…What is this? XKCD?

So taking advantage of this long weekened, I stayed up pretty late last night. This lead to some biazarre dreams.

Okay, so it’s new years day. And I’m in this resturant with my parents, but they’re told me to this party thing going on, on the other side of downtown. I had to get out of that weird resturant and I kept going in circles. Eventually I get out, and I ask one of the waiters were the place is, that I’m supposed to go to. And he points in a general direction and suddenly I remember. So I’m kind of…Floating? Above the city seeing all these other parties going on. So I get to the place and they’re blasting these fog machines all over the grounds, and I hate fog machines. They clog up my throat and they have that weird smell. The guy with the fog machine gave me a mean look. So I’m stumbling through it, and I miss the party. I’m back to floating above the city watching people enjoy themselves. And I was like “Woah, I didn’t even do anything special for new years. I didn’t even count down. It’s 2008 now, what the hell?” So..In my dream I thought New Years was last night. (I had stayed up rather late.) So it ended kind of depressing, I was so worried about leaving behind 2007 and not doing something special for 2008. But go go time warp!

I don’t know if this was before or after, but somehow our family had adopted a baby leopard. It was this cute little cuddly thing, but definantly bigger than our housecats. We kept it in the backyard for a few days. My backyard is a small square, surrounded by a high fence. The townhouses are in a row, and we all have these small square backyards. So I had stood up on something and looked over at my neighbours backyard. They had a full grown jaguar! Though, it didn’t really look like a jaguar, but my brain told me it was. It was really spikey, and scary. Okay, so eventually our baby leopard wanted inside, so we let it in. Our cats weren’t too happy. But the leopard was really nice. What the hell? I blame the zoo.

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Okay, so my cats are very fond of sitting on our desks. They usually only bother my moms desk, because my dads is too messy, my brothers has no space to sit, and mine used to be really cluttered infront of my monitor. The new slim keyboard has been a beacon for one of my cats, Selena. Usually she bothers me only when I have a bowl of cereal and milk, but lately she’s been in a “bother Eva” mode. Today such an event happened, she sat for a minute then decided it would be more comfortable to lie down on my keyboard. Thinking quickly I pulled the keyboard infront, and let her sit inbetween it and the monitor. Usually she sits in between the keyboard and myself. I figured this would be fine until she rolled over and attacked me. This is unacceptable, so I blew in her face and she ran away. (Tip: Cats don’t like that.)

Now now, could I find something more boring to blag about? Probably, but for now homework and Canadian Thanksgiving dinner.

Yesterday something so simple, yet pretty powerful happened to me. Nothing like this has really happened before, to such a degree. I was introduced to an album by Boards of Canada. This is the first time music has actually scared me. This isn’t an insult to them, this isn’t about the lyrics, the mood of this album actually managed to frighten me. I remember being introduced to Illinois, by Sufjan Stevens. I remember because at the moment I thought it was the happiest day of my life. I thought to myself, who needs drugs if music can make you feel these thoughts? Simple music had made me feel this happy. I remember lying in bed and listening to Sigur Ros and shedding a tear, because it was so beautiful. I remember being younger, and watching a scary movie, and not knowing better. When you’re young and scared, you’re really scared. This is what last night was for me. I had decided to literally face the music, armed with an iPod, a stormy night and a dark room I embarked on a mission to hear this album through.

My first time through sitting at my computer had shook me quite a bit, and there I was distracted by so many things. I had become completely bummed out. Lying alone in my room really opened me up to this album. And by opened me up I mean scrunched me up into a ball. This album is scared me and I don’t know why. I felt like a child again, scared by my shadow. My legs felt heavy, and all those little insecurities about myself started appearing in my head. By the 6th song (Sunshine Recorder) I was in tears, and had every notion to just turn it off and go to sleep. I pushed on through, trying to be strong about this. I don’t know when but at one point I had grown almost happy about this album, I had a smile on my face. That switched over as the mood darkened once more. My room hadn’t ever really felt menacing to me, but suddenly it did. Everything kind of closed in, my legs felt heavy. My mind started focusing on horrible thoughts. I imagined the roof coming off, the walls closing in, shootings, etc. My mind started to wander, and I wouldn’t let it, that was not part of the experiment. When they only thing you’re concentrating on is music time seems to go rather slow. And the horrible thing is that time wasn’t going slow, here it was one am already, and I still had songs to go through. I think I was in and out of sleeping through the last few songs, in the battle of fear, sleep conquered. I woke up to find the album looping, and I turned it off but I hadn’t really been sure if I had listened to all of it. Before my final drifting of into sleep it started pouring rain outside. I sleep on the top floor and the roof and outside made so much noise. I was fine with this happening, since usually it does that for five or so minutes and ends. Toronto weather is weird like that. But that night, that spooky album, the wind was making such weird noises. I freaked out, again.

I woke up with a strange feeling. Well that, and complete tiredness. I didn’t have any dreams but I woke up in strange daze. I forgot my phone that day, a permanent staple in my day to day life. (What a girl~) I went through the day not sure of what to listen to. Even now I’m listening to it hoping for some more clarity on the album. It’s not scaring me now, but the point is that it did. I was scared by music, and it was such an experience. I’ll say this once more, I felt like a child watching a scary movie. My parents were bad with movie restrictions, I saw Akira when I was maybe 10, and I’m still scared to watch that movie all the way through. I felt like I was being chased and had nowhere to hide.

It’s amazing what music can do to you on a deeper level. In all honesty I can’t even begin to describe what last night was to me. I don’t know if this album will have the same effect, but I suggest listening to it. Geogaddi by Boards of Canada

—(Shut up, one day I’ll write better-er.)

Also known as volunteer work. My two friends were doing it, so I decided to join them at a small alternative schools fair. When the lady in charge of the volunteers listed jobs, I picked face painting.

We had to get there at 9am to help with the setup but we decided to meet 15 minutes from my house so we could all go together. I’ve hardly ever woken up at 7:45 am on a saturday, but it kind of felt refreshing. We got there and were put to work. Now, for my previous volunteer hours I did stage work. It involved lifting many metal stages risers from under the stage, to ontop of the stage. It wasn’t a fun job, these things weigh 90 pounds. We had to carry two of these, across the parking lot for a mini-stage. Bleh. Then I got to set up the face paint stuff. It was then I was told that I would not be working with some cute girl, it would just be me, all alone. So I was kind of freaked, and kind of really super cold. But Starbucks was there, and staff got free food. Which means me! We took total advantage of this.

Notes on face painting:

- I was told to paint my own face, and so I did in the form of a kitty.

- Face paint is really annoying to use. It’s this creamy stuff, that is kind of unrealiable, and I only had two sponges.

- Kids are really shy, can’t hold still, but REALLY appreciative of really crappy face paint.

- Parents are scary, and tall, and they gave me odd looks. Some of them were kind of mean, others loved what I did. Which is pretty cool.

- Best Face Paint: I did spiders, scars, a lot of butterflies (All turned out bad.), lots of kitties, hearts, stars, rainbows, a zombie, the batman logo!, spiderman, and dalmations. Plus some random stuff. It was kind of cool to be told what to do and then totally struggle with it.

- Face paint makes your fingers all gross. I had to wipe my hands on my pants since I couldn’t go get napkins, I really hope these wash off. (Though, they’re kind of turning into painters pants.)

-Sparkle glue is fun. Dry sparkles are not.

-At one point there was a huge amount of kids wanting their faces painted. It was nuts. The line was long. It was horrible.

Clean up:

Finally somebody announced it was done, so we raided the girls making cotton candy. (Which, my god, is amazing.) And the girls doing the popcorn machine. (Also amazing.) Then we had to lift all sorts of heavy things, and I’m weak and can’t lift things properly so my entire upper body is dead. (Especially my chest, which hurts A LOT.)

Overall it was kind of enjoyable. I hadn’t really face painted anybody but myself, and little kids are kind of cool. School fairs are always cool, they had a live band that was pretty funny as well.

P.S. I don’t really need anymore volunteer hours for school…. (We need 40 hours to graduate.) (I now have 66!)