#7 “I Hope My Heart Goes First”

#7 We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed by Los Campesinos

This picture really got to me for some reason. I don’t know what I mean by “really got to me.” I didn’t laugh a lot. I laughed out loud. Well a chuckle I mean. Which actually is pretty rare for me. I thought I was a person who laughed a lot, but I recently realized I only laugh a lot when I’m with my friends, which isn’t that often. Other than that I don’t really laugh that often. I listen to a lot of comedy podcasts and watch a lot of comedy shows that are really funny, but it’s very rare that I’ll let out an audible laugh. If something really gets to me I’ll smile and think, “That was fucking funny.” However, if I’m in a good mood I will find myself laughing more than regular, even at stupid things – actually especially at stupid things. It’s probably not that when I’m with my friends we’re saying funnier things than the people in these podcasts and TV shows I listen to and watch. It’s just that I’m in a better mood when I’m with my friends, so I laugh more.

I didn’t come here to talk about laughing. I actually came here with very little to talk about. Two days ago when I first thought about writing about this picture I was under the impression that I wouldn’t be able to write more than a paragraph or two. I’m now completely confident that there will at least be three paragraphs. But probably no more than three and a half. I don’t think there can be such a thing as half a paragraph.

Later in the day after seeing this picture for the first time I realized why it got to me so much. I feel like on a Valentines Day, or perhaps just any random day of the year, I’d be with a girl I’m madly in love with and I’d wake up, cook her favorite breakfast for her, pick her fresh flowers, cover her body in kisses – not Hershey’s – make the sweetest of love to her, and then whisper into her ear, “Darling, you’ve made me happier than any man has ever been, there’s no one sweeter, no one more beautiful, no one I’d rather talk to until the end of time than you. God could try for all eternity and never be able to recreate any soul as beautiful as yours. I love you.” Then she’d lightly smile, reach over to the desk, and hand me a card upon which when I open am met with the picture drawn by Demetri Martin.

Stolen from whosay.com/DemetriMartin

Okay, that’s not completely what I think will one day happen, it’s kind of what I think already happened, not word for word of course. I just feel like I’m always more in love than the other person, which I can’t really blame the other person for. So the picture to me represents the way girls I’ve been in love with feel about me, which is a weird feeling. Barely in love means you like a person a whole lot, but somehow it sounds a lot worse than if someone just liked you. I’m barely in love with you sounds like at any moment things could just fall apart disastrously. And in my situations that turns out to be the case more often than not.

That’s all for today. I just really felt a connection with this picture, especially with what I’ve been going through. Thanks for the picture Demetri Martin – who’s comedy styling’s I enjoy. I love it…but just barely.

…..

After I wrote the above I decided that it should go with this song, but I also want to write a little about the song directly, and I should probably explain why I wanted to put all that with this song.

I wrote about how I always feel like I’m more in love than the other person is with me – which probably isn’t true in all occasions, it just connects more strongly to me when I’m the one not feeling the love returned – and it immediately reminded me of the lyrics in this song, “I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love is to like the other slightly less than you get in return. I keep feeling like I’m being undercut,” which only resonates with me in that in my experiences the person who is more in love ironically is the one who ends up being less happy. I suppose if everything goes hunky dory then maybe the person more in love ends up being more happy, but in my experiences everything never goes hunky dory, but I suppose one day it will, but when it does I imagine, or rather I hope, that she’ll be just as in love with me as I am with her.

#34 “I restored your mother’s faith in men, whilst boring you to death.”

#34 Documented Emotional Breakdown #1 by Los Campesinos

This is one of those songs that I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. That’s really not as impressive as it sounds because 90% of the time I hear new music I’m in my bedroom, as boringly is the case in this situation. However, I remember almost exactly when I first heard this song, almost to the exact date.

It was a few days before Thanksgiving of 2008. Things were so different back then. I had no job, I was living at home with my folks, I had no girlfriend, I was a virgin (all of those things are still true) so, lots of people don’t make any progress in life over two and a half years (yes, they’re called losers) how rude.

It was at night because I remember Squid had played the song. Squid was my buddy from the Pi Delta Cappa fraternity down the street. That’s not true at all. He was the DJ on the local radio station I used to listen to. He wasn’t one of my favorites, but he came on after Jamie Cooley, who was my favorite, so I often just let the radio stay on and would listen to all the crap he played. But for all the crappy music he played, he made up for it by playing this song from the We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed demo he had been sent.

I listened and slowly fell in love, but not soon enough to hit the record button on my radio. Nonetheless I wrote down the name of the band and the next night when my brother wasn’t home I grabbed my Ethernet cord and connected it from my computer into the modem in his room – this is how I used to have the internet before we went wireless, it really sucked because I could only use it when he wasn’t home – and I looked up as many Los Campesinos songs as I could find, and immediately loved them, enough that a couple days later when me and some friends went shopping on Black Friday I bought their first album Hold On Now Youngsters…unfortunately I was unaware that my three favorite Los Campesinos songs would not be on it, but nonetheless I loved it.

Shopping on Black Friday was interesting, in the most boring sense of the word. David and I had spent the night at Quy’s house staying up all night, them playing video games or watching some weird Asian videos, and me using Quy’s internet to listen to music and talk to my love at the time, who I think was still in her motherland. Weird thing about talking to her, most of our earliest conversations took place when I was at Quy’s house, because David and I would go over there a lot to spend the night and most of the time I’d just stay up all night listening to music and talking to her because I didn’t have full access to the internet at my house – nor did I have full access at Quy’s house because it would have been very awkward to watch porn while Quy and David slept in the bunk bed less than a foot away from me. But it’s weird to think from my perspective we had a lot of our early intimate conversations while Quy and David were around.

But in the morning around five or something Ha (now Alex) came to pick us up and we went to Wal-Mart, yes Black Friday shopping at Wal-Mart who already has ridiculously low prices, because Ha wanted to buy a camera on sale that they only had like 100 of or something, and that’s all he bought. So basically we waited in line with him in the freezing cold, although not technically freezing I just wanted to paint a picture, for about two hours for the store to open so he could get 30 dollars off a digital camera. Also he cut in line, which none of us were pleased about. I would have rather waited in line for another hour than have everyone else who got their earlier have to wait for an extra person, and I’m an atheist for God’s sake, so apparently I have no reason to have any morals!

Then we went to some other stores and it was completely boring and I was super tired and David got headphones and then we went home and two and a half years later I wrote this and frankly I wish I would have ended this after the previous paragraph.

#69 A Heat Rash In The Shape Of The Show Me State; or, Letters From Me To Charlotte by Los Campesinos

Holy Lord has this been a fantastically terrible week for me in a physical sense. I’ve had a headache every single day, my stomach has hurt three of the days, I’ve felt nauseous on and off, at one point I went more than 24 hours without eating, my left wrist hurts whenever I move it and sometimes even when I don’t move it, I now have a sore throat which I feel is going to be worse tomorrow, and at the start of the week I puked a whole lot which was climaxed by some yellowish sludge that burned and tasted like what I can only describe as what I assume a raging butthole tastes like.

Despite all that, the very worse part of my week was the can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup I had. I fucking love Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. It’s fucking fantastic. So much so that I used the word fucking twice already, and I only cuss when I’m really excited or really mad or really in between the two. I know Campbell’s is really basic, just the noodles and about eleven small pieces of chicken that sink to the bottom mixed with one can of tap water, microwaved to shear perfection. Progresso and Chunky’s have nice chicken noodle soup with all the fixin’s, but I’d still pick good old fashion Campbell’s with a spark of pepper to spice it up.

One fucking problem though. This is nothing against my mother, because in theory what she did was very wise. She bought me the new Campbell’s chicken noodle soup which you can drink straight out of the can. Great when you’re on the run or too sick to sit up and slurp the soup out of a bowl annoyingly with a spoon. However, how-fucking-ever, this isn’t the same soup as Campbell’s classic chicken noodle soup. The noodles and chicken and carrots have to be small enough to fit through the hole you drink from. Wait, did I hear carrots? Carrots!

Campbell’s classic chicken noodle soup didn’t have carrots, and you know what, I fucking liked it that way. I don’t have problems with carrots. In fact I like the occasional carrot. I don’t over do it, but once a month I like the long cold carrot in my hand right outside my mouth in the stance of a cigar as I say, ‘what’s up, Doc,’ in the world’s worst Bugs Bunny impersonation. I don’t even mind the carrots in soups like Progresso when they’re a nice big circular chunk of carrot, and you get a hint of carrot in the flavor. But darling the carrots in the Campbell’s chicken noodle soup I had weren’t those carrots. They were these small flavorless mush balls that ruined every fucking thing that was ever good about Campbell’s classic chicken noodle soup.

Behind the broth and the noodles the carrots were the third thing on the ingredients list. Something doesn’t seem right. Well it’s soup, so the broth covers that part. And there are noodles in it. No problem, the second ingredient was noodles. Hmm, chicken, chicken…what’s this, carrots? Carrots is next on the ingredients list. It comes before chicken. What the fuck? It’s chicken noodle soup. If I wanted carrot noodle soup I’d go to that part of Asia where carrots are abundant; probably some place in China. I can’t fucking believe there were more carrots in the soup than chicken. It should have been called carrot noodle soup featuring chicken, which is like going to a comedy show with Carrot Top featuring Louis C.K. No, I want Louis C.K. to be the headliner, not Carrot Top – although I don’t particularly have that big of a problem with his prop comedy, he was just the first often-thought-as-bad comedian that came to my head, for obvious reasons. The chicken is the reason the people go to the soup. Other soups have noodles, but it’s the chicken noodle where the chicken takes center stage. Everyone can’t wait to sink their teeth into the chicken bits. The carrots are supposed to be like foreplay, warming you up and salivating your mouth until you get to the main event, chicken. But these carrots were more like foreplay if it included anally raping one’s mouth with a dildo made of coal (how does someone anally rape a mouth?) Those are the types of questions that keep me up at night.

#81 In Media Res by Los Campesinos

I didn’t realize this until now but Los Campesinos have two songs from each of their three albums on my list. That of course means they only have six songs on the list, which might seem low for a band fighting with Bright Eyes, who so far has had no songs on the list, for my fourth favorite band spot, and possibly even jumping Dashboard Confessional for the third spot. But what makes Los Campesinos so good is that they have almost no songs I don’t like. Even Say Anything and Brand New have multiple songs that I never listen to. But Los Campesinos don’t really have a song, other than an interlude type thing, that I’ll skip over when listening to them. That’s rare to find in an album with me, let alone three albums from one band.

Also for my money they’re very consistent in good album titles. Hold On Now, Youngster… is if nothing else an interesting title. And We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed isn’t only half true for me, I won’t say which part is true, but one of my favorite album titles ever. The juxtaposition of being beautiful and doomed is magnificent. Okay, I’m not entirely sure if it’s magnificent, I just wanted to use the word juxtaposition. It’s the word of the day on my calendar (that’s a lie) not a lie, just an untruth. And the most recent album title, Romance Is Boring, is provocative in ways I can’t even begin to defend. I defy you to give me three album titles from one band that are better than those three.

In Media Res is the first song on the album Romance Is Boring, which is a very important song on an album. The first and last song make an album. It’s the fist thing you notice about an album and then the last impression you gave of an album. As long as those two song are great the album will be good, even if the middle is 12 songs featuring a raccoon farting into a trombone. This isn’t a perfect song to start an album with, but it’s a good song, and surprisingly I find that many albums start off with songs that aren’t best to start an album with. I think in today’s era of downloading songs instead of whole albums it’s less important where songs are located in album order, but to me it’s still very important.

I’ve never been able to tie a cheery stem in a knot with my tongue. I know that’s random to bring up now, but I’m overcome with fear I must be a horrible kisser. This crossed my mind because I was using my hands to tie a red vein, you know the red rope candy thingy popular in theatres, and I wondered if I would be able to tie that in a knot with my tongue. Crazy thought of course considering red veins are about eight times longer and ten times thicker than a cherry stem. It would take the mouth of Stephanie Kralevich to tie one of those in a knot with a tongue – Stephanie Kralevich is a local weather girl who I used to have a huge crush on, and she appears to have a huge mouth, which of course every man imagines she uses to tie red veins in knots with.

 

#86 And We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison by Los Campesinos

Ugly truth of men, or at least just me: I just scratched myself in my private area with my bare hand, skin on skin, and then reached into my thing of Nerds – the candy, I don’t keep a thing of nerd people around me, although I should – with the same hand and then inserted said Nerds into my mouth not even giving a damn. If I could would I lick my balls? No, not at all. Would I lick my hand after I scratched my balls with it? I’ll say no, but of course you know I mean yes (what does this have to do with the song?) As always, absolutely nothing.

Anybody who is reading this won’t like this song. I can almost guarantee you that. I don’t know what it is, but no one I know likes Los Campesinos. I’d like to believe that their songs have too much going on at once and no one’s feeble brain can comprehend it all perfectly except mine. That’s probably not the reason. I think that’s one complaint though, that too much is going on at once. I also think people don’t like the guy’s voice. I don’t mind it, and I in fact enjoy the girl’s voice and wouldn’t mind her going off and doing a side project one day, and by ‘side project’ I mean me (lame joke) I know, but the jokes have gotta come somewhere.

I think if people are going to like any part of this song it will be just after the one minute and eight second mark, when both singers sing, but the girl’s voice is clearly dominant, the lyrics [none of the information in that sentence is relevant because I couldn't find the normal version of the song on youtube],

“It takes an educated guess to see I like you little at best. And if you come here for the faces hope you leave under duress. And you still treat it like a novelty, less pop concert, more butchery, and we exhale and roll our eyes in unison.”

I don’t know why I assume people would like that part best, if that being the only part they even vaguely like at all, I just do. So let me know what you think. Or don’t let me know anything at all, but either way I suggest listening to the song if for no other reason to let your self know if my assessment is right. I don’t really care that much if I’m right or wrong, mostly because I’m already convinced I’m wrong.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about this song. Other than that for a brief moment I was thinking about taking it off the list and adding a Promise Of Redemption song. Okay, actually I wasn’t thinking that, but I am thinking that now. Promise of Redemption has one song on the list that’s coming up shortly, but if I were doing this a year from now there could be a few more making the list, but I’ll talk about that when I write for that song.

I’m not terribly in the writing mood at the moment. I kind of just want to listen to sad music and…holy fuck I just looked at the time and it’s two in the freaking morning…try and fall asleep. Why sad music you ask. Well actually you didn’t ask, so I’m not going to answer.

Damn, I was so vehemently going to town on these Nerds that I tore the box. This isn’t good. Now you’re thinking, ‘wait a second, I want to know why he wants to listen to sad music.’ See what I did there? At first I brought up the topic, but if I bring it up you don’t really care to know, it’s just another guy complaining about being sad. But if I go on to not talk about it, it becomes a secret, a secret you’re not privy too, and now you have to know (I’m sure no one was thinking that way) well you’re wrong good sir, because when I read this years from now I’ll be thinking that.

I don’t know why sad music. Happy music just seems so depressing (infinite question marks here). Well in a sense it makes sense – what an odd sentence, I love it. There’s this one song where this guy is singing about finding the perfect girl, and being happy and in love and it’s just so disgusting. I’m not even happy for the guy anymore. I’ve become so cynical. I’m like, ‘fuck you guy. We get it, you’re in love, but you don’t have to scream it in my fucking ear,’ which is rude of me because I was the one who put the song on my ipod and turned the volume all the way up. But still I blame him. He shouldn’t have made the song so damn good. By the way, the specific song I’m thinking of is actually on my list, so if you’re reading this in the future hopefully I will have came back here and posted a link to it. But if you’re reading this in the now, or perhaps even in the past the song must remain a secret, meaning you want to know what it is that much more badlier (badlier isn’t a word) it will be by the time the future people are reading this.

Quote of the Week: Boredom

I am never bored anywhere; being bored is an insult to oneself – Pierre-Jules Renard.

Somehow my being bored all the time now makes sense. When I think about it I’m not bored that often and I think what I have to thank for that is my never shutting up mind. Often I’d take boredom over some of the stupid things my mind would have me think about, not to distract me from boredom, but rather just to fuck with me. I remember when I was a kid and was trying to get to sleep I’d often think about death or spiders or that blue clown doll that belonged to my dead grandma that my mom had hanging up in my room. I didn’t think about those things because they helped soothe me to sleep, but instead because I hated those things and they scared me and my mind knew I hated to think about those things, so around the age of eight I figured out that if I didn’t want to think about something it meant my mind was going to fuck with me and make sure there was no way that I could not think about those things. By the way I hated that blue clown hung up in my room but I couldn’t take it down because it was my dead grandma’s and for some reason that gave it some worth, not monetarily of course because nothing my family has is worth any money, but rather it had emotional value, which I’ve come to find is pretty worthless, kidding of course.

The point of the previous paragraph was not only to inform you that I’m afraid of blue clown dolls once belonging to my grandma, but also to point out that my mind keeps me free from boredom, not in the greatest of fashions, but it’s not all bad. I used to play with rocks, and I had a good time doing it. On rainy days I would be disappointed because I couldn’t go outside and play with my rocks. Mr. Pebblestone and Ms. Igneous had to have their wedding postponed for a week because of a snow storm. It turned out to be a good thing because Mr. Pebblestone found out Ms. Igneous was sleeping with Granite, the body building rock from down the street. And in turn Ms. Igneous caught Mr. Pebblestone sleeping with Sedimentary, the local harlot. Rocks tend to have strong sexual urges, and my childhood mind was very perverted (so nothing’s changed) I’d argue I’m more perverted now, but only for the sake of humor!

If a person is bored shouldn’t that person be held accountable for being bored? (there was absolutely no segue from the last paragraph to this one) I don’t believe in segues, I also don’t believe in people who blame their boredom on anyone other than themselves. If you’re bored than do something about it. Read a book. Get out some crayons and draw a pretty picture of a unicorn fucking Rush Limbaugh with its horn. Masturbate for Christ’s sake. I don’t care if you’re at your family union. If anything the oddity of masturbating at the reunion will take away any iota of boredom remaining, and will make it the most memorable reunion ever. Use your mind to think about something that interests you. Not only will it distract you from boredom but it will help you organize your thoughts on the subject and in turn make you more well equipped when discussing that subject with friends. Talk to yourself out load if you have to, I know I do and it’s absolutely fascinating (no it’s not) it’s worrisome at times because I get a little carried away and begin to seriously think something must be wrong with me, but those worrisome thoughts bother me no more, because I now know there is something extremely wrong with me.