Say Anything

Life Bites (snack-size)

2008-05-09T21:23:00.001-07:00

I was always the type of blog writer that was against the idea of posting my day-to-day routine for the world to see, just because I sustain a personal belief that assuming the world wide public space of the Internet would be interested in such pedestrian happenings is pretty vain; not to mention that I know my life is so retardedly routine, I'd end up copy/pasting entries anyway.

[Wussy disclaimer: Again, that's just my belief. It's ironic (I think) that I do read the blogs of friends who do exactly what I just disparaged].

Thus, the following mini rants will only be posted just this once (until, you know the outcome...comes out). For your convenience, much detail and useless tidbits have been cut off from the body of text, much like the crusts of toasted sandwiches your mothers so lovingly chopped off for your benefit.

1. The wayward wife

To be fair, she's not exactly wayward, she's just my aunt. Long story short, she married the wrong dude and now she wants out, and fast. What she fails to recognize is that the door to that particular pathway slammed shut about a good couple years ago. Saddled with two kids (who are adorable, yet are obviously experiencing the backlashes of an unhappy household) and a useless sack of meat who is currently having love affairs with upper pills and alcohol (two mistresses that shouldn't be mixed together, so some of us in the family wishes he might slip up and do just that), she's feeling appropriately stressed and very, very sorry for herself.

The second bit is inappropriate and just about enough to drive me, someone at least two decades younger than this particular adult, into a frustrated rage. It's disconcerting to hear about a 40 year-old acting like next door's 3 year-old brat--tears, snot and all.

I had once thought that becoming an adult meant that you would, I don't know, act like one. It's bad enough that, through my daily encounters with strangers (I caffeinate the masses), I know only a depressingly small minority of our population achieved this coveted status, it's worse that this deficiency might be genetic.

They say eugenics is a pseudo-science, but now I'm betting all I've got on that claim.

This isn't a very happy, sunshiney blog, so I might as well end this here for tonight. It's getting effing long, anyhow.

Revving the brain for some motivation

2008-04-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a good couple weeks since I've last blogged, and a good month or so since I've really laid down anything worthwhile to read (I mean, stuff besides my personal outbursts of love and affection to certain individuals). Something about aging kind of grabs my usual blog topics by the arms and pulls them into a complicated looking headlock until they give and leave, defeated and with their heads sore by my annually rising numerical value.

Or something like that. This is good news because my usual blog topics were kind of really stupid, but without them, there's no meat to pack this burger.

I'll stop with the metaphors. It's summer (vacation), even though the weather has dipped back down to a coolness reminiscent to the knees of our changing seasons (assuming that spring is the head), aaand...I'm doing it again.

Alright, so I don't have much to blog about except that it's summer and I'm enjoying my brief moment of relatively free time (my work schedule is pretty sparse) until I throw myself into summer school and interships (that last one is just a possibility, people don't like to return my phone calls or something).

Oh, but I must announce to the world (or the small parts of it that stumbles by this blog and actually reads it) that a good friend of mine is going to be playing a live set this Thursday. He's a sexy man with fiery fingers and a hot, hot heart. ...That's a bit over the top, but my man Hiu plays a mean acoustic guitar set and his lyrics tug, pull and become entangled in your heart strings. Please check him out:

Time and Place Start Time: Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 9:00pm
End Time: Friday, May 2, 2008 at 3:00am
Location: Aura Lounge
Street: 4973 Yonge Street.
City/Town: Toronto, ON

Cover is F$6 and M$9 (mm...sexism), or $12 at the door. This is a 19+ event, so kids, grab your fake IDs and prepare to kick off the night with your Haiwaiin drivers lisence, "Patricia" *winkwink* Okay, but seriously, there's going to be a party after the sets, so if you're interested in DJs, dancing, and places that don't let you wear hats or athletic wear to party, this is your scene.

There, now this post has a point.

strange impulses

2008-04-15T17:37:00.001-07:00

One of them being the urge to grab my stranger and plant one on him. To sow the seed or fast-forward its growth to full bloom?

Knowing me, probably neither. It would be a memo for him, a sort of: Dear recipient, I'm in love with you, just so you know.

Photo courtesy of Morgan Fuse @ Flickr

Shelley

2008-04-10T16:04:00.001-07:00

Because I just got your letter (hearts and all) and was suddenly overcome with happiness, I just wanted to say:

Totally appreciating your stalker habits, totally touched (though I hope for some literality in the near-future), and promising to post up something good soon.

Oh, and dude, I totally miss you <3

Photo courtesy of loren ashleigh @ flickr

Bump of Chicken - Orbital Period [review]

2008-04-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, the chicken had broken coop and left fans in a swirl of feathers and dust when the band took a vacation from the glare of the limelight. But like a good momma bird, Bump of Chicken returned in the small but significant form of singles, five of which were dropped during that time period.

Having been successfully egged on by these short snippets of memorable melodies, fans are welcoming the return of this Japanese band with open arms and a roar of approval loud enough to send the musical men back into space--which was apparently where they resided during their brief moment of rest.

Orbital Period is an album as space-based as the title suggests. All the tracks follow the theme of being lost and found and lost again in this great, wide universe we live in. Though the band was known for its messier style of music--especially noticeable in their early releases--the transition to more mellow and melodic styles of rock has become much more consistent in their latest work. Whereas crunchy guitar riffs used to dominate, Orbital Period features many tracks where layers of plucking guitar strings weave and interweave melody lines over and around each other, while each accentuated note bring on the sparkle of individual stars coming to light.

Logically, title tracks of the album would have been the singles dropped prior to the release of the finished product. But all five--from "planetarium" to "karma"--are individual pieces that fit into a larger work. The tempo of the music ebbs and flows like waves of emotion that washes over--but never overwhelms--the listener. Music and lyrics are wedded intimately together, bringing forth a dual barrage of emotionally charged sound, where layers of arrangement are meshed tightly with simplistic lyrics that communicate the most complex of human emotions.

The men of Bump of Chicken are officially back, and their newest work shows that they haven't lost the goose-bump-inspiring capabilities that they named themselves after (the rest was an English grammatical error). Though fans feared that the respectably lengthy break in between albums would only mess around with the band's musical styles, Fujiwara Motoo--sole composer and frontman--has not lost his touch.

Orbital Period is a successfully spacey piece of work without leaving out the descriptions of complex humanity that gives it a distinctly earthy feel.

Heroes

2008-03-31T17:34:00.001-07:00

...can be anyone from a larger-than-life, courageous as heck photojournalist in a war zone; to a snarky, cynically optimistic fashion photog' inked with some of the most impressive tats I've ever seen on skin; to the genuine love and respect your mom (it's cheesy, but damn it, it's true)--heroes are found scattered all over the place within your daily walks of life, so why don't we talk about them more often?

More than that, is it possible to get through your life without ever thinking, "Wow, if I ever get to be a better person in life, I'd like to be like so-and-so"? And if so, would that make you an anti-social, unimaginative putz? Or does that make you better the rest of us ant-like beings, who scramble furiously against the ebb and flow of time and humanity?

Lots of questions tonight, possibly because I haven't blogged in a couple of eons, am partially hopped up on caffeine, am tired to the point of slight limb vibration and just personally started thinking about how all my fears are of such tiny consequence in comparisons to the day-to-day dealings that are tackled by the people I look up to the most. These guys--Yunghi Kim, Dan Pak, Fuijiwara Motoo, Takui, and yes, my mom--have done and are still doing crazy awesome things. They're beings beyond the grasp of inconsequential me, that more often than not, I always imaginging myself looking up at them even though I know that their physical realities are all about my height or shorter.

So it's no wonder that when I explain to my mother how stressed I am about my school work and my job and my lack of confidence in my own field, she can only look at me in disbelief. She's lived, seen and experienced about five lifetimes more than I can even imagine (and though you might think that a lot of momma's girls will say the same thing, I'm telling you now that my household is matriarchal system 'cause she's just taken so much shit within a stride, she can handle just about any situation short of ruling a nation; definitely the real deal), so no wonder she can recognize my insecurities of childish self-indulgence.

I need to get bigger, I need to get better, and the only frustrating obstacle that's completely barring my path is me. Which is stupid.

But yes, heroes! Maybe I am a scrambling ant, but I've gotten the cool chance to be born in the same era as these awesome beings. They help give me a little bit of direction and a little bit of ass kicking when I need to remember that life just ain't as hard as I'm making it out to be.

And that's my post. I sound like a really proud kid, but at the moment, that's just what I am. Just wait until you see the rest of me.

back on the beaten path

2008-03-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

You're the reason I can't sleep at night.

Live

2008-03-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

This is really just for my personal reference, but every now and then, I like to do a self-reflection and shovel out old (and probably bad) habits to be replaced with new ambitions (as well as some new bad habits because I'm only human).

Today's spring cleaning started when I was looking through one of my many email accounts and decided to dump the emails I had written to one of my ex-boyfriends. I didn't think it would take too long, because my rusty memory informed me that the two of us didn't correspond THAT often. Maybe fifty emails, tops (it was a long relationship, fifty would be plenty). But of course, I surprised myself and found over a hundred emails, not counting the singular emails that branched out and became its own monster when the number of replies piled up. Needless to say, it took me a solid fifteen minutes to get rid of all of them (but this is only thanks to the "select all" option from gmail that allows you to delete all 20 emails that are present on the page /random advertisement) and I felt that much better that a somewhat shameful chapter of my life had been expelled from existance for good (or so I hope).

Yes, I looked in some of them, peeked over some of the lines and kind of fought the urge to regurgitate the pizza bun I had hungrily consumed a half hour beforehand. My young, immature and inexperienced love(s) was/were quite nauseating, but I'm glad I got it out of my system. At this point, I'm happily single, more sure of my sense of self, and will approach such relationships with much more caution and brain than my previous attempt(s).

See? Good lessons learned when you do that little spring cleaning jig. I'll stop using that reference to spring cleaning, I've used it twice and it's leaving a bad aftertaste on this blog.

And to think I started this just to list off yet another band I would be glad to see live before I die.

The previous list included L'Arc~en~Ciel, SADS (now not possible since the band split up), NELL, Epik High, Acidman and FAKE? (Luna Sea too, just for the record). But introducing my new love, Bump of Chicken, because they rock as much as their band name is grammatically awkward.

heart mumbles

2008-03-20T06:17:00.000-07:00

The very seed of this thought was planted by a simple conversation where I was the one attempting to soothe the complications of another's skipping beat. I was independent and free to fall in love with the distant voice of this one, the poetic words of that one, or the charming smile of the one that has temporarily left my sight.

But a single night and the simple murmur of my heart for one particular man has turned into a shout, a song, and it's an odd feeling to contain when its sudden excitement is riding on the waves of nothing more than a dream.

A dream, really, a simple dream. The mind knows that all of this is just a shallow swim, but the less logical part of me is happily submerged in this thick but fleeting feeling.

It's all illogical, it's all insane, but this is my so-called love.

law & order

2008-03-16T13:58:00.001-07:00

You know your city's safe when the community cop can't find anythin' better to do but to pitch his weight against a skinny 14 year-old skateboarder whose head probably reaches the guy's nipples. What an effin' fruit cake.

Love, love, love

2008-03-06T16:20:00.001-08:00

Over dinner, the last thing you expect to hear come out from your mother's mouth is not a choking-almost-vommitty cough (the hazards of eating come hand-in-hand with its joys) but the word "sex" and the continuing monlogue that concerns your brother having it.

Take a moment to imagine yourself and your family members seated serenely around the table, consuming good, hot food, and yourself thinking only of the next dish you're going to dip into with your spoon. Of course, once aforementioned table taboo word is spoken, you can help but pause your digestion and lock eyes with the bowl of asparagus and mushrooms because it's just a little too uncomfortable to look at anyone else at the moment; even the vegetables looked uncomfortable with the situation.
Nevertheless, my mother had a point to prove and she pushed on with it. To sum it up, she didn't believe that having too many sex partners was a good thing, which I'm sure you all agree with because no one wants to be a hoe or end up being with a hoe (and hoes can be male or female, yo; don't discriminate), just because that says way too much about a person without a single utterance on their part. But, I also believe her thoughts were leaning towards the traditional sense that the sex-before-marriage thing was a bad deal too, though not as bad as the hoe situation.

This is where both my brother and I disagreed, since society has evolved (or devolved, depending who you're asking) to the point where there is substantially more sexual freedom, and carving those few figurative notches into your belt is not as heavily frowned upon as before. Some people even prefer that their partner has a bit more experience because it makes the entire process a lot smoother. But how can you explain that to your mother without having to draw up sociological and historical articles as empirical evidence to back yourself up? Trust me, I tried to do a one-on-one heart talk with her on this before and I couldn't make her see.

Perhaps it's the fact that we are seperated by a gaping generation gap, and the kids of tomorrow will seem much more radical than the kids of today. Still, it would be nice to be able to have all family members on the same page when it comes to topics like these (not to suggest that I want our dinner conversations to get spectacularly saucy) for the sake of the freedom to be expressive in a love relationship without having to cut back of filial piety.

Photo courtesy of ErikStum @ Flickr

raaaghhh

2008-02-25T19:37:00.001-08:00

Is the type of painful noise-mumbles my shoulder muscles would make if they had mouths. Which would be creepy. And gross.

This blog has nothing to do with mutant body parts, by the way, I just thought I'd throw that in so y'all get a two-for-one type of deal.

So being a recovering habitual nail biter, I've lately found myself absolutely distracted by my grown nails.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/daenight/

Really, we take it for granted (like teeth), but nails are pretty awesome. I mean, they have a function (such as scratching and gouging out eyes or somethin) and you can accessorize them! Crazy! I don't mean in the nail-piercing kind of way--because I personally think it's grade A stupidity to pierce your nail with jewelery when the shit chips and breaks or whatever--but nail polish gets pretty damn cool when you've actually got enough calcium packed on your fingers to flash it properly. Really, it's sick.

I like accessories, can you tell?

To sum up this procrastination blog (I got another forty pages of sociological articles to get into my brain before bedtime and workies), nails + paint = a good excuse to go visual crazy. Nails + piercing = too much money to be cool. Really. If you disagree, feel free to educate me. I uh...had some cool witty thing to put to the end of that, but now I forget. So I leave you with a weather update: break out your mitts, the cold bite still has its jaws on Toronto -__- (snow!)

all in the name of change

2008-02-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

It's a given that the past is what shapes the present you, but that doesn't mean that I should love my past selves by default.

In the name of a fresh start, I decided to haul my ass from the much-loved xanga to blogger. There are other motives behind this sudden move, since it might seem odd that I suddenly jumped xanga-ship just when I got back from almost six months of hiatus. One of the major things (that brings us back to my introductory line) was that I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to archive my shit. It's a bit embarassing for me to look back at all the tripe I wrote for untold eyes to see, especially when I feel like I need the room to stretch my rusty writing muscles--something that can't be done when you're encumbered by your past, who was largely only good at sprouting drivel.

To end this seriously, really boring story (it's not even really a story), I'm gonna point out that I got a picture of beans on this blog. It's green, it's fancy-ish, and beans are good at making people happy because of their comfortable shape (the round green-ness is totally easy on the eyes). They're also tasty and come armed with a cool ass song:

Beans, beans the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot (courtesy of a long-forgotten Simpsons episode).

Do you see any other vegetables with their own jingle? Didn't think so. Side note: I didn't know beans were fruit, and I don't think they actually are, so don't hold me accountable to the presented facts in bean-jingle.