Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

I was watching a Metallica interview this morning (this is my life, shut up), and Lars Ulrich was talking about how for him, that connection with bands he liked filled a void, and that was what he was looking for. And that hit, man--you know? I like a lot of music, it's not just metal (man, just look at my CD collection for that, I've got shit like 3OH!3 and... okay, mostly it's at least some subset of rock, but 3OH!3 !), but it's metal that I can just give myself over to. It's rock music in general, but it's metal. There's a scene in the movie Deathgasm  where the main metal-y kid gives this nice-looking blonde girl a couple of metal CDs to listen to. Her reaction is how it feels.   That's it. It's raw and it's fuckin heavy and it's great. I love it. That's kind of the case with reading, too; I mean, I don't just read horror, I read all sorts of shit. But sometimes there are those books that just fill a void, authors like Clive ...

I mean, even beyond the 'technically on the calendar spring started last Wednesday.' I go for walks every morning. Every morning, when it's, you know, not twenty below, I get up early specifically so I can put on my Walkman and go wander around for an hour or two. I've been doing this for a couple straight weeks after winter, as it's been in the twenties and thirties (and near-fifty tomorrow? what the FUCK), and every time my hair freezes. This is because I'm dumb and just jump out of the shower and into my clothes and grab my Walkman and go, but also because it's below freezing and so like, water freezes, I'm not here to teach you science I don't even know science. But this morning, man--nothing. I don't even have over-the-ear headphones right now, because mine broke, so I'm on earbuds (gotta say, something very wrong about plugging Apple earbuds into a Walkman), and no frozen hair. I don't wear a hat, because I'm North Dakota Du...

READING Parkland by Dave Cullen, AKA the dude who wrote Columbine , which I read a few years ago. Columbine was good, Parkland is better. Sentence looks bad outta context. But the thing with Parkland is that it's very much a sequel to Columbine in the way that Cullen writes it, at least it is so far; he's comparing it to his experience in writing Columbine (and, in fact, the intro has some about how much writing Columbine fucked him up), and you can definitely see where he's grown as a writer. Also, I've only read a chapter at a time at this point, and each one has made me tear up, so I can look forward to bawling my eyes out, I think. WATCHING Season one of The O.C .. I know, I know, shitty early aughts drama TV. Not superbly written, especially when it comes to the dialogue, but it's been surprisingly well-acted so far, especially with the main kid, he's actually really good. And some interesting character choices have been made. I'm only three episode...

^  | That should pretty much be my motto, or precede all of my sentences at least. So I'm into Metallica. This is not one hundred per cent why I'm putting that as the title, because even if they've been around for a while they're like, still mega-popular, so that's not really what I'm getting into. So my favorite album is Master of Puppets because I'm not a monster. Apart from being pretty much the best fucking thing to whirr through my Walkman, MOP is also notable for being the last album the late Cliff Burton played bass on. Some of his writing was still on ...And Justice For All, I think, but the last one he played on was MOP. For those of you don't know, Cliff Burton died in a bus accident in Europe while they were touring. He was twenty-four. Twenty-four. This is why I say I'm late to the party, because, dude died in 1986 and people have been depressed about this since 1986 but the fact is just like, just hitting me. I mean, I've...

So it's blizzarding. There's a whole big thing that's going on in Central US, or whatever, I skimmed a few news articles but to be fair to the blizzard it is March and I am not too surprised by a blizzard, you feel? Like it's March. It's still winter. Winter isn't for sure over until halfway through May, you know? I don't mind a blizzard, especially when it's March and therefore warm enough that the shit'll melt. Like, it's thirty degrees out. That's above zero, by the way. By next Tuesday, we should be up near forty. Will we probably flood this year? Well, yeah, probably. We've got a fuckton of snow in these past couple months. But like, maybe it's the lazy motherfucker in me, but I do really like a day where I'm stormed in and there's no work and there's no class and I can just write, you know? I started a new first draft last night because I have absolutely zero self-control when it comes to these things, I'm ab...

The band. Anthrax the band. So I've been listening to my Attack of the Killer B's tape today, and it's just a mess of b-sides and live performances and Anthrax doing whatever the hell Anthrax wants. I have a couple of other Anthrax tapes; I have Spreading the Disease, and State of Euphoria, and Sound of White Noise, and also the Black Lodge single, and also two I'm The Man singles. One of the I'm the Man singles was my first Anthrax tape, and it includes the clean version of I'm the Man, the not-clean version, the live version, plus their cover of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and two other live songs (I Am the Law and Caught in a Mosh). I fuckin love that tape. Anthrax is my second favorite of the Big Four (Metallica is my first, I'm basic like that; my list goes: Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer), and while a part of that is how much they fuckin love Stephen King   I've talked about that before. I also think their live stuff is some of my favorite, ...

So, a while ago I did a post about how, wow, I actually really like Metallica , and to be honest, it has gotten worse, if by worse you mean I like them a whole lot more now. I think that the best kind of band to get into is a band that is not only super popular but has also been around for a long time, because you are never getting through all the interviews and everything. Like when I was super into Nirvana? They were big, but they weren't around for that long. Metallica has been around longer than I have. Like, twice as long as I have, practically. So I've gotten to the stage where I'm watching interviews in addition to listening to music. When I get into a band, there's a line that will be crossed at one point to decide if they're gonna be one of my favorite bands or not. If they are, I will seek out interviews. I did that with Nirvana and, way back in eighth grade, I did that with The All-American Rejects. Also, I do like how when you take that list and draw a...