He learns well

I just set up a new desktop computer for my little brother. I downloaded iTunes for him and transferred all of my music onto his computer. Tonight he started up iTunes for the first time and guess which song he played first, out of ALL the songs...


All Hands On The Bad One


I heard the bass drum pounding through the floor and I ran upstairs just to see if it was true. It sure was.

Tastes

I recently ate a peanut butter granola bar. I love peanut butter way too much. I have been known to eat it by the spoonful. Occasionally.

Just now, I burped and it tasted like Curry, which is what I had for dinner. Gyoza Curry, to be exact.

Of course, the reason why I'm writing such a retarded blog entry is because I have a midterm tomorrow and studying for Fluids always cooks my brain.

Also, my Geomath (differential equations) professor was on the news because she's a seismologist. Go Professor Wolfe.

Put him away.

Heart attack. Some idiot with a subwoofer in his (assumption...sorry guys) car just drove by and I thought the vibrating sounds were another earthquake. My goodness. I was almost running for the doorframe. Professor Wolfe told us today in class that in the next few weeks, it's very likely that we'll have a magnitude 5.something aftershock. I'm nervously waiting for it.

I like this article because she wrote it with someone whose last name is "Brownstein."



I've also taken two classes from Professor Robertson, who is quoted here along with Professor Wolfe. The part where Professor Robertson talks about the 15-20 minutes to get the hell out of the way of the tsunami scares me. Plus, now the world knows that significant earthquakes are to be expected here. What a way to ruin our tourism industry. This is yet another item on my rapidly growing list of reasons to leave Hawaii. I'll have to start writing it out soon.

HAHA watch "Daily Show pokes fun at KITV." Hilarious.

Midterms scare me almost more than earthquakes. I know what to do, but the pressure and time constraints make my brain stall. Excuses, excuses. Shame on you, C.S. I have one on Thurs., one on Fri., and one on Tues. I had one yesterday, but it was awful. My only hope now is that everyone else did equally as awful, or (better yet) even more awful than I did.

Milestones

One Beat (the song) has been played 100 times according to my iTunes, and is the top played song out of all the songs on my computer.

Congratulations, One Beat. I haven't tired of hearing you yet, and I never will.

Other top tracks:

2. The Size Of Our Love 98 plays
3. Was It A Lie? 91 plays
4. You're No Rock 'n Roll Fun 89 plays
5. Oh! 88 plays

Interesting.

Celeste's first earthquake

Okay, that's not entirely true. We had one a few weeks ago, or a few months ago...I can't remember...but it was MUCH smaller.

This morning I woke up to strange sounds. It sounded like an airplane, or maybe like the train that passed by us when we were sightseeing in Oregon. Anyway, I sat up in bed and suddenly my room was twisting and shaking. I ran out to the living room and all the walls were swaying. As soon as I gathered enough sense to stand in the doorway, the shaking stopped.

A few seconds later, it started up again, but this time it was STRONGER. I ran to the stairs and yelled, "Dad?! DAD!!!" because I was so scared that all I could do was yell. The walls were definitely moving dangerously and the ground under my feet was vibrating and sliding back and forth. I could hear the house straining to hold itself together. I thought the whole thing was going to fall down on top of me, so I started running back and forth between my room and the living room, trying to avoid whichever part was going to collapse first. Nothing collapsed, but I got the shit scared out of me.

A few minutes later, the noise came back and I got a sick feeling in my stomach. I yelled to my dad (who was upstairs with my brother) that it was coming back (can't mistake that noise now, and never will again) and we all took our places beneath our respective doorframes. The shaking was much more subtle, but I wasn't taking chances anymore (what I did earlier was idiotic).

My mom was at work at the gas station, and she described the liquor bottles clanging against each other, and how she shut off the power to her electric stove (she sells all kinds of food too!) before running outside with another employee.

I spent the whole day at work helping my parents sell gas. We had a backup generator and no one on the island had power. People told me that the radio stations were telling everyone to come to us for gas. That soon became obvious. The line to our station went down the street at least six blocks, so I've been told. Some people had to wait two to three hours to fill up. Eventually, they started getting angry and swearing at each other and us. Some resorted to childish insults. The police came and parked their cars in the middle of the street in front of our station. I was glad because I was starting to get really scared.

By 2 pm, all of our gas was gone and me and my brother created "NO GAS" signs that we wore on our chests (he wore "NO" and I wore "GAS"). The white bags over all of our nozzles still weren't enough to convince people that we were out of gas. They kept coming in and clogging our driveway, so we decided that body signs were necessary. People started getting it after a few minutes of us bouncing up and down and pointing to our signs. Some waved and smiled at us, which was like a pat on the back sent from heaven.

I tried siphoning by mouth-suction, and I think it's the closest I've ever come to committing suicide. After countless failed siphoning attempts, I created a shop-vac-siphon-machine out of...yep, a shop vac and a siphon. It worked beautifully.

We were trying to help people by staying open, even after all of the supermarkets had locked their doors, and some obviously appreciated it and thanked us excessively, but some were awful and treated us as if it was OUR fault that they had no ice, no batteries, and no gas.

I'm so tired of the bullshit. My mom is still working right now. She's been going for 24 hours and it makes me want to cry. I'm physically tired, my legs are really sore from standing and running all day, and my hands are sore from the gas and trying to help everyone with their car problems. I got gas in the openings on my knuckles. My clothes are covered with gas.

It was a day in hell. I feel dead.

On top of all that, my dad got into an accident in my car while driving through an intersection because the traffic lights were out. He's fine, thankfully, but I need a new front bumper and left fog light.

Acquired Taste

I just found out today that Tower Records is closing. I saw the sign as I was driving past and my mom confirmed to me that they're all going to be gone soon. I'm sad to hear it. Tower is the best record store in these parts (it's time to move...). I've spent countless afternoons wandering the Tower aisles, searching for bands I stumbled across online (Sleater-Kinney included), or being adventurous and buying something completely random and unheard of. Now I'm stuck with Sam Goody, where I can never find what I'm looking for. They're not even cool enough to stock S-K. I almost have no reason to go on living now. Almost.

So, the Tower end-of-existence sale was going on and I took slight advantage of it. I finally got myself a hard copy of Dig Me Out (I had initially bought the tracks online at e-music because none of the stores had it). I also got some Pretty Girls Make Graves (Elan Vital) and a Sub Pop music video compilation DVD (Acquired Taste). I just watched a few, and was excited to see Entertain and Jumpers in full-screen mode. I skipped around and eventually got to The Thermals' video for How We Know.

Whoa. I've never listened to The Thermals except when they opened for S-K, but...

I recognized the bassline and drum beat immediately. They had played it in Portland. The studio version of the song sounded weak. I remembered getting into this song and I remembered the bassline sounding a lot more danceable.

In conclusion, The Thermals are a live band. Absolutely. If I hadn't been so anxious for S-K, and if I had listened to their albums before the PDX shows, I'm sure I would have been blown away by their performances. Stupid me.

More Battle Scars

This is what you get when you don't know how to throw hook punches like me and your partner angles the glove so you can't hit it straight-on anyway.


I still can't take pictures. I'm beginning to think that it's the camera. It refuses to focus on anything these days. It's getting on in years now. It's definitely nearing the decrepit stage. Uh huh, right.


I'm going clothes shopping tomorrow for the piano recital on Sunday. I'm thinking of a collared blouse and blazer. A hat and scarf would be nice accessories, but I'm afraid it's still too hot here for that (and always will be, unfortunately).

I'll sport the Carrie look, but instead of a guitar, I'll shred a piano. Hahahaha.

Battle scars

Today was knife self-defense. All day.

We did it all. It started off with fighting on our feet, then taking each other down, then fighting on the ground. By 4 pm, I was dead tired. I drove home and fell asleep for an hour until my dad came home and woke me up.

I got "cut." Many times. This one has been getting darker all night:




I still can't take a decent picture.

School days

Today I brought my laptop to school to work on a lab report. A friend and I had a long break so I made her watch the performance of Modern Girl from BTS. Then, I showed her Jumpers on Henry Rollins. I was jumping around the whole time and she was nodding her head.

I think we have another convert.

THEN, a guy in our class came over to us while she was watching Jumpers and he asked me what Sleater-Kinney sounds like. I was a little embarassed that I couldn't describe them to him at all. There were just no words. I think he's curious now because he got a few glimpses of Carrie's jumps/kicks (which made my friend laugh in awe), Janet's robot arms, and Corin's intense singing face. He's going to convert soon, I just know it.

When it was time for class (a lab period that we spent making concrete), my friend and I were singing. I started singing parts of Entertain and Modern Girl while I was cleaning our concrete molds, making Carrie's hand gestures with a scraper in my hand. I think I'm probably a really irritating classmate.



On a completely unrelated note (my printer just ate a perfectly good piece of paper and I'm too irritated to go back to doing homework), I really really really miss this:




We went to Lake Tahoe this past winter. I hope we can go see snow again this winter. I don't like living in a place that doesn't have four seasons. It's no fun. No rock 'n roll fun.

LeTigre is telling me to get off the internet, so I guess I should.

Making a comeback

I'm playing in a piano recital on Oct. 15. I haven't been in a recital since I was around 11 years old.

I'm the only "adult" playing. The rest are little kids (8-14??).

I've memorized two songs, but I know that once I sit down at the piano, I'm going to forget it all. Because of this, I've been trying to modify my memorizing style so that I can remember most of the individual notes instead of relying on muscle memory like I used to.

We'll see how it goes.