Song of the Month

First Aid Kit: Emmylou
Not a usual fan of tribute songs but I think this Swedish duo did a nice job.

Year of the Black Water Dragon 2012

Tomorrow begins the auspicious year of the Black Water Dragon. I dunno...sounds pretty bad to me. Sounds like rain, and darkness, and apocalypse. I always wonder why the Chinese zodiac included the dragon...all of the other 11 zodiacs are real- dog, rat, ox, monkey, tiger, snake, pig, horse, goat, etc...why dragon? Why not also a unicorn?

Songs that say Fuck You

I saw Cee Lo's (Thomas Calloway's) performance for the Grammy's and immediate recognized it as a homage to Elton's Muppet performance. What I didn't know was that the original wasn't "Forget You" but "Fuck You"...so much much better (although no Muppet reference). Only Calloway can make such a hard, debase phrase sound as upbeat, cheerful, and American as apple pie from the 50's.

 And then I stumbled onto this gem of a song, "Horse Outside" by the Rubberbandits...I am sooooo going to be singing this song one day. But it'll be about my mini donkey.

 These guys are awesome! And instead of an Elton tip, they definitely have an MJ thing going that is sweet! Will definitely be looking up more about these boys from Limerick, Ireland!

I has feets

Why, yes you do little lizard, yes you do.

Two videos with people running on tracks

The Drums- Let's go Surfing

The Temper Trap- Love Lost

Adventures in Ulcerville with Special Guest- Juicer

So it seems the Year of Tiger has one last fight and belted me and A with ulcers. DH also got a nice head cold to top it off. Ulcers are a curious thing to me. They seem to come in stages, sometimes leaving without ever saying hi. I've been saying for years, "oh i'm still hungry" or "geez, I just ate but I still feel hungry". And usually someone replies "Time to feed your tapeworm" or "Maybe it's an ulcer". I think after all these years, it must have been an ulcer. A few days back though after eating one too many times at my new weakness, "The Habit", I developed a new feeling. A little more gnawing than usual, met with a healthy dose of nausea and what you could say, discomfort. I kept telling A for days, "I think my ulcer's back" but I didn't really _believe_ it. I still like the "if-I-ignore-it-it-might-go-away" approach to illness. And you know what, after eating yams for two days, whatever I had did go away. It went straight to A, and then reinvented itself.
    A is also interesting to me because he deals with pain differently than me. I like to ignore pain, question myself sometimes like "was that _really_ a sharp stabbing feeling in my kidney? nah, i must be crazy. If I feel it again, then maybe it was something". And then 10 min. later "I think I felt that sharp pain again, oh you know what, maybe that was the first time I felt it. I'll see if it happens again" and so on.  He on the other hand has a much more practical approach that is more like "WTF is going on with me?". A developed a full on ulcer and also a nice sinus cold. I jumped online to find out what I could about home remedies. Behold, the internet led me to the awesome powers of the Juicer.
    I quickly ordered one from Amazon, two day delivery (i love Amazon Prime...so worth it. Not like stupid Harbor Fright Inside Track Club- don't do it. If you do, make sure you get the receipt because they might not remember to log you in) and it got to us in 1 day. And I've been reading up on the benefits of juiced cabbage, beets, etc. Needless to say the DH has been on a cabbage and yam diet for the past two days as well as taking OTC and is doing much better. I was surprised how sweet juiced cabbage is! Yum! Today E and I went to the supermarket and bought all sorts of veggies that good decent folk probably buy all the time. At the checkout we were so excited about the juicer we told the cashier about it and she said she had thought so. The beets gave it away. And she said she too wanted to get a juicer for x amount of years. I didn't tell her then, but I wish I had said "DO IT!" It's so much fun and if you are vegitally disabled like me, its so worth it. Tomorrow I'm going to juice cucumbers, ginger root, and carrots. It's going to be awesome.

A's head cold though is being tricky. Just put a humidifier by the bed and hopefully that will help settle down the night time coughs (also due in part from the ulcer). Also giving him ginger tea and honey. Would like to also add some ACV but he won't drink it. I read carrot juice is also supposed to help with dry night cough but he's also not interested in that. I'm surprised actually he took the cabbage juice but he said it was the only thing that he could eat at first without the ulcer acting up. Before the juicer came I was blending cabbage in a vita mix. Bleech. It was awful but it still worked. Tastes very different from the cabbage juice from the the Juicer.

Also in recent news around here, Cousin J drove up from a jobby job interview in Palo Alto to say "hi". So nice to see him again. Can't help but talk a little about family and get a little sad how every one gets older, their mind changes, it's all inevitable I supposed. But it really is a blessing I think when you _know_ someone is going to go. The sudden unexpected ones leave much different impacts on you that just never goes away. Been trying to change my views on aging which was/is aging sucks to aging is awesome. Working on it.

Banksy ID up on eBay.

Not knowing who Banksy was like, the last great mystery- like not finding out a baby's gender until it's born.
Listing is here

 

Here is a photograph of a guy that people _think_ is Banksy

 Banksy once told Swindle magazine: 'I have no interest in ever coming out. I figure there are enough self-opinionated a**holes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1034538/Graffiti-artist-Banksy-unmasked---public-schoolboy-middle-class-suburbia.html#ixzz1BMLHuP2q

*Update 1/28/11 eBay ended up canceling the auction because it is _illegal_ to sell personal information on eBay.

Pumped up Kicks

So it's probably old news but I think Shazam is the best iphone app in the world. Thanks to Shazam I was able to find this little gem today:

Ok, so yeah this song is a little creepy. When Pearl Jam came out with "Jeremy" the video was pretty intense. Jeremy was inspired by a true story of a teenage boy who killed himself in front of his classmates by shooting himself in the mouth. I always thought that in the video, Jeremy killed his whole class because they never showed him dead, just a lot of blood. But that was due to some rules on MTV where apparently, they can't show kids shooting themselves in the mouth. Only now, as I googled "Jeremy Pearl Jam" did I read an article by the director who explained the final scene and pool of blood. Anyhoot, this song broaches a similar topic. Kid & guns = bad times. Jeremy came at the right time, the idea of kids and guns was scary and so the song was a little scary. Now we're so used to it, we're able to make catchy surfer songs about it. I remember in school they'd say things like "Guns don't kill people, people do". Kids kill people too (and themselves). Sad sad sad. But this song makes me happy. Yay me.

Oh hai, 2011.

I spent my New Year's Eve with some beer, my DH, and about 3 hours of Tosh.O. and I came up with a New Year's resolution. See, I love the internet. Anything I can think of, I can look it up and find out everything I need to know. I am consciously going to devote a good portion of 2011 to just looking up stuff. I've done good so far: "slow loris, Willie the raccoon, what animals are legal as pets in California", and now I can also add "Matt Groening's music taste".

If humanity could only send a handful of representatives to meet with aliens, I hope Matt Groening (or M.G.'s head) makes the list. Father of Life in Hell, The Simpsons, and Futurama, MG's music taste has often been called "eclectic" and for good reason. His range is obscene but more importantly, it's good. He's so good that people ask him to curate music festivals. I didn't know that was possible. You curate art shows, but I didn't know you could do that for music...and that people would go... I first realized MG's music in 2002 while watching an episode of Futurama. It was a regular episode- funny & smart but there was one difference. It played a song during a scene montage...I was blown away. Here on tv was a song I'd never heard of before, and it was possibly, one of the best songs I had heard in a long, long time.  I spent a long time searching the web trying to find who sang the song (pre-Shazam, people). I think it was over a year later that I discovered who it was. I'm not kidding. My searching skills are much better now. Anyhoot, turned out it was Pizzicato Five, singing Baby Love Child.



While Pizzicato hasn't done much for me personally besides this song, the Japanese duo has had a significant impact on the music scene, especially for Shibuya-kei.And while I have yet to fully appreciate MG's favorite band of all time, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, I can recognize the uniqueness and instantly realize that what I really need to do is to go outside, drink a beer, and maybe shoot something...could be a bb gun but more likely pool.


Sadly the good Captain did not make it to the new year himself, passing away just last month.