Geranium kisser, Skin like silk and face like glass 11:53 AM

With the colder season approaching, it seems that life just gets more and more interesting as the year comes an end. The thing that often makes me seem less enthusiastic is just how cold my hands get. Stiff, frozen, feeling like they are about to fall off: it's really painful. I don't have a decent pair of gloves even though they are the one thing I would like most. The last time I had a pair of gloves I was in Missouri in 2007, climbing up the side of a large hill in the middle of a forest, hoping to see the horses that I was promised. I remember getting to the top but I don't remember there being horses. Maybe horses don't like the cold either.

I don't really like horses anyway.

Due to the heater in my house being broken (and me being openly vocal about it on other websites) my hands are hurting all the time due to being too cold. I don't know how to take it very well since I need to be on this silly laptop all the time. It seems that the only warmth I get on my hands is the warmth from its internals moving around. Not that bad of a heat. But hey, something more "alive" wouldn't hurt. The cat would be fine if he wouldn't make me sneeze with every rub of his back. I guess it's an even trade off.

There is lots of work to be done in the next week and a half. Academia comes to mind, of course, but there is other stuff I feel like I need to take care of. Advice was asked for and advice was given. Just to get the variability of bias out of the picture I asked people who don't even know me what I should do.

The consensus on their ruling?:

"There is no problem. It's life. Enjoy it."

I guess I will. I tend to think too logically too, you know. My way is just slightly more silly:

"Can't you come up with one of your math equations to help you get through all of this and find out why?"
"Don't you think I've tried?!"

Drowning my worries with milk and tea in the cafe is a comforting pastime. I feel like I am getting old. Loving the taste of hot tea over lemonade and bubbly sodas, enjoying the sound of an acoustic guitar over the distorted buzz of banger, loving the feel of a warm hug more than a kiss on the lips.

Man this entry sounds depressing and vague, but I assure you it isn't supposed to be.

I think I am just realizing that I may expect too much.
Or that I am too giving.
Or that I just need to learn that I don't need to be superman or a white knight or a prince charming.

But it's too fun not to.
Mediocrity is for suckers.

Haha.

Approaching the train tracks, he sighs, lays flat across the line, and shuts his eyes. 9:51 PM

Everyday when I look in the mirror I make sure to tell myself that I am happy before I step off the front steps of my house. It sounds weird, I know. But it's something I have been doing for the past two years or so.

You take things into perspective when you hit rock bottom. You start to take into consideration "the little things", as everyone and their grandmother puts it. The warm meals you eat everyday, the refreshing sense of water as it goes down your throat, the feel of an insect crawling on your arm before you instinctively flick it off- you "feel" more.

As time gets further and further away from the dark times of 2006 I had gone through, the light of the future pushes through the clouds and puts opportunities on the plate. I admit it- sometimes I play with my food. Some of the food has gotten lukewarm, some cold, others moldy. But that's how life is, I guess. A plate of food that you just continue to take from: going back for seconds if you enjoy it, leaving stuff you don't like to get cold and then feed to the family dog, or sometimes an empty plate to look at when times are dire and hopeless.

I've learned a lot since then. How to not care about what others are doing, how to take care of myself, how to ask for help when I need it, and how to help others when their time comes.

Is it wrong to keep holding on to a person? Not wanting to let go for fear that the free fall to Earth last forever? When does the line come into sight from when you go from acquaintance to ankle biter? I often ask that to myself in the mirror everyday if what I am doing to get by is normal.

"Is this okay?"

Maybe. At least- for a little while.

It will take time, no doubt.

Maybe it's the fact that I need some sort of positive in my life and it's the only source I can get it from. I don't know.

It's hard to come home everyday and just not be satisfied with the day's events. Maybe it makes me greedy. I feel greedy anyway.

There is a hole here. It's not gone now.

Acting so tough, Didn't know you had it in you to be hurt at all 2:06 AM

I guess it's time to get life in order and at least put a small dogear in the important things that go along with my hobbies. That tiny thing called life. I often forget it's filled with walking to school, my face in a book, typing functions with arguments, and listening to the same albums over and over.

It's been refreshing actually. Refreshing in the sense of the fact that it's been so dynamic. It isn't that bad, to be honest. The life of academics (which takes up most of my time anyway) has been treating me well. I mean, I cannot complain. I had a brief stint of procrastination but I am slowly crawling out of that valley and getting back to where I used to. I also scored a summer internship at USAA from May 31st to August 6th. I am more excited than ever! Having real world experience like this... it's just so overwhelming. I have heard from current employees that USAA is such an excellent company to work for. Two interviews, a hotel stay, and a day long tour really paid off. I honestly cannot wait until this summer. I am sure the money will be good.

But enough about work and academics. I mean, that's not all I do- right? I surely hope not.

It's funny to say but... admiration has been poking his head into my life and jabbing my ribs with a stick. I dunno how to explain it but I guess it is a good feeling? I sound like a teen (as if I am any better, I am only 22 for heaven's sake) gushing over a teen idol but this type of feeling doesn't really hit me often, if at all. In fact, I just got told earlier today:

(xxxx): You can nudge them along, but no worries about being too focused on that, you were never that kinda guy.

I guess I wasn't the only one to notice. Maybe it means it's legitimate? I don't know.

I kind of want it to be.

Sometimes I wonder if I am too difficult to read or if I put off the wrong vibes or even if I just seem like an asshole to 80% of the people who see me for the first time. I mean, some of my current friends have told me that they thought I was kind of pretentious when they first met me. How odd? Although I can see where they are coming from. I mean, even I would probably think that way. But I digress; going off on a tangent now... need to get back on track. I usually don't have trouble putting down how I feel in words. I have no idea why it seems so difficult to even put together a coherent sentence at the moment. Perhaps I have too many things running through my head or maybe I am just sleepy. Not sure. Don't really care.

On a recent thread on site that will remain unnamed, there was a thread where we tried to summarize our lives in the third person in as few sentences as possible. I don't remember what I posted exactly but it mentioned just how solitary my life is and to be honest... just how much I don't like it. I mean, I work hard nearly everyday and push myself to do things others won't in hopes that the rewards will make my life just a tad bit easier. Usually it works and sometimes it doesn't but it sucks seeing others get it handed to them by their parents. Not that I don't think life is fair. Some people get dealt better hands than others and I am perfectly fine with that, but goddammit, I'd be lying if I said it didn't irk me. I work and work and work and give and give and give and I come home to... well, nothing. It's like a spot in my body that is not only not filled, but I also have no idea how to fill it. I just want to come home to someone who'll cook for me for once.

I feel like an old lady.

Is it greedy if all I want is a hug at the end of the day?
Is it wrong if sometimes all I want is to hear someone tell me "I love you too"?

I don't miss being in love.
I miss the feeling of being loved; not being treated as an object of physical desire.

Fuck this town.
I want to run away with someone and not look back at this smoldering crater that most kids never get out of, grow old, have babies, live average lives, and die.
It is my biggest fear that I will live a mediocre life. More so: a mediocre life alone. I need a buddy.

These feelings- it's these feelings I have right now that make me tell myself:

Oh fuck. I wished you lived down the street.

La SAPE: Letting those who are vain lead those who are blind 6:38 PM

These are sapeurs, acolytes of a 25-year-old movement called la SAPE—La Societé des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes (aka Kitendi, the religion of the cloth) — that revolves around the possession of the most expensive, most luxurious, most extravagant fashion in the world. Followers of SAPE wear $10,000 jackets and $500 shoes, but these mostly young Congolese men otherwise barely make a living in the rubble of Kinshasa and Brazzaville or the ghettos of Paris and Brussels, washing dishes or washing bodies, and sometimes selling their own.

Before bling and ghetto fabulous, before the dawn of the metrosexual, Congolese men have been pushing the limits of outlandish fashion and heterosexual male vanity, roaming the streets like walking advertisements for the world's top labels.




They don't carry guns and rarely brawl, but occasionally they invade one another's turf, dressed to the nines, of course, in what they call a "Defi de Sape," or fashion challenge. Think West Side Story meets Zoolander. They flash labels, not knives. The winner is the team with the most expensive or rarest collection. One recent standoff was televised by a local station.

On a recent Saturday night along the main drag of Kinshasa's Bandal district, a small gang of young men sipped warm beer, watching the crowd watch them.

Most are twentysomething and unemployed, their only money coming from dealing cocaine, opium and marijuana.

There's little question where the money goes. They ticked off their designers like actors on the red carpet. Yves Saint Laurent. Jean Paul Gauthier. Thierry Mugler.

One wore his leather Versace coat inside out to show off the label.

It made little difference to them that they sat at a grubby plastic table near an open sewer line. A blackout had cut electricity in the neighborhood, leaving them and their clothes visible only by the headlights of passing cars. Reared in an era that has offered them little hope or opportunity, they said they draw their identities and self-worth from what they wear.





He struts down the muddy, trash-strewn alley like a model on a catwalk, relishing the stares and double-takes from passersby. In a country where many survive on 30 cents a day, Papy Mosengo is flashing $1,000 worth of designer clothing on his back, from the Dolce & Gabbana cap and Versace stretch shirt to his spotless white Gucci loafers. “It makes me feel so good to dress this way,” the 30-year-old said when asked about such conspicuous consumption in a city beset by unemployment, crime and homelessness. “It makes me feel special.”

But Mosengo can scarcely afford this passion for fashion. He worked eight months at his part-time job at a money-exchange shop to earn enough for the single outfit, one of 30 he owns, so he’ll never have to wear the same one twice in a month. He doesn’t own a car. He lets an ex-girlfriend support their 5-year-old son and still lives with his parents, sleeping in a dingy, blue-walled bedroom that is more aptly described as a closet with a mattress. Friends, family and his new girlfriend implore Mosengo to stop pouring all his money into clothes and liquidate the closet. “Man, we could buy a house with the money,” said Dirango Mubiala, his clothing dealer, estimating that Mosengo spends $400 a month.

Mosengo won’t budge. “This is just what I am,” he said from behind a pair of oversized white Gucci sunglasses. “I’m a Sape.”

- Edmund Sanders, 2006

There is more to fashion than just looking good- for some, it's a way of life.

A post about music 1:26 PM

Parallels
Ultralight EP
New Wave, Electro, Synthpop
Web - Myspace

I seemed to have missed the band's music when they first released this EP earlier this year. I am kind of ashamed really since it's actually one of the better electro albums to grace my ears all this year. This Canadian trio gives us a modern rendition of classic New Wave inspired female vocals. I really get the heavy Cyndi Lauper vibe as Holly Dodson provides her siren like vocals over the synth and drums played by Cameron Findlay and Joey Kehoe. If you love (or loved) music from the 80s or music that has a heavy New Wave influence, give this album a try.

(link removed)














Tegan & Sara
Sainthood
Indie Rock, Pop, Electronic
Web - Myspace

With this official release of their six studio album just happening yesterday, sister musicians Tegan & Sara have been growing a cult following since 1999. Sainthood may sound a bit more poppy than their last albums but I was albe to enjoy it thouroughly without any complaints what-so-ever. Although this may not be the case for all die hard Tegan & Sara fans, this album is easilly accessible and enjoyable for anyone just now catching the train at T&S station.

(link removed)













Andrew Jackson Jihad
People Who Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World
Folk, Punk
Web - Myspace

I have been growing a liking to folk-punk music as of late. This started with Texas bred band Rosa and with long time reccomended band This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb. Listening to this album on a whim caused me great joy. The melodic (often dark) lyrics in top of both acoustic guitar and banjo really make this a joy to listen to- for me at least.

(link removed)

Pomplamoose
Video Songs
Indie, Pop
Web - Myspace

Being Youtube famous has clearly help this San Francisco duo a fanbase that has moved on from the internet onto mp3s players. Jack Conte's instrumental talent along with Nataly Dawn's nearly blues like vocals make this album much different than what I was used to. Their videos have been on youtubes front page and have covered songs ranging from Beyonce's Single Ladies to Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson.

(link removed)













The Silent Years
Let Go
Indie, Alternative Rock
Web - Myspace

This summer release (which I also listened to months later) has grown on me. At first I thought it was your run of the mill indie pop album until I listened to lyrics deeper and deeper and heard more of an alternative rock and sometimes even twee sound. This EP is not even 6 months old yet I have met many people over the web who are fans of theirs. I know it gets a lot of playing on my zune.

(link removed)

Sweat and Cigarettes 8:27 AM

Photos by Val and Robby

Goth + Glamor: Once you go black... 1:35 PM

The trends of fashion come and go like the tides on a dirty shore, bringing in new items while washing away the skeletal remains of season's (or even day's) past. It's a tricky little thing, trying to keep up, or even remaining in-the-know can be a daunting task for some. Sometimes I feel like tossing my laptop out of a window and just going outside in short shorts and a tank top all day-

but what's the fun in that?

It's fun to play dress up.

The salty tide that has seem to come up every winter (and more so now) is the trend of wearing darks. I mean, darks and winter: it's a no brainer. It seems were going darker than the usual dark though. Dare I say, gothic. Leather, studs, straps, furs- it seems the the flower of the darkside is blooming and infecting (I would call it gifting, honestly) innocents with a way to blend goth and glamor. And I love it.

Jun Takahashi shows us how men can do it right with his Undercover line.

Undercover

What I like most about these looks (and is making me want these following items even more) is how the boots and the earmuffs compliment the whole look rather than distract. I am sure we have seen people wear large, overly shaggy earmuffs or gaudy, black boots with blue denim but these outfits really work. I am tempted to find some nice suede earmuffs and finally, finally, FINALLY get myself a pair of nice leather shoes/boots.

Don't think women can't get into the act either. Ann Demeulemeester and Balmain show us that women can look just as great as men in black leather.

Ann Demeulemeester

Balmain

So, where is there to go one from here? Now that the whole twee/indie wave of '08/'09 is leaving us and the neon tsunami of '07 is finally (thank god) past the horizon- I am welcoming our fashionable minions with open arms and wallets.

New Music Weekend (10/9 - 10/12) 8:19 AM

It's the weekend- and mine is lasting four days. How lucky! Columbus day on Monday and all classes canceled on Tuesday. It seems the stars have aligned in my favor and given me an extra day for my beauty sleep (as if I need it bahahahahahahahahaha). I kid. I kid. It will be nice to catch up on school work and such. Possibly hang out con mis cholas and have yest another amazing Chola Sunday.

But let's get back on topic.

I've decided to start a new weekly post (we'll see how long it lasts) of the music I have saved up all week and then will listen to on the weekend. Hopefully people who see this will get an interest in something they see here (hopefully they choose something totally different then the usual!) and give it a listen. It will always be a mix of the old and the new, stuff from past decades to stuff released a few days ago. Maybe this will broaden my taste for music for the better and I can finally stop listening to shitty electro all the time.

• My Bloody Valentine - Sunny Sundae Smile (Indie Rock)
  
• Jesu - Opiate Sun (Drone, Experimental, Metal)
  
• Minitel Rose - The French Machine (Electro, Synth-Pop)
  
• jj - JJ N° 2 (Left Field, Synth-Pop)
  
• Ceremony - Ceremony (Dance, Shoegaze)
  
• Dirty Stop Out - Cuntro Classics Vol. 1 (Pop Rock)
  
• Cutting Pink With Knives - Populuxxe (Experimental, Heavy Metal)
  
• Linuz - Operation Stackola (Gansta Rap)
  
• The Gothic Archies - The Tragic Treasury: Songs From "A Series of Unfortunate Events" (Novelty, Ballad)
  
• Andrew Jackson Jihad - People That Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World (Folk, Punk)
  
• Dinosaur Jr. - Farm (Alternative, Indie)
  
• Cluster - Zuckerzeit (Krautrock)
  
• Fifths of Seven - Spry From Bitter Anise Folds (Modern Classical, Post Rock)
• The Smiths - The Queen is Dead (Alternative)
• Inkwell Rhythm Makers - Ollapodrida (Jazz, Grunge, Folk)
  
• Aranis - Aranis (Acoustic, Experimental, Folk)
  
• Westbound Train - Transitions (Ska)
  
• Audio Active - Apollo Choco (Dub)
  
• Homesick For Space - Unison (Indie, Alternative, Emo)

I am pretty sure I forgot some. Happy listening.

March of the Sirens 9:31 PM

Yesterday afternoon (in the U.S. anyway) was the debut of Alexander McQueen's S/S 2010 line entitled Plato's Atlantis.

Wow.

What a show it was! The models walking for him looked as thought they were from another planet. The make-up, the hair, the dresses, the shoes... everything just seemed other worldly. The patterns on his dresses looked so organic in their nature even though they were just so intricately made; an almost controlled chaos. If you look closely at the dresses you can see they all had nice, rounded shoulders, tiny waists, and were short in height. They resembled a combination of mathematical fractals, moth wings, broken water reflections, and snake skin... but the real show stopper were the shoes.

The shoes, the shoes, the shoes... they created the illusion of them being on their tip toes on a very high heel. It was totally different but matched the style and theme of the show and clothing. Some had the look of coming from a steampunk universe, adorned with artistic metal design while others resembled crab claws.

But- without further ado:

Alexander McQueen's Plato's Atlantis

Details (HQ)

Runway photos from SHOWstudio
Detail photos from unknown source

Compare // Contrast 10:56 PM

I love the naturals and whites in this set. Way too much. I won't post them all but I love how the outfits look very gypsy-esque. The hoods really do it for me and give them a nice boost to being something different and beautiful at the same time.

I have been on a light color kick since the summer and fall hit. Whites and shale grays up the wazoo. I will assume that once cold weather becomes more of the norm blacks will slowly migrate from stores' clothing racks and into my dingy closet. Oh Joy.

A small snippet of:
Bruno Pieters Spring 2010