My Musical (featuring Killer Robots!)

April 12, 2009 at 10:24 pm (fan girlism, ranting)
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Happy Easter! Or, the more awesome holiday being celebrated today, happy Cosmonautics Day! I was not actually expecting to have a particularly good easter this year because my parents are masters of deception and had convinced me that i was to receive no eggs this year (it is particularly painful when they do this at christmas, or when it turns out they weren’t actually lying). Although because our garden is currently flooded and overgrown the easter egg hunt was limited to the conservatory and stone-outsidey-place-where-the-washing-line-is. I got 3 eggs and an easter bunny- which was reason enough to do a little celebratory dance to “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer and spend the rest of the day wearing a scarf tied around my head and hoop earrings pretending to be a pirate (i was re-reading Lord of the Flies today, which explains why i needed a distraction). I hope everyone else had a good easter! (its weird how even when i was younger and went to a CoE primary school and had to go to church etc. easter was never about Jesus. Ah well.  Enjoy your candy!)

Other than chocolate it has been an amazingly boring time recently. Still pretending to revise. Still reading What is the What which is as depressing and also as amazing as ever. (actually so bored i stopped blogging to try and beat my high score on Snake Extreme 2 on my phone. gah).

In an attempt to beat the boredom i have been listening to The Aquabats, which is weird because i don’t usually listen to ska/rock…people pretending to be superheroes. Though i think more people should dress up as superheroes! I would personally enjoy it if they weren’t so tight and made of spandexy. I was thinking earlier about trying to make up a very cool super villain and ended up just deciding that if anyone was going to take over the earth i would want it to be Jonathon Coulton in a top hat and monocle.

(okay: this is future me writing when reading over this post. this next bit goes a tad crazy. my sincere apologies)

See, i was listening to ABBA earlier (yes. i am slightly ashamed) and decided that the songs could have been used to make a way cooler musical!. One about…killer robots. As in, Super Troopers.  And i decided to chuck in songs by Jonathan Coulton and the Silver Jews as well (because…i am not sure why). And then i remembered the song Super Trooper was all about how someone loved and was comforted by them so i decided that maybe some poor woman made them to be her husband substitute after he was murdered. And JoCo steals these robots and reprogrammes them to be evil world taking over robots. Thus twisting “Does Your Mother Know” from a cheesy and slightly pervy pop song to a threatening refrain sung whilst shooting teenagers who break curfew. It would also be fun to choreograph a dance to “Todd the T100” and of course, those who disobey are sent to Chiron Beta Prime (i love that song!).

Anyway. David Berman, our hansome-ish anti-hero, and his wife Cassie are hanging out past curfew (cue: Punks in the Beerlight) and are surprised by killer robots who steal Cassie to take back to JoCo (cue: Skullcrusher Mountain) and David Berman mourns (cue: The Winner takes it All, then lots of other songs as his mourning progressess. I guess Sometimes a Pony gets Depressed and then maybe when hes more suicidal My Pillow is the Threshold). So he decides he will defeat and gathers up some sidekicks! He gets Code Monkey (cue the song) who decided to hand in his resignation to boring manager Rob and become a superhero in order to win the heart of the secretary, he saves Tom (from Re: Your Brains) from hordes of zombies and gets  Leonard Nimoy to try and stop him mourning over his short lived affair with Bigfoot (Under the Pines). So he gathers them all around, explains his plan (by singing Take a Chance on Me obviously) then decide to make their headquarters on the party barge (…cue Party Barge).

So now they need to find JoCos hiding place. They happen to come across the crazy lady who started it all who tells them where to find him (cue: There is a Place). So they make their way to Skullcrusher mountain where Cassie is still imprisoned (i can’t decide what song this should be! maybe she could have befriended one of the guards who sings Chiquitita to her. Or maybe she sings Candy Jail in bitter tones!). David Berman and his sidekicks manage to defeat the hungry mountain wolves, though one manages to bite David’s hand off (cue: SOS)….

Okay that is as far as i got. It is just a rough outline of this…musical thing. It probably doesn’t make that much sense if you don’t know the songs, but even without that knowledge i believe it could be awesome. Especially since it has killer robots in (which makes anything pretty awesome). And seeing as David Berman said he might go into writing screenplays…

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Goodbye Berman, Hello King of All Cosmos

January 26, 2009 at 9:46 pm (Uncategorized)
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Okay. You might be expecting me to talk about The Princess Bride. Or end of exam celebrations. Or the painfully recent breakup of the Silver Jews (how could you David!?!?!). And I will. But i would like to to begin by saying that i think cup fungi are very pretty 🙂

Look! It's really awesome fungi!

Look! It's really awesome fungi!

 

Pretty fungi helps me calm down. As does ABBA (see what you have reduced me too?!) and obsessively applying lip balm. Because i am seriously pissed at you David Berman (speaking of pretty pictures, i happen to have one of David Berman eating twister ice cream. That is awesome on so many levels! I used to freakin’ love twister ice cream!), and myself. The ONE time i could have gotten tickets to see the Silver Jews- i forgot. I didn’t really like them then, i just thought it was a good name and for such a low price i ought to check it out. Now i will never see them! I am just going to have to get a car, learn to drive it, go to Tennessee (I’m pretty sure that’s where you live. so watch out. well, actually don’t- then my plan won’t work) and kidnap you. Keep you underneath the ping-pong table. Force you to read me your poetry. That kind of thing. Which would be weird- but ultimately for your own good (yeah…plan isn’t fully developed yet). But that would be mean- especially considering you just revealed your estrangement from your father, who is “a world historical motherfucking son of a bitch.”. I hope this is only a temporary break. Giving you some time to grow a longer, grey, flowy beard and to write some kickass poetry (seriously- i would like another book. please). Or you could have a child- that would be pretty adorable.

(actually- people who i want to have children: John Green and The Yeti, Katherine and Hank Green. they would be the most awesomest, nerdiest babies of all time).

For once, i don’t have much to say about The Princess Bride. I have a lot more reading to do. And i did calm down eventually. Why did he never write the sequel? the sequel sounds awesome (but…but did he have sex with someone else? that was kinda implied. i know he’s a pirate and all but i was ever-so-slightly devastated)! And then we could make another film. Starring me. And Sean Penn. In your face Robin Wright Penn! (okay, no. Cary Elwes will always be my Westley. and he will always come for me- this is true love! do you think this happens everyday?)

End of exams! It was a hectic friday trying to party. Thats kinda my fault for never having my phone on me and hating phone conversations….so we ended up waiting at some bus stop for around 2 hours waiting for Sophia to turn up. But it ended up okay! We watched Secret Window (again. Got to love that film- tis’ hilarious) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which was better than i thought it would be- loving the Dracula musical). We ate the party rings. They were pretty fucking amazing.  Kinda too exhausted to do much. Invented a new word for bus.

On Sunday, Fia introduced me to the world of Katamari Damacy. I suck at it (yeah…even though its like…ridiculously easy) but god i love it. I love how pretty it is. I love the object you get to roll (like- the object of the game is to roll objects up into a ball. Youtube it or something). I love the music. Most of all- I love the King of All Cosmos ♥

 

"Maybe we'll invent Cosmic Esperanto"

"Maybe we'll invent Cosmic Esperanto"

 

Yes- maybe we will invent cosmic Esperanto. Together. And i will sing you songs in our little private language on a rainbow guitar- is that a rainbow-coloured guitar or a guitar made of rainbows? Who knows. All we know is that it will be beautiful and touching yet also rather sextacular (that word has the added bonus/creepiness of making me think of tentacles).

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Megabats and Brackets

January 18, 2009 at 9:37 pm (fan girlism, randomness, ranting, Uncategorized)
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I meant to update this yesterday with a blog which got all nostalgic because i bought some party rings (!!!!!!) but my scanner is working which yeah…basically it will appear sometime soon. Which is a shame. It is probably more interesting than this post because right now i am just trawling through the internet, wishing i could buy some tickets to go see Emmy the Great. I like her music. I like Emmy as well- she’s adorable. I saw her at Latitude 2007 in like, this little stage in the woods and after the show i got a picture of Emmy giving bunny ears to my friend (who apparently doesn’t like Emmy much anymore. and is now dating my brother. awkward much).

But Emmy is not as cool as Megabats. You heard me: Megabats. Otherwise known as Old World Fruitbats. I love the random article option on wikipedia. I love the fact that apparently Megabats  “pose no direct threat to human beings, baby cows, or ill children”. I love you wikipedia, i really do. Plus all the different kinds of Megabat! “Lesser tube-nosed fruit bat” and “bare-backed fruit bats” or “long-tongued fruit bats”. It just makes me very happy for some reason. Plus they are really adorable. I just want a talking one. Look at its smile!

A Megabat!

A Megabat!

When i was about 4 or 5, i went with my family to sit outside this cave for aaaages. And i had no idea why we were there. I feel like that a lot but anyway. At sundown, this great cloud of bats flew out the cave to start hunting! It was pretty awesome.

I have also been enjoying Tanglewood Numbers. David Berman is adorable. I wish i was his wife. No, seriously. Cassie Berman is really cute and can play the banjo and can pull off pink-tinted hexagonal shades. (Though right now i actually feel very cool because i am wearing two watches! and one of them is making a funny noise. One is the watch my grandfather gave my mum at her graduation, the other belonged to my step-grandmother. (edit: i am now wearing three watches! hah! all reading different times!)i am also wearing dangly, hippy earrings which make me feel fun and i jangle when i walk. Why isn’t David Berman a practitioner of bigamy?! Why can’t he marry me? Is it because w have never met and I’m 15? Or is it because he just can’t handle all this love i want to give him? or…because that just sounds really creepy. (Speaking of creepy: i was reading an interview with Charlotte Rouche about her novel Wetlands. eeeww. ewwww. kinda want read it just so i can laugh at the people who fainted during the readings but probably wont because i do not want to be seen buying it. Oh: also in Borders the other day i saw they have a special “erotic literature” thing next to the classic section. me and hannah were planning on buying some for zoë because they look hilarious). Anyway. Its a good album. It sucks because they play some of my favourite songs…and i can only buy their CDs off the internet because i live on this ridiculous island! GAH! (fyi: i live in Papua New Guinea. i wish. i live on a non-excitingly shaped island. which sucks. everyday i drive down to the coastline and yell at it.)

Oh, you may have noticed in the bracket above (or maybe you just skipped over it i don’t know. maybe you just don’t read brackets, leaving me free to insult you in the brackets. ha! you stupid person wasting time reading my arbitrary thoughts! i believe you suck!) but me and Hannah spent some time hanging out at Borders on Friday. It must have looked a bit odd, two girls poring over books, going into the classical civ. section to laugh at Caesar (“hah! those druids! they are concerned with divine things and sacrifices public and private!”) and me flicking through Bill Clinton’s autobiography to show Hannah this photo of him with a beard which makes him look like a sea captain. Oh Bill. You and your not-very-well-thought-out-at-all facial hair. We were quite hyper, no idea why because we had just had a latin exam. We were loving this question: How is the visitor described (2 marks)? Answer: A huge and beautiful young man.

Anyway. I am going to stop typing because my face feels likes it burning. If i don’t have time to update later: Enjoy Barack’s inauguration bitches! (yeah, not the finest sentence i have ever typed but it just felt…right somehow)

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Coming to light

October 12, 2008 at 11:06 pm (fan girlism, randomness, ranting, Uncategorized)
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I know it is late. And i am going to school tomorrow. But i am no longer quite so annoyed now, a combination of how much i love night and of reading Everything is Illuminated. I had just finished reading Strange as this Weather has Been (by Ann Pancake, winner of the Bakeless Fiction prize, my friends refuse to believe that it is her real name) and so i happened to pick up Everything is Illuminated in my brothers room and started to read it. I should have bought my own copy because now i feel compelled to keep this one, in fact without this copy i will die and wonder the earth all lonely as this copy will one day be gone from my side and back to its rightful owner, i.e Fred my brothers best friend. I hate to think what will happen when i finish reading this book. I hate finishing good books because i can never reread things fully, i go through and pick out all the parts i like and those aren’t so good anymore and this makes me feel so hollow inside.

So yeah, i think you can tell i think you can tell i like the book. I am even considering going to Yale, just in case Jonathan Safran Foer ever considers teaching their again, like he did last spring (god bless you wikipedia). I just distrust Yale. I just hate that name-Yale. My love of Bill Clinton couldn’t make me want to go there, but my love for Foer can which is saying something. It also makes me want to read his wife’s books, which i have seen around and wanted to read but now might actually read. I have too many books i want to read. Ah well.

Oh: listening to Pavement, because of their connection to the Silver Jews

(was feeling like such an awful person because i was listening to a recording of David Berman reading some of his poems and i was like “oh olivia- you are such a horribly pretentious fuck”. still. it was nice to know he reads his poems like the voice in my head does. maybe the two of them can become friends and i can make them lemonade at watch them complete crossword puzzles together then burn them. and we can all laugh at TS Eliot and Dylan Thomas because they sound so bloody awful when they read their poems. And we invent a new method of stitching and practice on strawberries. and now im just slinging together any words that go so i ought to stop before i try and find some meaning in them)

Oh: tomorrow night i am off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz.

Oh no wait, im off to see Voldemort, the evilest wizard of them all.

By which i mean i am off to see Ralph Fiennes on stage. Playing Oedipus. Which brings back memories of a cover latin lesson. *shudders*.

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Losing friends, alienating people

October 11, 2008 at 2:36 pm (fan girlism, randomness)
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Long weekend! And I’m wasting it basically. Thursday afternoon i wondered around with Imogen, bought some more Gabriel García Márquez, and spent several hours reading in Starbucks. Only Sophia ended up coming to the cinema with me on Friday, despite most people telling me they could come. That always happens when i decide to organise things, but i cheered myself up by wearing my favourite shirt (which isn’t actually mind, its my brothers and I’ve always wanted to wear it) and listening to awful music. Specifically: Shaggy. I heard some people on the bus singing…it just got stuck in my head. Also Hot Gossip and Sarah Brightman for some reason.

Watched “How to Lose friends and Alienate People” at the cinema which was standard comedy, and i remembered just how much i love Jeff Bridges. Especially his voice. I just want audio tapes full of that voice, of like “The Big Lebowski-Book Version” or something. Or some book in the “seedy-american-underbelly-story-possibly-narrated-by-a-detective” genre.

 On the bus to the cinema i ran into some people from school, and i realised i have turned into that girl who sits on the bus in a leather waistcoat reading poetry written by the lead singer of her favourite band whom no one else has ever heard of (well, no one i know) who was on drugs at the time of writing said poems. God. I actually made small talk. I am the master of enthusiastic sounding smalltalk. Its frightening, but worth it because i do absolutely love David Berman and his style of writing. Its comforting how most of it actually makes no real sense, but you still read it as if it does (I’m not sure that sentence actually makes sense). Though after reading my thoughts were jumbled and i was thinking as if they were the poems, using the same voice i use in my heads for the poems and if my thoughts had been written down they probably would be in some weird line pattern.

I’m going to blame this on Charlton Heston. Because he’s dead. And because he keeps on popping up in random places. Also because i just like mentioning his name. Like Jeff Bridges name keeps popping up in my head, which meant my imaginary people were having a discussion about how bees were disappearing because Jeff Bridges eats them to protect his daughters from bee strings-because in my head his daughters are aged like 5-7 even though in real life they are like 20 something. Man can that guy eat a lot of bees.

The people in my head actually buying miniature tricorne hats right now. This sounds odd, most “people in my head” updates do. Especially because they are “people in my head” updates. I just sound crazy. But the reason they are buying miniature tricorne hats is because they are on holiday and are buying the hats for their neice- who is five so it has to be a mini hat, and wants to be a pirate hence it being a tricorne hat. See? Not weird- actually adorable. Its just because if i fully explained everything that went on in my head it would take too long. So i just end up sounding crazy.

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Party Barge!

September 16, 2008 at 7:15 pm (fan girlism, ranting)
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I am much much better. I no longer have disgusting mouth ulcers! I am however still being creepily obsessive about David Berman. Right now i am listening to Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea which i bought on Sunday. How could you not love that album? It is one of the few albums I’ve bought where i actually like every track and not just a select few i listen to over and over again. Plus it has a chord sheet for guitar  on the inside (dead useful as i suck at memorising chords) which says “silver chords: anyone can play these songs. just put your fingertips on the polar noses + strum. love D.B” in Berman’s adorably childlike handwriting. Also the album cover art has Babar on it! I used to love it when my mum read me Barbar. IN other creepy obsession news i got Berman’s poetry book “Actual Air” which i mainly love, though some of it i actually can hardly understand (favourite poems…um i did have a list then i was like “oh but i like that too!” until it came to be too long a list to type).

I read most of the book on a bus ride when the evening was getting dark (its winter time again! it so odd after all the sunshine) which made everything better somehow. I love nearly empty buses. I was on my way to a dinner celebrating Zoë’s 16th birthday and we were all very excited for her because she is now legal can now buy lottery tickets. Yeah. So she took me, Isabel and her boyfriend James (this was the first time I’ve met him though they’ve been dating for a while now. verdict: nice and doesn’t mind if we make jokes at Zoës expense which makes things fun) to an Carluccios, which was awesome as always, and we got up all sorts of exciting japes and high jinks and we capered and frolicked all night long.

Just about everything is going well. Except french. And me asking my biology teacher if he would give his kidney to his mother is her own kidneys failed like he presumed they would (he wasn’t offended by this, but yes it was insensitive. Also if you ask him a question he makes eye contact with you the whole time he’s answering which is generally a while and this is very disconcerting). I am also getting very annoyed with the people in my book (The Plot Against America by Philip Roth) and occasionally say things to Hannah like “honestly! He’s bloody well getting brainwashed by Kentucky tobacco farmers!” and the like.

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Suffering Jukebox

September 11, 2008 at 9:52 pm (fan girlism, randomness, ranting)
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I am spending far too much time in my head. This happens when i don’t feel inclined to talk or like now when i find it hard to talk due to gloopy stuff sticking my mouth together in a futile attempt to soothe my mouth ulcers (disgusting i know. I’ve never really looked at the underside of my tongue before and frankly i don’t like it). So i am reading Markus Zusak (love love the name) and ignoring people and spending time thinking about strangers and daydreaming.

 I keep thinking about these two people on the two different buses i can take. One of them i christened “big, blond viking guy” because that was my first thought on seeing him (though now it would probably be more “boris-johnson-a-like”). He always seems to be wearing the same suit with clumpy shoes. He is very red in the face, its a lumpy face, and looks rather nervous despite his size. He is on the double decker bus i take most often and we get off at the same stop. I once saw him out shopping, with who i presume was his wife, and i felt shocked at him invading my place (yes, i find shopping at sainsburys a wonderful adventure).

The second has no real nickname, only when i see him i think “oh no, its the scary guy”. He has a very cold, sharp face with blue eyes and hes practically bald. He looks quite old, but wears a long green jacket with a fluffy hood with mod symbols on it, which i find rather worrying. He gets on the single decker bus i only get on every now and then, despite it being the quickest way to get home. He gets off at the same stop and, he probably isn’t aware of this, we race. He takes a different route to get to the same road and he always beats me, even when i tried his route. The other day i was very confused when i was getting of my double decker bus thinking “oh, there’s big blond viking guy. I wonder how…” and there scary guy was. Coming off a different bus which made me so confused. I see him around some times, it makes me uncomfortable.

I probably spend more time thinking about strangers then people i know around me. Not my friends obviously, i think about them a lot, but just the people i see everyday. Like the people in my class who i could get to know, i don’t really want to know. Sure they are mainly really nice. I like talking to them, its nice when they notice me or presume i know stuff and i gladly accept the chocolate they hand out on their birthdays. But I want to talk to strangers. I know that sounds weird and goes against everything those bright and shiny videos taught me when i was younger. I’ve been staring at this picture of David Berman, thinking (okay, wishing) he was here because he’s staring right at you and he just seems so much more real. I don’t know him, i am not even a hardcore Silver Jew fan but i know i could stare at that picture all night imagining us talking.

I would tell him how i watched the video for “Punks in the Beerlight” and then watched Planet of the Apes, only to discover the clips for the song where actually from Beneath the Planet of the Apesso i watched that too. Then we could talk about the films, how relieved i was that Brent didn’t kill Nova and why he appeared to be doing so, if we preferred Brent or Taylor (i actually can’t decide) and how what the films made us feel about humanity (to sum up: we’re disgusting) even though they aren’t amazing or deep films or anything. I would ask him what hes reading (in this picture hes holding a magazine or newspaper) and i would just listen to him talk and talk in that wonderful Virginia accent. And while he was talking i would think about his attempted suicide, and how i hoped he was happy with his wife and no longer suffering from depression, how much im looking forward to reading his poetry and god how pathetic i am to care so much but lets not think about this now because i’m talking to David Berman…

But this is just tired talking. Apparently the mouth ulcers indicate i am tired and rundown. How can i be rundown when i now know of the existence of the word “swash”? When i had cover lesson french and the cover teacher didn’t show up until 20 minutes before the end of the lesson? When im having a 1920s party in history next week where im pretending to be Kelly Wright, a telephone operator? When my cat is being so affectionate and looking better and is rather addicted to milk? Everything is going great. Really great.

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Sometimes a Pony gets Depressed

June 1, 2008 at 9:20 pm (doctor who, fan girlism, ranting)
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I actually had a good day: not too much revision, went out shopping to find birthday presents, spent time in a bookshop (always awesome) and i am currently listening to the song of the blog title, by the Silver Jews. Looking up David Berman on wikipedia gave some interesting information about the singer, also a mobster of the same name. David Berman seems like quite a nice gangster, less murder and evilness more driving racists out of Minneapolis and gambling in Las Vegas.

However, i am sitting here annoyed and (rather foolishly some might say) chewing on a needle for no real reason other than it was there. Going back to school tomorrow, my headphones are broken, have not had time to finish watching some doctor who DVDs and no one is making me tea!

Doctor Who yesterday! Funny how it wasn’t scary when i was watching it in my cosy living room with my grandfather (who wanted to see what all the fuss was about) yet I went to sleep with the lights on. Foolish Livvi. Much of today and late last night was spent questioning Doctor Who with Jess, namely why introduce this River Song possible love interest from the future lady before Rose comes back?! He loves Rose! Not this unattractive (well, shes not bad but The Doctor could actually get anyone woman he wants), sometimes plain odd woman! She was playing with his sonic screwdriver! Typing that made me laugh- how awful.

 I know it makes sense really, but this quote from good ol’ wikipedia made me laugh:

“The year 2008 has been declared the International Year of the Potato by the United Nations, noting that the potato is a staple food in the diet of the world’s population, and affirming the need to focus world attention on the role that the potato can play in providing food security and eradicating poverty”

 I wonder if this includes sweet potatoes? Oh well. Potatoes FTW.

 

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