Currently in the process of scouring youtube for obscure(-ish) metal. It seems to me like sitting at a computer is when I'm least amenable to new music. It's like my brain can't handle the stimulus of loud music coming through my headphones while my eyes are simultaneously absorbing the radiant light of my monitor, so first my ears begin to ring, then my eyes begin to ache, and then a possibly caffeine or nicotine headache begins to sneak up on me and by then I've completely lost the desire to expose myself to any music, new or otherwise. This is probably a sign that I should get off of the computer and do some reading for my essay, the outline of which is due tomorrow, but first I'll drop this sweet SYL song:

[link]

Until recently they had always been a band I'd heard of and never listened to but ever since I tried (and failed) to go to a show featuring a few ex-members two weeks ago, a bunch of links to Devin Townsend et al have been randomly appearing on Facebook, so I figured I should give them a shot, and that's a sweet tune.

Because I don't want to read yet, I think I'll keep writing. The "finished" version of my play was workshopped this afternoon. The comments were interesting, to say the least, although quite a bit less was made of my objectification of women than I feared. One girl did write rather obscurely something along the lines of: "I feel like I should be offended by your character's misogyny, but for some reason it just doesn't bother me." A lot of people mentioned that my play made them want to take drugs, which might not be the best life lesson to be unleashing on the world, but maybe it's just a side effect of my own bizarre enough infatuations.

As a group, they tended to refer almost by rote to the inherent "poetry," which, although a comment I've heard before, is one that never fails to strike me a little bit strangely, as someone who's never spent any significant amount of time writing or reading poetry per se. Maybe I like the challenge that presents itself in cramming interesting language into straightforward storytelling? Or maybe I'm just pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.....(I came to the conclusion that it's just a remnant of a misguided desire to imitate that art which has so much impact on my own life, and infuse a musical sensibility into my words, but I'm probably just delusional.)

On the whole, feedback on the play seemed relatively positive, which is good because after spending the two nights writing the play with a sense of cool detachment, almost distaste, I found myself kind of falling in love with it in the interval...although no one seemed to get that the protagonist is a despicable bastard and a parody of slackerdom. Damn literalists! Oh well, humour never was my strong suit.

By the way, I'm aware that none of you will have read said play and so this little masturbatory exercise isn't functioning as much more than catharsis, but I don't want to read about German political upheaval in the late 1960s, okay? Actually, if I'm going to be perfectly honest, the topic of my essay is probably the most interesting thing I've read this term, a sardonic take on a kind of inverted murder mystery in paranoid times called "The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum." [link] But I'm lazy. And I want to take a shower and smoke a cigarette, because I think this really is a nicotine headache.

But I'm going to keep writing. Got a text this morning with some distinctly familiar but unplaceable song lyrics. "My girl, my girl, don't lie to me. Tell me where did you sleep last night?" I spent the entire day trying to remember what song they came from, but the only one that came to mind was this one [link] but I couldn't figure out how to connect the opening line with the lyric I recognized. Turns out I was damn close - while this [link] isn't quite a de facto grunge song, it's pretty closely associated with a certain little yellow-haired dude on an acoustic guitar for me, and I imagine many others...interesting choice of song, too, given that the girl who sent it to me might be the one putting a roof over my head for a few days in December, but I digress...

Okay, now I really will go and do all that fun stuff. Ciao.

[link]