The Joys of Custom Radio

{hearing - Yami ni Chirikeri - Kagrra,}

I get my jrock via last.fm, and for a very long time I did it by listening to the jrock tag. This resulted in a lot of skipping of tracks and frusturated shouts of, "COLDPLAY? HOW THE HELL IS COLDPLAY JROCK?!"
And then I discovered it. The custom radio of last.fm. You type in artists you like and it plays only those artists. No Coldplay, no Good Charlotte, no Evanescene. Just pure, unadulturated jrock.
In fact, I'm going to go make this incredibly random radio just because I can... I'm going to add all the bands I've listed as favorites in my profile to the Japanese ones. It will be musical chaos!
Wait a minute... maybe custom radio isn't as great as I thought... I really should just buy CDs, but I'm cheap and imports are so expensive.

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told... Again.

{hearing - CHILD PREY - Dir en grey}

I've been listening to a lot of hide lately...

This summer my friends and I are going to shoot our updated version of Romeo + Juliet. It was inspired by, of all things, a school project. The idea of the project was for us to put together a movie proposal, featuring cast, a poster, soundtrack, alternate ending, and finally, a trailer. It turned out really well, and we had such a good time we're going to do it over the summer.

We got a 96% on the project, too. Highest grade in the class. Mrs. Monte took a point off because Romeo (Liz) said "This blows!" in the trailer when (s)he discovered Juliet (me) dead.

In our R+J:

Romeo = Roemo.

Juliet = "socalite." preppy. becomes emo out of love.

Starring Liz as Romeo and me as Juliet, because we go to an all-girls school and don't know any boys willing to subject themselves to this.

Angst! Stress! Ahh!

{hearing - PINK SPIDER - hide}

Family yelling. Turning up music.

Are the last two weeks of high school always going to be the worst? I have until Thursday to get a lot of work done, and then finals.

I. Cannot. Wait. Until. Summer.

But at least my history teacher is letting me do an extra credit poster on anyone I choose, as long as they're dead. I couldn't decide, as I told Kate. "Jim Morrison? Joey Ramone? hide?" She interrupts. "I'll give you $2 if you do it on hide."

So that's settled, at least.

And they called it "Jrock"

{hearing - fell in love with a girl - the white stripes}

There is a whole subculture of rock and roll that remains unknown to most people. Known as Jrock (short for Japanese rock), this music releases more endorphins than any other style of music I've laid ears (ha ha) on, and "Cage" by Dir en grey features Toshiya doing things I didn't know were even possible on a bass. Kyo (their lead singer) can make noises that shouldn't be possible for a human being to make, and it still sounds good.

Why am I telling you this? Because I have an amusing Jrock-related anecdote to share, that's why. I play flute in band, my friend Liz plays clarinet, and her boyfriend/my friend Tom plays trumpet. My $2000 flute was made in Japan, so Liz and I named him Shinya. Yesterday we discovered Tom's $2000 trumpet was made in Japan.

...We named him Die.

The First Post

{hearing - Been Swank - The Von Bondies}

Right now I am munching on Trader Joe's honey sesame sticks, drinking a bottle of Ice Mountain, and contemplating what should consist the first entry of this blog. Talking about the amazingness of these honey sesame sticks doesn't seem like a good topic, plus it's not like Trader Joe's is going to pay me for it.

I guess I could do one of those introductory, meet your blogger posts. I am probably not what you expect, or everything you think I am. Hah! Paradox! Is that even the right word to use there? At the very least, I will tell you my name is not really Ruby Kaleidoscope, because that's just too awesome to be true.

I could also tell you what I plan on writing about... but I don't plan those sort of things. You know what I'll do? I'll explain the names of things on this blog.

Title: "She ain't no Cinderella" - lyric from "Going Down" by the Von Bondies. It's true and short. For awhile I was considering "This is a public service announcement... with guitar!" from "Know Your Rights" by The Clash, but it proved too long.

My "name": Ruby Kaleidoscope. One day, a speaker came in to talk to us about what we were going to do with our lives and how looking at your future was like looking through a kaleidoscope - you shift it a little and everything changes. My friend Liz and I started talking about expensive kaleidoscopes after they gave us cheap little ones. I said a ruby kaleidoscope would be cool, she said that sounded like the name of an iconic rockstar. Well, why not an iconic blogger? So I'm not quite there yet, but I plan getting there eventually.