In which everyone wants to be thin and rich and have great sex. They also want to be more right than everyone else about what God wants.
The top 25 most-highlighted books on the Kindle are about vanity and fucking, the love of money, self-help, and God.
The Bible appears five times.
The other “religious” books are tortured odes to human ego’s self-worship, and are written by the unenlightened. Because when the blind lead the blind, it always works out so well!
There are six novels.
Considering how many Kindles are in use and the type of people who use them, this list is terrifying to me.
In which I do something I don’t think I’ve ever done here: give a vocal lesson!
I have a friend who kicks ass when she shows up at karaoke. She’s been in bands. She’s a singer. She comes to my gigs sometimes.
She posted this article on Facebook today, and I read it, and damn if it doesn’t need a rebuttal. And I’m just the woman to do it! (If you’re too lazy to read the link, it’s basically a bunch of bullshit about how your diet has a profound effect on your voice box, and how you should “eat light proteins” and “avoid dairy” before gigs.)
Over the years I’ve tried it all, and I’m here to tell you that it’s all bullshit. Your voice is no more sensitive to environmental factors than your ankles are. Yes, if you sprain your ankle you’ll need to rest it until it’s healed, but other than that you probably never really think about how your diet or the weather are affecting your gait. No one ever goes around saying dumb shit like, “I can’t have dairy an hour before I walk, because it messes up my ankles.”
Continue reading »
In which it’s finals week.
I shall {seriously endeavor to} be (mostly) AFK until Thursday night after I’m done with school.
Why? Because it’s finals week, and I’m totally not ready. I have HOURS of LabSim left to slog through, a chapter test and a practice test and and moar practice tests and a final for CCNA 4, and two chapters plus a final exam for SuSE Linux Admin!
All in four days! Gah!
Procrastination, thy name is Mush.
In which I fly! To Seattle! On a plane!
Last week I went to Seattle to see my beloved Satguru, Amma, properly known as Sri Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi.
While I was there I enjoyed a lovely retreat, learned a new meditation technique, suffered a vicious spring cold, had a series of trippy spiritual revelations, and ate a lot of refined carbohydrates.
My friend Toni was slated to go with me and drive us to Seattle, but for some reason I kept blowing off making our reservations for the retreat and the hotel. Two weeks before Amma’s visit, she called to say that had to have a minor surgery that week and wouldn’t be able to go. Suddenly we not only didn’t have reservations, but I didn’t have transportation either.
Continue reading »
In which I’m kinda busy!
Last weekend, I had a total blast at Sunbanks (a blues festival near Grand Coulee). Coyote Kings and I played the 2:30 slot on Saturday, and we had an encore and everything! It was freakin’ awesome! The crowd was amazing.
Then we stayed for another 24 hours and talked to musicians and drank campers’ cocktails and in general had an absolutely fun time! Here’s the photoset.
Tomorrow, I’m flying to Seattle to see Amma. I’ll be home next Tuesday. Om namah Shivaya!
Since there are only two weeks of the term left, I need to be busting ass to make up for the homework I didn’t do last week and won’t do next week. I also need to do laundry and pack. So if you’ll excuse me?
In which it’s gigging season again!
Last weekend, Coyote Kings competed in the Int’l Blues Challenge (held on Clover Island, right before UnTapped kicked off) and we took first place!
Coyote Kings competing at IBC, Clover Island Inn Hotel (Kennewick, WA)
This means we’re going to Snohomish in August to compete against the state’s finalists. And if we win there, we go to Memphis next winter to compete at the national level!
I’ve spent quite a few cycles lately learning the brand-new material and going to band practice and going to UnTapped to schmooze and stressing about the fact that I have no decent gigging clothes because they’re either old or they don’t fit anymore.
Next weekend we’re playing Sunbanks, and I seriously have no idea what to wear. Argh!
Oh, and our new album, Move, will be out in late June!
In which I’m just trying to look busy here, guys! *type typity type*
School
Since last term culminated in an exhausting two-week freak-out because I hadn’t gotten my courses finished in time for finals, this term I’ve made myself a schedule.
I’m already behind my clever schedule, and it’s only week 4. Um.
I like my Linux class, my CCNA class makes me miserable, and my other class is fine but the labs and chapter tests are seriously tedious. Waah.
Nicotine
That last quit failed. I just wasn’t prepared to suffer for the necessary length of time.
Quitting smoking is mild yet endless suffering; a feeling that you should be doing something else that doesn’t go away for weeks. It’s relentless. I didn’t have my shit together so I failed to withstand the whisper of the dopamine.
The fact that every drag is doing irreparable damage to my lung tissue is pissing me off, however. There will be another quit, I just need to get my mental and emotional shit together before I face it. Grr.
Clothes
For no particular reason, I broke down and bought clothes from KrishnaCulture.com yesterday. I can’t wait for them to arrive! Two shirts and an adorable gopi dress. Yay!
My jeans are too big. A punjabi I’ve had for years and which has always been tight now fits. I’m probably going to have to buy a couple of new sundresses this summer, so I don’t look like I’m wearing someone else’s clothes.
Continue reading »
In which I haven’t washed my hair since last weekend, and that’s because I’m a full-time student who takes all her classes online. From her room. Which she never leaves.
I’m taking three last classes in this, my back-to-school year. I’m sick of it. I am having a hard time dredging up any enthusiasm at all, and I actually do care about the material.
Work is better. Waaaay better. At work, something breaks and you fix it! Sometimes you have to learn stuff before you can fix it, and that’s okay. At the end of the year, you’ve learned a bunch of stuff, but you did so organically. School is a weird, artificial way of getting information from one place to another. It’s pissing me off. I want it to be over.
Continue reading »
In which Day 2 is summarized.
Fuck this! Quitting is hard, and I don’t want it to be this hard, and I hate nicotine, and I hate my fucking neuroreceptors, and I hate dopamine, and the nicotine patch is weird, and this entire process sucks rocks.
In which I tackle the old nicotine addiction. Again.
I quit smoking two or three times last year, and each time I was really ready to succeed… but failed because I just had one cigarette. Or three. Or five. Which, of course, led to smoking full-time soon after.
The first time I quit, I quit cold turkey. It worked for a few weeks, but then I broke down and bummed a smoke at a gig and bought a pack within the week. The second time, I used nicotine gum. It worked for awhile, but the gum tastes bad and the whole park-and-suck routine made my gums sore. The third time, I used lozenges, but those gave me mouth ulcers and made my already rapid dental tartar build-up even worse because of the sugary, chalky gunk they’re made of.
I failed to stay on the recommended dosages with both products because they were mildly uncomfortable to use. When in a high-risk circumstance I’d just go ahead and smoke because, let’s face it, that’s what my neuroreceptors wanted me to do: smoke the damn cigarette and ease the annoying cravings. There’s no better way than inhalation to get nicotine into the brain. Mmm, smoking.
Continue reading »
VSCO
Instagram has become unusable crap, so please click the icon below to see my latest pics.
4 random books from my Library!
