Academia is a broken record.

I am here.

I am in the halls.

I am in the rooms.

The remnants of my steps still lay on the thin carpeting.

Breathless.

Yet Here I am.

A shell of a person.

Repeating.

Repeating.

Repeating.

The monotony races.

Untitled, 2006 Watercolor and ink on paper by Marcel Dzama

People look at me and stare.

Their eyes burn in my flesh.

do not know their names,

I do not know their faces.

Yet here I am.

A shell of a person.

Running through the motions that this academia promotes.

Shadows of regret loom over me.

I had my choice,

I made my decision long ago.

The option to turn back is no longer

'the option'.

I feel alone.

And when I turn the corner,

I look at all of them.

Just like me.

The shells of all the people.

And just as I think to be like the others,

to stare and to burn,

I smile and say hello.

And yet here we all are,

shells of people.

We are all broken records,

and we are all truly the same.

And then I am happy.

Breathing again.

-Lexi

Back-to-school special: music video Besties!

EDIT: The video links on this post aren't working at all. So, ya'll have to look up the videos on youtube the OLDE FASHIONED WAY.

This post is to make up for the CRAPPY POSTING I've been doing recently. Please don't hate me. Or eat me. Either way, I'll smell like turkey bacon. Here goes.

Yes, dear children. We have reached that time of year again. Back to school time. The scent of teachers' Diet Cokes and B.O. is just around the corner, and with that brings an entire blog post awarding only the most prestigious categories in the music biz! Shall we begin? Yes. Yes we shall.

The Best British teeth award goes to.......

• The lead singer of the 1990's in the video "You're supposed to be my friend"

• With a runner up.... Joseph Mount in the video "Radio Ladio" by Metronomy.

The Trippiest video award goes to.....

• "Knights" by Minus the Bear. {HAS YOUR MIND EVER BEEN BLOWN SO MUCH? I didn't think so.}

The award for Most likely to get stuck in your head at random parts of the day and other people will get mad at you for humming it or whatever goes to.....

• Avi Buffalo with "What's it in for?" {I'm not kidding. I saw them in concert and I sang this song for days and days and days afterwards. Which thus resulted in getting smacked a few times by my lovely sister.}

With a runner-up.....

• "Lemonade" by Coco Rosie. {Mostly just the chorus part. The verses and her strange, phlegm-y accent are not as easily duplicatible.} P.S: me and her should be bff's because we like to draw beards on our faces.

The Best song about the city I live in and adore with all of my heart that is actually good and by an awesome band and isn't a song I sang in my Elementary school's fourth grade program Award goes to....

• Band of Horses with "The Great Salt Lake"

That, kiddies, is a swell note to end on.

Only you can prevent forest fires,

Lexi

Some days we get crafty...

Hello, kiddies!

I made this shirt last Tuesday. It didn't fit me properly in the arms, {grumble} so today I altered it. This is my first attempt at shirt-makery.

Classic Jackie-O. style boat neckline. Baby's on the half tip!

I also made this bow-belt out of elastic inspired by a Vera Wang dress.

Enjoy.

Intestinal fortitude

Yesterday I discovered Avacado Gelato on my way back from the SLC Farmer's Market. {What can I say. I'm a Far-mar junkie.}

Magic in the form of Italian ice cream.

Rag-Fan.

It's almost school time.

Which is really weird when you think about it. It seems just the other day that I was at the top of the food chain, the oldest in the school. Now, I am but a mere fetus. Trying to open my locker. But I can't. Because it is broken. And Corn can't open it either.

IMPROMPTU BULLETED LIST!!!

• Oooh. I haven't done one of these for so long! Golly. I've missed that little black dot.


• I got my schedule today. The school was teeming with kids in sports uniforms. Stacie was there cleanin' the elevator. Because that is her job. We {as in Corn and I.} chatted for a bit about rag-fans. {Such a genius invention.} I see that gal everywhere. Barnes and Noble. Wal-Mart. The Deseret Industries. Yup.


• I have four friends. Three are paintings outside of the library at my school. The other is Hanna.


• This whole bulleted list idead was a lot better when I was just thinking it in my head.


• IKEA catalog. Enough said.

Yeah...whatever.

-Lexi

The Adventures of Corrin and Bread Boy. Issue 1

Experimentation on tablet. Based on actual events. Clickity to zoom!!

The San Francisco Chronicles: Ramshackle

{Originally written... Oh deal with it. I don't remember.}

The other night when we went to the MOMA and Pier 39, we rested solely on public transportation to get us to the city, around the city, and back to our hotel by the airport in Burlingame. BAD IDEA. At around 9:30 p.m. after a rather long day of shopping and sightseeing and the like, we made our way back into the heart of the city. Our bus stop to get back to the hotel was on Market and 3rd. Somehow amongst the hustle and bustle of the trolley, we didn't hear the stop we were supposed to get off of, and when we did get off, we were surrounded by numerous head shops ,strip clubs and x-rated video stores. We were on some street that at this time I can't recall because of the evils it placed there. But one thing I knew {after looking at a map.}, we were smack-dab in the middle of the Tenderloin district.

Lemme give you some background. I am a very, VERY paranoid person. So, naturally, I looked up all of the places to avoid in the San Francisco area, their addresses, and the reported crimes in those areas within the past week. Upon this research, the #1 place to avoid according to crime reports and visitors' reviews was {and I quote} "Anywhere in the Tenderloin District. STAY AWAY." And with good reason too. Numerous assaults, shootings, drug busts, thefts, rapes, and prostitution cases had occurred recently in that area.

GO AHEAD. LOOK IT UP. I DON'T LIE TO YOU, DEAR READERS.

For the next hour and what seemed like an emotional cocktail of fear and adrenaline, we escapaded through abandoned bus terminals and finally chased down a bus leading to Burlingame, where the hotel was. I had had it. It was 10:45 p.m. My hair felt like it hadn't been washed in days as a result of the windy city. An Indian man was yelling at my sister because she was looking at the pictures on her camera that she had taken that day. {He was crazy. It got so bad that the bus driver pulled over to the side of the road and made the man move to the back of the bus so he would 'stop disturbing the passengers.' Our bus driver was sooo awesome and I totally felt safe with him there after such a hectic night.} So, I did what every teenager who thought she was going to spend the night in an unknown city miles from home in an unknown abandoned bus terminal with a lot of unknown homeless people would do: I plugged into my iPod. The first song to play while on shuffle?

Ramshackle by Beck.

Because of that night, this is my favorite song. It is like a photograph to me now. I see and feel everything I did that night when I listen to it. It honestly feels like I'm listening to the art that I saw at the MOMA earlier that day. I hear the distress I felt, the ache of my feet in my worn Sanuks, and the polluted city air running itself through my hair. It is my gateway into the past.

I present to you, dear readers, Ramshackle. I hope that this song can make you feel something inside as it does for me. I hope that it can stir up emotions you forgot you had, and perhaps get a glimpse of how I saw it that night on the bus. For me, this song is a very precious memory.

Take care of it.

Savor it, as the artist would want you to.


Music is how we hear our feelings.

-Lexi

99 luftballons

Soooo much inspiration lately. My mind has been moving at a billion thoughts a second, and hopefully something good will come out of them. One can't be sure when your thoughts are moving so fast. Your brain may filter out the good ones and only leave the ones that are of no substance. Just a watered-down paste. One can't be sure if such inspirations will stick, or if you will forget them.

That's why this whole artistic thing is such a bait-and-switch. You can't ever be sure of anything. You just do what your brain tells your hands to do and it always changes. The world will change, your abilities will change, your ideas will change, everything. And there isn't anything you can do to control the inevitable. It's just that. Inevitable.

Wow. Everything is so retrospective right now. That is partially due to me completely missing 'Frisco and how it exposed me to so many different beautiful things, and partially because I am still riding on my spiritual high from trek and for the same reasons. I feel like a new person. Trek was incredible. I won't go into detail because it is something too dear to me to share with such an impersonal and sterile audience. I do not share my deepest thoughts to plastic screens and dark voids.

I'm working on a new design for Threadless on my tablet. It shall be epic.

Did I mention that this is my 99th post? Crazy, huh? I can't believe I actually kept this whole blogging thing up for 99 whole posts! It feels like just yesterday I was writing about James McAvoy and Metronomy. It's pretty neato to see your own progression over less than a year, right? I thought it was. Thank you to my diligent readers that have been there from the start, my not as diligent readers that I'm not sure even read this but follow it anyways, and even the readers that don't follow my blog publicly at all but stalk me in the comfort of the own home...er...whatever. I thank you and love you all. I love reading your comments and hearing your opinions.

And now, the song of the day. {It was so applicable. I COULDN'T RESIST, OKAY?}

99 luftaballons by Nena. {You have to find it yourself because youtube won't let me embed the video.}

-Alexicus Viviennicus