Today was a pretty boring day. I spent much of the day at work drawing mermaids and trying to make some sense out of one of the books my gorgeous piano instructor, Viktor, sent home with me. It really is a shame that this book, clearly intended for children who are learning piano, seemed so complicated to me. Of course, I have to remind myself that it is stuff that I haven’t been taught yet so I can’t really be expected to understand it yet… but it still does bother me a bit. Aside from that, it was a really blasé day. I woke up on time at 7:30am, I didn’t work out because I decided I’d rather skip Monday instead of Wednesday this week so I could workout with my Mom. I ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast and had a pretty decadent dinner from Whole Foods that was going to be like $30 but thanks to the VISA gift card I won from work last week and my Mom wanting to split, it didn’t cost me a thing. It was delicious. I may elaborate on that a bit later but for now I have a specific topic on my mind. Like I said, it was a pretty boring day, details-wise, but there has been something on my mind all day.
As I mentioned last night, tonight was the premiere of Jessica Simpson’s new reality show, “The Price Of Beauty.” I’ve been really excited to see this show after seeing Jessica’s recent appearances on Oprah and, just today, “The View.” I feel really strongly about what she is doing – putting together this whole show to give the youth of America examples of how beauty has so many different faces across the world, and that the only beauty that truly matters is the beauty inside of us all. This is a message that has always been very near and dear to my heart and I feel extremely grateful to and proud of Jessica for doing this whole thing. I think it is truly astonishing that this girl, who is best known for not knowing the difference between chicken and fish, has decided to use this huge platform she has gotten to try to make a real statement to the world. It may seem silly, but just the thought of it all is nearly bringing a tear to my eye as I type this. I just feel really strongly about this whole thing and have become very emotional hearing her speak of the whole experience in appearances and such to promote the show. You can tell that the entire experience has changed her in such a deep way and she is doing something great to try to share it with the world. There are not enough shows like this on television, and not enough people doing things like this in the world. It is truly inspirational to me, particularly considering that what she is doing with this show is something that I have always dreamed of doing with my own life. No, I have never particularly dreamed of traveling across the world to examine the concepts of beauty in different cultures but I have always dreamed of doing some sort of documentary series on a topic that means a lot to me and that has the power to positively impact the lives and minds of people around the world.
In thinking about the whole concept of the show, I have really been giving a lot of thought to my life and my personal concepts of beauty. I have always been a person who strives to see the beauty in everybody I come in contact with, and I like to think I’ve done a pretty good job of it. What I have had more trouble with in my life has been trying to see the beauty in myself. It’s no secret to anybody who knows me, or even to anybody who has read this blog, that I am a really confident person. I have a pretty staggering amount of faith in my self, my beliefs, my talents and my abilities. I have never really lacked confidence in who I am as a person or what I am capable of achieving in this life. The one area of my life that I have lacked confidence in, though, is my appearance. It’s not that I don’t feel like I have an appeal or am unaware of my strengths, appearance-wise, but all of my life I have always felt as though I have talents, abilities and personality in order to make up for my physical appearance. I have said many times throughout my life that I make up for what I lack in looks in a plethora of other arenas. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I have ever felt like I was ugly or anything like that, but I have certainly felt like I was unattractive. Even in my romantic relationships, I have always felt like I was “dating up,” because I have more often than not dated guys who are socially lacking but very attractive. In most of my relationships I have felt as though my boyfriend was the lure for others to talk to us and I was the reason they stuck around. It is a fact of life that we gravitate towards people we find physically appealing, in one way or another, even if we have no intentions of pursuing a sexual relationship with them. It is simply human nature. As Jewel said, though, “what we call human nature in actuality is human habit.” That’s a discussion for a different day, though. In any sense, I have always felt like I needed to date somebody who I felt was considerably more attractive but considerably less interesting than I am. I think this may explain a lot about why most of my relationships haven’t worked out.
In my younger years, I even went through a series of eating disorders and extreme measures to try to lose weight or distract from my weight or whatever else I could do to get people to look at me instead of my physical appearance. It’s funny, too, because I think a lot of people would be surprised that I am even writing this blog. I don’t behave like somebody who is insecure about their looks. I don’t give off an air of insecurity or anything. I am just like everybody else, though, in the sense that I feel the same insecurities as anybody else does. I just hide them well. More than that, though, I think I stave them off pretty well. I have gotten really good at fighting off my negative feelings about my appearance through affirmations and counteracting those thoughts with more positive thoughts. Still, that type of thing never truly goes away and I still have plenty of moments where I feel fat and disgusting and like nobody will ever love me. It’s a part of life, I suppose. What I know, though, is that no matter what my physical appearance may be there is somebody out there who will love me for everything that I am, both internally and externally. That person is out there – I am sure of it. I will find them eventually. In the meantime, I am working really hard to love and accept every part of my physicality, as well as to mold it all into something I can be genuinely proud of.
As I mentioned before, I do still have plenty of moments where I am not proud of my physical appearance and there are a lot of things that I do to distract from it or try to dress it up. My affinity for wearing designer clothing is one example. My makeup would be another. These are two of the things in my life that I spend the most money and time working on. Of course, neither of these things are solely about trying to take distract people’s eyes from my weight or my thinning hair or whatever else I dislike about my physical appearance. That leads me to a different portion of this topic that I wanted to discuss. On the premiere episode of Jessica Simpson’s “The Price Of Beauty,” Jessica, Ken and Caycee traveled to Thailand to discover some of the things that Thai women do to make themselves feel beautiful, and they visited a tiny village where the women wear golden rings from early childhood in order to elongate their necks and lower their shoulders. The women in this village were very beautiful in their own ways – none of them wore makeup or had fashionable hairstyles or clothes, but their every day clothing looked like they were ready for some sort of celebration. Their clothes were basically rags, but they were full of bright colors and intricate jeweled details. They were really beautiful and seeing this women speak about what all of these things represent to them and how beautiful they feel wearing these gold rings around their necks, it truly was inspiring. It kind of reminded me of my makeup in a lot of ways. I don’t know that many people look at me and think, “Wow, that guy is beautiful,” but when I see myself in the mirror with different makeup looks I have come up with, that is how I feel. It isn’t really about whether or not other people see it or agree, it is about me feeling as if I am beautiful. The same goes for my designer clothes. It isn’t really about making anybody else feel anything really, but about how it makes me feel. These golden rings around these women’s necks, stretching them to longer than they should be naturally, may appear odd or unusual to the rest of the world, but the women wearing them feel like they are really something special and beautiful. That is inspiring.
Of course, this show did not just feature positive concepts of beauty – in Bangkok, Jessica and the crew discovered that skin bleaching is a very popular thing to do. The Thai people consider fair skin a sign of wealth and beauty – the logic is that people with a tan have been out working in the sun. They met with a woman, a former bar singer, who had been so obsessed with having fair skin that she used enough skin bleaching products to basically burn off the skin on her face and leave her extremely discolored. She quit singing because she was so embarrassed by her appearance and couldn’t bear to go outside anymore. She was married when she began doing this, but after her husband saw what had happened to her face he left her. This poor woman basically became a hermit because she was so ashamed of her physical appearance… and for what reason? Because she was so obsessed with trying to be the concept of beauty in her culture. It was really a heartbreaking story and took me back to a lot of different places in my life. I did a lot of crazy things in attempts to lose weight and become the concept of beauty in my culture. I experimented with drugs known to cause weight loss, I vomited up everything I consumed and even, as recently as 2006, completely starved myself in attempts to lose the extra weight that I have carried for pretty much my entire life. What did any of these things really do for me in the end? I still carry the excess weight but now I carry a much heavier excess weight emotionally.
What reason was there for any of this? What did I gain from any of it? The only answer I can come up with is perspective. I gained perspective, and the knowledge that what is truly beautiful about me is what is on the inside; the only beauty that truly matters. Do I still wish to lose weight? Yes, but now I know better than to try any of those unhealthy and self-destructive ways to do it. I have been down those roads and they have only led to feelings much worse than having a few silly insecurities about my appearance. I have even learned to look at myself and every now and then see something special and even just a little bit beautiful. I have learned to appreciate the gifts that I have been given, both internally and externally, and I have learned which beauty is really of value and which is not. It is a pretty powerful thing, and a thing that it really seems like Jessica Simpson may have learned, as well, along this journey. The show was really a beautiful experience – it had it’s share of wacky, fun moments and really touching, enlightening moments, but mainly it really shed a light on what it means to be truly beautiful. I am really excited to see more, and urge anybody who may read this blog to check the show out and give it a chance. No matter what your opinion is of Jessica Simpson, it really is worth taking a look at – it very well may change your perspective on what beauty really is in this world. Thank you for listening, and goodnight.
Tuesday, March 16
Monday, March 15
Chapter 129: Bump In The Road
You know how yesterday I talked about how I didn’t leave the house but still had a really productive and creative day? Well, today I didn’t leave the house, either, but it definitely wasn’t a productive or a creative day. I fell asleep on the couch again last night. Thanks to Daylight Savings Time, it was after 7am when I did finally manage to fall asleep. I tried going to sleep in my bed first, but after laying there for a couple of hours, I got up and went into the living room. I’m not really sure exactly what sleeping on the couch the past two nights is all about, but tonight is the time to get back to my regular routine. After all, I have to get up at my regular time tomorrow and get myself up and ready for work slightly earlier than usual, since I have to take a cab. My Mom is still out of town and is coming back in time for work tomorrow, but she is going in to work at her regular time of 11:30am, instead of her overtime hours that she has been doing every day for the past few months. This means that I have to take a cab to work. One plus side to not leaving the house all weekend is that I didn’t wind up spending any money all weekend, either, and am coming out of the weekend with plenty of money to get through the week, even with my $30 registration fee at the Allegro Academy this week. I should be able to manage that and get through the week without touching the money in my bank account. The only thing I can think of that I need to spend money on is a sheet music notebook for my music class. I don’t know that I will be able to pick one up in time for this week’s lesson, though, unfortunately. This isn’t due to a lack of money but more due to a lack of time. I need to find out the hours of my local Sam Ash music store – hopefully they are open until 9pm so I can have my Mom run me down there after work tomorrow or Tuesday. We’ll see, though.
I woke up just before 12:30pm this afternoon, which is later than I had hoped for. Honestly, it would have been exactly the time I had hoped to wake up had it not been for stupid Daylight Savings Time. That has served as nothing more than an annoyance for me, and I spent all day long feeling like it shouldn’t be the time it was. I decided that my breakfast of pizza rolls and Spaghetti-O’s was so good yesterday that I would go ahead and do it again today. I did switch it up a little bit by having actual leftover pizza instead of pizza rolls. The only reason I did that, though, was because we were out of pizza rolls. I sat on the couch and watched the two new episodes of Oprah from this week, including her big Oscar “after party,” featuring the winners in the four major acting categories, Best Actress Sandra Bullock, Best Supporting Actress Mo’nique, Best Actor Jeff Daniels and Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz. It was a really great episode featuring fairly in-depth interviews with each of these winners, as well as Nate Berkus backstage interviews with the stars at the Oscars and Carson Kressley discussing the best Oscar fashions. I loved Nate Berkus’ backstage interviews – I just find him extremely appealing and am very excited to see more of him come fall when he debuts his own daytime show. I am really excited to see how that goes for him – I think it will do well because, as I mentioned before, he is a very appealing and interesting guy. I like him a lot. My favorite part of Oprah’s Oscar special, though, was her giving Geoffrey Fletcher, screenwriter of “Precious,” a second chance at his acceptance speech. Geoffrey Fletcher is the “other” history-maker at this year’s Oscars as the very first African-American to win the Oscar for screenwriting, (the big talk one, of course, being Katheryn Bigelow being the first woman to win Best Director.) It is really an amazing accomplishment for Geoffrey Fletcher and he was understandably overcome during his speech on the show, so Oprah gave him a chance to do what he would have wanted to do in the moment and he was amazing – so eloquent and gracious. He also spoke very touchingly about what a joy and privilege it is for a screenwriter to see his dialogue be brought to life by such a brilliant cast. I thought he was pretty brilliant and definitely deserving of the Oscar he got – “Precious” really is a complete triumph. Yes, I completely championed “Up In The Air” and stand by that, but “Precious” was also an incredible film and so deserving of all the accolades it has received. I also found Christoph Waltz very adorable, sexy and fascinating in his interview with Oprah – he seemed kind of uncomfortable with the whole thing and in awe of the company he was on that stage with, particularly Jeff Bridges. It was really nice seeing these four Oscar winners sharing the stage, interacting and expressing their mutual respect for one another. I liked it a lot. I also watched an episode Oprah did about Lisa Kudrow’s new reality show, “Who Do You Think You Are,” which follows various celebrities as they trace their genealogical roots. It’s a really cool idea for a show and I am very excited to see what they dig up for some of my favorite stars who are going to be featured, like Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick and, one of my favorite actresses of all-time, Sarah Jessica Parker. Genealogy is not something that I have ever really had much of an interest in, honestly. It seems like a lot of people really believe that it gives them some sort of added insight into the person that they are and I can respect that concept, but I disagree. The history of anybody who may have been related to me is of no significance to who I am as a person. The only history that really affects the person that I am is my own history. Other information is certainly interesting to know, but doesn’t really have any true effect on who I am. This is just my opinion, though, and I do find it fascinating to see how these histories affect others. Should be an interesting show, I think. It was certainly an interesting episode of Oprah. The new reality show that I am really excited for, though, is “Jessica Simpson’s The Price Of Beauty.” This show also got it’s own dedicated episode of Oprah recently, as well, last week. I have always been a pretty big fan of Jessica Simpson. In spite of anything else she has done, she is an extremely gifted vocalist and it makes me sad that people don’t recognize that and even try to lump her into that category of pretty girls who can’t really sing, like Britney Spears. Jessica Simpson has a gorgeous voice and an extreme talent with it, but it has kind of wound up being overshadowed by her image. It’s really a shame. I also have a lot of respect for her because she has always seemed to make it a point to try to effect positive changes in this world, no matter how dumb she may seem, and this new reality show she is doing is no different. Essentially, she and two of her closest friends, Ken Paves and Caycee Cobb, are traveling all across the world to see the ideals of beauty and the extremes people will go to in order to achieve them on different continents and in different cultures. I think it is a brilliant concept and watching her discuss it on Oprah was really impressive and inspiring. This show premieres tomorrow night on VH1 at 10pm and should be a fascinating journey. I am really excited to watch that.
After my mini-marathon of Oprah, I decided to try to do something slightly productive with my day. Last weekend I did a good deal of Spring Cleaning in my bedroom and bathroom, but today I decided to do a different type of Spring Cleaning – I cleaned my computer. There were a LOT of superfluous files, particularly music and videos that had been hanging around on the computer for far too long now. I spent a couple of hours working on that this afternoon, and my computer now seems to be running much quicker and more smoothly since I finished. I have been thinking a lot about it and I think that, once I am in a more financially stable position, I would like to get a new computer. Not just any computer, though – I want to get a Mac. I am thinking that I may look into getting on through Aaron’s, the rent-to-own company that we got this computer through 5 or 6 years ago. I just kind of fell in love with my friend Devin’s Mac computer and feel like Apple is the way of the future – their products just seem considerably more interesting and reliable than Microsoft and Windows. I have also been thinking a lot lately about possibly upgrading my phone. Actually, what I am thinking of doing is actually downgrading it slightly for something that is a little more functional and has a certain status to it – a Blackberry. Sprint doesn’t offer the touchscreen Blackberry Storm, though, so it would be kind of a downgrade going from a touchscreen to a regular QWERTY PDA, but I have been looking into the functionality of the Blackberry lately and feel like it would really be right up my alley. We’ll see what happens with that, though – it will still be a while before I am eligible for upgrade. I have plenty of time to consider my options, as far as phones go.
I did do a load of laundry today, which was also fairly productive but really didn’t take any time at all. Laundry is really, in my opinion, the easiest chore there is, so long as you stay on top of it. You really just have to throw it in and leave it alone until it finishes. While I was doing laundry and watching some other stuff that had been sitting on the DVR for a while, I decided that perhaps I should go ahead and clear out some space on there, as well. Since there is so much new stuff being added to it so frequently lately, with the return of old shows and a lot of new shows starting, I figured it would be a good idea to clear stuff out before stuff that I actually want to keep on there gets deleted due to lack of storage. I have typically kept all the episodes of my favorite shows on there for later re-viewing, but it is actually pretty rare that I go back and re-watch anything, so I figured it was silly to leave them all there taking up storage space, so I deleted a bunch of past episodes of shows and managed to take the DVR from 14% space remaining to 53%. That seemed like a pretty good accomplishment, even though it really took very little time or effort. By the time I finished with laundry and clearing out space on the DVR, I realized it was already about 7:45pm and I had yet to take a shower or eat dinner, so I went ahead and hopped in the shower and took a nice, long, relaxing shower and felt really great coming out of it. I made myself a quick, easy dinner of leftover Arby’s sandwiches and decided to catch up on the past few weeks of “Desperate Housewives,” which have been REALLY good. I really love that show, although this season has been kind of odd. I mentioned back in December when all the shows were leaving for Winter Break how odd and just generally “off” all of my favorite shows had been this season. Fortunately, a few of them seem to be returning much better than when they left – particularly “Desperate Housewives,” and “Gossip Girl.” I was only going to watch one episode in order to be writing this blog and getting ready for bed by 9pm, but I wound up watching all three of the episodes on there, which is why I am still writing at 11:59pm. In fact, it is about to be midnight and I should probably get to sleep. I am feeling pretty ready for bed, actually.
Before I do go to bed, I did want to mention one last thing – iamamiwhoami. For those unfamiliar with this sensation, it is a viral campaign going on for a new release from some musician, but nobody knows who it is. There has been a lot of speculation about who exactly it is that is being promoted with these videos. My personal favorite theory and my hope is that it is Christina Aguilera, who is releasing a new album sometime in the not-too-distant future that is supposed to have a really experimental, electronic sound to it that would really kind of suit the style of music featured in these videos. I don’t know if it is her, though, but she seems to be a popular theory. Another popular theory is that it is Lykke Li, who I was never overly familiar with and downloaded an album from tonight to see what it was like based on all the talk that the music in these videos is similar to hers. I don’t know who it is, but a lot of people are ruling Christina Aguilera after the most recent video premiered tonight, (you can view the new video here,) which kind of shows the face of the artist. The face and body is covered in plastic, saran-wrap type material and you really can’t see much of the face, except the eyes and teeth. The eyes do seem reminiscent of Christina’s but I can’t really tell if it’s her or not. What I do know is that I am anxious to find out who it actually is, because the music in these videos sounds amazing. It is really a fascinating way to promote a new record for whoever it is and I am anxious to see exactly who is behind this whole phenomenon. We’ll see soon enough, I suppose. For now, though, I need to go to bed. Good night.
I woke up just before 12:30pm this afternoon, which is later than I had hoped for. Honestly, it would have been exactly the time I had hoped to wake up had it not been for stupid Daylight Savings Time. That has served as nothing more than an annoyance for me, and I spent all day long feeling like it shouldn’t be the time it was. I decided that my breakfast of pizza rolls and Spaghetti-O’s was so good yesterday that I would go ahead and do it again today. I did switch it up a little bit by having actual leftover pizza instead of pizza rolls. The only reason I did that, though, was because we were out of pizza rolls. I sat on the couch and watched the two new episodes of Oprah from this week, including her big Oscar “after party,” featuring the winners in the four major acting categories, Best Actress Sandra Bullock, Best Supporting Actress Mo’nique, Best Actor Jeff Daniels and Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz. It was a really great episode featuring fairly in-depth interviews with each of these winners, as well as Nate Berkus backstage interviews with the stars at the Oscars and Carson Kressley discussing the best Oscar fashions. I loved Nate Berkus’ backstage interviews – I just find him extremely appealing and am very excited to see more of him come fall when he debuts his own daytime show. I am really excited to see how that goes for him – I think it will do well because, as I mentioned before, he is a very appealing and interesting guy. I like him a lot. My favorite part of Oprah’s Oscar special, though, was her giving Geoffrey Fletcher, screenwriter of “Precious,” a second chance at his acceptance speech. Geoffrey Fletcher is the “other” history-maker at this year’s Oscars as the very first African-American to win the Oscar for screenwriting, (the big talk one, of course, being Katheryn Bigelow being the first woman to win Best Director.) It is really an amazing accomplishment for Geoffrey Fletcher and he was understandably overcome during his speech on the show, so Oprah gave him a chance to do what he would have wanted to do in the moment and he was amazing – so eloquent and gracious. He also spoke very touchingly about what a joy and privilege it is for a screenwriter to see his dialogue be brought to life by such a brilliant cast. I thought he was pretty brilliant and definitely deserving of the Oscar he got – “Precious” really is a complete triumph. Yes, I completely championed “Up In The Air” and stand by that, but “Precious” was also an incredible film and so deserving of all the accolades it has received. I also found Christoph Waltz very adorable, sexy and fascinating in his interview with Oprah – he seemed kind of uncomfortable with the whole thing and in awe of the company he was on that stage with, particularly Jeff Bridges. It was really nice seeing these four Oscar winners sharing the stage, interacting and expressing their mutual respect for one another. I liked it a lot. I also watched an episode Oprah did about Lisa Kudrow’s new reality show, “Who Do You Think You Are,” which follows various celebrities as they trace their genealogical roots. It’s a really cool idea for a show and I am very excited to see what they dig up for some of my favorite stars who are going to be featured, like Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick and, one of my favorite actresses of all-time, Sarah Jessica Parker. Genealogy is not something that I have ever really had much of an interest in, honestly. It seems like a lot of people really believe that it gives them some sort of added insight into the person that they are and I can respect that concept, but I disagree. The history of anybody who may have been related to me is of no significance to who I am as a person. The only history that really affects the person that I am is my own history. Other information is certainly interesting to know, but doesn’t really have any true effect on who I am. This is just my opinion, though, and I do find it fascinating to see how these histories affect others. Should be an interesting show, I think. It was certainly an interesting episode of Oprah. The new reality show that I am really excited for, though, is “Jessica Simpson’s The Price Of Beauty.” This show also got it’s own dedicated episode of Oprah recently, as well, last week. I have always been a pretty big fan of Jessica Simpson. In spite of anything else she has done, she is an extremely gifted vocalist and it makes me sad that people don’t recognize that and even try to lump her into that category of pretty girls who can’t really sing, like Britney Spears. Jessica Simpson has a gorgeous voice and an extreme talent with it, but it has kind of wound up being overshadowed by her image. It’s really a shame. I also have a lot of respect for her because she has always seemed to make it a point to try to effect positive changes in this world, no matter how dumb she may seem, and this new reality show she is doing is no different. Essentially, she and two of her closest friends, Ken Paves and Caycee Cobb, are traveling all across the world to see the ideals of beauty and the extremes people will go to in order to achieve them on different continents and in different cultures. I think it is a brilliant concept and watching her discuss it on Oprah was really impressive and inspiring. This show premieres tomorrow night on VH1 at 10pm and should be a fascinating journey. I am really excited to watch that.
After my mini-marathon of Oprah, I decided to try to do something slightly productive with my day. Last weekend I did a good deal of Spring Cleaning in my bedroom and bathroom, but today I decided to do a different type of Spring Cleaning – I cleaned my computer. There were a LOT of superfluous files, particularly music and videos that had been hanging around on the computer for far too long now. I spent a couple of hours working on that this afternoon, and my computer now seems to be running much quicker and more smoothly since I finished. I have been thinking a lot about it and I think that, once I am in a more financially stable position, I would like to get a new computer. Not just any computer, though – I want to get a Mac. I am thinking that I may look into getting on through Aaron’s, the rent-to-own company that we got this computer through 5 or 6 years ago. I just kind of fell in love with my friend Devin’s Mac computer and feel like Apple is the way of the future – their products just seem considerably more interesting and reliable than Microsoft and Windows. I have also been thinking a lot lately about possibly upgrading my phone. Actually, what I am thinking of doing is actually downgrading it slightly for something that is a little more functional and has a certain status to it – a Blackberry. Sprint doesn’t offer the touchscreen Blackberry Storm, though, so it would be kind of a downgrade going from a touchscreen to a regular QWERTY PDA, but I have been looking into the functionality of the Blackberry lately and feel like it would really be right up my alley. We’ll see what happens with that, though – it will still be a while before I am eligible for upgrade. I have plenty of time to consider my options, as far as phones go.
I did do a load of laundry today, which was also fairly productive but really didn’t take any time at all. Laundry is really, in my opinion, the easiest chore there is, so long as you stay on top of it. You really just have to throw it in and leave it alone until it finishes. While I was doing laundry and watching some other stuff that had been sitting on the DVR for a while, I decided that perhaps I should go ahead and clear out some space on there, as well. Since there is so much new stuff being added to it so frequently lately, with the return of old shows and a lot of new shows starting, I figured it would be a good idea to clear stuff out before stuff that I actually want to keep on there gets deleted due to lack of storage. I have typically kept all the episodes of my favorite shows on there for later re-viewing, but it is actually pretty rare that I go back and re-watch anything, so I figured it was silly to leave them all there taking up storage space, so I deleted a bunch of past episodes of shows and managed to take the DVR from 14% space remaining to 53%. That seemed like a pretty good accomplishment, even though it really took very little time or effort. By the time I finished with laundry and clearing out space on the DVR, I realized it was already about 7:45pm and I had yet to take a shower or eat dinner, so I went ahead and hopped in the shower and took a nice, long, relaxing shower and felt really great coming out of it. I made myself a quick, easy dinner of leftover Arby’s sandwiches and decided to catch up on the past few weeks of “Desperate Housewives,” which have been REALLY good. I really love that show, although this season has been kind of odd. I mentioned back in December when all the shows were leaving for Winter Break how odd and just generally “off” all of my favorite shows had been this season. Fortunately, a few of them seem to be returning much better than when they left – particularly “Desperate Housewives,” and “Gossip Girl.” I was only going to watch one episode in order to be writing this blog and getting ready for bed by 9pm, but I wound up watching all three of the episodes on there, which is why I am still writing at 11:59pm. In fact, it is about to be midnight and I should probably get to sleep. I am feeling pretty ready for bed, actually.
Before I do go to bed, I did want to mention one last thing – iamamiwhoami. For those unfamiliar with this sensation, it is a viral campaign going on for a new release from some musician, but nobody knows who it is. There has been a lot of speculation about who exactly it is that is being promoted with these videos. My personal favorite theory and my hope is that it is Christina Aguilera, who is releasing a new album sometime in the not-too-distant future that is supposed to have a really experimental, electronic sound to it that would really kind of suit the style of music featured in these videos. I don’t know if it is her, though, but she seems to be a popular theory. Another popular theory is that it is Lykke Li, who I was never overly familiar with and downloaded an album from tonight to see what it was like based on all the talk that the music in these videos is similar to hers. I don’t know who it is, but a lot of people are ruling Christina Aguilera after the most recent video premiered tonight, (you can view the new video here,) which kind of shows the face of the artist. The face and body is covered in plastic, saran-wrap type material and you really can’t see much of the face, except the eyes and teeth. The eyes do seem reminiscent of Christina’s but I can’t really tell if it’s her or not. What I do know is that I am anxious to find out who it actually is, because the music in these videos sounds amazing. It is really a fascinating way to promote a new record for whoever it is and I am anxious to see exactly who is behind this whole phenomenon. We’ll see soon enough, I suppose. For now, though, I need to go to bed. Good night.
Sunday, March 14
Chapter 128: A & E
Today was a decent day. It had its share of disappointments but it had its share of positives, as well. I definitely feel like it was a very productive/creative day, which is always a plus. It’s also a bit of a surprise, considering the way the day started. It didn’t start in a bad way, by any means. I fell asleep on the couch watching an episode of “The View” around 4am last night, and woke up this morning around 10am. I knew as soon as I woke that I just hadn’t gotten enough sleep, so I came into my bedroom and went back to sleep in my bed until around 2:30pm. I woke up in a bit of a haze and felt very lazy. I was probably up for a half-hour before I actually brushed my teeth and washed my face. I just didn’t really feel like doing anything. Plus, to make matters worse, yesterday when I was leaving work I started to feel a headache coming on and it was still there when I went to sleep last night, as well as when I woke up this morning/afternoon. It’s pretty unusual that I get headaches in the first place, let alone one that lasts so long. I’ve been getting them pretty frequently these past couple weeks, which I think has to do with the illness I had. I believe it was a sinus thing, and these have been sinus headaches. I am back to feeling pretty much completely normal again, even having lost the cough for the most part, and I am hoping this headache issue goes away next. I figured in the time I had before I had to get ready for the Lady Gaga Flash Mob I would try to catch up on some TV from the past week, because I haven’t watched any of it. I have been having trouble keeping up because a couple of new shows have started recording, (like NBC’s brilliant new show, “Parenthood,” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,”) as well as a few of the old shows I watch returning, (aka, the entire CW schedule, including “Gossip Girl,” “90210” and “Melrose Place.”) Because of this, I have a DVR full of stuff that I haven’t watched. So, I figured I’d devote a little bit of time to that today. Since I woke up so late in the day, it seemed appropriate to have a mid-day type breakfast so I made myself some of those Pizza Roll things and a bowl of Spaghetti-O’s and sat down to an episode of “The View.”
I watched all of the episodes of “The View” from the past week, and found that I hadn’t really missed out on much. It wasn’t that interesting of a week on “The View,” but at least Whoopi Goldberg was back. She was out all last week, and it was still interesting but not near as good without her. Now, I know what you must be thinking – “That’s at least 4 hours in front of the TV.” It is not, though. When it comes to the topical discussion shows, like “The View” or “Chelsea Lately,” I have a tendency to skim through them. Not really skim, per se, but if I don’t have an interest in the guests or the segments they are doing that day, I will just watch the Hot Topics section and then move on. The guests on “The View” this week weren’t all that interesting, so I was able to watch the whole week in a span of about 90 minutes-2 hours. I also watched this week’s episode of “Gossip Girl.” It’s funny because I normally would never leave “Gossip Girl” sitting on the DVR for that long, but I think it was kind of “out of sight, out of mind” for me over the break, so now that it’s back I was still in that frame of mind about it. Now that I’ve actually watched the episode, though, that frame of mind is long gone. This third season of “Gossip Girl” has been very up and down, but they managed to hit on some really interesting ups in this week’s episode and have me pretty excited for next week’s episode. I also watched this week’s “Melrose Place,” which was the last episode for Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and Colin Egglesfield. It’s kind of a shame the way that whole thing went down, because they were fired pretty suddenly and at random, which they have both talked about pretty extensively in interviews and such, and I’m not sure how the show is going to go without them. Ashlee Simpson’s character, Violet, was one of the most interesting parts of the show and they really didn’t tie up her big ball of craziness at all. After having her become an obsessive stalker, revealing that she had been sleeping with her brother before moving to LA and never actually tying up the matter of whether or not she killed her mother, or if that was actually her mother, they really had a million different directions they could have taken her character and it seems like they really wasted her talent on that show. I’m sure me talking about TV shows is terribly fascinating, but I’m going to go ahead and stop it now to move on to other topics before this entire post becomes one giant TV review. Sorry.
So, after a few hours of TV watching and as it was getting a bit later in the day I decided to text Rachel to find out what the plan for the Gaga Flash Mob was this evening. She messaged me back saying that she didn’t think she was going to be able to do it. Apparently her mother needed her to watch her baby sister this evening and was pulling one of those major guilt trips, and she already owed her mother. I can certainly understand that type of situation. I text messaged her back and said it was fine. My headache still hadn’t gone away and I was just feeling kind of a mess this afternoon. As excited as I was about the whole thing, I had already had a strange feeling like something was going to happen to prevent me from taking part, anyway. After my music lessons wound up costing me more than expected, I have found myself running kind of low on funds and was already pretty much needing to cancel on the plans for sushi afterwards, which kind of brought me down on the whole thing already. Plus, I had noticed Rachel’s status updates on Facebook and such hadn’t been very positive and it seemed like she had been having some troubles these past few days. I just had this feeling that she wouldn’t wind up being in a mood to go, anyway. I hadn’t foreseen the whole situation with her mom, but I just had this feeling it wasn’t going to happen. So, when I found out that it wasn’t, I wasn’t overly disappointed or anything. I told Whitney about this a little while later, since she and Nate were planning on coming. I told her that we should still hang out tonight and she didn’t really respond. After a while without a response, I text messaged her again and got a little attitude about her lack of response. Then I felt really bad about having attitude afterwards. I just have this feeling lately about her, Nate and all of my friends that I am just not important enough for them to make time for or make an effort to contact or whatever. I am probably just being over-sensitive, really, but every now and then I allow it to get a little under my skin. As I learned from the book, “How To Make Someone Love You Forever In 90 Minutes Or Less,” I am a Promoter and my key feeling is the feeling of Importance. Unfortunately, this is a feeling that I am severely lacking in my life lately. Don’t get me wrong, I am filled with self-importance, but that is very different from feeling important to the people in my life. Right now, I just don’t feel important to the people in my life, and it sucks. I understand that everybody has their own things going on, but it seems like people would at least want to check in on the people who are their good friends. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. This is really more of a rant, though, and I am going to stop it before it actually gets to that ranting point.
I decided to try my hand at the whole t-shirt painting thing again this afternoon, and it went considerably better than last time. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I believe, my sister gave me a really good tip on painting on fabric – she said to try drawing the design on cardboard first, then going over it in Sharpie or something dark, then kind of tracing it through the fabric. I decided to give this a shot, and it didn’t work out exactly as planned. Unfortunately, the fabric was thick enough that I couldn’t really see it well enough to trace it. I was able to see it enough to have the basic idea of where each word started and ended and was able to wing it well enough to do the same idea I tried last time and have the text not come out lopsided. Of course, I didn’t actually do the same text as last time, but the same idea of cursive handwriting and glitter. This time, in honor of the Gaga Flash Mob, (this was before I knew we weren’t going,) I did the line from the song “Bad Romance,” where she says, “Walk, walk, fashion, baby…” I did the words Walk, Walk and Baby in metallic silver and the word Fashion in pink, and covered the whole thing with a spritz of glitter, which gave it a really cool sparkle. Like I said, this came out much better than last time. It still isn’t something that could pass off for something actually purchased, but it’s a good second attempt. I’m thinking the next thing I try will be an actual drawing on the shirt with my fabric marker and then painting to fill in the colors. I’m really excited by the whole idea and may try it out tomorrow even. We’ll see how that goes.
The new Goldfrapp record, “Head First” leaked today and while I downloaded it, I decided to listen to some of the older Goldfrapp records. While listening to the album before this new one, “Seventh Tree,” I heard what is probably my favorite song of theirs, “A&E” and felt extremely inspired by it. I know that here in America, we see A&E and think of the television network or what the network stands for, Arts & Entertainment, but over in Europe A&E generally stands for Accident & Emergency. Basically, it is what we know as the ER. This song by Goldfrapp is referencing that. The lyrics, in the literal sense, are basically about being so disappointed by an absentee lover that you go out and do something crazy, and wind up in the A&E. The first chorus of the song says, “I was feeling lonely, feeling blue, feeling like I needed you, like I’m waking up surrounded by me, A&E.” The part that really stuck out to me today was the line, “like I’m waking up surrounded by me.” That line to me is a line about feeling completely alone, so alone that you are surrounded with nothing but yourself. To me, it expresses the feeling of being on an island; like you are the only thing in your world. It is a really powerful statement to me, and one that I can certainly relate to. This spoke to me in a very profound way this evening, and I decided that it was time to break out the camera and try my hand at another photoset. First, I went into the bathroom and experimented with makeup a little bit until I came up with a look that I felt really expressed the concept I was going for. I went a little more over the top than I would on an average day and did silver streaks across my cheeks and really overstated silver and purple combinations around my eyes. It was pretty unusual looking and probably would have looked better had I had some sort of foundation to work with, as well. As it was, though, I really liked the look I came up with. I spent a good little while working on the photoset and experimenting with lighting effects, even making a reflector with cardboard and tin foil, and I felt really proud of what I came up with. It’s still nothing overly professional looking and it is just images of myself, but I really liked the way it turned out. I really think I could do some cooler things as a photographer if I could get some people to model for me, or get somebody else to shoot me with me directing them. I just don’t know who to get to model for me – I have some good-looking friends and such, but it isn’t necessarily about the people being good-looking. It’s about finding people who are the right fit for the concepts I have in mind. This is definitely something I want to look into doing more of, though. I am also thinking of maybe trying to work on some of the photos I have already taken of myself in some sort of photo-editing program. It’s times like this that I really miss having Photoshop, because I look at some of the photos I’ve taken and know that I could do some brilliant things with them in Photoshop. Sadly, it is much more difficult than I thought to find a bootlegged version of Photoshop out there and I can’t really afford the $400 or however much the legit version costs. I’m not sure what I’ll use, but I definitely want to look further into photo-editing software to do some more interesting effects on my photos. I also want to look further into finding people to model for me, although I don’t even know where to begin with that. In any sense, you can check out the photoset on my Flickr account.
As I mentioned before, the new Goldfrapp record leaked today. The album is called “Head First,” and I’ve got to say, I am pretty impressed with it. Goldfrapp has long been on my radar and I have had their last two albums on my iPod for ages but I have never been a huge fan of theirs. The album that was kind of their breakthrough, “Supernature,” has a lot of really strong songs on it, like “Ooh La La,” and “Ride A White Horse,” as well as my favorite, “Lovely To C U,” but has always seemed a little too focused on electronics and synthesizers and general production. It was a good album to listen to and a lot of fun, but was really lacking in great lyrics. The follow-up to that album, “Seventh Tree,” was really stripped down, by comparison, and definitely solved the lyrical issues. I really liked that album much more, but this one kind of had the opposite problem to “Supernature” – it had really strong lyrical concepts and such, but most of it lacked the catchiness and unique melodic and production to really make many of the songs stick with you, aside from a few major exceptions, like the aforementioned “A&E.” I was especially impressed with “Head First” because it really is like a combination of the two previous records – it is the one that finally got it right on both fronts. As far as the sound of this record goes, it is really like a combination of the previous two, as well – it is electronic and very experimental, like “Supernature,” but also keeps with the more rootsy and ethereal vibe of “Seventh Tree.” It is clearly very influenced by 80s music, like Hall & Oates and even some Depeche Mode and The Cure type stuff, but the lyrics tend much more towards the positive than the previous records. The album’s first track, and first single, is a song called “Rocket,” which has a very strong Hall & Oates style influence, and a very spunky, upbeat lyric – “I’ve got a rocket, you’re gonna be on it.” When I initially heard this song a while back it immediately put a smile on my face. It is one of those songs that just kind of make you feel happy. It’s a really fun track. This record has a lot of those, actually. There are only 9 tracks on the album, and they are all really great songs. The entire album is pretty brilliant, so there’s really not a need to name personal favorite tracks, although I will call out two that I particularly love. First of all, the title track of the album, “Head First,” which has a much lighter, more airy sound than much of the rest of the album, and a very catchy chorus of simply, “My whole world and I, my whole world and I, my whole world and I, head first in love.” It is more of a mid-tempo track, but still quite upbeat and just has a really fun, happy sound to it. My favorite track, though, is the second song on the album, called “Believer.” It has a very fun, upbeat pop sound to it and a very positive set of lyrics. The chorus says, “Rushing like the sea, you’ve come back to me and I’m a believer, I’m a believer, I’m a believer in you now.” It is really a beautiful sentiment, basically stating that you have found your trust in and have developed faith in somebody. Like I said, the entire album has this sort of positive, fun vibe to it and I definitely think will make for a great workout soundtrack. I really love this record and highly recommend it to everyone.
I completely forgot until I noticed the time a little bit ago that tonight is Daylight Savings Time. I also didn’t realize that it was the Daylight Savings Time where time skips ahead an hour instead of going back an hour. I like the one where you get an extra hour more, especially considering that this one means that it is now 5:29am instead of 4:29am. Either way, I really should have been in bed a while ago. I actually sat down to start writing this blog a few hours ago, but I allowed myself to get distracted a bit. When I say I allowed myself to get distracted I don’t mean that I was looking at something else here on the computer and got delayed on writing, I mean that I got up and went into the living room and put in a DVD and watched my very favorite movie of all-time, “Shortbus.” It wasn’t so much that I got distracted as it was that I actively stopped what I was doing with the intentions of doing something else. Silly, I know. Still, I was kind of glad I did it. As I mentioned, “Shortbus” is my favorite film of all-time. For those who don’t know, “Shortbus” is the second film from John Cameron-Mitchell, and the follow-up to his absolutely brilliant rock/drag odyssey, “Hedwig & The Angry Inch.” “Shortbus” is the story of a group of people experiencing some form of sexual dysfunction in their lives in Manhattan, and the sex club where they all hang out, called Shortbus. The film’s schtick, or the schtick that was attached to the film, is that there is no simulated sex in the movie – every sex scene that takes place in the film is 100% real. Those sex scenes are pretty abundant, as well, considering much of the film takes place in a sex club, complete with random orgies and people fucking, (gay, straight, bisexual, lesbian – you name it,) in front of groups of people. It is really a fascinating film and one that I highly recommend that everyone see. It can be uncomfortable at points for some people, as I learned when I made it a “movie night” selection with a group of friends a couple years ago, but it really is an amazing piece of work and a film that is relatable and really has an important story to tell. I feel like some of the best stories are the ones that are the least comfortable to see or hear. One of the stories, in particular, that really spoke to me is about a gay man who is in a very loving, committed relationship, but just can’t seem to be happy with his life, so he talks his boyfriend into having a threesome, which leads into a polyamorous relationship, in attempts to replace himself. It is really just a completely fascinating film and, like I said, I really feel like it is something everybody should see. They should just make sure their children aren’t in the room, and that they are prepared to see some pretty graphic sexual situations. If you can keep an open mind about it, you will be completely blown away.
Anyway, since it is nearly 6am now and I need to try to get up at a halfway decent time tomorrow, I should probably get to bed. I just can’t let myself sleep until 2:30pm again tomorrow – otherwise I will have trouble going to sleep tomorrow night and may wind up having trouble getting up Monday morning, and I really can’t afford to oversleep Monday morning. I am not looking forward to Monday morning, honestly. I am keeping my fingers crossed, though, for a week that passes much quicker than the past one did. As far as Sunday goes, I don’t really have any plans for it – I need to do a load of laundry. Since I did so much laundry last week, the only laundry that really needs to be done this weekend is the stuff that I wore throughout this past week. I am going to try my best to do laundry every weekend, so I don’t wind up having to do as much as I did last weekend in the future. I am already pretty sure that it won’t last forever and I’ll wind up letting it go a couple weeks again in the future, but I can at least try to keep it from happening anytime soon. Aside from that, I may try working on doing an actual drawing or design on a t-shirt tomorrow and will likely end up catching up on even more TV from the past week. I don’t really know, and I kind of like the idea of that. It’s a good feeling to just have a day that is pretty much entirely open, where I can do pretty much anything that comes to mind. Whether it winds up being just lying around all day watching TV, or doing some sort of cool creative work like I did today, I am looking forward to whatever tomorrow may bring. I guess the best way to get closer to it is to go to bed now. Good night.
I watched all of the episodes of “The View” from the past week, and found that I hadn’t really missed out on much. It wasn’t that interesting of a week on “The View,” but at least Whoopi Goldberg was back. She was out all last week, and it was still interesting but not near as good without her. Now, I know what you must be thinking – “That’s at least 4 hours in front of the TV.” It is not, though. When it comes to the topical discussion shows, like “The View” or “Chelsea Lately,” I have a tendency to skim through them. Not really skim, per se, but if I don’t have an interest in the guests or the segments they are doing that day, I will just watch the Hot Topics section and then move on. The guests on “The View” this week weren’t all that interesting, so I was able to watch the whole week in a span of about 90 minutes-2 hours. I also watched this week’s episode of “Gossip Girl.” It’s funny because I normally would never leave “Gossip Girl” sitting on the DVR for that long, but I think it was kind of “out of sight, out of mind” for me over the break, so now that it’s back I was still in that frame of mind about it. Now that I’ve actually watched the episode, though, that frame of mind is long gone. This third season of “Gossip Girl” has been very up and down, but they managed to hit on some really interesting ups in this week’s episode and have me pretty excited for next week’s episode. I also watched this week’s “Melrose Place,” which was the last episode for Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and Colin Egglesfield. It’s kind of a shame the way that whole thing went down, because they were fired pretty suddenly and at random, which they have both talked about pretty extensively in interviews and such, and I’m not sure how the show is going to go without them. Ashlee Simpson’s character, Violet, was one of the most interesting parts of the show and they really didn’t tie up her big ball of craziness at all. After having her become an obsessive stalker, revealing that she had been sleeping with her brother before moving to LA and never actually tying up the matter of whether or not she killed her mother, or if that was actually her mother, they really had a million different directions they could have taken her character and it seems like they really wasted her talent on that show. I’m sure me talking about TV shows is terribly fascinating, but I’m going to go ahead and stop it now to move on to other topics before this entire post becomes one giant TV review. Sorry.
So, after a few hours of TV watching and as it was getting a bit later in the day I decided to text Rachel to find out what the plan for the Gaga Flash Mob was this evening. She messaged me back saying that she didn’t think she was going to be able to do it. Apparently her mother needed her to watch her baby sister this evening and was pulling one of those major guilt trips, and she already owed her mother. I can certainly understand that type of situation. I text messaged her back and said it was fine. My headache still hadn’t gone away and I was just feeling kind of a mess this afternoon. As excited as I was about the whole thing, I had already had a strange feeling like something was going to happen to prevent me from taking part, anyway. After my music lessons wound up costing me more than expected, I have found myself running kind of low on funds and was already pretty much needing to cancel on the plans for sushi afterwards, which kind of brought me down on the whole thing already. Plus, I had noticed Rachel’s status updates on Facebook and such hadn’t been very positive and it seemed like she had been having some troubles these past few days. I just had this feeling that she wouldn’t wind up being in a mood to go, anyway. I hadn’t foreseen the whole situation with her mom, but I just had this feeling it wasn’t going to happen. So, when I found out that it wasn’t, I wasn’t overly disappointed or anything. I told Whitney about this a little while later, since she and Nate were planning on coming. I told her that we should still hang out tonight and she didn’t really respond. After a while without a response, I text messaged her again and got a little attitude about her lack of response. Then I felt really bad about having attitude afterwards. I just have this feeling lately about her, Nate and all of my friends that I am just not important enough for them to make time for or make an effort to contact or whatever. I am probably just being over-sensitive, really, but every now and then I allow it to get a little under my skin. As I learned from the book, “How To Make Someone Love You Forever In 90 Minutes Or Less,” I am a Promoter and my key feeling is the feeling of Importance. Unfortunately, this is a feeling that I am severely lacking in my life lately. Don’t get me wrong, I am filled with self-importance, but that is very different from feeling important to the people in my life. Right now, I just don’t feel important to the people in my life, and it sucks. I understand that everybody has their own things going on, but it seems like people would at least want to check in on the people who are their good friends. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. This is really more of a rant, though, and I am going to stop it before it actually gets to that ranting point.
I decided to try my hand at the whole t-shirt painting thing again this afternoon, and it went considerably better than last time. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I believe, my sister gave me a really good tip on painting on fabric – she said to try drawing the design on cardboard first, then going over it in Sharpie or something dark, then kind of tracing it through the fabric. I decided to give this a shot, and it didn’t work out exactly as planned. Unfortunately, the fabric was thick enough that I couldn’t really see it well enough to trace it. I was able to see it enough to have the basic idea of where each word started and ended and was able to wing it well enough to do the same idea I tried last time and have the text not come out lopsided. Of course, I didn’t actually do the same text as last time, but the same idea of cursive handwriting and glitter. This time, in honor of the Gaga Flash Mob, (this was before I knew we weren’t going,) I did the line from the song “Bad Romance,” where she says, “Walk, walk, fashion, baby…” I did the words Walk, Walk and Baby in metallic silver and the word Fashion in pink, and covered the whole thing with a spritz of glitter, which gave it a really cool sparkle. Like I said, this came out much better than last time. It still isn’t something that could pass off for something actually purchased, but it’s a good second attempt. I’m thinking the next thing I try will be an actual drawing on the shirt with my fabric marker and then painting to fill in the colors. I’m really excited by the whole idea and may try it out tomorrow even. We’ll see how that goes.
The new Goldfrapp record, “Head First” leaked today and while I downloaded it, I decided to listen to some of the older Goldfrapp records. While listening to the album before this new one, “Seventh Tree,” I heard what is probably my favorite song of theirs, “A&E” and felt extremely inspired by it. I know that here in America, we see A&E and think of the television network or what the network stands for, Arts & Entertainment, but over in Europe A&E generally stands for Accident & Emergency. Basically, it is what we know as the ER. This song by Goldfrapp is referencing that. The lyrics, in the literal sense, are basically about being so disappointed by an absentee lover that you go out and do something crazy, and wind up in the A&E. The first chorus of the song says, “I was feeling lonely, feeling blue, feeling like I needed you, like I’m waking up surrounded by me, A&E.” The part that really stuck out to me today was the line, “like I’m waking up surrounded by me.” That line to me is a line about feeling completely alone, so alone that you are surrounded with nothing but yourself. To me, it expresses the feeling of being on an island; like you are the only thing in your world. It is a really powerful statement to me, and one that I can certainly relate to. This spoke to me in a very profound way this evening, and I decided that it was time to break out the camera and try my hand at another photoset. First, I went into the bathroom and experimented with makeup a little bit until I came up with a look that I felt really expressed the concept I was going for. I went a little more over the top than I would on an average day and did silver streaks across my cheeks and really overstated silver and purple combinations around my eyes. It was pretty unusual looking and probably would have looked better had I had some sort of foundation to work with, as well. As it was, though, I really liked the look I came up with. I spent a good little while working on the photoset and experimenting with lighting effects, even making a reflector with cardboard and tin foil, and I felt really proud of what I came up with. It’s still nothing overly professional looking and it is just images of myself, but I really liked the way it turned out. I really think I could do some cooler things as a photographer if I could get some people to model for me, or get somebody else to shoot me with me directing them. I just don’t know who to get to model for me – I have some good-looking friends and such, but it isn’t necessarily about the people being good-looking. It’s about finding people who are the right fit for the concepts I have in mind. This is definitely something I want to look into doing more of, though. I am also thinking of maybe trying to work on some of the photos I have already taken of myself in some sort of photo-editing program. It’s times like this that I really miss having Photoshop, because I look at some of the photos I’ve taken and know that I could do some brilliant things with them in Photoshop. Sadly, it is much more difficult than I thought to find a bootlegged version of Photoshop out there and I can’t really afford the $400 or however much the legit version costs. I’m not sure what I’ll use, but I definitely want to look further into photo-editing software to do some more interesting effects on my photos. I also want to look further into finding people to model for me, although I don’t even know where to begin with that. In any sense, you can check out the photoset on my Flickr account.
As I mentioned before, the new Goldfrapp record leaked today. The album is called “Head First,” and I’ve got to say, I am pretty impressed with it. Goldfrapp has long been on my radar and I have had their last two albums on my iPod for ages but I have never been a huge fan of theirs. The album that was kind of their breakthrough, “Supernature,” has a lot of really strong songs on it, like “Ooh La La,” and “Ride A White Horse,” as well as my favorite, “Lovely To C U,” but has always seemed a little too focused on electronics and synthesizers and general production. It was a good album to listen to and a lot of fun, but was really lacking in great lyrics. The follow-up to that album, “Seventh Tree,” was really stripped down, by comparison, and definitely solved the lyrical issues. I really liked that album much more, but this one kind of had the opposite problem to “Supernature” – it had really strong lyrical concepts and such, but most of it lacked the catchiness and unique melodic and production to really make many of the songs stick with you, aside from a few major exceptions, like the aforementioned “A&E.” I was especially impressed with “Head First” because it really is like a combination of the two previous records – it is the one that finally got it right on both fronts. As far as the sound of this record goes, it is really like a combination of the previous two, as well – it is electronic and very experimental, like “Supernature,” but also keeps with the more rootsy and ethereal vibe of “Seventh Tree.” It is clearly very influenced by 80s music, like Hall & Oates and even some Depeche Mode and The Cure type stuff, but the lyrics tend much more towards the positive than the previous records. The album’s first track, and first single, is a song called “Rocket,” which has a very strong Hall & Oates style influence, and a very spunky, upbeat lyric – “I’ve got a rocket, you’re gonna be on it.” When I initially heard this song a while back it immediately put a smile on my face. It is one of those songs that just kind of make you feel happy. It’s a really fun track. This record has a lot of those, actually. There are only 9 tracks on the album, and they are all really great songs. The entire album is pretty brilliant, so there’s really not a need to name personal favorite tracks, although I will call out two that I particularly love. First of all, the title track of the album, “Head First,” which has a much lighter, more airy sound than much of the rest of the album, and a very catchy chorus of simply, “My whole world and I, my whole world and I, my whole world and I, head first in love.” It is more of a mid-tempo track, but still quite upbeat and just has a really fun, happy sound to it. My favorite track, though, is the second song on the album, called “Believer.” It has a very fun, upbeat pop sound to it and a very positive set of lyrics. The chorus says, “Rushing like the sea, you’ve come back to me and I’m a believer, I’m a believer, I’m a believer in you now.” It is really a beautiful sentiment, basically stating that you have found your trust in and have developed faith in somebody. Like I said, the entire album has this sort of positive, fun vibe to it and I definitely think will make for a great workout soundtrack. I really love this record and highly recommend it to everyone.
I completely forgot until I noticed the time a little bit ago that tonight is Daylight Savings Time. I also didn’t realize that it was the Daylight Savings Time where time skips ahead an hour instead of going back an hour. I like the one where you get an extra hour more, especially considering that this one means that it is now 5:29am instead of 4:29am. Either way, I really should have been in bed a while ago. I actually sat down to start writing this blog a few hours ago, but I allowed myself to get distracted a bit. When I say I allowed myself to get distracted I don’t mean that I was looking at something else here on the computer and got delayed on writing, I mean that I got up and went into the living room and put in a DVD and watched my very favorite movie of all-time, “Shortbus.” It wasn’t so much that I got distracted as it was that I actively stopped what I was doing with the intentions of doing something else. Silly, I know. Still, I was kind of glad I did it. As I mentioned, “Shortbus” is my favorite film of all-time. For those who don’t know, “Shortbus” is the second film from John Cameron-Mitchell, and the follow-up to his absolutely brilliant rock/drag odyssey, “Hedwig & The Angry Inch.” “Shortbus” is the story of a group of people experiencing some form of sexual dysfunction in their lives in Manhattan, and the sex club where they all hang out, called Shortbus. The film’s schtick, or the schtick that was attached to the film, is that there is no simulated sex in the movie – every sex scene that takes place in the film is 100% real. Those sex scenes are pretty abundant, as well, considering much of the film takes place in a sex club, complete with random orgies and people fucking, (gay, straight, bisexual, lesbian – you name it,) in front of groups of people. It is really a fascinating film and one that I highly recommend that everyone see. It can be uncomfortable at points for some people, as I learned when I made it a “movie night” selection with a group of friends a couple years ago, but it really is an amazing piece of work and a film that is relatable and really has an important story to tell. I feel like some of the best stories are the ones that are the least comfortable to see or hear. One of the stories, in particular, that really spoke to me is about a gay man who is in a very loving, committed relationship, but just can’t seem to be happy with his life, so he talks his boyfriend into having a threesome, which leads into a polyamorous relationship, in attempts to replace himself. It is really just a completely fascinating film and, like I said, I really feel like it is something everybody should see. They should just make sure their children aren’t in the room, and that they are prepared to see some pretty graphic sexual situations. If you can keep an open mind about it, you will be completely blown away.
Anyway, since it is nearly 6am now and I need to try to get up at a halfway decent time tomorrow, I should probably get to bed. I just can’t let myself sleep until 2:30pm again tomorrow – otherwise I will have trouble going to sleep tomorrow night and may wind up having trouble getting up Monday morning, and I really can’t afford to oversleep Monday morning. I am not looking forward to Monday morning, honestly. I am keeping my fingers crossed, though, for a week that passes much quicker than the past one did. As far as Sunday goes, I don’t really have any plans for it – I need to do a load of laundry. Since I did so much laundry last week, the only laundry that really needs to be done this weekend is the stuff that I wore throughout this past week. I am going to try my best to do laundry every weekend, so I don’t wind up having to do as much as I did last weekend in the future. I am already pretty sure that it won’t last forever and I’ll wind up letting it go a couple weeks again in the future, but I can at least try to keep it from happening anytime soon. Aside from that, I may try working on doing an actual drawing or design on a t-shirt tomorrow and will likely end up catching up on even more TV from the past week. I don’t really know, and I kind of like the idea of that. It’s a good feeling to just have a day that is pretty much entirely open, where I can do pretty much anything that comes to mind. Whether it winds up being just lying around all day watching TV, or doing some sort of cool creative work like I did today, I am looking forward to whatever tomorrow may bring. I guess the best way to get closer to it is to go to bed now. Good night.
Saturday, March 13
Chapter 127: If We Ever Meet Again (Chew Fu Club Mix)
Today wasn’t a bad day. It was kind of a long day but overall not a bad one. I woke up on time and wasn’t exactly hopping out of bed, but wasn’t overly tired or anything. I got up and did all the regular things I do every day before working out – coffee, cigarettes, teeth, face, etc. Last night before bed I downloaded the new Dance Spring playlist from Ali’s Blog. Ali’s Blog is one of my favorite music blogs out there. It is not updated as frequently as a lot of the others but Jon Ali, who runs that blog, really puts a focus on quality on his blog. He doesn’t post a leaked album until it has leaked in full quality retail and shies away from a lot of the crap that a lot of other blogs post. Another of my favorite features of Ali’s Blog is the Dance Playlists he puts together for each season. There have only been three so far, but each one is shot full of the hottest remixes of the hottest songs out at the moment. The Dance Spring playlist doesn’t disappoint in the slightest, either. It included mixes of the latest and greatest from some of my favorite artists, including Lady Gaga, Cheryl Cole, Rihanna, Goldfrapp, Selena Gomez, Jason Derulo, Alphabeat, Erik Hassle, JLS, Jason Derulo, and Blake Lewis. My favorite tracks on this mix, though, are the Fonzerelli Radio Edit of Adam Lambert’s “Whataya Want From Me,” which is one of my favorite songs in it’s original form and this mix really adds something completely different to it. My favorite track on this mix, though, is the Chew Fu Club Mix of “If We Ever Meet Again” by Timbaland featuring Katy Perry. I have become kind of obsessed with this song recently and I almost like this remix better than the original version. When I initially heard that Timbaland was working with Katy Perry, I wasn’t sure how it would come out. The finished product, though, is a gorgeous song with one of the best vocal performances I have heard from Katy Perry. She doesn’t sound like herself on this song, in some ways, but she sounds much better than usual. It is a really gorgeous song and has this beautiful, sweeping pop sound that doesn’t sound anything like what you typically hear from Timbaland or Katy Perry. It is brilliant. Since I had downloaded this last night and fell in love with so many of the tracks on it, I figured it would be the perfect thing to work out to this morning. Turns out, I was right! The beats were perfect for working out and kept me motivated to keep moving the whole time. My Mom wasn’t familiar with a lot of the music on the mix, but also seemed to stay pretty motivated the whole time. She even asked about who was singing a lot of the songs, something she typically does when she likes what she’s hearing. I figure that was a good sign. It was a really good workout this morning and I enjoyed it a lot. I don’t know why I didn’t think of trying the Dance Fall or Dance Winter playlists before, because I’m pretty sure they would work just as well. If you want to check out any of these playlists, or any of the other great stuff, visit Ali’s Blog. They are all free downloads and he posts some great stuff. Like I said, it is one of my favorite music blogs out there.
As far as work goes, it was a pretty boring day. My sister left early due to some personal drama that took place in their household last night. She wouldn’t even tell me what it was and said that my Mom would explain. When I saw my Mom on my lunch break, she did explain and it was pretty shocking. I am not going to share it here because it’s just not really my place and I don’t know who all is reading this blog at this point. I have always made it a point to be as honest as possible in this blog when speaking about myself and my own stories, and I have stuck to that even when it has been uncomfortable, but when it comes to stories that are not my own, I don’t feel comfortable going into details. In any sense, I am keeping them on my mind and hoping for the best for them in this situation. I know everything is going to be alright but the whole thing is still enough to kind of freak you out. Today was also one of my co-workers last day. I don’t know how to explain my feelings towards that, honestly. On one hand, this is a person that I spent much of my days talking with and such and I will probably miss that. On the other hand, though, this is also a person who has been the source of a lot of drama in the workplace, much of which she brought on herself, and a person who is constantly sharing her views and really working my last nerve with her closed-mindedness about a lot of things. I certainly won’t miss that. It made for an interesting dynamic today, honestly, because I spent half the day feeling glad that it was her last day and the other half of the day, well… not really feeling the opposite but feeling slightly differently, I guess. I think it’s a good thing all around, for all parties involved. Still, it may make the days pass… well, slightly differently. Blah.
My job has a pretty strict rule against overtime, except for on those rare occasions like what happened last month where they were actually offering it. Otherwise, they are very strictly against it and we all have a day where we have to take an hour lunch every week, and a day where we have to come in 30 minutes late. Tuesday was my hour lunch day and I completely forgot about it. I told my sister about it and she said that it would be fine since I still had my day where I come in 30 minutes late. That day was today. Of course, I didn’t realize that until after I had already clocked in and was sitting there in Available just after 9:30am. I wasn’t supposed to be there until 10am. So, unfortunately, I had to take an hour-long lunch. I hate having to take an hour lunch at work. It is just so boring and there isn’t a lot you can really do with that time sitting in the atrium at the place that shall not be named. The only real option is to walk over to CVS across the street and kill a little time shopping for makeup. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really afford to go shop today and the weather was gross and raining today, so that wasn’t a desirable option. So, I spent the first 15 minutes of my break talking to my Mom, who takes a 15-minute break at the same time that I take my lunch. After she went back upstairs, I went outside to smoke. There was this guy standing by where I sat down that I hadn’t seen around before. He was cute-ish, but not really my type in general. Still, there was something about him I found kind of interesting. I kept catching him looking over at me, but he didn’t approach or say anything so I just went about my business of smoking and dicking around on Facebook on my phone. He walked away a few minutes later and went out the back exit of the building. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention honestly, but I did notice there had been a break in the rain. It was only temporary and a few minutes later, the rain started back up. It wasn’t long after this that I suddenly saw a soda being set down at the other side of the table where I was sitting. I looked up and it was this guy again. He said he had left to walk to this little restaurant across the street but had to turn back because it started raining. Okay, whatever. He then introduced himself, and I introduced myself in kind. Then he sat down and spent the next 30 minutes or so chatting me up. He was nice. Like I said, he was cute-ish and the more I talked to him the more I was kind of like, “Okay, he’s alright.” I don’t know if he was gay or straight or what, but my gaydar was kind of pinged. Plus, I am one of those people who doesn’t get approached randomly by straight guys just wanting to talk. I am very clearly gay, I wear makeup, I have a rainbow tattoo right on my wrist, etc. It just doesn’t happen often, so I assume that if a guy actively seeks me out for conversation he is also gay. This isn’t a foolproof theory, but more often than not it is the case. It was an interesting way to spend my hour lunch, if nothing else.
I spent much of the day drawing. Mainly I was doing concept drawings of various makeup looks for the Lady Gaga Flash Mob tomorrow at Target. I came up with a few different ideas that included a lightning bolt on the face, like that iconic image of Gaga, as well as one with stars on the cheek, one with male and female symbols over the eyes and, my favorite, one with the number 20 on the face, referencing the Natalie Imbruglia song “Twenty,” which I spoke of in last night’s blog. I liked that idea a lot, but it seems like it would go wrong for two different reasons – one, it could wind up looking like one of those silly sports fan painted face type things, and two, the drawings on the face is kind of over the top considering we are supposed to appear to be just regular Target shoppers breaking out in dance. Sure, the Facebook page for the event says to dress Gaga-esque, but I figure you don’t want to stand out TOO much otherwise it seems like it would make it kind of obvious that you were trying to do something unusual there. Either that, or people would just think you’re an attention-seeking whore. Either way, I figure going too far over the top would be a mistake. I am slightly concerned about this event for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are only 8 people confirmed to be taking part. As with many things, though, I’m sure there are plenty of people who intend to show up but haven’t RSVP’d. Also, there isn’t any sort of choreographed routine – it is just intended as a random, free-style dance thing. That is kind of a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it is easier to get more people involved that way because I know if I were at Target and happened to see a group of people randomly freestyle dancing, I’d probably want to join in. If I saw a bunch of people doing a choreographed dance, I’d probably just stand and watch. It is bad, though, because I think freestyle dance, especially if it does wind up being a small group, has much less of an impact. It doesn’t look like something that was organized or anything. It just looks like people heard a song and started dancing. I don’t know how exactly the song is going to be played, either, or how loudly it will be played. I don’t know how any of it is going to play out, and there was even some confusion over the time it was taking place the other day, (which has since been resolved,) but I’m really excited to see how it turns out. Either way, I intend to have fun with it.
When I got home from work, I just kind of laid around for a while waiting for my Mom to get home. She was only staying for a few minutes to pick up a few things then heading out of town to spend the weekend at her boyfriend’s house. I don’t really mind when she goes out of town for the weekend, although sometimes I do have a tendency to get a little bored and lonely. I knew that wouldn’t be the case this weekend, though, with all the plans I have made. It is sure to be a pretty full weekend, all starting off with tonight. Tonight was the first official show on my friend Nate’s BlogTV account. BlogTV is like Ustream or Justin.TV, where you broadcast live and have a chatroom for people to join in and talk to you. It’s a pretty cool set up. He did one last Friday night, as well, which was pretty fun, but it was mainly just he and I in that one. This time was different, though, there were quite a few people talking in this one. Whitney was there and a few other people I know in various ways. We were all in this chat for nearly 2 hours and never really got bored or anything and it seemed like everybody had a really good time. Of course, after a little too much joking about the topic, Nate now thinks that I think he hates fat people but that is kind of a long story. I don’t think he hates fat people, I was just joking about some comments that he made in one of his YouTube videos about Gabourey Sidibe, star of “Precious.” It was all in good fun, on both of our parts, and I feel bad that he took my joking seriously. This is the trouble with text, as opposed to actually speaking with people, though. In any sense, it was a really fun chat. I had a really good time watching him and talking with him and all the other people that were there and I am looking forward to more in the future. If you are reading this and were not there this time, you should definitely make it a point to be there for the next one. It is a lot of fun! You can find his BlogTV account here.
Now, it is nearly 4am and I am feeling really exhausted. I’ve got what is possibly going to be a big day ahead of me tomorrow. Whatever happens, as far as the Flash Mob goes, I intend to have a fun evening tomorrow. I’m not sure if I should do the sushi dinner or not after the flash mob, or just have people over to my house. On one hand, I would really like to do sushi. On the other hand, though, my cash flow is not the best right now and I still have to pay my $30 registration fee at the Allegro Music Academy next week. We’ll see what happens. I can certainly afford to do sushi, but just because I CAN doesn’t mean I SHOULD. Big difference between those two. We’ll see what happens, I suppose. Either way, I am excited for tomorrow night. It should be a good time. For now, though, I am excited to go to bed. I am exhausted.
As far as work goes, it was a pretty boring day. My sister left early due to some personal drama that took place in their household last night. She wouldn’t even tell me what it was and said that my Mom would explain. When I saw my Mom on my lunch break, she did explain and it was pretty shocking. I am not going to share it here because it’s just not really my place and I don’t know who all is reading this blog at this point. I have always made it a point to be as honest as possible in this blog when speaking about myself and my own stories, and I have stuck to that even when it has been uncomfortable, but when it comes to stories that are not my own, I don’t feel comfortable going into details. In any sense, I am keeping them on my mind and hoping for the best for them in this situation. I know everything is going to be alright but the whole thing is still enough to kind of freak you out. Today was also one of my co-workers last day. I don’t know how to explain my feelings towards that, honestly. On one hand, this is a person that I spent much of my days talking with and such and I will probably miss that. On the other hand, though, this is also a person who has been the source of a lot of drama in the workplace, much of which she brought on herself, and a person who is constantly sharing her views and really working my last nerve with her closed-mindedness about a lot of things. I certainly won’t miss that. It made for an interesting dynamic today, honestly, because I spent half the day feeling glad that it was her last day and the other half of the day, well… not really feeling the opposite but feeling slightly differently, I guess. I think it’s a good thing all around, for all parties involved. Still, it may make the days pass… well, slightly differently. Blah.
My job has a pretty strict rule against overtime, except for on those rare occasions like what happened last month where they were actually offering it. Otherwise, they are very strictly against it and we all have a day where we have to take an hour lunch every week, and a day where we have to come in 30 minutes late. Tuesday was my hour lunch day and I completely forgot about it. I told my sister about it and she said that it would be fine since I still had my day where I come in 30 minutes late. That day was today. Of course, I didn’t realize that until after I had already clocked in and was sitting there in Available just after 9:30am. I wasn’t supposed to be there until 10am. So, unfortunately, I had to take an hour-long lunch. I hate having to take an hour lunch at work. It is just so boring and there isn’t a lot you can really do with that time sitting in the atrium at the place that shall not be named. The only real option is to walk over to CVS across the street and kill a little time shopping for makeup. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really afford to go shop today and the weather was gross and raining today, so that wasn’t a desirable option. So, I spent the first 15 minutes of my break talking to my Mom, who takes a 15-minute break at the same time that I take my lunch. After she went back upstairs, I went outside to smoke. There was this guy standing by where I sat down that I hadn’t seen around before. He was cute-ish, but not really my type in general. Still, there was something about him I found kind of interesting. I kept catching him looking over at me, but he didn’t approach or say anything so I just went about my business of smoking and dicking around on Facebook on my phone. He walked away a few minutes later and went out the back exit of the building. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention honestly, but I did notice there had been a break in the rain. It was only temporary and a few minutes later, the rain started back up. It wasn’t long after this that I suddenly saw a soda being set down at the other side of the table where I was sitting. I looked up and it was this guy again. He said he had left to walk to this little restaurant across the street but had to turn back because it started raining. Okay, whatever. He then introduced himself, and I introduced myself in kind. Then he sat down and spent the next 30 minutes or so chatting me up. He was nice. Like I said, he was cute-ish and the more I talked to him the more I was kind of like, “Okay, he’s alright.” I don’t know if he was gay or straight or what, but my gaydar was kind of pinged. Plus, I am one of those people who doesn’t get approached randomly by straight guys just wanting to talk. I am very clearly gay, I wear makeup, I have a rainbow tattoo right on my wrist, etc. It just doesn’t happen often, so I assume that if a guy actively seeks me out for conversation he is also gay. This isn’t a foolproof theory, but more often than not it is the case. It was an interesting way to spend my hour lunch, if nothing else.
I spent much of the day drawing. Mainly I was doing concept drawings of various makeup looks for the Lady Gaga Flash Mob tomorrow at Target. I came up with a few different ideas that included a lightning bolt on the face, like that iconic image of Gaga, as well as one with stars on the cheek, one with male and female symbols over the eyes and, my favorite, one with the number 20 on the face, referencing the Natalie Imbruglia song “Twenty,” which I spoke of in last night’s blog. I liked that idea a lot, but it seems like it would go wrong for two different reasons – one, it could wind up looking like one of those silly sports fan painted face type things, and two, the drawings on the face is kind of over the top considering we are supposed to appear to be just regular Target shoppers breaking out in dance. Sure, the Facebook page for the event says to dress Gaga-esque, but I figure you don’t want to stand out TOO much otherwise it seems like it would make it kind of obvious that you were trying to do something unusual there. Either that, or people would just think you’re an attention-seeking whore. Either way, I figure going too far over the top would be a mistake. I am slightly concerned about this event for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are only 8 people confirmed to be taking part. As with many things, though, I’m sure there are plenty of people who intend to show up but haven’t RSVP’d. Also, there isn’t any sort of choreographed routine – it is just intended as a random, free-style dance thing. That is kind of a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it is easier to get more people involved that way because I know if I were at Target and happened to see a group of people randomly freestyle dancing, I’d probably want to join in. If I saw a bunch of people doing a choreographed dance, I’d probably just stand and watch. It is bad, though, because I think freestyle dance, especially if it does wind up being a small group, has much less of an impact. It doesn’t look like something that was organized or anything. It just looks like people heard a song and started dancing. I don’t know how exactly the song is going to be played, either, or how loudly it will be played. I don’t know how any of it is going to play out, and there was even some confusion over the time it was taking place the other day, (which has since been resolved,) but I’m really excited to see how it turns out. Either way, I intend to have fun with it.
When I got home from work, I just kind of laid around for a while waiting for my Mom to get home. She was only staying for a few minutes to pick up a few things then heading out of town to spend the weekend at her boyfriend’s house. I don’t really mind when she goes out of town for the weekend, although sometimes I do have a tendency to get a little bored and lonely. I knew that wouldn’t be the case this weekend, though, with all the plans I have made. It is sure to be a pretty full weekend, all starting off with tonight. Tonight was the first official show on my friend Nate’s BlogTV account. BlogTV is like Ustream or Justin.TV, where you broadcast live and have a chatroom for people to join in and talk to you. It’s a pretty cool set up. He did one last Friday night, as well, which was pretty fun, but it was mainly just he and I in that one. This time was different, though, there were quite a few people talking in this one. Whitney was there and a few other people I know in various ways. We were all in this chat for nearly 2 hours and never really got bored or anything and it seemed like everybody had a really good time. Of course, after a little too much joking about the topic, Nate now thinks that I think he hates fat people but that is kind of a long story. I don’t think he hates fat people, I was just joking about some comments that he made in one of his YouTube videos about Gabourey Sidibe, star of “Precious.” It was all in good fun, on both of our parts, and I feel bad that he took my joking seriously. This is the trouble with text, as opposed to actually speaking with people, though. In any sense, it was a really fun chat. I had a really good time watching him and talking with him and all the other people that were there and I am looking forward to more in the future. If you are reading this and were not there this time, you should definitely make it a point to be there for the next one. It is a lot of fun! You can find his BlogTV account here.
Now, it is nearly 4am and I am feeling really exhausted. I’ve got what is possibly going to be a big day ahead of me tomorrow. Whatever happens, as far as the Flash Mob goes, I intend to have a fun evening tomorrow. I’m not sure if I should do the sushi dinner or not after the flash mob, or just have people over to my house. On one hand, I would really like to do sushi. On the other hand, though, my cash flow is not the best right now and I still have to pay my $30 registration fee at the Allegro Music Academy next week. We’ll see what happens. I can certainly afford to do sushi, but just because I CAN doesn’t mean I SHOULD. Big difference between those two. We’ll see what happens, I suppose. Either way, I am excited for tomorrow night. It should be a good time. For now, though, I am excited to go to bed. I am exhausted.
Thursday, March 11
Chapter 126: Twenty
Today was a pretty boring day. I don’t honestly have a lot to say about it. I guess I will start at the beginning, though. I woke up on time today, at 7:30am, and was feeling pretty decent. I got out of bed right away and brushed my teeth, washed my face and got a cup of coffee. I sat in front of the computer and smoked a cigarette and checked my Facebook and Twitter messages and such until it was 8am, otherwise known as workout time. I put on a random shuffle of Ashley Tisdale songs and got started on the workout. I have to say, Ashley Tisdale was really giving me what I need this morning. I don’t know that she was such a motivation for my Mom, but it really worked for me. It was a really good workout this morning. I don’t really think it went as well for my Mom. She has a tendency to have issues with pain in her knees and it seemed to be acting up pretty badly this morning. I felt really bad for her. Still, I felt like I got a really good workout and was very grateful for it. My Mom and I kind of discussed the workout music and she said she thought it could be cool to work out to some of the more upbeat group numbers from “Glee.” I was thinking of throwing together a playlist of them to workout to, but sadly it seems like they did more slow songs than anything else on that show. I’ll see what I can manage with that. After all, the workout soundtracks shouldn’t just be good motivation for me – we should both get something from them. When I think about some of the best workouts we’ve had, they have been set to music that we both really enjoyed and were moved by, like Adam Lambert, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, etc. I need to come up with more stuff like that to workout to. After the workout, I got dressed in a brown “Henley” style shirt with a light blue design on the chest and blue jeans. I decided to get a little experimental with the makeup and did a bronze/brown/blue combination that I couldn’t decide how I felt about for the rest of the day. I thought it was pretty awesome, but there just seemed to be something kind of “off” about it.
When I got to work, I found my sister sitting at my desk leaving me a note because she thought I was about to be late and she was going to leave a pissed off note about it. Fortunately, I was on time and that wasn’t an issue. She asked me how my music lesson was and I told her all about it. I figured this was providing me the perfect segue to ask her about next week, and so on. I said, “Can I ask you a big favor?” and she said, “Is it going to piss off my girlfriend?” I was a little taken aback by that question and said I didn’t see why it would. She knew exactly what I was asking and apparently her girlfriend did, too. I asked why that would piss her girlfriend off and she said it wouldn’t really, she just finds it annoying. I don’t really get it – she’s not the one I’m asking anything of and she is still at work at that time every day, anyway. My sister said it should be fine and she would talk to her girlfriend about it. This kind of put me in a sour mood early on in the day. I thought about it for a little while and later approached my sister and told her that if it’s going to be an issue, I could try to figure something else out. She said it wasn’t an issue and she would talk to her girlfriend about it. It should be fine. I feel bad, though, that it may be an issue. I just don’t understand it. I can’t possibly imagine why it would be annoying or anything else to my sister’s girlfriend if my sister drives me to my music lesson one day a week. Initially, I kind of assumed that her eye roll reactions to my music lessons were just a matter of her not supporting me in my pursuit of music – what else is new? If I had a dime for every person who doesn’t support that, well… I’d have a decent amount of dimes. If for every person who doesn’t support my dreams I had 3 other people who do… oh wait, I do! I feel really fortunate for this fact – there are a lot of people in my life who really seem to have faith and really believe in me and I couldn’t be more grateful for all of them. So, one person is having a bit of a fucked up attitude towards it? What difference does that really make? Not a fucking ounce. Sure, I find it annoying but I am not going to dwell on it. The worst that can come of that is that she may convince my sister not to drive me each week… That would suck, but I’d figure something out. I have had enough trouble trying to get started with music lessons – I refuse to allow anything to stop me from continuing with them. I understand that the roads we are destined to take are rarely the ones with least resistance and now that I have gotten a start on this road there is no way in hell I am about to stop. I have done that far too many times before. I am getting older. The iron is already cooling off – I need to strike immediately.
It kind of reminds me of a song by Natalie Imbruglia, called “Twenty.” The song says, “Twenty cities have passed me by, Keep finding treasures I don't want to find, But I've stolen and I've crossed the line and I want you, I want you, Twenty seconds and you could be gone, You shine brighter than the morning sun, You think its over but its just begun, and I want you, I want you.” Sure, it would seem that Natalie Imbruglia is singing about a lover or some important person in her life, but to me those lyrics are all about music. I feel like I’ve been trying so hard for so long to make any sort of progress and finally here I am, taking the steps I know I need to be taking but knowing that even the slightest thing could possibly take it all away. I know this because it has happened before. The chorus of the song goes on to say, “Tell me where I'm heading, Tell me that I can be there soon, Somewhere I’ve forgotten, I'll die a little more for you, When everything is broken, There's a piece I’ll never use, I keep finding reasons to die a little more for you.” Again, it sounds pretty accurate of my feelings about my dreams of making music. Liz Phair also has a song that says, “Sometimes a dream is what makes you a slave.” The first time I heard that line I knew exactly what it meant. I always thought, “Well, I hope it doesn’t end up that way for me,” but I have since realized that it IS that way for me. I wonder if it isn’t that way for every artist out there. No matter what you do, you are a slave to your art – whether you become the next Madonna or Gaga, or if you spend your entire life chasing it. You are always a slave to your art. I am eternally a slave to music. I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is why I find it pretty upsetting when people don’t support me in it. I can understand their views on the matter and such, but it just means everything to me. I cannot let anything stand in my way. Fortunately, it does seem like my sister is pretty supportive of this whole thing and was pretty reassuring that she would be fine to take me to my lessons. She has strange methods a lot of the time, but I do know that my sister always wants me to be happy and will do whatever she can to help me in pursuit of what makes me happy. I am so grateful for her and for her support. Just in case, though, I am also going to start giving her some gas money for it, so at least I am making a contribution. It only seems right.
I spent the first part of the day at work doing the homework that Viktor gave me last night. I don’t know if I mentioned in last night’s blog, but he did give me some homework. As I did mention in last night’s blog, the first lesson was mainly focused on learning about how to identify notes and write them on sheet music. He sent me home with a couple of songbooks and gave me a couple pages to read and mark which notes were shown on the sheet music. He also sent me home with a blank page as a guide, of sorts, to write each note, C-B on so I would not only know how to identify them but know how to write them down myself. This morning at work I marked all of the notes in the book and filled the blank page he gave me with all of the notes. It was pretty cool and a very good way to pass a little bit of time at work. Plus, I was pretty impressed with the fact that I could kind of determine what the music would sound like just looking at the music on the page. I felt kind of like a real artist, music-wise, and was really kind of proud of myself. I just really feel like, as I have said a few times already in this blog, like the life I know I am meant to lead is slowly but surely taking shape before me. It’s an amazing feeling, really, and I am trying my best to fight my natural instinct to be kind of terrified. I don’t understand why we, as humans, have this natural instinct to be afraid of happiness and pride and all of our really positive feelings. It’s as if as soon as we start feeling good about ourselves and about our lives we have to immediately become afraid that it is going to go away. I guess the reason for that is because so often when we have those really great, positive feelings they do go away. Not this time, though. It is only going to get better from here. I refuse to allow anything different to happen. I am here now, and the only direction I can possibly head in is forward; not even forward, but upward.
After finishing my homework, I started reading a new book – the book that I mentioned a few days ago, “The Givers & The Takers.” My Mom had read this book ages ago and told me all about it, so I am familiar with some of the concepts in it, but I decided after talking to my Mom about it a little bit more yesterday that perhaps I should go ahead and read it for myself. I didn’t get very far in the book, honestly, but what I did read was really interesting. Essentially, the concept of this book is that, in relationships, there is always one giver and one taker. This book is focused on romantic relationships mainly, but it really applies to all different types of relationships in our lives. It really got me thinking about some of the relationships in my life and which role I fall into in them. In my last couple of romantic relationships, I was definitely the giver and the other people were classic takers. What is interesting, though, is the fact that in my friendships and even my relationships with my family members, I have more of a tendency to be a taker. According to the book, givers are extraverts who are more focused on the outside world and acting in ways that are more intended to satisfy outside sources. Takers are the opposite, introverts, who act in ways that are to serve their internal lives. Essentially, takers are focused on themselves and their own perceptions of the world and acting in ways that are intended to satisfy their own agendas and views on life. I think, in general, in life I am much more of a taker. This then begs the question: why do I have such a tendency to get involved with other takers and try to become a giver in my relationships? Why have I not been seeking out relationships with givers? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I suppose I will continue reading the book to try to figure them out.
The rest of the workday was pretty much a bore. When I came home I sat down and watched an episode of “The View” from earlier in the week, which featured former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura discussing his new book, “American Conspiracies,” which are attempting to expose the illuminati and all that stuff that Zeitgeist has already done. It was a pretty interesting interview because the ladies of “The View” basically spent the entire segment harping on him and his lack of patriotism, etc. I have read a lot about the illuminati and various conspiracy theories involving 9/11 and other parts of American History. I don’t know that I believe in any of it, per se, but these conspiracy theorists certainly make some really interesting points about a lot of things. I don’t think that Jesse Ventura should be their figurehead, though, because he is nothing but a joke to most people, myself included. Even when he was making good points during this interview, I just couldn’t take any of it seriously. He just came across like an asshole who was belligerent and spewing his beliefs at people instead of attempting to make them understand. It kind of reminded me of Michael Moore, who I agree with in most cases but whose methods I don’t really appreciate or respect. I think Democrats and left-wingers with extreme views who are unwilling to accept the views of the other side are just as dangerous as Republicans and right-wingers who do the same thing. Still, the illuminati concept is one that I find particularly fascinating, especially in terms of modern pop culture. I just find some of the symbolism that is to be found in some of the most iconic images of pop stars and such is far too much to be considered coincidence. It is now 11:55pm, though, and before I go into too much about this I should probably get to bed. I am having trouble keeping my eyes open here, anyway. If you do want to read more on this topic, though, I'd recommend a visit to Vigilant Citizen. They have a lot of really interesting articles on that site. Go check it out. Good night.
When I got to work, I found my sister sitting at my desk leaving me a note because she thought I was about to be late and she was going to leave a pissed off note about it. Fortunately, I was on time and that wasn’t an issue. She asked me how my music lesson was and I told her all about it. I figured this was providing me the perfect segue to ask her about next week, and so on. I said, “Can I ask you a big favor?” and she said, “Is it going to piss off my girlfriend?” I was a little taken aback by that question and said I didn’t see why it would. She knew exactly what I was asking and apparently her girlfriend did, too. I asked why that would piss her girlfriend off and she said it wouldn’t really, she just finds it annoying. I don’t really get it – she’s not the one I’m asking anything of and she is still at work at that time every day, anyway. My sister said it should be fine and she would talk to her girlfriend about it. This kind of put me in a sour mood early on in the day. I thought about it for a little while and later approached my sister and told her that if it’s going to be an issue, I could try to figure something else out. She said it wasn’t an issue and she would talk to her girlfriend about it. It should be fine. I feel bad, though, that it may be an issue. I just don’t understand it. I can’t possibly imagine why it would be annoying or anything else to my sister’s girlfriend if my sister drives me to my music lesson one day a week. Initially, I kind of assumed that her eye roll reactions to my music lessons were just a matter of her not supporting me in my pursuit of music – what else is new? If I had a dime for every person who doesn’t support that, well… I’d have a decent amount of dimes. If for every person who doesn’t support my dreams I had 3 other people who do… oh wait, I do! I feel really fortunate for this fact – there are a lot of people in my life who really seem to have faith and really believe in me and I couldn’t be more grateful for all of them. So, one person is having a bit of a fucked up attitude towards it? What difference does that really make? Not a fucking ounce. Sure, I find it annoying but I am not going to dwell on it. The worst that can come of that is that she may convince my sister not to drive me each week… That would suck, but I’d figure something out. I have had enough trouble trying to get started with music lessons – I refuse to allow anything to stop me from continuing with them. I understand that the roads we are destined to take are rarely the ones with least resistance and now that I have gotten a start on this road there is no way in hell I am about to stop. I have done that far too many times before. I am getting older. The iron is already cooling off – I need to strike immediately.
It kind of reminds me of a song by Natalie Imbruglia, called “Twenty.” The song says, “Twenty cities have passed me by, Keep finding treasures I don't want to find, But I've stolen and I've crossed the line and I want you, I want you, Twenty seconds and you could be gone, You shine brighter than the morning sun, You think its over but its just begun, and I want you, I want you.” Sure, it would seem that Natalie Imbruglia is singing about a lover or some important person in her life, but to me those lyrics are all about music. I feel like I’ve been trying so hard for so long to make any sort of progress and finally here I am, taking the steps I know I need to be taking but knowing that even the slightest thing could possibly take it all away. I know this because it has happened before. The chorus of the song goes on to say, “Tell me where I'm heading, Tell me that I can be there soon, Somewhere I’ve forgotten, I'll die a little more for you, When everything is broken, There's a piece I’ll never use, I keep finding reasons to die a little more for you.” Again, it sounds pretty accurate of my feelings about my dreams of making music. Liz Phair also has a song that says, “Sometimes a dream is what makes you a slave.” The first time I heard that line I knew exactly what it meant. I always thought, “Well, I hope it doesn’t end up that way for me,” but I have since realized that it IS that way for me. I wonder if it isn’t that way for every artist out there. No matter what you do, you are a slave to your art – whether you become the next Madonna or Gaga, or if you spend your entire life chasing it. You are always a slave to your art. I am eternally a slave to music. I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is why I find it pretty upsetting when people don’t support me in it. I can understand their views on the matter and such, but it just means everything to me. I cannot let anything stand in my way. Fortunately, it does seem like my sister is pretty supportive of this whole thing and was pretty reassuring that she would be fine to take me to my lessons. She has strange methods a lot of the time, but I do know that my sister always wants me to be happy and will do whatever she can to help me in pursuit of what makes me happy. I am so grateful for her and for her support. Just in case, though, I am also going to start giving her some gas money for it, so at least I am making a contribution. It only seems right.
I spent the first part of the day at work doing the homework that Viktor gave me last night. I don’t know if I mentioned in last night’s blog, but he did give me some homework. As I did mention in last night’s blog, the first lesson was mainly focused on learning about how to identify notes and write them on sheet music. He sent me home with a couple of songbooks and gave me a couple pages to read and mark which notes were shown on the sheet music. He also sent me home with a blank page as a guide, of sorts, to write each note, C-B on so I would not only know how to identify them but know how to write them down myself. This morning at work I marked all of the notes in the book and filled the blank page he gave me with all of the notes. It was pretty cool and a very good way to pass a little bit of time at work. Plus, I was pretty impressed with the fact that I could kind of determine what the music would sound like just looking at the music on the page. I felt kind of like a real artist, music-wise, and was really kind of proud of myself. I just really feel like, as I have said a few times already in this blog, like the life I know I am meant to lead is slowly but surely taking shape before me. It’s an amazing feeling, really, and I am trying my best to fight my natural instinct to be kind of terrified. I don’t understand why we, as humans, have this natural instinct to be afraid of happiness and pride and all of our really positive feelings. It’s as if as soon as we start feeling good about ourselves and about our lives we have to immediately become afraid that it is going to go away. I guess the reason for that is because so often when we have those really great, positive feelings they do go away. Not this time, though. It is only going to get better from here. I refuse to allow anything different to happen. I am here now, and the only direction I can possibly head in is forward; not even forward, but upward.
After finishing my homework, I started reading a new book – the book that I mentioned a few days ago, “The Givers & The Takers.” My Mom had read this book ages ago and told me all about it, so I am familiar with some of the concepts in it, but I decided after talking to my Mom about it a little bit more yesterday that perhaps I should go ahead and read it for myself. I didn’t get very far in the book, honestly, but what I did read was really interesting. Essentially, the concept of this book is that, in relationships, there is always one giver and one taker. This book is focused on romantic relationships mainly, but it really applies to all different types of relationships in our lives. It really got me thinking about some of the relationships in my life and which role I fall into in them. In my last couple of romantic relationships, I was definitely the giver and the other people were classic takers. What is interesting, though, is the fact that in my friendships and even my relationships with my family members, I have more of a tendency to be a taker. According to the book, givers are extraverts who are more focused on the outside world and acting in ways that are more intended to satisfy outside sources. Takers are the opposite, introverts, who act in ways that are to serve their internal lives. Essentially, takers are focused on themselves and their own perceptions of the world and acting in ways that are intended to satisfy their own agendas and views on life. I think, in general, in life I am much more of a taker. This then begs the question: why do I have such a tendency to get involved with other takers and try to become a giver in my relationships? Why have I not been seeking out relationships with givers? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I suppose I will continue reading the book to try to figure them out.
The rest of the workday was pretty much a bore. When I came home I sat down and watched an episode of “The View” from earlier in the week, which featured former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura discussing his new book, “American Conspiracies,” which are attempting to expose the illuminati and all that stuff that Zeitgeist has already done. It was a pretty interesting interview because the ladies of “The View” basically spent the entire segment harping on him and his lack of patriotism, etc. I have read a lot about the illuminati and various conspiracy theories involving 9/11 and other parts of American History. I don’t know that I believe in any of it, per se, but these conspiracy theorists certainly make some really interesting points about a lot of things. I don’t think that Jesse Ventura should be their figurehead, though, because he is nothing but a joke to most people, myself included. Even when he was making good points during this interview, I just couldn’t take any of it seriously. He just came across like an asshole who was belligerent and spewing his beliefs at people instead of attempting to make them understand. It kind of reminded me of Michael Moore, who I agree with in most cases but whose methods I don’t really appreciate or respect. I think Democrats and left-wingers with extreme views who are unwilling to accept the views of the other side are just as dangerous as Republicans and right-wingers who do the same thing. Still, the illuminati concept is one that I find particularly fascinating, especially in terms of modern pop culture. I just find some of the symbolism that is to be found in some of the most iconic images of pop stars and such is far too much to be considered coincidence. It is now 11:55pm, though, and before I go into too much about this I should probably get to bed. I am having trouble keeping my eyes open here, anyway. If you do want to read more on this topic, though, I'd recommend a visit to Vigilant Citizen. They have a lot of really interesting articles on that site. Go check it out. Good night.
Chapter 125: Sweet Surrender
Today. Today was a pretty good day, I’d say. I woke up at 7:30am when my alarm went off, but didn’t actually get out of bed until around 7:55am, and then laid on the couch for about 10 minutes before actually getting up to do anything. I’m not sure what it is, but the past two days I have had trouble waking up and trouble getting motivated to move once I did wake up. I’m not sure what the reason for this is, but I don’t like it one bit. I am guessing, of anything being done differently the past few days, it may be the fact that for the past two nights before bed I have taken both Benadryl and this cough syrup my Mom got prescribed that has codeine in it. Both of these things have active ingredients that are meant to knock you out, so I think maybe it’s been too much. Fortunately, my cough is considerably better than it has been recently so tonight I decided not to take the cough syrup. We’ll see if that winds up helping at all. Today was the day my Mom and I had decided on to skip the workout this week and so she left the house around 8am to go get her oil changed and I stayed here and dicked around on the computer for a little while listening to the Alexz Johnson album again, (since downloading it yesterday after work I have listened to the album in full 6 times, and listened to individual tracks a bunch of other times.) I had a Hot Pocket for breakfast and smoked and drank coffee a little longer than I usually do. That idea I mentioned last night of allowing myself a little more time to shower and get ready for the day didn’t end up happening and once I finished doing hair and makeup it was already after 9:20am. I had to rush really fast to finish up my last minute things, like putting on shoes and accessories and filling my spill-proof cup for work. We made it out the door by 9:27am, which is about 5 minutes later than usual, and still managed to get clocked in at work just under our 7-minute window before we get an issue for being late. Despite being rushed, I felt pretty decent when I got to work. I wore my new pink “heather” Old Navy polo I bought over the weekend with a pair of blue jeans and did a cool pink/bronze/brown makeup look today that I really liked. I felt like I was looking pretty good and was dressed well for my first music lesson this evening.
I had a few minor thoughts of “What if something goes wrong again?” but I made sure not to dwell on any of those thoughts and to be as dismissive of them as possible. More than anything, I was really excited for the lesson, though. I spent a good deal of the day imagining what it was going to be like – what my instructor would be like and what types of things we would cover tonight, etc. I imagined my instructor would be a kind of jolly, older Italian man – I have no idea why Italian, but it was the vision in my head. I think it may have been because of his name, Viktor, even though it isn’t a particularly Italian name by any means I figured he would be friendly but not TOO friendly and one of those wise old guys who is very set in his ways and kind of giggles knowingly to himself at my “young person” way of looking at the world. I wasn’t really sure what we would go over, but I figured we’d start talking about chords and I’d impress him by knowing all of the major ones already. I had this very fatherly image of this Viktor, my piano instructor, and was really excited to see whether or not I was right. First, I had 8 hours of work to get through, though. I was kind of expecting today to pass really quickly like Monday did. I had kind of attributed Monday’s quick passing to the fact that I was so excited and nervous about my piano lesson that night. That must not have been the case, though, because I felt the same way about my music lesson today but the day still felt really long. One of my co-workers was really working my last nerve today, and a couple of others were helping with it, as well. I spent much of the day drawing again. The only thing of note that I drew was a really cool looking mermaid. I am kind of brainstorming a mermaid themed design for a t-shirt, but I’m not entirely sure where it will wind up going. I did love the look of my mermaid, though. I’ll probably end up working on that a bit more tomorrow. As far as my co-workers go, it really seems sometimes like they get bored and decide to perpetuate a bit of drama amongst the team. I have been putting a lot of effort into not allowing myself to get involved or even be aware of that drama recently. It doesn’t always work out, but I think I did a really good job of it today without completely alienating myself from the rest of the team. My mind just wasn’t there at work at all today – instead it was at my music lesson, with my old, kind and wise Italian piano instructor. I had Subway for lunch that my sister bought me, which was really good because I was feeling really hungry at lunchtime today. I even got to spend the first portion of my lunch with my Mom, which is always nice and has been happening a lot lately. All in all, though, it was a pretty bland day at work and I couldn’t have been happier to see it end.
When I got out of work, just a few minutes after 6pm, my sister was already downstairs waiting for me. We had a good talk on the way to the Allegro Music Academy, discussing different work issues and listening to this random radio show that she likes, that I heard on Monday, as well. It was kind of nice to get a little extra time outside of work with my sister, especially after the day at work because she seemed really annoyed and in a bad mood all day. I was never clear on why exactly, even after talking to her on the ride to my piano lesson. The only impression I could get from her was that the people creating drama at work was getting on her nerves just as much as it was getting on anybody else’s. I haven’t talked to my sister much yet about future music lessons, but I am really hoping she will be willing to help me out by driving me regularly. Otherwise, I’m not really sure how I will manage to get there each week. Fortunately, I’m pretty sure she won’t be too against it – she has been really supportive of me in my quest for music lessons. She was telling me that her girlfriend just rolled her eyes when she told her about them, which I found a little annoying. At the same time, though, what her girlfriend thinks about it doesn’t really matter to me. What anybody thinks about it doesn’t really matter to me. I am taking the first steps on what I have always known would be my life’s main journey and I don’t care what any naysayers have to say about it. Anybody who doubts me is just going to be proven wrong in the end – I know it. Like I said, I am taking the very steps on my life’s main journey and I am not going to allow anything to discourage me or stand in my way. I have a lot of dreams in life, but if music is the only one that I can make come true it will be more than enough. It is my life’s ultimate goal and it is more than enough to make my life the greatest one I could possibly live.
When I arrived at the Allegro Academy, I walked in and was immediately greeted by name by the girl at the front desk. When I met her on Monday, I immediately felt really good vibes from her and found her to be really sweet and friendly. I got the same thing from her this time, as well. First thing when I got there she asked me if she had explained their payment process last time I was there, which she had. She explained again that they take payment at the beginning of the month for the rest of that month’s lessons. I had already prepared for this. Unfortunately, what I had forgotten to factor in was the fact that there is also a $30 annual registration fee. I also didn’t realize that my first lesson was NOT actually free, like the impression I had gotten based on my initial phone conversation with them. I’m not sure what happened with that exactly, but when getting money from the bank that was not factored in, either. All of this meant that I suddenly didn’t have enough money. So, in order to make sure that I had enough cash to pay for this month I decided to do 30-minute lessons, instead of 45. Even with that, I still didn’t have quite enough to cover payment for 4 lessons and the $30 registration fee. I explained to the girl at the front desk that I had neglected to take out enough to cover the lessons and the registration fee and she said it would be perfectly fine for me to pay that fee next week when I come in. With that settled she told me that my instructor, Viktor, was actually there this time and would be out in just a moment. So, I just kind of stood there, looking around at the various advertisements that were sitting on the counter and such.
As I was standing there, I saw a little girl come out from the back and an attractive man probably only a year or two older than I am following behind her and asking where her parents were. She said they were on their way and he was very sweet with her and told her to stay right there in the lobby until they got there, then went over to the girl at the counter and told her to keep an eye on the girl. I noticed he had a pretty strong accent, but I couldn’t really make out where it was from. In any sense, he was gorgeous and just had a really cool, positive vibe in the way he moved and spoke and handled the little girl. I didn’t know who he was, but was totally checking him out. Then he turned to me, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You must be Jason. I’m Viktor.” This was my piano instructor – a far cry from the wise older gentleman I had envisioned in my head all day. I was a little taken aback that this gorgeous man was my piano instructor. I was already envisioning us making sweet, passionate love for hours at a time. Then I had the thought that this could be a bad thing. This could be a distraction from my lessons and, at this point in my life I really need to be focused. Still, I figured it would be worth a shot. He told me to go to his room and wait for him, so I did. When I got to his room I found a two chairs and a piano bench in front of the piano. I sat down in one of the chairs because I figured we would mainly be talking today and not doing so much with the piano itself yet. When he came in he gave me a funny look and told me to get on the piano bench. He told me to tell him about myself and I gave him some basic information, like how old I am and what I do for work and such. He asked me what I was doing there. I told him that my goal is to learn to actually write music, which he seemed really into. He said he doesn’t get to teach that very often and was kind of excited about it. He asked me what type of music I want to write and I sat and thought for a minute, then rattled off a couple of names – Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette. He told me he was from Europe and Sarah McLachlan is really huge over there. He kind of rambled on about Sarah McLachlan for a little bit, which I thought was adorable. Then he told me to get up because he needed me to be sitting right. Apparently, I was sitting too far to the back of the bench and didn’t have my legs in a good position to work with the foot pedals. Once I was sitting in the right position on the bench, he grabbed my leg at the back of the knee and placed it in the position he wanted in. It seemed odd, but I was okay with it. He was very touchy-feely throughout the entire lesson, often just placing his hand on top of mine when it was just in a relaxed position not doing anything at the piano. That seemed a little odd, as well, but I was okay with this, too. As I’ve mentioned previously, I am not one of those people who thinks that everybody is flirting with them, and I don’t really think he was flirting with me, but he seemed to have a very flirtatious manner. I really liked that because it kind of put me much more at ease right off the bat. Most of today’s lesson was spent identifying notes and learning how to write them on sheet music, which was a very good thing for me because I know a little bit more of the hands on stuff than I do about how to actually read or write music. For example, when he’d mention a note by name I could immediately find it on the piano, but I wouldn’t know how to write it down on a blank page of sheet music. He also told me that he wanted me to get a notebook of blank sheet music before my next lesson, as I will need it moving forward. I am not sure where to find one of those, but I would assume I could go to Sam Ash or any other music store to find that. He also taught me about the right position to hold my finger in while pressing the keys and we drew up a little graph of how many beats each type of written note should last for. It was really cool. He also told me that I had beautiful hands, which I thought was interesting. I said thank you and he said, “No, it’s not a compliment for you, it’s for your mother and father – they’re the ones who made them.” I thought that was adorable and it made me smile a bit. It was just really interesting how well he and I vibed on each other – we kind of clicked immediately. I think he was really into the fact that he wasn’t teaching a child and could say “Shit!” when he screwed something up, which he did say a time or two during the lesson. It was a really great lesson and I cannot wait for the next one. The one complaint I have, though, is that 30 minutes did seem to pass really quickly. I do feel like I learned quite a bit during those 30 minutes, but I also feel like it would be much better to take 45 minutes. I am already thinking that perhaps when next month comes I will upgrade to 45-minute lessons, and actually be prepared to pay for them upfront. Either way, I was feeling kind of high on life when my lesson ended.
Of course, it was only 7pm and I wouldn’t have a ride until my Mom got off at 8pm. I remembered recently seeing a Latitudes Café just down the street from this place, so I decided that it could be cool to walk down there and spend the time waiting for my Mom there, with a cup of coffee and an open mind. Unfortunately, when I got there I found that they were closed – not just closed for the evening, but shut down completely. So, I turned around and walked back. There was a 7-11 between the Allegro Academy and the empty shell of the Latitudes Café, so I decided to stop there for a cup of coffee instead. I got coffee and a new Milky Way Simply Caramel candy bar, which was delicious, and sat in a covered bus bench, dicking around online from my phone. The time between my lesson and my Mom showing up actually passed really quickly. The weather was very warm today and so it felt really good outside tonight – there was a breeze keeping things cool, but not cold like it has been so much lately. I actually really enjoyed this hour or so of just hanging out on the street side. I saw a group of guys screaming at each other from opposite sides of the highway and eventually going out into the middle of the street and freaking out a bunch of drives in oncoming traffic. I saw a lot of different cars and buses and such passing by. I sat under streetlights and just kind of enjoyed being out of my normal element. It was pretty nice. Of course, by the time my Mom got there I was ready to get away from it all. I played the Alexz Johnson album, or most of it, for my Mom while we drove. Neither of us felt like cooking at this point, so we went to Taco Bell to get dinner. I told her all about my lesson and she talked to me about her oil change and how her boyfriend was pissing her off. We just had a nice talk about our days all the way home. Then we watched “American Idol,” and ate our dinner. It was a pretty good day, overall. I enjoyed it and, most of all, I felt really proud of myself for taking the first steps towards realizing my life’s ultimate goal. I feel kind of silly now for having been concerned about whether or not I would gel with my instructor or if it would go well or whatever – I should have known how it would go. The Universe is working in my favor, after all, and it has yet to steer me wrong. Everything is going to work out perfectly for me. I just know it. For now, though, it is 12:37am and I am not skipping my workout tomorrow, so I should probably get to bed.
I had a few minor thoughts of “What if something goes wrong again?” but I made sure not to dwell on any of those thoughts and to be as dismissive of them as possible. More than anything, I was really excited for the lesson, though. I spent a good deal of the day imagining what it was going to be like – what my instructor would be like and what types of things we would cover tonight, etc. I imagined my instructor would be a kind of jolly, older Italian man – I have no idea why Italian, but it was the vision in my head. I think it may have been because of his name, Viktor, even though it isn’t a particularly Italian name by any means I figured he would be friendly but not TOO friendly and one of those wise old guys who is very set in his ways and kind of giggles knowingly to himself at my “young person” way of looking at the world. I wasn’t really sure what we would go over, but I figured we’d start talking about chords and I’d impress him by knowing all of the major ones already. I had this very fatherly image of this Viktor, my piano instructor, and was really excited to see whether or not I was right. First, I had 8 hours of work to get through, though. I was kind of expecting today to pass really quickly like Monday did. I had kind of attributed Monday’s quick passing to the fact that I was so excited and nervous about my piano lesson that night. That must not have been the case, though, because I felt the same way about my music lesson today but the day still felt really long. One of my co-workers was really working my last nerve today, and a couple of others were helping with it, as well. I spent much of the day drawing again. The only thing of note that I drew was a really cool looking mermaid. I am kind of brainstorming a mermaid themed design for a t-shirt, but I’m not entirely sure where it will wind up going. I did love the look of my mermaid, though. I’ll probably end up working on that a bit more tomorrow. As far as my co-workers go, it really seems sometimes like they get bored and decide to perpetuate a bit of drama amongst the team. I have been putting a lot of effort into not allowing myself to get involved or even be aware of that drama recently. It doesn’t always work out, but I think I did a really good job of it today without completely alienating myself from the rest of the team. My mind just wasn’t there at work at all today – instead it was at my music lesson, with my old, kind and wise Italian piano instructor. I had Subway for lunch that my sister bought me, which was really good because I was feeling really hungry at lunchtime today. I even got to spend the first portion of my lunch with my Mom, which is always nice and has been happening a lot lately. All in all, though, it was a pretty bland day at work and I couldn’t have been happier to see it end.
When I got out of work, just a few minutes after 6pm, my sister was already downstairs waiting for me. We had a good talk on the way to the Allegro Music Academy, discussing different work issues and listening to this random radio show that she likes, that I heard on Monday, as well. It was kind of nice to get a little extra time outside of work with my sister, especially after the day at work because she seemed really annoyed and in a bad mood all day. I was never clear on why exactly, even after talking to her on the ride to my piano lesson. The only impression I could get from her was that the people creating drama at work was getting on her nerves just as much as it was getting on anybody else’s. I haven’t talked to my sister much yet about future music lessons, but I am really hoping she will be willing to help me out by driving me regularly. Otherwise, I’m not really sure how I will manage to get there each week. Fortunately, I’m pretty sure she won’t be too against it – she has been really supportive of me in my quest for music lessons. She was telling me that her girlfriend just rolled her eyes when she told her about them, which I found a little annoying. At the same time, though, what her girlfriend thinks about it doesn’t really matter to me. What anybody thinks about it doesn’t really matter to me. I am taking the first steps on what I have always known would be my life’s main journey and I don’t care what any naysayers have to say about it. Anybody who doubts me is just going to be proven wrong in the end – I know it. Like I said, I am taking the very steps on my life’s main journey and I am not going to allow anything to discourage me or stand in my way. I have a lot of dreams in life, but if music is the only one that I can make come true it will be more than enough. It is my life’s ultimate goal and it is more than enough to make my life the greatest one I could possibly live.
When I arrived at the Allegro Academy, I walked in and was immediately greeted by name by the girl at the front desk. When I met her on Monday, I immediately felt really good vibes from her and found her to be really sweet and friendly. I got the same thing from her this time, as well. First thing when I got there she asked me if she had explained their payment process last time I was there, which she had. She explained again that they take payment at the beginning of the month for the rest of that month’s lessons. I had already prepared for this. Unfortunately, what I had forgotten to factor in was the fact that there is also a $30 annual registration fee. I also didn’t realize that my first lesson was NOT actually free, like the impression I had gotten based on my initial phone conversation with them. I’m not sure what happened with that exactly, but when getting money from the bank that was not factored in, either. All of this meant that I suddenly didn’t have enough money. So, in order to make sure that I had enough cash to pay for this month I decided to do 30-minute lessons, instead of 45. Even with that, I still didn’t have quite enough to cover payment for 4 lessons and the $30 registration fee. I explained to the girl at the front desk that I had neglected to take out enough to cover the lessons and the registration fee and she said it would be perfectly fine for me to pay that fee next week when I come in. With that settled she told me that my instructor, Viktor, was actually there this time and would be out in just a moment. So, I just kind of stood there, looking around at the various advertisements that were sitting on the counter and such.
As I was standing there, I saw a little girl come out from the back and an attractive man probably only a year or two older than I am following behind her and asking where her parents were. She said they were on their way and he was very sweet with her and told her to stay right there in the lobby until they got there, then went over to the girl at the counter and told her to keep an eye on the girl. I noticed he had a pretty strong accent, but I couldn’t really make out where it was from. In any sense, he was gorgeous and just had a really cool, positive vibe in the way he moved and spoke and handled the little girl. I didn’t know who he was, but was totally checking him out. Then he turned to me, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You must be Jason. I’m Viktor.” This was my piano instructor – a far cry from the wise older gentleman I had envisioned in my head all day. I was a little taken aback that this gorgeous man was my piano instructor. I was already envisioning us making sweet, passionate love for hours at a time. Then I had the thought that this could be a bad thing. This could be a distraction from my lessons and, at this point in my life I really need to be focused. Still, I figured it would be worth a shot. He told me to go to his room and wait for him, so I did. When I got to his room I found a two chairs and a piano bench in front of the piano. I sat down in one of the chairs because I figured we would mainly be talking today and not doing so much with the piano itself yet. When he came in he gave me a funny look and told me to get on the piano bench. He told me to tell him about myself and I gave him some basic information, like how old I am and what I do for work and such. He asked me what I was doing there. I told him that my goal is to learn to actually write music, which he seemed really into. He said he doesn’t get to teach that very often and was kind of excited about it. He asked me what type of music I want to write and I sat and thought for a minute, then rattled off a couple of names – Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette. He told me he was from Europe and Sarah McLachlan is really huge over there. He kind of rambled on about Sarah McLachlan for a little bit, which I thought was adorable. Then he told me to get up because he needed me to be sitting right. Apparently, I was sitting too far to the back of the bench and didn’t have my legs in a good position to work with the foot pedals. Once I was sitting in the right position on the bench, he grabbed my leg at the back of the knee and placed it in the position he wanted in. It seemed odd, but I was okay with it. He was very touchy-feely throughout the entire lesson, often just placing his hand on top of mine when it was just in a relaxed position not doing anything at the piano. That seemed a little odd, as well, but I was okay with this, too. As I’ve mentioned previously, I am not one of those people who thinks that everybody is flirting with them, and I don’t really think he was flirting with me, but he seemed to have a very flirtatious manner. I really liked that because it kind of put me much more at ease right off the bat. Most of today’s lesson was spent identifying notes and learning how to write them on sheet music, which was a very good thing for me because I know a little bit more of the hands on stuff than I do about how to actually read or write music. For example, when he’d mention a note by name I could immediately find it on the piano, but I wouldn’t know how to write it down on a blank page of sheet music. He also told me that he wanted me to get a notebook of blank sheet music before my next lesson, as I will need it moving forward. I am not sure where to find one of those, but I would assume I could go to Sam Ash or any other music store to find that. He also taught me about the right position to hold my finger in while pressing the keys and we drew up a little graph of how many beats each type of written note should last for. It was really cool. He also told me that I had beautiful hands, which I thought was interesting. I said thank you and he said, “No, it’s not a compliment for you, it’s for your mother and father – they’re the ones who made them.” I thought that was adorable and it made me smile a bit. It was just really interesting how well he and I vibed on each other – we kind of clicked immediately. I think he was really into the fact that he wasn’t teaching a child and could say “Shit!” when he screwed something up, which he did say a time or two during the lesson. It was a really great lesson and I cannot wait for the next one. The one complaint I have, though, is that 30 minutes did seem to pass really quickly. I do feel like I learned quite a bit during those 30 minutes, but I also feel like it would be much better to take 45 minutes. I am already thinking that perhaps when next month comes I will upgrade to 45-minute lessons, and actually be prepared to pay for them upfront. Either way, I was feeling kind of high on life when my lesson ended.
Of course, it was only 7pm and I wouldn’t have a ride until my Mom got off at 8pm. I remembered recently seeing a Latitudes Café just down the street from this place, so I decided that it could be cool to walk down there and spend the time waiting for my Mom there, with a cup of coffee and an open mind. Unfortunately, when I got there I found that they were closed – not just closed for the evening, but shut down completely. So, I turned around and walked back. There was a 7-11 between the Allegro Academy and the empty shell of the Latitudes Café, so I decided to stop there for a cup of coffee instead. I got coffee and a new Milky Way Simply Caramel candy bar, which was delicious, and sat in a covered bus bench, dicking around online from my phone. The time between my lesson and my Mom showing up actually passed really quickly. The weather was very warm today and so it felt really good outside tonight – there was a breeze keeping things cool, but not cold like it has been so much lately. I actually really enjoyed this hour or so of just hanging out on the street side. I saw a group of guys screaming at each other from opposite sides of the highway and eventually going out into the middle of the street and freaking out a bunch of drives in oncoming traffic. I saw a lot of different cars and buses and such passing by. I sat under streetlights and just kind of enjoyed being out of my normal element. It was pretty nice. Of course, by the time my Mom got there I was ready to get away from it all. I played the Alexz Johnson album, or most of it, for my Mom while we drove. Neither of us felt like cooking at this point, so we went to Taco Bell to get dinner. I told her all about my lesson and she talked to me about her oil change and how her boyfriend was pissing her off. We just had a nice talk about our days all the way home. Then we watched “American Idol,” and ate our dinner. It was a pretty good day, overall. I enjoyed it and, most of all, I felt really proud of myself for taking the first steps towards realizing my life’s ultimate goal. I feel kind of silly now for having been concerned about whether or not I would gel with my instructor or if it would go well or whatever – I should have known how it would go. The Universe is working in my favor, after all, and it has yet to steer me wrong. Everything is going to work out perfectly for me. I just know it. For now, though, it is 12:37am and I am not skipping my workout tomorrow, so I should probably get to bed.
Wednesday, March 10
Chapter 124: Look At Those Eyes
I woke up late this morning – 7:50am, to be exact. I got up, brushed my teeth, washed my face with Clean & Clear Morning Burst facial cleanser and went to the bathroom – typical first thing in the morning stuff. Unlike a typical morning, though, it was already 8am when I finished with all that. There have been days where I have just gone right into working out after doing these things before I have smoked or drank coffee or anything. This wasn’t one of those mornings, though. I wasn’t feeling very motivated to work out in the first place this morning because waking up late just automatically puts me in a bit of a mood. Still, despite my lack of motivation, I was determined to do it. I told my Mom I was just going to smoke a quick cigarette and then I’d be ready. It was 8:16am when we finally started the workout. This morning I decided that we should workout to a playlist of Scissor Sisters songs that I had arranged previously. Scissor Sisters are one of my favorite bands of all time and I think my Mom loves them even more than I do, so I figured they would make for good workout music. It didn’t take long to discover, though, that I was wrong about this. They have a lot of really upbeat, dance-style music but I’m not sure what exactly the problem was, but we both kind of agreed the music just didn’t work out for us. Between the music and waking up late, I just wasn’t feeling the workout this morning. Still, I went through it. Okay, I quit a little short of where I normally would but it was getting late and I still needed to get ready for work. I ate a bowl of Trix, then smoked a cigarette and drank my coffee before getting ready. I wore my gray Marc Ecko sweatervest with a pink argyle design on it and this pair of jeans I found while cleaning out my closet. It was a pretty cute look, I think. I wanted to use my new Mocha Mirage duo from Maybelline Eye Studio today, so I paired the bronze color from that with my Christian Siriano Sandstorm eyeshadow and did a very cute, but much more subtle look today. I liked it, and I left the house feeling like I was looking pretty good… maybe not as good as yesterday, but good nonetheless.
Unlike yesterday, work felt extremely long today. It was really slow and there wasn’t much going on. Around noon or so this afternoon I started feeling really exhausted and like I was going to pass out right there in my cubicle. I was trying to do some drawing, in attempts to come up with some ideas to try out on t-shirts. Of course, I always have the drawings I did before to send to the t-shirt company but those are really ambitious for me to try hand painting. At the same time, if I could pull them off they would be quite brilliant, I think. I don’t know what I’m going to try next on a t-shirt. I was talking to my sister about it a bit and she gave me a really good idea. The instructions on all the fabric paint packages, as well as all the instructions I found whilst Googling the topic, recommended putting a piece of cardboard or something along those lines inside the fabric, so the paint doesn’t bleed through to the other side of the shirt. Well, Amber had the idea of drawing the design on that piece of cardboard first and going over it with Sharpie or something like that, so that when working on the actual shirt it would basically be like tracing. This seems like an excellent plan and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it myself. It’s so simple. I’m thinking I’ll try experimenting with that a bit over the weekend. As far as my drawing today, I didn’t really come up with much. I drew one picture that I really kind of liked – a woman, very 60s Flower Power looking, with a giant rainbow coming down from the sleeve area all the way to the bottom hem of the shirt, with different random things sliding down the rainbow, like music notes and hearts and stars and random other things. I like the idea of it because it is basically an image of a hippie tripping out, but I feel like the initial drawing I did today is really lacking something. I’m not sure what exactly, but it’s definitely missing something. Maybe I will work on that a bit more tomorrow. Aside from that, though, I did a bit of a concept drawing of a woman’s top that I thought was pretty cool. I basically spent all day at work drawing to keep myself awake.
I also got into a couple of interesting conversations with one of my co-workers who was kind of trying to justify the use of the word “gay” in the slang sense. I was saying that I don’t see anything wrong with being politically correct even though a lot of people complain about people being too PC. My belief is that if you can word something in a way that isn’t going to be offensive to others or hurt anybody’s feelings, then why wouldn’t you? It just seems mean-spirited to say things in a way that could offend others when you have a whole vocabulary of perfectly good alternate words to use that won’t offend anybody. I understand that we should be able to express ourselves in whatever way we see fit but I also feel very strongly that I don’t want the way that I express myself to be something that will be hurtful to the people around me. I am all about freedom of expression and am a very big fan of pushing the envelope and provoking thought and emotions in others in all kinds of ways, but I do try to make it a point to not do anything in a way that would be hurtful to others. It’s all a matter of treating others how you want to be treated. My co-worker and I kind of agreed to disagree, but that seems to me like my co-worker saying, “Well, I’m not going to stop saying things that may be offensive and I don’t really care if other people are hurt by it.” I hate that type of thinking. Some days I feel like I’m surrounded by that kind of thinking and I have to figure out some way to be light in the midst of that darkness. I do the best I can, though, and it hasn’t worked yet. That just means I need to do better. One of my program managers handed out these little papers to everyone today with motivational quotes on them which sounds kind of silly, I know, but I think it is a nice way to kind of perk up people’s days. Mine was really good and I felt really relevant to me, specifically. It was a quote from Henry Ford that said, “Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we allow ourselves to look away from our goals.” I have long believed that things like horoscopes, fortune cookies, tarot readings and such are the Universe’s way of delivering messages to us. Perhaps not every one you read or anything, but I think that if the Universe is trying to give us a message that we just aren’t seeing in other ways it will get it to us SOMEHOW – often through one of these silly, frivolous type mediums. I think this random quote from my program manager was definitely one of those, and I was grateful for the reminder of what I was already thinking but may have needed reiterated.
On my first break this morning, I was checking Twitter from my phone and noticed a tweet about something that I knew was coming but didn’t realize was arriving TODAY. What was it? It was the debut solo album from Alexz Johnson. I’m sure none of you know the name Alexz Johnson and it is extremely unfortunate that this is the case. Back in 2004, shortly after I first moved back to Florida, my Mom and I shared a love of a certain Canadian teen melodrama called “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” “Degrassi: The Next Generation” is one of my favorite television series of all-time. It airs on a channel that, at the time, was called The N. It was kind of a teen version of Nickelodeon. Most of the original programming on this network was not actually original at all, but imported from Canada and “Degrassi” was it’s most popular show. Then they premiered a new show from the makers of “Degrassi” called “Instant Star.” This show was about a girl named Jude Harrison, played by Alexz Johnson, who won a fictional Idol-style reality show called “Instant Star.” The show followed her creating an album after winning the show and kind of followed her career and her personal life as she dealt with an on again off again relationship with her producer and all sorts of other drama. It was a really great show, but the best part of this show was Alexz Johnson and her music. There was a new song from her featured in each episode of the show and they would release an album for each season of the show featuring all of the songs. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is some of the best music to have come out of the first decade of the new millennium. Alexz Johnson has the most incredible voice and also wrote a lot of the music for the show. It was one of my favorite shows while it was on. Sadly, it only ran for four seasons, and thus only bore four albums. Anyway, starting with season two rumors started spreading like mad that Alexz Johnson was working on her own album separate from the show and I was extremely excited for this to happen. Shortly after the rumors started they were confirmed and I started getting even more excited than I was already. Unfortunately, when the show ended in 2008 there was still no album. She posted a small bundle of songs on her official Myspace page, all of which were completely brilliant, and got me even more hyped. Then she got dropped from her label, got picked up by another label and eventually parted ways from them, as well. It was beginning to look like her solo album was just never going to happen… then it did. I knew the album was set to come out sometime this month, but I had completely forgotten the date until I got on Twitter and saw a tweet from her saying, “Hey, the album is out NOW.”
When I got home from work this evening, the first thing I did was come to the computer to download the album. I was pretty excited, considering I had been waiting anxiously for over 3 years for this to happen. I was so excited, in fact, that I actually went the full length and PAID for it. I am pretty extreme when it comes to downloading music in those various forms where you don’t pay for it, but I make it a point to try to actually purchase music when it is from artists who aren’t on major labels or, like Alexz Johnson, are actually self-releasing their music. Let me just say – the album is worth so much more than the $9.99 that I paid for it, (at http://www.alexzjohnson.com/pages.php?sec=14 if you want to check it out – it is ABSOLUTELY worth it, and you can get a free download of the first single there, as well, if you want a little preview.) The album is called “Voodoo,” and the first thing I want to mention is the album artwork. The cover is this very cool, old-timey looking picture of her and it reads, “Voodoo” starring Alexz Johnson. The album artwork all has this cool theme of one of those classic mystery/suspense films from the 40s or 50s. It really suits the album very well. The album itself is absolutely brilliant, as well. Her music would basically fall into the category of pop, but is nothing like the pop that you think of when you hear the words “pop music.” It is all guitar-based and all played on real instruments, (there is not a synthesizer to be found on this record,) and has some really cool “world” style beats and a very classic sound. There are 11 tracks on the album and every one of them is brilliant in it’s own way and, while many songs have very different vibes, the album works perfectly as a whole. The standout tracks for me are the title track, “Voodoo,” a song called “LA Made Me,” which had a very immediate anthemic feeling for me, “A Little Bit” which is probably the poppiest song on the record, “Superstition” which is a bit haunting and has a very large, epic sound to it, “Trip Around The World,” the album’s first single and “Hurricane Girl,” which is a gorgeous, heartbreaking ballad. My very favorite track on the album is a toss-up between two songs, though. The first is a song called “Taker,” which stood out to me just based on the title. My Mom read this book ages ago and has talked to me a lot about it, called “The Givers & The Takers.” It is basically a book about relationships and how there is often a Giver and a Taker. My Mom, in all of her relationships, has tended to be a Giver. Me, on the other hand, have a tendency to be a Taker. It’s funny, though, because in my last couple of romantic dealings the tables kind of turned on me and I became the Giver… well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I became the Giver in the monetary sense, but I was still always a Taker in the emotional sense. This is really a topic for another blog, though. This song does really make me wonder, though, if Alexz Johnson hasn’t read that book, as well, because this song really suits the concept. Essentially, it is a song about being a Taker and taking so much that you wind up hurting the Giver. It is something I can definitely relate to. My other favorite song on the record is “Look At Those Eyes.” This song really struck me right of the bat, with a bridge that says, “No, tell me it’s not so, that people will come and they’ll go, we push away all the love that we know, No, tell me it’s not so.” I found myself REALLY relating to those lyrics, but the song goes on to a chorus that says, “But look at who’s right beside you when you’re alone and barely holding on, Leave your worries behind you, You’re not alone in the dark, Look at who’s right beside you, you’re looking back thinking oh my God, that somebody’s never left you, You’re not alone in the dark.” It is a very powerful message that this song sends and one that really means the world to me at this point in my life. I have discussed many times in this blog how much I sometimes feel like I am completely alone in this world. I know it isn’t true, but I feel that way a lot of the time. This song will serve as a reminder to me that I am not alone and that there are always people there, even if I don’t see them or feel them all the time. Like I said, this is a completely brilliant album and I HIGHLY recommend everyone take the time to check it out – it is beautiful and worth so much more than the $9.99 it will cost you at the link above.
It is almost midnight now and I need to get to bed. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow, after all. My Mom and I recently discussed perhaps selecting a day of the week that we will skip the workout, since we seem to keep missing days for other reasons. We figured that Wednesday would be the best day for that, since it is the middle of the week. So, we are not working out tomorrow. My Mom is taking her car to get an oil change in the morning and I am going to use the extra time to take a nice, long shower and be leisurely whilst getting ready for work. Tomorrow is a big day because it is my rescheduled first music lesson after work! This evening, my Mom went to the bank for me and pulled out enough cash to pre-pay the rest of the month and I am extremely excited to get started! I am not feeling as nervous as I was before… at least, not right now. I will probably get the nerves again tomorrow, though. It is a good kind of nervous energy, though. I am really excited to get started on this journey and I am confident that tomorrow’s lesson will be incredible. I can see it now – soon enough, I will be writing and playing my own music and really getting the ball rolling on writing my very own record! The ball is about to officially start rolling and I cannot wait to see what happens next! For now, though, I must retire for the evening. I need my beauty rest, after all. I want to strut into that place looking cool and confident and ready to take on the world with my weapon of choice being a piano! Goodnight.
Unlike yesterday, work felt extremely long today. It was really slow and there wasn’t much going on. Around noon or so this afternoon I started feeling really exhausted and like I was going to pass out right there in my cubicle. I was trying to do some drawing, in attempts to come up with some ideas to try out on t-shirts. Of course, I always have the drawings I did before to send to the t-shirt company but those are really ambitious for me to try hand painting. At the same time, if I could pull them off they would be quite brilliant, I think. I don’t know what I’m going to try next on a t-shirt. I was talking to my sister about it a bit and she gave me a really good idea. The instructions on all the fabric paint packages, as well as all the instructions I found whilst Googling the topic, recommended putting a piece of cardboard or something along those lines inside the fabric, so the paint doesn’t bleed through to the other side of the shirt. Well, Amber had the idea of drawing the design on that piece of cardboard first and going over it with Sharpie or something like that, so that when working on the actual shirt it would basically be like tracing. This seems like an excellent plan and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it myself. It’s so simple. I’m thinking I’ll try experimenting with that a bit over the weekend. As far as my drawing today, I didn’t really come up with much. I drew one picture that I really kind of liked – a woman, very 60s Flower Power looking, with a giant rainbow coming down from the sleeve area all the way to the bottom hem of the shirt, with different random things sliding down the rainbow, like music notes and hearts and stars and random other things. I like the idea of it because it is basically an image of a hippie tripping out, but I feel like the initial drawing I did today is really lacking something. I’m not sure what exactly, but it’s definitely missing something. Maybe I will work on that a bit more tomorrow. Aside from that, though, I did a bit of a concept drawing of a woman’s top that I thought was pretty cool. I basically spent all day at work drawing to keep myself awake.
I also got into a couple of interesting conversations with one of my co-workers who was kind of trying to justify the use of the word “gay” in the slang sense. I was saying that I don’t see anything wrong with being politically correct even though a lot of people complain about people being too PC. My belief is that if you can word something in a way that isn’t going to be offensive to others or hurt anybody’s feelings, then why wouldn’t you? It just seems mean-spirited to say things in a way that could offend others when you have a whole vocabulary of perfectly good alternate words to use that won’t offend anybody. I understand that we should be able to express ourselves in whatever way we see fit but I also feel very strongly that I don’t want the way that I express myself to be something that will be hurtful to the people around me. I am all about freedom of expression and am a very big fan of pushing the envelope and provoking thought and emotions in others in all kinds of ways, but I do try to make it a point to not do anything in a way that would be hurtful to others. It’s all a matter of treating others how you want to be treated. My co-worker and I kind of agreed to disagree, but that seems to me like my co-worker saying, “Well, I’m not going to stop saying things that may be offensive and I don’t really care if other people are hurt by it.” I hate that type of thinking. Some days I feel like I’m surrounded by that kind of thinking and I have to figure out some way to be light in the midst of that darkness. I do the best I can, though, and it hasn’t worked yet. That just means I need to do better. One of my program managers handed out these little papers to everyone today with motivational quotes on them which sounds kind of silly, I know, but I think it is a nice way to kind of perk up people’s days. Mine was really good and I felt really relevant to me, specifically. It was a quote from Henry Ford that said, “Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we allow ourselves to look away from our goals.” I have long believed that things like horoscopes, fortune cookies, tarot readings and such are the Universe’s way of delivering messages to us. Perhaps not every one you read or anything, but I think that if the Universe is trying to give us a message that we just aren’t seeing in other ways it will get it to us SOMEHOW – often through one of these silly, frivolous type mediums. I think this random quote from my program manager was definitely one of those, and I was grateful for the reminder of what I was already thinking but may have needed reiterated.
On my first break this morning, I was checking Twitter from my phone and noticed a tweet about something that I knew was coming but didn’t realize was arriving TODAY. What was it? It was the debut solo album from Alexz Johnson. I’m sure none of you know the name Alexz Johnson and it is extremely unfortunate that this is the case. Back in 2004, shortly after I first moved back to Florida, my Mom and I shared a love of a certain Canadian teen melodrama called “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” “Degrassi: The Next Generation” is one of my favorite television series of all-time. It airs on a channel that, at the time, was called The N. It was kind of a teen version of Nickelodeon. Most of the original programming on this network was not actually original at all, but imported from Canada and “Degrassi” was it’s most popular show. Then they premiered a new show from the makers of “Degrassi” called “Instant Star.” This show was about a girl named Jude Harrison, played by Alexz Johnson, who won a fictional Idol-style reality show called “Instant Star.” The show followed her creating an album after winning the show and kind of followed her career and her personal life as she dealt with an on again off again relationship with her producer and all sorts of other drama. It was a really great show, but the best part of this show was Alexz Johnson and her music. There was a new song from her featured in each episode of the show and they would release an album for each season of the show featuring all of the songs. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is some of the best music to have come out of the first decade of the new millennium. Alexz Johnson has the most incredible voice and also wrote a lot of the music for the show. It was one of my favorite shows while it was on. Sadly, it only ran for four seasons, and thus only bore four albums. Anyway, starting with season two rumors started spreading like mad that Alexz Johnson was working on her own album separate from the show and I was extremely excited for this to happen. Shortly after the rumors started they were confirmed and I started getting even more excited than I was already. Unfortunately, when the show ended in 2008 there was still no album. She posted a small bundle of songs on her official Myspace page, all of which were completely brilliant, and got me even more hyped. Then she got dropped from her label, got picked up by another label and eventually parted ways from them, as well. It was beginning to look like her solo album was just never going to happen… then it did. I knew the album was set to come out sometime this month, but I had completely forgotten the date until I got on Twitter and saw a tweet from her saying, “Hey, the album is out NOW.”
When I got home from work this evening, the first thing I did was come to the computer to download the album. I was pretty excited, considering I had been waiting anxiously for over 3 years for this to happen. I was so excited, in fact, that I actually went the full length and PAID for it. I am pretty extreme when it comes to downloading music in those various forms where you don’t pay for it, but I make it a point to try to actually purchase music when it is from artists who aren’t on major labels or, like Alexz Johnson, are actually self-releasing their music. Let me just say – the album is worth so much more than the $9.99 that I paid for it, (at http://www.alexzjohnson.com/pages.php?sec=14 if you want to check it out – it is ABSOLUTELY worth it, and you can get a free download of the first single there, as well, if you want a little preview.) The album is called “Voodoo,” and the first thing I want to mention is the album artwork. The cover is this very cool, old-timey looking picture of her and it reads, “Voodoo” starring Alexz Johnson. The album artwork all has this cool theme of one of those classic mystery/suspense films from the 40s or 50s. It really suits the album very well. The album itself is absolutely brilliant, as well. Her music would basically fall into the category of pop, but is nothing like the pop that you think of when you hear the words “pop music.” It is all guitar-based and all played on real instruments, (there is not a synthesizer to be found on this record,) and has some really cool “world” style beats and a very classic sound. There are 11 tracks on the album and every one of them is brilliant in it’s own way and, while many songs have very different vibes, the album works perfectly as a whole. The standout tracks for me are the title track, “Voodoo,” a song called “LA Made Me,” which had a very immediate anthemic feeling for me, “A Little Bit” which is probably the poppiest song on the record, “Superstition” which is a bit haunting and has a very large, epic sound to it, “Trip Around The World,” the album’s first single and “Hurricane Girl,” which is a gorgeous, heartbreaking ballad. My very favorite track on the album is a toss-up between two songs, though. The first is a song called “Taker,” which stood out to me just based on the title. My Mom read this book ages ago and has talked to me a lot about it, called “The Givers & The Takers.” It is basically a book about relationships and how there is often a Giver and a Taker. My Mom, in all of her relationships, has tended to be a Giver. Me, on the other hand, have a tendency to be a Taker. It’s funny, though, because in my last couple of romantic dealings the tables kind of turned on me and I became the Giver… well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I became the Giver in the monetary sense, but I was still always a Taker in the emotional sense. This is really a topic for another blog, though. This song does really make me wonder, though, if Alexz Johnson hasn’t read that book, as well, because this song really suits the concept. Essentially, it is a song about being a Taker and taking so much that you wind up hurting the Giver. It is something I can definitely relate to. My other favorite song on the record is “Look At Those Eyes.” This song really struck me right of the bat, with a bridge that says, “No, tell me it’s not so, that people will come and they’ll go, we push away all the love that we know, No, tell me it’s not so.” I found myself REALLY relating to those lyrics, but the song goes on to a chorus that says, “But look at who’s right beside you when you’re alone and barely holding on, Leave your worries behind you, You’re not alone in the dark, Look at who’s right beside you, you’re looking back thinking oh my God, that somebody’s never left you, You’re not alone in the dark.” It is a very powerful message that this song sends and one that really means the world to me at this point in my life. I have discussed many times in this blog how much I sometimes feel like I am completely alone in this world. I know it isn’t true, but I feel that way a lot of the time. This song will serve as a reminder to me that I am not alone and that there are always people there, even if I don’t see them or feel them all the time. Like I said, this is a completely brilliant album and I HIGHLY recommend everyone take the time to check it out – it is beautiful and worth so much more than the $9.99 it will cost you at the link above.
It is almost midnight now and I need to get to bed. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow, after all. My Mom and I recently discussed perhaps selecting a day of the week that we will skip the workout, since we seem to keep missing days for other reasons. We figured that Wednesday would be the best day for that, since it is the middle of the week. So, we are not working out tomorrow. My Mom is taking her car to get an oil change in the morning and I am going to use the extra time to take a nice, long shower and be leisurely whilst getting ready for work. Tomorrow is a big day because it is my rescheduled first music lesson after work! This evening, my Mom went to the bank for me and pulled out enough cash to pre-pay the rest of the month and I am extremely excited to get started! I am not feeling as nervous as I was before… at least, not right now. I will probably get the nerves again tomorrow, though. It is a good kind of nervous energy, though. I am really excited to get started on this journey and I am confident that tomorrow’s lesson will be incredible. I can see it now – soon enough, I will be writing and playing my own music and really getting the ball rolling on writing my very own record! The ball is about to officially start rolling and I cannot wait to see what happens next! For now, though, I must retire for the evening. I need my beauty rest, after all. I want to strut into that place looking cool and confident and ready to take on the world with my weapon of choice being a piano! Goodnight.
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