Wilderness - "Monumental"

Peter Bjorn and John - "Detects on my Affection"

These are dedicated to the deer

Jackie O-Motherfucker - "Your Cells are in Motion"

Sleater-Kinney - "Rollercoaster"

Sleater-Kinney - "Get Up"

The Kinks - "Strangers"

One of the best Morrissey B-Sides

Morrissey - "Lost"

I have trouble coming up with titles

Wire - "Outdoor Miner" (Long version)

This is pretty much all I listen to: Part 2

Cocteau Twins - "I Wear Your Ring"

I think this was introduced to me at some point by Stuart Murdoch's diary.

This is pretty much all I listen to.

Cocteau Twins - "Cherry-Coloured Funk"

C'mon progeny!

This is just creepy.

Lambchop - "Up With People"

...when I cry and cry and cry...

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Lucy"

and

Wordsworth's "Lucy poems"..

Strange fits of passion have I known

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eye I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy hould be dead!"


She dwelt among the untrodden ways

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!


Three years she grew

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.

'Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

'She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And her's shall be the breathing balm,
And her's the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.

'The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mold the Maiden's form
By silent sympathy.

'The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.

'And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell;
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live
Here in this happy dell.'

Thus Nature spake---The work was done---
How soon my Lucy's race was run!
She died, and left to me
This heath, this calm, and quiet scene;
The memory of what has been,
And never more will be.


A slumber did my spirit seal

A slumber did my spirit seal
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.


I travelled among unknown men

I travelled among unknown men
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire;
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

English Lit homework

Elegiac Stanzas

Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castel, in a Storm,
Painted by Sir George Beaumont

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

Ah! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;
-- Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A stedfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been,--'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,
If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O 'tis a passionate Work!--yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.--
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

--William Wordsworth

British Sea Power - "It Ended on an Oily Stage"

Come Armageddon! Come!

I've been obsessed/depressed over this article all day...


CHICAGO (AFP) - The world is inching closer to nuclear Armageddon, a group of prominent scientists and security experts said.


The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has kept a Doomsday clock since 1947 as a reminder of the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

The clock will be moved forward Wednesday at simultaneous events in Washington and London whose speakers will include physicist Stephen Hawking, the Chicago-based periodical said in a statement.

The Bulletin warned that the world had entered a "Second Nuclear Age marked by grave threats."

It cited the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea; escalating terrorism; unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing "launch-ready" status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia, and "new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks."

First set at seven minutes to midnight -- a phrase that has become part of pop culture -- the clock has been moved 17 times in response to global events.

The most recent shift was in 2002 when it moved two minutes forward because the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and terrorists were known to be seeking nuclear and biological weapons.

It currently stands once again at seven minutes to midnight, the closest to danger since the end of the Cold War.

Founded in 1945 by scientists who had helped develop the atomic bomb and were deeply concerned about the use of nuclear weapons, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists counts 17 Nobel laureates among its boards of directors and sponsors.

Here are the dates and reasons for previous changes:

- 2002: Seven minutes to midnight

The United States rejects a series of arms control treaties and announces it will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Terrorists seek to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons.

- 1998: Nine minutes to midnight

India and Pakistan "go public" with nuclear tests. The United States and Russia cannot agree on further deep reductions in their nuclear stockpiles.

- 1995: Fourteen minutes to midnight

Further arms reductions stall while global military spending continues at Cold War levels. Risks of nuclear "leakage" from poorly guarded former Soviet facilities increase.

- 1991: Seventeen minutes to midnight

The United States and the Soviet Union sign the long-stalled Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and announce further unilateral cuts in tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

- 1990: Ten minutes to midnight

The Cold War ends as the Iron Curtain falls.

- 1988: Six minutes to midnight

The United States and the Soviet Union sign a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces; superpower relations improve; more nations actively oppose nuclear weapons.

- 1984: Three minutes to midnight

The arms race accelerates.

- 1981: Four minutes to midnight

Both superpowers develop more weapons for fighting a nuclear war. Terrorist actions, repression of human rights, and conflicts in
Afghanistan, Poland and South Africa add to world tension.

- 1980: Seven minutes to midnight

The deadlock in US-Soviet arms talks continues; nationalistic wars and terrorist actions increase; the gulf between rich and poor nations grows wider.

- 1974: Nine minutes to midnight

SALT talks reach an impasse; India develops a nuclear weapon.

- 1972: Twelve minutes to midnight

The United States and the Soviet Union sign the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

- 1969: Ten minutes to midnight

The US Senate ratifies the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

- 1968: Seven minutes to midnight

France and China acquire nuclear weapons; wars rage in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Vietnam; world military spending increases while development funds shrink.

- 1963: Twelve minutes to midnight

The US and Soviet signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty "provides the first tangible confirmation of what has been the Bulletin's conviction in recent years -- that a new cohesive force has entered the interplay of forces shaping the fate of mankind."

- 1960: Seven minutes to midnight

Growing public understanding that nuclear weapons made war between the major powers irrational amid greater international scientific cooperation and efforts to aid poor nations.

- 1953: Two minutes to midnight

The United States and the Soviet Union test thermonuclear devices within nine months of one another.

- 1949: Three minutes to midnight

The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.

- 1947: Seven minutes to midnight

The clock first appears on the Bulletin cover as a symbol of nuclear danger.

Morrissey - "Everyday Is Like Sunday"

My Friday afternoon

I've been listening to Remember the Night Parties by Oxford Collapse a lot lately, which has been reminding me a little of old favorites Texas is the Reason, who recently played a reunion show in New York unbeknownst to me. I would have liked to have been there, for old times sake.

Oxford Collapse - "Let's Vanish"

Oxford Collapse - "Forgot to Write"

Texas is the Reason - "A Jack With One Eye"

How I started my Friday

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "In the Ghetto"

The lobby of the Heartbreak Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee plays all Elvis, all the time.

They do not play any Nick Cave.

I'd never given up on you. The next stop is the East Side Motel.

In the summer of 1994 a group of us used to rent out the ice every Sunday morning at 5 AM to play hockey at the Ice Chalet (RIP) in Costa Mesa. Afterwards would be an Egg McMuffin breakfast at McDonalds, where one time, I heard "I Keep Forgettin'" by Michael McDonald and was shocked that it was the exact same song as "Regulate" by Warren G! My young mind was blown, as "Regulate" was a guilty pleasure of mine at the time (way better than Coolio), and I was not aware that songs could borrow from other songs and such.

Anyway, my point is that listening to "Zero Refills" by Pernice Brothers on the way to class today made me think of all of this. Why? I have no idea.

YouTuebesday: Kicking Television

Wilco on the tv on the YouTube on my blog.

"War on War" - Later With Jools Holland


"Jesus, Etc." - The Tonight Show with Jay Leno


"The Late Greats" - Late Show with David Letterman

Shake my sheets

Ted Leo + Pharmacists - "Me and Mia"

Ted Leo + Pharmacists - "Little Dawn"


An ex-classmate/acquaintance/blogger claimed this album as his favorite of 2004. Trusting his judgement, I ran out and bought it, and....only liked these two songs.

I think I still feel a little guilty about not liking it more. :/

The sky is ready to burst

Sunday music part 2

I listen to this album just about every Sunday morning whilst doing my best to not get out of bed. This was my favorite song the first time I heard the album, I think.

The Kinks - "Johnny Thunder"


And for good measure, here's Elliott Smith covering another one of my favorites from that album in August 2003.

Elliott Smith - "Big Sky" (Live)

off white is now the new white

Joan of Arc's Eventually, All at Once had one of the best album covers of last year.



Joan of Arc - "Many Times I've Mistaken"

as we lay upon your bed

David Bowie - "Seven"