Author: Pearl L

so pearl the tard is playing with her new digital camera and freaks out when she realizes one of the modes she’s been anticipating (called the “long shutter” mode) is missing. she goes through the manual, goes through various sites, and is immensely saddened by the thought that her new camera might be defective.

but THEN! she goes online and talks to brian, and he suggests that maybe the mode is only available when the camera is in manual mode. pearl runs to check this, finds out he’s correct, and is overjoyed.

I declare Brian Won to be Man of the Hour!! :D :D :D

so my best friend kipp’s fraternity brother chris auditioned for American Idol, and he passed the first few callbacks, so he’ll be on TV~!!!! WHEEEEEE!! I’ll keep y’all updated… i’m SOOOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D heheheh. I haven’t been watching AI, but I guess I’ll start. :)

sparklehorse is ALSO out tour right now in the UK!!!

ok, enough with the awful news. onto something nice!!

woke up this morning and finished John Grisham’s The Painted House. This is only the 2nd Grisham novel I’ve read in my life, the other one being the firm, and part of me is wondering why I haven’t been reading more of him. He’s a surprisingly skillful storyteller, able to paint golden brown portraits of the Arkansas farm lands as he is in shading the figures he writes about. The dialogue was extremely well written, far from the stilted language of The Firm. He also paces the novel very well, able to languish in his descriptions of the rural life without sacrificing the excitement of the story, which is largely character driven instead of plot driven. fun read.

there’s nothing like curling up in bed with a good book. why don’t I do it more often? I’ve got all these stacks of books in my bedroom (because I don’t have a bookshelf for them anymore… long story), and I just recently went to marie’s bookstore opening last tuesday and bought even MORE books.

oh!! the bookstore opening! I forgot to write about that! so my old roommate marie recently started working for the new barnes and noble that was just opening up on Hawthorne in Torrance. And they had a friends and family night the day before opening to the public!! yay!! it was so awesome! got to see jen, marie, sue, crispy, and jen’s new roommate jen (I have no idea how that works), but I didn’t get to talk to them a whole lot. I was too busy running around the store! It was sooo nice! it’s sooo big! on top of the requisite bookstore, they also have a cafe and a music section that features the blue dot or red dot or whatever it’s called thingie so you can instantly sample music off any cd in the shop. freaking awesome! anyway, we didn’t get anything from the store, since it was all really overpriced, but we did get several books. jer picked up a few michael crichton books; I picked up a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories and a couple of travel guides for England and Scotland. the travel guides are really great: it’s doesn’t just talk about where to go in those countries; each also has a good history section, with the story being told by the people themselves. It definitely makes for interesting reading! and as for the Fitzgerald short stories… well, i’ve always been a stickler for Fitzgerald. :)

ok, so i’ve got LOTS to read. so what the heck am I doing instead of reading all those good books i’ve got?

1. gaming.
I’ve spent way too much time on NeverWinter Nights. Gosh, that game is evil. Worse than Diablo. sucks you in, and you just want to keeeeep plaaaaying! at first, I thought the story and the characters were kind of cheesy (having totally been spoiled by Blizzard’s too cool and eventually too hilarious characters — try clicking on starcraft or wciii units next time you play), but eventually, you just get into it. i’m developing an elven sorceress right now, and she’s really kick ass. granted, it’s because we cheated and gave her some kick-ass items (pearl’s determination, for one.. hehehe we get to name them!), but it just helps the story go along better. :) anyway, jer and I haven’t played recently because he’s been working a lot; hopefully we’ll play a little bit this weekend. :)

2. this stupid site
if you haven’t noticed, i’ve relocated my site AGAIN. thanks to thomas, I found out about a free public unix shell that offers webhosting for quite a reasonable price. and it’s a FREE PUBLIC UNIX SHELL!! I’m also having waaay too much playing with it. hehehe. it’s food for the inner geek. anyway, please update your links. i’ll be attempting to update portions of the site in the next few weeks (riiight), so there might be some dead links here and there. :( sorry!

3. going to school
it’s amazing how much better you do in school when you go. that’s my insight of the lifetime. -grins-

idlewild is on tour with coldplay in the UK!!! why aren’t they on tour with them heeeeeeeeere???
*sad*

so much to say, so much going on, and I don’t have the patience to blog it all down!! aargh!!

lately I’ve been thinking a lot of the the state of modern feminism. ok, well, maybe not as big an idea of “feminism,” but more the very noticeable lack of female rock stars out there. no, I’m not talking about pop stars, like Christina or Michelle Branch or Avril Lavigne or anything. I’m talking about women like Kim Deal, Justine Frischman, Tanya Donnelly and a whole slew of female frontwomen for ROCK bands back in the 90s. Of those “rock” women, only Gwen Stefani is still around, and almost no new female voices have emerged in the scene. And that makes me sad. Remember the 90s? Sarah McLachlan and Lilith Fair? There were sooo many female voices on the pop scene then, and they proved to a male-oriented record industry that women can make sophisticated and popular music, and that there WAS an audience. a few years later, that message seems forgotten. The truth is, it’s not like women can’t rock or make music, it’s just that record companies aren’t trying to push those sorts of acts on us. Instead, they’re pushing upon us hyper-sexualized images of girls and young women. Every once in a while, a really talented female singer whose act ISN’T focused on her sex appeal gets heard on the radio, but it’s more a fluke than a common thing.

case in point: Dido. She had a record out, had a theme song to Roswell, and whose song was on the charts for almost a year before she hit it big. and HOW did she hit it big? not because her record company promoted her. Because Eminem sampled her vocals on one of his songs. Her songs were baaarely getting any radio play or notice until “thank you” hit it big.

I can’t believe i’m getting nostalgic about the nineties, but there was a lot of good “rock” music out there, and a LOT more female rockers then than there are now. It’s like, you have to be a cute/angst-ridden good looking boy who thrashes around a lot to get an audience? you have to be a hoobastank or a linkin park? what, cuz girls can’t attract an audience? that’s bullshit: good material will almost always garner an audience anytime.

ok, so how many female rock singers/band members can you think of?
no doubt. garbage. tori amos. alanis morrissette. anyone else?

how many pop stars?
avril lavigne. christina. michelle branch. probably a lot of others too, but I can’t think of them.

what about five years ago? which female artists did you hear on the radio?
donna lewis. sophie b hawkins. sarah mclachlan. chantal kreviazuk. heather nova. liz phair. paula cole. shawn colvin.

the music is also vastly different. if you want to talk about introspective singers/songwriters, can one really compare michelle branch with sarah mclachlan in terms of the subject matter they deal with?

looking back, I guess i’m really lucky that I grew up in a time where the culture I was exposed to wasn’t soooo obsessed with sex that art had to equal sex to sell. but what kind of world are we handing to the girls growing up now? =\

I thought I was a shoo-in for parking for winter quarter but I guess I was wrong. someone got REJECTED~!!! 22 points isn’t enough to get a parking permit at ucla. I mean… what does it take? I’m a freaking senior, I live 20 miles away, and i’m on campus every day for class. dammit~!!! *shakes fist in frustration*

so i’m waitlisted. we’ll see. at this point, I’m really not sure what I should do…

got the LOTR collectors edition DVD and omigod, it’s freaking awesome. steal it from a friend and go watch it.