List and Lights

Wow. School is starting again, in 2 days. Summer was even shorter than usual. It just started feeling like summer a few weeks ago. WHY? I guess I'm ready for school, somewhat. I used to be so bored by the time July came around that I would be really excited for school to start. But now that I've discovered the computer, and the library, and friends, and now that I actually have stuff I want to do, I feel like summer could almost go on forever and I'd never be bored. Well before, I had all those things, but I got bored of them all so fast(except for friends, because how do you get bored of friends? Unless you spend every waking hour with them until you get sick of each other, which is rare, I think) so I just sat on the couch and made boredom noises.

I feel like I have an endless array of things to do. If bored, go on the computer. If you can't, go read a book. If you haven't visited the library recently, go do some summer homework(which you probably should have been doing anyway). If you don't feel like it, go paint. If you don't feel like it, go draw. If you don't feel like it, go make something. If you don't have the stuff to make whatever you feel like making, go eat some bread. If you ran out of bakery bread, call a friend. If they aren't there, write something. If you don't feel inspired, then go check and see if the computer is open. If it isn't, sleep. If you wake up and nothing has changed, then there's nothing you can do.

It rarely comes to that though. Anyway, I guess I should make a list now.

Things I want to do

Sit on a roof - I have always wanted to sit on the roof of a house. A real roof, not one of those flat ones with pools and gardens on top. I imagine there'd be wind and birds and a giant tree swaying by and random people jogging down the sidewalk. And it would just feel weird, to be able to see the roofs of all the houses down the street, and to actually feel the wind and to be the only person on the roof of anywhere. I think you would feel more alive, because it's just one of those things that you can do that makes you feel like you're the only person aware of it, and because this is one of those things that people can go through their whole lives not doing. And you can be one of the few people that have experienced something like that!

Punch someone - I really think I may live my whole life without punching anyone. You read about it in books and see it in movies and hear that other people have done it and yet you have no idea what it's like. It's one of those first-step kind of actions. Just like sewing up a hole in a pair of pants or playing a piece of music or driving a car. Each one of these things is the first step to a whole realm of stuff, and since stepping into each realm is so different, I want to experience all of them. So punching would be like the first step to the fighting realm! Not that I want to go any further than that.

Go to a concert - I think it's pretty sad that this is on my list. But just in case I don't go to one of those concerts where everyone is a fanatic about whoever is performing and random people in the crowd scream, I have listed this down. It's just one of those random things that every person must experience.

Work at a cafe - As a part time job during college or something like that. This is just too cool. Everyone seems to have worked at a restaurant or a cafe or a bakery at some point. I always hear about how you start off as garbage-taker-outer and then you move up to dishwasher and then you move up more until you become a cashier and stuff like that. And I want to know what it's like to be whoever it is that takes my order. By the way, this just cannot work at a chain fast food store. It's too depressing. I want to work at some little or somewhat well-known place. Somewhere where there are regulars and people that sit at tables and do work for hours and only get coffee refills. Or somewhere with several super busy hours of the day where people line up and yell orders and everything is hectic. 

That's pretty much it for my list as of now. I have other things I've always wanted to do, but those either aren't notable enough or I've forgotten them. It's a pretty short list, but I want to do each one so much that it doesn't really matter. The list used to have just two things on it anyway, and I don't know why I called it a list then either.

Well, that's all. Ooh, the song I'm about to link to is one of those songs that you happen to listen to on loop while doing something specific. And it plays several times so that that song and whatever you were doing at the time are forever linked in your memory. So whenever the song plays, you instantly get this weird nostalgic feeling and it's like, flashback! That's why I associate this oldie song with playing pokemon on my gameboy. It's also why I associate this architecture thing I did last year and with this Mike Posner song.

Lights by Ellie Goulding - I was at this art workshop earlier this summer. Sometimes when we painted, this guy's ipod would play from some speakers at the far end of the room. I didn't like most of the songs on that ipod, so I was kind of surprised when I liked this one. Anyway, when we had paintings to finish in the studio on the top floor of the dorms, the same person would play the music on their ipod, and I always noticed when this one came on since it was one of the only ones I liked. So I associate this song with late nights of painting in the studio and being tired and just being in the same rut as everyone else in my class. It was fun.

Actually, on the second to last day, several of us stayed up all night to finish our pieces. They blasted that ipod really loudly from the other room in the studio. It was super tiring. The whole workshop was intense and we had homework every day and we had to replenish materials every other day and in that city people walk everywhere. And meals were a long ordeal if you wanted to go out to eat. You have to walk to the place, wait for the food, walk/run back, depending on whether there was an evening workshop thing, then buy stuff and stop by several stores to get more paper towels or another tube of toothpaste. By the time you got all the necessary stuff out of the way, it was well into the evening and everyone's feet hurt and by the way we stand all day in class while painting. And we stayed up late and had to wake up early to stop by Walgreens and get our reference photos printed because the printer in our dorms had no color ink and the other building's computer room is closed on sundays and the actual building in which our classes are held has broken printers. I hope you realize that we walked all the way to all these buildings and then had to walk all the way back. Anyway, this led to everyone being super super tired by the time it was evening. People periodically slept on the ground right in front of their canvas, on the brown paper we laid out on the floor so that we could go around barefoot and not get paint or charcoal on our feet. A lot of us had snack breaks to the vending machines and random compilements of food in the kitchen for a snack feast, which was pretty sad because we were all kind of still high school kids that hadn't realized the importance of buying groceries. So we had some sausages and bread and pizza rolls and goldfish and soda from the vending machines.

My point is, all this just made us even more tired than normal, which was why I was so surprised when the effects of late-night-sleeping hit earlier than usual. Normally staying up late doesn't show its symptoms until the afternoon, when I get really drowsy. It was weird there because as soon as you woke up, you felt super tired. And not even walking around helped.

So in the morning, people would sway while painting and have hallucinations and mix the wrong colors because they thought they had aimed their paintbrush at the brown but when they put it on the canvas it turned out to be green and getting perspectives wrong and not seeing the teacher until they were right next to you. Before that, I didn't know it was possible to fall asleep standing up. The hallucinations were funny though, I have to say. During lunch, we would share our own hallucinations and talk about the weird feeling you get where you can feel the room tilting but you can't see it. And then the giant canvases propped on the wall would look like real people and every once in a while you would be like, whoa! There's a person right there! And then you'd realize they weren't real. And then you would be painting a head when suddenly the head would look like Hogwarts and you would lean in and be like, what a mess, that looks nothing like Hogwarts, and you'd wipe away the whole thing with an oily rag and then jump back and go, wait, what'd I just erase? And then you'd think, oh my god, I just erased the entire head! and have a mini moment of clarity and hilarity at yourself and horror.

Wow. I think I really needed to get that out. I haven't told anyone this experience in detail yet really. Anyway, that workshop was really one of the funnest long-ish experiences I've ever had. Weird too. Maybe I'll just write a series of posts describing the experience, because there was just so much that happened. I'm going to end now with a question, even though my English teacher always told us not to, because my song link ending is no longer really an ending anymore. It was a beginning! Haha.. Yeah, anyway have you all ever had similar long-ish fun experiences?

And YES! I finally ended that thing that I kept doing in my recent posts where I felt I needed to have correct grammar and no run-on sentences by rambling away about that workshop I went to. Just in time for school!


Oh by the way:


Current status: eating bakery bread :D

Shadows

Ok, short post. I just saw The Voice's second to last episode, and I have never watched an episode for that show before. I actually wanted to see it before it came out, but then I saw a part of an episode once and it didn't seem that great. I decided to watch this one because I heard that the four finalists would be singing original songs.

Anyway, that's how I found this singer, Dia Frampton. I love her original song. The other songs were cool too, but I felt like some were too repetitive or something.

Since the episode just aired, the song hasn't gotten on grooveshark yet, and it's probably not on project playlist either, so here's a link to the youtube video of her song. I think her song is on iTunes though.

Inventing Shadows by Dia Frampton - Listen to it!

no bubbles today!

Aaah, I'm not that tired. I keep feeling like I should say I am, but I'm not. For a while now I've been waking up around 4pm, and the days always feel so short. And so when I actually do wake up early, the day feels amazingly long. I've been staying up later and later every night, and usually when I do that, there comes a day where I stay up until morning and still feel super awake, and so I decide to just stay up all morning until I conk out at night, this time at a really early time. So then everything is reset!

Ugh, I'm also trying to get my voice back. Not my actual voice, but my how-I-speak-differently-from-everyone-else voice. Recently I've been trying to post stuff and I feel so stiff and contained. I think this must be because of all the essay training we've had during the school year for english, and because I've been typing and editing so many e-mails and letters to adults this year, which always takes me unnaturally long. Therefore, when I send regular e-mails to people, I always use "in which" instead of "when" and "where", and I try to keep myself from using smileys and from using exclamation points and from typing super long sentences and from making up words. Right now I am trying to break away from my essay-voice. And ah! I'm still separating my contractions! I recently began using smileys again, but I'm still trying to contain that a bit because I realize that I keep depending on them too much and when I try to keep myself from using one, I realize that I can't find the right words to express what I want to.

I forgot the other thing I was originally going to talk about. Oh well.
Hmm. What's the opposite of brown? Or the complement of it? It feels like all colors have their complements, but I can't think of one for brown.

I'm slouching right now. Normally I can bring myself to unslouch when I realize I am, but it's like the staying up late has this side effect of making me not unslouch. Now I keep switching between slouching and what I call the dancer pose. That sounds a lot better in my head, like most things do for people. Anyway, the dancer pose is basically just when you don't slouch, but more extreme. Every time I think I'm extremely not slouching, it's not extreme enough. It's like your shoulders have to go all the way back and down or else everyone thinks you're not sitting up straight enough. When you actually do accomplish this spine-straightening activity, you kind of look like a dancer, and that's why I call it the dancer pose. I only say this because my school has a dance department, and it is always immediately obvious who is in this department because they are the majority of the people who sit up straight.

For some reason, I can't stand listening to any of the music I normally listen to. I went through all the music I had on my grooveshark account, and I just couldn't stand any of them. So then I watched youtube videos, which I never do. And then I went to the old playlist.com, and listened to everyone else's playlists, which surprisingly worked. It really reminded me of last summer, or maybe even back in 8th grade during the school year, which was nice. I've been listening to the same kind of music all year, and it's like when I listen to the same kinds of songs now, it isn't summer or something. Even The Fray, which I love. Suddenly all the sound in the background of their music really bothers me, like I'm suffocating in too much sound diffusion. It's very strange.

As a result of my music search expedition, I've found a few new songs. I found this apparently well known amazing singer/piano girl on youtube who's name is Christina Grimmie. I'll pick one and link it here in the middle of my post, just to change things up.

Just a Dream by Sam Tsui & Christina Grimmie - So this was a really popular song a few months ago, sung by someone else. Tsui and Grimmie did their own cover to this song, and it sounds really nice, and different enough so that it didn't sound like the stuff I listened to all year. Listen to it!

Do you think there's such a thing as negative babies? As in negatively aged babies? Because we're 9 months or so when born, so before then we were 0, and then is there a before then age? Are all babies fated to happen so that there are baby souls somewhere, each one counting down to their birth? Maybe there's a -102 year old baby someplace right now, so in 102 years and 9 months, it'll be born. I always imagine these beings to be bubbles. Everything I don't know about are bubbles. Dreams too. I think it's because I feel like they should always be floating.

Now that we're on this topic, one of the reasons I oversleep sometimes, other than when I'm doing it to avoid doing inevitable things that day, is because I'm chasing dreams. You know when you have a really good or interesting dream(maybe even nightmares that are too interesting not to continue) and suddenly you wake up either from an alarm or a phone call or other people or your internal clock, and you really want to get back to the dream? Normally if it was your internal clock that woke you up, that's not a problem. Alarms are ok too, if you've gotten so used to slapping it off and stuffing it under your pillow that you can't remember how it got there. But if it's a phone call, just looking at the caller id will bring you too back to your senses, so that it's almost impossible to get back to your dream.

Dreams are like bubbles, I think, and so you have the bubble when you're dreaming. When you wake up, you let go of the dream bubble, and it starts to float away. Usually it's easy to catch if you're half conscious or if you woke up normally, because it's only a few seconds you're asleep again. If you stay awake too long, the dream bubble floats out of your reach, most likely taking other bubbles with it, so you don't have any more dreams that day no matter how many hours you spend hoping it'll come back.

Thumbnails

Wow, it's been so long since I last posted a post. Every time I felt like posting these past few months, I would get distracted by something and then I wouldn't feel like posting anymore. Because of this, I have collected a lot of links and a lot of things I feel like talking about. So let me get the links out first, and then I'll go on with everything else I was going to say.

There are a lot of links. I really don't feel like describing each one, so I've decided to just write a few words related to the link as the description. Then you can go click on whatever sounds interesting. I also put a small thumbnail of each site under its link because for some sites, I think the pictures explain better than any description I'd write. Ok, here's the list:

phras.in

grammar type search hits match this or that

isleoftune.com

music sound make island small bump objects

evernote

notes find save ideas remember

sliderocket
powerpoint online slides presentations nice animation

bomomo
drag moving paint canvas cool unique

muro
deviantart mural graffiti paint tools

writespace

blank writing clear space simple dark

harmony
draw shading sketch instant awesome

heavy mural

post-it sticky note mural huge print upload image

like.fm

music like recommend list track summary

stayfocusd

google chrome set time no distractions

otomata

tune music bump click simple repeat change

alterego

game choose click path grow up text

Oh, I also have a list of books and anime and maybe music that I feel like recommending. I'll do that later. This is already longer than I expected, so I think I'll just post what I was going to post originally later.

Now for the end song! Sometimes I feel like adding two songs at the end of my posts because I can't decide between them, but it just doesn't work because I always feel like the song at the end is the theme of the post or something, even if its not. Usually its a song that's either my current favorite, or one I was listening to while making the post. Right now I don't really have a current favorite, just songs that haven't gotten too old for me yet. So here's a song that fits into that category.

Never Gonna Leave This Bed by Maroon 5 - This is pretty popular right now. Or maybe it was a few weeks ago that it was? Anyway, I especially like this song because as soon as I hear it begin, I want to listen to the rest of it. Sometimes I hear a song beginning and I go, "too depressing", or "ugh, not right now", but this song is so versatile for many moments, and that's why I like it.

Morning Oranges

I had this dream where I was upset for some reason in the dining room. In a fit of rage/or unhappiness, I walked through the kitchen and picked up four different oranges and carried them to my room. I think the oranges were supposed to be comfort food or something. Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I had pretty much forgotten my dream, and I walked into the kitchen to make some breakfast for myself. I paused at the fruit bowl and remembered part of my dream. I had this urge to pick up four oranges. So I did. Then I didn't know what to do with them, so I just left them on the counter.

Well, the point of that was that I thought it would be an interesting if someone recorded their morning routine with a camcorder. Then, every day for a week, they would try to repeat what they did the first day, and record that. And again and again and again. After a few days of recording, they could overlap the videos somehow, and see how close they were to repeating each day.

Maybe the first day they rinsed a glass before pouring milk into it, and the fourth day they forgot to rinse it and just poured in the milk. Maybe they would find out that each day, they put the milk carton in the exact same spot on the counter every day, or that they always left the cupboard door open after grabbing the peanut butter and remembered to close it while making scrambled eggs.

Yesterday, I finished reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. It's a really good book.

It starts off a little slow until you get to the pranks. I actually read this book a long time ago, and I always see it in the library. For some reason, I could never remember what happened in the book, so last week I decided to read it again. It was so strange because I had random moments of deja vu as I was reading it, but not the really familiar kind, where you know exactly what's going to happen next. I just felt like, "Oh, something bad happens next right?" or "She triumphs over something here, I think." I realized by the end of the book that the reason I didn't remember it too well was because the book didn't really have a happy ending. Not that I dislike all books without happy endings. It's just that I really disliked her boyfriend at the end. I liked Alpha. He seemed to be the only character that could think the same way Frankie could. I like her strategic thinking, even though she may be psychotic, according to some of the other characters in the book. Or misunderstood.

Anyway, I have some book recommendations for you. I also have some books that I want to read, and after reading laurapoet's other blog, The Plebicolar Library, I have decided to make a mini wish list for myself. This list is a list of all the books I want to read.

Book Wish List

1. Zombies vs. Unicorns by Holly Black and Justin Larbalestier - This book is an anthology. The two authors I listed are actually editors of the book. There are 12 short stories inside, written by 12 different, well-known authors. Even I recognize these authors, so they must be really well-known in the YA category, at least. Some of the stories support unicorns, and some support zombies. They are designed so that you can side with one side... For me, I don't really have any thoughts on either. I have a teacher that hates unicorns because they're "cliche", so everyone always gives her unicorn gifts, such as unicorn costumes, wall art, unicorn pottery, plushies, etc. She now has a unicorn shrine. As far as zombies go, I once found a dating site for zombies, and I thought it was funny.

Is plushies a real word? I've been using that word ever since I started playing Neopets, and even when I stopped playing, the word stuck. It's just such a nice substitute for "stuffed animals".

2. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender - Ok. You can just click on the link for the summary, since I don't feel like summarizing all that in my own words. This author has some really interesting ideas. I want to read her other books too.

3. Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue - This book is about 5 year-old Jack and his mom. They live in an 11 by 11 ft white room. Jack has never left this room. Now you can click the link to the summary.

Oh, a while ago, I began a list of all the books I have ever read, and it has about eight books on it so far, some of which are unfinished. Maybe I'll make a list of all the movies I have ever seen, and then all the stories-but-not-books I've ever read. Just for future reference.

Now for my book recommendations:

1. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender - This book has a really interesting concept. There's a girl who can taste emotions from the food that people make. The first time she realizes this is when her mother bakes her a lemon cake for her ninth birthday, and after she eats it, she can taste her mother's unhappiness. She tries to avoid homemade food after that. During dinner, which is unavoidable, she tastes her family's emotions and realizes that not everything is the way she thinks it is. The writing is really amazing. The only problem is that after a while, the book kind of swerves and goes off in another direction, and then it's all about her brother. He's interesting and all but... I wish the book focused on her tasting ability a little bit more. I didn't really like the ending either. Still, you should read it anyway! It made me want to read Aimee Bender's other books too, which have interesting titles.

2. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart - It's been a long time since I've read any of E. Lockhart's other books, but I'm pretty sure that this one is very different from those books. It has a nice cover too(I'm talking about the one with the blue envelope and the red basset wax seal). I already wrote a whole paragraph on this book in the beginning of this post, so I'm just going to skip this part and you can just click on the link to its summary.

Ok... So neither of my book lists are very long, but they will be, eventually, when I think of more.

As for music, I have a ton of music recommendations! Unfortunately, I just sent a long list of them a few days ago, so I don't feel like doing it again. I'm not going to copy it either because my comments on the list make no sense unless you have the same brain as the recipient. It would be so much easier to just write a list of recommendations, rather than a list of recommendations plus my thoughts, but it's hard not to comment on my choices.

Also, I used to use playlist.com, but I discovered Grooveshark a few months ago, and I really like it. The graphics are nice, and there's a giant collection of music. The scrollbar on the bottom is kind of shifty, but I don't use it that much anyway. I have included a link to it in the sidebar. I still visit playlist.com sometimes though, just because my playlist there has a three year span of my music choices. And all my friends use it.

Ooh, a glint of sunlight just shifted into my eye through the blinds. I don't really like glaring sunlight, but I do like those times in which bits of sunlight shine into your eye in a way that probably makes your iris look transparent. It makes everything sparkle, like those circle sun flares that appear on sunny photos. You should try it. It makes you feel like there's glitter on your eyelashes or that your eye is a crystal and it's refracting a rainbow of light on the wall behind you. That would be so cool. If we could actually refract rainbows of light, I would line up a bunch of people in the sun and let them refract rainbows onto my wall until it absorbed the light and glowed at night.

Hmm. I'm going to go get some oranges now.

For the First Time by The Script - Here's a good song.

Music

Music. I think it's interesting how sounds affect people so much. A lot of times I hear people ask other people whether they would rather lose their sight or their hearing. Usually they say sight. I guess this is because our world is so based off of what everything looks like, and so we use sight to figure out where things are and how they work. If we decided to go back in history, and instead of focusing on building a world where sight is so necessary, we decided to build one based on sound, we would be like bats.

We would read books by speaking and hearing our voice hit the page and reverberate off the words. And then people would have iPods for portable art. We'd just plug the eyephones into our eyes and we'd buy all kinds of scenery for $2 off of iTunes and it would be like we were transported somewhere else for as long as we were plugged in.

That's what happens with music, right? We listen to it and it feels like it means something, and when you close your eyes you don't have to be anywhere. If you do it long enough and forget that you're sitting in a chair in front of your computer, doing homework at 3 in the morning, you can convince yourself that you're floating. It's like those times in the morning when I know I need to get up, but it's just so much more comfortable to be snug in my bed, so I imagine that I'm getting up and turning off the alarm. Then, since I'm kind of half asleep and half awake, I start believing it, and I'm so proud of myself for forcing myself to wake up. And then I suddenly realize that I imagined that entire thing and I still need to actually get up. It's kind of funny. At the time, it's actually kind of disappointing, but at least it's one of those weird things that everyone experiences and it's just funny because it's such a random experience for people to share.

Anyway, back to the subject. For some reason, I'm trying to monopolize the world into a tiny little city. So I'm just going to continue with my city analogy since it's already rooted in my head. And hearing-city sounds silly, so that's why it's bat-city. Anyway, we have a sight-city, where sight is the most important part of our everyday lives. In bat-city, however, hearing is everything. So logically, every situation involving sight and hearing is reversed. iPods blast art, galleries showcase music, cinemas are for symphonies, etc. I think it would make sense that iPods blast scenery too, not just art, like gallery art. Music moves people, so in this city, art should move people too right? A change of scenery would obviously make you feel like you were somewhere different. And musicians and singers would no longer be the big celebrities; instead, traditional artists would enjoy the fame and fortune.

There are the other senses too. Ghosts always wish they could taste food. Animals/vampires/creepy villains use their sense of smell to find their victims. And then there's touch, which always seems like an afterthought to me because it's the only sense that's represented by something that is not directly attached to my head.

Touch is actually pretty vital. If I lost my sense of touch, would I lose the ability to feel too? Like, I wouldn't be able to feel papercuts or velvet, but would I be able to tell if I bent my elbow or turned my head? Without touch, you can feel pressure, but not surfaces, which is kind of scary. If I couldn't feel anything, I wouldn't know whether I was standing or sitting or falling. If I closed my eyes and fell off a ladder, I would think, "Hmm, there's this strange pressure all around me," and then I would hit the ground and be like, "Oh, I must have hit something." My organs would probably feel like they were dislocated or something. And maybe I'd accidentally put my hand over the stove without realizing it and it would only be when I turned around that I'd see the damage and freak out.

Ok, since I've been talking about music(or was), I think I shall conclude with a song! I've been wanting to share this song for a while anyway. Don't listen to it on Youtube. Really. It doesn't sound as good on Youtube because it hasn't been amplified and it was recorded outside and has not been cleared by computer technology and there is just no magic. Listen to it on Grooveshark! The link is below, so just click on it.

Demons by On The Rocks - So... This entire song is voices only, without instruments. As far as I know, OTR does this with all their songs. It's kind of a sad song, but it's nice to listen to anyway. At first, when I saw the title, I was like, "Hey, demons. That sounds like a song that might be a rock song that I don't feel like listening to at the moment." But just in case it turned out to be incredible, I listened to it anyway. And it was totally incredible. So listen to it.

Week 415

Week 415

Speech :: Leech
Meredith :: Grey
Consensus :: Senses
Attack :: Defend
Sue :: You
Voted :: Star
Epic :: Game
Checking in :: Checking out
Dishwasher :: Plates
Underneath :: The bed

from lunanina