meine freundin

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Subject:	Everything's Coming Up Roses
Time:	12:29 am.

It has been 374 days since I last posted to my livejournal. YIKES.

So, to sum up the past year:
-I didn't go abroad or intern, instead I went back to Cedar Point, which was *loads* of fun (that's sarcasm).
-I started working at the Historical Society of Michigan, and then I quit at telemarketing-thank god!
-I became way more involved in Model UN.
-I got a real journal, started writing in it, and subsequently stopped (see? it's not you, lj, it's me.)
-I helped Josh move to Chicago.
-I fell out of touch with a lot of my friends.
-I moved into my apartment.
-I'm currently on track to graduate in May, as long as I do an internship over the summer.
-I have no idea what I'm doing after graduation!!

Anyway, I'm mostly updating because I have my last paper of the semester due in 12 hours, and why on earth would I start a paper more than 12 hours before it is due? That is just not my style.

So I have 6-7 pages to write about Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" (which, for the record, I just bought today). After turning in that paper, I'm going straight to the Amtrak station--Josh's train arrives in East Lansing less than half an hour after my paper is due. Then, we have tickets to see Seinfeld, which we're both super excited for!

I should write this paper.

Tonight, tonight
Won't be just any night
Tonight there will be no
thought of sleep...

today, the minutes seem like hours
the hours pass so slowly
There's still 5 pages to write......

Comments: please?.

likeviolins

Subject:	Music Babble
Time:	12:08 am.

Maybe I'm getting grumpy in my old age and forgetting how to appreciate things or maybe my negative attitude towards the year itself is making itself too apparent, but this was a pretty underwhelming year music-wise. But, like, I didn't even have internet/ a working computer for 65% of the year, so let the salting commence.

Top 9 of 2009

Twilight Sad, Forget the Night Ahead

This band really hates their mom/dad/grandparents/neighbors and never got over that one instance of heartbreak, but somehow a luscious Scottish accent and distorted bass makes it all okay. In contrast to the occasional lilting and ebbing squalls of their debut, FtNA is dense and forcefully atmospheric. So atmospheric, in fact, that the songs are incredibly blistering in how muscular they are in a way that invokes My Bloody Valentine's most encompassing moments. (Actually, it's all about the Scottish accent. I dare you to listen to this album and not fake a Scottish accent afterwards.)

Hyperlink to Made to Disappear

Atlas Sound, Logos

Now, I don't think that Bradford's dream of creating that perfect marriage between warm and hazy dream-pop and the perfect 1950's pop song is exactly realized, but I think the fact that he acknowledges how incongruous the two genres he tries to meld is important. In every song, there's a bit of subversiveness brings every song on the cusp of being terribly catchy, just to pull it away into something unsettling.

Hyperlink to Shelia

Amadou and Mariam, Welcome to Mali

Just so I don't feel like I don't only listen to boring white people music. Honestly though, the spirit of Mali (even if it's sort of self-conscious and contrived) is so infectious that even my bitter heart has to enjoy how ambitious the album itself is. I mean this as non-condescendingly as possible (yes, I realize this qualifier makes me sound like a d-bag), but the way they've melded the inorganic and organic so seamlessly is really inspiring.

Hyperlink to Sabali

Wild Beasts, Two Dancers

Am I really listing this album among the best on the basis of the lead dude's falsetto? If so, where the fuck is the Adam Lambert album? Ok, no. Let's just say this album rules because it's unabashedly baroque without careening into total inaccessible drivel. Almost every moment is odd and disjointed as the band plays up the tension between some sort of theatrical Dickensian melodrama and actually being a band. It's always pretty accessible in an odd, if arresting way as the stark drama of the lyrics always speak to some level of instantly relatable abstraction that this dude's ridiculous falsetto or a million glass-breaking turns can't change.

Hyperlink to All the King's Men

Fever Ray, Fever Ray

Because Karin Dreijer is God/Xenu/the Flying Spaghetti Monster/Marat Safin and saying anything more would be an affront to her greatness?

Hyperlink to When I Grow Up

Grizzly Bear, that one with the unspellable title

I'm sure everyone on my f-list has got this one covered. I'm not even going to use the "overrated by college kids, hipsters, and Starbucks; underrated by everyone else" assessment I always use in situations like this, because this album is good enough.

Hyperlink to Ready, Able

Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

See above. Also, the 1-2 punch of naming your album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix + having a song called Lisztomania is enough to make this album qualify.

Hyperlink to Lisztomania

Tim Hecker, An Imaginary Country

Obligatory, isn't it? After playing the shit out of Fennesz's Black Sea until my brain probably shaped into the same glacial movements, this album is really a nice change of pace. In contrast to the contortions of the Black Sea, this album is all about texture and dichotomies--warmth in the midst of the ominous, color in the absence of space, lushness in minimalism, etc.

Hyperlink to Where Shadows Make Shadows

A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Ashes Grammar

So, like, I'm always bitching about how noone ever gives this band the attention it deserves and then I almost forgot to add it! This close! (I couldn't even find a link to a song I wanted to embed D: The only song they had up without them dorking-out was that Panda Bear-esque song). This album is like one-big symposium of gauzy, layered shoegaze. You should learn to love it, damn it.

Hyperlink to Ashes Grammar/ Ashes Math

Other Albums that Were Great, But I'm Too Lazy to Think About Why

Black Dice, Repo
DM Stith, Works in Progress
Avett Brothers, I And Love And You
Dinosaur Jr, Farm
Girls, Album
Mastadon, Crack the Skye
Built to Spill, There is No Enemy
Black Heart Procession, Six
Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport
Polvo, In Prism
Clientele, Bonfires on the Hearth

Conclusion

Now tell me what I forgot. I didn't forget Xx (on the basis of the ridic. name specifications), Animal Collective, YACHT, or Florence and the Machine. I'm still deciding if I forgot Bitte Orca or Discovery's album or not, you tell me, Solange Knowles.

Comments: 1 gave in - please?.

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