That's for (+)ivity Day!!!!

L@T: Noisettes BLAM

Ladies & Gents

It's crazy but I've been thinking alot about my blog of late...I'm doing so much work on it...getting regular and anyway I was trolling and I found out Noisettes new album (after forevvvvveeerr) on April 17 which sounds good.

Go listen to their new track "Break Free" at http://www.myspace.com/noisettesuk

...Still working on that Ol' collage for my last post...

L@T: (+)vity in Action

Blarrrggg its my weekly updates mateys!!! I had this whole thing that I was going to talk about...you know the hatrix* and so forth but you have to write that kind of stuff when you're just coming out of it so I'll do something positive instead. Here's a mish mash of things that bring a smile to my face of late:

1. I just started volunteering at a radio station which has made me start to re-evaluate my musical taste which are wide (and can be offensively tacky to some) and embracing but I'm hoping I'll meet some cool people. I meet this girl Jenny C. but she's leaving in a week...this is a theme of my life, people passing through...I don't know if that makes things more beautiful or sad. Nope, this (+) tivity day (which is nearly as much of a bullshit holiday as family day since only 40% of working parents actually qualify for the day off and its not for families but just because there's too long without a holiday between new years and Easter so its all crap....nearly as much crap as Valentine's day ...I digress). Anyway I'm starting to work on my radio show that I want to pitch to the station. Its in relation to movies, soundtracks, and trivia 9the kind you only find trawling the net as I am wont to do.). It should be really cool but it has no name yet or set format. Until then I'll practice my on air personality and just help out around the station (Because that's what good girls do!)
   
2. PingMag (http://pingmag.jp/)- Go to the english and then the japan section. This website makes me smile in regards to ...everything Japanese!!! They have so many articles on products, artists, shows, etc. Gives a girl something to aspire to for when I move there!
3. Rolo Realm (http://www.thehookupzone.net/RoLoRealm/topten.php)- Oh YES. I hesitated to include this but my dorkiness knows NO BOUNDS. By the way, the new Wolverine movie is coming out and so many sick, sick characters are going to be in it (Hold up I had to do my overbundence-of-joy-contained dance again) like Gambit and a way smarter Sabretooth (nefarious!)....Geeeeeekkkkk.
   
4. Audrey Kawasaki ( http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/2007/index.php)- An amazing artist who works on wood (like her canvas) and paint and pencils etc. An extremely diverse talent from Pratt University. You may feel uncomfortable with the youthful sexuality (I guess this is where classy pervs get their jonesy's on...) but if you look past that and examine the romantic world she creates, in contrast to my next artist, you gotta respect the woman. WORK!
5. Fafi ( http://www.fafi.net/wallpaint/years.html)- I actually wasn't going to discuss her next but her caustic little creatures do tend to make me laugh. She's the most(in my opinion) badass female painting graffiti artist from france but travels all over the world doing so much more. She's a business woman on the march on fashion, brick, publishing...repping.
   
6. Fresh laundry...seriously nothing like going a round with the old washing machine and coming out the better for it.
   
7. Beth White (http://www.lindgrensmith.com/search/white/index.php)- Okay I just became a huge fan of hers (ten seconds ago!) She makes art out of paper like silhouettes (This is not Punch & Judy, ladies & Gents). She's doing a show with Ms Kawasaki which is how I discovered her. Her intricate portraits show an ingenuity and a level of mature sophistication without losing their (and I wouldn't add youthful but some would) quirk. Its so fun like art should be. I suddenly have the urge to go break out some safety scissors and coloured paper...
8. "NCIS" and "Location, Location, Location" reruns- Let me break it down: Kirstie Allsop and Jethro Gibbs are too hard for you regular folks. They will break you and mold you into the perfect NCIS agent/ English home buyer ever. Enough said. (Heroes plz plz plz come back to me....)
   
9. Alex, Ray, Sammy, Coco, and Tia- These kids make me laugh. And they kind of sound like a brat pack.
   
10. The Noisettes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C91iV8gQb1U)- This English band (What's The Time Mr. Wolf?) are so last season in some people's eyes but I am in full on love. And a super hot black girl Shingai Shoniwa fronting this sweet, I wouldn't quite say rock, party thrash band is just a triple bonus squared.
    
11. Alice Smith ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx_LdMnOvZA)-Get thee to Youtube immidiatemont!( That's supposed to be French...I should brush up on my French.) And if I hear one word about Alicia Keys VS Alice I'll scream. Just Don't DO It. It's like Kate Nash VS Lilly Allen- not the same just because it's 2 white girls.
    
12. Great lush movies- Frida, Chungking Express, Fallen Angel, The Fountain...I can't stop playing these movies again and again. Sometime I'm not even watching it, its background noise. I can feel the emotions in the voices and silences...the music, the sounds of breathe. Two of them are subtitled but trust me, they're so worth the risk if you enjoy emotional, visceral movies ( w/ or w/out plot...I'm talking to you director Wai!) that take you to a place inside yourself that you trouble to relate and communicate to others.
13. Beth Ditto from The Gossip(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gossip)- The second I feel bad about myself, my inner voice of confidence takes her form and pumps me up. I would unabashedly become a lesbian for this lady. This voice sounds like chicken and beer and sultry good times dancing till your sweaty in a bar where the DJ is so good you forget if anyone you know is there.
    
14. The Vagabond Set ( http://www.thevagabondset.com/)- This lady is living a very cool life (perhaps vapid according to some but none should judge. You're so jealous!) and I'm not exactly sure how she does it but does it she does. She's just moved to Tokyo ( from Manchester, England but is a Swede...you get it after awhile) and she details the fashionable and the life according to her and Said (I've figured it out...I kept thinking she was just saying said repetitively because she doesn't capitalize [importance of grammar kids!] but I'm pretty sure that's just her boyfriends name.). Its a cool knick nack of stuff drenched in designer duds.
15. And so I've finished Hitodama to the point that I'm comfortable showing it to people...of course now I want to flesh one of the characters a bit more...and what you may not know is that each book gets a playlist of songs that evoke characters as they are and as they hope to be and who they've been- this book is really about loss and coping as young adults (Beer, beer, beer!). I'm starting on the next novelette ( I'm not sure exactly what to do about the first yet) and I found the song for my character Janey L. in this book by Shane Alexander:Shipwrecked: and the whole album that goes with it. Go listen immediately ( The Album Is Out NOWWWW...I'd have it if I weren't so broke and I refuse to bittorrent this, a girl must draw a line! If not true beauty then where?) at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEjohC0dNWk)
    

EEWW there was pure silence for most of this post but I then regained my senses and began to play this randomness of a playlist called Relaxo (its unusually blah): Feeling Good:Micheal Buble, There Is:Boxcar Racer, Coal to Diamonds:The Gossip, (Skipped Berlin...started to wonder WHAT is this garbage...), Breathe (2 am):Anna Nalick, Dead Meat: Sean Lennon, Magick Man:Heart, White Flag: Dido, Like A Star: Corinne Bailey Rae (Cannot wait for her new stuff), Once: Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Cool Jazz:Miles Davis, Every Planet We Reach Is Dead:Gorillaz- And this is where I had enough of this tripe and risked the All Music Shuffle(*GASP*) which produced this: I'm Coming Freestyle:Lupe Fiasco, Sinnerman:Nina Simone, Dream:Alice Smith, Woodstock:Alice Smith, Foundations:Kate Nash, Pump It:Black Eyed Peas, Who Is Tanya:Tanya Stephens.

Crazy I think I just saw microscopic bug....maybe I'm just tired. I'm going to work on a visual collage for this post now!

*More on the Hatrix at another post but not this one. I will be happy today. Happy, happy, happy...

Edict OT General # 3:The power of forgiveness and determination

Wow remember when you were a kid and somebody wronged you? And just before you could exact your perfect revenge the villain was caught and forced to give you their sad excuse for a “Sorry”. As a child (or maybe even still now) you didn’t hide your feelings. Sorry doesn’t cut it asshole! You wanted the sweet sweet taste of revenge and nothing else would do…for about fifteen minutes after which you eventually found yourself so bored by the whole evil maniac monologue in your head that you either forgot* about the whole thing naturally or tell yourself to leave off it until you do forget.

And that was what was great about childhood: you could enter the now and ‘forget’ the pain of before. Of course now you’re an adult and that simply doesn’t fly anymore. You can try like hell, be absolutely determined to forget your hurts and affronts, but its there at the back of your restless mind and coming to the forefront.

What the hell do you do when that forgetting shit doesn’t work? That’s something each person should examine for themselves. Sometimes, psychotherapybabble aside, you do have a great reason for not forgiving. It might not be a great reason in the grand scheme of things but in the small stage of life that you occupy it may mean everything. You do have the right to protect yourself from those who don’t mean you well and will repeat those same devastating acts.

But just because you scream “I hate you all” at the top of your lungs doesn’t mean you don’t hate yourself a little for it. After all, who doesn’t want to swoop down and rescue another from themselves? That would transform you from the victim to the hero.

But here’s my personal stand from that: Scream. Scream all you want and it doesn’t matter who you think you’re screaming at, in the end it’s always you. Haha doesn’t just suck how weak we are? Or is it strong? Sometimes I have to imagine society as people stuck in bubbles that may pop at any second from being pressed together so tightly but still the real people inside never touch.

The conundrum is this, should we all be responsible for saving ourselves- doomed to fail- or save each other- doomed again to fail? That is the wrong question. We are forgetting that relationships between real live people can be reflected in the intertextualities of characters in literature. The greatest artists show us the everyday, the mundane, and thus the truth. They make us revel in it. But I digress [majorly<- huh, I never knew that was slang. People, majorly is not a word! Okay seriously, stop.], we have to be determined to solve how to forgive those who have harmed us without letting them back into our lives.

You see, grudges are powerful things that just stick on your heart like a clogged artery. HEART ATTACK BABY! [sorry I have to allow myself 1 minute of otakuness a day. People, that was it. F33r 1t.]

But wait, didn’t I post earlier how people shouldn’t apologise if they don’t mean it?

Crap, I just realized…I’m struggling with the same quandary!

Right so what do you do? You get determined. You get so fucking determined you scare the people aware enough to see it in you. They don’t know what to say, they need to be awed. You have got to believe that you are worth establishing forgiveness. That won’t be easy, soldier. There will be tears and reflection and pain but when you cross so many of your own bridges, it might be easier to feel some compassion to the bridges that others have burnt behind them.

It takes a lot of fear to fuel a burning bridge. Who couldn’t understand that kind of fear? Who couldn’t reflect on a time where you’ve thrown your own fear on a bridge from your heart to another’s? And who amongst us, with all that, would dare not to remember the pain it brought us? That is why forgiveness won’t be easy. It isn’t easy because it takes time. Unfortunately the collusion of your destiny doesn’t come with a timetable.

* When I say “forget” I actually mean “put it to the back of your inner closet until it all builds up as a pubescent when you just happen to think about it and suddenly you’re really angry about a multitude of offences all at once…” Yeah.

Playlist [ parts from my two itunes playlists “relaxo” and “adieu mr knight”] : “hallelujah” Rufus Wainwright, “dead meat” Sean Lennon, “broken” Seether ft Amy Lee, “black hole sun” Soundgarden, “its been awhile” Staind, “you’re so last summer” Taking Back Sunday, “stranger in my house” Tamia, “count yourself in” Ten Second Epic, “apologize” One Republic, “deep river” Utada Hikaru, “first love” Utada Hikaru, “amai wana” Utada Hikaru, “when it all falls apart” The Veronicas, “color me once” Violent Femmes, “hoppipolla” Sigur Rus, “swiderweb” Coldplay, “fortune faded” Red Hot Chili Peppers, “the simple story” Feist ft Jane Birkin, “paper planes” M.I.A.

L @ T: Seriously?

No wonder people don't think we can do anything...seriously, how long did it take to practice this? Go do something with your life! I know everyday you do something you regret, like filling up a quota, but I think they filled up a couple weeks worth!

http://www.slide.com/r/pHT0BYh4wz99-q1CsaadQlcZblSdXkKK

M M & I: Old Lady News prt 2

Kay these are rants from miles and days and inches ago...serious. But January sort of imploded all over me which is just as gross as it sounds. So I'm just going to quickly recap that lovely week in January, put up an edict, put up a link, update some info and be gone baby gone. Off to watch NCIS, brain shall return.

Day 4-

Actually inbetween the lazing alot of good got done. Plans were being made left and right. Weelll the shapes of plans were being made. And today I gave a very basic rundown of my magazine pitch to a friend ( http://girlsdontusuallydothis.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html ) for the first time. Which is cool and weird at the same time. It's cool but no one knows how much courage it took for me to talk about the magazine idea to a friend. I had no idea what reaction to expect. Didn't have the balls to tell her the whole thing but the first step is out there, vibrating in the world. Now it's up to me to kind of follow it through.

It's weird because I have friends from high school who don't really know me because even though I've changed so much in the last five years I hide these parts of myself from them so our friendship can continue. Essentially they are still friends with the "high school" me ( I feel Kate Nash's "Foundations" would really explain the feeling I go through. Occassionally the cracks in these relationships cannot be smoothed over...)
Nearly everytime we reconnect its weird in my head. An emotional goal for this year can be to see whether they can accept me as I am ( a sexuality accepting, fashion/art whore/hobo, lit freak, sarcastically optimistic, OCD/ADD/Dyslexic whole human being) and vice versa. If they can't then there are some facades one cannot and should not aim to keep.

Without acceptance there is no love. Without love there is a vortex...a black hole where love should be.

Over the course of just living, each and every one of us, saints and all, will harm, hurt, damage, and break those around us. Why invite the inevitable into our lives? Why not encounter it as the bigger picture intended?

My mantra for 2008:

IF YOU CAN'T ACCEPT ME AS I AM THEN THIS IS ME ANYWAY- WORKING TO MAKE THE REALITY OF ME BE. I AM SORRY YOU CAN'T BE APART OF THAT PROCESS (...cuz it would have been so killer!!! Why do you think I was inviting you, the chips you'd bring? Well you would have been partly right).

I guess that's what I'm going to have to say and be at. Ha, who wouldn't want to be on they're journey to "there"???

Playlist: "7 days" Craig David ft. Mos Def / "a night like this" The Cure, "spaze out" Lupe Fiasco, "push" Madonna, "billy" James Blunt, "hunter" Dido, "black hole sun" Soundgarden