honest to blog

nothing screams desperate blogger’s block more than an entry detailing one’s present musical inclination. but at least i could say i owned up to it. it’s in "artist - song title - why the heck do i like the song" format. so here goes:

* the sads - why do you do me like you do - "like a long drive in a small car", like the velvet underground meets belle and sebastian, like acoustic guitar and violin complementing each other oh-so-very-good, like infectiously minimalist, like the soundtrack of my life right now…

* anchor and braille - blur - haunting vocal. singer’s my favourite lyricist. poetic on motion. been airing a lot on my post-evening atmosphere. on repeat.

* jason mraz - on love, in sadness / spinning (you make me high) - mraz’s voice has never sounded darker and sexier. breathy vocal, simple yet complicated lyrics (?!?!?!?). will-make-you-feel-fuzzy-all-over type of songs.

* say anything - alive with the glory of love - my personal audio caffeine. cheekily romantic lyrics, deliciously catchy riff. i’ll keep listening to it until it becomes irritatingly overplayed on the public air.

* incubus - pendulous threads - incubusesque rock at its best. hands down lovable. with a good dose of psychedelic riff. guaranteed head snapper. great live material. and the singer’s voice…if they are ever in need of a groupie. awesome. whew.

* scary kids scaring kids - my darkest hour / faces - one of those "on-your-face" kinda stuff (pun very much intended). good ol’ rock n roll with a synth edge. think thursday and alkaline trio in juvenile court. nothing original but still grabs nevertheless.

* blindside - swallow - another audio caffeine material. good jogging company. my obvious choice when i need something a little hardcore. the singer’s scream sounds soooooooo shamelessly spot-on. got stuck in my head real easy.

* the killers - bones - my personal favourite out of the band’s second album. catchy tune, good use of horns…did i mention catchy tune?

* bitter:sweet - dirty laundry - jazz meets techno synth, wicked lyrics and a gripping husky female vocal. think polkadot scarf, red dress, and purple eye shadow. i’ve been known to go into ‘retro’ mode when i listen to this song. it’s hawt.

* does it offend you, yeah? - weird science - i wouldn’t think of myself as a pure techno listener. but this song just proves me wrong.

what’s yours?

once upon a yesterday, i was attending a marketing tutorial during which a conversation went something like this:

tutor: this class has way more coffee-drinkers. i asked the other class, there were none.

student: are they first-year students?

tutor: nope, third-years, like you guys.

student: ow, maybe they’ve moved on to drugs…

uh, we were discussing about starbucks’ case study. but let’s not dwell on it ’cause my quirky left brain has started coming out with *drums rolling* brands’ catchphrases!!! *cue the geeky dance*

starbucks: caffeinating the world. one tragic soul at a time.

harry potter: tree-lessing the earth. millions at a time.

vogue: vanity is our business.

netmba.com: bastardising your marketing theories.

playboy: our customers - the marketers’ ultimate wet dream.

bratz: stealing your innocence, like, 9 years sooner.

mcdonald’s: more than an epidemic. may the arc be with you.

coke-cola: still #1 - suck it pepsi!

nike: to outsource or not to outsource. just do it.

mastercard: getting as many people as possible in debt *cough cough* helping people realise their dreams sooner

in an ideal world, i’d spend my adulthood living a bohemian life on paris’ cityside: spending my time people-watching in the afternoon, discussing life with random strangers in the evening, coming out with uber-cool, quasi-intelligent, killer philosophical one-liners at night (confucious is such a happenin’ dude), and sleeping my way through the morning. in an ideal world…

oh, who am i kidding?

for the love of lambs, i might actually cross over to the dark side and become one of ‘em corporate #^%!*&%!$#&^@. i might actually sell my soul to the system’s devil and leech a living through consumerism. i might wear my yuppie heart on my yuppie sleeve on my yuppie ride.

for the heart is willing, but the flesh is weak

so, who knows…

i was walking to the bus loop on my own the other day when a black lexus suv stopped next to me. the driver asked where the normanby house was (for the non-monash-clayton-educated mass, it’s some kinda residence building for uni students). i wasn’t sure where it was so i showed him the direction towards monash security office. the driver then started telling me that he was looking for students to be involved in some levi’s jeans project. do you know levi’s? he asked. duh, i almost answered, but i stick to a polite smile and a well-composed "yes". then he went on with saying that a thousand dollars would be given for a three-days involvement. so i nodded. would you be interested in this kind of job? he asked. no, i automatically replied. not because i wasn’t interested, mind you, it’s because i wasn’t thinking at all. and so he bid farewell.

as i watched the car took off, i remembered that line from the transformers movie: "Fifty years from now, when you’re looking back at your life, don’t you want to be able to say you had the guts to get in the car?"

i wouldn’t mind the money at all. but i’d rather not risk ending up in some random mexican border.

there is this cat that likes to hang out around my neighbourhood. the cat has a collar with bell on it and likes to frequent my house ‘asking’ for food. and cat also has these starry liquid stares that i could almost see tiny thought bubbles over cat’s head saying "i’m cute, i’m fuzzy, adopt me, adopt me!" i used to offer some shrimps, chickens or full cream milk (cat doesn’t like low-fat). but i haven’t been giving food to cat lately because i’ve moved to the front house and the only food here are snacks.

i have recently relocated from my previous crib, but to no drama, i’ve only moved around 3 meters away. i have officially been shooed to a room at the front house which means that i now have a better access to the washing machine but less convenience for my refrigerator-raiding fetishes. now i know what those economists meant when they were all out yapping about trade-offs.

anyhoo, i had an interesting time moving my stuff to my new room. well, at least for me it was interesting; since i’m the easily-amused kinda type. but being the little particular twit that i was, i decided that it was best to move things in small numbers so that i could really calculate where each stuff should be placed in my new room. i’ve got a new place to crash, might as well make a clean break if you know what i mean. so i went back and forth for only about a hundred times accumulating a distance that will get me to china if my steps were laid out in a straight line. but in the course of my logistical activity, i discovered a lot of stuff that…how to put it nicely…made me contemplate about my characters and nonsenseness (i’ve taken the liberty to make up words here). the range varied from tree-based products (aka papers, magazines, postcards with pretty pictures on them) to, uh, novelty couture (aka ballerina-style purple skirt, what was i thinking?!?!?!), and some other stuff i won’t talk about here. it took me more than 6 hours to move things and it wasn’t because i’ve got that much stuff, but i have to say that i had a hard time filtering the ones that i should throw away and those that i should keep (i was trying to make a clean break remember?).

after carefully allocating my new space utilisation capacity (intermittently noted by some repetitive failed attempts to shoot myself in the head), i managed to let go some of the stuff that i probably won’t need (an article on scott stapp’s scandal? but i swear i didn’t know they were there). the day grew and i developed a mild headache and stress from all those back-and-forth movements. but i’d have to say that i learnt a lot about myself during those few hours; my patience limit, oppression capacity, and my aptitude of sanity (or lack thereof). never knew how much cleaning up can surface one’s inner self. well, eventually, i finished all the to-do-list and started to ease myself into my so-called new beginning. i took a rest, grabbed some chips and tried to appreciate my effort before i began to think,

gosh, ocd’s such a bitch…