollars.
the actual video quality, however, is the most hilariously terrible dvd presentation i've ever seen. to start off with, the footage they recorded isn't really that great. lots of crappy audience shots, bad camera angles, jerky footage, and uninteresting shots of things like the video screens and the back of the drummer's head. at times when bowie is doing interesting things with his whole body, they'll zoom in to a head shot. or go to the crowd. if i recall, i'd paid a large sum of money at the actual concert to get in front and see as few of the other people in the way as possible. why do i want to watch them instead of bowie on the dvd? i don't know.
had they stopped with that, it would have still been better than what they did in the editing room. someone else commented that watching the dvd "was nothing like seeing the concert, unless you were constantly shaking your head left to right the whole time". that's a pretty accurate depiction of most of the editing. awful, fast shots back and forth during a lot of the songs. and slow motion, freeze frames, white outs, quick freeze-frame montages, black and white stills intercut with the actual performance...it's as if someone did a powerpoint presentation and selected every effect for every slide. brandon and i nearly died laughing, with the addition of making fun of the people who did the editting. it's as if they were trying to make a pbs benefit concert presentation look like something they would assume to see on mtv. had i paid more than $10 for this dvd, i would have been pissed. as it is, chances are i'll just turn off the picture and listen to it like a cd. without enough BOWIE even IN the picture most of the time, it's not worth the eye strain.
so, yeah. i haven't even finished watching it all yet, since it's two hours long and my eyes could only handle so much and i could only laugh so hard. good music though, so i can't complain. i can poke fun though, and that i will do plenty.
current mood:  amused
current music: David Bowie (w/ Gail Ann Dorsey) - Under Pressure (imh)
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(comment on this)
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| Saturday, October 23rd, 2004
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12:35 pm - i love fall
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a pumpkin spice muffin and hot apple cider are almost enough to make coming to the mall worth it this morning.
almost.
current mood: yummy
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 22nd, 2004
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9:51 pm - results
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in the end, the aladdin sane-style icon won out with the most votes. since i also devoted the most time to making that one, it seems pretty reasonable.
still, until i decide i need another icon, i had space to accomadate number one on my list for the time being too, since it was so close. we'll see which one i start to prefer in actual use.
thanks for playing this time folks! it was fun for me.
current mood: funny
current music: The Beatles - Ticket to Ride
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6:56 pm - trying again
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| Thursday, October 21st, 2004
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11:50 am - you all knew it would happen sometime
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| Wednesday, October 20th, 2004
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4:52 pm
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my dad must be lonely. he called me up to see if i wanted to go out with him for dinner. since i'm at work i can't, but we made plans to go out tomorrow instead. that's the major thing that makes my parents' divorce upsetting to me. my mom isn't lonely, she's got her new apartment and life all set up, but my dad doesn't really have anything to do in house all by himself. it's just him and the cats. it'd be easier if my sister was closer to home, she and my dad get along much better than he and i do. but i'm the only one around, and so it kind of falls on me to fill in the gaps now and then.
i feel so bad for my dad. these must be really tough times for him. not that he ever talks about his feelings with me (or anyone) but it's just a list of hardships lately. he's getting a divorce i don't think he wanted, his parents (who they haven't told about the divorce) are rapidly approaching death, his brother has severe cancers all over, and my father himself was just recently diagnosed with prostate cancer (caught very early, thankfully, and it shouldn't take any years off his life, but still).
he and my mom still see each other fairly often and act friendly, but it's not exactly the same, clearly. she'll be coming to take care of him after his treatment for the cancer starts so that's good. when she's not around, i'm the closest one, but my life is so crazy these days too that i don't even go home that much. my dad and i have never been very close...he doesn't like to talk much and i'm kind of confusing. he respects me for being smart and doing well in school, but he doesn't care for any of my interests and looks down on me sometimes as lazy and messy.
so, tomorrow we're having dinner. should be...i don't know. it'll just be something i'll do.
current mood: depressed from this
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| Saturday, October 16th, 2004
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10:45 am
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if nothing else, at least people surprise me pleasantly now and then.
yesterday was a good day. and i felt like maybe a few of you out there had one too. i hope you did.
current mood:  relaxed
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, October 10th, 2004
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1:13 pm - always a surprise
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i had a reading assignment for my modern Korean history class reading a short story by a man named Yi Sang, who lived from 1910 to 1937. the professor also gave us a larger selection of his art and poems we didn't have to really read, but just look over. she said the story was "really weird".
what she didn't say is that he was known for being a "transgressive" author, and that he was bloody brilliant. these are two of my favorite things. i was amazed and showed his stuff to brandon, who concurred with my opinion immediately. i can only imagine he sounds even better in Korean, since these are just translations. here's a sample, one of his poems:
"Holding the razorblade my arms became severed and fell off. Looking closer I see how cold and pale they are as if seriously threatened by something. Confronted with this I stood my pair of lost arms up as candleholders to decorate my room with. The arms are dead but seem to show all the more nothing but fear of me. Such frail etiquette i consider more lovely than any flower basin."
i've never had homework make my day before. much happiness has resulted from this discovery.
current mood: amazed
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