So Ready To Blow This Popcorn Stand Foreva, Foo

A few days ago, I joined a cool site called 20 Something Bloggers. Yesterday I was cruising around the forums and found myself in a group devoted to indie music. Someone on the forum had posted that they were about to graduate from college and travel the country with their band for a couple of months. Whoa, that's exactly what Ryan and I are doing, I thought to myself. That's so cool that someone else is doing that too. Then I looked at the post again and realized that Ryan wrote it. He got a 20SB account when I wasn't looking. It's a small Internet after all.

Ryan put a new post on his blog last night that terrified me for a minute until I read the whole thing. Then it made me grin. I called him and we spent a good hour babbling on about all things rock tour related. The conversation ended with us proclaiming that this summer will be completely "ROCK-EFFING-TASTIC!" I got off the phone and stared at my map for a bit before I fell asleep.

I am so bored with my life right now. I do not allow myself to get bored very often, but right now I feel like I'm stuck in a bunch of ruts. It's not that my life is bad right now, it's just that I'm ready to do something entirely different.

Some people get really depressed over the whole graduation thing. They feel like their life is ending or something. I don't get it. I feel like my life is just beginning. If my life was a film, everything that has happened up until this point could be covered through a expositional dialogue (or perhaps a montage) in the first 15 pages or so of the script. I haven't even fully broken into Act Two yet. I've still got the whole movie ahead of me.

(Hi, I'm a scriptwriting nerd. Can you tell? :D)

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do today. Last time I checked, it was sunny out. I think I'll put on my springtime bohemian attire, go for a long drive, end up in a place where no one knows my name, and write for hours while drinking over-priced coffee.

Friday Friday

Bleck. I feel as though my entire throat is inflamed in rebellion against that bad lemonade I drank last night. I'm just going to call it psychosomatic and move on with my life.

Besides, life is good today. It's a sunny Friday. I am done with classes for the weekend and hanging around my apartment in my scuzzy Greenday t-shirt (a shirt I still insist on wearing even though I know it looks better on Ryan...).

Fridays get my thumbs-up of approval. Not sad to see this week come to an end.

Wrote a new song a couple of nights ago while I was attempting to mentally process the weirdness of the world. I really don't know if it's any good. It's a bit of a departure from my normal whimsical style (I'll be back to writing songs about zombies and icebergs soon, I am sure). I'm always nervous to post songs like this for fear that they are too cheesy or just plain suck. But I am trying hard to overcome these standard issue neurotic insecurities of a songwriter, so I took a quick recording of it on my iphone when I was practicing this morning. It's a terrible recording and the song is still fresh out of the notebook so it's a bit rough.

See? It's barely legible, and that big blank spot is where the second verse will go if I ever feel like writing one (I'm infamous for cheating and just recycling the first verse instead of writing a second...hey, words are hard for me - I'm more of a music and melody girl).

Anyway, now that I've given you two paragraphs worth of disclaimers, you can hear the song now. It's just audio. Maybe I'll be more sophisticated next time and add video as well, but I was feeling camera shy this morning.

I would love to hear what you think. The sound of Internet crickets is always terribly unnerving.

On a side note, if you're just now tuning into all this madness, you should check out this entry.

It's all about how you can get involved with our summer tour by joining our street team. There's a great video over there you might want to watch. Also included in this entry is information on how you can date Ryan. Check it totally out, yo.

I'm gonna go do whatever it is I do on Fridays. Peace and trash rock. Over and out.

Can't Sleep. Clowns Will Eat Me.

I should be asleep right now but sleep is overrated.
I was dancing around my kitchen eating Cheez-Its a little bit ago. I need to stop having so much energy in the middle of the night.
Ryan and I now have a show booked for May 23rd. It's at the Someday Lounge in Portland and I am completely stoked. It's been way too long since we've done any live performances.
If you want to buy tickets to the show, let me know. They are on sale in advance for $8. I would really love to see YOU there.
Of course, if you live in a completely part of the country and cannot make it to the Portland show, fear not. We might be coming to your town this summer.
The official route is still in the works. Bits and pieces of it are coming together. Tonight, Ryan informed me that all systems are go for Las Vegas. We're gonna stay with his old roommate (we're couchsurfing as much as possible) and hopefully play a few shows down there. Not exactly sure where we're headed to after that, but eventually we'll be on the east coast. I'm trying to surf around the Internet and figure out what cities would be good for us. Someone told me there is a big indie music scene in Michigan. Random.
Do you guys know any great places we should investigate?
Would love your input. :)

And now, I shall sleep. Maybe. Yes.

Death and Business Suits

I think I'm going to die.

It all started with the strange craving for a smoothie. I'm the proud owner of a Magic Bullet and usually I just make my own smoothies, but tonight I was out of yogurt and feeling lazy. I remembered the peach jet tea smoothies they make in the coffee shop on campus and drove over there.

I don't really frequent the campus coffee shop like I used to. I went there all the time my freshman year because it was close the drinks were cheap, but I soon realized that most of the baristas working there didn't know how to make coffee. It's hard to mess up blended drinks though, so I thought I'd go there tonight. But when I walked in, I found that the entire room was lit by candlelight and there was some sort of poetry reading/silent environment/seance going on. I really didn't stay long enough to know what it was. I left, still longing for a smoothie or some sort of fruity something. I passed a vending machine in the student union building on my way out and was seduced by the idea of lemonade.

So I fished a bunch of odd change out of my bag and bought lemonade out of a vending machine. And I went home and drank lemonade. Really bizarre, bad tasting lemonade. The more I drank, the weirder it tasted. I made it halfway through the bottle when the expiration date caught my eye: SEPT 01, 2009.

Today is April 15, 2010. That lemonade is over seven months old. I can see the words on the gravestone now:

Here lies Lauren. She drank bad lemonade. RIP.

Ah well. All I can do is continue to live my life and see what happens, right? :D

A few weeks ago I bought a business suit. I've never really been one to own a business suit, but figured if I wanted to look good at an interview I should add one to my closet. And isn't that what you're supposed to do after college - get a bunch of interviews for jobs that you're mildly interested in and hope you get the one that is the least offensive? That's what I thought I would do. That's what I thought I should do. That's why I bought a business suit (which looked pretty good on me, but that's besides the point).

Today, I returned that business suit. There may come a day when I need to own one, but it's not going to be for awhile.

It was quite liberating to get that suit off of my hands (no matter how good I looked in it).

Rock tour, here I come.

United States of Neurotica

I ride the elevator up to the 18th floor, clutching the bag with my hard drive in it. I hate elevators. I get in and out of different elevators three times just because I cannot bear to ride up 18 floors in one straight shot (and because an assortment of awkward strangers kept getting in with me).

The 18th floor is full of offices and cubicles. I immediately feel stifled. I quickly find the people I've been doing an internship for and get them the video they need from my hard drive. "Sorry it's not entirely edited," I say. "I was going to go to the lab and edit it this morning, but somebody spilled some chemicals in the science building and the whole campus was shut down." (And yes, that really happened.)

They are nice people. They like the work I've done, or at least they pretend to. It's a dreadfully boring video, but it's what they wanted. They help me finish it and get it exported and out of my hair. "Great work," they say. The man gives me a high five.

I take the elevator down 18 floors and spend several minutes attempting to locate my car in the parking garage. I do not relax until I am on the freeway.

I never, ever, ever want to work in a job that requires me to sit in a cubicle. I never want to have an office. I don't know if I ever want a proper desk. The idea of offices and cubicles and giant corporate buildings with over 18 floors terrifies me. It's enough to make me want to run away and make music.

Well, I guess I want to do that anyway. But you get the point.

Two weeks of school left. Two weeks, and then finals. After that - BAM! Graduation. The official launching into the universe. I am excited, but at the same time, I am totally stressed out and not even sure how I'm going to make it through the next two weeks. I know I will somehow, but it still throws me into anxiety land whenever I think about all the things that need to happen between now and then.

I tried to go to bed early tonight, but it didn't work out. Too much on my mind. I went into the kitchen and ate jello with a fork (the spoons were dirty). Then I puttered around the Internet for a bit, as I often do on nights like this.

Tonight, I found myself on Omegle. I hadn't been there in a long, long time and most of my conversations looked like this:

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

You: i dont want to have cybersex
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

I did manage to have a decent conversation with a polite, music-savvy teenager in Brooklyn. The convo ended with the girl adding Original Sound Trash as a friend and promising to come to a show if we play Brooklyn. I gave up on Omegle after that. The odds of having two good conversations in one evening are too slim.

I should probably go to bed. I am not going to want to get up in the morning. But I probably wouldn't want to get out of bed even if I fell asleep three hours ago.

Man, I can't wait until rock tour. It's quickly become something that I not only want to do, but that I need to do. I need to get the heck out of here for awhile. I need to travel and meet all kinds of interesting people and have crazy experiences and make loud music.

That's all.

The Highlight of My Day

I walked into physics class today to see Ryan sitting there in his infamous purple pants. His outfit was even complete with the infamous white button-up shirt. Usually these particular articles of clothing only come out of Ryan's closet for shows. Not accustomed to seeing this attire in physics class, I ask him what the occasion is. "I am out of clothes," he confesses. "I need to do laundry."

This picture doesn't really do the outfit justice, but you get the idea. It's magical.

Ryan's a brave soul. I too have various trash rock outfits but would never wear them to physics class, not even on the most desperate of laundry days.

Fingers Crossed

Today, that Steve fellow that I am rather fond of is going to approach the operations manager at his job. He is going to ask the following question: "Can I have two months off to travel around the country with a local indie band and film their rock tour?"

I'm praying this conversation goes well.

And Would You Like Fries With That?

For the past week or two, I've been having these reoccurring dreams about fast food restaurants. Usually it's a Carl's Jr or a Wendy's. Sometimes it's a Taco Bell. But regardless of what chain it happens to be, I'm always sitting there drinking a milkshake and waiting for the rest of my food to come. Reasons for being there differ. Sometimes I'm there because I'm avoiding someone obnoxious (this could be anyone from my ex-boyfriend to my seventh grade math teacher). Sometimes I'm waiting for someone that never comes. Sometimes I just want to drink a milkshake. I'm always there longer than I intend to be, and the teenagers at the counter never get my order right.

Weirdest thing is, I don't even eat a lot of fast food in real life. I don't even really like fast food that much.

I'm sure Sigmund Freud or some like-minded psycho shrink could derive some deep meaning from this mundane series of dreams, but I'd like to think it's just another sign that my life is in need of a change. I mean, if the most exciting thing my subconscious can come up with in this current environment involves greasy chain restaurants, it must be time to get out of this town.

I'm going to attempt to sleep now. And hopefully tonight, I'll dream about something more exciting. Maybe I can dream about rock tour. :D

Trash Rock Defined on the Interwebs

The following is copied from dictionary.com:

trash rock - 1 dictionary result Main Entry:	trash rock
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	a genre of rock music that is loud and unsophisticated
Etymology:	from the music's garbage-like nature
Usage:	music

And this is from urbandictionary.com:

	1. trash rock
	Trashy, seedy, campy rock n' roll with an often androgynous, drunk/drugged out, and b-movie-obsessed disposition. Many trash rock bands are punks reviving the feel of the raunchiest '60s garage bands.
	Hehe. And all this time I kinda thought we had invented a new genre...
	I particularly enjoy the fact that the words "b-movie-obsessed" made it into the description on urbandictionary. That part doesn't fit us at all. It's not like we have a 40 minute rock opera devoted entirely to the subject of zombies or anything. (That was sarcasm in case you didn't catch it. We totally do.)

Happy Friday!

Here's a song we wrote a few months ago. It's about our favourite topic - the end of the world! Enjoy. :D



The world better not end before this rock tour adventure goes down. That's all I have to say.

On a completely unrelated note, Amanda Palmer tickets go on sale tomorrow! Gah, I am such a fan girl. But the idea of seeing her perform live seriously makes me giddy.

In other news, I am still sick. I slept all morning and will now attempt to eat ramen noodles. Life is so exciting today.