Alcohol, Dirty Malls, Pensacola, Florida Bars.

I haven't even owned Manchester Orchestra's new album Simple Math for 48 hours now, and I am completely and totally infatuated with this wonderful, beautiful, astonishing record. Really, Music Blogosphere, can we shut the fuck up about Odd Future for two seconds and start talking about this brilliant band? Because no one does, really. Not enough anyway. Every single song on this record is fantastic. Go listen to Virgin, now, because I've yet to come across anyone--anyone--who dislikes that song. Also, Deer is so...not what you'd expect from manch orch, but it's beautiful. Pensacola is great, too, and Simple Math, and y'know, the whole lot really. It's different from Mean Everything To Nothing. But don't worry, I love Mean Everything To Nothing also, so it's not too much of a departure from their old work. Manchester Orchestra are one of those rare bands at the moment where, not only do they make records that work and flow as albums rather than one song and then another(y'know what I mean, album-buyers, yes?), but it's almost like the albums themselves flow together. I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child flows into Mean Everything to Nothing, and now Mean Everything To Nothing flows into Simple Math and really, that's a vary rare things in bands nowadays. It's very rare that I just want to sit down and listen to a group's entire discography in chronological order and do nothing else...but this is definitely one of these rare times. So really, go buy the record. I strongly suspect you will adore it.

Oh yes and I mentioned I went and fucking saw this band live on Tuesday in my last post, yes? Ugh, the nonchalance with which I said that...I had no idea just how brilliant the night was gonna be. Fun on a weekday, yes. O'Brother opened. They're a sort of wanna be grunge-rock-prog thing, in other wides it's pretty much a a solid half hour set of power chords, long hair, and head banging. Even if their music is somewhat unoriginal and same-y, it's too pleasing to the ear to pass up to be honest. Funnily enough, I'd seen them about a year ago, opening up for Manchester Orchestra again. I didn't like Manch Orch then...I went for Biffy Clyro(who, it just so happened, Tweeted on Wednesday that they were backstage at this gig. OHMYGOD. band I love seeing band I love with me in the room.), who were also opening at that earlier gig, and who I probably love a bit too much. I fell in love with manch orch after then. So anyway, O'brother was quite good, to be honest, though I'm not sure my parents were as pleased. Nevermind! Waited for too long(long night--legs and back in so much pain after). Cage the Elephant were co-headlining and after ages, they finally came on. Okay, I'm gonna swallow my pride here and say even as someone who went to this to see Manchester Orchestra, Cage the Elephant blew everyone else on the bill out of the water. I can't say I'm manically obsessed with their music, sure it's fun to listen to but I don't always find i too captivating, but they are phenomenal live. This is mainly down to the brilliant, adorable, and endearingly rock n roll lead singer that is Matt Shultz. First time I was introduced to Matt Shultz was on an episode of never Mind the Buzzcocks, shoved in between Stephen Fry and Matt Shultz. It's hard too look too impressive in between these two brilliant human beings, but what with his air guitar and over exaggerated southern drawl and extreme hyperactivity that was almost certainly down to chemical influence of some sort, he was wonderful. Same goes for tonight! Yay, drugs! Interestingly, Matt's ditched the platinum blonde hair and skinny jeans look, and has now opted to become a sort of Kurt Cobain doppelganger. In appearances, anyway. And very Ian Curtis in his stage performance. In a very superficial way, both of these blended in very well together, and he stormed through an amazing set, screaming, running around, and kicking balloons onto the crowed. maazing. They played In One Ear, 2024, Aberdeen, Tiny Little Robots, Rubber Ball, Indy Kidz, Ain't No Rest for the Wicked, and several others. The best moment was the ending--the oh-so-predictable but still remarkably enthralling stage dive on matt shultz's part. It was arguably one of the more interesting stage dives I've witnessed, though I didn't catch much from my angle. But oh, his poor oversized Blondie tshirt, it was absolutely ripped to pieces. Like, it was barely holding on by one shoulder. Amazing. Manchester Orchestra, while they did not live up to these levels, were brilliant nonetheless. Very loud and energetic and Andy hull is brilliant in every way. (Matt Shultz is the epitome of cool in an over sized Blondie shirt. Andy Hull is very much the anthithesis of cool in a Katy Perry t-shirt.)(Also, he kinda bitched at the crowd for crowdsurfing too much. 'This isn't the fucking Warped tour, so fucking chill out. I'm playing a slow ass song here.)(And he was grumpy because they ran out of time and someone dropped his guitar and not many people were interested in the new album, But good anyway!) They opened with the ever fabulous Virgin, and then continued with Shake it Out, Pride, 100 Dollars, In my Teeth, April Fool, Now That You're Home, My Friend Marcus, the River, The Only One, Simple Math, Everything To Nothing, Ive Got Friends, Pensacola, and Where Have You Been. I got a t-shirt and the night was incredible and now all I want to do is listen to the new album all the time.

Got myself sick with something or another, and got to stay off school Wednesday. Slept in till ten. Very happy with that. I needed it. Normally I can just about pull myself together the day after a gig, but I was too tired that day. When I say 'pull myself together after a gig', it sounds infinitely cooler than it actually is. It's not so much coming to school looking like Ke$ha as it is wearing a sweatshirt and being too tired to even bother with social communication the entire day, and then going home and having loads of sugar.

On Tuesday in art I decided with doing the seasons as my theme for my project. So creative, I know. My thing sucks, nothing I draw is even distinguishable, and I read through most of the lesson.

Health today was the most brilliant health lesson in the world. We did a silly little activity(minimal participation required, wonderful), and then went for a lap around the school. ('Let's go to the senior parking lot and see if we can catch anyone smoking pot'. My teacher said this was her hidden agenda). It was a nice day outside. We were supposed to go to the library but the computers weren't working, so we went to the caf and did nothing. Then she rounded us up and we watched a video.

Science is the usual nightmare. Taxonomy, animals, phylums, classifacations, et cetera. Luckily, on Wednesday people were able to seriously sidetrack the teacher with questions about frogs so the quiz got moved to Monday. Nevertheless, I seem to be completely clueless on just about everything and therefore will fail miserably. A fun weekend ahead of me, yes.

In World Civ we finished our video on Martin Luther and then went onto one about Joan of Arc. The Joan of Arc one was less interesting and slightly romanticized. Can we just establish that she wasn't some nonconformist feminist or whatever this made her out to be, as much as she was a lunatic. I'm sorry. She's interesting but she's not brilliant. We went to Debate Day, which was to some extent interesting. They discussed, 'Is the outdated technology at the school hindering education'? Short answer: no. When someone questioned the feasibility, money-wise, of updating all technology the arguing team went on about how this is just an ideal situation they're propsing, not reality. This is ridiculous because in an ideal situation, science quizzes don't exist, laxbros and Glee Kids are kept well away from me, and the caf is quiet enough for me to read. See, anything can exist in an 'ideal situation', silly people.

English is more Tale of Two Cities. I've had one vocab quiz and one test, both went reasonably well I would say, and more analyzing this poor book to death. Pretty basic stuff, for the most part, though. We've done one more fishbowl so far, but it was spread over two days and I missed one of them--very lucky. On the second, I went up twice! Admittedly I only go up when the other shy girl goes up, but at least there was a noticeable change in my behavior, right? The whole idea still bothers me because these aren't discussions, it's just quick fire saying whatever the hell comes out of your mouth, no matter what it actually means or if you contribute anything. So very shallow. I totally played into this, everything I contributed was so fucking contrived and juvenile but the teacher isn't the deepest soul out there. (for example, I misued the word 'sensationalist' at one point but she's the sort to think that I've at least heard the word, so that actually shows a good vocabulary or something.which it obviously doesn't). And she keeps going on about drawing parallels to like, Libya, and stuff and it's funny to watch fifteen year olds pretend they know a damn thing about it. (I really don't either, but at least I'm honest, you know? If you pretend to be knowledge on these matters to look good in some manner, as far as I can tell it's just disrespectful to the situation at hand). Sigh. Fish Bowls are the worst.

I've got a very stressful weekend ahead of me. Gonna listen to Single Math yet again, night!