Ooh! Shiiiiny!

Fuck Yeah

violetsquirrel — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:58:33 GMT

So last night I had this awesome dream that Miyavi came to Perth for some reason and I met him.

OH WAIT NO that totally happened.

YEAH SO. Miyavi is here for the One Movement Festival, which is a music festival with a special focus on bands new to Australia, from Asia in particular. This is a large part of why it's in Perth- Perth is closer to most of Asia than the rest of Australia is (and is also really beautiful and an awesome venu for things, of course). The Festival doubles as a kind of conference for various people involved in the music industry. Aside from performing at the two-day festival over the weekend, Miyavi was scheduled to perform at one of the "industry showcases" which is basically where a LOT of bands perform one after the other at about five different places in the city simultaneously, and it's open to the conference delegates and any members of the public prepared to pay extra above and beyond the festival ticket to be able to get into them. In particular the venue he was playing at was one of three that are basically part of the same building.

I got there SUPER EARLY because I thought that was probably a good idea and parking in the city is a dodgy prospect at the best of times, but mostly because I wasn't sure what was happening with getting in and tickets and wristbands and things and I wanted plenty of time to sort it out. So I sat outside the venue and heard him do his soundcheck, which was Universe, What's My Name and Futuristic Love. Which really surprised me, because I figured he was probably going to have time for about five songs and that three of those would be Survive, What's My Name and Torture, but for some reason I thought the other two would be ones that have been released, not just ones I only know from the live streams from the Tokyo concerts (I was REALLY hoping for Ame ni Utaeba but I wasn't even sure if he brought Coba with him to play it).

Eventually I got the ticket situation sorted out, which took about 20 minutes so I'm extra glad I got there really early, met up with some friends and wandered in. I got in there at about 7:50 and he was meant to play at 8pm, but all the staff had said they thought it was definitely running late as per usual for events like this. But of course in true Japanese style, at 8pm or so we heard that really distinctive guitar strum that signals MIYAVI IS ABOUT TO BE ONSTAGE. We didn't pay too much attention though since it was so sudden with no introduction or anything, but then he was onstage playing! Just him and Bobo (who was not wearing pants o_o), no Coba.

The venue was pretty empty since he was the first performer of the night and people were spread out over the whole building and a couple of other places around town, and naturally barely anyone knows who he is in this city. So my friends and I kind of stood a few metres back from the stage while he launched into Universe. Universe is one of my favourites of the new ones so that was pretty cool, I was pretty happily singing along even though I've only heard it a few times streaming. After he finished he announced who he was and then gestured at us and told us we could come forward. So the few of us went right up to the stage while the people who didn't really know him hung back. Soo we were like a metre or less away from him for most of the show which was pretty fucking awesome. I was practically close enough to read the new tattoo he got for the baby. He kept grinning at us and shooting us looks and things.

He didn't really talk much since he didn't have time, just played through Survive, What's My Name, Torture and Futuristic Love. He announced the names of the songs before he played and mentioned that Torture is his latest single and the album coming out soon, naturally. I was pleased to note that after he started there was a steady flow of people wandering into the place, and barely any if all leaving once they got in there. And considering there were at two other artists performing in the same building and another couple not far away, and no one knew who he was, I think that's a pretty big win for him. Not much dancing even during Futuristic Love but it's kinda hard to get people dancing at this kind of show anyway.

I've got to say, I've been to a few viskei shows and been pretty damn close at a couple of them, but this was the first time I've really come away with the impression of "yeah, that guy's just another person". He really is just person-sized and is an actual person! Albeit an extremely beautiful and extremely skilled and energetic person with great stage presence, but really just a person. Possibly part of it is because it's kind of hard to idolise someone when you can see their skinny little ankles, and his tattoos aren't quite as sharp as I was expecting. The ones on his fingers are definitely fading but as far as I'm aware that's why finger tattoos aren't meant to be such a good idea especially if you're a guitarist.

Anyway, after he played we hung out in that room for a while and then decided to go look for him in the more open area of the set of venues since we figured there was a pretty good chance he'd be hanging out as the rest of the industry people were. Sure enough we found him and his various crew hanging out near the bar chatting to various people. He'd taken his hair extensions out and thrown on a jacket so he actually looked oddly normal. He doesn't even stand out as particularly tall in this country, which shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. I think I'm just so used to the concept of him as REALLY TALL even though most people are tall to me since I'm pretty short.

So we kind of hovered and waited for a break in his conversation, and kind of descended upon him for autographs (there were about six of us) although we did make an effort not to all crowd around. He was very gracious about the whole thing and made sure he spelled all our names right. He mentioned he was surprised to see so many of us there so I said we were surprised that he came to Perth since no one ever comes to Perth and he went "Oh yeah, I heard about that". Someone's definitely been teaching him the ways of Australia (he used "stoked" yesterday!). Then he said he was just going to be hanging around the place, and we weren't sure if he meant "I'm hanging out so leave me alone" or "I'm hanging out so come chat" so we assumed the former and left him alone after that, aside from sticking around the area and trying not to laugh at his obvious iphone addiction. I kind of wish I had spoken to him in Japanese because it would've been easier to judge his tone if he was speaking that rather than just trying to get the right words out in English. But anyway, it was pretty awesome, he was very cool, and now I have a signed thing :D

And I get to see him again tomorrow :D :D I suspect he'll play the same songs, but I gotta say Universe and Futuristic Love are two of my favourites from the unreleased ones so I don't mind hearing them again at all. I'm really glad he didn't do Gravity, I was worried he might and that wouldn't have gone down so well. But of course diving into the deep end of a place where no one has any clue who he is and making himself known and loved is practically his specialty by now so of course he knows how to handle the audience here.

violetsquirrel — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:48:49 GMT

HOLY SHIT MIYAVI IS PERFORMING IN PERTH IN THREE WEEKS

HOLY SHIT

ETA: I AM GOING TO SEE HIM TWICE TICKET GET

PSA

violetsquirrel — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:18:53 GMT

Ways of contacting me! Because depending on your usual default way of trying to contact people I might appear distant and hard to get ahold of or you might be wondering why I even feel this post might be helpful because I'm clearly around so much.

The best, easiest, usually fastest way to get ahold of me is email! My email address is the same as my LJ username at gmail. Commenting on my LJ or PMing me on twitter is the same as emailing me, I get notifications for both. I also get notifications for facebook but depending on my feelings on facebook and ability to remember my password I might not actually get around to replying even though I'll read it.

In terms of chat programs I'm almost always on gtalk although the status may be a lie. If you email me I can haul myself over to MSN but it's too clunky for me to like using all the time these days compared to gtalk.

I am better about my phone than I used to be! But I still might not look at it for a day or week on end so try email first. I also usually have my phone on silent so messaging me is probably a better bet than trying to actually call. I usually have my phone on me and charged and try to check it at least once or twice a day during term time, but during the holidays all bets are off. Seriously, email is probably better.

Home phone is... you'll probably have to leave a message and I don't check the messages so I'll only find out you left a message when my mother checks the messages. May or may not be more reliable than my mobile phone but on the other hand the response you get is probably going to be email/SMS anyway so you might as well use one of those methods.

One day I might update about Life Things but mostly I am kind of just using twitter for that.

violetsquirrel — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:37:17 GMT

Haha I haven't posted in here since March! I am still very much alive, just mostly using twitter now I guess kind of? It's study break hence the procrastinating on actual studying by posting here, but also there's a meme going around which I think is kind of cool, so Name a fandom and I'll give you some unpopular opinions about it.

In other news, my cat is the most adorable cat.

Five things meme!

violetsquirrel — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:20:34 GMT

If you ask I might give you five things I associate with you or I might not I make no promises.

From penchaft:

Japan:
When I was a kid I thought Japan was fascinating because it was the only country I knew of that was "modern" like the west, but wasn't colonised and whose people still had a completely different culture. Obviously I know the world is a lot more complicated than that these days, but that's where my interest started. I would have learned Japanese in highschool if I could have, but I couldn't so I learned Indonesian (which I'm glad about because I don't think I ever would have learned it otherwise). And then in highschool I got into anime and later visual kei and that brings us to my next topic I guess.

Androgyny:
I don't actually remember how interested I was in androgyny as a concept before I got into viskei but I think I was? Because I've been interested for a very long time in how it's possible for someone to be completely straight or gay when to me it seems like there's just so much overlap (I think I understand it a bit better these days having read a few discussions about it but still). One of the things I came across last year while researching for my dissertation really struck me, it was one of those things that seems really obvious in retrospect and makes everything make much more sense. That was the theory that there isn't just a masculine-feminine scale, there's a scale of how gendered someone is at all. You can be androgynous because you're both very masculine and feminine at the same time, or because you're neither. I should have realised this earlier because Japanese even has two different words for androgyny that map onto those two ends of the scale fairly well (which were mentioned in the piece I translated, I think I translated them as "neutral gender" and "androgyny" although that's not entirely helpful).

Law:
When I was very little I wanted to be a vet, but as I grew old enough to realise that being a vet was less adorable kitties and more sticking your hand up cows I decided I'd rather study law. It was a pretty simple choice and I've never particularly felt the need to question it, it just always seemed like the thing I wanted to do. I don't actually particularly want to be a lawyer but I really enjoy studying law and I don't think I'd mind being a solicitor particularly if that's the way my life ends up going. Mostly I like the direction it stretches my mind in when we analyse cases and apply case law to potential scenarios and I think I'm pretty good at it. If I was a better student and therefore more organised about actually learning the law that I'm meant to be discussing and applying then my marks would be much better than they are.

Firefox tabs:
I'm much better about these than I used to be! I used have 80+ open at any one time but at the moment I only have 35 open between two windows. I'm a terrible procrastinator so I have a tendency to open tabs to things that I'm sure I'll get around to later.

Phoenix Wright:
Someone once commented that the Phoenix Wright games must be really accurate if I, as a law student, loved them so much. Actually I love them partially because they don't even pretend to bear any resemblence to ANY form of coherent legal system, much less a realistic accurate one. I love the sheer ridiculousness of them and their characters and cases, while retaining a certain level of internal logic and intelligence. One day I hope my Japanese is good enough that I can play them in it, because as far as I'm aware the characters and the jokes are different in the Japanese and that would mean I'd get to play and enjoy them all over again in a new way. But it's gonna be a long time before I'm good enough to play a game that's so finely focused on the exact meanings of words.

From auntpol:

Japan:
As much as I like being in Japan, I don't think I could live there permanently. I'm not prepared to give up the privilege of living in a country that's not racist towards me and where the main language is my native one. I do really like Osaka but that's probably at least partially because it's the first time I've ever lived in a big city. I love Perth, but it is pretty quiet here. Osaka is huge and vibrant and I love the atmosphere around Shinsaibashi/Nanba, which is where I spent most of my time hanging out. And there are still places I haven't been that I want to see there. Being in Japan is also fun because of the sheer novelty of being surrounded by my fandom, which is basically unheard-of in Australia. I'm sure that would wear off if I lived there for a while but channel flicking to MTV and catching the broadcast of a concert of visual kei band is awesome. Not to mention actually being able to go to the concerts of my favourite bands. Visual Kei is a fairly fringe subculture (I'd compare it to the Goth subculture here in terms of how much the average person knows about it) but it's still definitely around. There's a section for it in most CD shops, it's on TV, it's on posters in train stations.

Clarinet:
I started learning clarinet in year 8, but stopped fairly quickly because I was overwhelmed enough by starting high school at a new school and everything. And that would have been that except that halfway through year 9 I mentioned it to a family acquaintance, who suggested that there was no reason I couldn't take it up again now that I'd settled in. I thought that was a good idea so I did. I did TEE music (specialised in it for my end-of-highschool-exams for those of you playing at home) which means I reached a pretty decent level of ability, although I was fairly mediocre on the scale of people studying TEE music. Then I didn't play for about three years until a couple of things spurred me into joining a local community concert band, which has been one of the best decisions I've made in the last few years. I love playing in an ensemble and doing my bit to create something that sounds amazing.

Genderfuck*:
This came with a note that Amber picked it because of the Which-One's-A-Girl Game, so I'll talk about that! Screwing with peoples' perceptions of gender is basically the favourite pastime of most visual kei fans (Usually taking the simple form of "Hey, she's hot!" "That's a guy" ".......") and I took inspiration from a post about it on a fan comm to make a game out of it. I've been refining my choices of photo for the last few years and the current version is here. If you haven't seen that version before feel free to guess in the comments (one of them is a girl, no really, no this isn't a trick question, yes only one). The previous versions are here: 1 2 3 3.1 4 so you can see how it's changed. I'm still not entirely satisfied with it and I'm always on the look out for more pictures to use for it. I'm thinking of maybe doing different difficulty levels too. I like springing it on people because I find it fascinating the way people are so hung up on gender and sex when really they're kind of arbitrary (everyone except the girls (who are both physically female and identify as women except for one who IIRC identifies as neutral) in those pictures are male and identify as men). I've done my best to fix it so that there is no logical way of working it out, so in each new version I've learned from the reasonings people have given me and done my best to make them not work again.

Also the icon I'm posting this post with is really outdated in terms of what pictures and terms I should be using, I should fix that.

South Africa:
My father was born and raised in South Africa. My mother was born in Zimbabwe (well, Rhodesia) but studied in Cape Town and met my father there. South Africa is the reason why I was raised being told that Perth is paradise. I've been there once and Cape Town was quite pretty and I've got relatives living there still but you couldn't pay me to live there.

Laughing:
Hmmm... I'm not really sure what to say about this. I laugh pretty easily, and I also smile and giggle when I'm nervous (which can actually be useful when I'm doing something public-speaking related, I've been complimented on seeming friendly when really it was pure nerves). I think I have a tendency to laugh after I say something if I'm unsure about what I'm saying or trying to lighten the conversation, but I've never analysed it that closely.

PSA

violetsquirrel — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:07:55 GMT

Don't give me nice things, I'll just fucking lose them.

Manga recs anyone?

violetsquirrel — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:00:16 GMT

Okay so manga is cheap here and very, very good for my reading skills (I'm thinking in terms of increasing my reading speed moreso than increasing my vocab). But most of the manga I can think of I've either read in English already or don't really have much interest in. So rec me things! I have a wide range of tastes except maybe for sports manga and also really really long series because even though it's cheap I don't want to be carting home 50 volumes of something. Bonus points if it's not completely obscure so I can get it second hand. For reference, if I think of my favourite manga the titles that spring to mind are FMA, Genshiken, and Paradise Kiss.

To the mooooon!

violetsquirrel — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:54:34 GMT

I'm leaving for Japan tonight! In case anyone didn't know. I'm there for six weeks, arriving home on the 24th of February.

Anyway, since last time I went I didn't use my travel LJ nearly as much as I should have, this time I've decided to try Twitter instead. I figure I have more chance of doing lots of little updates than enough big ones. Soo bear with me as I figure out how it all works, and you can follow me at Polysymphonic. And let me know if you're on it cause I guess I might as well follow all of you too :P

And while I'm posting, they're making an animated version of Storm and it looks like it's going to be brilliant.

PSA!

violetsquirrel — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:33:17 GMT

If you're planning on watching season four of Dexter and you don't want to be spoiled, watch it now. That spoiler is the kind of spoiler that is going to be impossible to avoid for more than a few days unless you play internet hermit.

Hooooooooooly shit

violetsquirrel — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:57:20 GMT

FUCK YEAH I AM AWESOME

I got my thesis marks back.

:D :D :D :D

violetsquirrel — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:33:21 GMT

This week's been an absolute rollercoaster for a few reasons but I got my dissertation handed in on Thursday, over 24 hours before it was due, so I feel pretty good about that. I think. I'm mostly glad it's done with. I've still got a lot to hand in next week so it's not over uni-wise for me yet, but I'll get there. Right now I'm watching a live broadcast of the visual kei festival that's on this weekend and life is pretty good.

My concert band is performing next Sunday (1 Nov) those of you in Perth should all come! It'll be really awesome music and it's our musical director's last performance with us before he leaves us and he's amazing. It's at 2pm at St Mark's Anglican Community Performing Arts School and you can buy tickets online here.

あううううｇｈ

violetsquirrel — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:30:50 GMT

い　ふぃにしぇｄ　ｍｙ　ぢっせｒたちおｎ　もｓｔｌｙ　ぶｔ　のｗ　い　はヴぇ　と　ｗりて　あ　じゃぱねせ　ｐれせんたちおｎ　ふぉｒ　うぇｄねｓだｙ　あんｄ　いｔ’ｓ　れあｌｌｙ　いっりたちおんｇ　そ　い’ｍ　うぃにんｇ　へれ　ぶｔ　ぃけ　てぃせ　しんせ　い　はヴぇ　いｔ　せｔ　と　ｔｙぺ　いｎ　ひらかな　あｎｙわｙ　あんｄ　いｔ’ｓ　ぽいんｔぇｓｓ　うぃにんｇ　そ　いｔｓ　おかｙ　いｆ　の　おね　かｎ　べ　ぼてぇれｄ　と　れあｄ　いｔ。てぇ　ねｘｔ　とぉ　うぇえｋｓ　あれ　のｔ　ごいんｇ　と　べ　ふｎ　あｔ　あｌｌ　あんｄ　えヴぇｎ　あｆてｒ　てゃｔ　い　ｓちｌｌ　はヴぇ　てぃんｇｓ　づえ　そ　い　あｍ　きんだ　ｓｔれっせｄ。　ぶｔ　いｔ　うぃｌｌ　あｌｌ　べおヴぇｒ　そおｎ　い　ぐえｓｓ　あんｄ　うぃｔｈ　てぇ　あもうんｔ　おｆ　こっれｃちおんｓ　ｍｙ　すぺｒヴぃそｒ　はｓ　せんｔ　め　い　しょうｌｄ　あｔ　ぇあｓｔ　ど　おかｙ　おん　てぇ　ｔらんｓぁちおｎ　せｃちおｎ　おｆ　ｍｙ　てぇしｓ。　

うぇｌｌ、　ばｃｋ　と　ｗりちんｇ　ｍｙ　ｐれせんたちおん。

5892/7000 words

violetsquirrel — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:32:03 GMT

Are you confused yet? :D

violetsquirrel — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:50:19 GMT

If anyone on my flist wants something to point people to when those people say that Roman Polanski should be released (I'm going to give you all the benefit of the doubt that none of you believes that yourselves), go here. It has excerpts from the girl's testimony. It's graphic and it pulls no punches about what happened.

Maybe I'll update about my life one day! It's been going pretty good aside from the day of doom and thesis being due approaching faster than I'd like.

violetsquirrel — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:56:30 GMT

Wow, I think Rove just managed to hit racism, sexism and transphobia (genderqueerphobia?) all at the same time within 30 seconds of the show starting.

violetsquirrel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:36:29 GMT

My grandmother bought some socks, but they were a little too small for her so she gave them to me.

I now have thigh-high black socks with white bat patterns down the sides.

My family is awesome.

I DON'T LIKE THESE ALIENS ANYMORE. I did actually like them beforehand because I can't help but get the impression that this is the first time they've tried invading anywhere, and they're kinda nervous and things aren't going right. Like they clearly have colds, and their translator is being slow and having hiccups, and they aren't entirely sure how best to state their demands. But they're trying to do it by the book anyway because they want to impress the higher-ups. But anyway...

So I woke up to three entries on my flist basically going AHH FUCK NO. Sob. As soon as Jack and Ianto went into the building I knew it'd be him :( Baaaaw he was quickly becoming my favourite this season.

That said I have significant hope that they'll bring him back. After all, he died in a reasonably reversable way (crazy alien virus) as opposed to being blown to bits or anything. The only way they're going to be able to win against these guys is to outsmart them and gain leverage over them, and the first thing Jack's going to do is want them to revive those who died of the virus. And this is the second last episode, not the finale.

If he does stay dead then I'm just gonna start treating Torchwood like GANTZ in that there's no point getting close to the characters because they're just going to die anyway. Seriously TW has to win some kind of award for killing off its main cast. I guess it does make sense though, I mean, fighting aliens is meant to be incredibly dangerous and it's only rare for torchwood members to retire because they usually die. But still, Ianto ;; I thought Rhys would die of happy couple syndrome long before Ianto would.

Actually wait, he can't stay dead. Then that whole thing about Jack being honest with him and opening up to him and being himself and all that stuff goes nowhere except reinforcing to Jack that he shouldn't get close to people. That's not character development, that's just being terrible to him for the sake of it.

And here is some white space for people who want to reply about the first thing without seeing the second.

violetsquirrel — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:22:21 GMT

First of all, my MSN hasn't been working half the time so I've been just using gchat and finished. So feel free to add me on gchat and talk to me there! My gmail address is my lj name at gmail dot com.

Also, anyone who watched Torchwood or has ever had any interest in watching Torchwood, this year's "season" is a five part story that airs every night for five days. It started a couple of days ago and it's fantastic. I've always thought that Torchwood was a great concept with great characters that just... didn't know what to do with itself properly. This is what Torchwood always should have been. The writing is slick, the plot is unpredictable, the characters are being used beautifully, it's just so much better than Torchwood has been up until now. It probably has to do with the fact that they don't have to write a whole season of DW AND a whole season of TW and they can really get stuck into a 5-episode plot instead of having to come up with 12 or so separate ones, but whatever the reason I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Anyway, since I know there's a couple of you who might be interested, does anyone want to marathon it with me in a couple of weeks' time? I know that's when semester starts but it's only five hours' worth of TV, it's not too hard to fit in I think.

Hahahahahahahahahah OH GOD

violetsquirrel — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:43:34 GMT

So. I'm doing Japanese Honours this year and half of my dissertation for that is a translation of a 10-page-or-so article. So at the start of this semester my supervisor and I decided on an article which was 11 pages and which I thought was relevant and interesting. I scanned the pages so I didn't have to have the book on me to translate stuff, and it wouldn't fall apart since it's quite old. And I've been translating it since then. I'm a bit (lol, a lot) behind on it (I was meant to have finished the draft by the end of semester) but I was going to catch up and finish it during the holidays! So I just sat down to work on it and finished the one sentence I had left on the page I was on. Went to open the scans of the next page only to discover there's a page missing. That's okay, maybe the scans are out of order. Nope. No, there's definitely no page 104/105. How many pages do I have scanned? Eleven. I gave the book back to my supervisor a few weeks ago so she just got an only slightly panicked email from me asking her to check to see if the pages were actually in the book and I'd just missed them when I was scanning. But I'm sure we counted eleven pages at the start of semester.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

ETA:

"Sarah-san,

...

Let's be calm for the time being, though. There is no reason why, if necessary, I could decide that it was okay for length reasons for you to omit those pages anyway (suitably pruning off extraneous bits fore and after)."

Well at least I'm pretty sure she means "couldn't" there. S-sob okay I can stop panicking now.

violetsquirrel — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:38:05 GMT

Fascinating site about cat intelligence.

Cats form a mental map of their environment, but instead of mapping landmarks ("the church is 300 ft to the left of the shop, the shop is a mile north of the farm") a cat's mental map has the cat in the middle and everything else is relative to the cat's position.

violetsquirrel — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:00:52 GMT

Fuck you too, Obama.

And while I'm in a ranting mood actually, fuck you general American public or perhaps perception of general American public too. So You Think You Can Dance started over here last night and a pair of guys auditioned doing- SHOCK HORROR- ballroom dancing. And the judges couldn't get over how oh god you're switching roles and I'm so confused and I can't tell what's meant to be going on and you just alienated all of our viewers!!! Come back for choreography so we can see you dance with a girl! You might find you even like it!

Come on, two guys nearly outright won Strictly Dancing here a few years ago. We'd better see some same-sex couples in our next season of SYTYCD. I don't care if they don't do that during the top 20 bit, but really, considering that the auditions aren't supposed to be any particular form of dance there is no reason why two guys or girls shouldn't be able to partner each other for it. Also for the record, one of the guys in both the pair on SYTYCD last night and Strictly Dancing was straight.

That poetry thing again

violetsquirrel — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:00:52 GMT

I went to see Tim Minchin tonight! Sixth row, a little to the left which is just perfect because then you can see him play piano properly and that's always a good thing. For those who don't know, he's a comedian who plays incredible jazz/classical/whatever piano and sings and is hilarious and witty and I kind of love him a lot. ANYWAY one of the things he did was a nine-minute beat poem called Storm, that pretty much perfectly encapsulates a lot of how I see the world as well and is generally otherwise awesome so I'm going to insist you all listen to it. I couldn't find a proper video of it (I think it's very new) but this was as close as I could get:

violetsquirrel — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:43:44 GMT

THEY ARE DELETING MY CHILDHOOD

That is all.

Poetry Month?!

violetsquirrel — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:01:55 GMT

I'm not a huge fan of poetry. And yes I know you're not supposed to say that but really, it's true. It's not to say there aren't poems that I like, but I like them because I can see that they're clever and sound pretty, not because they speak to me on some deeper level. That said, what I do love is music, and poems that have been turned into songs. So have a couple of Australian poems in song form!

The first is by Henry Lawson, who as wikipedia says is one of Australia's best known poets. This is one of his poems as performed by The Idea of North, who are an accapella quartet from Sydney(ish). I love it because it's about being optimistic in the face of everything.

After All - The Idea Of North

The second is a lot more contemporary. It's from a group called Elixir, which is a side project of two of the members of george, which is one of my favourite bands although I don't think they're really doing anything as a band right now. Most of Elixir's lyrics come from a poet who works with them, whose name I forget, but anyway this is my favourite of their songs, and therefore his poems. It's not the most traditionally poem-like of the ones on the album, by which I mean it has full sentences, but I love it for the story and the characters. The singer has one of the most gorgeous voices I've ever heard, so it's worth a listen just for her.

river and moon - Elixir

Signs I have too many things on my mind

violetsquirrel — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:54:27 GMT

You know how last week I posted about how I woke up early to go to my course until I realised after I was out the door that it wasn't on until next weekend? I just realised that it's Saturday today! Which means it's the 4th! Which means I should be there right now!

violetsquirrel — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:40:32 GMT

This morning I woke up early to go to my course that's on every week or so but wasn't on last week, had a shower, got dressed, ate breakfast, got in the car, drove for two minutes and then realised that today is in fact not the 4th of April, and therefore it's not on this week.

I just saw an article that said Andy Serkis would be playing Captain Haddock and went WTF until I actually looked up more information and discovered they're doing motion capture and actually bringing the characters to life I think. So it doesn't really matter who's playing anyone as long as they can do the voice and mannerisms. Works for me!

And while I'm posting: Miyavi got married a few months ago and that fact got leaked a couple of days ago, even though he was going to announce it at his concert on the 5th (because in Japan you can actually be a celebrity and get married and have no one know until you're about to announce it yourself). Fandom's being fandom about it which in some ways is good and in other ways is fascinating (I've been kinda glued to the 2chan thread watching the differences between how the Japanese fans and the English-speaking ones are reacting) but is also kind of sad when they're being idiots about it. It looks like the stupid fan-anger is mostly directed at him and not her though which is... weird for fandom. But it'll be interesting to see what happens from here.