hello all
my mom brought back the new Bombay Bicycle club record when she came back from England. Also, journals and candy and stuff. I miss England like hell when I see things like this. Also, she got to spend November 5th(which I miss more than almost anything about that country) at Lewes. Lewes is a little village with no particular significance but they have these huge 5th of November shows there every year. Like, tens of thousands of people are crammed into this village, it's like one huge, terrifying, spectacular riot one day a year. In a way it sounds like something i'd like to go to, though it'd scare me also. Oh well.
Music time.
I hated this song at first. If you do too, I suggest you bear with it anyway. It really grows on you. also, great lyrics.
The English presentation was a nightmare. I think I might hate someone in my group. I try not to hate people, really, because it's usually just such petty things they do that annoy me. I know it's not worth it, but I can't help but become wound up by some of the things people do. Like, this girl in my group, she made cupcakes for the class. See my last post on why this is absurd and I hate it. Then, I am the one forced to hand them out to people. I, who had nothing to do with this nightmare. And when every single person in that room asks and laughs why are we doing this? I have to say “metaphoric significance”. Yes, it has metaphoric significance, guys. That was embarrassing. And she made me talk even though I had little to say during the whole thing and I’m not even going to go into, yet again, why this is absolutely awful. And to top it all off? I looked at sparknotes at one point a few days ago to see if I was going in the right direction(confirmed). Yes yes sparknotes is bad but i use it very infrequently and, most importantly may I add, I use it to check where I am, not to add extra details to what I have. Maybe that’s a silly distinction, but I want everyone to note that distinction before I continue. Noted? Okay. Well, something on Sparknotes was a reference to something, something specific, in the Torah. A metaphor. Fair enough, although that’s way above this level of analysis. And this girl, she takes this reference and fucking uses it in her discussion. She does not know the Torah well enough to make that ‘religious connection’ on her own, might I add. She’s someone who thinks and acts like she’s much more calm, much more intelligent than she could possibly be. I know everyone uses sparknotes to some extent, but within reason, because they have the brains to know that looking like her is not a good thing. And lying for your grades is one thing, I don’t care about that as much as lying to other people in your position. Most people who use sparknotes, they will be honest about it to others in the class when the teacher isn’t looking. This behavior, I could not care less about; it’s innocuous and I don’t mind. Lie to the teacher for a better grade, that’s fine, but be honest to your classmates. However, when that girl makes that statement in the discussion and other people come up to her and tell her she’s smart, she says thanks and nothing else. Here, we have someone lying not only to the teacher but to others in their own position in order to look better. That kind of behavior, to me, is the kind that’s really kind of vile and unacceptable, and it pissed me off so much that someone could lie in such a blunt manner in order to look like they have some sort of semblance of literacy or intelligence or, like, biblical knowledge. I hardly come off looking wonderful from this story for a number of reasons; I am aware of that. But that girl’s behavior is just completely awful to me, it’s hard to describe. In a way, I don’t want a good grade on this project. A C would ride fine with me. Give the awful girl what she really deserves, why don’t you, I’m more than happy to have my grade suffer because of it.
That bio quiz was terrible, absolutely awful. That was the only thing we did on Thursday and it made me very stressed for the entire following weekend. Got it back on Monday and it’s fair to say that it was more than low enough to lose me my A in that class. Today was a very bad day for me, all things considered, shitty bio and even more shitty algebra grade, too. We’re talking about enzymes now. We did an activity about breaking tooth picks, saturation point and stuff like that I think were the focuses. In a weird way, it was kind of cool. I want my A back, if nothing else than for my own self-esteem(which is embarrassingly based a lot on grades and stuff) to be back to the fairly stable place it was before.
It’s only been a few days, just one long weekend, which is why there isn’t much to report from the school standpoint. That’s good, I suppose. Ah, yes, but on Saturday? I went to see Manchester Orchestra. And it was, genuinely, incredible. Like, one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. And I haven’t seen anyone in a couple of months at that point, so it was great. My third time seeing Manchester Orchestra. First time, the March before last, I went for the support band, and then I got their 2nd album for Christmas and fell in love with it. Then, saw them in may right before their third album was released. But between then and now I became totally familiar with all of their work and they became one of my favorite bands. We got there early and got a really got place to stand, and I got merch, and then the 1st opening band called White Denim came on. And technically they were good, but their entire set seemed to be one long guitar solo, so they weren’t really for me. The second band to come on was The Dear Hunter. Now, I have heard an awful lot about this band, and the vast majority of it is really, really good. Like, this-is-the-best-band-of-our-time type appreciation. And I’d never actually listened to them before, so I was really curious to hear what they were actually like. And they had one of those big, like, eight-piece bands with all these guitars and synth and stuff, and when they played it really was just a lot of sound to take in. It’s kinda prog and post-rock at the same time, if that makes any sense. They only played a few songs but the response was amazing, and they have this one track which I now know is called We’ve Got A Score To Settle, and you all need to go and listen to that asap. After the show, after Man Orch, I got their record(signed, no less, by two of them!) and was kind of puzzled at its astronomical price. But I learned later on that, among other projects this band have done (frequently pretentious and self-indulgent to an extreme, but worth a listen to all the same), their most recent venture was to release a set of nine EPs, each with the title of a color and four songs describing the emotions and imagery most people associate with that particular color. I had unknowingly bought the entire nine EPs as a set of three CDs, the entire thing titled The Color Spectrum. But I don’t mind because this is something that’s really, really worth listening to. So far I’m only really familiar with black, red, and orange, but I’m getting further into yellow and blue and green, and I’ll finish with violet, indigo, and white at some point. They’re genuinely quite diverse in their sound but they manage to keep everything tied together. Like, Black is rally intense and almost metal like in its sound, red is very much for the Manchester Orchestra fan, kinda still as angry and intense as black but more fuzzy and less intimidating, less synth too. Orange is as close to classic rock as could be imitated. Yellow is beach music, naturally, and as far as I can tell as far green and blue are kind of like Hawaiian, lo-fi things. Really, really great stuff. It’s pretty easy to see I’ve fallen head over heels about this band, and I’ve been listening to them obsessively since the gig, but I digress. Manchester Orhcestra remains the focus for the moment. And a good thing too, because they were every bit as amazing as the Dear Hunter! They opened with April Fool, arguably my least favorite song on Simple Math, but it’s kinda loud and easy to listen to, so it works. They played a bunch of Mean Everything to Nothing stuff after that, including Shake It Out(absolutely and totally wonderful in every way), In My Teeth, Pride(odd choice), and 100 Dollards(again, slightly confused, but I can’t complain). They played an awful lot of stuff from that record—they did I’ve Got Friends later in the night, which is one of my favorite Manchester Orchestra songs, and I think I recall them playing Everything To Nothing. Oh, and they do this really amazing live version of The Only One where it starts off very slow and continues for the entire song, except for the last twenty seconds or so, when they play it normally, that is, fast and energetic. I quite like that. After a lot of that, out of nowhere they played a song off their first album called Sleeper 1972. It’s melodramatic but I like it. And then, my god, they played what is not only my favorite Manchester Orchestra song, but one of my very favorite songs of all time. It’s called Colly Strings and it’s off the first album so they only play it very occasionally, making it even more of a gift to hear it live. And it was so perfect even though Andy changed some of the lyrics a bit, and it threw the crowd off, it was everything I always wanted it to be. And I never thought I’d hear that song live! It’s difficult to describe how wonderful it is to hear it in concert, and you know, I think the rest of the crowd agreed with me on that. It was a little bit impossible to top that for me, but they played Simple Math, Virgin(best live song), Pale Black Eye(underrated), Pensacola(there’s a bit where there’s no music and the band shout “alcohol, dirty malls, Pensacola, Florida bars” and it’s essentially the cornerstone of the song, and this time everyone knew this song and we could all sing along), oh and Dear. Dear was unforgettable. A lot of the crowd had started to clap as the song started, and the thing with Dear is they played it very slowly and were building it up and going faster and faster as things continued, although it’s not a particularly fast song anyway, and the clapping crowd were baffled by this and went on with their thing anyway. You know, large crowds of white people who can’t keep a beat clapping. In the second verse of the song, the protagonist of this song(Andy claims this isn’t from personal experience here) addresses “everybody who has paid to see his band”, and talks about how it still confuses him and he doesn’t deserve it and everything. And Andy changed this to “dear everybody who claps when they see my band/it’s fucking up our timing, you’ll never understand/I acted like an asshole cause it’s ruining this song/” etc. I love Andy, he’s so casual and funny and everything on stage. He seemed pissed at the crowd, claiming other bands can keep time but theirs can’t and that they’re not very good musicians or whatever. He’s insecure, but lovely. Oh, and they ended with River. River is a great song. And I came out of that gig totally infatuated with that band again, literally thinking it one of the best gigs I’ve been to. Absolutely amazing. Oh, and I’ve never been to a gig before where the group of college guys beside me shout “peace be with you!” after every song. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to the individual, I suppose...but it’s hard to deny that was a unique sort of heckling.
It’s been good to have this long weekend, Friday off and everything, although homework now awaits. Good music will assist me.
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