November 27th, 2015

Happy late Thanksgiving folks. So today I'd like to do something real special. I work at a retail store and we have two bulletin boards that hang up in the hallway before you get to the public restrooms. One is for community news, anybody can put shit up there, and the other has recently been taken up by a 4th grade elementary class's monthly (bi-monthly? I don't really know how often they rotate) drawings of different things. These drawings have become a steady source of comedy for me and maybe one or two other cynical co-workers. Plus, if the internet has proved anything, it's that little kids have hilarious drawings. So lets start.

1. Here's the 'title page' if you will. Notice it says 'Circus Art'.

2. Here's picture number one. This is really great, mostly because this kid has the right idea. Don't fuck with animals is what this drawing says to me. You shouldn't mess with them either, especially when they look so absolutely outlandish and horrifying. Look at those claws... Not to mention the look of terror in the poor boys face.  If you can't read the speech bubble it says "I am screaming, there is a tiger after me". This, to be totally honest, is a really creepy thing to write down for a 4th grade child, so props to him for going the extra mile. Also, does the tiger have a beard? Or what the fuck is that black thing on his face. I don't even think I'm going to spend the time touching on the tigers weird pink ears and flat face. 

3.  Picture number two is really, really, great. If you don't know why already, think back to what this 'art prompt' is supposed to be about. The circus. This drawing is obviously depicting a fucking wizard. Last I heard, wizards aren't part of the circus, probably because they have more important things to do. Like casting spells, saving planets, defeating demons, and conversing with gods. Although, if I could go to what ever circus this kid is imagining, one with lightning wizards and a two-toned earth, I would pay a lot of money. 

Also, note his support of the gay and lesbian movement, that's a very politically correct wizard. Another side note, why the fuck is he so angry? Or is it vengeance? Wizards are not to be fooled around with apparently. He will gay-kill you so hard. Storms a-comin'. 

4. So, man, this elephant is so great. Have you even seen an elephant that looked so fucking shady? Just the way he's peeking around the page's end, or corner if you have the imagination. He looks like the kind of elephant who would be real nice to your face but then call you a bitch while you're walking away. Under his breath like, so you can't hear him. What a bitchy looking elephant. He's even got that fucking stupid hat thing. I don't know what that is but I instantly hate it. 

He's even got a weird half-gold star tattoo thing on his eye. You know this elephant thinks he's better than you.  

5. Most people seem to have a fear of clowns. It's my opinion that a lot of this fear is trend following and made up, but, I can definitely understand why people are afraid of clowns. That being said, this is the fucking scariest thing I've even seen a child try to draw that is supposed to be a symbol of fun and good cheer. Shit, I don't even know if it's supposed to be a clown. It could be a multi-colored, fucked up meerkat. It could be a weird, deformed, un-shelled ninja turtle. Jesus ... It might be a clown... or it might be a terrible fucking alien. It's even worse because the water colors make the 'clowns' eyes seem like they're bleeding weirdly. 

6. Alright, last one and then I'm done berating the little kids who like to draw. I feel like I'm ripping off of Madox but he can suck a dick. I actually had to go and take pictures of these drawings. 

This one is pretty self explanatory, and might even be the most thought out drawing of the five. It's obviously a lion tamer and his lion. Although the lion looks more like a psychopathic floating Pooh Bear and the lion tamer is so ill equipped it's laughable. Look at that tiny chair. What the fuck is he gonna do against the nightmare of the Hundred Acre Woods with that shitty little hat. Plus the stupid fucking grin he's got on his 'about to be eaten by Pooh Bear' face. Man, what a shitty drawing. 

SERIOUSLY, THAT'S RABID POOH. DID I MENTION POOH IS FUCKING FLOATING?

He's gotta be some sort of mutant, not only because he's floating, but because he also has a fucking duck bill instead of a regular bear muzzle. If only this kid had drawn a red shirt on him, I could die happy.

  

Holy shit, those are some of the best drawings I've ever seen. I will definitely be posting the next month (bi-month?) of photos too. I wish I would have had this idea when the last round of drawings were out. The theme was Dream Houses  and one kid drew a fucking snowman. That's right a fucking snowman for a house. I love that kid. That kid should write and illustrate my dreams.  I bet it was the same kid that drew the psychopathic floating Pooh Bear. Or as I will now lovingly refer to him as, 'The Nightmare of the Hundred Acre Woods'. 

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did.  

Seriously, a snowman for a house. That's one rad motherfucking kid. 

November 20th, 2015

8:56

Oh man, so today, Spotify released three new singles that really excited me. We'll go from least exciting to most exciting, since that sounds like more fun.

Least, but definitely still really cool, is Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros dropping their single Hot Coals. Oh man, it's really good. It's got a really nice sound to it that makes me feel like their next album could really kick ass. There's this cool piano/drum combo that sounds, dare I say, nearly funky. Which is a far cry from their usual sound. To make it clear, it still sounds very much like past songs, just with that certain element of growth and branching out that's always so awesome to see in bands as they mature. Needless to say I'm really excited to see what direction their next album takes and how far they push their boundaries.

 Next up on the list is Wolfmother with their two singles Victorious  and City Lights. Now, this is kind of a funny comparison between how I feel about different bands and different genres I think. I said above that I was really excited, and I am, about how Edward might be taking his Zeros in a bit of a different direction. It's sort of the exact opposite with Wolfmother, I want them to stay exactly the same. I love their past music, both albums were fairly solid, non-serious, and powerful rock pieces. I really liked Victorious, but City Lights really didn't do much for me. I guess that means I'll just have to wait and see. I've known that they have had an album in the works for a little bit but it still sort of sneaked up on me. I will await this new one with baited breath.

Alright, number three, the most important one. Cage the Elephant released a single called Trouble that will be off an upcoming album entitled Tell Me I'm Pretty and boy has it gotten me excited. Alright, but I have to be clear, this excitement comes as a bitter sweetness. I, being maybe the last person to still hold on to this opinion on the planet, liked Cage the Elephants debut album better than Melophobia. Even though I did LOVE Melophobia  I can't help but miss the pure energy from their first self titled album. Songs like In One Ear and of course No Rest for the Wicked, not to mention Back Stabbin' Betty have elements that I sorely miss on Melophobia. Even though I think their third album is their strongest album track for track, I really do miss the punk feeling Cage the Elephant held in their debut.
That being said, I'm really excited for Tell me I'm Pretty. Trouble sounds just about the same quality as most songs from Melophobia, it even surpasses the single Come a Little Closer in my mind. So it's fair to say that I'm totally ready for December 18th, which is when Tell Me I'm Pretty is being released. Boy howdy.

Other than these three exciting things, my day at work was bland. I work grave yard, So I get off quite early in the morning most days. Most people tent to think that graveyard would be 'really hard to do' and always ask me 'how I manage to do it'. Truthfully after you spend about a week doing it, while maintaining a good amount of sleep of course, you lose all sense of 'late' and 'early', also days and nights are just sort of light cycles at this point. And that's great for this line of work. I can pretty much fall asleep when ever I want to. If I can't I just take some melatonin and that usually works pretty good.
Oh, and I also hang a blanket over my window so my body makes some natural melatonin, if that even works. Hopefully it does.

I think that's enough writing for me now, have a great day. 

November 18th, 2015

I'm watching a particular youtubist, or youtuber if you want, that goes by the handle TheNeedleDrop. If you don't know who he is, I'll explain quickly. He is a reviewer of music albums who talks about the album, give his thoughts, and then a solid numeric score. Usually a six. I think he's pretty good. Well, I mean I know he's good, he has the viewer base to back that up. So maybe I should say that I think he is a fairly good reviewer, based on watching five or six videos of his. I also am lead to believe that he is a, to put it unreasonably harshly, hipster douche bag. Like I said, unreasonably harsh. What's worse is that I agree with him about a lot of the things he says, maybe that also makes me a hipster douche bag. There are worse things to be, though.
I find that I disagree with some of his views and opinions usually when it's concerning things that hipster douche bags like TheNeedleDrop and I would usually disagree on. I loved FIDLAR's second album Too and Tyler, the Creator's third album Cherry Bomb. TheNeedleDrop, on the other hand, gave Too a four out of ten, and Cherry Bomb a three out of ten. I know this is futile to complain about because in the end, opinions are just that, opinions. However, I feel like the root of our differences lie in the fact that Mr.NeedleDrop (or is that your father?) takes more into account the value of lyrics and production value rather than how the music makes you feel. Saying it like that makes me feel slightly childish, but there it is and I feel like it's the truth, too. I mean, he was pretty spot on about FIDLAR's lyrics, while I think they're less elementary than their debut, they still are pretty whiny and bratty. What he seems to lose sight of in his review is that that's just fucking punk. West coast rich kid punk, sure, but it's not like it isn't a theme in other punk outfits. In the case of NeedleDrop vs. Cherry Bomb he makes it out to be some sort of disrespect to the hip-hop world. I get it, it's not the best album. Especially by the standards of pop music right now. Even with Kendrick Lamar's very well received album To Pimp a Butterfly, of which TheNeedleDrop rated a ten out of ten, making rap with jazz influences more acceptable, or what ever, in modern pop charts, Tyler's attempt at branching out pretty much fell on dead ears. That has always depressed me, because again, it's really not that great lyrically or production wise, but it feels real damn good.

I guess what I'm saying is that opinions don't matter and we all suck. 

November 12th, 2015

I just ate some edibles and decided that It would be a good time to make and entry before things started to get real weird. This should be a fun day to say the least. 

You know what bugs me about the blogger formatting system? I can't use the tab key to indent paragraphs. Maybe that's a silly thing to get annoyed about but there it is. 

November is a real great time of year, for the northwest at least. Days get colder and darker, and all those delicious winter beers get released. There's nothing better that a cold day and a beer that warms you up. Right now I'm sporting a bottle of Jubelale, but I like all of them really. Pray for Snow, Sleigher, Brrr, ect. It's a real great time to be an adult until you have to spend  your livelihood on Christmas presents for people. At least you also get some. 

So Spotify has that really cool playlist called discover weekly that's different for every body. It shows you music it think's you'll like based on stuff you listen to. It's real killer shit, man. Except this week it think's that I'll like Leonard Cohen's Is This What You Wanted. You know what, it was right. I'm pretty into this particular song. Real groovy bass line. 

I've been hearing tid bits about the Yale free speech video, the one where the Yale college master Christakis very neatly puts every one in their place with, you know, boring stuff like facts and reality. Or that should have been how it worked, unfortunately these spoiled brats have no concept of what free speech is. One of the scholarship babies actually says "Even when it offends me?" in response to Christakis's statement of "People have the right to free speech". Can you fathom how backwards and un-american this is? It's pretty unbelievable that grown, college educated adults can think and act this way. Just in case you're reading this and don't know what prompted these outbursts of childish ignorance from our brightest students, it was an email about Halloween costumes and may or may not be seen as appropriate sent out by Christakis's wife, also a Yale professor. Here is a link to an article with more information.   Another great quote from one of the 'higher educated' folk that attend Yale was this little gold nugget 

"You should step down! If that is what you think about being a Master then you should step down! It is not about creating an intellectual space, it is not! Do you understand that?! It is about creating a home here! You are not doing that!".

 

So this really bright student thinks that her school's Sil Master isn't supposed to be creating an intellectual space. 

What. 

What. 

Are you fucking kidding me? This is such absolute horse shit. 

I think on this real happy note, I'm going to call it a day as far as the journal goes. 

Have a great day -J

November 4th, 2015

11:35 pm 

I guess you could say that it's pretty much the 5th of November now, late as it is. My girlfriend is asleep in my bed after having a none-to-fun night of headache and hardly touched dinner. I assume she's fine now because she's snoring softly. I'm currently watching the film Omen on my second monitor, (oh yeah, I do pretty well for a retail worker) and it's brought a few things to my attention. The first thing is that old films have the worst habit of going from ear straining quiet to brain shattering loudness in a matter of moments, and that really sucks a dick, wowzers. A second thing is that old horror movies managed to still bring in the at least pretty solid actors and actresses, unlike today's melting pot of non-talent walking shit boxes that call themselves actors who star in the more recent horror films. Really, that's all I have to say about that.

Life is pretty good though, besides spending the occasional day off or so hungover. It certainly isn't a terrible pile of shit. I eat well, probably to well, I sleep well, definitely too well, and I don't have a terminal disease (that I know of yet).  So I guess you could say I'm one of those annoying middle class white American males that have no real problems in life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

My girlfriend, the ol' gf as I would call her, just sold her house. This is great cause now she's got good chunk of money and I have a sugar mama. It's pretty much a win for both parties involved. In January the lady and I are heading on a road trip down to California, hopefully. Also hopefully she'll have a new car that will actually get us down there in one piece, my shitty junk heap probably wouldn't get the job done any way. That will be exciting, any way. We'll be staying with high school friends of mine for one day or so, and with one of the ol' gf's friends who just moved to L.A. Great news for us because getting a hotel is super fucking expensive, especially fucking expensive if you're staying more than one night. Uhg, I don't even want to think about it.

Either way, I think that sums it up for my first post. I'm not sure about the regularity I'll be posting with, but it shouldn't be too few and far between. So stay tuned, I don't know.

-J