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“Black Books” 2000

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Musical Alphabet Challenge - E

Eet - Regina Spektor

You spend half of your life trying to fall behind. You're using your headphones to drown out your mind. It was so easy and the words so sweet. You can't remember; you try to move your feet.

Her voice is so perfect it makes me cry.

[hanger-princesses]

Torei

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Day 02 – Your least favorite song

Mamba - Vielä on kesää jäljellä (Meille vai teille)

Now here's a song I can't stand. Of course there are many others as well, but this one I've hated with passion for years. Not only is it horribly annoying, it gets stuck in your head every single time. Which in itself is horribly annoying. Every year I dread the end of summer because they always start playing this on the radio around July and keep going well into September and it just drives me nuts. (I googled their album and got that picture. Don't want to use the original album cover because why would I want to see the face of Tero Vaara? There is no reason, I'm damaged enough already having had to listen to this song today.)

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Who sleeps, really? If you’re a proper adult person in the 21st century, how can you relax, at all? Your mind keeps churning. You think, “What if this thing happens?! What if that thing happens?! What if they happen together?! What if I lose my job?! I hate my fucking job! But what if I lose it?” Your mind is a hive of worms. And worms don’t live in a hive, so it already feels unnatural. You lie in bed, beside your partner… “What if I died?!” If you don’t have a partner, you just think, “What if I died? …Okay, I would be dead.” But if you do have a partner and family, you’d think, “What if I died? How would they cope?” They wouldn’t! They would be out in the street in half an hour, stealing food from seagulls mouths! Or worse! They WOULD cope!

Dylan Moran, Yeah, Yeah (via keepcalm-beawesome)

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Day 01 – Your favorite song

See-Saw - Obsession (.hack//SIGN OST)

This wasn't really a difficult choice, people just don't understand how beautiful this song is, I swear. I had it as my ringtone for ages and got so much hate for it, apparently most people without emotional attachment to this anime just hear it as noise, not music. It's my favourite song from my first favourite anime that has my all time favourite anime character and the most precious femslash couple, it is the ultimate awesome and Kajiura Yuki will never not be brilliant.

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Musical Alphabet Challenge - D

A Drinking Song -The Divine Comedy

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Musical Alphabet Challenge - C

Crying Lightning - Arctic Monkeys

With folded arms you occupy the bench like toothache Saw them, puff your chest out like you never lost a war And though I try so not to suffer the indignity of a reaction There was no cracks to grasp or gaps to claw

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I think it's fair to say that Dylan Moran has changed my life. In a very small but important way. It's been happening very gradually, during the past few weeks. I've spent a lot of time watching his stand up things on Youtube lately and, I don't know, somehow he's made me feel a lot calmer about a lot of things.

I don't get so stressed out over stupid things like dirty dishes or dust bunnies or not eating more healthily. I mean, I've always been pretty indifferent towards things like that anyway but I've always felt a bit guilty about it. That I should at least try to care about stuff like that more and be more organised and shit. But somehow this random guy from Ireland with cool hair has made me feel better about myself. I no longer feel a bang of guilt when I don't get up till late in the evening and I'm now completely okay with having a "fuck it, that'll do" attitude towards cleaning.

Because really, none of those things matter. We're all gonna die anyway and it's pointless to waste time and energy on things you just don't care about. Yeah, I'll keep my place clean enough to be safe to live in and stuff. But I'm not gonna keep it all neat and tidy and organised. I'm not going to bother with keeping up appearances. I have other things I'd rather do with my time. I'm going to read books and spend time with people I like and also, did I mention, I'm going to revolutionise sociolinguistics (or at least get a PhD in it). Fuck the rest.                

[hanger-princesses]

Musical Alphabet Challenge - B

Bite Hard - Franz Ferdinand

I may be lonelier now but I'm happy alone- honest. It ain't lonely alone What would we talk about anyway? No I never resort to kissing your photo, Honest, I just had to see, How the chemicals taste there honey.

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I discovered Franz Ferdinand when I was 16 and it's been my favourite band ever since. What I love about their music is that their songs, even the ones that sound relatively simple the first time you hear them, sound different every time I listen to them. There's always something I had missed before and the smallest things seem to be able to turn the meaning of the song upside down. Even the songs I don't like at first tend to grow on me because there's always something that catches my imagination. Actually, usually the songs I don't like that much at first often end up to be my all time favourites later on. (It's often like that with music though, isn't it? If you like a song immediately you usually get bored after listening to it a couple of times. The best ones take time and effort to get into.)

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It's like Christmas has come early, I finally got my shinai this week! I have to mark this date (28.11.) down in my calendar and make it an annual celebration, my shinai anniversary. It is a huge deal to me because kendo is a huge deal to me. Some people think it's weird I like to smell new things but my shinai smells really good. Not sweaty at all. Yet. I have to take it apart and oil it etc., which I am not so worried about. Putting it back together is going to be the real challenge, last time I battled for at least half an hour with the tsukagawa (aka the kendo condom) and in the end didn't tighten the tsuru enough. This week's practice wasn't a huge success since no one had told us the practice had been cancelled because there was some celebration at the school. It was already over though so we decided to stay anyway and piled up all the chairs and then cleaned the floor using a squeegee and someone's forgotten shirt. Everyone else was more advanced but I got to try hiki strikes again and learned something new too. Just don't ask what because embarassingly enough I forgot what it's called. And I still can't bow properly. I mean how difficult can it be? Very difficult, or so it seems. I'm so nervous about the graduation and I will surely forget to do something really basic. Like bowing. We all forgot to bow when we practiced. We are so fucked. But last week the scary 侍 gave me some compliments, he said my men uchi was 5th kyu level already and that I will soon surpass him. As if! But I appreciate it. We should do police kendo more often because that's where I seem to do stuff right. Last time we were supposed to rate our hits from 0 to 100 and to be on the safe side I said I thought mine was around 70 just to be told it was definitely over 90. I am happy I don't always fail! Only most of the time. At least my hand has healed. I stabbed myself with a knife (by accident) exactly where the shinai presses against your hand. So that wasn't the most pleasant thing ever. At least haven't had to do anything traumatizing for a while. Like when I had to lead the warm ups. Or we did kirikaeshi for half an hour. And 日本人 hasn't pushed me around in a while. Though I must say, first I am always shocked when someone touches me but you really do remember to keep your arms down after dô when someone shoves them there once.

I reckon everyone in kendo is pretty awesome though. Anytime we actually have time to talk about anything unrelated everyone just seems like such a nerd. We have talked about WoW, D&D and anime. I feel much more at home at kendo practice than I do at any English students' meetings. Maybe why I don't attend those anymore.

Anyway, here's a close up picture of my new shinai! I have the coolest bag for it too. I'm only a bit afraid to carry it on my back now it's gotten cold and the ground is slippery. I fall down a lot and I don't wanna accidentally snap my shinai in two! It's for us onna no hito so it naturally has flowers. Ok, maybe it's a bit cute, I admit. Now I only need a pink tsuru.

[hanger-princesses]

Musical Alphabet Challenge - A

Alive (reprise) - Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical

What a feeling to be so alive! I have never seen me so alive! Such a feeling of evil inside - That's the feeling Of being Edward Hyde!