| Oct. 17th, 2009 @ 10:40 pm Stuff |
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Sang karaoke for the first time tonight. I did Journey's "Who's Cryin' Now" and The Beatles' "Ob La Di, Ob La Da".
My bass teacher and I had a conversation today in which he opened the veil a little bit. It was nice, and I thanked him for the privilege of having a truly personal glimpse. I also pointed out what I know to be true about things between us, proving once again that eventually stuff I think about him and "us" will eventually be said to him.
I'm going ahead with the NaNoWriMo for 2009. I've been finishing one nearly novel-length fanfiction as a warm-up for the real thing. Today I hit the wall, and it's been a week. Maybe this is what it feels like for the 2nd week of NaNo. I felt ornery and angry about the whole story-making endeavor.
I did get a laptop from work to write my story on. I'm actually enjoying using it for the first time in ever. Usually have no patience for using built-in laptop mouse pads, and that translates itself to frustration with a laptop as a whole. This one is a really nice IBM.
I told myself that if I did NaNo I would not allow my bass playing to suffer. For that reason, I've been quite diligent in the playing. My flaky home internet connection has actually helped in that regard. I have time to do lots of interesting things when I'm not mindlessly surfing the internet. We've heard it before, and it's true for me.
Oh, for NaNo, I've been doing some research, and I think my lead character is a conscientious objector. Remembering that, I went to look up e.e. cummings's poem "I sing of Olaf glad and big". It was one of my favorite poems from when I was in university English. I found this literary analysis of the poem in the databases through my library (yay, knowing how to do research!)
"It may be difficult, given its contemporary currency, for today's readers to perceive the visceral impact of the word "Fuck" that Cummings drops at the end of this stanza, but needless to say, at the time the poem was published (three years before Joyce's Ulysses won its obscenity trial and beat back the censors), anyone of delicate sensibilities not already inflamed by Cummings' anti-hero would have been standing at full attention."
The bolding above is mine. I realize that's an official analysis, but that is really bad writing. Come on. If it's truly "needless to say," the statement would not have been there in the first place. So really, that was a dumb and backwards way to point out "we really need to say this in case you didn't know it already."
Lastly, I've got some new music. Two weeks ago I bought Madonna's 2 disc edition of Celebration, and it's a great collection of her hits. The only song I'd put on there that isn't already is "Human Nature", maybe even "Causing a Commotion", but otherwise it's truly like all the best in one place, even hard to find songs from movies.
Yesterday I got Lady Gaga's The Fame. It's a fun album, but I like her singles best because that's what I know. I don't care for the song "Brown Eyes," though. It totally doesn't fit the rest of the album. It turns out I really like the songs "Just Dance" and "Paparazzi" even if the lyrics are suspect at best. I'd been seeing a lyric quote from "Paparazzi" for a while now but only within the last few days found out the song it was from. Here I'd been thinking it was sad and desperate, which it is, but not on behalf of the person who'd been quoting it.
Also, I was driving really fast when listening to this dance music. Thankfully, no tickets and I slowed down and acted more cautiously. |