twice the speed of life

One of my favorite bands during my country phase was (and is) Sugarland. I love the lyrics and the energy of the songs so much (honestly, almost all my favorite songs are very high-energy ones). Here are some of my favorite Sugarland songs over the years!

Are you a country fan at all? (And as always, I'm up for any recommendations y'all have!)

Tuesday Tunes (sorta kinda not really at all)

So I'm going to have to extend this mini-break until next Monday, due to some unforeseen issues. I'm sorry, y'all.

In the meantime, I offer you the following:

Have a good week!

Tuesday Tunes

I write a lot of my posts in advance these days, just to make life easier, and I feel compelled to state that there's not gonna be much text right here because I'm actually 3000000000% too lazy to write anything, and I've spent all day sleeping because I had nobody to do anything with, and that did not translate into productivity, unfortunately.

What music are you enjoying right now?

Tuesday Tunes

How do you find most of the music you listen to?  I know a lot of people specifically follow various bands and musicians, and a lot of people find music based off the recommendation of friends, or off 'related songs' on Pandora and Spotify and YouTube, or via the radio.  Personally, I don't really follow bands or musicians very avidly (or any celebrities really...) I get some music based off other people's recommendations on occasion, have found lots of things because they were free on iTunes (hooray for being broke!) or heard them on the radio somewhere while I was out.  A surprising amount of my music, though, comes from things I've heard at concerts or performed/seen performed in various musicals.  (Okay, it's not surprising at all, considering all the years of acting and choir, but still...)  Other than that, there's not much rhyme or reason to the things on my iTunes (or much organization either, shhh).  There's everything from Pitbull to fancy orchestral pieces to country to pop to whatever the hell Taylor Swift even is (is she country? pop? a fusion? we just don't know, but I do want all her clothes) to "things that were popular among preteens back in 2005 that were all I was allowed to listen to until shortly before this blog was made and I was deemed sufficiently adult to listen to things other than Hillary Duff" to showtunes to anime music (the third-most-played song I've got is a Puella Magi song, so) to K-Pop and J-Pop and Spanish music, some random stuff in German... Is anyone else this ridiculously non-cohesive in what they listen to?

Anyways, my songs today are pieces I've seen performed.  One is a song a girls acapella group at my university performed (they're such a cool group!) and the other is from the musical The Last Five Years, which I highly recommend, even though it will take your heart and carve it into an elaborate masterpiece before beating it flat and then dicing it up and lighting it on fire.  Seriously, you've got a 67% chance of starting to cry at the opening song.

Tuesday Tunes

Anyone who knows me for more than a day or two tends to wind up knowing that I did not grow up around TV very much - I wasn't allowed to watch TV until I was six, or movies until I was eight, and then only on very rare occasions, and we completely rid ourselves of TV when I was thirteen - so I don't really watch TV shows.  Like.  Ever.  I sometimes see things on tumblr for, say, Elementary or Doctor Who and think 'I should try watching that', but I never do.  Somehow, though, last night I wound up watching the premier of The Bachelorette.  It was pretty much ALL the second-hand embarrassment, naturally, but I think I'll probably be sucked into watching it again with my suitemates next week...  I can't claim that it's relevant to my song choices for today, unfortunately, but I guess it's kind of interesting.

Also, this first song...yeah.  I keep hearing this EVERYWHERE and it's gotten almost permanently stuck in my head.

The second is an old favorite of mine from when I had a very abrupt and very serious country music phase.  Hey, I'm Texan, so at least it's expected.

Any good music you've heard recently?  (Also, should you feel motivated, you should totally suggest recipes for me to attempt cooking in my quest to learn how to cook...  I'll be soliciting y'all a lot for this, just a warning).

Tuesday Tunes

I completely forgot to write this. You might have noticed it didn't go up at midnight. Also I'm writing this in a rush before work. Go me? But yeah, helped someone move more things than they could possibly use, and indeed, they haven't touched most of it (here's looking at the skis, the broken wall decoration, etc). Just a couple of songs for y'all today, and not much commentary...

This is a gorgeous AMV someone did with Homestuck and a Florence and the Machine song. Basically love at first watching for me...

Heard this a day or so ago, kind of love the sound...

What music do you currently love?

Tuesday Tunes

Work is exhausting, and I've only done one day. Here's to hoping it gets easier!

I'm on a real Florence and the Machine kick right now. I don't think I've managed to find a song from her that I don't like. Some of my current favorites...

What are some of your current favorite songs?

Tuesday Tunes

I finished all my finals, and all I have left to do is...nothing! Nothing but sleep, and get as much time in with my friends before they leave. I pretty much spent the past week listening to certain songs on repeat while trying to focus. One of them, which gets to be today's featured music, was "Past Lives" by Ke$ha. It's not really a homework-y song, but sometimes it's just nice to listen to something a little different from my standard homework fare of "screw everyone".

What's your current favorite music?

Tuesday Tunes

Guys, I have a Gatsby problem. (Gatsby, what Gatsby? I'm not obsessed at aaaaall...) Seriously though,  about all I want to do right now is watch the trailers for The Bling Ring and The Great Gatsby and just have fangasms over how cool and exciting everything is. I really like what I'm seeing (and hearing) for these movies. Gatsby fever is probably more intense right now, though... (I know I should be excited for Iron Man III, but considering I was introduced to the whole series by someone who has since decided that our entire friends group isn't even worth the time required to tell us that she doesn't care, I'm kind of feeling a little sour about it right now... I'll recover, but it's definitely not on my priority list right now).

Probably my favorite Gatsby thing out right now (besides those trailers, because damn, those are intense) is the Lana del Rey song. I can't stop listening to it. It's definitely an addiction.

Are you excited for Gatsby too? What are you especially excited to see? (Any tips for dealing with irresolute friendship breakups? Cause I could use those...)

Tuesday Tunes

I think my favorite thing about having just given myself a specific thing to write about for Tuesdays is a wonderful thing - I think, of all days of the week, I'm least inspired on Tuesday, and I'm actually (usually) more tired on Tuesday than I am on Monday. It's a lot easier to just be able to write something and not think about it again, except to remember to stick a link up on twitter and facebook (you should follow me on both, by the way - I've got buttons in the sidebar, y'all).

I know the main question about the music I'm sharing this week is probably "is it Puella Magi again? |: " and the answer is (surprisingly) no. I still haven't stopped listening to it, though - it's very useful for doing homework. It's actually Psy, because I might have a tiny bit of obsession with his music. He recently released another, somewhat odd, music video for one of his songs, and while I don't like it as much as Gangam Style, I'm certainly intrigued. (I really want to know why he likes that style of pants so much...)

Is there any music you're into right now? What do you think of Gentleman (and/or Psy's pants)?

Tuesday Tunes

I feel like any blogger understands that feeling of 'crap, I don't know what to write about!' (and hates it). It's something I know I struggle with frequently - I'm good at coming up with two posts other than my weekly ones, but not so good at coming up with a third. Maybe it's just that I don't generally have enough time to do the creative things I really want to post. Still, my default for 'I don't have time/energy' to post seems to be music, and it eventually occurred to me that I might as well post music for y'all more often - and keep myself from actually experiencing stress over something I do for fun. So I think this'll be a Tuesday post from now on, because I might as well - Tuesdays seem to be crunch days, and this is definitely a post I won't have to worry too much about.

Since my last music post, I'm afraid I still haven't stopped obsessively listening to music from Puella Magi. It's simply too beautiful. Not my favorite for walking to class, though - I need something a lot more active for that! - but it's definitely wonderful homework music.

This is becoming one of my favorite songs from Puella Magi, right now. I love the drama of all the music, but I also love the very simple pieces, of which this is definitely one.

My favorite walking to class songs are very different. I like fast-paced songs where the music, if not the words, are upbeat. Cognitive dissonance is always fun, after all! This pretty much translates to everything I listen to while walking being either a) Florence and the Machine or b) Homestuck songs. I don't think I can come up with anything else that gets as much play as those.

What are some of your current favorite songs?

can't stop watching

It's a little known fact, at least here, but I'm absolutely crazy in love with the webcomic/medium Homestuck. It's weird, full of Nic Cage's face (and Dante Basco references...), self inserts of the author, time paradoxes, and all sorts of types of crazy. Oh, and the apocalypse happens a few different times. It's absolutely amazing, at least to me, and I follow the fandom as well, because sometimes it produces absolutely stunning things. A lot of the fans are artists and musicians (hey, the aforementioned Dante Basco is a fan, and Snoop Dogg Lion tweeted about it a while back (apparently once he was mentioned, the fandom decided he should read it?)) - in fact, a lot of things in the series are done by fans, who Hussie, the author, hires. It's a very interactive series, and inspires a lot of people. A while ago, last summer, it went on a temporary hiatus, so that Hussie could work on a few very labor-intensive updates. Without the usual multi-page updates, the fandom got a little crazy, and dreamed up animestuck, where they...went and started turning out pieces of an anime version of the webcomic. To the best of my knowledge, nobody's actually tried to do the whole thing, or really much more than an opening sequence or a few seriously cool scenes, but it seems to have inspired a serious interest in animating the characters to cool music. And now we come to my latest obsession...

Cool, right? Right. I'm just going to go back to watching this like a madwoman and squealing at how cool everything is.

Do you ever get really into certain things, to the point of, well, obsessing over them?

music!

Today, I'm going to be occupied with updating my blog - pages, the general setup and layout, y'know, fun things - so I would like to offer you music in stead of my wonderful wordiness. These are some of my favorite current songs, and total obsessions lately. (Seriously, Kill the Lights got 35 plays on repeat a few days ago, when I bought the song).

Have a great day!

Manicures and Music

They may offer you fortune and fame/
Love and money and instant acclaim/
But whatever they offer you/
Please whatever they offer you/
Don't feed the plants/
Don't feed the plaaaaaaaaaaaaants~


My nails this past week were entirely inspired by Little Shop of Horrors, and our wonderful, lovely little plant (wish I had pictures of it...)

Nyx "Neon Yellow" and Color Club "Age of Aquarius".

This time, it was insanely hard to get a decent picture of my nails. I don't honestly know why. Oh well! It was really fun. :>

And of course, the song I typed some of the lyrics from...

Happy MLK Day!

(Are you supposed to put 'happy' before that...? Oh well, I will, because a day off school...)

In case you haven't seen this, one of the first released songs on the Hunger Games soundtrack. It's so lovely and addictive.