"so, screw california"

(uh oh...this new pandora thing makes my music references really easy to figure out sometimes...)

One theme I have increasingly become aware of as I have grown is that much of what we encounter on a day-to-day basis is "human-made". Rules, laws, mores--all constructed by us humans. (Realizing this as a kid could have been a ready salve for many an angst, but alas...)

When I first moved to Burlington, I wrote several songs. Full-fledged songs with words and chords and everything, that I still often sing in the shower or on walks, etc. (Someday I will make myself brandish them at an open-mic night somewhere...) One of them was about softly shaking my head on behalf of people that think they can run away towards some external idea and it would suddenly make everything internal better. My first chorus throws a jab at people romanticizing California. This evening I discovered someone else has put the same thing in a song, too. (...hence this blog post title...not my words, but this other song's...)

So, having poked plenty of scorn at other people clinging to social or personal constructs, it's only prudent to turn that same scorn on myself from time to time. This round is about relationships. Why do I think I want one? Do I really? And if so, and if I am fortunate to find one...who's to say it will last. These are questions which I once thought I had answers to...and now...I don't know. And what's more, I don't know if I ever will have the answers.

I want something to believe in. (Something personally constructed.) I need something to believe in. Can I give that to myself?...I don't know. I'm not sure what it would even be, this thing to believe in. This is an interesting bit of philosophy that I'm sure entire books have been written about over the past several hundred years. But maybe everybody just has to figure it out for themself.

I'm just gonna do what I gotta do (as John Legend--stealing Aretha's chords--would say...) Maybe constructs are just made to be broken, and you can only ever count on yourself.

"This next song, I don't know if you've heard it. It's a song about cheating. But it's a nice, sexy song about cheating. It kinda makes you wanna cheat. It's called, 'She Don't Have to Know'..." --John Legend at the end of a live track

(And despite myself and everything I stand for...I really like that goddamn song...)

no really, he's that awesome

(...more serious writing about "monastic aspirations" continues to be postponed, likely until the weekend, when this crazy week is behind me.)

Now is just a quick bit of wit, from two Maine natives expressing shameless admiration for one of our favorite sons:



And now...
"Goodnight, you princes of Maine, kings of New England."

two songs you MUST listen to

Spending Sunday late-night figuring out what music and Mathematica have in common. (Well, I already know what they have in common, but I need to figure out an articulate way to put it...) A perfect soundscape for such an endeavor, I figured, was the algorithmically-generated playlists of Pandora. I've been a huge fan of this site for a while now...but just tonight I created a new station based on the artist Rogue Wave. This may now be my favorite station in my account there...even better than some of the ones I've spent months tweaking to my every musical whim! I don't want to jinx anything, but I've been listening to this station for well over an hour or so now, and I haven't needed to hit the "next" button once...

Anyway, I came across two songs everyone must absolutely check out (and probably in this order):

"Elevator Love Letter" by Stars
"In The Morning" by The Coral

And might I suggest as a low tempo palette-cleanser:

"Crush the Camera" by Rogue Wave

You're welcome. ...back to work.


(so much for work... 11:27 pm update: just figured out how to put a classy sidebar on my blog listing my most recent Pandora song bookmarks. Oh, technology.)

monastic aspirations, pt. 1

For someone who is not remotely religious, and, has somewhat fallen off the spiritual wagon in the past year or so (for reasons of not having had anyone to talk Eastern philosophy with in a long time, not bothering to re-read favorite texts from said philosophy, and increasingly taking on more of a cold, mathematical view of the universe) I find I am oddly enough continuing to develop "monastic aspirations".

Someday I would really love to go vegan. I realize, however, that such an attempt would probably be doomed to failure because:

1. I can't eat soy, and not a lot of commercial foods aimed at vegans use sources of protein other than that. I would probably spend a lot of time in the kitchen as a mad scientist, trying to extract protein from other plant sources. (Actually, this doesn't sound so bad.) I've heard you can do it with wheat gluten.

...and then more earthly whining...

2. I like seafood.
3. I love yogurt (both for taste and protein) and cheese.

I can however, continue to iterate my diet towards a more vegan-esque makeup. The current thing I am working on jettisoning is milk. I don't really need milk. I use it in cereal and baking. These uses can withstand alternative substances. I've already written about how the rice milk from Full Circle pretty much sucks, and today I've got some more positive news. I finally found the little repository of alternative dairy-like beverages at Schnuck's yesterday. And was totally stoked to find they had almond milk. (They also had a few brands of soy and rice milk--even Rice Dream brand, which is, as far as rice milk goes, pretty good--but I am giving up on those two for obvious reasons.) They had one brand of almond milk, so I got a quart each of the two versions: original and vanilla. I have already gone all the way through the vanilla one. This stuff is good. Evidently they make oat milk, too. I am so trying it (even if I must trek to Urbana or even buy it online...)

I have more to write, specifically regarding grad school and love, but these will have to be writings for other times. I've got a lot to do today and should get to working on all of it...

"there's something wrong with being copied in a memo, in the form of a big ugly demo..."

So I'm spending Friday night in. This is perfectly ok because, one, I could have gone out dancing with friends tonight but pansy-ed out (because I'm tired and broke) and two, because I've got stuff going on both Saturday and Sunday nights. (Actually, when I put it that way...I should probably be being productive tonight...hm, nah...) So instead I will recount a tale of my Saturday previous.

I get excited about little things. I'm not sure if this is inherently who I am, or someone I became at some time in my life for purposes of coping with said life, but I do know by this point it is essential to my being. There is this bar in town that has all sort of goodies in the ladies' room, including body lotion, spray-on deodorant, hair spray, peppermints, and (free) tampons. Now let me tell you--when you have dry skin, as I do, you very much appreciate when a business is intelligent enough to put lotion in the bathroom. Washing hands and then not putting lotion on in the winter is rather uncomfortable. =( So suffice it to say, this place already had my allegiance. Well, I was prevented from being a hermit last Saturday by a couple of work buddies who were going to this place for dinner and drinks (including the dude responsible for the introvert/extrovert quote in a previous post). I hadn't been to this place in a while, and was happily surprised by the newest addition to the restroom luxuries:



Washcloths to dry one's hands with! How awesome is that?! There was a little sign on the paper towel dispenser saying something like "restroom amenities provided by staff. soiled cloth hand towels in hamper, paper towels in trash". Drying one's hands with cloth is a lot less rough on dry skin than paper towels, so this is just a dream come true for me. Plus, my little inner hippie is very impressed that they are also cutting down on their paper waste.

Besides the washcloths, the rest of the evening was very lovely, also. It's nice to begin to feel less and less like a hermit. My work buddies were glad that I seem to have finally come out of a months-long funk and am being sociable again. A lot of people have had a lot of really nice things to say about me in the past week. I don't really know why all this positivity is converging on me all of a sudden, but it sure is well-timed, I'd say. There were also a couple not-so-nice things said about me this week (evidently I'm an even worse judge of character than I realized, or more accurately, I'm even better at deliberately ignoring my character judging abilities than I realized...), but the balance of it all is still positive enough to prevent me from getting down. Even though I'm somewhat in a holding pattern this first part of the year while I wait to see where the second half will take me, I'm quickly discovering there is still enough friendship in this foreign land to keep me from crashing into the Hudson.

out of context

You know, with a different picture, this ad could take on a whole other meaning. (But that program probably wouldn't be suitable for PBS. Unless it was sufficiently "artistic".)



In other news, yesterday's brooding has been downgraded to something that could probably be taken care of by one of those really small Ben & Jerry's cups. However, upon realizing (while chatting yesterday eve with my recently-turned-health-nut little bro, who was--despite said health-nut-ness--eating a pint of oatmeal cookie B&J's) that I hadn't eaten any of their ice cream in oh...well, at least since I left Vermont, I've decided it's time to fix that. Tomorrow, at lunch. And I'm probably going to go for the pint, but it's also probably going to be the low-fat, fro-yo Half-Baked.

And if you don't know what the following is all about, then you should probably go look it up... (oh, Google...is there anything you can't make interesting?)

"when sad," she said, "i do what i do best. i take to the keys."

Endings she could handle, misunderstandings...she could not. But it was out of her hands now, and what would be, would be.

This one would have to be settled the old-fashioned way, she feared...with some Ben & Jerry's and a fresh haircut.