LISTENING
Grass Widow. Almost on infinite repeat the past couple days. I’ve been feeling very even-keel. Not high. Not low. In between emotions. Grass Widow is this really chill, yet discordant and angular (oxymoronic, I know) post-punk Kill Rock Stars triplet from San Francisco. I’m pretty sure they’re not a band anymore, which totally sucks because their music is really cool. At least they have four EP/LP releases on Spotify.
Because of my second place finish at Taipei Story Slam’s August show, I was invited to tell a story at the Grand Slam last Thursday. The theme was Holidaze. The holiday season is RIPE with experiences that are productive for narrative storytelling. Most of the drama that’s happened in my family has happened around holidays or vacations. But as I was trying to think of what story to tell, one thought kept pulling at me: Chase.
I wrote this over a month ago, but here it is now:
Today, my boss told me he’s leaving. He came into the science classroom when I was in there alone before lunch. He asked me if I was an admin on the Google stuff our school start using this year. I worried he was asking me this because he expected me to do more with it. But then he tells me he’s being dismissed. He said it so politely. “I’m being dismissed.” Not fired. Not forced out. He said he didn’t know when, but probably within a few weeks.
LISTENING
Priests. A DC punk band. I first heard them last fall when they were the music guest on the Chris Gethard Show episode with special guest stars Sleater-Kinney. I was like, this seems pretty cool. Checked out their Bandcamp and made a playlist of their stuff on Spotify, and I was like this is pretty good. Slowly, it grew on me. And then I started following their tumblr and realized how cool they are, as in, how thoughtful/intellectual their music is.
LISTENING
Missy and Santi. Last week, Santigold came out with a new, extremely up-beat and self-loving single: “Can’t Get Enough of Myself.” And this week Missy Elliott came out with a new single and video: “WTF (Where They From).” Both make me want to just get up and dance around*. Also, the WTF video is great. Always amazing dancing in the Missy Elliott videos. I like Missy Elliott and Sanitgold’s music and respect them both as artists, so it’s nice they’ve finally got new stuff coming out! Hopefully both these albums will be fun to listen to when they come out later this year / early next year.
LISTENING
I was sick pretty much all last week, and sleep has been a difficult thing for me to get. I find that my mind is racing with thoughts of all the things I haven’t been doing – because I was so tired and sick – that I couldn’t go to sleep. And thus couldn’t stop being tired and sick. INFINITE LOOP.
Being sick sucks. Halloweekend exhausted me. Little sleep and poor nutrition compromised my body’s ability to deal with the germs that are constantly in contact with it. Thus, I got sick. It started on Tuesday with a sore throat. Then made the end of the workday Wednesday unbearable. I stayed home sick on Thursday and got much needed rest (I barely left my bed, it was awesome). Friday, I felt alright, just coughing a lot, with a runny nose and mildly exhaustion. And then Saturday and Sunday I had several commitments I was able to keep despite still experiencing these symptoms. So I’m on the mend, but still not 100%.
Continue reading “Sick in Taiwan: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Face Mask”
And I want to share it with you. Not polished at all. Just recorded it and thought it was a cool little drone tune. Cool to drone out to. If you want to drone. Enjoy. Maybe.
I think I’ll call it “Ear Drum.”
First single from the Invertebrate Shredders.
APE AND TACO 