I'm seeing Cloud Cult tonight at The Roxy in LA. I tried to listen to their new album, "Light Chasers", but I just haven't been in a Cloud Cult kind of mood. As far as I can tell the album sounds like Cloud Cult, which is to lightly backhand them for making an album that sounds like their last two albums. I mean no offense, but I like it when bands evolve and develop into new directions.

I guess I should say: when I am listening to a new album by a band I love, the last thing I want is for it to sound familiar. When I start to feel like I've heard this before, it just makes me wonder why should I bother investing the time into falling in love with this record, when I'm already in love with and enjoy the other ones?

You're on notice, bands that I have written about. Let's see those next albums take you in a new exciting direction. Stick with your main characteristics, your little quirks that make you awesome, but branch out. If you normally sound like Grizzly Bear, make yourself sound like Bear In Heaven. If you normally sound like No Doubt, make yourself sound like some other band with the word No or Doubt in their name, like, Doubting Thomas, or... I really can't think of any other bands that have "No" in the name. That's it, I'm naming my band No. "We are No!"

If you see someone tonight at the Cloud Cult show who looks like this, but less blocky, say hello. I always say this, never expecting anyone to say hello, but maybe someday someone will take a wild guess and say hello to me and I'll be like "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? WEBSITE? I DON'T EVEN OWN A COMPUTER, WEIRDO DIPSHIT. What the fuck are THOSE? Capris? You're man. Men don't wear capris. Mary Tyler Moore does. Go the fuck home and take those off right now, you're embarrassing yourself so thoroughly that I feel embarrassed just to be standing next to you. It's just sad. Really, it's one thing to have no respect for yourself, but everyone else? We have to look at you."

Is it absurd to be upset about not being sadder than you are? I've been doing a lot of longing for emotional peaks lately---oh woe is me, why can't i fall in love with girls who blow me all the time_? am i broken? where have all my capitals gone?_---but just now, listening to this Cloud Cult song and trying to brainstorm things to write about, it occurred to me that this song used to be familiar to me, and it doesn't feel like it any longer.

I used to be able to listen to a song like this and feel like I identified, like I understood the pure passion to feel that fills the singer's voice on this track. In this moment, seconds ago, I felt nostalgic. Somewhere in my drug-addled brain I felt wistful for the feeling of being completely lost, of knowing how far I'd come but not feeling like maybe I could go on any further but still going on because suicide is some scary shit when you get to a-thinkin'-a-bout-it real hard-like, of being totally gutted because something real bad just happened!

But no, now I just feel kind of, you know, shrug, about everything. I guess just because not being an emotional wreck isn't what I'm used to doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's probably a good thing. It probably means something like... like... I'm building a self-image that doesn't rely entirely upon the status of my external life! How cool is that? No longer does my life have to fracture to bits every time some girl waltzes out of it.

Man, if a girl ever literally waltzed out of my life, I just don't know what I'd do. Take waltzing lessons or something. Isn't that something you'd have to do with old people to get cheap lessons? I'm going to the adult school down the street, and I'm going to learn to waltz. Not now, but later, when I have to go waltzing after some girl who tries to waltz out on me. You know how sometimes a word starts to look weird, like, really, that letter goes there_?_ Waltz. Look at that word. Waltzes. Waltzing. Waltzed. Who the fuck is Walt? And isn't Zed dead, baby?

Vote yes on Prop 19! Ensure future posts like these.

I've been reluctant to post a Cloud Cult song because I didn't feel like I could pick one that would do them justice. Cloud Cult is so diverse in their stylings that I am fairly certain that you could hear a song that could annoy the piss out of you, and then hear another that you love to death. This morning, however, I realized that I should get over that and post this song, one that has stuck with me for a while now, that made it into my best 2008.

I wrote this big long rambling paragraph and then I deleted it! I am expressing restraint.

There is so much joy and beauty in this song, and hearing it felt like a revelation: I've been trying to tell people this forever. It's not an eye for an eye, it a favor for a favor. It doesn't matter if there's a billion saviors, because there's so many things to be saved! A miracle's a miracle even when it's ordinary! I guess it sounds like a collection of motivational catch phrases or something but it's all true, so fuck it.

I'm not religious, I've become all moodily disenchanted as I am certain so many do when approaching the ripe old age of twenty-four, but this song is important to me, and the messages it contains have absolutely nothing at all to do with religion or God. (Kind of like what Jesus preaches in the Gospel of Thomas [and a decent amount in Matthew], to let my former religious side cut in for a second.)

Just... be good to people, and don't sweat the small stuff. ("And it's all small stuff!") I don't know why this is so hard to for people to understand, but all you've got to do is stop doing things to other people that you wouldn't want done to you, and vice versa, do things for other people that you'd want done for you. (I'd say that this usually begins with: stop telling people what to do unnecessarily, stop giving unsolicited advice, and stop saying needlessly bad things about other people when they are not around.)

The whole "do things for others" part is really hard sometimes, but I like to give money to people/homeless people because I know if I were homeless or needed money bad enough to ask random people, I'd want some skinny guy to hand me five dollars, you know? It's tough when someone calls you up right as you're going to bed and they want you to rush out of the house to do something with them and you're lying in bed thinking: Damn, I really want to sleep right now, but if I were on the other side of this phone call I'd probably want me to wake up and do this... Shit. It's worth it, though. Generally people will start to think you're awesome and want to be nice to you.

If you start doing this and your life doesn't immediately become awesomely stress free, then I'll give you $50 and tell you to quit your job, get some self-confidence, and stand up for yourself, because you're probably letting other people get you down. If that doesn't work then you should really stop being so much of a pussy. It's possible to be nice to people without being a floor mat. Maybe that's the hardest of all.

~fin

Site Note: So much for restraint! Maybe tomorrow.