Author: briancollapsing

a little quotation from my evening’s readings in d. h. lawrences’s lady chatterly’s lover:

the world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few, in most personal experience. there’s lots of good fish in the sea — maybe! but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you’re not mackerel or herring yourself, you are inclined to find very few good fish in the sea.

i read that and thought: “exactly”. the thing both my ex-girlfriend (still friend) and i have both decided is, sadly, that after such a long, high-quality relationship almost no one else seems to measure up. we both sort of needed something new, at least for now; but are having the devil’s time trying to find anything even somewhat promising. single life is made out to be this fun time of meeting and mating all these beautiful people, but i think that’s just a trick. college isn’t really about having all these escapades. it’s a hoax to get you excited about going and paying all this money for classes you don’t like.

to be honest, sometimes i wish i was a mackerel.

i know i may have written in excess today, but i’m about to write more. please don’t be frustrated with me. i just finally have a lot to talk about.

following a link from kate of quidproquo, i have determined that i am a mere 42% emo. it was the utter lack of sweaters that got me, i think.

i realize, also, that it’s mid-week, and about time for a new song. i’m feeling generous though, so i think it might be more than one this week. mostly to give you easy access to a couple tracks from the new mix cd in addition to the regular song of the week, because i’m so proud of our creation. but i digress.

if i had a few extra dollars lying around right now, i’d put it toward the new aphex twin cd, drukqs. you might not know this, but i love aphex twin. this cd came out recently, and i downloaded a few samples to tide me over until i could pick it up… and wow. it’s probably some of the best stuff he’s done yet (he being richard james, the single man behind aphex twin). since this is the best non-band, non-rock music i listen to, i thought i’d share it since this has already sort of become electronic music week. i’ll get back to sharing my latest indie/pop songs next week (for example — i can’t stop listening to “battlescars” by ozma), but for now the song of the week will be some aphex twin.

with bonus tracks from kenna, mu-ziq, and cut chemist. i just love to spread the love (for a limited time only).

today i had the pleasure of being bludgeoned into submission by another finance midterm. god i hate that class. not because it’s unbearably hard, but because no matter what i can’t make myself work for that guy (the professor). i studied some, but never enough obviously, and even though i feel ashamed of myself for the two hours i’m sitting there staring at the exam, not knowing how to do the problems, 20 minutes afterward i already can’t make myself care anymore. it’s just a peculiar situation.

i’d like to think it’s just further evidence that i’m more of an idea man than a number man. that’s the excuse i always fall back on to save myself from having to admit that maybe i’m just not as good a student as i used to be.

but really, does being a good student have anything to do with being a good (or interesting) person? not at all, really. so as long as i have a decent “overall gpa” to put on my resume after college that says i at least didn’t spend four years stumbling drunk from one night stand to one night stand, i think it’s more than fine to just plain not care about one class in my whole educational career so far. i have that right, don’t i? the panel of experts says yes, i do. sorry professor finance (real name changed to protect anonymity — a lesson i learned the hard way in my dark past…)

suge knight, the ceo of death row records (you know, dr. dre? snoop dogg? tupac?) is speaking at our school tonight. i thought about going just to say i saw the guy, but then i’d have to wait in a long line, probably, just to spend a long time listening to some “gangster” dude trying to sound smart in front of a packed auditorium. maybe he’s a really sharp guy though and i’m just being judgmental. it’s been known to happen on occasion.

[confidential note to cate at distraction: did you know burning airlines was even thinking about changing their name for a month or so after the big incident? they decided against it though and i support them. it’s so cool sounding, national tragedy or not.]

in other news, i’ve taken a liking to the highly recommended page awkward pirouettes, so voila, there it is. before long, it’s going to take me several hours to click through my list of regularly read blogs. luckily i have little enough to do with myself that i check twice a day and never fall too far behind. otherwise i’d have to just give up on the whole thing.

and i don’t want to do that to all you nice people.

my roommate mike might be going to scotland next semester to study abroad. mike listens primarily to cool electronic music (not crappy club techno. good techno or even cooler experimental stuff), and whenever we go somewhere and he’s driving, he’s blasting his tunes on his nice car stereo. i figured that if he were to leave, i might not hear any of the good stuff he plays for something like six months, so i should make myself a compilation of the best stuff to listen to while he’s gone.

i’ve been hatching this idea for over a month, and last weekend i finally made a list of songs. well, tonight, instead of studying, we finally got down to actually making the cd. it turned out fabulously and i think the selections really are the best stuff we could have picked. a couple aren’t the best songs artistically (like n trance), but are fun, and sure, weezer isn’t electronic, and kenna’s almost a synth-pop sort of song. but, these were included because they’re the musical equivalent of inside jokes, i.e. songs we play loudly and sing along with and maybe do stupid dances to sometimes when we’re a bit goofy.

nonetheless, most of the songs are high quality, and i thought that i’d share the list with weblog land for a nice little change of pace from the indie rock obsession. i personally recommend you check out all these songs at least once. a couple of these bands are so good that thanks to mike, i’m probably going to pick up their music for my own library (especially air — whose cd moon safari is the chillest cd ever, and whose soundtrack to the virgin suicides is the best soundtrack ever — and squarepusher) so here it is, a tribute to my roommate…

my name is stereo mike:

1 — dj qbert – turntable tv (revizion)

2 — bran van 3000 – drinking in LA

3 — mu-ziq – brace yourself (remix)

4 — fatboy slim – pierre henry – psyche rock (remix)

5 — innerzone orchestra – the beginning of the end

6 — funky porcini – reboot

7 — n-trance – set u free

8 — squarepusher – a journey to reedham (7 a.m. mix)

9 — cut chemist – alphabet olympics

10 — kenna – freetime

11 — midfield general – midfielding

12 — prodigy – [from the dirt chamber sessions] (this one doesn’t have track names. it’s track 2 on the cd though…)

13 — fatboy slim – weapon of choice

14 — weezer – island in the sun

15 — air – playground love

16 — groove armada – at the river

so try that on for size. this is some good shit, trust me. i should get back to studying for my midterm though for a while before i give up like i always do in favor of a good night’s sleep and a not necessarily “good” grade on the test.

not much to share today, friends. an uneventful tuesday. i have a midterm tomorrow in the worst class ever. but on the plus side tomorrow is also payday. death cab for cutie show is friday, i’m getting excited about that. but for now, not really a lot to say.

maybe later.

hey, look at that. my name next to a cool picture from 2001.

if i’m wrong about that movie reference, i’m going to smack myself.

kate gets to be collapsing friend #13, lucky her. (that’s clever because 13 is unlucky, see?). i decided that kate is rad in just under 24 hours. and i’m seldom wrong about these things. i do have a slight tendency to be judgmental (yes, only slight, i swear), but it was put more delicately by my friend shannon once who said, “you’re just very selective about who you want as friends”. as that sounded much more flattering, i made sure to remember her wording. it’s not that i hate indiscriminately for petty reasons. i’m just very apt at determining quickly when someone i meet or have to interact with is someone i feel like getting to know better. i find very few such cases on a day to day basis, but i’m not perfect and have been proven wrong on occasion. it’s just easier with this ability not to bother with people that i know early on are just going to bother me more later on.

so when i say someone is rad, it really means something, is what i’m getting at. now to study.

this one’s especially for dominic.

i’m sure you’ve all seen those annoying (well, i think they’re annoying. you may think they’re a perfectly appropriate patriotic gesture and not in any way tacky, ugly, or embarrassing) car-window-mounted american flags. from my counts, the phenomenon of flying flags, american or otherwise, in this fashion is a very recent one. i think it looks awful, but that’s not the point here. neither is me going on about the merits (or lack thereof) of showing your undying support of all things american by flying one of these wal-mart monstrosities.

but i’ll get to my point. my first observance of this style of flag-flying was this summer, when a similar bout of flag-flying occurred during and after the LA lakers played in and won the NBA finals. they were everywhere for a month or so. everyone was so proud of those little basketball guys and naturally wanted to show the world — or at least everyone else on the freeway. my summer roommate and now best buddy dominic and i thought from the start this was stupid, and since these laker flags are either yellow or purple, they’re even uglier than the american flags you see now. so we always laughed at these people, especially those excited enough to fly one on both sides of the car for twice the lakers enthusiasm.

but a month after the finals, we still saw a fair amount of these flags. the last game was won in mid-june and they were prevalent well into july, even early august — terribly lame. it became the mission of dominic and i to be the last one of the two of us to see one of these laker flags, and have had the privilege of seeing the car that must be owned by the lamest person in los angeles. i had him for a long time with a car somtime near mid-august, but then by some freak chance, right when we were talking about how it was all over, he saw one during the conversation, and reclaimed the title. i think this was either at the very end of august or maybe even september or october. who’s to really know. either way, i knew he had probably won the battle.

but oh no. saturday night, NOVEMBER TENTH, 2001, on the 110 north freeway on the way to see spike and mike’s animation festival, from the backseat of spencer’s roommate max’s SUV (i had three witnesses), i saw a car with a laker’s flag flying from the driver’s side window. it was a feeling of triumph i am rarely privileged to know. i now, with almost utter certainty, have seen the car of the lamest man in los angeles! take that, dominic! (enter queen music) no time for losers, because i am the champion . . . of the world (exit queen music). thank you.

a very nice girl from far away wrote to tell me she read my webpage. i thought that was grand. i read her page, and wrote her back to tell her i thought it was splendid. perhaps you’ll agree, and would like to follow the conveniently located link to quid pro quo at the left.

if she ever comes back: hi kate!

it’s time to turn in a few verdicts from this weekend’s activities.

first, the ozma concert. i saw them open for jimmy eat world over a year ago, and although i liked them okay, i wasn’t blown away by any means. after that i heard some of their stuff recorded and it just didn’t do it for me. they seemed like lousy weezer wannabes that weren’t very fun to listen to. i guess you can count me as converted now though. i went last night only because it was free and i was bored. but they played a really good show, i thought. so my verdict on them has gone from “not good” to “good”, although i still think they’re weezer wannabes and not “great”. they certainly aren’t lousy, they were fun to watch, i like their use of a keyboard, and some of their songs i enjoyed a lot. so good job in proving yourselves to me, ozma. i’d buy you a soda if you were behind me in line at 7-11.

also, i got to hung out with my man justin who i seem to only see at radio station events like this concert. (something’s wrong with that. some bowling is in order, i think.) sadly though, i met no new rock girls really. i should just stop expecting for that to happen i think, it only leads to disappointment. all that happened was talking to sexy music director brigette and having my crush on her turned up a notch, and seeing the girl i work with, who gave me an unexpected hug. that wasn’t so bad. of course, maybe she’d been drinking and it doesn’t mean she desperately wants me to ask her over some time like i’d like to think. we’ll see.

next, spike and mike’s animation. i thought it was alright. there were a couple shorts that were really great, like the finale, rejection. that and a couple others made me laugh a lot (one of them was the tenacious d animated video for “fuck her gently”. i’d seen it before, but now i got to see it on a movie screen — haha. what a good song, musically), and the people i went with, who’d seen previous years, said this year was disappointing in comparison. guess i’ll have to go back next time and see. it was fun to go even if some of the stuff we saw was godawful.

that’s enough for now. soon i’ll be done with savage love and i can turn in that verdict too, in a couple hours if i get in the bloggin’ mood again. for now though i should probably finally have a meal, today . . .

when your finacial situation can be classified as “very limited”, as i’m pretty sure mine can, you have to plan ahead for things. especially expensive things, like christmas. by my count of friends and family close enough to expect gifts from me, i have to buy nine gifts, and i’m only getting three more puny paychecks before christmas. ugh. so luckily i realized today that i had better get started on this business.

to get things going, i spent the day — that would have otherwise been completely wasted and boring — listening to music, doing a little bit of thinking, and a decent amount of internet exploring. other than this, i did nothing today, not a single solitary useful or enjoyable thing. it was sort of relaxing though, and now i have my little sister’s gifts sitting on my floor already bought, and three of my friends’ gifts lined up and soon to be bought. that means i’m almost half done before midway through november. i am the best gift giver ever.

tonight i have a full plate though: free concert on campus featuring ozma, and out to see spike and mike’s twisted animation festival after that with my buddy spencer. i’m not a big ozma fan, but i’ll see them for free when i have nothing better to do and there might be cute rock girls there. personally, i think they’re overrated and only everyone from orange county likes them. it’s a bizarre phenomenon. as for the animation festival, i really know nothing about it but it sounded fun so i accepted the invitation. plus i love spencer.

i’ll let you know all about the details tomorrow. party on.