icky thump

Yah-hee, icky thump
Who'd-a thunk?
Sittin' drunk
On a wagon to Mexico

Her hair, what a chump
And my head
Got a bump
When I hit it on the radio

Red-head señorita
Lookin' dead
Came to said,
"I need a bed" en español

So I gave a drink of water
I'm gonna sing around the collar
Well, I don't need a microphone

Icky thump, with the lump
In my throat
Grab my coat
And now it's reckon
I was ready to go

Yeah, I swam beside the hair
She had one white eye
One blank stare
Lookin' up, lyin' there

On a stand in her hair
Was a candy cane
Black rum, sugar cane
Dry eye, somethin' strange!

La la, la la la la la la la la la laaa laaa laaa

White Americans:
What, nothin' better to do?
Why don't you kick yourself out?
You're an immigrant too.

Who's usin' who?
What should we do?
Well you can't be a pimp
And a prostitute too

Icky thump, handcuffed to a bunk
Robbed blind
Looked around
And there was nobody else

Left alone
I hit myself with a stone
Went home
And learned how to clean up after myself

- "icky thump," the white stripes

i'll eat you up, i love you so

since i read it as a child, i've loved where the wild things are by maurice sendak. so when i heard that my favorite author, dave eggers, was adapting it into a novel AND co-writing the screenplay for a spike jonze film, i was ecstatic. i fell in love with and related to all three works completely differently because they each are so wonderfully their own.

each story is about max -- a young, imaginative, confused boy who travels to a far away land and becomes king of the wild things. being a kind-of-aspiring writer, i empathize with the amazing imagination that all three maxs have. beyond that, though, i empathize with being a wild thing.


the energy of a wild thing is what amazes me most. they seem to almost hum with emotion. i'm sure everyone has felt like that; i know i have -- when your entire body seems to be humming, every nerve ending completely aflame with energy that doesn't even seem to have a reason. max's wild thing comes from anger. sometimes mine comes from anger too. sometimes it comes from anxiousness, excitement, frustration, love, hate, from simply being overwhelmed.


"please don't go. i'll eat you up, i love you so." kw says this to max. i think this line, uttered tearfully as a goodbye, captures a level of desperation hiding in the wildness of the wild things. sometimes loving something (or someone) is overwhelming and all-consuming. it's both touching and a bit scary and it can eat you up if you're not careful.

so go out and howl at the moon. there's a wild thing in all of us.

stream-of-conscious; no sleep; song covers

disclaimer: i fucked up my sleep schedule. my writing lately is mostly stream-of-consciousness and edging on unintelligible. apologies.

i realized the other day that a lot of the songs i've been into lately are covers. a vampire weekend cover by esau mwamwaya and radioclit; outkast by obadiah parker; mgmt by jónsi; and just tonight i stumbled onto three seperate versions of the same song by three amazing artists (included later). in all of these instances, i discovered/was suggested/listened to the songs because of my love for their original versions.

in other instances, however, i've been really into a song only to realize that it was a cover. "heartbeats" by josé gonzalez is a great example. i was watching the video on youtube, scrolling through the comments, and came across an ongoing debate on wheter gonzalez's version was better than the original. color me surprised when i discovered that the original version was not acoustic like gonzalez's but actually a sweedish pop song.

and then, tonight, i was listening to the bright eyes album "noise floor" and "devil town" came on. i decided to look for the music video on youtube (where, apparantly, i learn the most information). as it turns out, "devil town" is originally by daniel johnston (most famous for his album "hi, how are you," you may have seen the album cover on kurt cobain's shirt). beck also covered it. i listened to all three versions (which i've included below) and i loved them all individually, for their own reasons.

daniel johnston:


bright eyes:


beck:



WHICH BRINGS ME TO: i've been thinking a lot about originality in writing and music and i'm trying to figure out if anyone really has a "voice" and i don't really know if they do. i think that if someone has some sort of distinctive writing style or musical style it's just because they OWN it most, ya know? not that it's theirs, but just that they do it best? or that they're most recognizably associated with it? i dunno. my friend max (check out his music!) was talking about how "originality" should really be thought about as "creativity" because, in reality, everyone is borrowing from someone else. i completely agree.

p.s. i'm re-reading on the road by jack kerouac right now and this version has a really interesting introduction. apparantly, kerouac spent years trying to stop writing like thom wolfe and, when he finally did, adopted the feverish narrative that neal cassidy used in the letters he wrote to kerouac. even jack kerouac isn't wholly "original."

i am grounded, i am humbled, i am one with everything

When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the side

Of the road, turn out the lights, get out and look up at the sky
And I do this to remind me that I'm really, really tiny
In the grand scheme of things and sometimes this terrifies me

But it's only really scary cause it makes me feel serene
In a way I never thought I'd be because I've never been
So grounded, and so humbled, and so one with everything
I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

Rock and roll is fun but if you ever hear someone
Say you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sun
Look at the ocean and the desert and the mountains and the sky
Say I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye
I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye

When I saw Geneviève I really liked it when she said
What she said about the giant and the lemmings on the cliff
She said 'I like giants
Especially girl giants
Cause all girls feel too big sometimes
Regardless of their size'

When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the side
Of the road and run and jump into the ocean in my clothes
I'm smaller than a poppyseed inside a great big bowl
And the ocean is a giant that can swallow me whole

So I swim for all salvation and I swim to save my soul
But my soul is just a whisper trapped inside a tornado
So I flip to my back and I float and I sing
I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything
I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

So I talked to Geneviève and almost cried when she said
That the giant on the cliff wished that she was dead
And the lemmings on the cliff wished that they were dead
So the giant told the lemmings why they ought to live instead

When she thought up all those reasons that they ought to live instead
It made her reconsider all the sad thoughts in her head
So thank you Geneviève, cause you take what is in your head
you make things that are so beautiful and share them with your friends

We all become important when we realize our goal
Should be to figure out our role within the context of the whole
And yeah, rock and roll is fun, but if you ever hear someone
Say you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sun
Look at the ocean and the desert and the mountains and the sky

Say I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye
I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye
I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye
And I don't wanna make her cry
Cause I like giants

- "i like giants" kimya dawson

the americans

i've been obsessed with robert frank's photogrophy lately. with a guggenheim grant under his belt, frank took off across the country; a trip that became documented in his book the americans, published in '59. i know of few artists who capture wanderlust so well -- jack kerouac is the only other that comes to mind. fittingly, kerouac wrote the introduction. he writes, in part:

"madroad driving men ahead -- the mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the west, spine heights at the world's end, coast of blue pacific starry night -- nobone half-banana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onward, illuminate -- the raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass -- orangebutted west lands of arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher -- the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route, fabulous plots of landowners in green unexpecteds, ditches by the side of the road, as i look."

here are some examples of frank's photography. he captures something amazing.

finally

finals. no sleep. this is what i found:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

the people united will never be defeated

hampshire college is, above all, a community of learners, educators, and individuals passionate about the school's philosophy. this community is why i decided to attend hampshire college, it is what kept me from transferring elsewhere on multiple occasions, and it is what continues to keep me here.

this community was fragmented recently with the deliberate ignorance of student, faculty, and staff voices by a few select members of the administration. a project costing upwards of $300,000 -- money which we, as a 40-year-old institution, don't have at our disposal -- was planned behind closed doors. our roles as members of the hampshire community were being purposely delegitimized by those involved with this project, and that is not acceptable.

this feeling of discontent echoed across campus. the student body, along with members of the staff and faculty, mobilized in less than a week to make our voices heard. more than eight hundred petitions calling for transparency and dialogue were signed in protest. members of the campus community gathered on the library lawn on two separate occasions -- first, on tuesday, to make some noise and demand answers, then, yesterday, to present the staggering number of petitions to the president of hampshire, ralph hexter.

the mobilization that the students, professors, and hampshire staff have demonstrated over the last few days has renewed my love for this school. the fact that we won't take the administration's blatant disregard for our voices is a reminder of everything that hampshire is supposed to stand for -- an open, transparent, and engaged community working together. if we work together, we can make hampshire a place that everyone is proud of. i have never been prouder to be a hampshire student.

that -- the avoidance of a community-wide dialogue, the purposeful silencing of students, staff, and faculty -- is what hypocrisy looks like.
this -- our banding together to make our voices heard -- is what democracy looks like.