What A Wicked Thing To Do

hiqc by how i quit crack
Simply gorgeous. Slow, a little eerie, and melodic vocals. 

Get Low

So, I finally think I am outta my funk. Brain chemicals re-balanced for the moment (thanks for kicking back in serotonin!). That said, I have been listing to happier music, with more reverb, and that I can jump to. Please to enjoy!

shaa.. you dont know JOHN PORCELLINO

J.P. is one with kind heart. His comic's are well known among an extremely small group of people known as indi comic book fans. The good folks back in Denver's or "dogfood town" Kilgore Books are responsible for creating this lovely and well deserved documentary about John and his zen seance of existence. Here's a preview of the upcoming flick. Also here is a link to Johns website go there and buy things

Gotta love

My kind and cool pre-ex-ex made this little diddy and vid to go with. the Glitchyness is still in progress. but I love this noise he made for it. so here it is in the works.

Sim02_agk rough draft from cdexp on Vimeo.

^^åK∑ your day

yummy is this. sooo deranged only those who are ok with some dark will appreciate this. Although, I've always been ok with the artsy twisted shadow side of myself, so I cant say.

Сою́з Сове́тских +日本=Great Advertising

What happens when Dostoevsky meets J-Pop, mixed with a little post modern animation? I'll tell you what, THE COOLEST ADVERTISEMENT ever made for a fake product. My FFL (friend for life) Lonnie Allen is a great cartoonist, you should look him up, and presented me with this little gem.

A day for polish baked goods and photography

It seems that I have been having a lot of days recently where all I want to do is sleep in, grab a Gib's bagel and go find the beauty in life. With the looming date of graduation and the twenty credits of pure, unadulterated crap I am currently taking, I feel the need for some joy to come out of this human zoo called college.

Monday, monday, monday

New week, old book, awesome song

1995

i don’t know how He got the wedding ring off Her finger. i just remember by the end of the night it was in the neighbor’s backyard. lost. to the never mowed grass, the dandelions, and the thistles.
they had a backyard. we had asphalt and a dumpster. both were fun.
“how’d you break your arm?”
Her yellow cast was glaring in the dining room light. no one signed it.
“I slipped on the ice walking to bus stop from work. I am so clumsy.” Her laugh was as out of place as the unnatural yellow of the cast.
She drew back her arm. swung hard. recoiled even faster. He looked unfazed. the ring was gone.
don’t tuck your thumb.
when samantha insulted my friend, i remembered. thumb out. i swung, landed, swung again. no recoil. until a teacher and group of peers surrounded me. my plaid skirt was covered in gravel, my jelly shoes filled, but my arms... free.
i looked at Her. She can. i can. He can’t.
“you seem so much older. how did you learn to be so grown up little lady?”
He replies, “she is really 36. smokes and drinks black coffee everyday.”
“unfiltered,” i reply as i slide off the bar stool. it is closing and bob said i could call out, “last call” to the remaining.
He walks with his head down, mumbling, from the bus stop. Her waist gets larger.
“do do do do, here comes the bus, do do do,” She sings to me.

I couldn't stay at the party

Photo by Hannah Clark

I'm petty
But
When my heart stops
seizing
And
When red flashes stop
Slicing
Through my brain
I'll be done

The Best Parts of Campus

This old machine, part of a mad science lab (?),  robot in disguise (?) is just sitting on the 2nd floor of Bio Sciences and is awesome.

All the bathrooms in Bio and Phys Sci look like this, some have orange quilted benches. I am still waiting to walk out one day and back into 1960.

Sweet Romance

Love is in the air. Many of my friends have been having more luck in the love department lately. I expected to be more embittered then I am about this. After all, losing nerd night for one member to attend a wedding and another to go on a date, is never easily excepted. Also, recently I have just gotten out of ICU for a 3rd degree burn of a relationship. I'm not going to resign myself to being the bitter bitch in a corner, refusing to acknowledge happiness in romance. I have known the lightness of a heart 'all aflutter' and it is a experience that maybe, someday, I would care to undergo again. This video captures the true essence of early romance in a way that I think even the most dedicated of spinsters can appreciate.

king of limbs.

"give up the ghost" has a kind of grizzly bear feel, like the soft-spoken songs from their 'friend' ep. "morning mr magpie" has more of the vibe-like guitar riffs, with thom wailing as usual. "codex" has a kind of coldplay feel, if that isn't sacreligious. melancholy piano chords resonant as a single bass drum beats.


my favorite track is "little by little", though. i'm a chord progression girl, and this one has some good'uns. the incessant drum chattering also keeps it propelled, never stagnant. 


the whole album is dreamy, one you could listen to while lying on your carpet, bemoaning your exhausting life, or celebrating the dots on your ceiling.

The Frosty Frosty

Lately I have come to realize that Laramie is too small to actually sustain a legit cool population. The lack of bands, art scene, club scene, general things to do isn't to blame either. The lack of a coherent "cool" population is due to a self mutilating quality, which occurs when people don't have enough to do. Rather than work towards making Laramie more interesting, most of the brightest are stagnantly squabbling at the "hip" coffee shop (cough *coal creek*) or out posing each other at Front Street (maybe the Ranger, maybe). In bigger places kids just have more to do, they can spread out, frequent more than one coffee shop. More than that though, people just have more interesting things to squabble about.

city country.

so i got called city slicker again yesterday. i was snowshoeing. and i said the word 'meese'. yeah, i know it's moose singular, moose plural. but meese just sounds better. so much more cuddly! that's something i learned when i moved out west. meese are not gentle animals, but killer wildebeests with the thirst for human flesh. or at least that's what i gleaned from the wildlifers' nerd speak (no offense cbell!)


but still, i was snowshoeing. when do i shed my slicker skin? is it like the 'one drop' rule? once you've lived in a city, you can never be blue collar? i don't want to be pooled with the greenies or the greenies-by-proxy, californians. i am from the DMV, muhhfucka! where we call cigarettes jacks, and we dance to go-go. if you don't know who sean taylor is, you're excommunicated. educate yourself:

"even the mayor had a run-in with crack, but we all kept it real and voted him back."


i grew up on 16th&T, about 10 or so blocks from the white haus. i could see the monument from my bedroom window. if i wanted to, i could eat seven dinners within a 5 block radius of my house: italian, mexican, thai, cuban, ethiopian, creole, and mediterranean. and more. i never drove a car until i moved to maryland, and i probably walked 5 miles a day just hanging out with my friends in chinatown, silver spring, and georgetown. i knew which way was north was because 16th is N-S, not because we had some bullshit mountains on the horizon (i kid, i kid). you never ran into people you knew on the street; if you did, you had a stalker. as a senior, we had beach week after we graduated, where we all drank all night and slept all day in rented ocean city condos. as a teen, i got catcalled on a daily basis. not by the resident town drunk, but by assorted cohorts of men all over town. it wasn't a unique occurence, it was a way of life. there were streets you never walked down at night, and there were parks, restaurants, and concert venues that my friends and i called our homes. the center of american civilization was our back yard.


i can understand why some people think that you can never take the city out of someone, and i definitely see why. i drive like i'm from dc. don't use a turn signal? you get the horn. cut me off? you get the horn. going under the speed limit? you get the horn. i am loud, opinionated, and i curse like a sailor. i don't wear cowboy boots and plaid buttondowns every day, but does the average wyomingite? 


i think what people choose to ignore is that the wilderness changes you just as much. small towns are attractive in their own right; i like laramie summers where i run into someone i know every time i go downtown. i love that i can go hiking, nordic skiing, and snowshoeing just outside my town. and being able to drive to kickass places in montana? definitely a plus. but wyoming has definitely tempered me out a little. i listen more, talk less (if you can believe that), and have really enjoyed getting out of the political hotbed that is dc. (not that we don't have political craziness here in WY either...grumble grumble...)


so, call me a city slicker. but i bet that dc could kick the shit out of your country personality too.

Valentine's for All!

Before Valentine's Day was a way to 1) get you laid or 2) make you hate your partner, it was a holiday about a man who married people despite the fact it was illegal. Yeah, St. Valentine married Christians during Roman rule, which was illegal (gasp!). So religious right, maybe fact check? Or look to the past for a little future.

I like you so much better when you're naked

Why do we like each other so much when we are naked? Is it something about stripping off all of those masks that we wear when we are with other people, or is it about putting on another one? I find myself, today of all days, thinking about the essential nature of human connection. I find, that I am often more intimate and more connected to those people that I am not naked with, and less intimate with the ones that I am. Maybe it's me... maybe the desire that I have to connect to other people is less about physical intimacy, and more about intellectual intimacy.
I find it difficult to really put into words all of the things that I am thinking about right now. Yet again, I am finding myself
at a bizarre crossroads where life is asking me what choices I want to make, and how they demonstrate the path that I am on...
But it is so hard for me not to compare. To compare my choices with others, to think that for some reason I am not far enough, good enough, or where I need to be. I know that yesterday I wrote about self-acceptance, something I am really keen to observe in my own life... but I guess my biggest question is: how to you continue to accept yourself when things don't go the way that you want? Or,when you feel like you have made all of these big, life determining decisions, and you don't know if they are right?

I guess that there really isn't an answer, but I know one thing, life is really all we have.. and it is too short to spend so much time obsessing about... So, instead of worrying why or how or whatever about men, relationships, and sex, instead, I choose to life in this moment... and really, I even like myself better when I am naked.....

classical jams.

so i'm doing a recital this april. april 21st, actually. don't feel obligated to come, internet. i don't know if there's room for all of you.


anyways, my engineering hobby is really cutting into my practice time. damn my skillz. so i am waffling about my repertoire (read: set list). 


here are my definites:
2nd sonata, ysaye (first three movements)

TFLN Bell Edition.

Well, it seems we've got quite the conglomeration of contributing ladies now... I do not, however, think this is a bad thing.

I've been asked to share some drunken text gems from last night. I apologize in advance.

"Kaitlin. I need you. As in your boobs. In my face. I'm peeing."

"Sooooooo drunk. In an old preschool? Bathroom has half door."

[Picture of my friend Sam's sweet sweet cleavage] "You like? Hurry the eff up."

"You had better get here like ten minutes ago. Dance. In. The. Alley."

"Next time I see you it's a booby handshake."

Apparently, drunk me likes breasts quite a bit. My mother must be so proud.

I Luv the Library

A playlist for nothing in particular

So, I just happen to be sitting around not thinking about anything in particular. In fact, I wasn't thinking at all. This playlist came out of thin air. No references necessary.


Romance is Boring- Los Campensinos
Heart Shaped Box- Nirvana
Heart in a Case- The Strokes
Heart of Glass- Blondie
Cheated Hearts (Peaches Remix)- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Love Will Tear Us Apart- Joy Division

Ma vie coude

This weekend while I was in Denver, my car got towed. This was after one of the most amazing shows I have ever seen. When I found out that it got towed, it surprisingly didn't bother me that much...

I feel like it was an analogy for everything, for my whole life for the last three years of my existence on this wonderful lil' planet we call home... I was about to say getting lambasted, but I think I have decided it is much like what Palahunik has to say about life... it isn't anything... it just is.

I have been through so much lately, but there are two things that I have learned, or at least am in the process of learning: 1) I have the absolutely best friends in the whole world, even if I don't appreciate them in all the ways that they need and deserve to... they are my saviors. I love you ladies... and the few gents out there that there are. 2) I am perfect, just as I am. Even though I fuck up, even though I don't always do the right thing... I deserve and am amazing. It is taking me my whole life to realize that, well, I am pretty fucking rad.

Finally, my comment on the week. Valentine's Day may be created... and a big part of me wants to go on a big rant... but I won't. Instead I will say: Love those in your life, bless those that aren't anymore, and try your damnest to treat the world with love.... especially yourself. That is my lesson for this year: love yourself, whoever you are, wherever you are at in your life, because someday you won't be there anymore.

So, friends, readers, love to you, blessings, and <3!!>

L'amour et la paix pour tout le monde.

You Better Check Yourself, Befor You Wreck Yourself

It's easy for me to fall back into my own self-righteous bullshit, occasionally I get it blown back in my face making for a painful lesson in humility. I first started listening to The Dead Kennidys when I was 12. Now, many years latter, I have traded in my almost, if not entirely dogmatic punk rock philosophy, for what I fear is a bubblegum coating of it's former self. There was a time when I would scream the lyrics of Holiday in Cambodia to those I saw as ignorient and privileged. "So been to school for a year or two, and you know you seen it all.... playing ethnicky jazz to parade my snazz on your five grand stereo. Braggin' that you know how the niggers feel cold and the slums got so much soul". My big moment of humility comes when I realize how much I am like the fucking people I used to hate. Well, in the words of Jello "It's time to face what you most fear". Anyone wanna join me on a Holiday to Cambodia?

on valentimes.

a brief history of sweethearts, the sugar-flavored chalk dust you love to eat and then remember why you hate them.


to start this post off by alarming you: THE NECCO CORPORATION HAS ALTERED THE TIME-HONORED TRADITION OF SWEETHEARTS AND HAVE NOW MADE THEM "SOFTER AND MORE FUN TO EAT". eating should be fun? i guess when you start off with a shitty piece of candy, the only way to go is up?


some other changes you should expect: 
1. new sayings. no more "fax me" or "be mine", we gotta get some "sext me", "walk of shame", "fb stalk", and so on.


2. new flavors! say goodbye to the old favorites: pepto bismol, toothpaste, and talc! helloooooo blue raspberry, green apple, and secret shame.


3. en espanol! yes, you may now make your crush uncomfortable in two languages! 


and now, some background on those delicious pieces of gypsum board:


a quote from the Necco website, on the eureka moment of the sweetheart:


"In the 1860's, when Daniel Chase, the brother of New England Confectionery Company's founder, Oliver Chase, began printing sayings on the candy. He experimented first with hand tools, and then devised a machine in which the cloth was replaced with a felt roller pad, moistened with vegetable coloring, usually red, which pressed against the die. The die printed the words on the lozenge paste and the double purpose machine cut the lozenges."


gotta love that lozenge paste. those chases were onto something.


so when you are ready to propose to that special someone and get rejected, think Sweethearts™.

Player hater: "Born This Way" Lady GaGa

So I am listening to the new Lady Gaga, which Rolling Stone called better than Madonna's, "Express Yourself." Um, wrong again Rolling Stone (why don't you go back to kissing Bono's ass?). "Born This Way" is completely self serving dribble. Gone is the innuendo of "Pokerface", or the uber pop of "Telephone." Replaced with lyrics that easily could have been on a made for Disney Channel theme song. The most infuriating is the "Don't be a drag, just be a queen." Shut the hell up Lady Gaga. The last thing I need is faux art pop princess telling me I am on "the right track." Go back to making dance floor hits with (while inane) fun and sexy lyrics.

Here is the real thing. Madonna in a "Metropolis" like dystopia, a black cat, and the sexiest saucer of milk evah.

Candidates for Mom

This is a list of woman i wish where my Mother in no particular order.

1) Strong black woman
2) The chick from girl with a dragon tattoo
3) Any of the woman from Golden Girls, except Blanch (the slutty one)
4) Meryl Streep
5) Barbara Walters

Look back

Thinking about all those who I have met who have been/are/will be caught up in "the system". Remembering J. Martinez words "once your in the system, you can never leave." Magnetic locks, timed meals of shitty food eaten in silence, taking monitored showers, dress cods and uniforms, chores, cleaning, folding, digging ditches, moving hundreds of pieces of wood for no reason, not being aloud to speak for a week, lose of privacy in any sense of the word, losing my name, being given a number (it was 332). Well I'm out, and I intend to stay out. I can't say this shit 'reformed' me, but I am a stronger and better person because of it, at very least, I'm not the same breed of idiot that I was. Well, enough time down memory road. Here is a sweet track that has a nice gritty blues feel. Please, enjoy.

Getting the MRS degree

This no joke was a post on a threaded disscussion for my fabrics class.... (yeah they don't appreciate the pun either)

"I think that women like to wear different and nicer fabrics such as silk. The nicer fabrics feel nicer on women's skin and allows us to attract men with the luster and smoothness of these fabrics. Also, since women have ben doing the cleaning and laundry for years, women can take care of the more delicate fabrics that need special care. Men on the other hand are not good at doing laundry or using proper care for the more delicate fabrics. This is a reason why men meanly just have cotton clothing because of the easy care."

I vomitted a little.

Surrender to Sound

The word Islam translates to surrender. I am not on-board with the organized religion boat, however if I where convert, Islam would be the choice. If your gonna do it, why not do it all the way and 'surrender' to your beleif. Non of this half-ass 'only-go-to-church-or-synagogue-on-the-weekend' shit. Plus, I would love access to more soundtracks like this. Listen, enjoy, and Salam to you, my friend.

Our soft light is from a flourescent bulb

The Plight of Hipsters

You Don't Know the Hippest Dinsey Princess? You are so 1999

So apparently the newest meme on the interwebs in hipster ariel. As a former 7 year old (current maturity age 12 thank you), I feel like I have considerable expertise on the subject. First, why Ariel is not the hipster princess. She wishes for legs to look like everyone else.

Breaks hipster law: Never conform, if you are going to conform do so irronically. Next, Ariel is like 16 years old. You can't be the ultimate hipster and be 16, and live with your dad. Hipster fact Ariel does have: she is awkward around Erik's family (butler?) and seems very uncordinated (on land).

So who is the hipster princess? Easy. Belle. Let's us review the facts. First, everyone is always talking about Belle, who is totally to cool to notice.

Second, Belle is a total nerd and talks to animals (face it probably vegan). Also the ultimate bro is all over her and she doesn't give a damn. Girl is ice cold.



Third, she dates a dude with massive facial hair, who hangs out with gay dudes, and collects tons of old shit. Beast is the alpha hipster male. He also cleans up for her, which really even for hipsters is kinda a big deal.

"Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens." -Chuck P.

Better than a V pledge

So here is a little background info, I went to Catholic school for 9 years. On top of that 2 years of Catholic camp... Besides a crippling sense of guilt and preference for plaid, I recently found a "purity pledge" card I got at Catholic camp. I won't comment on that (...) but I also downloaded this sweet song.

Purity Ring is a side project of my fav H-Core turned elctro outfit Gobble Gobble.
 
Ungirthed- Purity Ring

They don't have a recording to buy (yet)......

You're such a drag

Believe me it is a compliment considering the work of one Zola Jesus. The lady is barely two decades old, but she is the reigning neo goth. Think Florence+The Machine rose from the grave to haunt you (yeah, awesome).

Check it
Eulogy- Zola Jesus

Then buy it
Zola Jesus on MySpace

What's going on here?

So you stumbled on to this blog... kudos. Consider this an introduction, a warning, a reminder. First off, sarcasm runs rampant, and no I am not laughing with you. I am laughing at you. Second, this place is a stream of conscienceness for a collective conscious (translation: there is more than one author, so expect the unexpected). Third, well I guess there really isn't a third, but things just sound so much better in threes.
Please to enjoy,
-G