In the depths of despair, boredom, and Black Friday, I caved and bought a Time Walk and Mox Emerald. I’m now at least $2k in the hole and have a bunch of pieces of cardboard en route. The madness ends soon, unless I decide to get Betas of everything, which probably won’t happen because I’m nigh broke now.
The list:
I saw the stars. They will outshine us all.
It has always been assumed that Marit Larsen rests on the pinnacle of pop music perfection. Her voice, instrumentation, and melodies: all are leaps and bounds above the rest of the trifling crowd. And then my sister tells me about Lenka. She’s not yet close to dethroning Marit, but this Lenka girl is uncomfortably good. I’ve been listening to her on repeat for the past three days.
While Marit’s music is a divine combination of folk, pop, and Disney, I can hear in Lenka’s the best parts (in my opinion) of many contemporary pop singers: Feist, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, Regina Spektor, KT Tunstall. All in all, Lenka’s eponymous debut album is extremely addictive, and will probably share time with The Chase in my car CD player.
http://www.myspace.com/lenkamusic
On a brighter note, here is a live version of “Ten Steps”:
A hodgepodge of updates for the week-long Thanksgiving break that we have. Mainly I don’t want to start on this Stats 315A problem set, which looks on the other side of impossible.
1) I’ve been catching up on Battlestar Galactica. Just finished season 3 and Razor, and going to start season 4 soon. This show is so serious and melodramatic. It’s pretty good, even though I think the twist at the end of season 3 is a bit over the edge. Here’s to hoping that the series ends well, and doesn’t degenerate into something Matrix Revolutions-like.
2) Polina Semionova is on the cover of Pointe magazine! I guess being the premier ballerina in Germany, this was statistically bound to happen at some point. But it’s pretty cool anyway.
3) Saw Hilary Hahn play Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto tonight, and I wasn’t all that impressed. Her technique is crystalline as always, but she still seems very icey. There’s just some emotionality that seems lacking. I’m not sure if we were all just spoiled by Perlman, but something in terms of heart is definitely lacking.
4) I might actually finish Society of Mind this week. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to read this book, but I’ll be glad when I’m done. Not that it’s not interesting or a good read, but there are other things I want to read, and it’s been an albatross around my neck in terms of casual reading. Though not nearly as bad as The Divine Comedy, which took forever and a half to finish.
5) My fantasy basketball team sucks. Hopefully Deron Williams is back for good. That would be a bright spot in an otherwise murky situation.
6) I’m still struggling to find out what is “greatest good,” in terms of what I should do with my life. I’ve never felt like I’ve had much of a calling in life, which is nice in terms of having the freedom to explore many things, but is bad in that I am beginning to feel that I am wasting a significant part of my productive years searching instead of doing. Even after this master’s program, I doubt I’ll be any closer to finding out what it is that I should be doing.
Bought a Mox Ruby. This is quite an expensive set of blog posts, all in all. I don’t understand why Time Walk seems to be so much more expensive than I want to pay.
The list:
Won a Mox Jet auction late last night. This was kind of an impulse buy; I’m not sure if I overpaid or not. The Time Walk remains ever elusive.
The list:
I think one of them might not come. I’m thinking maybe I got cheated on the Mox Sapphire auction.
Bought an iPod Touch (16GB, 1st gen) at the bookstore yesterday. I have affectionately/creepily named it “Marit Larsen,” and added onto it videos and music of its namesake. I’m hoping it will be a useful device around campus, seeing as how it has all the iphone functionality less the phone (and who ever calls me anyway?). Probably will be nice to check email, etc. in/in between classes. But first I need the plastic protector skin to arrive so I can actually use it in the wild.
Despite my best attempts of buying things like mad, what with the iPod, Magic cards, and a new set of sparring gear, the economy is still floundering. This makes me a little sad.