Well At Least This One Starts Off Cheerful Posted by Sad Blogger , 27.7.12 at Friday, July 27, 2012, in

I obviously still have not figured out how to embed streaming audio, but I've signed up for a couple different hosting sites so now it's just going to be a process of elimination. However, since I'm putting all of this together on my work computer, you'll have to bear with another collection of YouTube links until I can get on my own machine.

1. Kishi Bashi - Bright Whites

I just found this one yesterday while trawling through old episodes of "All Songs Considered" Tiny Desk Concerts on NPR's Youtube channel. This album version is nowhere near the bizarre, prodigious, musical arts-and-crafts session that Kishi puts together for NPR, but it is a lot easier to sit back and enjoy. Not having any sort of comprehension of the Japanese lyrics laced throughout, for me they add a level of whimsy. They conjure up images of running on beaches or hang gliding or riding unicycles or something.

2. The Parlotones - Push Me to the Floor

These guys, while massively popular in their home country of South Africa, were just sort of languishing in global obscurity since 2003. Until they showed up at SXSW this year and were able to jump off of the acclaim that earned them to begin touring with Coldplay. I don't know why I decided to start giving you their biography rather than just make comments on the song. Probably something to do with not really having much to say and wanting to show off that I know something about something.

3. The Love Language - Stars

I somehow end up wending my way to this song every time that I listen to music because it is perfect. I love that it's about a girl named Kathleen because how often do you hear a song for a Kathleen. I love the yearning twang of the guitars. I love their peaking voices all layered and staggered over top of each other. It makes me think of a circle of men on a porch, howling at the moon. Night delivers cold shivers. And so does this song.

4. The Mountain Goats - Going to Georgia

Quite obviously, this is not the album version, but to me it is so much better. Even though he trips over one of the lyrics, you have to know it's because he's just so into the ferocity and the passion of the song. The words have to be almost yelled because that's how important they are. The lines:

The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway

is that it's you

and you're standing in the doorway

are such goosebump-inducing characterizations of the simplicity of something being remarkable; something being perfect and right and awesome. Then the downward curve of "SMIIIIILE" and the slight quaver of "when you ease the gun from my hand". Everything about everything he says with this song is amazing to me and then you add the forceful, driving strumming of the guitar and all that comes out of me are sighs of satisfaction, jealousy, inspiration, and rage.

5. Brian Lopez - Montjuic

Brian Lopez took the inspiration for this song from the long, broad hill that overlooks the harbour in Barcelona, Spain. I couldn't necessarily tell you how one draws inspiration from a hill, but you can dwell on it while you give the song a listen.

6. The Bowerbirds - In Our Talons

I can't remember where exactly I heard this song for the first time, but I know that it has become one of the default songs I share with people when they cry out for new music. Who doesn't love eerie, harmonized imitations of screeching birds or meandering accordion woven over the world's oldest-sounding guitar? I think this song is so unique and just the right mix of upbeat, pretty, and haunting. Plus it comes with a quirky stopmotion video. What's not to love?

7. Annuals - Always Do



This one tends to end up playing immediately after Stars by The Love Language. I couldn't tell you why, but they've just always gone hand in hand for me. They don't sound the same, they're not really about the same things, but I guess they just both have that note of desperation and painful wanting. But the mix of the pedal steel guitars and the cacophony of crash cymbals and the almost Brand New-esque screaming at the end...ugh so goddamn listen-to-able.

8. Frightened Rabbit - Fast Blood

I think that there was brief period when I would have claimed this was my favorite song by Frightened Rabbit. Then it was Backwards Walk. Then it was Old, Old Fashioned, then Keep Yourself Warm, then Modern Leper, then Good Arms vs. Bad Arms. And I have to admit that I completely forgot that this song even existed until I tossed Midnight Organ Fight on shuffle last night and had my heart seized and mangled and broken and mended by this song. And then again for the rest of the night and some of this morning. Listen to the lyrics and try to count how many goosebumps break out on your arms.

midnight organ fight
yours gives into mine
it's all right
and the fast blood
hurricanes through me

How. Fucking. SEXY is that? I was riding the bus this morning and letting the words make love to my ears and that bit just tears me up. I wanted to make out with the window and ravage the seat in front of me (calm down, I was the only one on the bus). But yeah. Good freaking song.
 
9. Sharon Van Etten - Much More Than That
 

K so I couldn't help veering off back into my depressing music. And I really don't have much to say about this song. I think sometimes it's my life. I can tell you I always pictured Sharon as like this little, pixie-looking girl. She's looks more like Winona Ryder in Beetljuice gained some weight. Not that that's a thought that needed to make it's way into this...article? It was really just all I had to say.

10. Joanna Newsom - Does Not Suffice



Joanna Newsom is brilliant and bizarre and unsettling and a genius. This is a great song. She has better songs. But this is the first of hers that I heard and the one that sent me tumbling down the rabbit hole of needing-to-always-be-listening-to-music-by-Joanna Newsom. It may, though, be one of the saddest relationship songs ever written. So that's something. 

Finding My Way Back to Here - Chapter 2 Posted by Sad Blogger , 25.7.12 at Wednesday, July 25, 2012, in

Staring out the window of my dad’s Explorer is a surreal shift from the active monotony the ward’s windows had to offer. The trees and fence posts and then the streetlamps and buildings scrolling past leave little to the imagination but there’s something calming and fantastic at the same time about the world just playing itself out for you.You know? Like why put all the work into imagining there’s other stuff going on when there’s all this stuff just there for you to fly by and take in? Isn’t it enough to even just process all the STUFF that’s just lying around? Anyways, we were mostly quiet, still, while my dad drove and my mom’s head stayed pointed in the same direction the entire time. I breathe out an amused half-snort at the thought that she was probably staring at the glass not unlike I had been back in the ward. My dad turns briefly in response to the sudden sound but I’m watching the buildings again.

“So they set you up with another doctor for visits or anything, Ty?”

“I don’t know if I really want to talk about it right now.”

My mom, “That’s fine, hun.”

Dad gave her a look like it wasn’t fine but she was watching the window again so he turned back to driving silently. I don’t know how else it was supposed to go. Like we were going to turn on some Danny Elfman soundtrack and discuss my plans for the rest of my life. Or I’d sit in the middle seat, pushed up against the backs of their seats and enthusiastically describe all the swell realizations I’d made about myself in therapy. Like we were on some jovial, bouncing ride in Pa’s jalopy after a fun-filled summer away at camp. As if. Imagine us crammed into an old Model-A or whatever with Mom all Thelma-and-Louis’ed up and Dad in a leather jacket with some of those pilot’s goggles and a scarf streaming out behind him. I silent-snort again and Dad whips around again, looking all mad. He probably thinks I’m laughing at Mom shutting him down.
I start to notice that the blur outside the window is turning into my parents’ neighborhood.

“Hey! Why aren’t we going to my place?”

Mom turns to face me for the first time, “Your car was impounded. You'll have lunch with us, then Layne is picking you up at 2.”

Layne was a guy I went to high school with who I didn’t really like, but he was under the impression we were best friends because we used to eat lunch at the same table. He was a major stoner and he lived with his major stoner girlfriend in a house that his grandma or aunt or something left to him when she died. It might have been his mom. I know it was a lady. Whoever it was, I don’t think he really cared and she probably hadn’t known him very well because I think if I was a dying lady, I would have left my house to somebody who got their hair cut sometimes and didn’t smell like wet leaves. Whatever, dying ladies can do whatever they want I guess. But because Layne was under the impression we were friends, he let me live in his basement for almost nothing. By ‘almost’ I more mean ‘usually’. When he first offered me the basement, I asked him about rent and his response was, “Sure thing.” So sometimes I give him cash when I think I won’t need it, but mostly it’s a non-issue.

Anyways, lunch with my nervous parents didn’t sound particularly appealing, but it was better than listening to Layne and Cassidy playing Halo upstairs while I ate cereal alone at my desk. I still didn’t particularly want to have to talk about what comes next, but it was an inevitability. Maybe they wouldn’t even bring it up now. We could talk about the virus Mom got on her work computer and how she thought to herself, “Ty could have handled this in a second huh-yuk-yuk.” Then Dad could drone about ‘the boys down at The P&W’ and all their tribulations and how the world was a different place (yep yep yep) and something about something his old man had told him and how his old man was right this whole time and then the meal would be over and I could go home finally.

But obviously that wasn’t going to be the case.

As we turned onto their street, I had a brief flashback of the last time I was here. My hands tensed and I realized they’d been wrapped around my little month’s supply of meds the whole time. I stuffed them in my hoodie and flicked at my mom’s headrest self-consciously. “Here we are!” she felt it necessary to announce as the Explorer pulled into the driveway. You have to imagine that when people do that, they do realize everyone else is capable of recognizing an arrival at a destination. Is it more of a neurotic confirmation that everything is as it should be? Here we are!...Right? We’re all here, aren’t we? From now on when I go places, I’m going to cheerfully announce to everyone, “We can’t ever truly know if we exist!” just to see if it has any effect.

Inside the house, I drop my hoodie on the chair that’s usually mine and survey the kitchen for the promised meal. In true form, my mother had set out plates and silverware before she left but hadn’t made any preparations to actually serve anything.

But wait...a wintery breath from the freezer...a desert-y cough from the oven..small talk...tick tock tick...a lasagna emerges...we sit.

The last time I had that 20-minute lasagna that comes in the tin was like nine years ago. I got food poisoning from it and spent an entire day and night either wrapped around the toilet waiting to throw up or crouched over the toilet waiting to stop throwing up again. So this time I didn’t hesitate to dump it down my gullet as quick as possible in the hopes it would send me into shock or something and at least I could get away from my parents. But whatever indignation my father had felt on the drive here must have taken up residence on my mom’s plate because he mostly just watched her fork and knife while she ate. And all the questions and advice I’d thought she’d have prepared for me had apparently asked a stream of celebrity gossip and weather predictions to cover their shift. So I just sort of sat there picking at the crusty bits around the edge of the tin and nodded at my mother’s yapping.


“So I think it’s going to go up to something like 98° tomorrow.”


I could feel the lasagna declaring war on my digestive system.

“Speaking of which, did you hear about Nick Lachey marrying that Jennifer Simpson?”


Digestive system requests a parley but the lasagna laughs in its face.


“I don’t know what such talented young men ever see in those show business floozies in the first place.”


The lasagna determines that it will be most effective to divide and conquer, firing a volley of tracer rounds at my stomach, intestines, and colon.


“I mean Justin Timberlake dating that Britney Spearie girl and Nick Carter getting into fights at bars. There are no more heroes in the world, Tyler.”


Straining under the onslaught, my digestive system groans its protestations and attempts to fight off the assault with a fierce shudder.


“Tyler? You’ve been awful quiet. Are you still hungry? There’s still some...Tyler, what’s wrong?!”


I’d pointed my convulsing body in the direction of the bathroom and lurched from my chair in hopes that the momentum alone would get me there. Bent double, I lumbered towards the shimmering, porcelain refuge I knew to be housed down the hall. My mom’s confusion and my dad’s irritability were barely audible over the hellish snarling coming from my bowels. But then above all the noise I heard my mother screeching,


“Walter! He’s GOING for the GUNS!”


I stopped and turned to face them. I felt the hordes waging war in my guts drop their weapons and retreat in abrupt surrender as every recess of my body was filled with a foreign sensation. It was like I could suddenly feel all my bits and pieces the way they looked in those anatomy cut-away books. I could feel each vein and artery and muscle and tendon seize up like they were individual plastic tubes. I felt my face heating up and my arms tensing and it was like there was a completely other body inside mine.


“MOM!” What the FUCK?!?”


They both stared at me like I’d just burst from the floor dressed like Adam Ant. My dad was halfway out of his chair with his fork and knife still in his hands. Mom just stood there with her dumb mouth hanging open, looking to him, to me, to him, to me. Six seconds felt like twenty while I just glared at them and felt my blood being blood. It wasn’t like you see in shitty action flicks when an angry dude will stand there with his shoulders hunched and his eyebrows scrunched, all breathing hard and whatnot. It wasn’t that I felt more powerful or any nonsense like that, but I was just so aware of all the hard warmth coursing through me. I wanted to be infuriated forever. But then the lasagna noticed the smoke drifting up over my digestive system’s camp and took advantage of the situation to mount their blitz. My stomach gave a startled gurgle and time skipped a beat as the fake pasta I’d shoveled into my body erupted from my mouth.

I wiped some lasagna-y mush off my lip with a fist, "I was going for the bathroom."

I walked to the kitchen sink and rinsed my mouth out from the tap while my parents awkwardly settled themselves back at the table. Turning and grabbing my hoodie from the chair, I stepped quickly to the front door. Knob in hand, I turned to my parents,

"I'm fine. I'm going to walk home. I'll call you."

The door closed on my mother stammering something about a crumb cake.

I felt like an album cover for a shitty emo band, trudging through the leaf-littered gutter with my hood up and hands shoved down the pockets. I don't think I actually cared that my parents didn't know where my mind was at. That was mostly my fault anyways. They were concerned and that's fine. I just needed to be home. My home. I looked up as a car moseyed by and remembered sauntering down the same street for guitar lessons when I was a kid, always hoping somebody would take pity on the kid with the heavy guitar case and offer to give me a ride. Not even hoping; expecting. As though anybody in the world is paying that much attention to anyone else, let alone giving a fuck. I smiled and nodded at a girl as she walked by with her dog and while I started dreaming up what our first house would look like and what we would name our kids, she silently worried about an upcoming exam or what she would make for dinner and I didn't exist to her.

I fall in love with everyone on the planet.

Selfishness Part 2 Posted by Sad Blogger , at Wednesday, July 25, 2012, in

I'm really starting to forget what I thought was going to be so complicated about articulating this damn thing. All it took was swapping some words out. Anyhow, everything below is literally copy+pasted from the end of "Selfishness Part 1" so if it feels like you're just kind of jumping into the middle of a conversation that makes no sense, try giving that post a read first.


All that being said, I originally sat down to write this dumb thing because I lost an entire night of sleep tossing and turning to the idea of how selfish it is to love another person. (That's where the problem was. I sort of landed on "selfish" as the default word for the concept I was trying to express. As concluded in the previous post, the word I was aiming for was "cruel") And when I say love, I mean that heartbreaking, obsessive, body-numbing, jealous, giggly, warm, uncomfortable, beautiful, aching kind of love that buries into your spinal chord and just absolutely destroys you piece by piece. But also gives you a reason to exist. That kind of love that replaces any need for religion or food or knowledge or movement. It's everything you ever need to know or think or experience. Having written all that, I don't like that I have to refer to it as "that kind of love". That's just what love should be.


Devastating.


So take all that into account and then mix in the often-truth of a line from Chuck Palanhiuk's Invisible Monsters: "The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person." I say often-truth because obviously, there are cases in which it's not. Now and then, a person happens to run into another person and they actually feel that devastating love for each other. So the torment is shared and balanced and mitigated like that. I think in most cases, though, love for another person just sort of wells up inside you until it becomes a structural hazard and needs to find somewhere else to go. And that's what I think my point is.


It's hard to conceive of a heavier weight to dump on a person than the rusty-barbed-wire burden of your own feelings. You know? All that broiling, bubbling shit just festering inside you is bad enough for you and you've had it building up over however long and had the chance to acclimatize to it. To unload that on another person without warning is just cruel. ESPECIALLY if they're not prepared to balance out that nonsense. Sharing you anger or your sadness or even your joy if you're one of those types of Joe Rinos...as sympathetic and compassionate as most people want to be...it's all just sort of overwhelming when we're all trying to sort through our OWN mess of emotions. So why do we expect something as painful as love to be any different?


Maybe I'm just a sociopath, but the thought occurred to me and I figured it was worth bringing up. Maybe tomorrow I can write a dissertation on why it's wrong to give children hugs or eat ice cream or laugh at funny things. I dunno.You only have yourself to blame if you're still reading. I hate feeling this way. I want to write angry things about superficial nonsense. Dear Diary, boo-fucking-hoo.


Give me another week and I'll be fine,
Sad Blogger

Selfishness Part 1 Posted by Sad Blogger , 23.7.12 at Monday, July 23, 2012, in

I feel like I bring up Ayn Rand and Objectivism far too often and just assume people automatically know what I'm referring to. Maybe not in the writing that I do here, but I know they're subjects I touch on regularly because they're extremely important to me and my intellectual development coming out of high school. I think most people tend to finger Atlas Shrugged as Rand's seminal work and thesis on Objectivism, but I have to admit I haven't read it and really much more prefer The Fountainhead. I've always related to Howard Roark's character and his attitude/approach towards happiness really influenced me right around the time that I was transitioning from that awful whiney, depressed, me-me-me phase that comes with being a teenager.


What I took away from The Fountainhead and have tried to apply to my life is that selfishness does not always deserve the negative connotation that is typically tagged onto it. People who have fostered a predilection for selflessness their entire lives will obviously not be able to think of it in this way, but if you really break down the word "selfish" and ignore the notion of it having something to do with greed or apathy, it really is about your self. When it comes to the big picture, your self is the most important thing in your life. It is your life...without your self, you're just a breathing machine. Self is personality and sentience and taste and emotions and dreams. And selflessness would literally imply having a lack of self. I mean we're told by certain types of people to "give of ourselves" but if you think of your self as that thing that makes and defines and is you, why would you give pieces of it away? So for me, the point of Objectivism is that you value your self before all other things. AS LONG AS it's not hurting other people. That sort of selfishness is just an absolute lack of consideration for the selves of others and that's more like what you'd call cruelty.


So that's what I meant when I was writing about my school and work decisions a couple posts ago. I still like to think that I quit school because it was starting to choke out my love for writing. It took five months for me to find a job because my "search" was constantly cockblocked by my need to find something that wasn't going to bore me. As though cash wasn't a sufficient incentive to get off my ass for almost half a year. Writing that feels like I've just completely given up on the validity of the argument for selfishness, but I really haven't. I still feel it's something worth yelling about if it comes up in conversation and I'll continue to make references to it as an attitude I feel is worth adopting...it's just also a possibility that it might have kind of fucked me in terms of my academic career and progress as a human being.


I wrote all of this in order to introduce an idea that had me tossing and turning for an entire night. That was a week ago and these three paragraphs have been sitting around for about as long in addition to another three or four that had more to the with the idea I just referred to. However, I've started to lose faith in the direction of the idea so I'm just going to be posting this part for now. Doooooon't worry, the second part will be going up eventually, but I want to take some time to work on the logic of it so that it sounds less like the ravings of a sleep deprived fool and at least resembles a something like a coherent argument. So I hope that for now this enough to go on. Honestly, it's far enough back in the timeline of writing things this week that I can't remember if I've even said anything. And I'll be damned if I'm about to go back and read it all.


Be a little less self...less,
Sad Blogger

sleep sounds/the way things change pt. 1 Posted by Sad Blogger , at Monday, July 23, 2012, in

I wanted to write poetry and I had an idea and I ran with it. I'll find my groove again someday.

when i was a little boy my 
pulse was soldiers marching through
my white and blue striped
mattress. and when i was a little boy my
fluttering eyelashes were dogs
sniffing and searching through my
blankets. and when this poem
began it was going to end
up being about you but poems
written for people named
you are just like every other
poem. so instead it's about how silent
my bed is these days. because
nobody writes poems about that

Bleh Posted by Sad Blogger , at Monday, July 23, 2012, in

Lately I've been fixated on worrying that I might be mentally challenged. I feel like my whole life people have been particularly friendly to me despite how socially awkward I can be and how often I'm just babbling nonsense. In terms of my education, I've always been treated like I was slightly ahead of the curve compared to everyone else even though most of the time the work I would hand in was just a graffiti-like decoupage of ideas about nothing. In what I've always considered intellectual conversation, people act overly enthusiastic when responding to my contributions. And I know that in grades two through four, I was taken out of my regular classes to attend a class of maybe six other kids in which we drew pictures and talked about what we did at home and what we like to watch on TV and whatever else. My mom always said it was class for brighter kids, but I really have no evidence back up to that claim.


I dunno. I've spent the past few years exercising a spectrum of feelings of superiority compared to my peers and other people in general, but in the last month or so I've just started to wonder if I've had any right to. I mean probably as a general rule and as a decent human being, I don't. But in accordance to my way of thinking, I just have to question whether my narcissism, smugness, egoism, and eccentricity have all be justified.

Ugh. I just did some research on Narcissism and now I just feel ashamed and gross. I don't know how to end this and I don't know what the title should be. So I'll just call it how I'm feeling.


Here's some words to take the place of a salutation,
Sad Blogger

PS - the music sharing post below didn't work out at all like I had originally crafted it. All the sharing sites I was using only worked if I was signed in. And obviously I'm not going to make people sign up on the sites just to hear a couple songs. I'll figure it out.

This Makes It Seem Like I Only Like Sad Songs Posted by Sad Blogger , 21.7.12 at Saturday, July 21, 2012, in

I created the Aural Stimulation panel from the outset of this blog because I like music a lot and I like a lot of music. Actually, before it was added and back when we had maybe two posts and a pile of ideas for stories and songs and poems we've never written, it was just a single song embedded in the code of the website that would play once and drift off into an uncertain silence. The intended effect being that readers would have something pretty to listen to while they browsed through our fantastic contributions. The problem with having the song embedded, however, was that if you happened to be on the page for longer than the duration of the song (which I believe was Crime Window by Grand Archives and is not even 4 minutes long), it would just abruptly end and leave the reader itching for more if the reader was a decent human being. On the other hand, if you weren't particularly interested in hearing any music, there was no way to stop it other than navigating away from the page. Which is bad for business. That being said, if you didn't happen to have you speakers on or headphones in, there was no indication that music was being played if you were in any kind of mood for some.

So it just did't work all around.

Enter the Grooveshark playlist! It allowed us to construct a mix of whatever sounds we were particularly obsessed with at the time and let us just drop them into a simple, pre-assembled player that any buffoon could figure out. There's the songs, there's who's playing them, hit the button with the big triangle, noise comes out!!! Which meant that I wouldn't have to toil over figuring out how to design my own player. Which meant I was extremely relieved. Which is good. So the problem of giving readers some sort of control over the music was solved as was the impotence of only having a single track playing. I know that in another website I put together for a friend, I was able to link a playlist with over 600 songs. So the sky's the limit in that regard.

However, despite having to do more with my own burgeoning ambitions for the blog than anything else, a new snag presented itself. See, if I were to write up a supplement for one of the playlists--a listening guide...AN ABSTRACT if you will--it would be a splendidly relevant read but only as long as that specific playlist was posted. As soon as we chose some new songs to go up, there would be a meaningless entry floating around the site going on about a bunch of songs that nobody had any links to. I think that there is actually still a post up that does just that.

So now just three years or whatever since the site went up, I've finally put some effort into finding a way to share music that is both comprehensive and full of options for us but intuitive and effortless for you all. And after an afternoon of wasting money on a couple of subscription-based hosting sites, I think I've finally found a method that will work for everyone. As such, this will mark the first of hopefully many posts full of songs that I just haven't been able to stop listening to.

Because goddamn it if sometimes I just can't suck it up and write out an entire post. I've got a couple of drafts piling up now. Like spinning plates. I'll log in and add a few words, get frustrated with the concept, and angrily exit out of the browser completely before realizing my mistake and opening it back up to browse Tumblr and Imgur for a few hours. With the introductions of this fancy new music posting stuff, now I can just pop on, upload some new songs, and vomit out a few lines to go with each one before mashing the POST button and feeling like I actually achieved something. So without any more ado, I present you with 10 songs that make my heart and face go all gooey (cuz they're awesome):

PS - Hopefully I can find a more convenient way to embed actual MP3 files within the next few days. Until then, just play with the YouTube links.

1. Cat Power - Good Woman 

This one isn't that much of a newcomer to my radar, but towards the end of my most recent music reconnaissance mission, I started picking out some similarities between Cat Power and some of the other gals that I'll be posting below. I just had to go back and experience the almost sort of non-music that she creates. I was originally going to post Metal Heart as a perfect example with it's out of sync guitars and barely audible vocals but I really have always been in love with Good Woman. So here it is. There's just something so heartbreakingly simple about it. The meandering, overdriven guitar and choppy fiddle are almost drunkenly emphasizing the regret in her voice as Chan sadly breathes out her poetry. I hope it can become as much as a staple for you as it has for me.

2. Alex Turner - It's Hard to Get Around the Wind

This one I discovered last weekend with the help of a movie called "Submarine". One of those slow, quirky coming of age stories about a teenage boy falling in love and falling apart at the same time. I think I kind of sold it short there, but really if you can find a way to watch it, do. The soundtrack for the film has a sweet late-60s/early-70s folk-pop sort of sound that I was surprised to find was all written and performed by Arctic Monkeys lead singer, Alex Turner. Naturally, I chose one of the gloomier of the set, but I think it gives a better overall impression of the tone of the film. So if you like the song, check out the flick.

3. My Brightest Diamond feat. DM Stith - Everything is in Line

I was driving just after sunset a few weeks back and this song came up on the radio and just so perfectly complemented the twists and turns of the road with the street lights flashing by overhead and the tumbling indigo folds of the twilit clouds beyond. The DJ described Shara Worden--My Brightest Diamond is her stage name--as having a fixation with various forms of visual art and having taken specific inspiration for her most recent album (and this song) from Japanese performance art...kabuki theater, traditional puppets and masks, etc. So I can't help imagining a dark, bizarre marionette show being acted out to this song with their voices portraying two different characters. I always picture DM Stith's belonging to a crow. I dunno. Close your eyes, give it a few listens, and see where your mind goes.

4. Lykke Li - Dance, Dance, Dance

I've been a fan of Lykke Li for years so this doesn't really count as a new discovery, but I wanted to integrate something a little less gloomy into the mix but also make a transition from My Brightest Diamond that didn't seem awkward and forced. So I have nothing really special or insightful to say about this song other than it's a fun song to softly bob your head to and maybe even tap your toe a little bit.

5. Dawes - Million Dollar Bill

We'll bring it back to the sad and pretty now with a song that was recommended to me by a guy I met when I was on a road trip across the States. Despite having a small laptop filled with a few thousand songs, this song became one of the fifteen or so that I had on almost-constant repeat. It's a great song by itself, but when you're rolling through the endless green hills of Oregon or the barren nonsense that is New Mexico or up some east coast Interstate, head pressed against the cold window and staring at the moon, this song is the perfect soundtrack for whatever forlorn, romantic garbage is tugging at your heartstrings. Just the lines:

So when she steps out into the night
and finds the light that makes her prettiest
she'll be facing me every time she shines.

are every crush that went nowhere in grade school, middle school, high school. That longing just to be noticed or thought of or cared for. I'm pathetic, but this song is magic to me.


6. First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar

Okay here's an actual fresh one! I first heard this song maybe a week ago and have had it on an endless loop on my iPod, phone, and computer since. Until forty seconds ago I would have told you it was about a relationship gone wrong blah blah blah. But I popped over to songmeanings.com just to see what other people were saying about it and if you take the first verse and apply it to the rest of the song, it really does sound like a bitter love song for the Church. Now I'm not here to interpret lyrics for one song out of ten. I actually want to get up at some point and enjoy the day. So all I'm going to say about this song is that it is just goddamn brilliant. Listen to the harmonies and the feeling in the chorus and agree with me. Also, as much as I've linked the official video, I would really recommend checking out this version.

7. The Milk Carton Kids - Michigan

I'm going to be honest with the next few songs. I just heard them either yesterday or the day before and haven't listened to them enough to write any essays on. This particular one I've heard enough to say I absolutely love the David Rawlings-style guitar picking and the sadness in the chorus. Other than that, it's just a gorgeous song that I should probably learn a little bit more about. I should also say this is the last of the folkey songs for this entry. Hopefully this song will transition well enough to the three lead-out songs. Probably not.

8. Metallic Falcons - Four Hearts

This one is just floaty and drifty and haunting and nice.

9. Soap&Skin - Turbine Womb

Some more pretty. Some more piano.

10. How To Dress Well - Suicide Dream 2

This is not the version of this song that I would have preferred to use, but I really just can't remember where I found the original version or how to find it again so this version will have to do. It's still pretty. As much as the whole thing is just an airy, dreamy cacophony, the "no air, no air, no air" at the end has always been my favorite part and hopefully it will make for the perfect conclusion to this entire playlist. This is one of those songs that I often fall asleep to. Don't worry...it won't actually make you dream about suicide. Give it a try.

So that's the first attempt at embedding songs. My fingers are really crossed hardcore. Let us know in the comments if there are any improvements we could make. Otherwise I just hope you enjoy the songs.


Happy listening,
Sad Blogger

I Hate the Weatherman Posted by Sad Blogger , 10.7.12 at Tuesday, July 10, 2012, in

David Spence stinks. I want someday for him to suddenly fall over in the middle of a weather forecast and explode.


I suppose I should append that I don't wish him any harm. I don't want him to die or break any bones or even get a paper cut (although a few paper cuts wouldn't be so bad...especially on his face. I would enjoy seeing little paper cut nicks all over his dumb face). But I'm in no way advocating any sort of injury or death to David Spence.


I would simply enjoy watching him fall over and explode.


Now, I've never much cared for David and his protruding belly. I met him once on a tour of the CFCN studio and he was surly and brutish. But today is the day I've finally had enough because today I saw a new side of him. As we're in the middle of Stampede week, Mr. Spence and his ragtag crew of newscasters are all decked out in their High Noon best. Except perhaps "best" is a stretch. While it's true that the majority of said newscasters have put an effort into cowboying up, Ol' David Weatherman decided it was fine to just show up in a poofy pair of jeans he bought in 1992, a shirt made from the wallpaper in a 19th Century plantation house's bathroom, and the glasses worn by the old man who fixed Woody in Toy Story 2. With his awful, distended abdomen and his crop of vulture hair, I just wanted a little Mexican boy to whollop him with a stick and watch candy come pouring out of a ragged, unnatural vent in his torso.

I feel pressured by my own standards of quantity over quality to add more to this. But there really wasn't any moral or message to this entry. For the time, I'm going to use the excuse of my intention to write daily to justify the quantity AND quality of this post. Pray for your own sake it gets better from here.

Coming Soon: The In Between 2.0? Posted by Sad Blogger , 9.7.12 at Monday, July 09, 2012, in

I get paid to sit at a desk for ten hours and peruse websites that I'm hoping won't set off an alarm while occasionally crawling up to one of twelve floors to pick up or drop off mail. I'd like to draw attention specifically to the amount of time that I spend doing this. I've spent each of the past twenty-five days in my spacious, tidy, air conditioned office with its excellent view and I've only now had this revelation: I have absolutely no excuse not to be practicing this thing that I've proclaimed for so long to be my art.


(Writing, if you didn't catch it)


I had a minor panic attack/fit of depression the other day as I gleefully completed my five-year financial plan and upon checking the printed version for errors, was struck by the realization that I'm kind of going nowhere. I understand, of course, that I'm currently too young to feel as though I have nothing to look forward to in my life etc. However, as much as I want to return to school, I don't see that happening for another year or two, and if that's case, I will be entering school and either almost 23 or almost 24. Which would therefore have me graduating a four-year program at either 27 or 28. Now I don't know about you, but brushing up against the ol' THREE-OH and only just starting to step into the professional world makes me want to pull my own skin off with my teeth.

So taking all that into account, I've elected to commit to updating this thing daily. I know that I've most likely made similar promises before now, but this is the first time that I'm actually forced to sit in the same room for hours a day without the eternal distraction that unregulated internet browsing used to provide me with. But I want to practice "my craft". The major theme of my nervous episode had been my inability to stick with anything. I'm a quitter. The moment I feel the least bit disinterested or irritated or miserable about some preoccpuation, I immediately drop it and forlornly seek out the next new thing. Up until the last few months, though, I'd never seen it as a negative thing. Never saw it as quitting. I always thought I was just "being true to myself" and doing what I had to do to stay happy.

And that's where I start getting insecure. The result of me doing my utmost to stay happy is that I am happy. I've considered it to be taking a cue from Ayn Rand and her Howard Roark character.

[Enter identity crisis]

Now I'm thinking that I've just been avoiding putting any real effort into growing up and becoming a functioning adult.

Which is why I need to get back into this shit. It's what I do. I have my never-want-to-do-it-again phases, but it needs to be done. Whether I can get some kind of training eventually or just happen to have the luck to "break", it's only going to happen if I stick with it. So today, as you can see, is going to be another one of those long, pathetic, self-pitying, reflective hunks of garbage. Hopefully, though, it will grow to be something impressive and meaningful and perhaps even entertaining (god forbid).

Thanks for reading this if you did and thanks even if you didn't.
Sad Blogger.

Imported Posted by Sad Blogger , 21.6.12 at Thursday, June 21, 2012, in

I was going to write something on Tumblr, but it got really long so I was going to just post it here. But I wanted it to be on Tumblr so I just copy+pasted it here for other people to read. Yay.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today I genuinely debated walking over to a woman on the fifteenth floor and crying for like an hour. Not about a specific thing. Not even because of some ambiguous thing I’m feeling. Just because it feels so goddamn good. I did it once at a camp ground the summer after the eleventh grade.

When I decided that I was going to type that, I thought it was going to be a short little thing that fit nicely amongst the recycled garbage that is my tumblr. Then I was gonna tag it with some obnoxious shoulder-shruggy thing like I dunno why I’m even typing this cuz nobody even follows me, but then I’d just be an acting-like-he-doesn’t-realize-he-only-has-one-follower-whom-he-doesn’t-even-know cunt. Which opened up the terrifying chasm of self-consciousness that comes with assuming said follower is actually going to read your neurotic drivel.

Cuz see, there’s writing like you’re ejaculating your fractured ego into the pages of a journal you assume nobody will ever see (but secretly hope somebody will so that once you get over your self-righteous proclamations of broken trust and invaded privacy, you’ll have one of those “confidantes” people in Nicholas Sparks-esque movies are always gurgling about). And there’s writing an essay or a short story or a script that you know will have a specific audience that you constantly have to keep in mind; always hold its hand and stroke its hair while you tend to its every need. The clueless, needy audience.

But then there’s writing on the internet. You have to think of it like you’re releasing a cat with a note on its back into the crowd at a European outdoor metal festival. It might be a cat and just stand there unnoticed…it might prowl around quietly, drawing the attention of a few easily-distracted types…it might scratch a few toes as it dashes toward what it thinks is freedom…it might have rabies and hurl through the crowd, slashing and clawing and menacing hordes of angry metalheads, driving them away with obscene, beard-muffled shouts. Or it might write a boring, repetitive, longwinded metaphor that nobody cares about.

My stupid point, though—despite having become lost in the woods following a trail of what it thinks are bread crumbs but are actually the unfortunate leavings of a devastatingly constipated deer—is that while the writing itself can feel personal and private, you realize that SOMEBODY is going to read it and now you have to doctor it up for them so they’ll be impressed or sympathetic or entertained or et cetera and suddenly a piddly little comment about crying at work is a shitty, pontificating manifesto about a notion that nobody really even cares about that you read back and completely regret even thinking about.

Actually, I take back setting that last paragraph up to be my point. My point is that you have to wonder what this entire thing is. I refer back to the part where I introduced the matter of having a single follower. Does that make this a letter? If nobody else is going to see it, is it direct, private correspondence? Or does the mere property of existing in an open forum drag it down into the arena of something more akin to a “blog post”? I mean at this point am I addressing you as an individual taking part in an intellectual dialogue or am I still pretending that a loose collection of curious readers might happen upon this dumb thing and take the time to read and connect to it?

That being said…did I just want to share a maybe-endearing, maybe-amusing moment from my day with the voiceless ether?

Or did I subconsciously hope that I would be offering some kind of awful emotional fig leaf to a person that I don’t know, don’t intend to communicate with, and frankly have no interest in associating with at all?

You know what? Fuck this thing. Point. Click. Create post.