Update: 12th March 2006. I'm in a "Let's meet new people!" groove these days, so please, by all means, if you're not scared off by the crazy, drop me a line! :)

Current Mood: bouncy

Yes, I know that I've already posted most of those songs before (some several times!), but bear with me, this is a Mix-Tape post for Romain. So he can fully appreciate my twisted tastes in music... (you'll notice that in my godlike kindness, I refrained from uploading anything from the Backstreet Boys or more than three songs from Hanson. I really couldn't do much more than that.)

I'm not pretending those are my favourite songs ever, even though some of them are, because that list changes every two days, but I rummaged through my music archives and those are the ones that literally waved to me, because they move me to tears, because they make me laugh, because they make me dance like an idiot, or for whatever other reason one might listen to a song in repeat. I'll make you my actual list of timeless classics another time, but you'll be subjected to it as well, be warned.

And I'm also posting the lyrics when they're important. And I'm forcing myself, with much difficulty, to stop at 22 songs for now (!) because your poor brain is going to implode.


Hanson - Great Divide Come on. I had to start with some Hanson. They're my favourite band in the entire universe, after all, and I don't care what people might think, they're absolutely wonderful to me. So so much love for those guys, it's incredible. Actually if you want to be even more scared, take a looksie at the post just underneath this one, the one with all the Hanson-recs. The links don't work anymore but my comments are still there. ( The lyrics. )

Hanson - A Song to Sing My absolute favourite song of theirs, full stop. ( The lyrics. )

Hanson - In a Little While Yes, I know, it's just a cover from U2. And so? It still gives me shivers. ( The lyrics. )

Ben Jelen - Christine ( The lyrics. )

RJD2 - Ghostwriter

Arrogant Worms - We are the Beaver ( The lyrics. )

Cat Stevens - Wild World ( The lyrics. )

Simon & Garfunkel - Flowers Never Bend (with the rainfall)  The first time I listened to that song tears actually sprung to my eyes and my breath got caught in my throat. You should understand why when you listen to the lyrics.  ( The lyrics. )

Stan Rogers - Watching the Apples Grow

Jude - I Know ( The lyrics. )

Charlotte Church - Crazy Chick

Natalie Merchant - My Skin This one hurts so fucking much. If you had to listen to only one song in this entire list, it'd have to be this one, for a whole slew of reasons. ( The lyrics. )

Les Trois Mousquetaires Petits Chiens (not the real name, but that's how my cousin and I have always called it. I'm sure you've seen it too.)

Ben Folds Five - Song for the Dumped ( The lyrics. )

Leonard Cohen - Woke Up this Morning

Jamie Cullum - Twentysomething Another one of my favourite artists, and the only concert I've ever gone to apart from Simon&Garfunkel. I adore this guy, I've vowed never to miss one of his concerts in Paris. And that particular song? Is exactly how I felt/sometimes still feel. ( The lyrics. )

Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet

Ella Fitzgerald - Too Darn Hot ( The lyrics. )

Four Seasons - Big Girls Don't Cry

Jane Horrocks - Get Happy ( The lyrics. )

Joe Purdy - Wash Away ( The lyrics. )

Ben Jelen - Setting of the Sun

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Tags: mp3s, music

Okay, let's do this! I don't know whether even one person will download even one song, but I don't much care (although I'll be delighted if people do dl some), because I like talking about Hanson even more than I like talking about myself, which, trust me, is saying a lot. However, mahouseki, I would think it obvious I'm expecting you to actually download the songs, even if you don't listen to them on your own. It'll make it easier for me to tie you down and force you to give them a shot later on ... heh, listening on your own is probably the best option you have, now that I think about it. *smirks* No, but seriously, I've seen what you have on your iTunes playlist. You can give Hanson a shot.

Since, as I said before, I can't for the life of me pick out ten songs, even less classify them, I'll just go with the flow. And will gape at my including songs that I still hated with a passion three months ago, until I started actually listening to them, and realized the small annoyances clearly didn't warrant missing out the awesomness.

Because the great thing with Hanson is that, there's something great in every. single. song, even the sappy ones, or the overly-philosophical ones. Sometimes it's part of the lyrics, sometimes it's the background of the Chorus, sometimes it's just the emotions that Taylor's voice brings up.

For example, the beginning of Save Me is so sappy it's always made me want to barf; but you wait a little, and then there's that classic "after the second chorus" (ASC) Hanson-thing, and you find yourself uplifted (...okay, I find myself uplifted). I'd been skipping Save Me basically ever since I'd gotten the CD, and it's only a couple of months ago, one day when I was too lazy to reach into my pocket and skip the song, that I realized what a fool I'd been.

Likewise, With You In Your Dreams has an amazing ASC. But I won't upload it because if I had to choose one song to share from Middle of Nowhere, it would be Weird. *sighs* Ah, Weird. It's the second song that got me into Hanson (the first being I Will Come To You, which I won't upload because it still breaks my heart and I can never listen to it anymore, it brings back too many memories), and three albums later, it's still one of my favourites, as much for the music as for the lyrics (as for the video which managed to be both completely embarrassing --the part underwater-- and amazingly poetic --the revolving room--).

And really, what always gets me with Hanson, are the lyrics. Oh, they're not all good. Most of them are incredibly sappy, or absurdly philosophical, or annoyingly Christian. But in almost every song, there will be at least one sentence that will just...click. Like pieces of my own life put into words. (let's check how many times I've used Hanson lyrics for icons, layouts, or subject lines, shall we?)

Broken Angel, for example, is quite lame, like something you'd write in highschool. But the ends of the two first couplets?

A high-flyer is what I want to be
Seems they won't let me
Says I'm too small
I don’t feel small at all

I'm gonna go so high
And swoop so low

Own my soul. (well, Zac's voice owns my soul, too, especially in that song, especially on the "I'm gonna go so high" part)

And, to be fair to their sappy songs, most often, even the music is good. A Song to Sing is still for me the perfect example of a perfect sad song, from the music to the emotion to the lyrics. Perfection.

And then there's the plain fun songs, like In the City, Look at You, or, obviously, Man from Milwaukee, silly, happy stuff that has no pretention apart from giving you this irresistible urge to get on your feet and dance like an idiot (preferably while washing the dishes or getting ready for bed).

Although no song makes me want to dance and yell as much as the upbeat, passionate ones. I still can't listen to If Only without anxiously waiting for the pause, so I can snap my fingers at the exact moment Taylor starts singing again. And Smile makes me want to open all my windows wide and take in the sun, even if it's winter outside. You just can't resist those songs.

I don't think I know a single band apart from them that can excell at both the serious, soul-searching songs, and the silly, poppy ones; nowadays they all seem to willingly place themselves in tiny little boxes. Coldplay is philosophical glue. Evanescence emo-crap. And even though I guess most "rock" bands try to balance everything, their songs still sound the same from one track to the other.

But Hanson? They do everything, and you can tell the difference. We did soulful, we did fun, we did upbeat, let's get to...uplifting, for lack of a better word. The songs that not only make me dance, but also lift my very spirits up, no matter how crappy real life is. Not lift me up because the lyrics are so nonsensical (or plain hollow), but because I can feel them ringing and tingling to the tip of my fingers. Those are the songs that I cannot help but smile to. Put me at a funeral, or in front of the Queen of England, and sneak Penny and Me, Get Up and Go, or Dancing in the Wind in my brain? I'll still break into a grin.


So there you go. I think that's a pretty good overview of what Hanson can do. Their new album is (supposedly) coming out at the end of March, and they've already said they had tried an entirely new sound...not that they didn't do this for each and every album they've made. Yeah, yeah, the cynical among you will point out that actually, their albums don't sound that different, but when you've grown up with them, followed them song by song? I can garantee you, you notice the evolution. It's another thing I've always liked about Hanson. They might have started preformated for success, but that's never been their goal, and after Mmmbop, they've never tried to make ready-made teenage-soup. They've always made the kind of music they themselves would like to listen to, and it shows. Their music and their lyrics have grown up along with them, and I honestly can't wait to hear what they'll be coming up with next, in two years, five years, ten years. Because to be honest, it's hard to picture my life without some Hanson music in it.

Current Mood: content
Current Tags: hanson, mp3s, music

You know, it's a true blessing that my laptop should be too old to install video games, else nobody would ever hear from me again (or at least not until I was done with Diablo II).

Thank you thank you thank you, Alex, for this poisoned gift! <3


( Don't worry, it's much shorter than my Oblivion recaps. Anyway, I'll be over there, playing. )


Okay, second part's the desert, I'd been hoping it would be the Jungle with the crazy pigmies. Oh god, I remember now, there's also an eclipse in that Act!! Goddamnit, I hate eclipses! It's bad enough when night falls, but it takes forever to get the sun back out in that quest! *trudges towards the first Act Quest*


* At least the background noises have been left unchanged.

Current Mood: Of course now my head hurts, but it's worth it
Current Tags: vgames:diablo ii

So! I just finished reading The Devil Wears Prada.

I'm still a little fuzzy as to why I got so addicted to a book that I never actually enjoyed.

( Spoilers for both book and movie, for those who care )


But you know what was really great about all this? Gulping down a book in less than a week, reading every possible moment, regularly losing track of time because of it. I'd missed that, I really had.

Current Mood: working
Current Tags: literature, rant

I can't believe I almost forgot to fill that meme out again! (and I can't believe it took me five hours to fill out. *headdesk* Maxthon, I HATE you, stop taking hours to load pages and freezing up every two seconds!!!!!) When for once it's actually useful...

And I'm linking my answers back to the appropriate entries, because I'm thoughtful like that.


( The 2006 Meme )

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:

Take every day as it comes. There's no need to angst about the future, close or far away.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Hello, goodbye my friend / Feels like the start all over again. (Hanson)

And if I could only find such perfect lyrics every year, those memes could be summed up in that last question!

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: B&B - Human Again
Current Tags: meme

ThursdayFriday, 00.31:

So.

The concert. Nah, the Concert.



( Complete review behind the cut )

Current Mood: dreamy
Current Tags: concerts, jamie cullum, music, pictures, squee

Random "Why I love Terry Pratchett So Much and Why I Would Sacrifice Any Amount of Small Animals to Reach his Genius" post.


'Hallo, skelington.'
[Death] swivelled round.
The small child of the house was watching him with the most penetrating gaze he had ever seen.
'You are a skelington, aren't you,' she said. 'I can tell, because of the bones.'
YOU ARE MISTAKEN, SMALL CHILD.
'You are. People turn into skelingtons when they're dead. They're not supposed to walk around afterwards.'
HA. HA. HA. WILL YOU HARK AT THE CHILD.
'Why are you walking around, then?'
Bill Door [a.k.a Death incognito] looked at the old men. They appeared engrossed in the sport.
I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, he said desperately, IF YOU WILL GO AWAY, I WILL GIVE YOU A HALF-PENNY.
'I've got a skelington mask for when we go trickle-treating on Soul Cake Night,' she said. 'It's made of paper. You get given sweets.'
Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason.
LOOK, he said, IF I WAS REALLY A SKELETON, LITTLE GIRL, I'M SURE THESE OLD GENTLEMEN HERE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.
She regarded the old men at the other end of the bench.
'They're nearly skelingtons anyway,' she said. 'I shouldn't think they'd want to see another one.'
He gave in.
I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE RIGHT ON THAT POINT.
'Why don't you fall to bits?'
I DON'T KNOW. I NEVER HAVE.
'I've seen skelingtons of birds and things and they all fall to bits.'
PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE WHAT SOMETHING WAS, WHEREAS THIS IS WHAT I AM.
'The apothecary who does medicine over in Chambly's got a skelington on a hook with all wire to hold the bones together,' said the child, with the air of one imparting information gained after diligent research.
I DON'T HAVE WIRES.
'There's a difference between alive skelingtons and dead ones?'
YES.
'It's a dead skelington he's got then, is it?'
YES.
'What was inside someone?'
YES.
'Ur. Yuk.'
The child stared distantly at the landscape for a while and then said, 'I've got new socks.'
YES?
'You can look, if you like.'
A grubby foot was extended for inspection.
WELL, WELL. FANCY THAT. NEW SOCKS.
'My mum knitted them out of sheep.'
MY WORD.
The horizon was given another inspection.
'D'you know,' she said, 'd'you know...it's Friday.'
YES.
'I found a spoon.'
Bill Door found he was waiting expectantly. He was not familiar with people who had an attention span of less than three seconds.

- - - - - -


This mix of nervousness and excitation that pops up every time the DisneyStore is concerned is starting to grate on my nerves. Yesterday morning I was so goddamn nervous before going to work that I should have called mom. I would prefer not to feel so stupidely nervous every time, thankyouverymuch. I guess it's just because I don't know what tomorrow's team will be yet. That must be it.

And now to bed.

Current Mood: tired
Current Tags: literature, terry pratchett

This good deed -- see previous post -- made me realize that I dearly needed to get famous for the right reasons (it grew to the point where I was so infamous guards would basically run to arrest me just because I was taking a stroll through town), and finally went into the Oblivion gate to close it down. I ran, and ran, and dodged, and ran, and healed myself, and dodged some more blows, passed through lovely rooms with lovely names such as "The Blood Feast", healed myself, ran up and up and up the tower, proceeded to get dizzy and lose my way about a million times, running around like a headless chicken and making my ennemies basically stop pursuing me because they knew I'd pass in front of them again at one point or another, finally got to the top and grabbed the goddamn stone, jumped into thin air...and found myself back into the real world. Not the most interesting thing ever, to be honest. And the worst thing? Now lots of new gates are sprouting up all over the country!!!! If I'd known that I'd have let the Klatch inhabitants deal with it on their own much longer, let me tell you.

It's an interesting phenomenon, though, because I've know started to look out for the gates, almost giddy when I find a new one (and disappointed when I reload a saved game and the door has suddenly disappeared because most of them are randomly created), just because...well, I'd rather know where they are (once they're on the map they can't go away) and be done with it, y'know?

The other thing is that I've read that once the main quest is done, you can continue playing forever but all the Oblivion gates close down by themselves, so they're not so threatening anymore. The very funny thing is the way they were saying it, which basically was "Enjoy the gates while you can guys, because they might close down before you can do it yourself!", and I was gaping at the screen, wondering who'd be masochistic enough to relish going into those hellholes where even rocks and plants want you dead.

I also keep trying to climb every mountain I meet to try and see if I can see several gates at once (you can pick out a tree in the distance and walk to it, and see the capital city from basically any high point in the country, so you'd think the scenery would show tower-tall gates of red fire, right? Wrong). Talking about mountains, I managed to climb the tallest one the other day, with my trusty horse, because I was looking for a sanctuary and thought it'd be in the mountain (the map doesn't really show moutains and such). After hours of hard vertical climbing, we arrived, panting, to the top. I looked down, tempted to shout "I'm the king of the world!"...only to see the sanctuary staring back at me from down in the valley, about four meters from where I'd started off.

My horse didn't like me that day. Didn't like me at all. Especially since, because as always I'd forgotten to save the game for a while, we had to go all the way back down, and the climb was so steep my horse fell and got knocked unconscious about half a dozen times. *coughs* I then proceeded to get lost in the forest and stumbled upon the sanctuary after one hour by pure chance.

...

...Now that you're done snickering, let's talk about my noble soul. Because as it happens, I'm a scoundrel with a heart of gold, in case you hadn't noticed it yet. The other day, I walk into a tavern, looking for a guy. Another guy, sitting at the bar, sees me and whispers "Don't say a word and sit down next to me." Cue me getting a little thrill of excitement, thinking I'd stumbled upon a new quest. As it turns out, it was just a guy from the main quest, which I'd forgotten I was supposed to find there. But anyway. We needed a very rare book, and I managed to get into contact with an obscure enemy brotherhood, who told me to meet them in the town sewers, alone.

First of all, the guy tells me he knows how to get there, and I should follow him. Now, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but every single time you follow or escort someone in any roleplaying game, they will die (click to see my point illustrated). Ask anyone. Because whereas I sneak around and avoid the enemies and basically am a basic intelligent human being, they will yell "Cover my back!" and rush at anyone they see in a blind fury, even if said "anyone" happen to be ten pissed off minotaurs with glowing axes.

Hence, inevitably, they die. Or, in the case of this guy, end up falling unconscious every two seconds because they are too important to the main quest to die quite just yet.

So needless to say, I decided to go to the meeting alone. I was supposed to meet them in the sewers under the Talos Quarter (it was in the capital). I, silly beast as I am, went to the Talos Quarter, found the entry to the sewers, and climbed down.

Within half an hour I was hopelessly lost and only managed to go back to the outside world by breaking and entering into somebody's cellar. Yes, my abismal sense of orientation even gets me screwed up in video games. Stop laughing right now, I can hear you from here.

I trudged back to the Inn and followed the guy, who went to the Elven Gardens's sewers, five miles from the rendez-vous point. How was I supposed to know this was the logical route, I ask you!

And so we went down ( in the sewers )

Current Mood: still accomplished
Current Tags: oblivion

So! That long awaited Oblivion post! Rejoice! *grins*

Seriously though, if you're bored/depressed/in need of a laugh, I think that's the post for you, although it might be less funny when you can't actually hear me say all those things. Ah well, use your imagination then, dolls, won'tcha?

I cut my ramblings into two posts, because I know how the longest post ever written can look daunting sometimes. Don't ever say I don't have pity on you.


So many things to relate. Thankfully I took notes. (yes, I did. I'm a geek. Shuttup). Mind you I was doubly right to take notes, because to my neverending delight when my sister came back to her place on Sunday night, and found me still there, about the first thing she said was "So, I wanna hear all about your gameplaying!!". :D She also told me that she'd met people who were playing to the game at the wedding they went to, and they all looked at her as if she was insane when she said that the game sounded really fun and exciting, with all those people to talk to and things to look for, and they frowned and said that "uh...no, it's not like that at all."

I think it says a lot that most people (the creators included, or at least that's how they sold the game) look at Oblivion as just another RPG game, point-and-shoot and kill as many demons as you can, when they've made it so real and detailed that you can basically never touch the main quest and spend ages building a life for yourself in that world. I still think they should release an extension that would allow people to just fish or paint or sew or whatever and play merchant instead of playing monster-hunter, because I'm tired of finding pencils and paint-pots and strips of clothes when I can't actually do anything with them!

I mean, apart from killing and stealing from people, my favourite bit? Is looking for Nirnroots (some nifty rare plant that emits music and glows blue) and pearl-shells. Yes, possibly I've got the game-point all wrong. I don't care.


So anyway, what did I do with my time...

Well, let's start by the nasty part, the Dark Brotherhood jobs. I wouldn't have thought that it could get worse than killing Marie-Antoinette -- ( which I did, yes. )

But you know, what bothers me the most about all this is that nobody acknowledges how horrible those missions are!! I mean, okay, so I'm an assassin, it makes sense I'd be given some gruesome jobs, that's not what I'm protesting, but since the game makers have done all they could (voluntarily or unvoluntarily) for us to care for the characters, I find it extremely worrying that no-one on the forums or the game-FAQs seems to think those jobs are anything to fret about (I only found one guy who said his girlfriend had been pretty upset about killing the Brotherhood members). What's the point, I wonder, of playing to such a lifelike game if it's to act just as detached as if you were playing to a basic shoot'em up game like Doom? *shrugs*


Illustration of how not-serious this game is: I had heard about a village where all the inhabitants had been turned invisible. After a while, curiosity got the better of me and I looked for its whereabouts in the Oblivion Wiki, because as lovely as my horse is, riding around in the bleeding pouring rain soon gets on one nerves (seriously, what's with Oblivion and rain? Not to mention the microcosms above cities. For some reason it's always sunny in the Market District but as soon as you step out to the harbour you get drenched and struck by lightning. Talk about a beach vacation...). Enjoying a miraculously clear night, I eagerly trotted up to ( the village )

-- oh yes, my horse got away once. I walked around for miles and miles, travelled to every goddamn city in the hopes of it following me there, only to finally find him back in the old castle where it had been given to me in the first place. When I arrived to the castle, the computer suddenly saw fit to inform me that my horse had returned to the castle. I don't know what I would do without those helpful messages, really I don't. The worst thing was one day, I was walking back to the capital after doing one brave deed or another, and the computer suddenly told me that Featherpetal-or-something had lost consciousness. Now, I'd never met that Featherpetal (I mean, with a name like that, I wouldn't have forgotten her!). I looked around wildly, sprinted back to town, desperately asked people hoping they'd tell me who she was, and all the while the computer kept telling me "Featherpetal has lost consciousness" (I didn't know at the time that it meant the character couldn't die). To this day I still have no idea who that Featherpetal was. But my bet is, she woke up with a raging headache the next day.

But back to me frantically looking around to see where the sound was coming from and whether I was about ( to be trampled to death )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The Tragically Hip - New Orleans is Sinking
Current Tags: oblivion