neko case is a goddess.

seriously.
i have basically been listening to her non-stop for the past couple of weeks, and i’m just endlessly blown away by her amazing pipes. i impulsively bought a dvd of her performing at austin city limits on amazon, but until i get it in the mail, youtube videos will have to suffice.

thursday tidbits #2

1. i was listening to kexp this morning because my cd player in my car decided not to work, and i heard the unmistakable voice of paul banks (frontman for interpol). i thought that it was a new interpol song and got really excited, but alas, the friendly dj informed me that it was in fact julian plenti, paul banks’ side project. the dj also said that he thought it was the strongest work to come from interpol since their debut, so that’s pretty high praise (i guess). the song i heard was “only if you run,” and it’s lovely, but very different from interpol’s sound, musically at least. i downloaded the entire album, and i’m excited to listen to it.

2. speaking of music, i thank the almighty every day that i nanny for hip thirtysomethings who listen to good music. i am so fortunate that, when everyone leaves the house and i get to tidy everything up, i can listen to neko case or leonard cohen or sigur ros, instead of having to listen to celine dion or josh groban.

3. i am so tired of hearing people scream “socialism” when obama’s health plan comes up. even if we start to vaguely resemble a socialist nation in the single realm of healthcare, it’s probably better than millions of people not even being able to consider healthcare as an option. the government is here to serve us, not to let us suffer, so if they have to step in and regulate (/control) the healthcare system for a while so that people can go to the hospital when they need to without it costing them an arm and a leg, i am not remotely threatened by that. and it seems like all of the people who are bitching about socialism are the upper crust who can afford healthcare to begin with.

4. i started watching weeds and i can’t decide if i like it or not. elizabeth perkins is absolutely horrifying and hilarious, but the rest of the characters and the show in general seems like a caricature of real life. there’s something about that’s not quite tangible. maybe i’m just spoiled because i’ve gotten hooked on so many well-written and well-acted shows… or maybe not every show can be as good as six feet under. that’s probably it.

5. i got the 2010 ikea catalog in the mail the other day, and it has been one of the highlights of my week. and once josh gets back, we are going to spend an entire day at ikea and i’m probably going to spend a trillion dollars on stuff for my new apartment. i’m so excited that i get to live in a real room, instead of the hallway between the living room and the bathroom, and that it will be my room for the entire year, and that i can furnish and decorate and make it beautiful. i know for sure that when i go to ikea i’m getting a horse-shaped baking tin… best ever.

6. i’ve realized that i really enjoy making numbered lists.

albums i will buy on vinyl when i finally procure a record player:

[i was thinking today about how i could get my dad's record player from georgia to seattle, and what would sound amazing on vinyl, and i got really excited.]

1. the beatles, abbey road
2. fleetwood mac, rumours
3. neko case, fox confessor brings the flood
4. animal collective, merriweather post pavilion
5. mates of state, team boo
6. the beach boys, pet sounds
7. elliott smith, either/or
8. interpol, turn on the bright lights
9. arcade fire, neon bible
10. sufjan stevens, seven swans
11. the eagles, hotel california
12. radiohead, kid a
13. lykke li, youth novel
14. sigur ros, agaetis byrjun
15. jens lekman, oh you’re so silent, jens
16. beirut, gulag orkestar
17. wolf parade, apologies to the queen mary
18. mirah, advisory committee
19. otis redding, the very best of otis redding
20. m. ward, post-war
21. antony & the johnsons, i am a bird now
22. the national, boxer
23. mum, finally we are no one
24. tv on the radio, return to cookie mountain
25. damien rice, o

thursday tidbits.

[i often want to acknowledge things or events but don't quite want to write a full post about it (or don't have enough to say about it to constitute a worthwhile post) so i think i'm going to start jumbling all of it together into one big amorphous blob once a week... hence, thursday tidbits.]

1. bill clinton is badass. say what you will about his personal life and habits, but the man is a diplomatic wizard when it comes to foreign policy.

2. i hear a lot of people say negative things about the ending of 500 days of summer, but i thought it was really poignant. yeah, it was cutesy and clever, but i thought it was a really powerful to see the interim between relationships and then end the movie with a subtle metaphor that posits relationships as a simple changing of seasons. it rang true for me. if you haven’t seen the movie, see it and tell me what you think about the ending.

3. i watched annie hall the other day and discovered two things: 1) that i am intensely attracted to woody allen simply because he’s overwhelmingly jewish (the same reason i’m attracted to larry david), and 2) that diane keaton’s style in this movie is amazing.

gaaaahhh, if i was a stick figure like she is, i would totally be rocking the baggy high-waisted pants with a vest and bowler hat.

4. i read an article about how the congolese government is using homosexual rape as a tactic to suppress rebels, and it makes me incredibly sad. rape is so much a synonym for power and will always inflict shame and violence on the victim, and that makes me think that rape will probably never cease to exist.

5. i watched a trailer for the lovely bones, and i’m skeptical. i really loved the book, and i feel like whenever hollywood tries to put a good piece of literature into film form, it always ends up sub par at best. but luckily, bad movies that are based on good books never seem to damage the book’s reputation (ie. the bonfire of the vanities). i’m hopeful simply because peter jackson is directing, but the casting choices were poor. it will have to be really good to impress me.

6. i have recently discovered the welcome wagon, and it’s slowly creeping its way into my favorite albums of the year list. i have a sneaking suspicion, however, that this “preacher and his cute wife singing” thing is really a ploy to cover up the fact that it is actually sufjan doing all the singing and music. i mean, seriously, could the welcome wagon sound any more like sufjan? i know he had some hand in their album being made, but the similarities between the two are uncanny. which is definitely not a bad thing. i’m dying for some new sufjan tunes.

spank that child!

my nanny job is starting to grate on me, not because i don’t love kids in general or the kids i nanny for in particular, but because i am constantly appalled at how the kids are parented. i’m basically biting my tongue for two straight hours and thinking “i could do such a better job.” and of course, the place that i would start (and likely get the best results) would be spanking.

when did there become such a bloody stigma around spanking children? i feel like the benefits of spanking far outweigh the negative parts. yeah, lots of kids are abused by parents who don’t know the line between spanking and maiming, but spanking shouldn’t be looked down on because some people don’t know how to do it right (everyone knows you don’t spank your kid when you’re still angry because that’s when you get out of control… duh). and i don’t buy the argument that parents should just try to reason with their children; children aren’t reasonable! that’s why they’re children! certainly it’s good for kids to develop a good sense of reason and certainly parents can help with that, but i think trying to reason with kids is an excuse for not disciplining them. adults, when will we all learn that parents are supposed to be parents, ie. authority figures, to their kids and not their friends? so many parents are too concerned with being buddies with their kids, that their kids end up running the show and the parent must helplessly do what the child says to avoid catastrophe. please spank your child! there’s a time to be your child’s friend (like when they’re of voting age and don’t live in your house anymore), but there’s also a time to teach your child right from wrong and then punish them when they intentionally do wrong. and no child wants to be spanked, so it takes relatively few spankings to get your point across about what is acceptable and what isn’t. there would be so many more well-behaved children, who would grow up to become polite and upstanding citizens as adults, if parents would just bite the bullet and spank their kids every once in a while.

my parents spanked me and i turned out just fine. obviously.