Hopefully No Tracks Are Missing This Time Posted by Sad Blogger , 19.1.13 at Saturday, January 19, 2013, in

So the last time I tried doing one of these things, I didn't check to make sure that the whole file worked properly. To be honest, I'm not going to be checking it this time, but I wanted it to be known that I was and am well aware of the issue. I mean I'm pretty sure nobody really listened to it, but it pays to come across diligent.

My fingers are crossed this time, though, for this "podcast" to be as awesome as I told myself it was while I was recording it. I think the songs are better, I think I had more interesting stuff to say about the artists. I think my voice might have matured......probably not, but a squeaky-voiced man can hope.

Anyhow, give this gem a listen and maybe you'll hear some cool stuff you've never heard before. As an added caution, you'll want to set the volume on the player to about halfway. I'm realizing now that I recorded it quite loud.


If the embedded player doesn't work for you, the file can be downloaded here.

As promised, the track listing is:

Alt-J - Intro (heard under my introduction)
Balmorhea - Bowsprit   youtube
Alt-J - Bloodflood   youtube \\ torrent the album
Swans - Lunacy   youtube \\ torrent the album
How To Dress Well - Cold Nites   youtube \\ torrent the album
Kathryn Calder - Right Book   torrent the album
Tame Impala - Elephant   youtube
Sharon Van Etten - Serpents   youtube
Lost in the Trees - Neither Here Nor There   youtube \\ torrent the album
Exitmusic - Sparks of Light   youtube \\ torrent the album
Perfume Genius - Floating Spit   youtube

My Boss Would Love To Know This Is How I Spent My Morning Posted by Sad Blogger , 3.1.13 at Thursday, January 03, 2013, in

I've never had a New Year's resolution in my entire life but I was thinking on my train ride in this morning that maybe it's about time I finally give one to myself. My resolution this year is to set goals. Because when is the last time you heard of anybody sticking to their dumb New Year's resolution? Yet people achieve their goals every day. Then again maybe I'm jinxing myself by wrapping the goals in the flaky shroud of resolution. Fuck it. It's not so much to do with the ritual of NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION, but more that I was thinking of how much other people need to change and figured it would be unfair to ask for such a thing and not offer some form of selflessness on my own part. And once again (for the Nth time), by selfless I mean changing or giving away a piece of the self. The beautiful, intangible, soulful, established core of our identities. Who and what we are. But enough of that. I think for the most part that people give themselves resolutions out of some  bizarre conformity to a shitty tradition. The beginning of a new year is a convenient time to "turn over a new leaf", but it's usually something easy based on cultural or societal pressures. "I will stop smoking or drinking or eating because other people keep telling me I should." "I will donate more time or money to my family or my church or a charity because it will make me a better person." "I will be a better person." Will you? Why?
Do you want to be a better person because you want other people to perceive you as a better person? Do you want to be more healthy because somebody told you to be more healthy? Or can you envision another reality in which you are a happier person for all the changes you've made in your life?

Because that was my problem. I remember making a post either here or on Tumblr (yes...I know) in response to a post I'd seen on a friend of a friend's blog about making goals to be happier. I was all pissed off and incredulous because I couldn't understand how people can't just be happy. The way I saw it, if you needed goals to feel content and comfortable in your own skin, you were a weak, self-hating person with no sense of self-awareness. You know? "I need to follow these steps to make myself the person I want to be." I couldn't wrap my head around just wanting to be the person you already are. I love being who I am; love being in my fat body with my hyperactive mind and all the cynical, whimsical, anxious, innocent, misanthropic, adorable, perverted, genius shit that swirls around in it. It's pretty fantastic being me. I mean my physical and emotional and psychological qualities obviously wouldn't be a lot of other people's cup of tea. I'd imagine the significant number of people that wouldn't even want to be around me is DWARFED by the number of people that wouldn't want to be me, but I get a kick and a half out of it. So for the longest time it was impossible for me to see any benefit in changing. 

But it occurred to me just barely an hour ago that changing doesn't have to be changing your self. I mean that  would be unhealthy. Unless you were already legitimately fucked up. If your attitude and personality and own decisions have harmed other people or led you down a path to a seriously bad place, you may want to consider changing who you are. But this little epiphany (as insignificant an epiphany as it may be) I had is more about making the decision to make changes that will find you in a better place. Because sure I can be pleased as punch with my situation, but what's to say that there isn't a better version of it on the other side of a minor tweak in my routine? For example, I declared in November that I would start working out with my roommate daily on January 3rd of this New Year. Not because I wanted it to be New Year's thing, but because all my December money was going to be sunk into Christmas and birthday gifts as well as paying off my credit card. I had a paycheque coming on January 2nd, so I would sign up for a gym membership on the 3rd and training would begin. That was the deal. And as today is the 3rd, the deal is looming. But I'm going to stick to it because it has nothing to do with the 2013th anniversary of not being enough for everybody else. It's not out of a need to feel more confident or attractive. Actually, if I'm being completely honest, I want to get ripped and craft a boar's hide vest and finally become the Viking I've always known I should be. But for the sake of this preachy bullshit blog post, I'm setting a goal that I hope will change my situation so that I might EVEN MORE delight in being who I am. I'm not going to change my self, but I'm going to insert my self into a different reality where being me is even more enjoyable. I think that's what resolution should be about.

So back to my goals. This year I aim to want things enough to pursue them. I'm not sure whether underneath it all it's laziness or fear, but I always get so caught up in how content I already am that I stop myself from going after the things I think will make my life even better. Every time I find myself lusting after some new toy to add to my collection of cool stuff, I aim to stay myself and think of how my time or money can be better spent to further my progress as a human being. This year, I aim to like people more. I shut myself off from a lot of social opportunities not so much because I find them intimidating or uncomfortable, but because I don't want to commit to the emotional investment of friendship. Then again, maybe it really is a defense mechanism that I've painted over with a couple coats of misanthropy and narcissism. God damn it! This was supposed to be about you freaks but it's turned into four paragraphs of self-analysis. But really, perhaps I've been so traumatized by the rejection I experienced from the people I thought were my best friends post high school that I've repressed it all down into a mask of superiority and disinterest. I don't think that's what it is, because the possibility doesn't make you all seem any less boring or space-wasting, but it's an absolutely valid theory worth considering. Anyhow, I'm going to attempt to let more people into my life this year and see if it gets me anywhere. Updates to follow, I suppose.

But if I'm going to do all that, I want you silly geese to make some resolutions as well. And by resolution I'm referring specifically to the notion of resolve. Be definite and earnest. Commit and persist and accomplish. Constantly reflect on how you can be better and live it. And when I say 'better' I don't mean you're not good enough. I don't mean improve in the eyes of your parents or your peers or your boss or your god if you have one. Improve for the sake of being a better version of yourself. Human beings are born with the capacity to be incredible, but so many of us pass up the tools and opportunities handed to us to manifest that incredibility. So resolve to be wholly yourselves. Resolve to have so much confidence in your own thoughts and desires that it annoys other people. Resolve to be beautifully original. Be influenced and inspired, but never derivative. Resolve to live the way your heart and your mind tell you to.You don't live in a sitcom or a romance novel or a soap opera or a crime drama. Your friends aren't scripted characters and your life doesn't have a plot. So resolve to toss out any "what would _____ do?" or "but ______ would never say that" nonsense that you have stored in the back of your mind. That shit isn't real. You and your friends are. Your life and your love is. Don't censor. Don't filter. Talk, be, feel, think, act, sing, walk how you want. Resolve to make your own stories. There's an eternity of beautiful stories by other people for you to quote to your friends and family, but we are the stories we tell and you can't live through other people forever. Resolve to go out and have experiences. Just be outside and consider its vastness. Ponder and pontificate and form thoughts and be enthusiastic about existence. Let your mind wander until it lands on an idea that enthralls you so absolutely that you just have to call your mom or text your roommate or rush home and type it out frenetically so you can share it with the trickling rivulet of anonymous readers that happen upon your goofy, purple blog. Resolve to discover. Resolve to respond. Stop idly absorbing information and ask a fucking question now and then. Question EVERYTHING! Wonder why. Search for meaning in everything and cling madly to the meanings you find. Show off all the cool junk you've learned and engage people with your fascinating brain. Stop being so goddamn timid and insert yourself into conversations. You got some knowledge? Resolve to drop that shit. Resolve to be funny. Resolve to be weird. Let the you inside your mind spill out and bother other people. Embarrass yourself with all the kooky, creative, amazing things you have to tell everybody. Real people will appreciate how profoundly yourself you are. Shitty people will run far, far away. WIN/WIN! Resolve to change people's perception of self expression. Inspire people to be themselves.

Does that seem like a fair exchange?

Happy 2013,
   the Sad Blogger

Sad Blogger Attempts Broadcasting Posted by Sad Blogger , 16.12.12 at Sunday, December 16, 2012, in

This is a repost of the original post. That wasn't redundant. That wasn't sarcasm. This could go on forever.

Anyhow, the old file broke so I've moved it to a new host and now you can enjoy it. Or not. I'm just saying it's here now.

An Ensemble of Es Entangled and an Eloquent Epic Expressed Posted by Sad Blogger , 24.11.12 at Saturday, November 24, 2012, in

(THIS WAS MUCH HARDER THAN THE OTHERS!)

Encumbered--or perhaps endowned--with Elephantitis of the extremities, Esmeralda Eenpalu is an excellent example of an enlarged Estonian. Exuding an ethereal elegance extrinsic to equivalent episodes, she enjoys her existence enthusiastically and effortlessly. Every evening Esmeralda would eagerly embark on the earnest enterprise of editing her estranged Ethan's eulogy, an elaborately engineered epitaph explicating his egotisitc and exiguous existence. Eventually, exhausted and expired and experiencing evident ennui, Esmeralda would extract her euphemism and escort her essence to an evanescent end.

What Rhyme's with Know-it? Posted by Happy Blogger , 23.11.12 at Friday, November 23, 2012, in

I love dreams
I love that reality is a dream and dreams are reality, at least that's how I feel most of the time.
I feel crazy. But crazy is perfect, and fucked up is perfect, so I will be perfect

I always say I just write thoughts- but as my crazy poet friend always says "thoughts are poetry, everything is poetry" I might as well admit that I have written another thing-a-ma-bob-that-I-have-problems-defining

the world where we live

in parallel skies we sit together

in parallel rooms we drink tea

in the delta waters we find infinite time

        it is easy to get found with you

here, things aren't complex

here, things find themselves

here, I don't worry that we don't collide

     in that place where we should belong

I hold onto reflections, intentions, perfection

I hold onto embraces, those traces, space

I hold on so hard

         that in waking makes me raw

you're disguised as the air

you're so gone that you're there

but I know you're waiting

              by the delta waters

there, we resume where we left off

there, we disregard earth's imprisonment

there by the delta waters

               is the world where we live

Yet another vague look into the depths of my dilemma. 

Yours truly, 

Happy Blogger

            

Future Me Will Laugh Posted by Sad Blogger , 23.10.12 at Tuesday, October 23, 2012, in

Now and then I bang out a poem that I feel might actually be worth sharing or even showing off. But that happens fairly infrequently in proportion to the amount of time I spend trying to write poetry or write anything, really. The creature below is not really the gem I was hoping it would be, but the short series of Emo-Kev Smodcast episodes that recently came out have got me wanting to have some sort of record of all the stupid shit that I've cranked out in my attempts to be creative or profound or unique or whatever. I do have other writing saved here and at home that might be worthy of self deprecating analysis someday, but at the moment I feel proud of most of it. This poem, however, I think is particularly pretentious and pontificating. It reads a lot like a child trying very hard to sound like a reflective grown up with grown up thoughts and observations. I mean if it's even a little good, then go me. But if it's as bad as it probably is, then I can't wait to go back and read this someday and cringe at my hopelessness.

these words have dragged themselves
across undustable hardwood and gnawed 
on ankles and stood on shoulders and 
pouted with disappointment that the
world is not much better from higher up

and it's strange now that they should
tumble back out from whatever dark 
closet they'd been shoved into maybe 
to commune with the rain in some 
desperate show of cliché melodrama to 
impress their friends

and what is it about rain that the 
annals of metaphorical and evocative 
imagery should hold it up in such 
high regard

as though the drops fell from a 
higher place than heaven and carried 
pieces of the souls they rolled over 
to get here and filled the world with 
the washed off flecks of ascended dirt

and life is just a shower drain for 
the departed

but for whatever reason and in spite 
of their insignificance these words 
long to count the raindrops on the 
window and clamor to curl up in old 
blankets and lust after strangers
trudging through the miserable layer 
of pre-winter on the sidestreet

Too Much Has Changed Posted by Happy Blogger , 9.10.12 at Tuesday, October 09, 2012, in

Wow. It has been too long.
I wish I could apologize, however I have my reasons.
Let's just say September was too much for too many reasons.
Vancouver, School, Vancouver, School.
I love most my classes. Music History is another story. I'm working on it though.
I love my contemporary poetry class. It probably helps that my teacher is strangely attractive.
I went and saw Kimbra at the Commodore Ballroom.
It was not a concert, but a real life fantasy for me.
I was so close I could see her sweat, and what appeared to be paint on her arms.
I was in a trance. I could not stop staring at her. I was so focused that I completely missed the lesbian girls have a falling out, and some drunk guy with a hat stealing one of the lesbians away.
The band that opened for her were incredible. The Stepkids have it going on. They really do.
The bass player stole my heart. His bass lines and grooves were too much to handle. I have never felt so inferior to a bass player ever. What a beautiful mess!
I like writing poetry.
Although I recognize most of it is fairly depressing.
They are just things. Thoughts going through my mind.
I enjoy being by myself and clearing my head, however the clarity can be scary.
I can't decide what I like better, being in a consistent state of fog or in a state of scary acceptance.

This was the most recent one I wrote. It's just my brain thinking too far ahead and being all hypothetical and what not. I don't know. I figured I would share. This is is a nice place.

Shocking
Petrified
Terrified, maybe
Abrupt like that kid in class that won't leave you alone. 
And how do you cope?
You don't
You wear the mask, like a wig on your bald head, pretending you are okay. 

I remember Kindergarten
I remember way back when we wore wigs for fun
I remember cheating off your social test
We were the only ones to get 100%
I wore the mask of your brilliance

You asked me if I could take it away
k(no)w I tried. 
I mean, who knows really?
We can ask Him all the questions
though there are few a little suggestions

Hard like a diamond pill
I can't even imagine swallowing
There is one this I do know, 
is the difference between giving up and letting go.

-Happy Blogger

The Woeful Tale of the Dirt Under the Nails Posted by Sad Blogger , 18.9.12 at Tuesday, September 18, 2012, in

As a nail biter since the age of three, I've never clipped my fingernails before. I mean I have immaculate toes and I've been taking care of them since I was maybe eleven, the age it started becoming uncool for your parents to care about you or touch you. But with regards to my fingers, those nails have been chewed down to the quick for the past eighteen-almost-nineteen years. Of course I had short periods during which my mother plied me with an assortment of BITE-B-GONE or CHEW-NO-MORE products but I always developed an immunity to them relatively swiftly and my nails were back to their usual haggard nature. So it's quite a big deal for me to have not even touched them for the past two months.

It seems like such a simple thing, but I'm constantly in a panic over every little detail of these newfound extensions of my body. They seem so tough, but the slightest bend in the right circumstance is the most painful thing in the world. They also get DIRTY! Like nobody seems to talk about that. You always hear about 'breaking a nail' and how inconvenient that is, but at no point in my life have I heard the woeful tale of the dirt under the nails. It's constantly there. Like every twenty minutes I have to stop everything or this unsightly build-up is just gathering there, waiting for somebody to come along and notice how poorly I groom myself. Why does no one speak of this? Is it some sort of fingernail-owner taboo? Is there maybe some sort of network of catacombs where all the anguishing fingernailians convene to bemoan the soiled state of their prized digit caps? 

Like sure, I remember watching my brother getting his nails inspected in Cub Scouts but that made it seem like he just had to wash his nails out once a week. If that! If you only have to scrub out your nails once a week to keep them pristine, you'd have to imagine just letting them be for a couple weeks would still leave them looking at least decent. Only after maybe a month or so of serious neglect would they end up looking like rusted bear traps. But no, regular intervals throughout the DAY. All of the days. Always and ever.

I feel now--being as I've taken a sentence that I'd already written and made it into the title--that I should actually write a short story about the Woeful Tale of the Dirt Under the Nails. It sounds like a Nate the Great story or something of the like. 


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

Day 749

For the forty-eighth week in a row, the sky was a dark, disquieting stockade stretched out low over the rolling flesh hills of the Index Finger Plains. The Dirt silently scanned the horizon from his vantage point on the tip of Finger Nail Ridge. His brow furrowed, he sighed at yet another day of inevitably fruitless scavenging. Yet another day of boiled water and dry grass. Of isolation and hopelessness.

The Dirt slowly descended the outcropping of rough skin to his shallow cave under the thin, jutting portion of the Ridge and meditated for the four thousandth time on how exactly it was that this had come to be his existence. Because it wasn't a life. A life has purpose and fulfillment and some sort of hope for the next day and the next. This was just being for the sake of satisfying some cosmic need to fill a void. The Dirt had no family, no friends, no memory of anything. Anything but occupying the den under Finger Nail Ridge and looking out forlornly over the miles of flesh the spanned out to the south.

He'd dared to venture out over those miles once. He had braved the treacherous peaks and valleys of the Knuckle Range, traversed the sparse and bizarre grasslands of the Fewandfarbetweenhair Fields, and stopped only when he'd come to the intimidating expanse of the Backhand Woods. Had he known, the arduous journey through those woods would have brought him to the unfathomable breadth of the Forearm Wilderness and to even further regions and territories of untold enormity.

But The Dirt was just The Dirt and so he'd returned to his home under the Ridge and carried out his meaningless existence.

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


The narration would then follow The Dirt's activities for a few more days. A series of strange and unfamiliar experiences would encourage him to once more strike out to discover some sort of answer to his questions. He would happen upon the Thenar Space and marvel at the landscapes found in the Digitus Medius Region, almost identical to those he had just crossed. And then...


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

Day 991

It was uncanny. The Dirt was almost annoyed at how similar this place was to the Plains. As though just over the next embankment, he would see the familiar smooth slope of Finger Nail Ridge and the rocky incline down to his den. The thought percolated and festered in his mind and a dull rage rose up in his stomach as the expectation began to feel more and more real. Nearing the crest of the last hill, he closed his eyes in preparation for the sting of disappointment and glaring sense of futility. He felt his feet stop moving as he stood at the top of that hill with the cool air blowing against his closed eyelids. The silence was penetrating while he let his reluctant anticipation build.

But then he heard a voice.

The Dirt's eyes snapped open and his mouth dropped at the scene spread out before him. It was Finger Nail Ridge but it was speckled with dirt. There were maybe six or seven of them and they looked exactly like him. He took a step forward and the voice called out again,

"Mom! Do you see him? Who is that?"

They were a family. A family of dirt. He began to run now as one of them began to usher the others down under the Ridge to what must be their own den. Tears in his eyes, The Dirt was sprinting now. He'd never imagined that there might be others like him. That there was dirt out there with stories and interests and lives worth living. The tears turned bitter for a moment as he realized everything he'd been missing out on, but then flowed stronger and more sweetly as he filled with hope for the future. The children had all filed down into their home now, but the mother and father stood guarding the bank, eyeing The Dirt suspiciously as he neared them.

He skidded to a stop maybe thirty feet away from the couple, breathing heavily and anxiously wiping his tears away.

"Hi," he breathed.

The female dirt offered a cautious "Hello..."

The male wrapped his arm around his wife and stepped forward defensively as The Dirt straightened and moved to approach them.

"Now you just stay right there for a moment, Stranger."

"Please," begged The Dirt, "I just want to say hello. I've been alone for as long as I can remember. I've just wandered here and never could have imagined I'd meet anyone who looked just like me. What is this place?"

The couple glanced at each other and back to The Dirt.

"This is Finger Nail Ridge, the northernmost point of the Digitus Medius Region. Where do you come fr-"

And just then, the air erupted with the thunderous clangor of earth hitting earth as the Finger Nail Ridge that the Dirt had occupied for so long descended from the sky and scraped violently along the length of this miraculous new Finger Nail Ridge. The Dirt stumbled back in paralyzed horror at the nightmare playing out in front of him. As his upside home completed its crisscross of the dirt family's, it began to lift away from whence it came. The bloody, mangled carcasses of the family clung to the ascending Ridge and The Dirt watched the promise of a new life disappear into the sky. In a matter of minutes, purpose had been handed to him and yanked away again. And so filled with anguish and unspeakable hopelessness, The Dirt crawled down into the cavern that had once housed the answers to all his dreams but would now stand to serve as a reminder of the atrocity he had just witnessed and would forever question. He was nothing more than dirt under the nails.

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


Well...it's not quite as eloquent as I was hoping it would be. But it's the story I imagined from the beginning so it works for me. Sorry if it was a bit of a bummer. It does have "woeful" in the title.

Once again living up to my name,
   -Sad Blogger

a band on men tissues Posted by Sad Blogger , 31.8.12 at Friday, August 31, 2012, in

a nicotine
scribe imbibes
dreams and
beams unseemly
rhymes onto
blank screens
and cranks

on while

tumbling and

fumbled notions 

humble a 

stumbling ego 

emotions crumbled 

and mumbling 

we go

on just

anonymously fawning

or spawning
unjustly dramatic
lines robustly
drawn thusly
this damn
addict pines

on and

on and

on and

on.

overwhelming in waking Posted by Sad Blogger , 27.8.12 at Monday, August 27, 2012, in

i want every inch
a million lovely pieces
exquisite, beaming