Emptor vero non tam librum quam libro cecitatem emit.
Heh, so much for my music meme actually making me post. Fail!
Actually, what happened was that Dakota came up to visit me, and then my parents came up to visit me, and we watched Avatar: The Last Airbender and Inception, and it was all really awesome, but I didn't get much work done, so then I had to scramble to catch up, and it just feels like this whole week I've been struggling to keep myself focused and get stuff done. And...it's not going to be any better this week, because now I've actually got to study for final exams. Ergh.
I just realized: I don't think I mentioned the Cat Anecdote on LJ, though I've certainly told many others about it. What happened was this: Some weeks ago, the professor in the class I'm auditing was lecturing on, like, kingship in Beowulf or something like that, when out of the blue, a woman appeared at the door. "Sorry to interrupt," she said, "But we're having kittens. Right now!"
The professor's reaction was kind of like, "Uh. Oh. Well, I'm kind of in the middle of class...."
Her: "No, I know, but I need the car keys!"
Him: Oh, okay.
(They get the car keys.)
Her: Don't tell the kids! I want it to be a surprise!
Him: I won't!
(She exits.)
Him: Yeah, this is our second litter of kittens in two weeks. They're all over the place.
(She re-enters.)
Her: Sorry to interrupt again, but did you park in the library lot or at Legends? [the sports bar on campus]
Him: The library.
Her: Oh, see, now, I would totally have gone to Legends!
(She re-exits.)
Him: That was my wife. The grandmother of the kittens.
Perhaps this is one of those things you had to be there for, but it was pretty hilarious, and really made me wish I had a litter of kittens around.
Continuing in my rapid leap from subject to subject without connecting thoughts! I've been dreaming (and remembering my dreams) more than usual here, but one day last week I had a night that really took the cake: I had four dreams in the same night, and remembered all of them. (Well, I suppose it's possible I had more than four dreams and have forgotten the rest, but anyway, four dreams!) I had the good sense to write them down as soon as I woke up, so here they are!
--Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance is an alien with phenomenal psychic powers who is discovered by the U.S. government when some scientists traveled to a world that they originally thought was abandoned where he had... crash landed or something. He is hooked up to machines in some lab that harness his powers without rendering him unconscious or unable to speak. A large part of his power seems to be emitting light in some unheard-heard of wavelength that produces a lot of energy, or something like that. He is surrounded by scientists, one of whom is Ernie Hudson of Ghostbusters. He falls in love with one of the female scientists--not the one who originally discovered him, who is named Ian, but her best friend. Whenever his love interest is in the lab, the alien engages in conversation with her while still participating in the experiments. This distracts him from whatever task he's supposed to be performing, so the scientists prevent their colleague from talking to or coming into contact with the alien. This infuriates him, and he unleashes his wrath, suffusing all sixteen or so scientists with a spectrum of rainbow light that a) renders them psychic, b) makes their forms almost impossible to discern with the naked eye--they mostly just look like big glowing shapes and c) makes them unable to speak, as instead they make some kind of weird noise like glass breaking or lasers or something. The scientists are then treated as commodities by the government and sold as tourist attractions to an amusement park. The "dream camera" then reveals what the world looks like to the transformed scientists: to themselves and each other, they look and sound the same as ever, but the rest of the world has become strange.
--I go to hang out with an old friend from middle school. We're going to have a sleepover, but her parents really, really don't want me to stay, and I'm so upset that I become sick. My mother is suddenly there. My old friend brings me an old mix tape I made for her, to make me feel better, and it's full of songs that I only scarcely remember at all. I want my mom to take a video of me listening to the songs on my iPod, but her cell phone is too old, so we have to make the video on my phone. We're sitting at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall. We're watching an old Katherine Hepburn movie on a laptop and I...fall asleep? When I wake up, my friend and my mom tell me that we watched three movies, but I only remember a little bit of the first one.
--My family and I are staying in a little one-bedroom cabin. Someone breaks in through the screen door and stabs my dad in the leg. I call 911, desperately hoping they will get there before my dad bleeds to death.
--I'm in my grandma's house. Brendan is looking for Socks the cat, who is still alive in my dream. I thought I saw him earlier, taking a nap in the cast-iron pot-bellied stove that has appeared between my grandma's dining room and living room. The stove wasn't on or anything, and the door was either open or transparent--he was just chilling in there. I tell Brendan, and we go look--but now, instead of Socks, there's a squirrel in the stove, pink and hairless and slimy, and we come to the conclusion that, even with the stove off, hanging out in it has caused the squirrel to melt. Brendan's even more freaked in his search for Socks. Suddenly we're at my house again, and Summer is at the bottom of the stairs--but there are two of him, identical, moving in tandem, both bleeding from the leg. Finally we find Socks, and I go up to my room. My mom comes in, saying, "We have to talk about something" in a very serious and grave way. She explains to me that Summer was injured fighting with Socks. She's called a cat retirement home to see if they'll take Socks, but if they won't, she doesn't think she can stop him from killing Summer.
So...yeah. That was a wild night.
And now meme!
Day 01- A song that makes me happy
Day 02- A song that helps me clear my head
Day 03- A song that makes you laugh
Day 04- A song that reminds me of something
Day 05- A song that has a new meaning to me every time I hear it
So, I have two songs for this. This is probably cheating, but a) it's been a while since I posted the last entry, and I feel like I owe the internet some songs, b) I couldn't find just the right song for this category, and c) who gives a crap, it's a freaking LJ meme. Thus, without further adieu:
"Wichita Lineman" by Glenn Campbell
Okay, this song doesn't have a new meaning for me every time I hear it, but it has had three meanings for me over the time that I've known it, meanings that sort of occurred to me gradually, like layers being peeled away.
Meaning 1) This is a weird song. I guess it's a guy singing about his job.
Meaning 2) Oh, at first glance it seems like a guy singing about his job, but it's actually a weird kind of love song.
Meaning 3) So, it might seem like a love song, but actually it's a song about a creepy stalker. Seriously, "I hear you singing in the wire,/I can hear you through the whine/And the Wichita Lineman/is still on the line?" This is a guy using his job to eavesdrop on other people's phone conversations and obsessing over someone he knows from spying on them. Creepy! But still a good song.
"Walking Is Still Honest" by Against Me!
I don't know that this song has a new meaning every time I hear it, but it sure makes me think of something different every time I listen to it. I always try to think of who's talking--when is it the mother's voice, and when is it the child's? What's going on with the gender politics here? There seems to be this idea that the mother's lasting contribution is through the molding of her son into some kind of pre-set role ("My legacy was making you a man") but what qualities separate him as "a man" from her as a woman or a mother? And I always wonder about the tone of the chorus ("Can anybody tell me why God won't speak to me?/Why Jesus never called on me to part the fucking seas?") There seem to be a couple of things going on there--1) A desire for purpose in life (perhaps eventually found through the raising of her son? I guess it depends on whether the mother or the son is the speaker at this point.) 2) A sense of betrayal by the divine, that God not only has failed to respond to the wants and needs of the speaker, but has not found a place or a vocation for the speaker in the grand order of things 3) Rebellion--the desire to struggle against the prevailing order, divine and human, which would fit in with other lyrics about the mother raising her son to be "an iron-fisted champion, an iron-willed fuck-up." The son might be said to be a warrior, but one without a purpose.
Anyway, I've never yet come to a conclusion about the meaning of the song, but I have a bunch of different things I think about when I listen to it.
Day 06- A song I can always relate to
Day 07- A song that is my guilty pleasure
Day 08- A song I liked when I was younger
Day 09- A song that makes me want to dance
Day 10- A song that makes me cry
Day 11- A song that reminds me of summer
Day 12- A song that reminds me of my best friend
Day 13- A song I sing to in the shower
Day 14- A song I like hearing live
Day 15- A song people wouldn’t expect me to like
Day 16- A song that holds a lot of meaning to me
Day 17- A song that annoys me
Day 18- A song I have as my ringtone
Day 19- A song I'm currently obsessed with
Day 20- A song from a new album I'm waiting for
Day 21- A song I want to dance to at my wedding
Day 22- A song that would be the theme song to a TV show about my life
Day 23- A song that makes me angry
Day 24- A cover song
Day 25- An acoustic song I love
Day 26- A song by my favorite band
Day 27- A song I make fun of
Day 28- A song that reminds me of my significant other
Day 29- A song currently stuck in my head
Day 30- A song I haven’t listened to in awhile
Actually, what happened was that Dakota came up to visit me, and then my parents came up to visit me, and we watched Avatar: The Last Airbender and Inception, and it was all really awesome, but I didn't get much work done, so then I had to scramble to catch up, and it just feels like this whole week I've been struggling to keep myself focused and get stuff done. And...it's not going to be any better this week, because now I've actually got to study for final exams. Ergh.
I just realized: I don't think I mentioned the Cat Anecdote on LJ, though I've certainly told many others about it. What happened was this: Some weeks ago, the professor in the class I'm auditing was lecturing on, like, kingship in Beowulf or something like that, when out of the blue, a woman appeared at the door. "Sorry to interrupt," she said, "But we're having kittens. Right now!"
The professor's reaction was kind of like, "Uh. Oh. Well, I'm kind of in the middle of class...."
Her: "No, I know, but I need the car keys!"
Him: Oh, okay.
(They get the car keys.)
Her: Don't tell the kids! I want it to be a surprise!
Him: I won't!
(She exits.)
Him: Yeah, this is our second litter of kittens in two weeks. They're all over the place.
(She re-enters.)
Her: Sorry to interrupt again, but did you park in the library lot or at Legends? [the sports bar on campus]
Him: The library.
Her: Oh, see, now, I would totally have gone to Legends!
(She re-exits.)
Him: That was my wife. The grandmother of the kittens.
Perhaps this is one of those things you had to be there for, but it was pretty hilarious, and really made me wish I had a litter of kittens around.
Continuing in my rapid leap from subject to subject without connecting thoughts! I've been dreaming (and remembering my dreams) more than usual here, but one day last week I had a night that really took the cake: I had four dreams in the same night, and remembered all of them. (Well, I suppose it's possible I had more than four dreams and have forgotten the rest, but anyway, four dreams!) I had the good sense to write them down as soon as I woke up, so here they are!
--Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance is an alien with phenomenal psychic powers who is discovered by the U.S. government when some scientists traveled to a world that they originally thought was abandoned where he had... crash landed or something. He is hooked up to machines in some lab that harness his powers without rendering him unconscious or unable to speak. A large part of his power seems to be emitting light in some unheard-heard of wavelength that produces a lot of energy, or something like that. He is surrounded by scientists, one of whom is Ernie Hudson of Ghostbusters. He falls in love with one of the female scientists--not the one who originally discovered him, who is named Ian, but her best friend. Whenever his love interest is in the lab, the alien engages in conversation with her while still participating in the experiments. This distracts him from whatever task he's supposed to be performing, so the scientists prevent their colleague from talking to or coming into contact with the alien. This infuriates him, and he unleashes his wrath, suffusing all sixteen or so scientists with a spectrum of rainbow light that a) renders them psychic, b) makes their forms almost impossible to discern with the naked eye--they mostly just look like big glowing shapes and c) makes them unable to speak, as instead they make some kind of weird noise like glass breaking or lasers or something. The scientists are then treated as commodities by the government and sold as tourist attractions to an amusement park. The "dream camera" then reveals what the world looks like to the transformed scientists: to themselves and each other, they look and sound the same as ever, but the rest of the world has become strange.
--I go to hang out with an old friend from middle school. We're going to have a sleepover, but her parents really, really don't want me to stay, and I'm so upset that I become sick. My mother is suddenly there. My old friend brings me an old mix tape I made for her, to make me feel better, and it's full of songs that I only scarcely remember at all. I want my mom to take a video of me listening to the songs on my iPod, but her cell phone is too old, so we have to make the video on my phone. We're sitting at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall. We're watching an old Katherine Hepburn movie on a laptop and I...fall asleep? When I wake up, my friend and my mom tell me that we watched three movies, but I only remember a little bit of the first one.
--My family and I are staying in a little one-bedroom cabin. Someone breaks in through the screen door and stabs my dad in the leg. I call 911, desperately hoping they will get there before my dad bleeds to death.
--I'm in my grandma's house. Brendan is looking for Socks the cat, who is still alive in my dream. I thought I saw him earlier, taking a nap in the cast-iron pot-bellied stove that has appeared between my grandma's dining room and living room. The stove wasn't on or anything, and the door was either open or transparent--he was just chilling in there. I tell Brendan, and we go look--but now, instead of Socks, there's a squirrel in the stove, pink and hairless and slimy, and we come to the conclusion that, even with the stove off, hanging out in it has caused the squirrel to melt. Brendan's even more freaked in his search for Socks. Suddenly we're at my house again, and Summer is at the bottom of the stairs--but there are two of him, identical, moving in tandem, both bleeding from the leg. Finally we find Socks, and I go up to my room. My mom comes in, saying, "We have to talk about something" in a very serious and grave way. She explains to me that Summer was injured fighting with Socks. She's called a cat retirement home to see if they'll take Socks, but if they won't, she doesn't think she can stop him from killing Summer.
So...yeah. That was a wild night.
And now meme!
Day 01- A song that makes me happy
Day 02- A song that helps me clear my head
Day 03- A song that makes you laugh
Day 04- A song that reminds me of something
Day 05- A song that has a new meaning to me every time I hear it
So, I have two songs for this. This is probably cheating, but a) it's been a while since I posted the last entry, and I feel like I owe the internet some songs, b) I couldn't find just the right song for this category, and c) who gives a crap, it's a freaking LJ meme. Thus, without further adieu:
"Wichita Lineman" by Glenn Campbell
Click to viewOkay, this song doesn't have a new meaning for me every time I hear it, but it has had three meanings for me over the time that I've known it, meanings that sort of occurred to me gradually, like layers being peeled away.
Meaning 1) This is a weird song. I guess it's a guy singing about his job.
Meaning 2) Oh, at first glance it seems like a guy singing about his job, but it's actually a weird kind of love song.
Meaning 3) So, it might seem like a love song, but actually it's a song about a creepy stalker. Seriously, "I hear you singing in the wire,/I can hear you through the whine/And the Wichita Lineman/is still on the line?" This is a guy using his job to eavesdrop on other people's phone conversations and obsessing over someone he knows from spying on them. Creepy! But still a good song.
"Walking Is Still Honest" by Against Me!
I don't know that this song has a new meaning every time I hear it, but it sure makes me think of something different every time I listen to it. I always try to think of who's talking--when is it the mother's voice, and when is it the child's? What's going on with the gender politics here? There seems to be this idea that the mother's lasting contribution is through the molding of her son into some kind of pre-set role ("My legacy was making you a man") but what qualities separate him as "a man" from her as a woman or a mother? And I always wonder about the tone of the chorus ("Can anybody tell me why God won't speak to me?/Why Jesus never called on me to part the fucking seas?") There seem to be a couple of things going on there--1) A desire for purpose in life (perhaps eventually found through the raising of her son? I guess it depends on whether the mother or the son is the speaker at this point.) 2) A sense of betrayal by the divine, that God not only has failed to respond to the wants and needs of the speaker, but has not found a place or a vocation for the speaker in the grand order of things 3) Rebellion--the desire to struggle against the prevailing order, divine and human, which would fit in with other lyrics about the mother raising her son to be "an iron-fisted champion, an iron-willed fuck-up." The son might be said to be a warrior, but one without a purpose.
Anyway, I've never yet come to a conclusion about the meaning of the song, but I have a bunch of different things I think about when I listen to it.
Day 06- A song I can always relate to
Day 07- A song that is my guilty pleasure
Day 08- A song I liked when I was younger
Day 09- A song that makes me want to dance
Day 10- A song that makes me cry
Day 11- A song that reminds me of summer
Day 12- A song that reminds me of my best friend
Day 13- A song I sing to in the shower
Day 14- A song I like hearing live
Day 15- A song people wouldn’t expect me to like
Day 16- A song that holds a lot of meaning to me
Day 17- A song that annoys me
Day 18- A song I have as my ringtone
Day 19- A song I'm currently obsessed with
Day 20- A song from a new album I'm waiting for
Day 21- A song I want to dance to at my wedding
Day 22- A song that would be the theme song to a TV show about my life
Day 23- A song that makes me angry
Day 24- A cover song
Day 25- An acoustic song I love
Day 26- A song by my favorite band
Day 27- A song I make fun of
Day 28- A song that reminds me of my significant other
Day 29- A song currently stuck in my head
Day 30- A song I haven’t listened to in awhile