Music and Me

Luckily for me, music is something I can obsess about. I can control it (what I listen to, when I listen to it, and how loud I listen to it) (Answers: Indie, all the time, and LOUD). And it makes me happy.

In January of 2006, a shocking, barely memorable three years ago, I started writing music reviews for this site: www.theredalert.com. The stuff I wrote at the beginning is now pretty horrific in retrospect, but that’s the sign of a good writer, right? Not liking one’s past work indicates that I’m growing. Or at least that’s what I tell myself so I don’t seem like a self-loathing heathen.

Anyway, working for the site meant that I received emails that were the ‘inbox’, that is, a list of all the cds that my editor had received and that we, the writers, were able to choose from. Once the inbox list was obtained, writers could use the MySpace pages of the bands to determine which albums they wanted, which my editor would send to us. The most logical solution for me was to take these lists (sometimes as long as six pages) and go through them one by one, listening to at least three songs for a minimum of 15 seconds each, sometimes up to a minute if the vocals took longer to kick in. I would then categorize them into ‘Yes’, ‘Maybe’, and ‘No’. If my list of ‘Yes’ were shorter than 17 thaen I would borrow from the ‘Maybe’ list. Now, this can take days, even weeks, so by the time I finally turn in my ‘Yes’ list I usually only get about 8 back. Which is fine, ‘cause I usually only do one a week (I should be writing an album review now. But there’s an hour before bed, so we’re cool).

One time, I was halfway through a list when my ex (boyfriend at the time) closed the window and DIDN’T SAVE IT. I was so pissed. Days of work. Gone. And he wouldn’t apologize. Bastard. (He’s been up to more bastardly things lately. Seriously, why does anyone put up with him?).

Anyway, my editor (who after about a year and a half became my real work boss) and I were talking about my inbox-going-through-methods and he was shocked to learn what bizarre things I was up to. Apparently, he and other writers just kinda look around and pick what intrigues them or what they’ve heard buzz on.

Yay OCD!

Here’s a list of my top favorite albums of 2008 for those less musically/OCD blessed, followed by my lists of past years to show how much music has taken over my life recently:

1. The Submarines: Honeysuckle Weeks
2. Jeremy Messersmith: The Silver City
3. The Billionaires: Really Real Forever
4. The Virgins: S/T
5. The Ting Tings: We Started Nothing
6. Mates of State: Re-Arrange Us
7. The Republic Tigers: Keep Color
8. MGMT: Oracular Spectacular
9. Oh Darling: Nice Nice
10. Fleet Foxes: Ragged Wood
11. Lightspeed Champion: Falling Off The Lavender Bridge
12. Cherry Poppin' Daddies: Susquehanna
13. Flight of the Conchords: S/T
14. Vampire Weekend: S/T
15. Electric Presidents: Sleep Well
16. Thao and The Get Down Stay Down: We Brave Bee Stings and All
17. The Explorer's Club: Freedom Wind
18. Colorstore: Bonefish: The Legend of Mahogany Cass
19. Grand Archives: S/T
20. She and Him: Volume One
21. Switches: Lay Down The Law
22. The Spinto Band: Moonwink
23. Sia: Some People Have Real Problems
24. Minipop: A New Hope
25. The Breakup: Eat Your Heart Out EP

07 list:

1 Teenager by The Thrills
2 Misery Loves Company by The Lovemakers
3 Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley
4 An Ocean in the Air by LoveLikeFire
5 Structure and Cosmetics by The Brunettes
6 The Alcatraz Kid by Jeremy Messersmith
7 Where You Went by Okay Paddy
8 The Bird And The Bee

06 list:

1.The Oohlas/Best Stop Pop
2.Muse/Black Holes and Revelations
3.Morningwood/Morningwood
4.The Strokes/First Impressions of Earth
5.Mellowdrone/Box
6.Weird Al/Straight Outta Lynwood
7.The Tender Box/The Score
8.Arctic Monkeys/Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What
I’m Not

Christmas and Me

I know. I don’t have a job (well, I do, but I can’t have it, so no money is coming in), and therefore I shouldn’t spend money on presents. But I can’t help it.

On Tuesday, after interviewing a band, I went to the mall. I arrived at 4. I was back in the car with 20 presents, that is, all my Christmas shopping, by 6:30PM. By 11:30 that night, they were all wrapped. How’s that for OCD?

I’m not religious; I was brought up in a house where god was not discussed. Religion hardly came up until I got really into Star Wars and was like “Ooo, the Force”. But this doesn’t mean that we didn’t celebrate Christmas (or Easter for that matter). I have really fond memories of waking up in the middle of the night as a small child when I needed to go to the bathroom and seeing the warm glow of the Christmas tree lights coming from the living room.

I know that I shouldn’t get a tree this year because I don’t have the money for it and I know it’s bad for the environment. But it will make me sad if I don’t get one. And I got this cool flamingo ornament for my birthday from my friend. And another friend last year was disappointed when I didn’t have her over the help decorate the tree. I didn’t know that was something she loved. But now I do. So on Monday I’m gonna go by a tree slightly shorter than me (last year’s tree was my height) and then decorate it. I’m excited. Then I’ll have a place to put the presents instead of the corner of my room.

Also, maybe that will make all this cold, sitting around in my house a little happier. Seriously, being in this house during the day is miserable, since I refuse to turn on the heater, since I don’t want to raise the gas bill while I’m unemployed, and make my roommate pay for it. That seems cruel. Maybe I’ll go put on my wool hat.

Fish and Me

Oy. If I’d known a simple pair of fish would be this hard, I would have thought twice about insisting on them.

When my ex and I moved into our apartment, I thought it would be nice to get some plants for the balcony and some fish to make it homey. We moved in at the end of 2004. Flash forward to Christmas 2006. He got me an aquarium and a gift card to get some fish. Awesome.

We bought two swordtails, and a fiddler crab. Hokaido (seen above) and Honshu and Mr. Crab. Only a couple of months in, during a routine tank cleaning, Hokaido was feeling harassed by Honshu in the bowl that we’d put them in and jumped out. Four feet down to the carpet. Sigh. The ex wouldn’t touch Hokaido. I had to fill a glass with water and come save him. In fact, the ex wouldn’t do almost anything involving the fish. Wouldn’t reach his hand into the tank to fix an escaped plant, wouldn’t help the later-bought Shikoku when she got stuck in the pirate ship, and, when we returned from dinner to find that the recently felled Hokaido was being eaten by Mr. Crab, had me save the body so we could bury it.

I cried. I know. It’s ridiculous to cry for a fish that I’d only had for a month or two. But the experience was pretty traumatic.

So traumatic that I still dream about fish that are able to ‘fly’ and escape from their aquariums. Ugh.

We didn’t want Honshu to be lonely, so we bought Shikoku (these fish are like $3), a female. At some point we also bought Ms Crab, but she died after not too long. Then Mr. Crab died. Then Shikoku had babies. Oy. What a morning that was. I was late to work ‘cause I had to save all the babies by putting them into the net. Then she had another batch of babies, so we let the old babies out and put the new babies in. The old babies got sucked into the filter or eaten. There was only one of that batch that survived. We named it Rocky. It turned out to be a girl.

Then we broke up and I wound up with the fish because I asked if he wanted any of them (lots of babies) and he said, “Don't think I can take care of a fish tank right now”. Whatever that means.

Anyway, I got rid of some of the babies by giving them away to a reluctant fish store. I hung onto a few because when talking about them with my landlord she said that she and her son might be interested in them.

In February, right before leaving on a trip to Vegas, I noticed that Honshu had something black on his lungs and wasn’t eating. Blurg. I warned my roommate that he may not make it through the weekend, and sure enough, the call came on Monday morning. I buried him with my friend in the plants outside my apartment.

I gave away more babies later to a different reluctant fish tank when they started to get big. But I kept six females, three for me and three for my landlord’s son. It turned out one of them was a male that just hadn’t matured so it looked like a female. Blurg. So eventually, once they had set everything up, I gave them two females.

Here’s where things ramp into high drama. One of those fish was pregnant from her sneaky brother. She had babies. She and her sister started to eat the babies. The nine year old son was horrified. I said I would come and collect the babies. But in the meantime, my landlord had put the two fish in an open plastic container. Of course, one of them jumped out while no one was home and ‘drowned’. So we quickly replaced it with my last ‘un-named’ fish (Shikoku and Rocky are mine).

The following week I got a call in the middle of improv class that the two fish were freaking out and probably gonna die. By the time I call her back they’re dead. They died at the same time. Weird.

So I gave the kid all but four of the babies. That’s the last I heard about them.

My own four babies escaped their net and only one has survived. That fish is the new Rocky. I’m waiting to see what gender it is before I name it, ‘cause if it’s a boy, I have to give it away.

About a month ago they gave me two goldfish they’d won at a fair to keep because they’d put them in the tank with the babies and they’d tried to eat them. So they went in my tank and lasted maybe a week. I only found one of them.

Ew. I still haven’t told them. Maybe they’ve forgotten.

Then my fish had more babies, thanks to that sneaky brother, and I was like ‘That’s it’ and took him to the reluctant store to give him away. I never named him for that reason.

So now I’ve got three main fish and then a ton of anonymous babies. I cleaned their tank on Monday, which always stresses them out, and Shikoku doesn’t seem to have gotten over the shock. She won’t eat. Although I did switch fish foods . . . so now I’m thinking:

Do I have a picky fish?

Ugh. Seriously. Who knew. The problem comes from the fact that they don’t breath air. A cat is easier than all I’ve gone through. Probably more expensive, and not allowed in most apartments, and the new bf is allergic to them. But oy. What an ordeal. Don’t do it. Don’t get fish.