1. The Devil's Orchard
2. I Feel The Dark
3. Face of Melinda
4. Porcelain Heart (with drum solo)
5. Nepenthe
6. The Throat of Winter
7. Credence
8. Closure
9. Slither
10. A Fair Judgement
11. Hex Omega

Encore:
12.Folklore

Porcelain Heart was much better than the studio version (which is honestly kind of Zzzz). The Heritage songs were kind of same-y, but more exciting than listening to the CD. Face of Melinda and Hex Omega were probably my highlights. Unusually (or not, following the trend of the newest album), no more death growls. :( I hope it's not forever because it's just not quite the same without them.

Hm, jotting down some points of interest. I should really put a "pedantic language nerd" warning on this blog.

As I'm making my way through Le Morte D'Arthur by Mallory, though I'm reading a Modern English translation, there are some artifacts of Middle English that caught my fancy enough to look up. (Btw, disclaimer, I never studied medieval literature, and I'm only interested in language in a general linguistics capacity, so I'm definitely not approaching this from a solid background of Chaucer or anything.)

A particularly fascinating construction I'm coming across in Middle English is the "impersonal verb". This will probably seem pretty sensible to anyone familiar with French/Romantic reflexives, but it does shed light on some fossilised terms such as the Shakespearean "methinks".

Examples of the impersonal verb use:
"methinketh"
"him liketh"
"him reweth"

Characterised by a third-person singular verb (thinketh, liketh, reweth). However, they do not function as regular sentence constructions, for if they were a straightforward cause of a subject + verb, we would use a subject in the nominative case. I.e. in English, "I think, he likes, he rues". But instead, the accusative/dative cases are used ("me" instead of "I", "him" instead of "he").

This is intentional, apparently, and not an archaic grammatical quirk. the impersonal construction shows the action being performed back on the original pronoun, and importantly, dropping an implied subject. E.g.:

me thinketh = (it ) seems (to) me
him liketh = (it) likes him = it pleases him
him reweth = (it) pains him = he rues

Very similar to a French reflexive verb (e.g. "je m'appelle", "je me souviens"-- in fact, I wonder if it was an imported grammatical structure from Norman/French?), but it drops a pronoun, which makes it harder to parse. We don't have this construction in Modern English, but it has become fossilised as a set phrase in "methinketh" or "methinks". However, it's often wrongly used.

The verb "think" stems from two Old English verbs that are extremely similar:
1. thenken --> to think
2. thynken --> to seem

(Read more here.) So in the Shakespearean sense, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" is not Hamlet thinking aloud for our narrative benefit, but that it seems to Hamlet, that Gertrude is protesting too much. A neat little leftover from Middle English. :)

I nearly had a stroke the other day when I thought I broke my laptop... in exactly the same manner I broke the previous one. I knocked the monitor against a chair and the monitor's colours went all screwy-- the black parts of images displayed as green and the white parts as pink. No physical damage to be seen and when the output was externally connected to a TV, the image was perfect.

Called a repair guy for a quote and he said it could be anywhere from 80 GBP for labour alone to 250 GBP for everything if a part replacement was required.

Well, I was pretty certain it was just a loose video cable connection so I said fuck that and took apart my laptop myself. Disassembled it, tweaked the cable connection and reassembled it. Fixed it this morning with a borrowed screwdriver, a pair of eyebrow tweezers, a guitar pick, a wee bit of sellotape, and some eyelash glue (good thing I just recently bought some false lashes!). Display is up and working again, like brand new!

Which leads me to believe my old laptop is completely salvageable...

Extremely pleased with saving a potential 250 quid. :D

Would see this! Shakespeare! Rome (well, sort of)! Dearest Ralph "Twisleton" Fiennes! And Vanessa Redgrave, yay. *_*

However, a disproportionate amount of my attention was unfortunately taken up by the incredibly silly pronunciation (in the FIRST LINE of the trailer) of "Caius Martius Coriolanus". I am letting the Anglicised pronunciations of the nomen and the cognomen slide, but I couldn't believe the hard "K" sound for Caius.

Then I searched the internet, and found, to my grief, that KYE-us for Caius is a readily accepted pronunciation for baby names.

PEOPLE. The spelling of Caius predates the Roman introduction of the letter G in the 3rd century BC, as the letter C represented both /k/ and /g/. The name was Gaius, and was, after the introduction of the letter G, accordingly spelled Gaius. The obsolete "Caius" variant spelling only ever appears surviving in archaic abbreviations as C. (e.g. C. JULIUS CAESAR for "Gaius Julius Caesar"), in official lists and inscriptions. It was always pronounced Gaius in Classical Latin. There is no reason in English to ever write OR pronounce Caius with a C because WE HAVE A G.

I suppose I only have the Bard to blame for writing it unnecessarily in the archaic fashion. Dammit, Bill!

OMG, and don't get me started on the way Cambridge University pronounces Caius.

Then again, if you're naming your kid Caius, it only serves the pretention right to get the pronunciation wrong.


P.S. Excited for the film, and sorry for the digression taking up 90% of the post.

Saw it yesterday. :D In lovely traditional 2D, no less, which is way harder to find these days, ugh.

( ramble ramble. warning, lots of exclamation marks. SPOILERS by the ton. )

We have really blasted through David Lynch's (stopped the urge to add a full stop there) filmography in the last year. We have watched (and re-watched in some cases), in the last several months, least recent to most:

- Blue Velvet
- All of Twin Peaks
- Eraserhead
- Fire Walk With Me
- Inland Empire

Probably nobody out there actually loves Dune the way I do, not enough to watch it again with me, but I'd probably want to revisit that on my own. Haven't rewatched Mulholland Drive in a bit, but it's due soon.

Blue Velvet was almost like a precursor to Twin Peaks, in the sense that Jeffrey Beaumont was like a wimpier, less rad version of Agent Cooper (whom we all lovelovelove!). Twin Peaks was most excellent, until episodes 17-penultimate, which dragged in the most horrible way. Who actually thought that James could carry the show by himself? God, it was awful. But then the final episode knocked it out of the ballpark, along with Fire Walk With Me.

2 nights ago, we watched Inland Empire. Now, I thought I had Lynch's highly opaque style down. I even liked the Rabbits shorts, as there was some kind of method to the madness. But Inland Empire. I am stumped. It is no clearer to me today than it was 2 days ago. On the surface, it was vaguely thematically similar to Mulholland Drive, but a) I could never tell who was supposed to be what character. b) I could never tell WHY anything was happening. c) This is admittedly my fault, but I cannot tell actors apart, which makes it THIS MUCH MORE confusing in a movie where each actor is playing identities-within-identities, etc. d) Nobody's motivations were clear. e) So many non-sequiturs. f) Also my fault, but I was really sleepy and kept zoning out at important(?) points.

g) This deserves its own paragraph. THE NIGHTMARE FACE HAS TERRORISED ME BEYOND BELIEF. How is it that David Lynch. always manages to scare the bejeesus out of me with the world's most primitive special effects? Agggghhh, I can't sleep thinking about THAT FACE. This is really getting down to the heart of why I am making this post. I mostly just want to let everyone know how TERRIFYING IT IS (don't click if you value your sanity).

Anyway, summer holidays are finally coming up. I will be back in Canada, YAY! Hopefully, before I go, we can fit in The Elephant Man. lovefilm.com keeps not sending that one.

Okay, I'll let you all get back to your more important affairs. Or, if you clicked that link, for you to cry into your pillows and whimper for your mummies.

I hope Hizumi recovers quickly and that they all succeed in whatever they do next. They've gone everywhere and done everything I've ever wanted them to. I'm proud of how far they've come in 12 years. I'm happy I've seen them all the times I did. I've no regrets, and I hope they feel the same. But I'm heartbroken that they won't be around forever, even though it was inevitable.

殺風景な部屋　空気に溶け込む君を失う事に怯え...

YAY lynch. has arrived.
Have given it 2 listens so far:

01. INTRODUCTION
Unnecessary, taking up space. It's not even a particularly good piano piece, and according to the liner notes, it's not composed OR performed by lynch.?! It's by some guy named "d-kiku". Who?

02. UNTIL I DIE
Catchy, uptempo, chugs along groovily and the chorus sticks in your head. Love Hazuki's voice in this one, it's got an intense but yearning quality to it. Unfortunately, the line "I'm leaving for the last time" is repeated WAY too many times and annoying because of how Engrishy it sticks out as, but this is overall radio-friendly and enjoyable. The band fits together very well on this, and it's just a very lynch. song.

03. I BELIEVE IN ME
Good stuff, still great. I can see why they picked it as the promo song, it encapsulates the album pretty well.

04. JUDGEMENT
I actually don't think I like this mix quite as much as the original single. It sounds weirdly hollow, like the instruments are all playing in different rooms, though I still love this song.

05. LIE
Kind of... like a crossover between An Illusion and I Don't Know Where I Am. Didn't immediately like it, and the staccato quality of the chorus is vaguely irritating, but I am won over by the twirly guitars going on, haha, and just the confident way it builds up. Like SCARLET, there's a bit of a nostalgic feeling to this one. Anyway, given it some thought and I think I do enjoy it.

06. -273.15^oC
WHAT A BEAST. I adore this. The bit in the middle that starts with just Asanao banging away a steady chugging beat and then builds up to a bunch of interesting things, and then falls into a more typical breakdown-- and then JUST ENDS. WAH. D: Probably the best new song on here. Reminds me of DOZE.

07. THIS COMA
UGGGGGHHHH THIS SONG WON'T END. Boring and amateur. How is this lynch.? It sounds like something a terrible indies band that dresses in things from their sisters' closets would put out on their first demotape. The only person who's vaguely pulling their weight here is Asanao.

08. SCARLET
I think I like this. It has an undescribable "old school" quality to it, like it could've been on the SHADOWZ or THE BURIED albums without being too out of place. I wish they wouldn't filter Hazuki's voice like they do on this one, though.

09. ALL THIS I'LL GIVE YOU
Still good! Album mix is pretty rocking. I need to see this liiiiive.

10. TIAMAT
A bit of a hot mess. All English, though you couldn't really tell. I kind of disapprove, as it blatantly borrows too many tricks straight from commercial Western nu-metal (the breakdown is a dead giveaway). It sounds derivative but messy at the same time. Not a complete write-off, but not great.

11. BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
Awww, this is so beautiful. It's slow and lovely like "prominence", but kind of, more wistful and less outright sad. Sparse and effective. I could listen to a 10-minute version of this.

12. A GLEAM IN EYE
I wasn't a huge fan of this single though I liked it, but it's a good song to end on. Solid, well-put-together, and upbeat. Album mix doesn't sound much different.


Okay well, I'll get around to translating some of these, I think. :)

Just a quick update, I am generally swamped with work, which is probably why nobody has heard a thing from me for awhile. I can't wait until exam season is over and the pressure is off.

I'm not actually sure why I'm even making a post. I think for this:

LOL at the doglady effect.

For the short glimpse I saw of the woman's face, for a sec it looked like Hazuki's enormous nose and then Yusuke in a wig. I've got to be seeing things. Clearly, it must be a real lady. They can't be in such dire financial straits that they're just photoshopping member faces together.

Asanao's haircut is, amazingly, really flattering. I never thought he could look so attractive. (Sorry, Asanao.)

Have given the song a few listens and I have come down pretty solidly on the side of liking it. From the singles, it looks like the album is going to be rather heavier than Shadows, though I do hope that there will be some variation.
UGGGGHHHH, THIS ALBUM HAD BETTER BE GOOD. D: