Irrelevant title

When you don't feel like saving up tonnes of money to buy an iPod that will inevitably stuff up somehow, you usually save up less money and buy an mp3 that will do the same, but in a cheaper way. When you get sick of scrolling through the list on your mp3 to listen to the artists and albums you want, you usually just shrug it off and tell yourself to suck it up.

Not me. I decided to go on eBay and buy a diskman or Walkman or whatever you want to call it. Now instead of scrolling through an annoyingly long list of tunes on a really dodgy mp3 I flip through my CD case and choose my favorite albums to listen to. My collection is coming along nicely and I have no regrets. Well, occasionally the music jumps a bit but I mostly have no regrets. Here are some of my favourite albums and why they are my favourites.

Angus and Julia Stone's album 'Down the way' is fantastic. I may have mentioned the advanced awesome levels of this album in previous posts. The songs are just so calm and laid back and relaxing I can't help but enjoy it. Also it reminds me of the snow.

 One track in particular that I have been adicted to on this album is 'Draw your swords' because it is amazing. Unfortunately it is also the only Angus and Julia Stone song I have ever heard that has a swear word in it. Mum doesn't like me playing it and there is not a single censored version on the internet. I have to settle for listening to it on my Walkman alone. Still, it is great.

Florence Welch is just plain inspiring. I don't own the 'lungs' album myself but I have all the songs on a mix CD. Not in the right order but I have all the songs. The songs are so good. Half of them tell a story and I love it when songs do that. 'Bird song', 'My boy builds coffins', 'girl with one eye', 'dog days are over', and 'swimming' are a few that I can't seem to stop listening to from this album. Can't help but love the music and quirky lyrics.

Saint Motel's EP 'Forplay' is absolutely fantastic. For $5 and $4 postage I got Saint Motel's first ever CD with 6 songs, 6 music videos and even full lyrics for every one of them. And just because it came all the way from LA, I put the packaging on my wall with all the other interesting junk.

It really is quite a miracle that I have heard of them at all. They are a band based in Los Angeles that hasn't gone mainstream yet. They are not played on any radio station in Australia. In fact, the only reason I heard them at all was because I am a Castle fan and a couple of their songs were on a video Stana Katic and Seamus Dever were apart of called The Alternative Travel Project. Stana Katic and Seamus Dever play Detectives Kate Beckett and John Ryan on Castle, if you didn't already know.

Anyway back to Saint Motel. On their face book page under genre it says "You tell us" because you really can't pick a single genre for all their songs. Except for alternative because that is the genre for when all else fails. I feel like mentioning their song 'Pity Party' which has an extremely happy sounding tune that is contradicted by lyrics such as "Your ship's sinking now. Go down with it." and "Can't clean out your wounds with rusty knives so why do you try". I love it and can't get enough.

 I would try to name my favorites off this album but they are all my favorites so I really can't. The first ones I heard on YouTube were 'Butch', 'To my enemies', 'Dear Dictator', and 'Pity Party'. Those are all links to the actual videos so go for it. If I saw Saint Motel live I'd be one happy literary rockstar. It would have been cheaper and faster for me to buy this CD off iTunes but I live in the 80's so I got it by mail.

The Juno sound track. I really like this movie because it is weird and I'm into weirdness. It's another CD that I don't actually own but I own a burnt CD containing all the songs. Because my brother bought it on iTunes like a normal person.

The songs are unusual and strange but the accustic guitar work is beautiful. The songs are, for want of a better more literate and descriptive word, adorable. There are many on there that I absolutely love but my favorite is 'all I want is you'. Why? The lyrics. "If you were the wood, I'd be the fire. If you were the love I'd be the desire. If you were a Castle I'd be your moat and if you were the ocean I'd learn to float." It is just plain adorable!

Nirvana's Greatest Hits. Another reason why I should be in the 80's. Nirvana is the band that stopped before it's time. 'You know you're right', 'Silver', 'Come as you are', 'Lithium', 'Smells like teen spirit', and  'Heart shaped box' are my favorites from this album at the moment.

 Hey God? Can we trade Kurt Cobain for Justin Beiber? . . . .  What do you mean Justin Beiber will only get us Michael Jackson? . . . . Fair enough. What about Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus? . . . . Yeah I guess heaven wouldn't really be holy after that. Worth a shot.

This one is my brother's CD but I made a copy for myself. Mumford and sons Sigh No More CD is brilliant. I can't listen to mumford and sons without feeling inspired. Not sure what I'm inspired to do, their music is just inspirational. My favorite tracks are 'The cave', 'Little lion man' and 'Thistle and Weeds'. That last one I have been listening to the most because it has the same sort of feel to it as 'Draw your swords' by Angus and Julia Stone which is like my song of the month or something. The whole album is increadible though and it is proof that there is room for banjos in the music industry today.

I serendipitously stumbled upon this at the library yesterday and just had a Matt Costa session. 'Mr. Pitiful' is still my favorite of his but there are other songs on there that I quite liked and will enjoy more of in the future.

                                    
Paramore, The Final Riot! live in Chicago. Listening to this on the way to Sydney to see Paramore perform at Sydney Arena psyched me up so much. Watching the DVD always makes me wish I could re-live that concert. Paramore sounds amazing and are a band that sounds even better live. You know how you get those bands like Fall Out Boy that have a singer that doesn't sound as good live? Definately not the case with Paramore.
 
Hayley Williams has an amazing voice. When I saw them at Sydney Arena in October, Stan Walker randomly joined them for Misery Business. I'm sure Stan Walker has a lovely singing voice, but in comparison to Hayley Williams he was just. . . . Miz Biz didn't suit him. I'll leave it at that. That concert was amazing and the only thing that would have made it fifty million times as awesome is if they had played All I wanted and Let the Flames begin. I mean fair enough though with all the songs they played I don't think even Hayley Williams would have the vocal endurance to play those songs too. Want to know what I mean?
 
Here's a link to all I wanted from the album Brand New Eyes and here is a link to the video of Let the Flames Begin from the Final Riot Album. If you only watch one video of the two, watch let the flames begin. You will then understand why I so desperately wanted to see the performance of that song live. And just because I can and it sounds good, an intro paramore did at a concert that wasn't the one I went to but sounds awesome dispite the terrible quality in video. It's called The lies we want to feel. 
 
Just to clarify, that was the greatest experience ever for me. It was the first actual concert I went to ever (let's face it, the big Exo day doesn't count) and it was epic. I want to do it again.
 
. . . .
 
There you have it. The CDs I have been listening to quite a bit, not including the mixes I've made. I make an awful lot of mixes.
 

How to spend a sunday without internet

Zombies.

RachOddSocks

It's been a while since I've made a post title extremely long and the post not really that impressively long. Perhaps I'll make up for it now? I'll do that.

I was sorting through the pictures on George the laptop and discovered something that is of no surprise whatsoever: I needed a whole folder for the pictures of my feet in various places. I take pictures of my feet an awful lot. The reason, I believe, is because I have many photogenic pairs of shoes and socks. Anyway I named all the photo's of my feet and I'm going to put them in this post along with what I named them.

1. My feet with odd socks shortly after I bought them. The socks I mean.

2. My feet with odd socks in the dark

3. My feet on the steps of a park at church

4. My feet in the lounge room after naming my slippers Alberto and Rodriguez

5. My feet at West Port Park when I stopped for a moment to take a feet picture.

6. My feet at the Younghusband's lodge

7. My feet at the movies while waiting for the midnight screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one to start.

8. My feet and other feet under the table at Tara's 16th

9. My feet after doing the paper run in the rain and mud and a few unusually slippery driveways

10. My feet after cleaning my gumboots that were quite muddy indeed.

11. My feet look sketchy

I recently got new Converse shoes that I will have to wear and take pictures of. There are so many names for Chuck Taylor's Converse All Stars. People call them Chucks, Cons, All Stars and my personal favorite, Chucky T's, just to name a few.

RachOddSocks

Things I don't have to do for 6 weeks or so

I don't have to do homework, write essays,
wear a skirt,
wake up before 8 in the morning,
google anything to do with World War 2,
wear black polishable shoes,
go down Mumford Street,
make a packed lunch,
listen to someone talk about sedimentary rocks,
take notes on what someone is saying,
pretend to be interested in geographic statistics,
miss my favorite TV show on account of it airing late on a 'school night',
stop playing zombie games in order to work on assignments,
stop playing zombie games in order to go to bed and wake up on time,
stop playing zombie games,
or say the phrase "I'd better go to bed, I have school tomorrow."

I love holidays.

RachOddSocks

Some of my favorite quotes.

After filling up the last post with fight club quotes, I felt the need to put up some more of my favorite quotes from random things. TV, film, literature or even just people, can present us with a memorable line or two from time to time. Sorry about all the Jodi Picoult. I'm a fan of hers, can you tell?



"Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it."  Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)
 
"You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not." Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatly wrapped lies" Jodi Picoult (Keeping Faith)

"When we're awake, we see what we need to see. When we're asleep, we see what is really there." Jodi Picoult (Second Glance)

"Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back."  Jodi Picoult (Second Glance)
 
"A mathematical formula for happiness: Reality divided by Expectations.There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality or lower your expectations." Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"Living with regrets is like driving a car that only moves in reverse." Jodi Picoult (House Rules)

 
"There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition." Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"I have come to believe that this life I’m living will never really fit." Jodi Picoult (House Rules)

“When you begin a journey of revenge start by digging two graves, one for the enemy and one for yourself” Chinese proverb

"We should celebrate with ice cream"
"We'd be fools not to." --Castle

"You are so lame! You're a lamey, Mclamester!" Castle


"Oh my god. This is quite possibly the worst coffee I've ever tasted. It's actually kind of fascinating. It tastes like a... (pauses to sip the coffee) it tastes like a monkey peed in battery acid. Try some?" Castle

“You want to make God laugh? Tell him your plan.” Robert Downey Junior

"This is the captain speaking. We have a . . . little problem with our entry sequence. We may experience some slight turbulence and then. . . explode."---serenity

“I’ve got to say, you are my kind of stupid.” Firefly

 

"You know what the chain of command is? Its the chain i go get and beat you with until you know who's in command!" ---Firefly



"Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."---Firefly


"I don't want to die now! I have a head ache. I don't want to go to heaven with a head ache I'll be all grumpy and won't enjoy it!" -The Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams



"Your friends poetry is terrible. It's like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random." -the city of bones by Cassandra Clare


"Why are you always so suspicious?"
"Should I answer chronologically or alphabetically?"-Sherlock Holmes


"No woman would marry a man who can't tell if someone is dead or not!" Sherlock Holmes


"If home is where the heart is, then your true home's in your chest!"--- Dr.Horrible's sing along blog




That was fun.

RachOddSocks

Mismatched activities

If you have been wondering about my recent lack in posts, which I doubt since I have no structure whatsoever in regards to my posting, it is due to the fact that our Internet had once again been run down. I blame YouTube once more. Also I blame Saint Motel because while I didn’t have their CD I had to listen to them via YouTube. Curse you awesome music.

Well now I have my Saint Motel CD and a few drafts of blog posts just waiting to be posted. This being one of them. There are a few things that I have to blog about, though their levels of interest vary from not very interesting to maybe mildly interesting if you are lucky. The theme of this post is brought to you by mice and fight club. You read that correctly I assure you, unless you think it said lice and light bulb.

First I shall explain the mice part. I’ve had pet mice for ages. They just don’t seem to want to stop breeding. Honestly, right when we think we have successfully separated the boys from the girls, there is a new litter of baby mice running about the cage. We have a few new mice in the cage that are small and adorable at the moment. I was playing with them the other day, letting them crawl all over my arms and whatnot. In fact, that was shortly after I watched Fight Club. . . .

I have to say fight club is awesome. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and the ever wonderful Helena Bonham Carter all star in it. I’m pretty keen to read the book it was based on, written by a guy by the name of Chuck Palahniuk. Pronounce that last name out loud I dare you.
So there you have it, the connection between mice and fight club. What will I do with this connection, you ask? Why, I am going to put up fight club quotes between pictures of my baby mice, of course!


                             “With insomnia nothing is real. Everything is far away everything is a copy.”

                

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we are free to do anything.”

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero.”

“Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip.”

“If I didn’t say anything people always assumed the worst.”

“I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.” 

“If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up a different person?”

                                                 “The things you own end up owning you.”

                               “From now on, all those with shaved heads: space monkeys.”


That last quote just might be my favorite quote of all time. Aren't my pet mice adorable?

-RachOddSocks