| (no subject) |
[May. 20th, 2009|04:38 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pensive | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Country Teasers - Golden Apples | ] |
Greeting from Albany, journal! I'm finally done with the school year but before going home, I decided to visit my friend Tim a former Beloit student who is studying music at SUNY Albany. This is a really nice place. I'm listening to his iPod and there's a keyboard sitting right here next to me. I'm going through his rather intimidating music collection as I type this while he sleeps. It's so much fun!
The end of the year was so ridiculously hectic. Packing was so horrible and miserable and I'm glad it's all over. I wound up paying over 600 dollars (wtf?) to have all of my stuff stored. I had over 18 boxes full of clothes and books and I was so ridiculously ashamed that I allowed so much stuff to accumulate in my tiny room. Additionally, I wound up donating two garbage bags full of old clothes/stuff to charity and dumping A LOT of stuff I couldn't carry with me outside of my door for other people to take. And if that wasn't enough, to add injury to insult it seems, I'm carrying two EXTREMELY heavy suitcases full of stuff and my backpack is so heavy it worries me. My mom is probably going to yell at me (edit: she did not) for bringing so much crap home and that won't be fun either. I can't believe I've let myself slip to such wasteful and superfluous proportions. There is simply no excuse for having all of this stuff and after giving away what I thought I didn't need, I still have a ton of stuff in storage. I'm actually kind of hoping it gets eaten by moths, stolen, or burned in a great fire so I will not have to worry so much about it anymore.
Wastefulness, I've come to learn, is seemingly very abundant amongst Cornell students. During those last few days of the schoolyear, the normally clean-cut and proper atmosphere of the campus degenerated into a junkyard. Many people dumped a lot of the garbage/useless things that must have been shoved under their beds and into the deepest, darkest corners of their closets into the "Dump & Run" charity boxes. Piles upon piles of garbage bags filled and surrounded all of the dorms on campus. In people's frenzies to clean their rooms, they scattered their things all over the floor. When I was walking through this happy trashland recently, I saw a group of indie kids who looked like they belonged in some hipster coffee shop somewhere climbing through/playing in the trash. One of them had fairy wings and I thought she was kind of cute because of that. I shrugged this strange occurrence off but later in the night, I saw MORE indie kids rummaging through the dumpster. I knew this was no coincidence. I later learned that this was the season for Dumpster Diving. It's when people go through the trash of college students in hopes of finding goodies for themselves. I think Cornell was a particularly good place to do this since what most of the students would consider junk could possibly be treasure for lots of other people. I saw some fairly nice things in the donating boxes. I don't know what they included in their garbage bags along with their used tampons, used condoms, and rotten food but I hope the indie kids did find something worthwhile amongst such treasures.
[At this point I stopped since Tim woke up. I'm now happily finishing it in Mississippi!]
Seeing all the waste that lurked beneath the surface of the school was interesting, though. It lead me to wonder where all of our society's waste as a whole goes. Since I've become more particularly sensitive to the rapid technological advances of the past two centuries this semester, I'm curious as to seeing what becomes of our old technology which seemingly gets outdated every two to three years. Where have all the floppy disks and the desktop computers of the early 90s gone to for instance? I will soon be visiting a very good friend of mine who has several old school gaming systems--Sega Genesis, Atari, Super Nintendo, original Nintendo, Game Boy, etc.--and perhaps dozens of their respective games shoved into his dressers and closets whilst his brand new shiny PS3, Nintendo Wii, and X-Box 360 stand proudly erect on his big screen television seemingly unaware that they themselves will be shoved into the closets and dressers themselves one day. I suspect that if gaming technology (not innovation, but technology) keeps advancing at the pace it currently is, his room will eventually overstuff itself and explode! While his particular situation is amusing, this is obviously not a workable framework for the rest of the world. I'd like to know where all of our old technology goes.
This actually reminds me of an excellent report I saw on 60 Minutes while eating dinner earlier this semester. It actually deals with what I just asked and gives stark and depressing pictures of a toxic "electronic graveyard" in rural China. Despite the oversensationalism characteristic of modern journalism, I think this piece is easily a step above what is usually shown on television and is well worth the time and effort of watching. I'd recommend it to anyone who cares to look:
http://www.ecofactory.com/community/blogs/ecofactory/60-minutes-episode-computer-parts-recycling-china
I think the video speaks for itself. It would be nice if waste could easily just disappear but that does not seem to be the case. It is interesting to note that as long as there is "progress" there will be an equal proportion of waste that has to be dumped onto someone. As more and more people in developing countries gain access to the "good life," I wonder how the rest of the world will bear handling the weight of the seemingly inevitable globalized elite. Hmmm.....well I'm starting to expand beyond my scope of knowledge. For now, at least, I will try to make a conscious effort to be both more frugal and efficient. I will somehow get rid of the crap that fills my 18 boxes in storage (unless my wish comes true and my fire comes!) try to buy less frivolous things. And hence an ecologically conscious Will was born. |
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| Writer's Block: Gamer's Choice |
[Apr. 13th, 2009|01:52 pm] |
WHERE IS DONKEY KONG COUNTRY 2, PEOPLE? Granted....it's not my favorite (that would be Sonic and Knuckles) but seriously WTF?
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| Writer's Block: Controversial Interrogation Techniques |
[Apr. 5th, 2009|10:59 pm] |
KING RAMSEESSSSSSSSS
The man in gauze, the man in gauze!
KING RAMSEESSSSSSSSS
The man in gauze, the man in gauze!
HE'S NO SANTA CLAAAAAUUSSS
The man in gauze, the man in gauze!
KING RAMSEESSSSSSSSS
The man in gauze, the man in gauze!
KING RAMSEESSSSSSSSS
The man in gauze, the man in gauze!
HE'S NO SANTA CLAAAAAUUUSSS
The man in gauze, the man in gauze!
x7 billion
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| Testing: Never uploaded pic before... |
[Mar. 4th, 2009|06:42 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | curious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Gilbert and Sullivan - The Pirates of Penzance | ] |
 
WHICH AM I?
Answer and I'll tell you which one you are. :D
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| Don't Fear the Reaper |
[Feb. 24th, 2009|12:00 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  dirty | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Advantage - Double Dragon III (Egypt) | ] |
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own death lately. However, this doesn’t mean that I’m feeling suicidal or anything. Quite the contrary, actually! I’ve been thinking about my future and my life in its totality. I’m too lazy to find the book (Herodotus’ “Histories”) but I remember this one scene in which a great, wealthy, and powerful king calls a renowned sage to his kingdom so he (the sage) can tell the king if he is or is not the happiest man the wise old sage has ever seen in his long life. After touring the kingdom, the sage says that he is indeed impressed by the riches, horses, and women the king has been able to gather for himself but he is sadly not the happiest man he has ever seen. The wise sage remarks that it is impossible to tell if someone truly lived a happy life until they have died. Only when one has died does a life become measurable, concrete, and quantifiable. The sage remarks that the king could lose all of his wealth and riches (as he indeed does) in an instant. He could die poor, lonely, and miserable and wind up being one of the unhappiest men in the world despite his present glittering lifestyle.
I’ve been thinking along similar lines lately. A new hobby of mine is looking at the Wikipedia pages of several famous people and comparing/contrasting their birthplaces and death places. Sometimes the birth and death places have next to nothing to do with each other and it’s wonderful to think of all the wonderful adventures that must have taken place between Points A and B! Let’s see if we can find some good examples. I will rank each birth/death combo on a scale of 1-10 of interestingness/awesomeness.
( The death list! )
But I think you are beginning to get my point. A life looked at in totality is both interesting and can even be kind of ominous. Let’s pretend that as I slept at night, a portal from hell opened and a demon came to me and woke me. This demon offered to let me know the place of my death in exchange for 1/100th of my lifespan. I would not be able to avoid the place due to almost Oedipal twists of fate. Any attempt I made to prolong and/or save my life would only lead to more suffering. He would expect me to accept my death with grace and honor. Let’s say I took him up on that. I wonder what my death markers would say about my future.
( My death list! )
What a fun experiment this has been!
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| Food for thought |
[Feb. 20th, 2009|11:26 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
So, while waiting for some movies to download, I read a Harold Bloom interview. For those who don't know, Bloom is a Yale scholar and pretty much the world's best and most renowned literary critic. He's an insane genius and perhaps the world's most well-read human being. What he says must be taken into deep contemplation. There's this one portion of the interview that hit me like a sack of bricks and I feel obliged to share with anyone who cares enough to read. The epic part is bolded.
"IL: You have discused at length the intimate relationship Americans seem to have with God.
HB: The United States calls itself Christian, but it isn't really, it has nothing to do with European, Middle Eastern historical, theological Christianity. It is an indigenous American religion which started 200 years ago: it is fermenting, it is enthusiastic, it is mystical. Two days ago in the New York Times, someone wrote about a woman who was the governor of Texas and whom everyone called Ma Ferguson, and she said that nowhere in Texas is there any language other than English to be taught. And she said: "If English is good enough for Jesus Christ, then it's good enough for us." This Jesus is an American Jesus. The Holy Spirit of the Pentecostals, which is a burgeoning religion here, is an American Holy Spirit.
IL: Do you have any relationship with God, be it intimate or not?
HB: A Christian has to believe that something is so, that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God, a Muslim is asked to submit to the law of Yahwah – and the submission is the actual translation of the Arabic "Islam" – a Jew is not asked to believe that something is so and neither is he asked to submit to anything. He is asked to trust in the covenants between Yahwah and his people. Since it does not seem to me that Yahwah, historically speaking, has trusted in the covenant or observed the terms of the covenant – otherwise how could there have been Auschwitz? How could there be schizophrenia? How could there be cancer? – I do not accept. Oh, dear child, it is very complicated, I am in a difficult situation – I do not trust in the covenants, and I believe that Yahwah is in exile, that he has deserted us. On the other hand, the Kabbalah seems to me the truth."
HHHHMMMMMMM!
Oh well, on to movieland.
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| pwnage |
[Feb. 15th, 2009|02:18 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  chipper | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Zero 7 - Waiting to Die | ] |
So I have three-day weekends now and I feel fantastic. That course on mystery cults wound up being horrible and boring. I dreaded going to the class every MWF since I would struggle to stay awake. We had our first paper to turn in on Friday and when I sat down to write the damn thing, I realized that I had learned nothing since the lectures were so drab and I simple ignored the readings. I finally decided to drop it. It was the only class I had on Monday (my schedule is very TTh heavy and my Sanskrit course only meets WF due to a grad student who drives from Syracuse just to take the class) so now I have no class on Monday. I shall now treat all of my Saturdays as off days and read things I want to read, watch things I want to watch, and drink whatever I want to drink and no one can do a damn thing about it. Contrary to popular belief, every single one of my credits from Beloit transferred to this school since Beloit’s such an academic powerhouse. I came here with more than half of the credits necessary to graduate. The only reason they gave me an extra year (or semester, as I’ve recently learned) is simply because I didn’t have a major + I have to cover Cornell’s 2,346,724 science requirements. I learned this when I went to look at my online credit report. I only need 8 more credits (2 classes) to graduate. Also, it seems I will manage to switch majors to Comparative Literature. This Sanskrit nonsense will count towards half of the courses for that major. I only need 5 other Comp. Lit. courses to cover the major and I’ve already taken 2 of those. Hence, I will only need 3 more classes for that shit next year. Summary? The hardest part of college is over and done with for me. I’ve put in my time. Now I can take leisure time. Also, I’ll be doing more specialized, individualized, graduate school-level work translation and research projects for the most part. The classes I’ve had that function like that meet only once or twice a week but require tons of outside preparation and work that is actually kind of fun. Funny how education grows more fun as it grows more complex. It’s daunting to imagine that this should be the second semester of my senior year of college. It’s ridiculous to think of how much I’ve been working and how long I’ve been swamped with classes. This proxy senioritis helps me feel less guilty about my laid back attitude towards things. I have many sophomore and junior friends (mostly majors in the sciences) that flaunt their stress-filled lives and workloads like they are badges of honor. I laugh at them and their Protestant work ethics! Dumbasses. Though, I don’t intend to spend all of my time sitting around and fapping. I’ve started to read Haruki Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” and I hope to start thumbing through the introductory lectures on psychoanalysis in the near future. I also hope to brush on my Japanese so I can hopefully turn my dreams of JET into a reality. I’m also taking up some more material hobbies. The two most interesting people I know at this place have recently started hooking up and now the girl comes over to visit this dude a lot. She has agreed to bring some of her clothes over so I can dabble in crossdressing. I’m just kidding. Or am I? (I’ve been dying to cosplay as Anthy Himemiya cause I think it’d be kawaii.) Blame these new passions on moot of 4chan. And that, as they say, is that. =] |
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| Barack Obama is a genius. |
[Jan. 12th, 2009|02:23 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
In an attempt to learn (in a much more sophisticated manner) what I should have learned in high school (I slept through everything), I'm reading David Herbert Donald's deservedly popular biography "Lincoln." I'm about 300 pages into it right now and it's riveting. I'm at the point where he was recently been elected to office and he is the President-elect an it is hilarious. I am now convinced that Barack Obama has engaged in the second most impressive social engineering project ever embarked upon in the "modern" world.*
(NOTE: Links do not actually have to be read)
He has made no secret of his admiration of Lincoln. See: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1077287,00.html
Also, muuuuuch ink has been spilled about the parallels between the two. Examples:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21290
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/manisha-sinha/is-obama-lincoln-to-hilla_b_98955.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/18/ken_burns_compares_obama_to_li.html
And muuuuuuch more. Now Obama is playing into the game by being sworn into office with Lincoln's Bible and riding a train to mimic Abe's own inauguration.
I won't add much more to all these words but I am highly amused. The South was highly disturbed by the election of a Republican president before he even got into office. While I doubt a physical war will break out, many contemporary Southerners are disturbed and creeped out as fuck. It is a grim day for the culture wars! Mary Lincoln is described as being an insufferable, overemotional bitch in much the same way Miss Angry-Black-Woman is expected to grace the White House. I swear Obama only wrote an emotional farewell letter to Chicago since Lincoln did the same for Springfield. Hahahaha this is all too great.
Though, it's a sombre day when the best person the "modern" world has to offer aspires to be merely derivative of a former "great man" instead of new, creative, paradigmatic in his own right but perhaps I shouldn't get into that one. I'm having too much fun! XD
*Hitler was the most successful, obviously |
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| LOL "social anxiety" |
[Jan. 7th, 2009|12:29 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Yo La Tengo - My Little Corner of the World | ] |
To anyone with a sufficient amount of time and a genuine interest in psychiatry and medicine, I recommend the following interesting article I found in the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22237
It’s a fascinating piece that has served as my introduction to the great problem of the link between the business interests of pharmaceutical companies and the medicines doctors prescribe to their patients.
I’m too ignorant of the field to claim that I understood it all fully but it did raise a lot of fascinating questions. The titles of some of the books citied basically sum up the article:
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs
by Melody Petersen
Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pp., $26.00
Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness
by Christopher Lane
Yale University Press, 263 pp., $27.50; $18.00 (paper)
( The rest )
Supposedly, America is the most overmedicated company in the world. It makes sense. Maybe that is why I’m so bored all of the time? As I jokingly told a friend of mine while at Beloit, I intended to sneak around to everyone’s rooms at night and steal all of their anti-depressants/medications. When the dawn came, I would walk around campus with a video camera and record the students running around punching/strangling one another, flaming couches flying from windows and chaos finally come to the Earth. Maybe it would be a good advertising commercial. As some random person cynically noted, and I paraphrase: “before you can market the drug, you first have to market the disease.”
Ouch.
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| Obligatory 2008 |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|06:01 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  thankful | ] |
I have no particular desire to write about anything right now because I’m being driven insane. A bunch of cows have been placed behind my house and I think their farmer shoved a bunch of porcupines up their asses because they’re mooing and wailing and bitching and whining and making me bang my head up against the wall. It’s hard to concentrate. However, letting 2008 end without making an obligatory end-of-the-year post seemed like a sin.
This has been a good year overall. Granted, much of it was hard and painful and lonely but I consider myself, as a recently taken online personality quiz put it for me a “person of accomplishment” (as opposed to a “person of leisure.”) I’m looking back at the culmination of all I’ve done and I am highly pleased. What little I can remember anyway. Unfortunately, I have a ridiculously horrible memory and can hardly remember anything that I’ve done all year. As a result, I will try to make this simple and just give a short list of the five greatest surprises of 2008.
( #5: Super Mario Galaxy )
( #4: George Orwell )
( #3: The Campaign )
( #2: Turning 21 )
( #1: ?????? )
I hope you all found something to be thankful for this year as well. If so, I hope 2009 brings even more riches to you and if not, you have my hopes that the next year will bring you happiness.
Peace, love and much booze tonight everyone! You’ve earned it.
P.S. Hmm guess I could concentrate after all....
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| Wonder what Tupac would say.... |
[Dec. 26th, 2008|12:09 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sick | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Tetsuo | ] |
Even though countless things have happened to me and thousands of different thoughts and impressions have floated through my brain in the past few days, I’ve found it nearly impossible to write about them in any coherent manner. I think I may have mentioned this during one of my previous visits home but the different “phases” of my life are sort of meshing together during this break and it‘s slightly confusing. One day, I may suddenly see an old friend from 3rd grade then speak on the phone with a Beloit friend for two hours and then spend the next hour thinking about a Cornell friend before watching TV with my mom and then plot my future escape to New York City. I feel like I’m getting a pretty interesting holistic view of my life (as it exists right now, anyway) and I think I like what I see. I’m changing so much and many people/things here have changed so much. Or at least I’d like to think so. What if I’m the one that has changed and nothing in the town has changed? Does it only look different to me now that I have something else to compare it too? Or what if I have not changed at all and the town has changed into something incomprehensible to me and thus leads me to question the person I’ve always been? It’s so fascinating!
( Ovid's Metamorphoses + other stuff )
Of course, I guess the same can be said of many people but I think the mere diversity of the circles I mingle in make my case somewhat significant enough to write about. Oh well.
Happy holidays, everyone!
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| Bad boys, bad boys |
[Dec. 20th, 2008|04:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | HOME!!! | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | chipper | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Earth, Wind and Fire - I'll Write A Song For You | ] |
Day #1:
So, I am back home. A lot of things happened before I left school and I had grueling bout of sleep deprivation and just plain bad luck in the airport but those instances probably aren’t interesting enough to write about here. I’m more interested in what’s going on down here in MS. I’m making it a goal of mine to keep my ears, eyes and (most importantly) mind as open as humanly possible in the short time that I have here. My greatest regret about my last visit home is that I simply spent too much time inside my home twiddling my thumbs. Because of this, I barely got to talk to anyone and barely had the time to explore my homelands. Well, that’s changing this time!
I spent my first day at my grandmother’s house. I’m now sitting in the home I grew up in and it’s such a warm feeling despite how it’s less physically convenient than my living conditions in Ithaca. Since I don’t have internet right now, I’ve spent a lot of time watching (i.e. analyzing) television. It is through the television that I’ve picked up on a major difference of lifestyles as lived in places like Ithaca and places like Ellisville: the remarkable preponderance and perpetual glorification of judicial/legal authority and police brutality on television.
( Justice always prevails )
P.S. The song I'm listening to is amazing. I heard it in the car while riding back home with my dad. Check it out!
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| I read the news today, oh boy.... |
[Nov. 27th, 2008|11:48 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  awake | ] |
I’m utilizing every single distraction at my disposal and pushing my ingenuity to its very limits in order to come up with excuses to not do the schoolwork I promised myself I’d do during this break. I’ve done South Park, I’ve done friends, I’ve done fun (i.e. real) reading and now I shall turn to writing. I’ll admit that I’m having a slight case of writer’s block due to the lack of emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and (of course) physical stimulation in my life right now but perhaps that will change as I go along. Let us begin!
Well, I’ve been reading the news a lot lately and it’s disturbing. The world seems to have transformed into an erratically violent place in the past few days. Well, the world is driven by a perpetual stream of violence (some kinetic but most of it potential) but the New York Times seems to have suddenly taken note of it in the past few days. Since the worldviews of pretentious college residents (like me!) are mostly molded by the media, this violence may as well be new, abnormal, and strange.
( Terrorism in India )
( Larger Implications? )
( Conclusion + emo )
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.
* Some British dude’s version of what I just said: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3529804/Bombay-terror-attacks-Why-the-Taj-Mahal-Hotel-was-chosen.html
*Mexico elite: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/world/americas/17mexico.html?_r=1
* Deepak Chopra lays the fucking SMACKDOWN. Great words: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/26/king.chopra.mumbai/index.html
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| Tribute to Hikari |
[Oct. 26th, 2008|11:49 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | What do you think? | ] |
In contrast to yesterday, it is bright and sparkling outside my window. Indeed, things began to get much better yesterday immediately after posting my journal entry yesterday. Around 5PM, the sun peeked from behind a cloud as it was still pouring down rain. It was one of those strange spectacles in which rain is still pouring in the sunshine. Though a rainbow was not to be found anywhere, the sun did reflect itself in each individual raindrop so the entire landscape was wrapped in a layer of transparent gold and showers of silver sprinkles rained from the air and into the thickets of dark green grass.
Yesterday evening was full of moments like that and I’m almost positive that they only happened to me since I have been listening to Utada Hikaru’s magnum opus “Hikari,” which I am convinced is song possessed of supernatural powers. The word “hikari” is the Japanese word for “light” and nothing could be more fitting. The song actually sounds better when in the presence of actual light. I took an early shower yesterday and the dirt, grit and mud that plagued both my body and my mind around the time I made my last post were eradicated. I felt, as Andre 3000 would probably say, so fresh and so clean. When I came back into my room, I turned both the overhead fluorescent light (a rarity for me) and the lamp in my room on. I clicked so Hikari would play through the speakers as I dried myself off, the song sounded ten thousand times better since I was clean and my room was swelling with light from all sides! (I should take this moment to note that the English version of the song is called “Simple and Clean” but I don’t consider that a real song. Squaresoft forced her into making such unbelievably stupid and dumb-downed lyrics for American audiences. Though, the song actually DOES sound better when you’re fresh and clean too!)
The upbeat acoustic percussion was usually comfortably nestled in the background behind a thick layer of acoustic guitar strumming and electronic effects but with this listen, they just shoved themselves to the foreground! I almost felt as if I was listening to a completely different song in this bath of light. Though, the fact that I was bathed in artificial light was not lost on me. I recognize that this song is pretty much inextricably linked with artificial phosphorescence and mechanized splendor that characterizes places like the heart of Tokyo or Times Square. (Hikaru herself grew up in Tokyo and New York City so this only helps my case!) The song, for me anyway, blurs the line between visual and audio perception. I can actually see the love she put into those guitar strums. I see glowing pink hearts, five-pointed yellow stars, U-shaped rainbows and crescent moons (with all due respect to Lucky Charms Inc.) flowing forth from the strings and vanishing into thin air as she strums the musical notes with love. The strange, indescribable laptop beeps that dance from one tempo to the next throughout the song undoubtedly and unquestionably invoke images of a butterfly curiously yet both lazily and actively fluttering from one flower (or, in this case, chord progression of which this song has like ten trillion) to the next.
I think I can understand why Utada Hikaru decided to make this her unofficial theme song. (The Japanese characters for “Hikaru” and “hikari” are basically the same.) Though, it’s important to remember that Hikari is also actually the theme song for the video game Kingdom Hearts. I shall now describe the song’s nostalgic qualities for me and hopefully thus lead anyone else that may think I’m certifiably insane to understand why I’d devote so much time to a mere J-Pop song.
Well, you see, this song was basically popped my J-Pop cherry and J-Pop as a whole popped my strange/foreign music cherry which in turn popped my imaginative cherry. (Though, music had a little bit of help from literature in that last phase but that’s another topic for another day.) Before then, I was very into the market of excellent, classic RPGs for the PS1 headed by Final Fantasy VII. I had slowly been developing an ear for the classic tunes I encountered in my RPGs and that was, in some ways, a preparation for what was to come. I first heard of the game Kingdom Hearts near the end of 9th grade and I was completely, absolutely transfixed. Anyone that knew me at that time will tell you that Kingdom Hearts was all I thought/talked about. I looked for updates on the game’s development almost every day. I seriously thought that Kingdom Hearts was going to completely revolutionize the gaming world. Indeed, I went about constructing my OWN creative vision for what Kingdom Hearts would be like. (And I can admit, without shame, that if the game HAD turned out as I pictured it in my head, it would’ve been the gaming event of the century!) I found a copy of and absorbed the game’s soundtrack before the actually landed on American shores. This is where Hikari comes in. I must’ve listened to the song hundreds of times. It was completely different from anything else that I had heard before. I think the song is inextricably linked with my state of mind at the time. It was a miniature version of the optimism and wonder one feels before setting out to explore great and unknown horizons. It was one of my major imaginative exercises in high school. In fact, Kingdom Hearts’ great failure to live up to my expectations convinced me that I should become a game producer myself and set the gaming community straight. However, that as well is another story for another day.
Yet here I sit in college now, so many years from those curious and strangely enough happier days. I’ve accumulated so much music from around the world and from various time periods but Hikari still stands strongly against any other pop/rock songs I may have. I don’t think it’s merely nostalgia that leads me to say this. Utada, a daughter of two classically trained musicians, considers this her favorite song. Many of her fans consider it her best work. It stands against my much more mature and critical ear as excellent work. Leagues of overcompensatorily (is that even a word?) masculine metal-heads have admitted to me that the song touches a soft spot in their hearts. It’s such an excellent song, in fact, that the mellow October sunshine in which I’m about to walk may turn out to be slightly disappointing….^_^ |
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| Poseidon's Web |
[Oct. 25th, 2008|01:09 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  mellow | ] |
| [ | music |
| | John Coltrane - Greensleeves (Alternative Take) | ] |
What a cold and watery Saturday morning! Some strange and incessant wind is blowing dead yellow-brown leaves in swirling and looping paths before they land in puddles and are thus stepped on, stuck to the bottom of boots, and finally dislodged in the middle of hallways and bedrooms. Combine this smattering of mud, water and leaves which covers our floor with the natural, organic messiness of all of the rooms on this floor (this is an all-male floor) and you will come to understand just how much of a mess this place truly is. It is almost as if we opened all of the doors of the dorms and allowed the Chicago Bears, a few Minotaur and the entire stampede of wildebeests from the Lion King to chase the Road Runner around this dorm building!
When I look out of the window, I see nothing but a landscape obscured by constantly dripping and flowing water. I feel as if I’m in a kind of submarine and at any moment, I’m expecting a giant purple fish and red stripes and a flashbulb on his forehead to float by my window and wink a green eye at me. This makes me wonder if a fish would be able to survive were I to throw it onto the sidewalk in the middle of hurricane-induced thunderstorm. Would the relentless stream of water be enough for the fish to survive?
Actually, these thoughts are getting too sadistic. Coming from a family of expert fishermen myself, I can sympathize with the constant sufferings endured by the aquatic community. As a result, I will simply turn the tables. Let’s assume that I’m at the bottom of a lake and risk drowning. The sun is obscured as a waving and flowing ball of white just as the people that I see outside of my window right now are transformed into black and blue blobs. I have no way to swim to the top. Let us assume that Wile E. Coyote has chained a 1,000 pound ACME weight to my ankle and dropped me into the middle of the lake. My situation is hopeless. However, it begins to rain oxygen in the lake. A relentless torrent of raindrop-shaped oxygen bubbles falls towards the bottom of the lake. They are my only hope of breathing. Would I survive?
Probably not. A web of water would exist between the constant oxygen-packets. The interconnected strings of water would undoubtedly function like a spider’s web. If I were to attempt to breathe, I would inevitably inhale a rouge string of water. If I were to swallow one of the water-strings with my mouth, I could probably gag and cough and wheeze for air and thus inhale more water-strings. If I were to do so with my nose, it would be even more horrible. Such a torturous end seems sick and grotesque. Thus, it seems like the fish would not survive. Poor thing. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 16th, 2008|04:30 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Duke Ellington Orchestra - Star Sprangled Banner | ] |
My break is over now and I’m slowly starting to get back to get into the groove of things. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say I’m getting “back” into the groove of things. I’ve spent most of the semester putting roughly 1/4th of my potential into my work. I’ve felt no great enthusiasm for the systematic maelstrom of paperwork, schedules, regulated thought, fixed emotions or casual relationships that I decided make up this whole “college” phenomenon earlier in the semester. I realized that I have two more years of this at the very least and realized something had to be done before I sank into the recesses of a tarpool of sloth and negligence. Around this time, an old friend who has recently started graduate school at Princeton suddenly invited me up to spend time with her. While I obviously was interested in seeing an old friend again, I was also giddy at the thought of immersing myself in a community of young scholars who lived for their work. I was hoping that I could soak up some of their dedication, intellectual curiosity and passion through osmosis and carry it back to Ithaca with me. I went up and to my great surprise, I did exactly that. (Though, I would argue that I was intimidated moreso than inspired.)
I think I offended my friend by constantly referring to her and all of her friends as a bunch of geeks but that is essentially what they were. I went out to go drinking with them and they spent all of their time harping about topics ranging from Hegel’s influence on the early writings of Karl Marx to finer linguistic nuances of some Native American language to the historical relationship between Mongolia and Russia and a bunch of other shit I didn’t understand. (Though, I am very proud to admit that I got a chance to show off my mad skillz when Street Fighter II came into the conversation!) I got a firsthand glimpse of the atmosphere and I really was impressed with them all. I felt outrageously outclassed (though I don’t quite consider myself an academic) and dumbfounded into a state of complete shock, fear, admiration and festive energy. My search for a good influence had worked. I’m utilizing this energy as best I can to hopefully get some work done before it runs out and I return to my typical drab self.
Though, lots more happened during the break that I won’t bother writing too much about but it’s interesting nonetheless. My first trip to New York City was majestic. My neighbor (from the Bronx!) on this floor was headed home on the same bus as me and he offered to guide me through the labyrinth of death that is the NYC subway system. We got off the bus in the middle of Times Square in the middle of the night and I instantly felt like I belonged. All around me, there were swirling colors of red, blue, purple, green, yellow and pink flashing neon lights. There were thousands of sounds—musical, natural, terrifying—flowing into my ears from all directions and the great crowds of people pushed on like rushing torrents in the sea. There was so much activity and energy that I just completely freaked out. (My traveling partner said that he wish he had a video camera at the time so he could record my reactions to things and put them on Youtube.) I spent most of my time making comparisons between the city that surrounded me and Neo-Tokyo as expressed through the movie Akira. As we walked through the subway, there were three or four different performers playing drums. They were obviously taken aback by the fact that I actually paid attention to them. I’d stand beside them, bob my head, make the \m/ sign and be like “YEAH MUTHAFUCKAS” and my traveling partner just shook his head in amused embarrassment. Also, as I was walking beside my traveling partner, I asked him many questions—one of these being: “Is it true that if you talk to people in New York City, they won’t talk back?” This one native of the city overheard me and when she thought I wasn’t looking starting giggling at me behind my back and shaking her head in delight. What impudence!
The break was a break of firsts now that I think about it. Not only was it my first time in New York City but also my first time on a train. I had to take a train up to New Jersey and it was really confusing at first. Behind me, this obviously very wealthy girl was chatting on the phone with a friend about Samuel L. Jackson’s son who was raising hell in a swimming pool at a party she had recently attended. Of course, Sam Jackson was there as well and she commented on how he actually DOES scream all the time. It was great! The train ride was rather uneventful besides that though I was confused as to where I got off and just followed/stalking this one really pretentious dude who was wearing a Yale bag on his shoulder. I figured he’d be going to Princeton.
I won’t say too much about what happened once I got there. Much of it was intimate, personal or intense and I won’t bore you with such menial details that you’ll already know regardless. Some funny things did happen, though. I went on a walk with my Chinese friend from my summer in CLS and I was blabbing about Sarah Palin. Rather, I was ranting about the people who hate her so much and I said something to the effect of “Ugh I get so SICK of it all. Whenever I hear another person complain about her, I add another mark to a tally I’m keeping.” And then this one hippy Princeton professor overhears my conversation and she’s like “well, you can add another tally right now!” out loud. My Chinese friend and I both burst into hysterical laughter in the middle of the quad and it was great. Just like my Beloit friend, my Chinese friend eventually had to go off and study and sent me on my way in the middle of the town. (WTF Princeton?) I explored the town and found this amazing, epic, intense record store that has so many rare and expensive goodies priced for less that 10 bucks. I stocked up on records that I could probably sell on Amazon for 100+ bucks each. Needless to say, I will definitely be returning.
Regardless, this is getting longer than I expected. I was going to take a break from working but it seems I will procrastinate as much as always. I just wanted to state that I had a good, fun break. This was my first great and real adventure in the Middle Atlantic/New England and I’m looking forward to getting off of campus and exploring some more! I need more adventures to periodically invigorate my imagination and my senses so if anyone’s in the area, please let me know! |
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| More procrastination |
[Oct. 3rd, 2008|12:05 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | peaceful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Yasunori Mitsuda - Voyage | ] |
I love nylon-stringed guitars. If guitars are truly the instruments of summer, flowers and love (let us not ignore the monopoly hippies have long had on the guitar and the images associated with it) then steel-stringed guitars, with their high-pitched, twanging sounds, give a true musical expression of sunlight, heat, activity and bright colors. If this is truly the case, nylon-string guitars, with their mellow and soothing sounds, represent the cool shade of a tree, calm flowing water or the gentle breeze. If the steel string guitar is the glamorous, dazzling iconography of JFK, then the nylon-string guitar is the deep pathos and melancholy of LBJ. If steel-stringed guitars invoke the fiery spirit of Greeks at war with one another, the nylon-stringed guitar is the complacent defeat and accepted melancholy in the watery eyes of the Biblical Jew.
I’m listening to a nylon-stringed guitar and I am constantly dumbfounded by how absurdly_human_the sound is. The hollow sound of the strings does not drown out the sound of the player meticulously moving his fingers about and plucking the strings. Every time his finger slides from one note to the next, there is this low-pitched yelping sound that somehow makes the song sound even more perfect. I can hear the light sound of palms bumping against the hollow instrument as he moves his fingers and hands around every so slightly. These light bumps, slides and finger plucks just make the song sound even more perfect. It is almost as if it’s not a “solo instrument” at all. The sound of the deep notes, the sound of the movements, and the sound of the hands/fingers lightly bumping/rubbing the hollow hickory all come together sound like a human body with a variety of organs working together in perfect unison to make a composite whole.
While the steel-stringed guitar arrogantly looks up to the heavens and shouts towards the gods, the nylon-string realizes its own mortality. By allowing the wood-slap a few instances to be heard in songs, it acknowledges the skeleton that supports it. By giving prominence to note-slides, it acknowledges the many internal organs and nerves that work and functions inside of it. By allowing the musician’s bodies to itself become an instrument, it acknowledges that it cannot go it alone and depends on the assistance of others. The nylon-stringed guitar is a communal instrument and free from narcissism. There should be more nylon-stringed guitars in the world. They make it easier for me to be heard. |
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| As I Please |
[Sep. 28th, 2008|12:33 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | hopeful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tilly and the Wall - Bad Education | ] |
I’ve known about the epic paper that I have to turn in on Thursday for at least three weeks now. It’s a paper for my Evolution class—one of my cursed required science credits and the typical banes of my existence. We were supposed to read Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” over the course of the past three weeks and in true scholarly fashion, I did none of the reading, skipped two discussion sections, slept through three lectures and switched the class to the pass/fail option so I wouldn’t have to take it too seriously. (This last suggestion was made at the suggestion of the two other girls that transferred to Cornell from Beloit and are now taking the class to get rid of their science credits as well. Hah! What a small world.) In the duration of my three-week long procrastination section, I was not elevated, seduced, worshipped, enlightened, comforted, reassured, amused, relieved nor deflowered. Essentially, it was a waste of time both professionally and personally though I did accumulate a collective extra seven hours of sleep.
Now, I suddenly have to cram a lot of information in preparation for section on Monday and the paper-writing process which in all likelihood will commence on Tuesday. I was extremely terrified of approaching what (I thought would be) Darwin’s dense, dry, scientific writing. I finally bit the bullet earlier this evening and started “The Descent of Man” and it’s much better than I expected. At the very least, my vocabulary for nature and the animal world is increasing significantly. However, there’s one thing that strikes me about Darwin and his writing: this man is a brilliant comedian. Am I the only one that sees this? I have written “LOL!!!” in the margins of this book at least five or six times and I’ve only finished chapter three. Each of his personal anecdotes of his interactions with monkeys is pure gold and fun for the whole family. Vivid descriptions of these creatures enjoying cigars/tobacco, interactions with a plastic snake and curious interactions with a live snake hidden under a box just bring a smile to my face. As this book quite eloquently has shown me, animals are such charming and intelligent creatures.
If I weren’t living in the dorms right now, I’d try to invest in a pet myself. I feel like having a nice puppy (hopefully one that wouldn’t grow….I despise dogs) or cat or something I could cuddle up and watch anime or something with. Of course, a girl would work pretty well for this too. Ultimately, I think I need to work on my intimacy issues. When I and some guys from my floor recently went to play Rock Band in this one woman’s room, her overly-friendly puppy tried to play with me but I just sat there in stilted awkwardness since my brain always seems to switch to a silent defensive when others are nearby. Also, I’ve learned that I most surely had two to hook up here but didn’t do anything since I just don’t understand how intimacy works. >_< Bah! If I were to be categorized as an element, I’m supposing I would be air—dry, cold and abstract but also fleeting and soaring at times. I need to find myself a nice water and hopefully make some steady, flowing waves with her. Mmm, yes yes. Mermaids.
Anyways! So that’s my Saturday night. Finding hell to get into is a bit more difficult than it was at Beloit, where I could just walk outside, see a party, walk in and usually see someone (usually quite inebriated themselves) I knew. My floor is comprised of the more homely and studious types so finding some more parties may be a bit more complicated than I expected. Regardless, I have a shit-ton of work to do this weekend and I think I made the wiser choice.
Though things are tough. In one corner, I have Responsibility looking down on me with a firm, condescending grimace as he holds his mace erect in intimidation. In another I have my muse sitting at her coffee table, sipping her latte and looking at me with sexual interest over a copy of “Pride and Prejudice” that she’s reading. Her librarian glasses glimmer in the sun. In another corner, I have Satan up to his usual tricks. And in the last one, I have a bottle of golden alcohol. The sun shines on it and sends golden rays of light and rainbows in all directions, blinding me to everything else around me… |
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