i wish i could say things without mak...

i wish i could say things without making people mad.

i  wish i could live a normal life without causing others pain.  that is all i seem to do anymore, and i am not even trying to do such a thing.

i must be a pretty terrible person.  i always thought i was pretty nice and caring, but i think i've given myself a false hope or a false security, that is.

i think maybe i should give up and just move far away so that i can only screw up myself and not hurt anyone else anymore.

Prince

Okay, I fully admit to it. I absolutely love listening to Prince. Especially Prince and the Revolution. Is there anything better than really well done funk? They used synths in a fashion that really was an actual revolution. That is why I am happy to report that I am listening to The Hits albums. I know, I know...just the hits? I've got Prince albums outside of this, but I just got this double disc and am very pleased to give my report on it.

Can I just start of by saying how old this makes me feel? These were songs that I LOVED as a child, but I had to hide from my parents. There were various artists and movies that my mom didn't want my sister or I to see. I didn't see the movie "Dirty Dancing" until I was a teenager because my mom forbid us from seeing it. Of course I thought the movie was ridiculous and had no idea why my mom wouldn't let us see it. I told her what I thought of the movie later on and she said, "well, maybe I prevented you from seeing it because I knew it was going to be stupid." Guns and Roses? Oh, no way. The vocals were too annoying. David Bowie? No. He is supposedly evil. Prince? Fuck no! Too dirty. Too evil. He got the double package there.

To not have to secretly listen to Prince and actually enjoy it as an adult still brings this sense of doing something in secret. It is seductive. It makes you feel like you have your own dirty little secret. I can actually appreciate certain things about this album that I did not understand as a child (because keep in mind I was just a little tyke when the radio was playing "diamonds and pearls.") Outside of the assless pants that I can recall seeing him wear on stage during an MTV awards show (and keep in mind my mom never lets that one drop when I talk about liking Prince), his range in vocals and sensational Revolution's synth stylings are exhilarating.

dream signals in full circles.

I am listening to this album for the first time in a long while. I remember the first time I heard this album. I was 17 and had met the man that I would later marry in a situation that is best phrased by "all whirlwind, heat and flash." Before we married there was a weird sort of awakening for me. I sometimes wonder if it was doing things that were against moral codes and boundaries, or whether it was simply the idea of feeling a sense of love. He loaned me some various albums to listen to, in which this one happened to be amongst the collection. There were also others in that pack that I still feel grateful for having the exposure to. I found myself listening to this album often during the period of time later on where I lived in Moscow, Idaho. In the icy winter tundra I would find solace listening to this, as well as Dear Nora, Erase Errata, Sonic Youth, and Rachels. When we finally decided on divorcing later on, this album was one that I hoped he would allow me to have during the splitting up of the cd collection. Although I didn't get this one at the time, it didn't matter. There is something grand about listening to an album you enjoy after a long period of time. It allows the sap to collect on the notes just a bit longer and to mature into some fine fruit. I guess we all cannot give in to temptation at every chance.

On a completely different topic, I have found myself making lots of new comics at my flickr page.

Do you ever wonder about people that you shouldn't bother wasting your time on? Lately I keep finding a large amount of hippie infested music at the Record Exchange, and I am pretty certain I know who's collection it is. I don't know why, but I care about it for some weird reason. What if he lost his job? He doesn't have any family here. He doesn't know anyone well enough to borrow money from, other than me. He would never ask to borrow money from me, and I would hope he wouldn't. At the same time, I am pretty positive that in today's economy a job in painting houses is not going to be stable. I was informed by Tracy that she ran into him at Terrapin Station one day and he said he fell off a roof and broke one of his ribs. I warned him a million times over to protect himself when climbing up roofs, but he was always in too much of a hurry to get the job done quickly. Considering the amount of Grateful Dead and Neil Young, the fact that the economy is absolutely terrible for anyone working any sort of job dealing with houses, and knowing that he's too proud to ever ask help from anyone, I am pretty sure that he is struggling to not be homeless. I sort of wish I didn't delete his number so that I could call to make sure he's doing okay, but sometimes you've got to clean out your phone list, you know? ah well. maybe his mom will come save him either way.

April is still being exactly the month that it has always predicted itself to be; rainy weather and constant wind flurries. I am crossing my fingers that by the mid portion of this month that the heat will officially come in and allow some time for planting. I am ready to start planting and harvesting a garden! That's the one real country girl part of me that I've still got left. I fucking love gardening. Nothing is more satisfying than growing a bunch of your own vegetables and eating them fresh. It is so delicious and convenient!

Lots of love to you all, and have a wonderful swim.

in particular

...is such a catchy song by blonde redhead. i think my all time favourite is "violent life."

do you ever wonder the "what if" questions to the extreme? i do that far too often.

dog on the sidewalk, i saw...

curerently listening to deerhoof's "bibidi babidi boo," which is a first for me. it has a different version of "dog on the sidewalk" then the version you will hear on "milk man," and i believe for good reason. this album so far is similar in style to "reveille" and "milk man," only some of them are live and some sound a bit different from the tracks on the albums. these songs were on the album, but they are different versions...and at times it is even more spastic and less disorted. i almost would say that the version of "milking" in this album is even better then what was released on "milk man." everyone in this is talented as hell. you can hear the guitar licks dripping from the speakers, and the drummer is going fast enough that it puts a hummingbird to shame. satomi's vocals are easier to hear on this album. you can get a feel for what her voice really sounds like and what the words are. can i also mention it is live? i usually cannot stand live versions of anything, but i have heard two live tracks recently that blew me away. this version of "milking" on "bibidi babidi boo" and the version of "bad sees" from beat happening's self titled album. i should also note that i twitted about listening to deerhoof and my good friend dan in england wrote back with delight. i'm glad to hear that deerhoof are rocking the UK just as hard as they rock the US. may i also just add that perhaps my all time favourite song from deerhoof ("giga dance") is really freaking amazing on this disc?

off topic. completely off topic. today was really confusing in general. there is a huge system that i deal with regularly that transfers a large amount of data that is essential to the company that i work for. they have been switching databases so that in the future, you will be able to check in depth on the properties within that particular file. this means that not only am i a drafter, but i am also a database operator in a way. i am constantly having to transport and maintain more data than i thought could be even imaginable as a child. i mean, think up to probably a terabyte by now. i'm not even kidding. for one, part of my job is to draw points from one substation to another. these are essential points that run underneath a distribution line. for example, things such as fences, buildings of any kind, street signs, street signals, billboards, distribution poles, roads, trails, rivers, streams, lakes, cell towers and the like all have points that have to be located. these are huge files that i have to move about regularly, as well as these other files all based in microstation or microsoft products, which are also huge. today the shit hit the fan, as some would phrase it. recently they had an emergency with the changing of the databases and made an alert that anyone with particular projects had to turn in all the drawings for those projects immediately for the transfer. this meant that i had to check in something like 145 drawings within a half hour off the fly. well, i was able to do it by some sort of skill based on drinking massive amounts of caffeine and focusing all my anti-depressant medication on being totally and completely focused. since this was awhile back, i had forgot that i saved all of the drawings in a folder on my harddrive for just in case before transferring them over. i sent an email to the head honcho over there so that he would know that i needed back these drawings immediately as soon as he was done with the transfer. well, i didn't end up getting them back immediately, simply because of lack of time. i got back from vacation totally ill and had went from one huge project to another relatively busy project that required my full attention. i did not have time to be a database lady at all during that span of time. so yesterday i was asked to check back in the drawings from the system and i went through and checked them all back in. today i found out that tons of them were coming up as the drawings before the last issuance, meaning that all of our work was totally lost. so then i was asked about whether i had saved it on a work file, and i said no since we had not issued them and i have only been saving after issuance. i had totally forgotten about having all these files on my computer. we were all getting really bummed about the whole thing, since this meant that the higher ups had accidently not done a step that has to be done to update the drawings to the most current ones. while trying to show my co-worker a folder where i might have a few saved, i glanced over a folder with the project name on it. i opened it up and it all totally came back to me. i jumped up and said, "this is all the files! we are okay! i completely forgot!!" well, this still didn't solve the problem. there are still drawings coming back with issues despite it all, but that one is beyond me. i am 100% certain that the drawings i sent out are in this folder, since i remember doing it now. i did it because i know myself well enough to know that things like this could happen, and because this particular project has been sort of confusing at times. i guess the whole point of this is that everything has ended in a pretty good way from what i can tell. i was able to quickly solve at least a couple of the things that were found right off the bat. i asked the leader of the project if the files i had saved seemed correct, and he said they all were, but that there were just a few weird little quirks that were not totally figured out. i guess i'm just bummed about having to write to the big guys that run the system and telling them that they are going to have to delete out some drawings. they will want an explanation i am sure, and this is going to lead to a weird "well, you sort of didn't do this one thing and so it didn't transfer all the correct data over to the new database." sigh. i'll do fine at it. i just hate the idea that since i have taken this role that it seems at times like i'm not the best at it. i try really hard to do my best at it and i am constantly going by checklists for it. i think the problem is trying to balance out about 60 hours of work into 40 hours. at least i know that i am fast. i'm pretty efficient, but i know i could improve. i think that process will come to me once i have down a perfect method for figuring out how to balance all of the different tasks that i have to do in one day. the thing that makes it difficult is the off the fly stuff. most of my work today was work that came by me that was immediate. the moment today that was pretty nuts was writing an email listing off all the drawings that had to be released (roughly 150+ drawings), plotting two 55 page sets of a project for an engineer that wanted it that minute totally off the fly, and then trying to figure out the issue with the database malfunction. the fantastic thing is that the problem i've been having for two days now has pretty much been solved by this dude out in hailey. he's a super nice and funny guy. he had the same problem today and started messing around with the database and figured out the trick to getting the drawings checked in. he called me up and chatted about the whole thing and i gave him the scoop on some things that i have been noticing with the system this week that seemed concerning. it wouldn't let me check in for awhile one day. then when i could finally access it, i could not access any project files at all. it was absolutely perplexing.

now after that insanely long rant, back on to topic.

i also have checked out the newest release from dungen called "4." i highly recommend this album! dungen is one of those bands that i think are great in a number of ways. i know that a lot of people think they sound like the beatles, but is that necessarily a bad thing? isn't it damned impossible to not sound like the beatles in one aspect or another? i mean, i've even listened to electronic stuff that sounded like the beatles. country?: oh yeah. i've heard some beatles sounding country, motherfucker. dungen is downright sultry and smooth at times. it is the type of music you could be listening to at a hip club with a fancy woman that has betty davis eyes. it is las vegas swank, all covered in the gloss and sheen of bands like love and at times on "tio bitar" i almost felt a bit of black sabbath in it. it often reminds me of the zombies (which is great for me, since i adore the zombies). i should also add that if anyone uses a flute, i am usually quite pleased. flute is one of my all time favourite instruments. i've been planning on getting flute lessons eventually in my lifetime and might eventually try to get myself into an orchestra later in life. i've always loved the idea of joining a really great orchestra, like martin denny's style of thing. i would get to play these quick little jazzy tunes on the flute real fast, and i would add a slight bit of reverb or distortion to it at times. i would get the opportunity to make 50's style dresses and glam it up for performances. wouldn't that just be delightful? god. i'd have to have a martini glass next to me the entire time just to give it that extra bit of swank. i'd almost be tempted to leave a lipstick mark on the trombone player's collar just to add to that sort of hilarious 50's style marty gold kind of music. could you imagine the audience's reaction to that? they'd be really digging the music, but be completely focused on the lipstick on the collar (because chances are at least 75% of the audience will be blazing drunk or sloppy high). anyways....

i am going to depart now to consume some food like substances. have a wonderful evening.

albums i've listened to recently:

albums i've listened to recently:

slint- spiderland (for the first time in a long while)
avalanches- since i left you
digitalism - idealism
senor coconut- around the world
senor coconut y su conjunto- el baile aleman
animal collective with vashti bunyan- prospect hummer
do make say think- s/t
martin denny- hypnotique
martin denny- exotica II
gnarls barkley- st. elsewhere
junior senior- hey hey my my yo yo
guided by voices- bulldog skin ep

so far this is my opinion of each album:

slint- i am sure you were already coming to the conclusion that i was going to say the obvious.  this album is a classic that influenced a gob of artists afterwards.  i cannot listen to this album too often personally, despite the fact that i do feel that it is an important album of its time.  moving on...

avalanches- at times this album makes me feel nostalgic of blaxploitation music coming in full throttle, like a current version of "car wash," for example.  it has the classic song that i have always had a crush on called, "frontier psychiatrist."  if you have not heard it yet, i definitely recommend checking it out.

senior coconut- both albums are instant classics for me.  it was one of those experiences where you only had to listen to the album once and you have already considered it an all time favorite.  imagine a quartet playing xylophones and having a horn section, bongos and the like playing songs like daft punk's "around the world," or kraftwerk's "robots."  it is absolutely fantastic.

animal collective w/vashti bunyan- imagine a voice that is hauntingly beautiful being distored and morphed into many synthesized forms and you have a basic concept of this ep.  i enjoyed it rather well, but it definitely isn't the album that i'd imagine everyone out there would enjoy right off the bat.  well, not my parents at least.  i'm pretty sure they'd rather be listening to fleetwood mac.

do make say think- i've already been enjoying this band for awhile now.  i'm a fan of the fact that they are the type of band that can be played in just about any location and be completely appropriate.  they are quiet and hypnotic, but also have some great electronic undertones that peak out here and there throughout the entire album.  if you ever have to host a party and need a band that does not interrupt from holding conversation easily, but will also not put your guests to sleep, put on some do make say think.

martin denny- it is so hip and clever.  absolutely sexy and sophisticated.  this is the ultimate bachelor pad music.  it goes from the "lets get dancing baby" style to the "baby, i know things have been tough around your place, so why don't you move into my place with me and let me get all sexy with you?" style.  it is a transition that satisfies even more than a snickers can.

gnarls barkley- well, dang.  i've heard the song "crazy" so many times that my mind probably has exploded from it.  at the same time, it really is a pretty catchy song.  the album has some great funk moments that are well appreciated.  i am not as into this album and some people out there have been, but i definitely pleased to have heard it.

junior senior- you know, i just didn't really get that into it.  i had the same opinion of it as i have of scissor sisters.  it is sort of catchy at times until the vocals come in or they try to have an intricate break, but it seems to fall flat.  there are times that i found something that definitely sounded catchy, but it isn't the album that i probably would write home about.

guided by voices- it is a decent enough ep, but not really a favorite of the guided by voices anthology.  that's not saying anything too horrible about them at all though, considering they've got something to the effect of 52 different albums, at least.  i think my all time favorite guided by voices album for me was "alien lanes," but i also really enjoy "bee thousand" as well.

this is my review for now.  i hope everyone is doing well and having a great week.  thank you to all that came out for my birthday.  it was very sweet of you all to show your love, and i definitely appreciate that.  i feel like a very lucky person to have such wonderful friends.

have a wonderful day.   


  
 

whoa, my finger just popped.

totally by accident. weird. i never try to pop my fingers because it freaks me the fuck out.

so this is a girly post! yay womanhood! way to rock my world!
here are clothes that i think are totally cute!!!



















sexy, no?







cute!







and these earrings are so fantastic!







wallet time!


holy shit! these are amazing! i want this for when pleen and i go tandem biking!

all of this is available at modcloth.com! they have got such great taste in fashion!
have a wonderful day!