resolve

i've never really done new year's resolutions before. the concept was something that seemed to only exist to me in socially neurotic tv shows or as jokes of self-assurance for people who were too afraid to take risks in even the most normal parts of their lives. i'm growing up and it terrifies me. reality is beginning to take over expectations and i for once want absolute consistency. i don't mean in the boring sense, but that sometimes consistency is all we need if its with what you care about. here's to a new year of some good ol'...continuity.

beefheart

today capitan beefheart died and a little part of me died with him. my mind is racing faster and faster as each minute passes to be lost forever. another late night, this one later than most, has at least given me the chance to give a brief goodnight to the moon and play some christmas songs just quiet enough to not wake anyone but myself. i can't sleep again and i feel more conflicted than ever. my mind seems to wander outside of its normal confines, intensifying what i can only describe as an eerie "out-of-body experience." it's ironic and darkly humorous the way things work sometimes. how feelings and emotions and the way we perceive things can change faster than our mind can even comprehend. we feel sadness and all of its potency often before we don't know why. and every now and then, bursts of happiness for no explicit reason. that's how i felt on the day that captain beefheart died. goodnight moon, and good luck to us all.

top ten favorite albums of the year

i didn't feel like studying for finals so i thought i might change things up a bit tonight by making a top ten favorite albums of 2010 list. i couldn't decide the order, but maybe i'll make rankings later. now let's hope radiohead will have album for me to put on my 2011 list.

disclaimer 1: these are my favorite albums of '10, not necessarily apart of what would be on a "best albums of 2010" list

disclaimer 2: i like indie hipster shit

disclaimer 3: i read pitchfork (but not a regular basis)

random question of the day: what ever happened to xanga?

top ten favorite albums of the year:

this is happening -- lcd soundsytem

arguably the best hipster dance album this year. i haven't heard a drop better than the one in "dance yrself clean" this year. never. give. up. the. dance. floor.

the age of adz -- sufjan stevens

for sufjan stevens fans, this album was undoubtedly a pretty extreme departure from the timeless banjo strumming, down to earth sound that we love so dearly. yet what hasn't changed is sufjan's ability to pull off whatever creative knack he's been in to. i'm a sucker for good electronic music.

everything in between -- no age

i haven't got a clue as to what the dissonant screeching sounds laced through the entire album are, but it mysteriously makes the record complete. these are the simple touches that makes no age one of those bands that are just damn good.

forgiveness rock record -- broken social scene

just more proof that a indiepopsupergroup can consistently put out good pop music. "texico bitches" is one of the catchiest bitches i've heard in a while.

the suburbs -- arcade fire

aside from the excessive "childhood" references/analogies, the suburbs is one of those albums that don't have one or two songs that stick out, but almost every song gets to you in some way. besides, the amount of times will butler uses the word "child", "children", "sons", "daughters", etc would probably make a nice drinking game.

contra -- vampire weekend

not as good as their self-titled album, but songs like "horchata" are just awfully pleasant to listen to on repeat.

odd blood -- yeasayer

this is some funky shit.

all day -- girl talk

even better than "feed the animals" in my opinion. the plethora of ludacris/rock classic mash-ups have only given me another reason why i can't miss their 2010-2011 tour (january @ the pageant). not to mention that this album was made a free download on gillis' website. more power to tha people.

my beautiful dark twisted fantasy -- kanye west

one word to describe this album: badass. i never gave up on kanye. i wasn't a huge fan of 808 and heartbreak but who cares? and kanye's personality? i love everything about it. he's hilarious. but who am i kidding, its about the music. this album is just so fucking sick. from the continuance of the MJ/king of pop references, to the fact that every song is an epic collab with great artists, to the 35 minute long runaway video...there just isn't any room to criticize from "dark fantasy" to "see me now".

go -- jonsi

if i were to rank these albums, this one would probably be number one. jonsi's icelandic and "hopelandic" lyrics on the sigur ros albums never deterred me from being a sigur ros fanatic, but now that he has solidified that he can write lyrics in english and still manage to be perfect in every way possible? i would let this dude sing me asleep every night (no homo). seeing jonsi perform his full set with a full backing band live only makes the album seem more alive. i'm having trouble listening to the album without getting intense flashbacks of the concert. this is one of those records that acted like a literal soundtrack to some of my best recent memories. s, i am not embarrassed to say (no homo) that to this day "tornado" has been the only song that has made me tear up at the computer.

where i end you begin

today i write from the keyboard that my fingers pouted about almost two years earlier. it's undoubtedly a bit odd and i am forced to reflect and ultimately reconcile with what has changed within the couple years of my seemingly insignificant high school life. but to be fair to the comfort zone of my conscience, i rather not divulge into such reflection at the moment. i'll use the eternal excuse of homework as an scape goat this time again.

i often get frustrated with the lack of cohesion that exists between the desirer and the desired. i don't want to be blinded by the intangible purpose of achieving something that would most assuredly mean nothing once attained and i think that's what scares me about any sort of commitment. i hoped prior to this post that it would not fall under the categories of bitch fest, but like all my other posts i find myself in a constant lack of static satisfaction. jealously is a funny thing.

So Sentimental

Being reclusive has its benefits. We all need hibernation, a state of mind beyond the comforts of maintaining the half-empty, half-full moments of our life, where we can be insecure, uncomfortable, and vulnerable. It's difficult to write with complete honesty in a blog, yet ever so often we are compelled beyond our rationality and we enable ourselves to spill ours guts to a world that only consists of one or two people glancing through your page only to find it too boring and personal to read. Today I told myself that I would write/type in such stark honesty, yet I find myself transcribing code through unnecessary diction and elaboration. Well to say it straight up, I am at what may seem like a trivial moment in my high school segment of life in a few years. A crossroads that means so much to me now, yet won't matter in the future. What is it that compels us to pursue such retrospectively meaningless.... adventures? The adventures turn into misadventures and amidst the negativity or positivity of such endeavors, insignificance blockades the path to current happiness. We preserve an intellect that is based solely on emotion and sentiment. In the end, it and her just become a memory, and most of the times, we want that memory--and is that what keeps us going? I've lost it.

Happiness

Can happiness exist without sadness? too often we find ourselves in a quandary of balance... balance between yourself and everyone and everything else. sometimes this struggle pinpoints itself between a reach of character, but more often than not, the conflict exists as a result of balancing yourself and the other person. i struggle to find peace and quiet between any of these entities and in return, i meet disappointment and its ugly, repugnant face. no, happiness cannot live without sadness, but we continue, knowing we cannot live without happiness. in the vein of christopher mccandless, happiness only real when shared.

Precisely Pretentious, Pretentiously Precise

Pretentious is my middle name. From obnoxious vocabulary to obscure references to indie lyrics, my Facebook statuses and Twitter updates lack everything except pretension. At the point where you think you're really cool if nobdy "likes" your Facebook status because its too indie for them to understand, you probably only have 1/1000th of the "friends" you possess on the Face books.

My ridiculous debate partner, who calls me literally everyday with sometimes legitimate questions and other times random-assed statements or comments tells the best jokes/stories. "Hey, Winston... What's Facebook? Is that when you put your face in a book?"

Probably the WORST usage of the English language that I have ever heard and probably the second WORST usage of my already free after 7pm cell phone minutes... even Sprint probably had to charge me a few bucks for that one. The only thing that could make that joke worst is if he said it in his native tongue, which is a complete lie because that would make the joke racially hilarious, and the only humor I appreciate is crude or racist. (I get witty/dry jokes too, but they are as genuine as my English essays)

What is pretension? In many respects, everybody is pretentious on their own level. The person, image, idea that we all try to imitate, you know our "personalities", takes shape only first through the pretension that we construct as "me". Sure, sometimes I am a pretentious douschebag, but we really are all pretentious, though we certaintly are not all douschebags. I'm sure I'm not the only one that questions myself who I am or who I want to be/want people to think of me. Such premeditation is inevitable. I'm just a little bit more precise then others and often that translates into something like this: "Hey Parag, MYspace isn't YOURspace. I just have a better layout and profile picture to prove it."

subliminal thoughts

i'm not very good at this anymore and not that i ever was. but perhaps with the advent of a new school year filled with simplistic success (by my own standards), i can accompany it with a more consistent blog schedule. often, the alternatives criticize consistency as some sort of evil institution that traps and vacuums the very marrow out of our fragile spines. I disagree. beyond the realm of social constructions and standardized standards stands only ourselves. the ontological question should be one that asks who we are not in the common, boring sense of "inner richness of life" but rather what is outside of it. consistency is no paradox when coupled with a life of happiness and yet it is something i lack and have recently desired for. yeah. thats not true.

will comply

i'm back. this time without the precise and calculated goal of displaying my need for an artistic and observant outlet of my frustrations/depression/insecurities, all of which come back like a plague with retroviral activity. i miss someone. is it possible to fall into simple, harmless infatuation with a simple and harmless person within a few days? my walk through this journey of chemistry, or of what society calls love, has been marked with memories of unnecessary struggle and unassisted misfortune, yet, warmth and irrationality always seems to throw down its belligerent gauntlet in a melting pot of emotions.

texting someone at the airport, ready to leave forever at 5 in the morning, listening to wilco's summerteeth album, and waiting, stoned, for the time it takes for the sun to rise only puts the pot into magnification.

unassisted misfortune: --falling in love with someone you just met a few days ago is unassisted misfortune in love itself.

unassisted misfortune part 2: thinking you're in love with someone, then finding out they're moving forever the day that you have to and later, purposefully pass on spending time with.

...yes, i'm still a mess, but i don't think i'm insane.

Work

I'm at work. Doin nothing.I hate arbitrary assignments or people that use a lot jargon for no reason, despite the fact that they know you don't have any clue what they are talking about. Woooo

lost

this was inevitable. misguided direction and the other distractions of my world have dissipated. i find myself in yet what seems to be another epiphany or revelation of my teenage life. i'm lost in a quandary of nothingness, but what more importantly seems like the remnants of a once beautiful person. its strange and quite sad to look back in retrospect of the years that of past. when we were young, our lives seemed full of strange, but beautiful personalities. yet as time moves on its relentless course, our unique personalities begin to dull and fade out... the rational world begins to take reality as priority over our dreams and it slowly, but surely sucks the marrow of life right out of our stretched out spines...

its a horrible feeling.

there was a lot more i wrote about, but it doesn't seem rational to post. i think i'm going a bit mad.

unforgettable

as i enter a few weeks or so into the new year, i have seen that i haven't made much improvement in the department of keeping things. since the beginning of the school season i have lost many objects: at least 5 or 6 water bottles, 2 jackets, 1 peacoat, 1 pair of hard lens contacts, 1 pair of glasses, 1 pair of shoes, 1 bible, 1 laptop charger, 1 tie, many t shirts, many socks, and many many pens and pencils (this is not anything special). And those are just some of the things that I haven't been able to find. i've probably lost my phone at least a dozen times and currently i have just lost my phone, my brand new laptop charger, and probably my sanity. the cause its probably a lack of sleep, but if i thought about it a little more, its probably all the time i invest google searching articles, copying and pasting them to word documents, then underlining and bolding words that distort the meaning of the actual articles. all this time i spent probably won't mean anything in the future, yet it seems like hundreds and even thousands of debaters go through the same thing each night. we take it a bit too seriously, and i'm afraid it will take a toll. and while we forget the wordly things of this life, i just hope i won't be as forgotten as this post will be in a few weeks.

in the way she breathes

i need to clear my head. confusion and burden is plaguing my mind and i miss having that gentle, yet powerful drive to play music. its as if i can feel the purity of this feeling as i write...the sounds of the pick sweeping across the strings, the soft screech of a sliding hand, and the ever-so-often buzz of the strings touching the fretboard's rosewood. its all warmth. sometimes its difficult to express emotions and i often find it even more difficult to articulate what i mean to say. that is, i am too confused to know any path of action to take because i am far too overwhelmed with emotions of frustration, sadness, and love. these are the things that need to be put in song. the things that we can't express, the things that make us want to sing and scream and die and live. after all, this is what makes a song beautiful. how else can our hearts be broken? i miss doing this. i miss making the thing that i love the most. its depressing to see that the notebook my sister got me at the start of the school year to be nearly blank, and its even more depressing that i don't know where it is. interestingly enough, this lack of music, this lack of life has coincided with all the confusion and all the burdens that i have made in the past year or so. its a movie without a soundtrack. no climax and with no end. the sounds of indescribable, unarticulated emotion is all but absent. i don't want to lose her.

fake plastic trees/american beauty

hi. today, i write from my bed, which is monumental because i usually find myself intently glued to a computer screen with my back upright against a chair of some sort. while my body aches from these awkward position, i am still able to remain in it for hours. i know, its almost nauseating, it almost makes me as sick as it makes me bitter or remarkably depressed. i'm mixing things up today.

sometimes i feel that all of these poorly crafted blogs will all sound the same old shit that we have been contemplating for years. i am almost positive that i was, and will not be the first to talk about abstract subjects and things that are not really that abstract. it must have been nice to be the first though.

by all means, if i had the choice i would make this blog a bit less of a bitchfest, or actually much more coherent of consistent, or whatever that means, but i guess we've been playing this game for ages.

today, i watched a movie, putting me in a familiar, yet unfamiliar state of mind. its like i've been in these moods before (as evident throughout my blogs), but each time is different and was trigged by something unique.......... Movies are only for entertainment...........sure, emotions rise and tears fill up after will smith cries in the pursuit of happiness, but after we leave the theater, its back to drive throughs and unauthentic Chinese food where we'll be back to our computer screens or sofa coaches, pursuing happiness. i'm just an average suburbanite that dies. ..........do you ever feel like you don't exist? not in a literal sense, but like nothing seems to have a positive or negative effect on you. is it apathy? or is it emotion? no, this isn't rhetorical.....here i am in bed, typing away what i can't seem to articulate. maybe its when we can no longer articulate emotion we end up with a lack of emotion. its actually not that strange that i care. there is so much beauty in the world, and its killing me. but i have to ignore it so i can function. it wears me out.