ihavebeenfloated

There’s cats walking around on the wall outside the window. They disappear down the other side of it, probably… well, who knows what they’re doing on the other side. Probably just more walking, nothing too exciting I’m sure.

I’m driving Tiffany and I up to Los Angeles today. She hasn’t really been toward Los Angeles, though I am not driving her all the way up into the heart of LA, or worse, Hollywood, but it should be exciting for her to see that the LA area is not all that different from San Diego… Except that it’s dirtier and nastier.

She’s going to meet my family… and my other sister. (We work with one of my sisters.)

This is frightening, in a way, though I am not stressed.

I could type up exactly why I’m worried, and I even tried, but then I realized that whatever reasons I come up with might all be equally true and false and none of them make any sense whatsoever, so what’s the point?

If you have no idea who Tiffany is, you can take yourself here.

There will be photos, I’m sure. Of what, I’m not.

I’m fucking freezing to death.

Sometimes I love my hair, sometimes I hate it.

We went out yesterday and met with the woman who runs Wee Companions at her home. We had called her as Tiffany became interested in the chinchilla they have, but I bitched and moaned so much that I decided a hamster was a better, cheaper, less annoying alternative. Their selection of hamsters looks very small on the website, but in reality they have a ton of hamster, way too many in fact. She joked that if we adopted one, we got five for free. She took a donation of only *$5* for the hamster we decided on. We gave her an extra $5 after she gave us a wire carrying cage to take her home in.

I highly suggest that if you’re looking into taking home any sort of small animal, and you live in the San Diego area, you give her a call. She knows about all her animals, and she wont send you home with something that will make you unhappy. (No nibblers, no diseased animals!) Don’t bother with pet stores, you never know what you’re getting with them. We drove something like 50 miles out of the way to go to her specifically, and you should, too.

(For those curious, every hamster she showed us was housed in it’s own very comfortable cage. Very cool.)

Been listening to more music lately. Let me see what I can run through for you. Latest listens are first.

Mike Doughty – Rockity Roll
Mike Doughty – Smofe + Smang
Rockity Roll is a six track EP that kicks a lot of ass. 27 Jennifers is a memorable track. Smofe + Smang is Mike performing live, solo, mostly Soul Coughing songs and some solo work, good stuff. I think he sounds better like this then he ever did with Soul Coughing. The solo EP rocks harder than Soul Coughing did most of the time.

The Thrills – So Much for the City
I really like this album. It’s a little lo-fi, and the main vocalist’s strange breathy voice is a bit off-putting at first, but the album grows on you. It’s sunny music, written during a stay in San Diego, and the entire album pretty much worships all that isn’t California to people that live and grew up here. (The fact that the band is entirely Irish, I can understand why they were gobsmacked shitless by their stay in San Diego.)

The Thrills has a lot in common with The Polyphonic Spree in the nature of the music, very uplifting and flowery, with simple lyrics that sometimes border on lameness, but the overall feel of the album is excellent. If you’re interested in some bouncy music that is obviously inspired by the likes of the Byrds and the Beach Boys, check out So Much for the City.

Their second album, Let’s Bottle Bohemia, I have not been able to listen to all the way through. I don’t feel it has the same charm, but I’ll get to it eventually.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned my love of this album, but it’s only grown. I’m not sure why I enjoy it so much, as it goes against everything I should probably like in music, and I hated Maps on the radio, but I love it within the album. Crazy shit.

Max Richter – The Blue Notebooks
This is a fusion of classical and electronic styles, mostly going toward the realm of being dark, sorrowful, and absolutely stunningly gorgeous. String arrangements, orchestrated parts, and a small underlying experimental electronic layer creates music that is as beautiful as it is haunting. The album opens with a small track with the following lines spoken by actress Tilda Swinton (who played Gabriel in Constantine), “Everyone carries a room about inside them. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say at night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall,” and it alone could be the reason I love the album. This is definitely pricking up your ears and listening. Beautiful stuff, you must check this out.

Sorry if I repeated anything.