Turning 20

Tomorrow is my 20th birthday. There's a lot going on in my life, so much so that I don't know where to start and some of it is unbloggable.

So, a playlist of songs that mean something to me from this year.

1. The Fear - Lily Allen

2. Cemetery Drive - My Chemical Romance (more significant overall than from this year. It's just a song I love for no logical reason)

3. Her Morning Elegance - Oren Lavie

4. The Night Starts Here - Stars

5. Hearts on Fire - Cut Copy

6. Weightless - All Time Low (lyric "And I'm over getting older.")

7. Wish -Paper Route

8. I'm Ready - Jack's Mannequin

9. It's Alright, Baby - Komeda (see if you can listen to this without feeling at least a smidge better)

10. Nineteen - Tegan & Sara

11. Breakable - Ingrid Michaelson

12. This Modern Love - Bloc Party

13. Don't Stop the Music - Rihanna

14. Oh My God - Ida Maria

15. Just a Girl - No Doubt

16. I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You - Black Kids

17. Under Pressure - Queen

18. So Long, Astoria - The Ataris

19. Grow Old With Me - The Postal Service (a cover of John Lennon. Melancholy and beautiful.)

20. Dancing in the Dark - Tegan & Sara

Turning 20 is bittersweet. Wonderful and odd. New. Old.

Four hours from now, I'm 20.

Irony

That's the theme of my week. Long story, much of it unbloggable.

So, recommendation.

Pick up Tegan and Sara's new album, Sainthood. It is a grower (give it about four rotations through your iPod or other chosen form of mp3 player), but it is worth the wait.

To fall off the face of the earth (and get vaguely graphic upon return)

This quarter has been the quarter I've been sick. This quarter has been the quarter where I have struggled, where I have been that girl. The one who skips class, who doesn't turn in assignments, who sleeps through classes because getting out of bed is just too much effort. The girl with a million excuses.

I have been sick, though. I started the quarter with an inner ear viral infection. I was dizzy, so dizzy I had to cling to the walls to walk and stick my arms out like planks to stay balanced.

I never really recovered from that. I've been exhausted all quarter. I went back to the student health center last week and was diagnosed with... another virus.

That one was a real charmer. I couldn't stand to have my clothes on, or at least, I couldn't stand having them touch me. I was nauseous and I had a very nice, rich cough. Just in time for homecoming and a dear friend and Jon to come into town.

I rested when I could, and then went out and acted like I wasn't ill the rest of the time. Then my tonsils, which have given me issues for YEARS, swelled up. Those of you who aren't intimately familiar with your tonsils, you are very, very lucky. I know when mine are angry. I know when mine are filled with gross crap. I know when mine are doing all right, simply because they aren't causing me any problems for once.

So my left tonsil swells up. And up. And up. It hurts to talk, and it hurts to swallow, and it just plain hurts. I tried to just recover on Monday, because I didn't have time to go to the doctor's. I'd caved to the concept of going to the doctor when I finally noticed the hole/blister on my left tonsil. My angry red swollen tonsil. With a blistery hole on it.

Yeah, just envision that for a moment.

Sorry.

So, I go back to the doctor. This is my third visit of the quarter, my third trip with prescription drugs, my first go-round on antibiotics this quarter. The CNP informed me that I either have strep, tonsillitis, or an upper respiratory infection. She prescribed a broad spectrum antibiotic (closely related to penicillin) and sent me on my merry way.

The antibiotic and the yogurt I ate disagreed. If you ever need to throw up in a public bathroom, attempt to have the presence of mind to cover up the motion sensor, or you'll get to experience what I experienced, which was a toilet flushing in my face while I puked into it. Even in the moment, I found it ridiculously funny. Partially because I never throw up.

Sorry, again.

It's the seventh week of the quarter and I'm just hoping that I finally start feeling healthy. Hoping that everything I've let fall by the side this quarter is something I can pick back up. Hoping that life gets a little bit better, because lately it has sucked (there is much more than just being ill going on in my life, which I'll write about eventually. Maybe. If life ever settles down enough for me to feel comfortable sharing.).

Music Monday: Songs to Get Stuck in Your Head

Today's Music Monday is a mish mash of stuff as I'm in a rush to go North for the Iglu & Hartly concert. So, songs to get stuck in your head (or, a taste of possible music mondays to come).

First up, Aesop Rock's "None Shall Pass." Jon got me hooked on this guy. Check him out.

Next up? Tegan and Sara's "Back in Your Head." I heard "Walking with a Ghost" in 2006, picked up So Jealous and The Con quickly afterward, and am now looking forward to their new album, Sainthood, which is due to drop at the end of October. With "Back in Your Head," I've always felt like this summarizes a relationship when you're starting to fight and wondering if it's all worth it. Having been through enough of this in the past... well, yeah.

With EIGHT MILLION views on YouTube, does Mika really need my little rec here? Well, maybe. Mostly I want you to dig out your Queen's Greatest Hits album and think about a 'man' named Crowely. (Wikipedia Good Omens if you've no idea what I'm talking about).

Finally, one last recommendation. My sister came across Owl City at some point or another and forwarded me the video for their song "Fireflies." But I like this video, and you might as well have something FUN to do with your spare time, right? Right. (Apologies for the size differentials here. Dunno why it is, but I did my best to make sure all the videos were similar in size.)

Music Monday: Amanda Palmer

I first heard Amanda Palmer as one half of the duo Dresden Dolls, not long after my eighteenth birthday. I'd heard of the Dresden Dolls long before that, and all I really knew is that they did 'Punk Cabaret,' which made no sense to me at all when I stumbled across them in AP magazine. But I loved the way the band looked in the photos I saw of them. I wanted to be the woman in the photos. Except... with my eyebrows, since hers looked drawn on. I liked my eyebrows.

The first song I heard from the Dresden Dolls was "Sex Changes." I loved this song. Loved the way it sounded, loved the way the lyrics worked, loved the pure energy that went into it.

(The option to embed the video I linked to is disabled, so here is a live version for those of you that hate clicking through to another page.)

But my interest dead ended there, at least for a time. A lot of it had to do with my limited access to high-speed internet and the pressure of school; I was constantly busy with classes and while I got a laptop last year, my folks didn't get high-speed until late last year. I still talk about it with a note of frustration in my voice, while many of my friends say, "Wow. I forgot about dial-up."

AHEM.

So my potential love of the Dresden Dolls got lost in the slush and snow of winter, and while I listened to the two songs I had on my iPod, I never went looking for anymore.

Then Neil Gaiman started posting on Twitter about a book he was working on called "Who Killed Amanda Palmer." This past spring he mentioned on his blog that he was dating Amanda Palmer. She was also on twitter. I followed her quickly afterward and loved her quirky style (they went on a road trip and she wore a horrible lime green paisley lonnnnng dress. My new love is things that are possibly ugly, thanks in part to her). I don't know when it came up, but it came to my attention that she was the lead singer of the Dresden Dolls.

Well, that stopped me in my tracks a little bit.

Then life went and swept me up again. Finals and helping friends move and then working 40 hour weeks because EVERYONE goes and decides to take vacation at the same time and... I still don't own a single Amanda Palmer or Dresden Dolls album.

But my youtube explorations have me reconsidering my failures. (This video is not for the faint hearted. Not many songs can gloss over rape, but this one kind of does.)

See what I mean about the eyebrows? Or the style for that matter?

One of the things I love about Amanda is she is an entertainer, and not in the straight-up crass manner that you so often see in female performers of late. It helps that she's not 16 and having to wait for her eighteenth birthday to be allowed to cut her hair. (For those readers who don't get bored and read Miley Cyrus's twitter, she is the particular pop starlet that I'm referring to.)

It looks as though the majority of the songs from Who Killed Amanda Palmer? are available in a series of videos through her youtube page. There is also a companion book, with pictures of her in various forms of being dead with words/stories by Neil Gaiman. (That link also goes to the WKAP website, for those of you that prefer to avoid youtube links.)

So, why am I recommending someone whose albums I don't own? Because in the few months that I have been following Amanda on twitter, she has been an amazing, entertaining person to follow. She started Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers (LOFNOTC) on Twitter and will often respond to the @ replies she gets. She is someone who has become known and loved by her fans NOT for drinking or being naked, but for being a talented, hard-working musician/performer, who is willing to connect with fans. What's not to like?

I believe I read on her blog that she is planning on touring the east coast this fall (which I hope includes Ohio, as it is more East than West), so keep an eye on her twitter or website for an eventual tour announcement. I have a feeling she will be completely worth the cash to see.

Quiet, furious rage

Is that title perhaps a bit redundant? I DON'T CARE.

It had been a long week for me, last week was, one that I was hoping would be brightened by a fun filled concert on Thursday. I had tickets to see Blink-182, with Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco. I was excited. It was an excuse to dance (the area I was going to be in was large enough that I wasn't too concerned about moshers this time 'round) and an excuse to visit my sister and an excuse to have FUN.

Overall, I had fun. But there was this one part, this itty-bitty part which has eaten at me like the worst heartburn a person can ever experience.

There were 20,000 people at the concert, and a majority of the people there had lawn tickets. I was one of the people who snapped up a lawn ticket (wrongly) assuming that the view would be reasonable enough to go without a decent seat. I was there by myself, unlike most of the people there. I ended up befriending a girl and two guys (who didn't know each other until we started talking before Blink took the stage).

I ended up in front of this girl's friend, a guy. I was dancing, having FUN, rocking out, generally rocking out more than I usually do at a concert. It was VERY packed, so we were shoulder-to-shoulder, front-to-back across the entire lawn. Every fifth person was smoking, and I was about six inches shorter than all of the people around me. I was very hot and, periodically, I would get dizzy from the smoke and the heat. Breathing problems for the win, yes?

So, I'm dancing to this one song. I could tell you which one if I heard it, but I imagine I'm already blocking this out, because the whole thing just PISSED ME OFF. Because, out of the blue, I feel a hand GRAB MY ASS like it is hoping to take a chunk off.

MY. ASS.

I stopped dead in the middle of my dancing, rigid as a board, my brain scrambling at what sort of reaction I needed to scrape up. I was on auto-pilot, so my initial reaction was to wave it off as an 'accident' like all of the bumps and slaps and slams I'd been getting up until that point. He leaned in, said "SORRY!" loud enough for me to hear. I couldn't think. What was I supposed to think? Do? Say? It wasn't a mace-level offense, but it was enough to... be worthy of a response.

When the song ended, he leaned in, again. "Sorry! I just like to grab things!"

I JUST LIKE TO GRAB THINGS?! I thought. Really! REALLY! THAT WAS HIS EXCUSE!

I am angry and disgusted. My reaction ended up being slowly inching my way through the crowd, away from this man, quashing any major reaction at that moment because what could I do? There was no space to turn around, and the opportunity to hit him like he deserved for the unwanted action had passed. It was too loud to yell at him, dress him down. Part of me wanted to go the pure rejection route, make up some line better than "I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!" because so many people act like that is simply a paper barrier, no more strong than the gowns you wear when you visit the doctor for the yearly physical.

"Wow. My girlfriend is going to love having me fork over the twenty she bet me about tonight," I purred in my head, my voice both sweet and so cutting.

I stayed silent. The anger built as I found myself worrying over my dancing, where I stood, how much I knocked into the people around me. Focusing on things that had been background motion and noise to me seconds before, making me less confident, less able to stick a jump.

I was shot back to earth, furious and betrayed and, worst of all, worst than anything? I felt like a BAD PERSON. As if I had done something wrong, simply by enjoying myself.

Maybe he wouldn't have done that if I hadn't kept dancing into him, my treacherous brain whispered, as if we were in the 1950's and men were still allowed to pass off the blame of any wrong to a woman. Maybe if I hadn't been moving around so much... Even though it wasn't on purpose that I knocked into him, even though I had done nothing wrong, the thoughts built, mounting, orienting themselves inward instead of outward. Anger at myself for enjoying the concert instead of at him for thinking that he could fix things with that stupid apology.

The fury eventually edged that out. It is now hanging out with regret, the horrid regret of not doing anything. My brain shut down and I didn't fight my way back out, didn't get to express how angry I was. He knew he did something wrong, sure, but he almost made it seem like it was my fault. My ass, the way he put it, was simply too tempting to not grab. This is the second time in a week (third, in some ways) that I have been objectified, reduced, made less than, by a person's actions/comments. These incidences have left me dumbfounded, wondering where feminism is, what happened to it, that men are comfortable, again, with reducing women to a pair of tits in a dress or an ass in a pair of shorts.

Music Monday: Ingrid Michaelson

Apparently, everyone and their brother knows who this is, if the internet is to be believed. Ingrid Michaelson had a song in an Old Navy commercial a while back, "The Way I Am," and it ended up being fairly popular, so if you recognize this song, it's from that.

The reason I ended up finally stumbling across her music was pre-college. MemAud had a playlist for the evening, when I worked, that had this song in it. After two weeks of sitting there, wondering who is this and hoping I'd remember to google it when I got home, I finally asked the stage tech, who tracked down her name for me. The more I look into her music, the more I find out that everyone has probably known this artist for quite a while now, whether or not we knew it - if you watch Grey's Anatomy, you might recognize her music, because they've used her many, many times.

She has toured and recorded with artists whose names you might recognize, like Sara Bareilles (link is to a song they recorded together) and Jason Mraz. Basically, this woman has been making amazing music and been the background noise in some of the most popular shows on TV for a few years now. Shouldn't we embrace HER, now, too?

Not yet convinced that she's worth checking out? Then the only thing I can really say here is this music? This music is for romantics.

Ingrid is going on tour at the end of August to support her latest album, which is due out August 25. Check her out before you find yourself having to ask, "Hey, who is this?" while in your friends car.