Hehe... Doesn't defeat the fact that he's brilliant, ya know!
Anyway, been wanting to make an icon with that copy "i like you the way you are"... But can't seem to find a picture to make the icon. There's one ODK pic that's REALLY REALLY REALLY great.... I say he's like the CUTEST ever there... But..... It's TOO CUTE... Anything I do to the picture seems to ruin the cuteness... So, I'm not gonna use that picture.
I wanted to use one of Mr. One Color... But..Hmmm..
I still don't understand xml, so i'm not sure how to customize things. But anyway, I really, really, really like this Lunkhead picture... so, it's not gonna go away....
But i wanted to redesign the blog for awhile now because in the old layout, there was no way to access old posts except through the archives. And even that, there's no way to scroll to the back pages... Kinda pain in the ass... So I've changed that.
Hope it's better now.
ANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.... I'm using Firefox these days, so, this is specifically for firefox........... Sigh...
i'm so scared. and i feel so dishearted. i feel so sad because i don't seem to qualify for anything and I don't seem to be good enough for anything. and i feel like I'm not making the situation any better. I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot and I'm scared I've dug myself into this huge immense hole I can't crawl back out from. I'm really scared I fucked up and I can't get back out.
I feel like every advantage my father has given me, with time and mistakes I'm piling on, is eroding any form of advantage my dad had worked so hard to give me. And sometimes... even with that advantage given me, I don't feel like I'm good enough for anything. I'm too young, too inexperienced, yet at the same time, already too damn old to keep trying to materialize illusions.
I don't know what is right anymore. Part of me I'm so scared I just want to hold on tight and not fuck up or try for what I love. The other part of me feel really unhappy and wish I could try to do something that I love, that I want to do, to find my meaning in this life, to make this life something I love and am happy with... But, I'm so scared because I just feel like the more I try or want to pursue my dreams or whatever it is, i just feel like I am shooting myself in the foot. I just can't help but feel that.
I feel like I'm reaching out so hard for smoke. And I feel like I'm just not good enough to get anything-- Even if I chased my dreams-- I'm just not good enough to get it.... Because I've tried and I'm trying-- but I'm failing.
So i'm here, I feel..... What i can hold onto as secure, I'm fucking up- What I want to achieve, I'm not good enough-- I'm fucking up what I can do for that something that I can't get. And I'm trying so hard at it, to achieve that something, to get that something that I just feel so disheartened and know in my heart of hearts that I can't get.
crashing my car everyday the same way, basically. and know you're crippling yourself with every move and yet still going on doing it.
Is it stupid, to give up what you have, just to try for that one thing that you only have a 0.001 chance of getting?
Been having a donut craving lately.... Since last week... Cannot stop wanting to eat donuts... The thing is that, i've never fancied donuts but, last saturday, at 11pm I even drove to a Dunkin Donuts' Drive Thru to get donuts... Then yesterday, I had to go buy donuts also to get for tea, then now, at 11:30pm, I'm eating donuts... I don't know why.
Anyway.. was spending the whole night trying to make two mixtapes of Japanese songs i've been listening to for Luis and Robbie, my two music gurus. Actually, I've been wanting to make one since March, but I still haven't got it done yet.
(yeah okay. mixtapes don't exist anymore. it's a mixCD, actually)
For Luis, I was trying to get more of those dancable tunes and indie rock tunes... ala Hey Mercedes, and Bright Eyes... Which are what I feel Luis was into back then. For Robbie, I was trying to get some indie rock tunes and some more rock and guitar based tunes, which are what I feel Robbie's music of preference...
While I was selecting songs for the mixtapes, I was chatting with Jingle... I was just thinking earlier today, that in 4 years, I'm gonna start an indie record label with Jingle... I was thinking about it today... Every industry had their pioneering indie record label. Back then before the whole emo/indie-rock scene, there was Drive Thru Records and Triple Crown Records, which probably signed 70% of the bands in the whole scene. Then, in Japan, I discovered today, that the Drive Thru records of their indie rock scene was, of course, High Line Records (which closed in July this year, by the way)... I think MOST of the J-indie rock bands would have had something to do with this record label/CD store in some way during the course of their career. SO ANYWAY, I thought, well, we need one too for South East Asia... And it's gonna be based in Singapore, and I'm gonna start it..... And the only person I could think of doing this with was Jingle.
So anyway, while i was chatting with her and selecting my songs for Luis and Robbie, I told her about the J-Rock/J-Indie scene.. and she told me to send the best song.
WELL... OF course ONE BEST song representative of the WHOLE ENTIRE genre is simply IMPOSSIBLE.
Because for J-Rock/J-Indie, albeit it's becoming saturated, it is unlike the music scenes in America or Britian or whatever, in the sense that, there is no one common tune or generically duplicated sound to all these bands in the scene. They all, really, do, have very different composition.
Let's hold on that thought, because there IS a clause to that statement.
J-indie/J-rock though, it is important to note that it borrows it's sounds from Brit-pop, grunge, American alternative rock, folk, emo, and punk rock. But perhaps like all things else that the Japanese adopts from another culture, they make those foreign adoption entirely very Japanese. And that's what you get with this scene too.
So, in that saying, although, unlike the music scenes in America whereby every emo band sounds like every other emo band, or when indie rock is popular, every indie band sounds like every other indie band, or when punk rock is popular every punk rock band sounds like very other punk rock band (i'm sure u get the idea). Unlike that, the Japanese scene is different because their bands don't quite sound like every other band... HOWEVER, because they DO draw from the same pool of influences (Brit-pop, grunge, punk rock, emo, alternative rock and the likes), these are where the common thread of sounds starts appearing, and perhaps after awhile, the sounds all start getting saturated and the same... (well this is if you are, like me, checking out entire discographies of 20 bands a week).
But anyway, I was telling Jingle, that, well, I've not bought a single English CD for the past 3 years (and if I have, they were the Japan version of those albums lol)... It's quite sad, actually... And some might say it's stupid because 90% of the music I'm listening to are Japanese and I don't understand 90% of what is being sung...
But that said, it's just that, I find that the one place that ROCK MUSIC is still alive (well, the good ol' rock days anyway) is in Japanese Rock/Indie.
After Brit Pop has died (and shot twice in the grave), after American Alternative Rock was hung and beheaded (by folk hahaha), after grunge has become passé, yeah, the music and tunes and beats that I love so much that I can't find anywhere else, not in the Travis-Jonas Brothers-Wilco world, rises and falls between the chords and the riffs of Japanese rock bands. Yeah, THAT is why I am listening to so much Japanese music-- because here, I can still find a tune that I'd love, a tune that, well, suits my taste, whether I understand the words that comes along with it or not.
Anyway, PLEASE WATCH, this PV of Base Ball Bear's 愛してる/Aishiteru (I Love You)... There are lyrics like within the PV
Aishiteru by Base Ball Bear
The first time I said "I love you" Your eyes were kind of sad I thought you'd be happy It felt as if a cool draft passed by Like a present i thought it'd be Though a naive boy's idea
I love you I can't be wrong about you, probably. I want to walk with you, probably. I love you, probably.
The third time I said "I love you" You told me you don't like me anymore "Really...what?" I kept repeating Something seemed different, I felt it.
I drank with friends, talked love theories No future, no answer
I love you I can't be wrong about you, probably. Yes, I want to walk with you, probably.
I love you, probably.
(Girl sings this part) Every time you say those words I feel love runs away Love has no form javascript:void(0) Publish Post (Guy sings again) I would give you something close Yes, I would give my heart
I love you...
I love you I can't be wrong about you, probably I want to walk with you, probably I love you, probably Most probably.
I hate to admit this but it's true, I'm very limited in the type of songs I like to listen to, and I often don't listen to anything other than the type of music I like to listen to.
I like rock songs. Soft rock, melodic rock, alternative rock and what-have-you-not, Brit-pop-ish kinds of songs I suppose, with droplets (and I mean DROPLETS) of Indie rock (too much indie kills). I liked so called "emo" too, and I once was totally in love with punk rock.
But I realized today that punk rock is so over for me these days.
Was downloading couple of Japanese punk rock band. It doesn't matter if we can hear what they're singing or not, because you can't really hear what's being sung in punk rock songs anyway haha, but anyway, totally, it's dead for me. It totally does NOT appeal to me anymore. I was listening to part of some of these songs (before i stopped it), and I realized that, yeah, if only it was 7 years ago, back in those days I really liked NoFX, Useless ID and the likes and I was desperately looking for songs that sounds like them... But back then I couldn't find any....
And these days, when it totally doesn't appeal to me anymore, there're like LOADS of them out there- punk-rock.
Kinda tragic.
Oh, and on the other hand... while sometimes I do like indie rock......... dude, toooooooooooo much of it makes me really hate indie rock sometimes... I think one needs a good mix of solid rock songs and indie rock.... Too much indie becomes folk and you wonder why the heck it is "rock"? Hmmmm....
Then again, who died and made me a music critic?
Anyway, I'm trying to look for another Japanese band like Tsubaki. I hope I find them soon. Kinda getting too much of Tsubaki lately, too much, too much, need something else!!!
Anyway, this makes me wish i had paid more attention during my History of Rock 101 class back in Uni............ damn.
片道キップ - Katamichi Kippu!!!! WOW! would be incredible to hear Isshiki-san sing this!! 昨日の風 風向き 夢見る街 雨音 アセロラ ループ
I think they're all such damn danceable songs!!! The beats are just awesome! Makes you just wanna jump along ^____^
I don't even mind if it's like in a Live DVD..... I wanted to hear Fuyu no Hanashi live too, they had that song in the live DVD, so that's nice enough =) Can't ask for the impossible all the time, right?
They PROBABLY some of these songs in the Live I went, but unfortunately, I didn't know Tsubaki back then, so I didn't stay in hall for the whole show... =( ごめん. But I did get to talk to Yamashita-san and Ishikawa-san at that time, so! I guess, it pays off =D
yeeeeeaaahhh.... I definitely DON'T think Waseda University is going to accept THAT as an answer, no matter how well I can phrase it in Japanese and how honest an answer it is.
so go do what you like, make sure you do it wise. you may find out that your self doubt means nothing was ever there.
Why can't I follow my heart? Why can't I follow where happiness is? Why am I always trying to figure out the next move, so scared to move?
Why am I so afraid of what's uncertain?
What if this is the wrong move? How bad would it get? How far would I fall?
I wish I knew where I belong. I hope God has something just right for me because I really don't want to live the rest of my life doing something that's wrong for me.
I shrugged off my pack. Lying there on my back, I looked up at the roof of the inn and, staring at the glowing moon and clouds, I thought, really, we're all in the same position. (It occurred to me that I had often thought that in similar situations, in moments of utter desperation. I would like to be known as an action philosopher.)
We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it's more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did-- but know I knew it, because I was able to put it into words. But I don't mean this in the fatalistic sense; we're constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct. And so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle of some roof in a strange place with a takeout katsudon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
-Taken from, Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto-
The Gospels give no direct evidence concerning the extent to which at the time of his leaving home he may already have been aware of the mission which lay ahead of him, yet Jesus was moved in his decision to forsake the life of Nazareth by detecting in the voice of John the Baptist something that appealed to his heart..... Certainly it was spiritual hunger which brought him to decide to leave his mother and his numerous kinfolk. It is not so certain, however, that his decision won the amiable consent of the family, especially not the consent of his male cousins. In the straitened circumstances of the extended family it was no easy thing for them to lose the contribution from Jesus just when he was at the peak of his productive years. His mother Mary, or any rate his cousins James and Joseph, Simon and Jude and the others, were not always completely in sympathy with him..... Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 record explicitly how for a long time his kindred bore scant respect for him. From their point of view the shadow perhaps revealed no more than his being an irresponsible dropout from the world of reality-- a man with the will to desert an establish living at Nazareth and be off to the barren wilderness of Judea.
-Taken from, A Life of Jesus, by Endo Shusaku-
I guess I can never be one of those hooker/waitress model/actress who just pack up everything and just head west to Hollywood, to try my chance at a Russian roulette game of life.
I guess, I just don't have the guts to sleep on the living room floor.
sad... but highlight of the day is seeing Isshiki-san's picture on Lunkhead's blog....
And despite me checking BOTH Lunkhead and Tsubaki's website and blog daily, it wasn't till YESTERDAY that I realized that they were both on tour together. It was only when they both had the SAME TITLE of the SAME PLACE on their blogs that I realized "shit, they're playing the SAME live aren't they?"
Go figure...
Shit, I wish I could have gone for the live...... =(
Anyway, I realized... Well not just realized... but... I realize that I'm a really selfish person... That instead of being instantaneously happy for someone when something happy happens to them, I always feel jealous FIRST and FOREMOST, and fail to see what I have already been blessed with, instead of what I don't have. I guess, i really don't deserve to be happy.
Oh... and Yoshitaro posted a REALLY REALLY long post on the blog and a VERY reflective and INCREDIBLY philosophical post about................ existance! Hmmmm... Just too brilliant, I suppose, ne ODK-kun... =)
