inphiltrate nonfiction v.7.5

(If you don’t feel like reading about some music-related stuff, do a control/command + f for “/music” and read from there on. )

I’ve been listening to music more and more, sort of like I used to, except now I’m actually listening to it on my desktop. I used to like to keep all of my music-related activities on my laptop so my iTunes library would keep a pretty accurate count of song plays and so I wouldn’t have to otherwise synchronize two libraries of songs, but uh, oh well.

Utada Hikaru’s new English album was released digitally on Tuesday (I think it’s in stores on May 12th). I got it today, but I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. The single features some rather straightforward lyrics, which is disappointing to me. I’m a person that loves metaphors and crazy references and allusions and euphemisms and everything outside or in between. At the very least, I don’t like the meaning of a song spoon-fed to me, and that’s pretty much what that song does. Clever lyrics would be nice. Her Japanese songs are better in pretty much every way. :\

Here’s the Promotional Video for the single, “Come Back to Me.” You can see what I mean for yourself, if you’d like. I would’ve embedded it, but embedding is disabled on every copy of this video that I could find. However, this video is currently free on iTunes (I noticed earlier this week, so I assume that next week it will be up to $1.99).

Compare that song to this one, which is one of her slow songs:

Everything about that song is better, even the translated lyrics, which lose some of the meaning when they’re translated (correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Japanese songs are translated very literally in most cases).

And for more reference, compare it also to this one, a much more upbeat song:

They just seem…better. But anyway, I need to give the whole album a listen and I’m sure I’ll report back, but until then, if you like the song “Passion” (the last video I posted up there), don’t forget that I karaoke subtitled it a very long time ago, but it’s still available for download if you click that link.

/music

Anyway, I officially start my job on April Fools’ Day (hope that’s not a bad omen ). They ended up telling me I could just sign the paperwork on my first day, so I’m getting pretty excited, and a little nervous. I’m excited that I’ll finally be back in the workforce and doing (hopefully) what I love to do. The people that interviewed me seemed really cool, so I hope to get along with them pretty well too. The nervousness is just the natural feeling that comes with starting something new – you know, making a good impression, getting used to a new workplace and way of doing things, etc.

I keep having trouble falling asleep lately. I think it’s a mixture of things, including the fact that I have been waking up late, and also that I seem to get a weird earache when I lay down. It’s not unbearable or really painful, it’s just annoying enough to bother me. When I sit up, it goes away, so I’m really not sure what’s going on there. I’ll probably need to go to the doctor and see what’s up whenever I’m covered by my new health insurance from work (unless this magically goes away, but I doubt it. It’s been around for a few months, at least).

-Philip