Funk City!

Once I get started, I just can't stop...

Remy Shand, more funk, more awesomeness. First song I heard was "Take A Message" that played pretty often on what is now VH1 on UBC in Thailand in 2001. He released a few since, but not much after that.

Remy Shand "Take A Message"



Nikka Costa, all I saw was this music video in 2001 (guess 2001 was a big year for me musically) and except for the screeching, it was pretty interesting, I mostly the clapping.

Nikka Costa "Like A Feather"



Okay, okay, I'm done for the day.

Compact Disc-Mania

One Christmas present I got last week was the Curious George soundtrack by Jack Johnson (and friends), which was a wonderful gift, except I already had it. So I had to take the task of going to Borders to exchange it. All I can say is, music has gotten hard to buy in CD format for me. I'm used to gettings songs one by one, so having to buy a whole 12-16 songs at a time is alot harder than I thought it would be, it took all of an hour.

So what did I end up getting instead? After much perusing, picking up and putting down of CD's I found two that I thought I might dig for a while before I got sick of them, the first one being:

Gin Blossoms "Major Lodge Victory"

Did you ever watch Empire Records with Liv Tyler and other assorted actors that played constantly on UBC HBO in Thailand seven or eight years ago? It was about the people working at this record store, drama, funny and a classic pop/rock song that was sweet, kind of happy and had a sad tinge on it called "Til I Hear It From You". This is a CD with basically that kind of music. More pop than emo, but still good to have a sad little croon to.

Gin Blossoms: Til I Hear It From You

Robin Thicke "The Evolution of Robin Thicke"

Did you watch Growing Pains? This is the (real) son of father (Alan Thicke) in the show. Now that we've got that out of the way, I like this CD, one because it was $10 for 16 songs, and two because it's got nice funk, r'n'b and he's talented. When I listen, do think Justin Timberlake once in a while, but at least I can listen to Thicke without cringing, not so much for former N'Sync-er. The reason I looked at this CD was because I loved a song from a while ago by him, "When I Get You Alone" which samples (let me quote some Amazon.com reviewer) "classical disco instrumental "Fifth Of Beethoven"..." That song was really cool, the music video got me going and I still listen and want to bike all over the city. The first song I actually skip becuase I can't be bothered to listen to it, but after that, it's so smooth and easy to sing along to. I haven't actually gotten through all of it yet, it's sitting in the rental car.

Track 4: Lost Without You


When I Get You Alone

Mission Accomplished

Okay. So when I lived in Fresno, I never really played CD's in my car, it was mostly the radio, because 1. I didn't have a CD player and 2. I didn't have many cassette tapes, and the ones I had sucked because they were free.

So I used to listen to the Fresno State radio station KFSR (FM 90.7), classic American music station KJEWL (FM 99.3) and oldies station KMGV (FM 97.9). Well, there was this instrumental song that they played on KJEWL practically daily, and I absolutely loved the steel guitar on it, but I never ever caught the name of the song, since they usually play three or more in a row and I have a very short attention span. Well, I was watching Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle yesterday and what comes on when Dylan walks into the bar in Mexico? THE SONG! So I wait until the credits, go through and note down songs that it could be and run to the computer to investigate. I go through each one on Amazon.com so I can listen to preview and I still can't find it. Go to imdb.com and look through soundtrack listings and keep trying and finally, I find Sleepwalk by Santo & Johnny, look them up in wikipedia.com and they have a video. Sweetness.



And since then I've been searching for better versions of the song, even the original recording, and the best I could find is a Final Fantasy video with two animated people making out and falling love in water. Kind of weird when its out of context, but don't let that affect your opinion of the song.



And then, there's this guy with a ukelele that's just cool.

Happy Festus Kwanmaskah!

Whew, the holiday season was hard this year, what with all the buying of the presents and the shopping with the christmas-mad people at Target. And you know that if Target was crazy in Fresno, Fashion Fair Mall must have been the epitome of insanity. Which was why I kept a 3 mile radius from it. I shudder at the thought. *huuugh*

Anyway, I wanted to post these two videos because I thought they were great, Tim from Ctrlaltdel-online.com posted him drawing his filler art for his comic, from pencil to finish, it's long, and in two videos, but it's pretty damn interesting if you're into that stuff. Like me.

Happy Holidays!

AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA

So happy so relieved so gooooood. I'm so glad I lived through finals, yesterday I honestly didn't think I was going to make it through the day. And today, I was worried that my professor wasn't going to like the quality of work I did, I was first to present (which I like, I like getting things over and done with and no one is comparing me to anyone else, yet) and I blasted through (yet again) and he loved it. Woo hoo, I'm done, now time to chill for a bit and then clean the apartment.

Finals!

URGH. In case you didn't know, that's my unhappy noise.

I have one more final left, ONE, which I'm completely happy about, except for the fact that it's a presentation final and I have huge zits covering my face, and it's pretty hard for me to concentrate on getting my words out to talk about my project when I know people are thinking why I still suffer from acne. And on top of that, since we're winding down to the end of the semester, we're learning more about each other (I know, weird, but it takes me a whole semester to get to the nerve to talk to people I haven't already talked to during the semester) and then everyone that finds out that I'm 22 is in complete shock. Fun to know people think you look like you're in your late 20's/early 30's.

Anyway, I had to two presentations today, the first one, my green design project was so nerve wracking, right before, I was so mellow it was really weird, and then as soon as everyone was ready for me, THWACK nerves of fucking jelly. I blasted through the presentation, talking about as much as I could meanwhile sweating up a storm with my heart about to pop out of my chest to say hi, and didn't do too badly. My professor didn't seem pissed and the client was happy so woohoo.

Then my next final was sacred geometry and I had to talk about my final design of my sacred space using elements of sacred geometry, lots of golden sections, theta rectangles and root 2 rectangles. He seemed impressed, good so far.

I'll update tomorrow when I get through the last final and can start cleaning the explosion that went off in my room.

Jack Johnson

I don't know when this song came out, I'm so not with the times, I assume it was sometime recently since it was on the MSN front page, but here's Jack Johnson with Matt Costa and Zach Gill "Let It Be Sung" from "A Brokedown Melody"



So dug the Hawaiianess in the beginning.

Even though it doesn't appear in this song, I though it might be notable that I LOVE the sound of a steel guitar, especially in this song that I kept hearing on the oldies station in Fresno, but I never got the name and since it has no lyrics it's even harder to find. FOILED AGAIN!

Funny what you can do with 8 treadmills...

"Here It Goes Again" by OK Go

So simple, so wonderful, so entertaining.

Attack of the Atom Massager

Honestly, if you had a cat this cutalicious wouldn't you take endless pictures of her? Plus, she's totally photogenic (silent envy streams from me) and everyone must experience the fuzzy ball that is Moo. Honestly, besides school, eating, sleeping and sporadic trips, I have nothing to do but assault this cat poparazzi style.

Here's what happened last week:

Moo finds out the wonders of lying in my crinkly flimsy. Luckily I didn't need them anymore.

Moo's annoyed face after being disturbed during her mid-morning sun beam time.

I just got an Atom Massager, and found that Moo is unamused by it.

Her ears perk when it's turned on, and she shies away from it when it's within her "personal bubble".

The aftermath of trying to push the atom on Moo. Definition of the calm before the storm.

Post-Freakout Post

Whew. What washing your face and brushing your teeth can do to your mood.

So:
-Call bank to tell them that I'm a moron and cancel cards [check]
-Make appointment with DMV to get a new license [check]
-Get mad at myself for losing yet a another thing [check]

Well got my checklist done for the night.

Now onto CityCarShare (CCS). It's pretty easy to understand, and there's alot of these companies around, which I will not name, since I think that CCS is da bomb. Anyway, CCS has cars all over the city, and across on the east bay, that you pay a $10 monthly fee to rent. That $10 covers insurance, gas and maintenence. There's a $300 refundable deposit when you start, you pay an hourly rate of $4/hr and a mileage rate of 44c/mile. And if you're just travelling in the city, you don't really rack up the mileage too easily. It's really good for running errands, like when we go to Trader Joe's or when we want to do laundry at Brainwash (Folsom near 7th - laundromat/diner).

So that was pretty easy, no? Oh, and the best part. If you've got more than one person living under your roof that meet the requirements, you can all register as the same household and pay one monthly fee for all of you, and the deposit works the same.

When you register and are approved, you get a FOB, I have no idea what it stands for, I'm sure its in the manual, and that little remote allows you access to parking garages and the cars themselves. You make a reservation online or call and you go to the car when you reserved it, FOB in, and start driving. If it's not there, there's numbers to call. "FOB in?" you ask? You hold your FOB over the little mechanism on the dash and the car doors unlock. The mechanism records whose FOB that was and how much mileage you're rackin' up.

I'm done for the night. Good night, good riddence.

Lost. Fo' reals.

I just lost my wallet for the third time in the last three months. That's an average of once a month. That doesn't seem healthy. I had it when I went to lunch at 3:05 today. I had it right before I ate my lunch, it was still open, I checked to see everything was inside. Then...I remember NOTHING. Honestly, how does this keep happening? Am I so careless that the fates will endlessly conspire to make my wallet dematerialize? (That question was so beyond rhetorical.) Honestly, the first time, I left it in the rental car and the moron that rented it after me decided to take it and call me hours later after I had panicked and cancelled all my credit cards and checked the car twice. I got it back but the only useful thing in there was my driver's license.

The second time I didn't put it in my back pocket twice and it must have popped out and ran off to spend some time with the bubblegum machine in the mall. In that situation, my wallet also dematerialized, no one turned it in, it was no where that I went, it just POOFED. What the fuck, don't people know that going through the motions of cancelling cards and waiting for new ones is a pain? And on top of that, my driver's license was gone so I had to go to the DMV people. THE DMV. I had an appointment which cut down the annoyance potential quite a bit, except that I couldn't find the damn bus stop so I basically overshot twice before I figured out where the hell I was. That pretty much evened out my annoyance.

And now. I have nothing. Nada. No debit, no credit, no license to speak of. And I must go through the whole shebang all over again. This time, I will do it right, this time I will get a fucking chain the size of my cat to hang from my belt loop to the wallet, which I will only remove at the end of the day in my apartment before I go to bed. If even that.

My feverent posting isn't helped by the fact that I just spent the last hour crying and blubbering into the phone to W. I was fine at first, a little annoyed but not super upset. And then the Amtrak lady answered my call. To put things in context, I was planning to visit Fresno and couldn't now that I didn't have any ID, couldn't drive while I was in Fresno and that would just be a pain in the ass. Plus, I have no way of paying for anything or even getting my ticket since I need a credit card to start the process going. Anyway she was a bitch. Like capital bitch, which was so confounding because whenever I have called Amtrak previously, they've been grrrrreat. But this time, she was just mean. So I cut the call short, didn't ask her to do anything for me (like cancel my trip) and hung and basically burst into tears. I hate losing things. I hate being careless. I was so good. I checked every few minutes to see if I had my wallet, phone and keys. But today was no ordinary day. Today I had my big final presentation for one my classes, and although I had finished it days ago, I was nervous because I wasn't confident about how it looked. And although I had already done my presentation at this point, I still had more to sit through and I still have more projects to do for other classes.

So somehow, between the soup eating and searching for my wallet at home, I lost my wallet. Such a damn fucking pain. I realised what happened, frantically checked everywhere in the apartment, realised where I saw it last, grabbed a CityCarShare for an hour and a half and high-tailed it to school to crawl on the ground and search for this stupid wallet. Thank goodness for CityCarShare to give me peace of mind (or something close to it) And on top of that, I'm not going down to Fresno this weekend, because of this hoo-hah and because of this hoo-hah I realised that I have way too much shit to do before the end of the semester. (Hoo-hah.) The fates have a mysterious and annoying way of telling me that I need to keep my mind on school and off flaking. You can only procrastinate on a watercolor project for so long before it gets ridonkulous.

And of course right now it's 12:07 in the AM and I am wide-fucking-awake, so its a good thing I'm not travelling because usually I wake up at 5:15 to go. I would not have survived the trip out to Richmond to catch the Amtrak must less the train itself.

I'm going to take a shower and chill and if I'm still not tuckered, I'll post about CityCarShare to explain the wonder that it is.

Superfantastic Moo

I'm not sure if any of you have noticed that Moo has a "sleepy/squinty eye". If you hadn't, well, she does, and it's not because I'm constantly poking at her and once in a while get her in that particular eye. No, it's becuase she has a virus that many cats pick up from kitten hood, I'm not sure what its called but it causes secretions heavier than normal, so once every few hours she will have a tiny little goop of eye junk in the corner of her eye, which someone invariably picks out.

In other Moo news, she has really started to settle into her life in the apartment, she understands us better as we understand her better. We like!

If a cat could "baroo?" this is what it would look like.

I keel you, with my deadly uneven eyes.

Moo discovers the outside world.

Moo enjoys the outside world from her vantage point on the heating pad.

Moo and her view.