kiss kiss bang bang

NOTE: I am trying really hard to not make this a music blog. But, I make no promises.


My friend Maxx is the sort of person who listens to every kind of music ever, but with a predilection towards punk music and interesting sounds. He goes to concerts a lot and is prone to accidentally finding these awesome bands. He gets really excited about them, and it's a lot of fun to talk about music with him.

A while ago he had told me about a band he had seen over the summer, opening for some other band at the Middle East in Boston. This band, he said, was "fuckin' amazing" and insisted I listen to them. He proceeded to give me all of their recorded albums. I added them to my iTunes and sort of left them alone for while. I listened to them a little bit and decided I liked them but hadn't found the right context to fully appreciate it. Maxx had mentioned that they were playing a show in Manchester, NH when we got back to school and I should come.

Now - I have a tendency to be informed of these sorts of things and immediately forget about them. I also have a tendency to arbitrarily end up places without necessarily planning on it... which is how when I woke up at 3 PM today, I was convinced to go to Manchester to some sketchy bar to see a band I was almost unfamiliar with play.

After suffering through some shitty, shitty opening bands including one which was made up of three fourteen-year-olds (mutilating early Green Day, The Offspring, AND The Strokes - yes, it was a crime against humanity), some sort of screamo/metalcore band which was technically really cool for a high school band but sometimes tedious to actually listen to (screamo is DONE, guys, nice try though. Also your name was something like "Beautiful Imperfection in Loneliness") and this circa-2001 punk-pop band who were unfortunately comprised mostly of assholes playing fun music.

At this point I was hoping the band we were actually there to see would be worth this trip. I had been promised a "killer live show" and while the opening bands paraded on, I had been seriously contemplating going downstairs to have a few drinks just to make this whole experience mildly entertaining.

And then Kiss Kiss started to play. I don't really know how to describe this other than say "a controlled noise experiment" wherein it becomes a mission to see how many more ways one can make noise sound sonically pleasant. No understatement - their performance redeemed the entire experience thus far. Part Arcade Fire, part St. Vincent, part noise rock, all awesome (and a splash of Heather is a hipster at heart). I can't find any sort of YouTube video which do them justice, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one. Maxx was totally right.

dining hall road rage

I live in a nondescript, early-contemporary 1960s style dorm on campus, which is next to a dining hall that is never open. To be fair, The Inconvenience Shack (as I prefer to call it) is open Monday-Thursday, from 7 am - 7 pm. This would be helpful if you are going to be on this part of campus and/or want to go a bit out of your way to eat here. Too bad WEEKENDS are the part of the week when people are most likely to be around. I generally avoid The Inconvenience Shack, as I keep weird hours anyway (read: not 7am-7pm) - and if it is open, I'm probably not around. I frequently eat at HoCo, just because it's more likely to be open when I will want to eat. That, and it is next to where I have most of my classes, shortening the commute from meal to class.

Today, for the first time in about year, I have class on Fridays again. My undergrad career has been a small scheduling miracle: no 8ams ever (I've supposed to have them - they just kept getting changed last-minute), my classes have mostly between 11am-3pm, etc. Granted, this class is at 1 pm, and it's Linguistics Lite. The hardest part of this class is merely getting myself across the street every Friday afternoon. My life is hard, I know.


And so today I went to HoCo, as the The Inconvenience Shack was busy being inconvenient. Coincidentally, UNH is hosting some sort of Great American theatre festival.

I present to you a mathmatical equation for today at 12:30 at HoCo:
Funnel all the people from The Inconvenience Shack + The Normal HoCo Crowd + A Theatre Festival - Seating Space To Begin With = UNAMUSED.
At what point was this a good idea?? Surely the Theatre festival could have used The Inconvenience Shack, right? It's just sitting there! Empty! This is a poor use of resources, UNH.


In related news, class on Friday is going to be difficult to readjust to.

"The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid."

J.D. Salinger died today.

And like nearly everyone else who ever read Catcher In The Rye, I am saddened by this fact. J.D. Salinger was one of my favorite authors; Franny and Zooey is one of my favorite books - I've bought at least five copies over the years just because they're necessary to have around and give to people. (In my mild defense, I hated Catcher in the Rye... everyone should read Franny & Zooey and Nine Stories instead. Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction is great too.)

I hope a) nobody tries to make a goddamn phony movie out of Catcher in the Rye and b) that Salinger has a few manuscripts sitting around that might get published posthumously.


Though I try to keep up with the news, I'm not always very good at it. The internet makes it too easy to ignore these things while they are happening, because an instant replay or a succinct summary is always available. I skipped the State of the Union yesterday - I can always catch the important parts on YouTube and Hulu right? - to drink a box of wine with some friends in the art studios.

This might have been the most pretentious thing I have ever written. I'm sorry, friends.

last first first last

Today is the first day of my last semester at UNH. Weird. While everyone is scurrying around campus going to their first day of classes, I'm back to research.

It's sunny and warm for January, and I can't help but think about how much it feels like this past summer.

Dear second semester,

bring it on.
love,
heather

and now, off to pack.

this is how i feel every time i am in a bookstore

(from Alison Bechdel's Entertainment Weekly piece for their 1000th issue)

Longest winter break ever is long.

Dear UNH,
Thanks for the longest winter break ever... but seriously now. It's time for this J-Term charade to end.
Listlessly,
Heather


10 SIGNS THAT WINTER BREAK IS TOO LONG
1. Everyone else has gone back to school!
2. You are facebook-stalking...
a) people whom you barely know in real life
b) people who are/have been Big-Deal students on your campus
c) people you went to high school with, but never actually liked and/or talked to
3. You find random people's blogs, read them, and then actively follow them
4. Texts from last night, the aforementioned blogs, etc could count as required reading
5. You start reading a book because, well, it's something to do ... and you read maybe the first hundred pages or so
6. You hit the stumbleupon button six times a minute -- surely there must be something new and interesting on the internet today
7. You have watched the complete series of four TV shows
8. Your hard drive runs out of space from downloading new music
9. The places you would normally go just to get out of the house are looking less like options; you've been there enough that it might look like you're creeping on the establishment
10. It is 7:40 am and you are still awake (why wake up for daytime? you may as well stay up all night and sleep all day anyway...!) (why yes, this did happen today, thanks for asking.)

because all i talk about is grad school

This is the face of someone who finished applying to grad school in November. This same face applies to someone who just got into her #1 choice for grad school.

If you need me for the next 5-7 years, I'll be at the University of Strathclyde, studying literary linguistics!

People I love, Part 2

My friend Katherine has had a blog for a while - and occasionally I would appear on it as a guest. Mostly, these posts involved me trying to cook stuff (here is a good example).

I finally remembered to tell Katherine about this. Thanks for letting me write for you occasionally, and I look forward to more collaborations!

íslenska

I spent my junior year of college translating Old English into Modern English. This was easily one of the most tedious things I have ever done. But, Intro to Old English and Beowulf were easily two of the best classes I have ever taken. Sometimes - though not frequently - I find myself missing it.

THAT SAID...I would be very okay if I never had to see any more epic poetry.

but, i find myself getting unnecessarily excited over the existence of the following collection of Early Icelandic poetry:

i think this speaks volumes about me.

prenups? nah, pre-dinners.

Yesterday was my mother's birthday. Happy birthday, Mum!

To celebrate, we went to Bugaboo Steak Whatever. This is one of those restaurants which insist on taking their theme aspect too far. Therefore - obviously - when they are alerted it is someone's birthday, they drag out every available person working there and sing a song and give dessert to the birthday person. Bugaboo Steak Whatever also features a stuffed moose that you Must Kiss. (Capital letters. It is COMMANDED.)

In preparation for this dinner, Dad and I therefore had to sign off on the following agreement:
I, Peter and Heather, agree to NOT invite the moose to Judy's birthday dinner...or FACE CONSEQUENCES.
We agreed to it. It's not like we had a choice, really... though Dad did sign with his favorite fake name, Irving.

Grad School Disasters (and Good News)

Applying to grad school has been one of those endlessly stressful things. I want to study English-language literary linguistics, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: studying literature through a linguistic perspective.

It turns out that if you are studying French or German or Spanish literary linguistics there are a bunch of programs, but if you want to specialize in English (simply because you don't know enough about those other languages) you have seven options for schools offering post-graduate degrees. And, inexplicably, four of them are in Nigeria. Seeing how Heather In Nigeria just sounds like a lot of a bad idea, I applied to the University of Nottingham and The University of Birmingham for a masters' degree, and the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland) for a masters' of research degree and then to go straight into my PhD.

The University of Nottingham fake-accepted me the Tuesday before winter break, sending me an email essentially welcoming me as an international student, with information on how to get housing and visas and the like. 24 hours later, I received a second email which essentially read "Um. So. We screwed up... it's not necessarily that you're not accepted, it's that we just haven't finished processing your application yet. Sorry!" (Three weeks later they offered me scholarship opportunities, despite still not being actually accepted to their school.)

As you can imagine I now have little faith in the Acceptance Letter System.

And so today I go to check my email. I have two facebook notices and one Message from Faye Hammill, the director of the English department at Strathclyde:

"Dear Heather,
Thank you for your application for a place on our M Res degree. We are happy with the proposal and references, and two supervisors have agreed to work with you. However, we need a bit more documentation. At the moment, we have no copies of your qualifications. Please can you scan copies of your degree certificates and upload to your application [...] (if you cannot scan them, please put them in the post).
Thank you
Faye Hammill, Director of PG Research"

!!!

So I'm still not necessarily in per se... they still want my transcripts from first semester. And, seeing as how waiting to mail stuff is stressful...I need another copy of my transcript. Which, of course, is in Durham, and I am not.

CAN WE GO BACK TO SCHOOL NOW KTHANKSBYE.

People I love, Part 1

Erin McKean is a lexicographer, which is sort of like being a Professional Word Dork.

She edited the New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd Edition) and has a website (wordnik.com) which is sort of like Urban Dictionary, but with etymologies. Basically, she is awesome AND gets to spend her life sitting around thinking about words.

I want to be her when I grow up!

Good job, animal kingdom.

I always hoped that octopi would be able to manipulate things. I'm glad that scientific research exists to prove these things. This makes me unspeakably happy.

Once upon a time,

I decided I was interesting enough to have a blog.

We'll see if this is true.