#217 - Music, school.

A working, functionally complete version of Bacchanalia [YouSendIt]

I have issues with this regarding melodic and chord progressions and overall structure, but I can perform it live if I wanted to. Will be leaving it for a while to simmer and cool down before I start trying to work on it again, if I'm inclined to do so.

I also showed this piece to sannion, who is a devoted follower of Dionysos, and he wants to play the song during the next ritual he's going to do for the god. Which is good, because that's sort of why I was doing the song in the first place (albeit a few months late).

***

[WARNING: RAMBLES AHEAD]

I left my ANT120/ART233 notebook at home today. *facepalm* So I couldn't study for the ANT120 quiz I had this morning (which wasn't hard, actually, but it's the principle of the thing I'm talking about here), and I had to/will have to take notes on looseleaf.

Am falling asleep here trying to murder time again (fucking thing just keeps coming back from the dead! Do I, like, have to cut off its head and gag the mouth with garlic or something?!) until I have to meet with Professor Akiyoshi at noon. Need something to eat, since I only had a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch with milk for breakfast and then a can of Mountain Dew during ANT120. Am craving sushi again.

In the middle of reading Greek Folk Religion by Martin Nilsson. There's nuggets of information here and there, but the style is impeccably snore-inducing. I can't go more than a few pages at a time, because otherwise my eyes start glazing over. That is why I am here killing brain cells on the Interwebs instead of killing brain cells on studying the history of my adopted spirituality and taking notes. My logics, it is invincibles!

Am also obsessively refreshing Twitter, what.

***

The recent issue of the Hudson Fanclub Insider newsletter has pointed me to the official English site for the Bomberman Blast game for Wii. There's still no release date for the American version. Wiccapedes says that the WiiWare version of the game was already released in Europe on the 12th (wtf? What's the logic in that?), while the Japanese console and WiiWare versions will be released on September 25 and 30, respectively.

Wiccapedes also reports an overall positive reception to the game, with critics making favorable comparisons to the similar Bomberman Live. But y'all know I'm a little Bomberbitch who doesn't really care about multiplayer, so the comparison is mildly useless to moi. I'll probably ask the buttmunch to go pick it up if he can (thank the Gods that we have similar tastes in games), but I'm not sure I'd be willing to shell out the cash for it not in the least because I have no cash to shell out.

To slightly paraphrase mia_noire's sentiments on finding a parking space at MVCC for my own use: "Who the fuck do I have to blow around here to get a decent Bomberman single-player platforming adventure game again?!"

-Reileen
there's no need to tell anyone, they'd only hold us down

#218 - Hey, what, spam?

THINGS I LEARNED IN ART233 TODAY

• If you microwave a donut, you'll end up with just an empty, dried out husk of a pastry.
  
• If you microwave a bar of soap, you can get it to expand and become all foamy and shit.
  
• Sex on the beach (referring to the actual act, not the drink) is not as romantic as movies etc. make it seem.
  
• The professor will be displeased if you go out and rob a grave in the name of scholastics. She will be very pleased, however, if you decide to have a beer and pretzel in the name of scholastics* (only applies to those over 21).
  
• Oh, yeah, and some guy named Sneferu had an obsession with pyramids and stuff.

ART233 is an interesting class, and the professor is knowledgeable and friendly, drawing amusing modern analogies to things she's talking about from history (see the first starred point at the bottom). And it has given me the interesting definition of art as "valued visual culture."

The problem is that, after waking up early to attend my 8:30am Science of Archaeology class, I'm freakin' dead after that. I was planning to have that chunk of time (3.5 hours on Tuesdays, about 5 hours on Thursdays) as a "Well, I'm already downtown, so let's good off around the city while I can!" sort of thing, but I totally underestimated how tired and lethargic I would be. I think I just need to get used to being up that early and actually being active, but it's still really disconcerting.

***

When I wasn't busy obsessively refreshing webpages and falling unconscious at the computer lab, I was lyric-sketching. I got down two songs, one of which is tentatively titled "life: notes from your mistress", but that needs a hella lotta work before I can think of even showing the rough draft (and I'm seriously contemplating relegating it to the "failed experiments" bin). This one fares better; I only half-hate the lyrics. The sentiment behind it is similar to Evanescence's lyric "I want to stay in love with my sorrow" from their song "Lithium", in that the narrator of this song (whoever s/he may be) is unwilling, for whatever reason, to give up that which isolates them from life, love, happiness. (Actually, now that I think about it, the narrator of this song could very well be Aya Asia from the Nougami Neuro series. Fancy that.) I have a vague inkling for how the music might go, but I'm still not sure if I want to go through with turning this into a performable song.

Cold

it's so coldly warm in here
don't want to migrate to tropic minds
where the sun will burn me
turn me aside
love, please don't cry
there's no need to melt my frozen heart
with the white-hot of your sorrow

I'm all right, I swear
bathed in the ice of my despair
embraced in a blizzard of
that which speaks to deepest blood
all that glitters is only cold

pleas in the air freeze before they die
you tried to save me from the winter storm
but found that I've only ever loved
the eternal snow

I'm all right, I swear
bathed in the ice of my despair
embraced in a blizzard of
that which speaks to deepest blood
all that glitters is only cold

nothing you can do will set me free
from this prison of eons old
come closer and you will see
all that glitters is only cold

nothing you can do will set me free
from this prison of eons old
come closer and you will see
all that glitters is only cold

-Reileen
behind the door, should I open it for you?

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*Apparently a common food offering to the dead in ancient Egypt was bread and beer.