i think i'm a contra

going through a phase of listening to all the vampire weekend i can get my hands on (again) ...which is not a lot. about 5 1/2 years - 2 albums. not enough. why can't you be prolific like phish (but phish have a lot of years on everyone) ? why cant all bands have a phish.net equivalent? maybe if i pray to the gods of comic con...

think i got started on the big re-listen after ryan adams started on his (lame) covers. i press play...i gawp in amazement that it doesn't sound a thing like vw. it's covers that manage to remove everything that's vampire weekend about the song apart from the lyrics which sound a bit garbled... so i give up listening in about 10 seconds and have a desperate need to listen to the actual songs. good result!
and then i listened to contra on headphones: beautiful. it's (almost) like a new album.

i'm in the mood (to bracket).

i dont do long words

I find it so difficult to read academic/paragraphic writing on the internet these days. It's reached the stage where if I click on a link and get to a page which is just chock full of text - I click it away almost immediately - reading nothing.

I think it's a combination of having left uni (4 years now) and mostly reading design blogs. Designers don't do long words or paragraphs unbroken by images. That's not to say that it's less intelligent. It's just more concise. Everything makes sense at first read.

Also twitter.

And I have Radiolab to teach me things.

what i like about music #3

this is more about why people listen to music. so many reasons! 

ironically. nostalgically. to sing along to in a car. to jump about to in an empty room. to dance to in front of/with other people. to karaoke. because it was in that movie. because it's vedder playing a ukulele singing 'dream a little dream of me'. because "the sentiment was really nice". because it's good music. because it's so bad it's good. 

...and all of these things are subjective! 

leedstalgia

starbucks, the light

typical leeds weather - random bouts of rain. my first ever cake pop. summer of the (mocha) frappuccino. i dig that their branding extends to the straws and not so much the walls. i dig views of road: people walking by, knowing what's to the left and the right of this particular view...

nation of shopkeepers, bang opp. red chilli 

red chilli sucks now btw. new chef or whatever. i was disappointed in the beijing hot wok lamb. no more fiery little red chillis *pfft*. but nation of shopkeepers - i love this place. dont think it existed back when i actually lived/hung about leeds. lovely chill grunge vibe. and that was some super buttercream frosting right there. made the cake. i make better banana cake but it was so so worth it. 

CLICK THE LINKS

thinking about my life and what's good about it versus other people's lives. let me take a break from being emo to appreciate the fact that i can (sometimes) just live in the moment and appreciate a good mango/song/conversation/email/tweet/meeting/workday...whatever.

things (some) other people do:
• they worry endlessly about things they have no control over/dwell on things that have already happened
• they are "slow to trust" - i think that effectively describes a certain kind of fear.

deviation: twitter. twitter makes you stop and appreciate your life i think. twitter is awesome.

yeah i had this big huge thing planned out in my head but i think it's covered.

peace! (but not literally...)