I go sleep alone but think that you're next to me.

Sometimes all one needs is Spoon on the stereo, the Winter X-Games on the television, two cans of Mountain Dew in the blood, a tub of Publix Orange Sherbet in the lap, and a healthy disregard for tomorrow's responsibilities.

The Drive Home

Taxi cabs at red lights, stop;
doors swing open and heads,
expelling the glories of the party,
pop out.

Hair falls, a silken robe.
Heads bob both to and fro,
swaying with stalwart prowess.

Witnessing the scene, street lamps
cast luminant gazes across the way,
turn mystical Night into brazen Day.

Back in.
Admitting the defeats of the evening,
doors fully shut and tales,
littered with laughter, begin;

I'll lick my wounds, would you pass the salt?

The Hold Steady: Separation Sunday
Spoon: Kill the Moonlight
The Beatles: Revolver
Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Joy Division: Closer

Cat Power: The Greatest
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins: Rabbit Fur Coat
Spoon: Girls Can Tell
Wilco: A.M.

Wilco: Kicking Television
Neil Young: Harvest

Wilco: Being There

***

That's quite an enormous amount of CD purchases for one week. This should hold me for a while. For the record, half of those were irresistible used purchases. So, you know, it wasn't that much money. ::cough::

Insane.

InsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsane

WILCO Tuesday, March 14, 2006 Doors: 7:30pm Showtime: 8:30pm



Advance general admission tickets $25 Limited FSU Student tickets: $15

Co-Presented by FSU Union Productions This is an 18+ event

TICKETS GO ON SALE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3 @ 12 NOON

InsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsaneInsane

I'm still seeing Wilco at the Langerado Festival-- I already bought my ticket for it. But I guess it's likely I will be seeing them again at the Moon two days later.

I wanna play the part of Eddie in The Stranger Dance.

Furthermore, for some ambiguities, there is evidence that linguistic and visual context can override syntactic preferences that exist in the absence of a context from the earliest stages of processing that can be measured with current methodologies.

That's from a chapter I was reading on ambiguous sentences. Thought I'd share.

***

I'm really tired right now, but I still have quite a few dozen pages left to read before tomorrow, so I'm not sure what will happen. Either way, I'm not too worried about it. Things tend to work out naturally, for some reason, all the time.

***

Oh! So get this: my (grad. student) teacher in mythology told us how to write the first essay she assigned:

"So, uh, you need an introduction and a conclusion. Make your thesis the first sentence of the intro, and for the conclusion, you can just restate your thesis. Then, list your three points in the intro paragraph, and then make one paragraph for each of those points. So you'll have the intro, the three paragraphs, and a conclusion. And don't use 'I' or 'you' anywhere in there."

I slapped my forehead about 25 times during her explanation of the essay. Mr Hammond would have burned a hole straight through her with a condescending stare and haughty expression.

Then I realized that the most depressing part was... somewhere in that class at least one student probabaly need those crappy, ill-informed, simplistic, mundane, uninspiring, limiting guidelines on how to write an essay.

"Just restate your thesis for your conclusion."

::sigh::

I want to pick peaches off a cherry tree.

Not as good as Ok Go's "A Million Ways" video, but entertaining nonetheless (click the pic):


(The Boy Least Likely To -- "Be Gentle With Me" video)

Speak softly and carry a big clip.

I don't know how widespread this knowledge is, but it's news to me:

Gamers in China are facing new limits on how much time they can spend playing their favourite online game.

The thing that gets me is that gamers are paying a monthly subscription fee to play, and the government is limiting the time they're able to play during that month. If it really is the situation it's reported as being, I think it's pretty unjust:

After three hours, a character's level is cut in half and drop rates for items is decreased, and after five hours the character's level is reset to the minimum. The character will not return to normal until the player has signed out for five hours.

Now, take into account that higher level players would probably only want to take part in missions or quests or whatever that take a considerable amount of time. Realize the (although digital) social correspondence inherit in the game, the fantasy element of escapism, the obvious releases of stress. It's obscene that a government could regulate an expansive recreational activity to such a degree.

If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Arrival of state-awarded financial aid means:

A) the settling of various debts.
B) the implementation of a thought-out plan of saving, appropriation of funds, and other mature acts of prolonged financial stability.
C) the realization of that dream vacation.
D) the purchase of five CDs.








E) A and D only.

Then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours

Whoa. Just read the coolest thing:

When type was handset, a period or comma outside of quotation marks at the end of a sentence tended to get knocked out of position, so the printers tucked the little devils inside the quotation marks to keep them safe and out of trouble. But apparently only American printers were more attached to convenience than logic, since British printers continued to risk the misalignment of their periods and commas.

This was from a great page on quotation marks.

I found it by searching for "m-dash" on Google.

I should send these pages to all the A&E writers...

So exorcise your cells till you're bereft

So, I'm in the midst of reading 58 pages of this:

Hence, one should find increasing lexical effects in speeded pronunciation performance as one decreases the transparency of the spelling-to-sound correspondences (also referred to as the orthographic depth hypothesis).

Surprisingly, I'm understanding most of it.

Oh, distance has no way of making love understandable

Spoon - Gimme Fiction, Grade: A

Spoon offers a bare-bones rock album with the group's fifth full-length, 2005's Gimme Fiction. The tracks bounce along with undeniable intensity despite successful efforts at rhythmic minimalism; the production is crisp and clear (when it wants to be), ringing tones out at full vibrance and lighting up the arrangements.

At its core Gimme Fiction is a bustling nest of hooks and straight-forward guitars, piano, bass, and drums. But injected into this basic landscape is a multitude of distractors including sporadic guitars, melodramatic bursts of fuzz, reels of tape winding and flapping, and isolated riffs and count-offs, giving the album the feel of an intimate recording session made in the moment.

Though this implication of a live recording lies far from the truth (frontman Britt Daniel recorded most of the album himself), the atmospheric magic of the recording is not lost, making it one of the best rock albums of 2005.

- Justin de la Cruz

***

As I told Matt, while I was writing the review, I realized that I wanted to make it a full review (this was for an article that used many people's reviews of different albums and each is supposed to be about 100 words, instead of 3, 4, or [more usually, with me] 500 word reviews). Buuuut, I was away from the apartment (still at home-- wrote this over the break), and didn't have access to much else I wanted to write about... and it was kind of the last minute as well.

Living in and out of a big fat suitcase.

I had a somewhat major freakout for about 3 hours last night, when I wondered whether I should start on the 100+ assigned lines of Latin translation that I was assigned in class, or drop the class and my other Latin class, and drop my starry-eyed idea of getting a second major in Latin.

Chose the latter.

I checked and would have had to take 5 or 6 more classes of just pure translation-- probably around 300 lines a week per class, and I would have to take more than one class each of the next two semesters. Strict translation was never the coolest part of Latin for me, and while I know I could do it and, eventually, do it well, I wondered, for probably the first time in two years, whether it was something I really wanted to do.

This wasn't some sort of "life is short, screw it" moments, it was more like "would I get much enjoyment of obtaining a degree for all this drudgery?" I dropped the Latin classes and enrolled in Classical Mythology, which I always found interesting but never fully explored, and an art history class-- from the Renaissance to modern art.

Next year I'm thinking of taking a photography class.

I still have a challenge this semester, though. I went to my two graduate classes today (both 3 hour classes, one day a week), and it looks like I'll probably be reading 2-3 articles and two big chapters a week, as well as posting discussion points online (for the first time), doing presentations, and writing papers. It should be a joyous experience-- I'm pretty interested in both topics (psychology of language, cognitive process in second language acquisition).

I am much more composed now. I will have extra time (Thursdays off, baby!), slightly less stress, and probably more fun.

She weren't even much too hot, but she totally mugged me up like raah.

The weekend before the first day of school saw your daring narrator play bass in the last two shows of Melbourne-based rock/ska band Go Play in Traffic's tour with Long Shot Hero.

Highlights include:

First thing guy from LSH says to me -- "What school do you go to?"

Me: "FSU."

He: "We're getting wasted!"

***

After the show the first night (Panama City, FL), a middle-aged man shook my hand and his wife gave me a hug. I assumed it was a friend of the band, or a mother of someone or someone's friend, upon inquiry "Who did I just hug," Andrew: "I don't know, some woman."

***

LSH's singer stumbled into GPiT's hotel room (actually LSH's hotel room, but they shared), saying stuff like "Hellooo, speedboat. This [the bed he was lying on] is my speedboat!" "How the hell did I end up in here?" and other drunken phrases before he passed out.

***

I bought a $0.97 gray beanie/headcovering for the second show (Dotahn, Alabama) at Wal-Mart.

***

Tonight, I had sushi for the first time. Didn't like it. Wasn't surpised -- I don't like normal seafood, so I didn't think I would like normal seafood... that was raw... and in tiny bits. I got salmon with avocado and fish roe (something called a "New California Roll").

***

Tomorrow, and (all following M/W/Fs) I have my first class at 12:20. SWeeT. (I also have Thursdays off.)

***

I got a stack of free CDs and the book The Google Story (hardback) from the FSView today. I'll let you know if any of 'em are cool.

***

I'm going to try to name all subsequent posts after lyrics I've heard that day.