barbed_whispers

until i get my blog blog up and running again, i guess i should post my book reviews here:

our band could be your life: scenes from the american indie underground 1981-1991 by michael azerrad: THIS WAS SO GOOD. some of the chapters were a little boring (ian mckaye was such a tool when he was in minor threat, but he became pretty awesome by the time fugazi happened) and some chapters were not about what they were supposed to be about (the mudhoney chapter was actually all about subpop, which is fine because subpop is way more important/interesting than mudhoney, but it was not marked that way) and some bands are so ridiculous it is unreal (oh the replacements ♥), but all in all this was so good. well-researched and well-written and so informative without making me feel dumb. also, k records is apparently basically everything i have ever wanted in a label/scene/indie movement, so i need to find more on them.

carpe corpus by rachel caine: urgh. i felt like i skipped a book in this series. it wasn't bad, but it was really not nearly as good as the rest of her work, i think. ( spoilers. )

bermudez triangle by maureen johnson: this book made me feel incredibly lonely. like, it is unsettling how lonely this book made me feel. semi-unrelatedly, i think i need to add maureen to the list of authors i love as authors (and human beings) but who i do not love as writers. i bought suite scarlett when i bought this, so i'll try that one too before i make up my mind, but...yeah. at least she's in excellent company? (so far it's just neil gaiman in that club. YES I AM A HEATHEN WHATEVER.)

ps: saw up. yes, i cried. I AM AN EXCELLENT YET RUSTY AI MACHINE ONLY HUMAN. for what it's worth, it wasn't the opening montage (although that did make me pray for the first time in years), it was the scrapbook at the end. fucking scrapbooks.

i find it disproportionately amusing that five years ago i spent a stupid amount of time flirting talking about third eye blind and getting fob and death cab lyrics whispered in my ear (oh produce boy. and yes, this is the actual facts reason i started really paying attention to these bands), and now i am going to see all three bands this spring.

it is SO WEIRD to see my entire youth parading around the country, but i kind of love it. (also on tour: no doubt! gavin rossdale! the dude from everclear! getting back together: our lady peace! a bunch of other bands i didn't actually care about the first time around! and i mean, they are making a vampire diaries tv show! if someone is not trying to make 16 year old me happy, then idek what is going on. i mean, PAUL SIMON might go on tour, dudes!)

(yeah, i said our lady peace. they have a new album coming out this year and they have played a couple of canadian shows. raine is producing the album and it allegedly sounds more like naveed.)

(everclear guy's show is only $8 at hard rock! that one album pretty much defined my existence in hs, but i don't know anything else by him/them. hmmm.)

i feel completely wrung out right now, which is bad because i definitely cannot sleep like this. (and i am exhausted. i have not recovered from bad sleep decisions this weekend yet, and work is going to kick my ass starting, uh today. awesome.)

(man, WORK. work has been so good lately! my electricians have been fantastic and my boss has been less moody and we have gotten rid of all the assfaces i hated in the office and we haven't gotten yelled at, for any reason, in a while. so good! but i forgot that my coworkers' reaction to my boss not treating us like shit is to create internal drama with gossip and a lot of fail until it gets to the point where my boss notices and...treats us like shit. personally, i prefer NOT being treated like shit, which is probably why my boss likes me best- i don't gossip, i'm not made of fail, and i don't go out of my way to piss her off. hell, i go out of my way to NOT piss her off! it's a pretty novel concept, i know, but it works for me.)

so anyway, work made me extremely cranky so i came home, ate dinner, read my blogs, practiced guitar, and crawled into bed early to watch p.s. i love you. i knew this movie was gonna be a little sad, but i was not in any way prepared for the full-force sobbing 25 minutes in. which then continued pretty much throughout the movie. i just. what? SO GOOD. SO SAD. SO MADE ME WANT TO REREAD LOVE IS A MIX TAPE AND CRY MY FACE OFF.

also, jeffrey dean morgan. irish. singer. naked. yes. hiiiii.

the curious case of benjamin button is worth the price of admission just for brad pitt on the motorcycle. trust me- every single person in that theater was all "hummina hummina helloooooooooooooo nurse!"

The goal is to watch 30 new-to-me movies in 2009. I will keep track of them here.

01. towelhead (01.01.09)
02. wild child (01.01.09)
03. the duchess (01.02.09)
04. the curious case of benjamin button (01.03.09)
05. a new wave (01.04.09)
06. secretary (01.04.08)
07. material girls (01.09.09)
08. chasseurs de dragons (dragon hunters) (01.11.09)
09. p.s. i love you (01.13.09)
10. city of ember (02.14.09)
11. how to deal (02.14.09)
12. a hard day's night (02.20.09)
13. high school musical 3 (03.01.09)
14. nick & norah's infinite playlist (03.07.09)
15. 17 again (04.17.09)
16. high school musical 2 (04.24.09)
17. taken (05.16.09)
18. the perfect man (05.16.09)
19. up (06.06.09)
20. futurama: into the wild green yonder (06.21.09)
21. high school musical (07.11.09)
22. harry potter and the half-blood prince (07.15.09)
23. the princess protection program (08.08.09)
24. bring it on 2 (08.08.09)
25. bring it on 3 (08.09.09)
26. bring it on 4 (08.09.09)
27. post-grad (08.21.09)
28. 9 (09.10.09)
29. princess diaries 2 (09.12.09)
30. nightmare before christmas (10.31.09)

for dinner tonight i am having tomato soup with a side of FREE INTERNETS! <3 panera

SO MUCH TO TELL YOU. the new apartment is pretty sweet, although i have to go through a daily ritual now where one of my electricians tell me i am going to wake up one and day and be 75 and all alone with an apartment full of books. i don't really see how this is a bad thing though? ::shrugs::

anyway, in more important news, the doughty show was SO GOOD. i love how he does not have a set list and just plays whatever we yell at him <3! for his second song, he and scrap played an absolutely gorgeous version of "the only answer" (aka my favorite doughty song) which you can see here, although the quality is not stellar. (and despite the fact that i am definitely sitting in a visible spot and had the biggest stupidest happiest grin on my face, you cannot see me.) (and wow, i am just watching this cos the internet here is so slow, and the volume on his guitar is all but nonexistent! i didn't notice at the show cos i was sitting less than ten feet from him.) he played a really good mix of old stuff and new stuff (thank you, crowd!), but my second favorite was probably "down on the river by the sugar plant" cos seriously, i didn't even know cellos could MAKE those sounds! (it took them a minute to figure the song out cos he hasn't played it in so long <3) all in all it was a really excellent set and he and scrap are so adorable i can't even. oh scrap, arguing with the audience about black holes <3)

(SO MANY HEARTS TODAY!)

the conor show was ALSO good, and was made infinitely better by the company <3 i do not think i am a big fan of his- his music is just not really my thing- but i have a lot of respect for him as a musician? and some of his songs were really fun. i just don't have a lot of patience for his more emo stuff. ::shrugs::

uhhhh WHAT ELSE. i have been watching a lot of movies! i am falling stupidly in love with hugh dancy <3 and i watched the dark knight again and you know? it is still goddamn amazing, ugh. and tomorrow there will be twilight! i nearly died today reading articles about it cos holding in giggles cannot be healthy.

and i've been reading more bandom fic. and weirdly enough, i want NON-CRACK. i want non-crack, serious angst, and i want it bad, and i am having trouble finding it. (i say "weirdly" but i read the most hardcore angst i could find in lotrips too. i only do this in fandoms where the people are real, which makes me feel like a total asshole.) i found some promising links today at work (wot? delicious is totally work-related!) so maybe they will please me. and i am reading one right now that i am enjoying the hell out of (the quickest way to ruin a friendship, if that means anything to you. i can't link you because i have it downloaded, obvs.) so i guess it's not too tragic.

i am going to go watch spn download and take care of some other stuff before my battery dies. <3!!

typing from bed is SO HARD. why haven't i moved my laptop back to my desk yet?

ANYWAY.

books: happy birthday or whatever by annie choi was pretty disappointing, especially since it has been on my to read list for ages. i am tearing through into thin air by jon krakauer though, even though it looked super-intimidating.

movies: watched robin hood: men in tights last night. nearly died laughing. why is there not more cary elwes in the world? watched wristcutters: a love story tonight. i had trouble watching the beginning, but i liked the rest and the end put a big dumb grin on my face. also: patrick fugit! ilu! (he was why i downloaded it, actually. i'm glad he was in it, cos otherwise i would not have touched this movie with a ten foot pole.) next up: ghost world!

music: i am so not linking from bed, but amazon has jessie baylin's album up for 99 cents today. they also have a free album called P IS FOR PANDA with a mix of artists, including one local boy that i love. and idek how this happened, but i downloaded the album for a brooklyn girl band whose name i can't even remember now because i couldn't get music/videos to stream and they sounded interesting. i am not allowed near amazon anymore because i will download too much music which will be bad because i already have too much music, for realz.

internet: i still hate the new lj profile pages. i have a twitter, but it's mostly for watching semi-famous people. (my username is weesaw.) y'all can count as semi-famous, so who's on twitter? i think i am ready to rename my lj. now i just need to get around to buying a rename token. eventually. uh.

you guys! you guys, i watched robin hood: prince of thieves last night. it was so good and so bad ALL AT ONCE. there were parts where i literally said out loud "am i watching a parody of robin hood, or did i download the real thing?" and yet it filled my cold dead heart with such love, i can't even. (also it's funnier if you think of every alan rickman character as snape.) (except the metatron. keep snape the fuck out of dogma, plskthx.) (seriously though, did kevin costner not even bother pretending to have an accent? why do i love that man so much?)

also i went to park ave today and bought cds in honor of my new favorite holiday: NOT YET FIRED DAY! (as an aside, park ave is quite possibly my hands down favorite thing about orlando. they give me free concerts!) anyway, i got conor oberst's cd cos it came with a free concert ticket and i wanted to go see him anyway, and i got the only doughty cd i was lacking (skittish / rockity roll). for some reason when people go solo they still get sorted with their former bands, even though i really doubt people are still looking for soul coughing discs. random! (and on the not fired front: who the fuck knows? it might be that she just hasn't hired someone new yet, or it might be that we're not getting fired. we did get yelled at, and someone did try to throw me under the bus, and i did cop a serious attitude later because the new solution to the work not getting done is to make us record everything we do in about 18 places. because if i can't manage to do my most basic job functions, i can totally remember to initial 18 notebooks saying so!)

anyway, this is the best (unintentional?) nerdfighter comic ever, y'all.

funny coincidence: i was talking about sweet last night, and how the beastie boys sampled "ballroom blitz" (it's in "hey ladies" btw), and then i was watching the rest of wayne's world tonight and guess what cassandra's band plays at the end! hah, so random.

(i promise i am done for the night. i am going to watch another movie and go to sleep now, yaaaay.)

i feel like i have been away for a while, even though i have not really. oh well, a list-y update anyway:

01. on halloween i ate too much candy and had a mini halloween movie marathon. watched halloweentown (i have seen better cheesy halloween movies, but it was cute) and house (the horror movie from the 80s, not the tv show with the bitchy doctor). i had seen house before, but not since i was a kid because it was seriously the most terrifying movie ever to me. (and i LOVED horror movies when i was little. the nightmare on elm street movies were my favorites.) one of my clearest memories from when i was little is my brothers tricking me and putting house in and turning the volume all the way up so that even though i was in my room with the door closed and my hands over my ears and i was screaming i could still hear the movie. (trufax: my brothers are sometimes assholes.) anyway, it was still really good, and i remembered a lot more of it than i thought, like the hand? heh. before rewatching it, my only two memories were the rambo skeleton guy (my brain made him scarier) and "dedicated to the one i love" (the song?), but there was plenty of "oh yeah!" anyway, good times.

02. i was really concerned about watching house though, cos i was afraid i would have nightmares. and i did, but it was not a horror movie nightmare so i guess it's okay. i dreamt i moved to nyc and got my own (sketchy) place that for some reason had a giant stuffed unicorn in the living room that the previous owner had left behind. i was pretty excited! anyway, scott lived across the street and m. lived nearby too and was on the local roller derby team and i was very unhappy about living near her cos, you know, she's a cunt. and her roller derby friends could kick my ass for saying so. and then my (not real) desktop AND my laptop got stolen out of my car! that was the nightmare part. there may have been tears.

03. i watched a bunch more movies this weekend! i do not know what has gotten into me. i watched beetlejuice (i love this movie a ton), kit kittredge: an american girl (SO GOOD), ten inch hero (pretty good, if a little cheesy), rounders (i miss playing poker), and wayne's world (people were making "that's what she said" jokes in 1992??).

04. i voted on satuday! it took over four hours! wtf!

05. we went out last night and it was SO FUN. i did not have enough liquor to do karaoke (my earlier claims of "not enough liquor in the world" are untrue- one more drink and i probably would've done it) but it was still very good times. i had completely forgotten that having friends is so awesome. there may or may not be video & photos later, giraffe tongue threats be damned :D

06. i forgot to plug my alarm clock back in last night so guess who did not go to work today! my bad, but still being in bed is awesome. i need to call the gas company and crap now though cos i am moving in less than TWO WEEKS WHAT.

07. i am too lazy to edit this so i hope it all makes sense!

i woke up sick on friday. it's been going around the office and i was the last man standing, but i swear i felt fine until i got home thursday night (when my throat started to hurt). UGH.

so here is a comprehensive list of what i did this weekend:

-moved my laptop next to my bed.

-watched a ton of movies: lilo & stitch, a knight's tale, becoming jane (the one damn time i want a happy ending...), real genius (i love this movie so much), idiocracy (it was funny), unnacompanied minors (good stuff), most of across the universe (hated it, didn't mind at all when my download cut off halfway through), and burn after reading (entertaining).

-watched that patd halloween song video thing at least 100 times. (no seriously. i am watching it RIGHT NOW.)

-had the following conversation re: my descent into madness bandom:

aren (1:06:59 AM): You are now the wounded gazelle.
lisa (1:07:10 AM): and bandom is the lion?
aren (1:07:23 AM): Yes. The retarded lion of Jon falling over.

-read a patd fic involving mermaids. or a merman, i should say.

-went to the hotel cafe show. (eh. the singers were all good but the crowd sucked.)

-opened a bunch of entries to reply to but never replied because typing in bed is hard.

-finished an abundance of katherines. i liked it more this time.

-went to publix for more drugs. this has, not surprisingly, made the patd video EVEN BETTER.

-slept.

got this one from kl ages ago:

1. Comment to this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.

( she gave me D. )

( FIRSTS, stolen from tia. )

stolen from myself, cos i was reading old entries and like this one:

My journal is called i'm just a zipcode man because i wanted to use the next line of the song for my subtitle.
My subtitle is i've got my house and i'll stay in if i can because i'm a hermit! and also i love mike doughty.
My friends page is called ( but i don't care to keep my fences ) because sometimes i like to have the company of others. sometimes.
My user name is a pioneer woman without a frontier because for starters, it's a line from one of my favorite movies ever (gypsy). but also it is how i feel most of the time- i could change the world if i just knew what needed to be changed!
My default userpic is a cow wearing heart-shaped sunglasses because that's how i roll.

some nights are just not complete without a hilary duff movie.

-I'm kind of really excited for The Dark Knight. Have I mentioned that? I think I have. Anyway, it looks completely awesome. And now they have put it side-by-side with the trailer for Batman (one of the movies that defined my whole childhood) and YOU GUYS, SO GOOD.

-Bess Rogers live acoustic podcast thing! Audio only, AND video!

-We watched The Day After Tomorrow yesterday, and that meant I had to go reread This is the Way One World Ends and cry like a damn baby.

-Can you guys believe I've been in Orlando for a year? (Not a link.) More importantly, can you guys believe that Sirius Black has been officially DEAD for a year? (Still not a link.) How about that HP has been done for a year? Doesn't it feel like longer? (Not a-- Oh fuck it.) Maybe living with Ashley is like dog years or something.

-Now we are going to get drunk and make Amy watch Waterworld. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

(while walking out of indiana jones and the kingdom of whatever)

mom: do the other indiana jones movies have ( really random (spoilery) plot devices? )
lisa: i don't know, i've never seen any of them.
mom: i think i saw the first one, but i can't really remember. let's go get ice cream!

...

the trailer for the dark knight or whatever the batman movie is called looks SO. GOOD. and i don't even like batman movies or summer blockbusters or, you know, movies in general, so that is saying something!

(also fyi, bad apple is giving away free tickets to an imax showing of kung fu panda. if you want the details, let me know or check their website or something.)

also also, indiana jones made me want to watch a dennis quaid movie, because i think dennis quaid is ridiculously sexy and harrison ford kind of sounds like him. time for the day after tomorrow, Y/Y?

-jersey was good! nana's back home and they think she'll be fine, everyone was naturally overjoyed to see me, and i got my favorite hoodie back from g, so i am counting it as a win.

-finished valiant (which was excellent) and started the princess bride (which is pretty much exactly how i remember it but with more racism). can't wait to get some new stuff though!

-watched charlie bartlett last night. it was fairly mediocre as a whole, to the point where i don't even know why i downloaded it. it had one really rage-inducing line though, which i can't find online and can't be bothered to search through the movie for. anyway, what a waste of two hours. (this is why i don't watch movies.)

-kibeth has been acting kind of funky :( i need to back everything up again and have someone from dell come out to take a look at her next week. i might need more RAM (among other things- the fan is going kind of haywire and i might have them look at the dvd burner, which has never worked). how do i figure that out?

-you should look into geohashing with the xkcd kids. i am still thinking about going to orlando's meet-up today, but will probably not bother as i have so much to do and can't justify procrastinating from across town.

-on a related note, my parents will be here WEDNESDAY. i really really need to clean. and quit smoking. and clean. FUCK.

-interesting blog post about buffy and her influence on society.

i know joshua jackson is scorching, but for the love of all that is holy, please do not pay money to see shutter. you will regret it.

01. finished s1 of the west wing and started s2. could josh and sam possibly be more gay for each other?
02. watched nancy drew. shut up, it looked cute! kind of sucked though.
03. baked really really really yummy orange chocolate chip cookies. a LOT of orange chocolate chip cookies. mmmm.
04. slept in TWICE. and not only did i sleep in, on friday night i slept for 12 uninterrupted hours. TWELVE! it was amaaaaaaazing. (do y'all remember the good old days when i could sleep for sixteen hours straight just because it was tuesday or whatever? now i have trouble getting five straight hours, ugh.)
05. made pasta sauce from scratch, AND meatballs. i thought it came pretty good.
06. washed stuff and bought food, blah blah.
07. attended a six year old's birthday party. ate darth vader cake.
08. painted my nails a sparkly pastel pink.
09. cleaned my bathroom and my closet and my desk. i think next weekend will be the rest of my room, and MAYBE a new bookcase. it depends on finances and my desire to carry a heavy-ass bookcase up three flights of stairs.
10. found my birth certificate & passport! they were on my desk.
11. didn't pick a march concert, dammit. i will do it this week, i'm sure.
12. didn't find out about a donora cd. this week, probs.
13. didn't go to the post office. tomorrow, def.
14. didn't rip any cds. i am enjoying this current batch of music though.
15. mostly caught up on the internets. on everything that matters, anyway.
16. didn't finish over sea, under stone. i did read while baking though! maybe i'll read before bed instead of watching more ww?
17. didn't work on a top secret project. whatevs.
18. mostly stopped eating easter candy by the pound. only cos i ran out though.
19. def finished that bottle of wine!

i also contacted dell about fixing my laptop (the left mouse button has come loose, probably due to overuse), which will hopefully get taken care of this week. in the meantime, i am using my awesome pink mouse so that i can stop accidentally clicking on things!

(also watched the first ep of sg1. now i want to watch due south, and kowalski isn't even my favorite ray! bastards.)

now i need to go make my bed and finish doing laundry and whatnot. at least i have next weekend off again!

so, the devil wears prada? worse than the book. i feel like if you combined the movie (cohesive storytelling) and the book (interesting characters), you might end up with a good final product. but the book was too all-over-the-place for me to really enjoy it, and the characters in the movie were all so watered down that i found the whole thing dreadfully boring.

anyway, the new movie on loan from my own personal netflix is hello, dolly! (which i have obviously never seen) because he could not find the producers this morning. and i was talking to one of my other electricians today, and i said something about going back to school so i can join the peace corps. his reaction? "so you already have crazy student loan debt, and you are going to go back to school and get MORE crazy student loan debt, so you can get a job in which YOU DON'T GET PAID? lisa, you realize that everyone else in the world goes to college so they can get a job that pays a ton of money, right?" apparently i missed that part of the college fair!

but really, the school thing is still on the back burner, although i am tentatively having thoughts. i don't know if i really like the direction these thoughts are taking though, and it's not even worth talking about them until i can make some phone calls, but: there are thoughts. (well, i can say one thing, which is that i still have the same problem i had when i was seventeen: i don't have a clue what to do with my life, so maybe i'll just go get some schooling while i figure it out! problem is, i tried that and obviously figured nothing out. and also got myself into some crazy debt while giving myself an ulcer and making my need for therapy even more of a pressing concern than it usually is. hooray for college!)