Worse Than A Fairy Tale

For a lot of people, this past week has meant the end of summer. I suppose that's pretty depressing, especially with how great this summer turned out to be, but I mean atleast it's an awesome summer that we'll all be missing.

I mean think of some of the crazy things that went down this summer:
-Trip to Canada
-Warped Tour Montreal VIP
-Warped Tour Boston VIP
-Going To San Diego
-Beach Houses
-Jake & Nick Getting their own place

and there's plenty of other goodtimes for sure.

But here I find myself, in the awkward spot in time before school starts but after summer has pretty much ended, and I must say it's rather inconveniant. Even knowing who to get in touch with and who hasn't gone to school yet or who from school has moved in already becomes frustrating. The good part of this time is the ability to freely visit friends at school without having to worry about what you have going on the next day. Adam, Mark, and I went to UCONN for move-in weekend last night and it was definately a good time. Pete, John, and Rob's new room is hooked with Shane, Aneesh, and Lionel so I'm sure those guys will have a good semester. Can't really provide any details about the events of my time spent at UConn but I wasn't really planning on being able to when I decided I would be going up for the night.

Here's the latest recap for people that have moved to Cali now....
Pat Pathammavong
Brettt Stanley
Zak Smola
Ricky Dionne
Brian Barnicle

and Due To Leave
Gitamba - Sept 1

good luck Gitamba, have a wild time out there dude. To everyone else I hope you guys are doing great.

So that's all for now, good luck to everyone going to school and have the best time you can. There's no point in going to school if your not planning on being outrageous frequently, if you don't know that already you'll learn it.


Today I picked up the new Drop Dead Gorgeous cd, Worse Than A Fairy Tale. It's a concept album about Saylor Lake, Colorado, where a killer sadistically killed 12 villagers between October 27th 1978 to September 7th , 1979. Produced by maestro Ross Robinson, Fairy Tale explores the mind of a psychopath and hysteria of a small town through 12 blistering tracks. I haven't listened to the whole cd yet but what I have heard was interesting, check it out.

Moving For The Sake Of Motion

I made it back from Canada, and have decided that it is just an amazing place to go party. I spent the whole weekend just doing whatever I/We felt like doing and really just being completely wreckless. I was able to go to another Warped Tour and hang out with all the guys from MAH for the second time this week. I spent a load of dough but it was worth it to add just one more wild thing that went on this weekend. Although the ride home left much to be desired, the trip as a whole was without a doubt succesful, and is a highlight of the summer without a doubt. Pictures of the trip can be found in either Adam O'neill or P-thom's facebooks.

After getting back from Canada we went to Rhode Island pretty soon after and I have just gotten back from that. It was a good time even though the weather wasn't too great for a beach trip. All the drinking that has gone on this week has just been out of control and it's only Friday. But hey, summer is coming to an end and I want to make the most of it. Speaking of summer coming to an end I believe Sutton and Roland went to school today to start football training. It'll be a while before I see those guys again but man after that Canada trip I can't even imagine what will go on the next time we hang out. Those guys are just wreckless and I love it.

So, if you haven't noticed yet, this blog is really my way of letting people know about all the interesting, thought-provoking, or intriguing things that I find on a daily basis. I suppose on a greater level it's a way for me to recount the things I've done and discuss how I feel about them too, but I do like sharing a lot of cool things. So I stubled across this website this week called We Feel Fine (http://www.wefeelfine.org) and it's basically a datebase of human emotion categorized by gender, age, or other characteristics. It's a really cool site and somewhat hard to explain so I'd have to recommend you check it out. I think that the idea behind the site is very innovative and really helps people connect on atleast a small level, and sometimes even a small connection to someone you don't know can make a big difference. This is the site's description of their purpose for the site.

"We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale.

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.

The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine's Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.

The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles' properties – color, size, shape, opacity – indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. The particles careen wildly around the screen until asked to self-organize along any number of axes, expressing various pictures of human emotion. We Feel Fine paints these pictures in six formal movements titled: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds.

At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what's on our blogs, what's in our hearts, what's in our minds. We hope it makes the world seem a little smaller, and we hope it helps people see beauty in the everyday ups and downs of life." - Jonathon Harris

Also, as I was writing this post I came across a new Dear Hunter video of them live in concert. The quality of the video is really good and the video is of their entire set. So if you have yet to see The Dear Hunter live in concert definately check this out. Erick Serna on guitar has a rediculous solo at around 20 minutes and his guitar work is part of the reason their live show is just so amazing.

Another California Clone

We both smell of sex, even though we've slept on seperate sheets for several dozen sunsets
We both see that same sun set over the horizon, just off the coast of different oceans
We both taste the truth tiptoeing off the tips of our tongues, yet it seems as if only lies are able to somehow spill out
We both hear the lone wolf's contagious cry in the distance off the pinnacle of a peak….
I just cant tell if it's from the Rocky or Appalachian Mountains
We both touch the train tracks that separate our souls as we walk on a tragic tightrope…
but I know she'll never meet me halfway

She-
Poses for the camera and feigns a foreign smile while simulating how to suitably showcase pseudo sentiments and sensations
She walks the red carpet like a robot
Except there are no wires
She still shows some slight and subtle signs that she was once a human being
Like the tear that fell from her eye that frigid night in mid December
When she boarded that plane to the Pacific and told me
"Donnie, my darling…I don't think I'm ever going to see the Atlantic Ocean again"

All the agents and assholes out West have now transformed and molded her into what she promised she would never become
A contaminated, comatose clone continuously crashing cars in her cranium
She even dyed her hair platinum blonde…and died a little inside too

What she does not know
Is that for her, there is a feasible way out
It's called Arizona
It's called Nevada
It's called Oregon
Hell, it's even called Mexico
But her heart hibernates in Hollywood now
And the spotlight always shines on her
And the spectacular stage is now her claustrophobic cage
And all the hormone happy teenage drama queens mold themselves into an identical copy of her figure and form
And all the world is a theater…and all it's citizens merely help act out this traumatic treachery

Someone once told me that it never snows in San Francisco
And it never hails in Hawaii
And it never rains in Washington
But I could see the storm clouds suffocating Seattle even from the Atlantic Ocean
I could smell the sex on her mattress from seventeen states away
I could taste the truth on the tip of her tongue as she sucks the celebrity status out of her director's million dollar dick
I could hear the lone wolf's cry high in the Rocky Mountains
I could touch the train tracks while the light at the end of my tunnel inches closer and closer
I see her on the screen and scream
I see her holding hands with Harrison Ford
While her other hand holds an Oscar
I decide that this needs to come to end
That she needs to open up her eyes
And realize what the Golden State has done to her
I need to save her from herself

I had plans to permanently plant peace in our planet tonight
But in 4 minutes and 47 seconds I will march out of my one room apartment
and I will parade all 2,883 miles from New Haven, Connecticut to the City of Angels
Without hitchhiking, without stopping to take a shit…hell, without even blinking or breathing
I don't know exactly what I'll do once I get there
But as soon as I cross the invisible line
She's right there waving and greeting the world
Like she freaking owns the stupid city
I pull her off her pedestal and plead for her to please come home
But she pleads with the police to please take me away
I came all the way here with a purpose
But now that purpose seems to have slipped my mind
Perhaps I've become a California clone too myself
Perhaps it wasn't her fault after all
Perhaps it was the Pacific

I grab her by the hand
I hold and kiss her in a way even Ron Jeremy would have applauded and approved of
But I don't have the heart to look her in the eye and tell her
That she's the worst thing to happen to the world since the invention of the word "love"

That she's become more dirty and disgusting than Detroit
That our relationship is a bigger mistake than America's invasion of Iraq
That the chances of me and her overcoming the obstacles are less likely than Chicago Cubs winning the World Series
That she is more overrated and glorified than God

I finally lift my head and stare at the stranger
A distasteful, counterfeit version of my former soul mate
I almost vomit over the sight off her fake tan and acrylic nails and beach blonde hair and ten tons of makeup
I breathe again for the first time since Bridgeport
And blink again for the first time since Brooklyn
And speak again for the first time since Santa Fe
And as an ounce of oil drips from her eye
I ask
"Is this really you?
Is this what you truly want to do?"
Her tears
Turned to ice
Her heart
Turned to stone
Her diamond ring
Turned to coal
My blood
Bled black gold

I can not continue this sadistic charade for even another second
So I wave farewell to forever
And say goodbye to the goddess of the Golden Globes
Because this is not where I belong
This is not where people belong
This is a whole different world here
The air tastes different
The people act different
The rules are different
And I must escape before I get sucked into the Beverly Hill's Black Hole
Before the red carpet turns into a tongue and swallows me whole
Before Hollywood has a hurricane and the only remaining letters on the huge sign are "H-O-L-Y"
Before California separates from the rest of America just like the scientists said it would
Before the mannequins start to move
Before the clones start to cry

I step on her star on the walk of fame and I sprint toward salvation at the state line
And when I get there, I don't even look back
And I hope she doesn't assume that I'm ever going to come back
Because the only time I will ever see California again
Is on an enormous silver screen at a matinee show
Maybe she'll make a cameo appearance in my dreams
But the only thing I have left to say to her is
"I hope that the Hollywood sign doesn't fall from its mountain and crush your corpse you while you're crushing another actor's heart"

…So I hang my head low and stare at the train tacks as I walk back to the Atlantic alone
Forcing myself to accept the fact that my former ally is now merely another Beverly Hills Barbie Doll,
another Malibu Mannequin...
a corrupted California clone…

- Donnie Darkhorse

She Had A Summer Smile With Winter Skin....

We're Sitting Ducks, With Our Feathers Plucked

The new TREOS album which I've mentioned a few times finally comes out on August 7th, which is in two days. Now, generally I'll get a cd a couple weeks before it comes out but this CD wasn't so easy to come by. I finally picked it up today however and must say it's pretty good. Not as good as Between The Heart and The Synapse, but come on that cd is golden. Either way if you want to check it out let me know. Warped Tour is this Thursday in Mansfield, MA, not Boston. Anyone who is going please let me know.

"All these suits with big black lives
Can't put me on the company's dime
I won't be bought
No I won't be sold.

All these greasy palms and greedy hands
All my supply; all your demand
I'm not your whore
And I won't be your Babylon." - TREOS, "Smoke and Mirrors" from The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi

The California Sun Has Sunk

Well, I'm back in the Cut. I made my two and a half week venture to San Diego to spend some time just kicking about and enjoying the summer and I must say it was more than I had expected. In the time I spent there I was able to get some cool things done: went hiking, hit up some beaches, went up to LA, went to the Casino and a few other miscellaneous adventures. I'd like to thank Brettt and Pat for being some awesome hosts, they really know how to make a good time happen out in Cali. Also, while doing all the things that I had hoped to in Cali I met some cool people which is always good. My time there really has made me reconsider moving out there, by the time came for me to come home I had already felt at home in San Diego and I'd liked to thank everyone for making that happen. It wasn't until I got back that I realized how crazy the weather here is, it seems almost absurd how hot and how cold it can get here while it is almost consistantly a beautiful day there. Let it be known, if you enjoy doing things outdoors, SD is the spot.

I got a chance to go see the premier of The Simpsons movie and as a lifelong fan I more than enjoyed it. To anyone who watches the show or considers themselves a Simpsons fan past or present, my recommendation to see it has been offered. I suppose I could go on about all the different stories from California that I have, but that would take a while and then what would I have to talk about in person. Actually, when you think about it, it seems like the internet can change the importance or necessity of a conversation all together. In theory, I could say all that I need to right here, just type until I had nothing else to talk about, and anyone who is interested could read it and never need to talk to me, or know me at all for that matter. Oh well, just a random observation but I guess its something to think about. I'm planning on buying a new bicycle and trying to get a few things done in the next couple of weeks but I do need to go back to work too.

I don't have any pictures from Cali, I don't own a camera, so you're going to have to trust me that I actually went.

I stumbled across this site one day and have been playing around it with it for a while. It's a group art project where using several different graffiti art supplies, and limited paint, you can start a project to have finished by other people online and I believe you can finish someone else's started project. The process leads to a collection of pieces with several inspirations and creative interpretations. The site is http://www.wetpaintpleasetouch.com and can now be found with the other links I have listed. Also added to the links page is a friends of mine's new site The Retrospective, http://www.theretrospective.com, which is filled with constantly updated indie music news, interviews, and album reviews. The people behind this project are all very talented and creative so go ahead and check it out.....I dare you.