| This is me with the words on the tip of my tongue and my eye through the scope down the barrel of a |
[May. 22nd, 2009|01:31 am] |
...gun
I try not to be a music elitist in general. I scorn people who react that a band has "sold out" or who disdain anything mainstream.
But Taking Back Sunday... it's a really odd situation for me. Their major label debut was their third album, Louder Now, which was also presumably their chance to make it big as a mainstream act. I saw them live in my first year of uni before that album was even on the horizon. My Chemical Romance, who obviously are massive now, were supporting them. I hadn't heard of MCR, but in the months (and years) after that I certainly heard a lot of them.
The thing is though... Taking Back Sunday's third album sucked. Their first two albums, the ones when they were small enough to play at the Refectory in Leeds but big enough that a major up-and-coming band like MCR could still support them, had a really distinctive sound that I absolutely love. On a basic level it's pretty much pop punk like any other band does, but two vocalists layered witty lyrics over each other in different ways - sometimes harmonies, sometimes alternating and playing off each other, and sometimes entirely different melody lines running counterpoint. Meanwhile, the songs were good, solid pop music with memorable choruses, without always being slaves to a verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure. Everything clicked. And as an added touch, the song titles are hilariously, self-consciously emo-tastic, with names like "Timberwolves at New Jersey" and "Set Phasers to Stun" that bear no obvious relation to the songs themselves. It was quirky and fun.
Most importantly, every song on both their first two albums is a classic. There's pretty much nothing I would call filler. Every song begs you to listen to it again.
Their third album, Louder Now, pretty much lacks all the qualities I mentioned above. All of them. There are a few good songs, but it's mostly just generic rock music, and most tracks have a bland chorus that consists of the song title repeated over and over (and over) again, which I think is pretty unacceptable no matter what your approach to popular music. It feels like they completely lost track of what their sound was and what they were trying to do with their music, and they replaced it with random boring whatever. And thus they blew their chance at being a major, mainstream force to be reckoned with*, while I sat there wishing more people had listened to their first two albums.
(* Yes, I realise it was probably much more complex than that, and that there were lineup changes and such.)
Why did I bring this up? Basically, I've spent the past two days listening to Taking Back Sunday's brand new fourth album, New Again, which is a massive improvement on Louder Now but still lacks the clever use of two vocalists from the first two albums. (It's such a large difference that I feel it must have been a conscious one. They can't have not noticed that this was such a major part of their earlier work and yet is completely absent from their current work. I don't understand they would make such a decision, but you know, artists do strange things. But I digress.) I like it, anyway. I think it's a good album with some brilliant tracks on it.
What I object to is this. The "must-have album" is Louder Now? The song you hope they play is boring crap like "What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost"? DID YOU EVER LISTEN TO ANY OF THEIR MUSIC BEFORE 2006???
And thus I feel like a horrible elitist. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 5th, 2009|02:40 pm] |
At this point I don't care if it's one more book, three more books, eight more books, whatever.
I just need this book in my hands right now. |
|
|
| Resolutions |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|04:40 pm] |
Well, I was going to open this post by reflecting on the resolutions I posted a year ago. Turns out I, uh, didn't do that. It was the year before. Oops! Shows how good I am at this.
Anyway, I want to get my resolutions for next year written down now so it's done and out the way. I've actually been thinking about them at some length over the past few weeks. I was building up to a big list of things I want to do next year. Funny thing is though, they ended up all being things I want to do more or better than I am already. Not things I've never done before, or that I've completely neglected, but things I just need to put more effort into to achieve what I want to.
So I have one resolution this year: Be less apathetic and more diligent.
This applies to a variety of different facets of my life. From the gravely important (looking for a job -- both a job for after I've finished my course, and a part-time job for during it) to the relatively trivial (dressing better; keeping my room tidy) to the very personal (working more on my novels; doing a better job of keeping in contact with my friends), I feel that I can be a happier person if I take the bull by the horns instead of deciding everything is too much work for me to bother with.
...While being careful not to expect too much of myself, of course. Down that road lies only madness.
Well, we'll see how well I stick to it! |
|
|
| A winner is me! |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|10:25 pm] |
I did it! I am an official NaNoWriMo winner!
My verified word count (which is approx. 200 words more than Word tells me, for whatever reason) is 50,304. Sadly this is mid-chapter rather than the nice stopping point I had intended to get to before the end of the day, but I realised I'd need one more chapter than planned for that anyway, so I had no real chance of getting to it tonight. Hopefully in the next few days.
Either way... time to relax. Ahh. |
|
|
| This is apparently what goes through my head when I can't sleep at night |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|02:29 am] |
Rejected ideas for Millennium Items:
Millennium Wii
Less sturdy than the real thing due to lack of Nintendium
Millennium WoW
Destroys every life it touches!
Millennium Plastic Explosive
This sacred item is, uh, one use only
Millennium Tampon
Gold isn't very absorbent.
Millennium Twilight
Isn't it gorgeous?
Millennium Johnny Yong Bosch
With the power (ranger) to be in every dub ever made
Millennium LiveJournal
With only the power of ANGST
Yeah I'm done now. |
|
|
| Translations of Wicked songs in Japanese |
[Oct. 5th, 2008|01:13 am] |
I've started a small pet project of retranslating the Japanese version of Wicked back into English and subtitling it to put on YouTube. I mainly find this interesting because the Japanese lyrics are decidedly... wonky in places. Some songs are adapted better than others, but with the amount of syllables it takes to get a sentence out in Japanese (and usually only one allowed per note when singing, even with vowel sounds that get merged together in everyday speech), they really struggle to get all the information across. And then sometimes they just don't even try.
But anyway, so far I've only done two. The original English lyrics are at the top, and the romaji Japanese lyrics are at the bottom along with my translation.
One Short Day:
Defying Gravity:
Enjoy! |
|
|
| Help! |
[Aug. 4th, 2008|06:17 pm] |
So I'm trying to put together a last-minute cosplay for the ball at AmeCon. My default ingredients are "black suit" and "dark blue suit" -- I'd ideally rather not have to buy another suit jacket for it, and neither am I capable of making anything from scratch.
My questions are twofold. One, is there anyone who has a black suit and no other plans for the ball that would be willing to put together a last-minute Elite Beat Agents cosplay and do it as a group? There's one other person I might be able to convince, but it ideally needs to be a group of three. The basic costume is just a black suit, white shirt and black tie, plus some accessories that can be bought at any costume shop. It'd be dead easy.
Two, any other suggestions? They'd be much appreciated! If I can't figure out something that's both worthwhile and sufficiently easy, my options are either not to bother (which feels like a shame, but isn't the end of the world) or reusing one of my previous ball costumes (probably Tohma, since the Tuxedo Mask costume is so slapdash that I'd much rather try and improve it if I were to ever wear it again, and I don't really have the time now). |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|04:35 am] |
|
I love how half my friends page is a string of posts going "OMG!!!" about this week's Doctor Who. |
|
|
| YES |
[Jun. 25th, 2008|11:12 am] |
I did it! I got a 2:1! I can do the MA!
So much relief p_q
I really should go and talk to the department since I'm not sure if I need to do anything to (re)confirm that I'm taking the course. I also might go into town to acquire hayfever medicine, since it's got really awful the past couple of days.
In other news, I finally started my job at Sports World yesterday. It was okay, I worked in the shoe department and served people looking at trainers. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 22nd, 2008|10:11 am] |
Just three more days until I find out my degree classification. Must do anything to keep my mind occupied until then.
I just got to the end (one ending, anyway) of the SNES game Clock Tower. I believe all of its sequels have been released in English, but the original is only available as a fan translation. It's one of the earliest survival horror titles, released before Resident Evil (by half a year) but after Sweet Home and several Alone in the Dark games.
( Lengthy review of Clock Tower ) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 21st, 2008|10:52 am] |
( Latest MGS4 score: No kills, no alerts )
Still quite a way from getting the coveted Big Boss emblem -- I'd have to do the same but in under 5 hours, without using any recovery items and on The Boss Extreme difficulty where your tranq ammo is very limited. Probably not gonna happen, right? Nonetheless, I don't feel this is too shabby.
Now that I've beaten this game three times in the space of ten days, I could probably do with taking a break... |
|
|
| Ahh, I'll buy it at a high price |
[Jun. 12th, 2008|05:20 am] |
Recently I've been catching up on the Resident Evil series, one of many things I got into quite late but have developed a mini obsession with. While it's still fresh in my mind, here are a load of my thoughts on the games I've played so far. This is ridiculously long and I doubt anyone will read it all, but I wanted to get it written down anyway.
I played the GameCube remake of the original game last year sometime. I had mixed feelings about it, but I'd really like to play it through again (and actually finish Chris's story this time) and also play the original version for comparison. It didn't help that it took me a while to get used to the controls, which was obviously no longer an issue when I played the subsequent games. So more on this later when I feel I'm in a better position to judge it.
But from what I have seen of the original, Resident Evil 2 sticks pretty closely to the basic formula of its gameplay: Pick one of two characters, get stuck in a building with limited ammo and plenty of zombies, progress by solving bizarre puzzles that really have no place in the world of the game, gradually reveal the backstory through diaries and occasional cutscenes, and later find a lab for a final showdown with some giant mutated thing. It does all of this pretty flawlessly, and I had a blast playing it.( More about RE2 )
Resident Evil 3 felt like an inferior rehash of 2. ( Lengthy rant about RE3 )Still, it was nice to play as Jill again, and it was interesting to see how the story fitted around 2. As more of the same you can't go too far wrong.
I then skipped ahead a bit and played Resident Evil 4. ( Mostly praise for RE4 )Currently, RE4 takes the #2 spot in my favourite RE games. Leon's a lucky guy to be in the best games of the series. Nonetheless, I can't help but wish they'd made more of a Resident Evil game and not changed so many other fundamentals along with the necessary mechanical upgrades.
Finally, I spent the past few days playing Resident Evil CODE: Veronica (to keep me distracted until MGS4 comes out). ( Ramblings about CV )Overall, CODE: Veronica is inferior to 2 but with superior graphics. The complaints I have about it aren't massive, but they do add up to a game full of little annoyances, when the same doesn't apply to 2 or even quite so much to 3.
So of the main series, all that's left are RE0 and revisiting the original RE at some point. It looks like I'll actually be caught up before the next one comes out, which is a plus! I should probably also play more of Umbrella Chronicles for its additional story details, even if the story does generally just consist of "There's another outbreak and another lab and Wesker's back and OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE FIVE MINUTES TO ESCAPE!"
Over and over again. But hey, it works. |
|
|
| Lyrics meme |
[May. 16th, 2008|07:50 pm] |
This "guess the song from the lyrics" meme that's been going around looked pretty fun, so here's my version of it. Ganked from everyone, but ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) syuria in particular. Incidentally, there's a ton of music on my PC that I've barely listened to if at all, so I had to fudge it a bit and skip over things I didn't know (and instrumentals of course). I promise I didn't skip anything for embarrassment reasons.
step 1: put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
step 2: post any damn line I like from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song. (Note: I love how this has evolved from "post the first line" as it's continued up my friends page)
step 3: post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
step 4: strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
step 5: looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
1) I've got a dying urge to feel the way you do / Too close for comfort, bed and breakfast in a spoon
2) Got a weird thing to show you so tell all the boys and girls
3) Vacation's where I wanna be / Party on the beach where the fun is free (chibi_takato)
4) Don’t you know the cold and wind and rain don’t know / They only seem to come and go away
5) I went to a whore / He said my life’s a bore (ishimarumakoto)
6) Some folk’ll never eat a skunk, but then again some folk’ll (monoboo)
7) Yo te atrapo, tú me atrapas para siempre / Lo que quieras puedes pedirme (artimecion)
8) Shizumu yuuhi ni sakebi tsuduketa hibi yo / Mienu ashita ni hikari wa... (monoboo)
9) Don’t get me wrong, I love you / But does that mean I have to meet your father? (monoboo)
10) I won’t be back / I still love you, but / I won’t be back anymore
11) Here we go for the hundredth time / Hand grenade pins in every line (chibi_takato)
12) I cry watching the days / Can't you see I’m a fool in so many ways
13) Carve your name into my arm / Instead of stressed, I lie here charmed (zalia)
14) Last chance to piss it all away / Nothing but hell to pay / When the lights are going down (ishimarumakoto)
15) You’re not everything to me that matters / My whole world when you leave won’t shatter
16) Migi te ni shiroi kami / Riyuu naki boku no e wo egaita tochuu de nage dasu
17) I close my eyes / Oh God I think I’m falling (syuria)
18) Hiru to yoru to ga gyakumawari / Toki no mekki no shitsurakuen (syuria)
19) Here we go again to stage the greatest show on heaven and earth / Come on, get your money's worth
20) Playin' spin the bottle with my mom / I watch COPS with no pants on
#7 is ridiculous, yet there are a few people on my FL who might actually get it. Do me proud, LiveJournal. |
|
|
| Yatta! |
[May. 15th, 2008|12:21 pm] |
The worst part of my exam period is finally over. I had one of my Core German exams, my final Japanese writing exam and even the dreaded German for Business exam. All of them were a mixed bag, but none of them felt like total failures (and GfB in particular wasn't nearly as bad as I feared), so hopefully it all turned out okay. The Kafka essay was sadly a bit of a disaster, but at least it's in now so I can put it behind me. Two glorious weeks off now before my final exam, and the feeling of relief is overwhelming.
Last night I slept for 14 hours.
On an unrelated note, has anyone reading this been to a gig in the rebuilt Wembley Stadium? What tickets are worth buying? I need to try and book Madonna tickets tomorrow morning, but I have little/no idea what will give us a good view and what will just be pointlessly far away. |
|
|
| "I don't wanna fuck about, I want a good time and that's why I'm out" |
[May. 10th, 2008|01:29 am] |
Since I last updated my LJ, I have had both my German and Japanese oral exams. I'd describe both of them as "mediocre".
( All about my oral exams )
So, 19 days to go! The next five of which will be rather unpleasant. God, it's only 5 days? I have to write a 3000 word essay in German and revise (read: cram) for three exams that I'm thoroughly unprepared for, one day after the other. Come Wednesday afternoon I'm either going to be very worn out or despairing at how badly my exams went. Or both.
On a different note, tonight I took an entirely undeserved break (which I hoped would be more deserved when I bought the ticket) to see a band called Hadouken! in the student union. Obviously I was drawn to them by the awesome name, but I downloaded some of their music the other day and it turned out to be addictive as hell, so I decided on a whim to see them play live. Here's one of the videos that sold me:
The gig was a lot of fun, even if I went into it pretty exhausted from insufficient sleep and the hot hot weather. It's music you want to dance to, and I did much dancing, plus a little moshing too. The crowd were really into it, so the atmosphere was great. The crowd were also a lot more colourful than I'm used to! The bands I typically go and see, everyone's dressed in black (and only black), which I'll admit is kind of boring even though I do the same, so this was a nice change. There was even some eye candy: the vocalist is pretty cute and he spent most of the set with his top off.
So, yeah, great evening. It almost makes up for having to write that godforsaken Kafka essay tomorrow. |
|
|
| [insert fanfare here] |
[May. 6th, 2008|06:30 pm] |
This morning I handed in my dissertation! Hooray!
It's a bit shit. Actually it's a lot shit. Part of the problem is that the scope of my title is much too broad, so there's too little of everything. (I realised far too late that I could have written a much better dissertation on a subtly different topic.) Partly, though, it's just that I ran out of time doing it at the last minute and left several sections - rather important ones - feeling decidedly incomplete. I think the main point of my title actually got submerged amongst things that should have been less significant.
But still, it's well-presented, it's within the word limit, and it includes a contents page, references and a bibliography. If it makes something resembling a coherent point amongst all that then I've at least jumped through some of the hoops. I'm pretty certain that I'll pass the module at least.
So anyway, I then slept for the entire afternoon. Now, time to prepare for my German oral... |
|
|
| Fun Nintendo-based timewasting |
[May. 2nd, 2008|04:46 pm] |
I've been reading through an insanely nerdy (yet awesome) blog that Jordan linked me to, all about little details of the Mario universe: Coin Heaven. It's sadly now defunct, but reading through archives has been fascinating and hilarious, both for the articles themselves and some off-site things the author linked to.
A favourite of the latter is some random blog's Top 10 Nintendo Romances of All Time. A few parts of this are just classic, including Mario and Peach's list of treasured memories and the implication of Wario and Waluigi as romantic partners (we sure as hell don't know what else their relationship is meant to be).
My favourite part, though, is in the comments. Someone asks: But aren't the Ice Climbers brother and sister? and gets the response: "Look, you don’t have a lot of choices when you’re up there on the mountain. Things happen. Popo and Nana have nothing to be ashamed of and I will not have you judge them."
(Sadly, I looked it up afterwards and it seems that Popo and Nana's relationship is ambiguous but implied to be friends/lovers and not siblings. Still a great comment though.)
Something else I came across was the Wikipedia talk page about Birdo, which included the inevitable tl;dr arguments about his/her gender. (I typically go with "his" since the SMB2 manual was perfectly clear about the matter, and more recent English-language materials have only used feminine pronouns for the sake of censorship.) The great thing I found buried in there was a link to the Japanese character page for Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, which includes the following quote about Birdo/Catherine:
"Appears to be Yoshi's girlfriend -- or is that boyfriend!?"
Thank you for brightening up my day, Nintendo of Japan.
Why yes, I am supposed to be working on a presentation. |
|
|
| Witness my life of failure |
[Apr. 2nd, 2008|09:54 pm] |
Today I set myself the most minimal target I possibly could. I decided that I would go to the library, get some subject-relevant books out, and start working on this particular section of my dissertation that I know is really crucial (since my supervisor commented about it specifically). Not complete it, not even get a significant amount done, merely start it.
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
I sat in bed all afternoon wasting time on the internet. I had to go into uni and meet up with Marisa to get her hoodie money, and I intended to go to the library before that and get some books out, but I left the house far too late for that. So then I sat and chatted to her and her friend for a couple of hours, and then I found that the library was shut. Then I went home and wasted more time on the internet.
Waste of a day is wasteful. I did get free pizza though. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|12:26 pm] |
|
Just as I'm printing out corrected versions of the two remaining pages so that I can hand this bloody form in, my printer credits run out. And the web page for buying printer credits won't work. Argh > |
|
|
| Things I have been watching lately |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|01:56 pm] |
I've been in a mood to watch anime lately, and in the time I have off I feel determined to actually get some watched of my big metaphorical mile of unwatched things. I know, that's not a massively profound ambition, but it helps me to feel like I'm not entirely wasting all this time spent putting off the important work I need to do.
As a result, I have finished 3 series in 3 days, though two are only 13 episodes and I'd already watched half of the other.
First is Rumbling Hearts (a.k.a. Kimi ga Nozomu Eien). The premise of this show intrigued me: It's about the awkwardness of someone waking up from a coma after 3 years, during which time her boyfriend started going out with her best friend. For some reason what I expected out of this was a lot of melodrama and backstabbing, but instead there was just... nothing. Almost nothing happened over the course of the series. It took several episodes to even get to the "premise" point I just mentioned, and then things carried on in autopilot for most of the remainder with little that resembled actual plot. Disappointing.
Much better was Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, the sequel to the original series that I finally got round to watching after 2 years or so. I enjoyed it a lot. On the whole I'd say it improved on the first series, if only because that started off so slowly whereas this was action-packed right from the start. And Nanoha sure is action-packed, with beautifully animated fight scenes spanning several episodes, full of cool weapons and massive explosions. (For those not familiar with Nanoha: Despite the name and the naked transformation sequences, it's not really a magical girl show.) I loved the new characters (especially the adorable Vita) and their backstory, and it was cool to have Nanoha and Fate fighting side-by-side.
However, apart from a few scenes about Fate going to Nanoha's school, there was very little screen time for either of them outside of battle. Didn't Nanoha have some kind of personality before? There wasn't much evidence of it in this series. Without conjuring up bad images of StrikerS (or what I've heard about StrikerS anyway), I honestly think Nanoha A's could have stood to be 26 episodes, with more character development and silly comedy for everyone.
Finally, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. I watched about 10 episodes of this when it was airing, and while I enjoyed it I didn't quite get into it as much as everyone else. Still, I thought I'd better finish the first season before the second one starts airing, so over the last couple of days I made my way through the remaining episodes. I got more into it as it went along, and I really enjoyed the episode 24/25 special that was full of things happening.
On the surface, Code Geass does very little wrong. The character designs are top-notch (everyone knows how much I love CLAMP), the story feels like a Gundam series but set on Earth, there's a large cast of interesting and amusing characters, and the conniving protagonist echoes Light from Death Note. The only thing that's really wrong with it anything to make it stand out (other than Pizza Hut, I mean) - the X factor that gets me hooked on it. Watching it every week and talking about it with other people would probably help, which is the other reason I'm looking forward to the second season.
On an unrelated note, I am in a mood to bake. Charlie inspired me to try making shortbread, and while the result failed miserably at being shortbread, it was still quite yummy. Now Ben is making things and motivating me to do more. What's next on Baccano! |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|