Everyone loves a 1-minute psych test.

I had this amazing idea right before i hit the sack yester-night. Kinda like a nano-second, twilight-zone “Ah-Hah!” moment, if you know what i mean.

It’s amazing, how most creative moments in your life happen
a)in the bathroom (toiletbowl/shower)
b)on the trains
c)on your bed right before you zone out.

In other words, we get to our peak of creativity at the height of our boredom. Ironic, but true. Even the brain gets bored of being bored, so actually the most creative people are technically also the most jobless.

Wow i should write a theory on this one. But I have a better idea now! Scroll down for the latest addition to the world of bogus pop-psych tests!
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Think you really know yourself? Take this test to find out!

1) You have a stupid housemate who almost
- set the house on fire because he/she left the coffee flask with the plastic handle over the fire.
- left his/her uneaten food in the pot for a week because he/she was too busy whining to wash up, and because the food sucked too bad even for shitty-human consumption. Mould grew, and you had to do the cleaning up for the severely handicapped.
- shat in your toilet because his/her shit clogged up his/her own toiletbowl.*
(all of the above are true accounts.)

*No photo of that one due to explicitly grotesque content.

You would:
a) Be nice and compliment on his/her free-spirit
b) Do nothing
c) Write a blog post on bogus psych tests just so you could share the intimate incriminating photos with the world.

2) The cat is..

a) happy
b) no idea!
c) doesn’t give a shit

3) The dog is..

a) laughing
b) white
c) freaky

If you had mostly A’s : you freaking liar.
If you had mostly B’s: geez, you’re useless.
If you had mostly C’s: Welcome to the club!!!! =)

(Okay no hate mails now. A joke, people. A joke!!)

A random tribute to the joker in heaven who enjoys messing with my life.

Disclaimer: This is an absolutely secular post. And no, this is not written for a particularly useless ex-boyfriend, or a cover-up suicide note. It was painfully extracted out of a dejected soul upon its receipt of yet another "we regret to inform you" letter (only the close ones would know, naturally. i never stop screaming into their faces.)

And hence the lack of stylish poetic embellishments. the poem isn't gonna sound like any more than sleeptalk.

It was conceived out of an epiphanic moment, a stark realisation that somewhere in the heavens above us, theres a control freak who loves playing us humans like how we humans play The Sims. he/she/it loves a bit of drama and modern Greek tragedy. Ha-ha. So here we go:

I think I’m defeated.
I spend my mornings in bed,
refusing to get up to start the day.

I think it ended.
It was over before it began.
There’s nothing left, not even the sun.

I would surrender.
But not today, I’m not ready yet.
I’m so used to the grey patches I see in my reflection.

I can’t swim well.
Though I guess I could keep afloat still,
With your help – please don’t turn me down.

Oh I’m defeated.
Spare me your evil chortle
You’re gonna choke on that big fart of a cloud now. -Lemon, Murder'd again.'08.

Squashed #7:PanicAttack!

It prolly started the moment i reached for my cuppa plain tasteless water & , to my absolute horror, witnessed 10 little itsy bitsy ants floating around at the top of the water level, dancing in a swirl.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

It's not the ants, really. I don't quite abhor the little ones as much as i hate fat flying bugs. It's the little mass of black they form when they come together. It's how the blackness spells Death right in your face. It's how easily these kamikazes did their thing and decided to kill themselves altogether in an attempt to stop the enemy (me) from drinking my water. And all i had to do was pour them outta the fountain of death and pour myself a new glass. And there goes their legacy, down the sink.

I scream not because i hate them; my scream shall serve as a tribute to their courage. as shall this post.

Why do ants choose to do this kamikaze thing, really? Could it be a mass exodus from their nest because of bad governship? Lack of job prospects (due to lack of food supply)? Or just simply an epidemic of contagious depression?

Whatever it is, i hope the ants think twice before jumping now. Curiosity kills the cat; depression kills many ants.

Now on to the wrap-up. Just got my hands on the latest Panic!at the disco album (and hence the title of this post) - and i love it!!!Finally, a style that IS distinguishable from Fall Out Boy's. Still the good ol quirky song titles, still the nice surprises peppered throughout the album, just way better sounding this time round!!The whole album spans across different styles and is, in all, a pretty amazing aural experience for a pretty panicky day.


http://www.myspace.com/panicatthedisco ->Click here to check their music out!

And now, time for some water.

Where's your 60B?

This is my Nth time catching the rerun of "Elizabethtown" on cable. And i'm still lovin' it. It captures everything i love & embrace - the greens, the fresh air, the free-spiritedness; the resilience we have within us to bounce us back from failures; love; destiny & its weird antics. it's a nice cosy feel-good film that never ever fails to inspire everytime i watch it.

Most of us get so caught up in our lives that we forget to live it. We slog, we compete. Measure satisfaction against the material wealth barometer. And the point in all this?There isn't, really.

Perhaps it's time to take a roadtrip. Drive along. Find your "60B"(Watch the movie to find out why!). Laugh a lil, love a lil. Smile through the pain, dance silly in the rain.

Because "amazing things can happen when u least expect them" to. And now that, is the point of being alive.


It's amazing, what watching E-town does to me. Check out the official movie website to tune in to the awesome music featured in the film. It's been on replay on my side since the film ended.. and i refuse to turn it off and go to bed!

Now wouldn't it be nice to just be silly and do crazy little things, and not give a hoot about what the world thinks?

bookworms unite!

wow it's an amazing feeling, getting to see all of them come together as one major force, finally!okay so maybe not all the book covers are aesthetically breathtaking, but these books are either a) some of the best i've enjoyed lately, or b) are what i intend to read in the very near future.

sigh, pity about the aesthetics. cd covers next, perhaps?

To top it off, here's some great music to read to:

*Howie Day - Collide

*Matt White - Love

*The Fray - How to Save a Life

Happy Sunday!

Squashed! #6 - Rediscovered.

well this is gonna be a really random post on a really random night, considerin the fact that its 2 am yeah in the morning and yet there's some serious construction drilling going on undeterred over on my left. hmm. time check, peeps? it IS kinda dark now!!

on a night like this, i choose to revisit a bunch of songs that i never fail to enjoy even after all this while.

nope no indie today, just nice, good ol mainstream radio music. this goes out to the drillers who can't stop rockin' - take a breather, man!

Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter

Damien Rice - Cannonball

Atomic Kitten - Whole Again

Atomic Kitten - The Last Goodbye

Sugababes - Too Lost in You

O-town - All or Nothing (i used to put this on replay back in the day!)

And i just found out about this one that really really swept me away. Love the alliteration, makes it oh-so-lyrical:

*Damien Rice - Rat Within the Grain

Oooooooh and the world is beautiful all over again.

The Letter.

It actually didn’t start out right.
There was black brown, never light.
We hold the bad emotions too tight.
And hate, never outta sight.

But the night grows old,
And it’s time to let go.
Let’s retreat inside our souls
Think outside our petty fouls.

I was gonna write an angry song
But why let anger drift you along?
Time age death don’t know right from wrong
Hate wouldn’t make you better than the throng.

I would write longer, longer, longer...
But it’s not gonna make anything better.
Because I’ve just got a letter
Showing me the real pains of the other world.

So tonight I shall forgive
And let live.
It’s a trap
Getting caught up
In a world
That doesn’t care
About
Anything.

So if you hate,
I hope you get the same letter.
And henceforth pledge your tears
For a more useful purpose.

It’s never just about you.
There are others, who deserve to smile under the skies so blue.

-Lemon, Murder'd
(upon reading a letter that calls out for donations to the poor kids in Africa).

of american bands & chinese band-names.

"Xiu Xiu" conjures to mind a girl bending over a green grass patch smelling (sniffing?) flowers, and "Saosin" a wet blanket. no?

Perhaps for the chinese-savvy. But it definitely works well as a marketing strategy to name your band like so. The anally curious have a strong need to dig out your entire history log and do a thorough traceback on the roots of your bizarre bandname that far surpasses randomness.

Whereas XiuXiu (pronounced shoe-shoe, according to Wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiu_xiu) is way more experimental, and comes up with music that is sometimes too much for a non-experimental crowd (they dabble with noise, for instance), Saosin is, i'm proud to say, not at all a wet-blanket. Basically a hardcore rock band, they are equally capable of producing stuff that could appeal to the mainstream population, my fave of which is the track "You're Not Alone" off their album in 2006.

But before I put up the vid and let blogger do its routine hanging/lagging on me (note to blogger.com: how about blagger.com for a sister site?!), some interesting trivia on the derivation of Saosin's bandname from our friend Wiki:

"It’s pronounced SAY-OCEAN, and it’s a Chinese proverb from the 15th and 16th centuries. It means “small heart”. "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saosin

Hmm.Gotta ponder on that one.Perhaps "xiaoxing" doesn't look as cool for a bandname, eh?

Whatever it is, we've gotta give these dudes much credit for daring to be different. (Actually, this suddenly brings to mind an acquaintance from US who showed me her tattoo once. She said it was supposed to be a chinese character for power or something. I didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasnt a chinese word at all. On the bright side tho, it was nicely done.)

Check Saosin out here! Enjoy the vid.

Rants and raves

Other than a vaguely socially-retarded sibling who can't seem to differentiate between 10dB and 1000000 dB of noise he produces, and who gets mad at stupid things all the time (and u say women are high-strung), today was- after strict subtraction- still stubbornly shitty.

let's start with Timbre@ Substation. Thanks for ruining an otherwise nice evening. I'm not gonna drag the entire management down, just perhaps the rather rotund and rude lady manning the bar area and the incompetent barman who happens to be serving drinks with his eyes on his arse. I give credit to the place, and even to the music. But i absolutely abhor substandard politeness. we pay u, 7% + 10% extra for service charge and gst, u woman and u man, for serving with a tinge of courtesy, thank you. customers do appreciate quality service.

-i've never really had any motivation to blog about lousy shitty service. im not usually upset by the mundane-

so with my eyes looking at the mocktail page of the menu, i ordered a * margarita, omitting the one word that would imply its non-alcoholic nature. i guess i kinda assumed that the absolutely attentive barman would bother shifting his eyes down to where i was looking at to catch my drift.

no.my bad,i guess.

so we got into conversation.manager came over.gave a bunch of bull - and suggested AFTER A WHILE that yeah, she could change me a glass without the alcohol, but i gotta pay the initial cost. fine by me, miss. but uh, why that sulk? just cos i had a perfectly legitimate reason not to get a drink tonight? you had absolutely no smile, no kindness. you were insincere to the core. if i could sing u a song on the spot i woulda dedicated "Your lousy attitude is the reason why i don't feel like having a drink anymore" to you.

and yes, i told her not to bother with her grudging service. this episode dampened me for a while, so thanks, Peanut, for being around.

I would still go back to Timbre @ Clarke Quay for the pizzas. But Timbre @ Substation? Your guess is as good as mine.

Now on to something more rave-worthy. The only good part of the day (night?) took place btwn 930-1115 pm, during which we caught 2 amazing acts by the bay. When do we start a band?!

Do check out the two mesmerising singer-songwriters:

Andrea Hamilton
Style: Acoustic/pop/rock
Her vocals were so pure, yet so powerful. Almost faultless. I love how she captured her free-spiritedness & positivity in her songs. Yes i would get your EP's the next time round I promise!

Trey Lockerbie
Style:Indie/Pop/Rock/Alternative
A more emo version live, he kinda reminded me a tad of Secondhand Serenade. His recorded stuff is, in comparison, very much more soothing and stripped-down. I love the edgy rock feel he incorporated into his act, however. And like Andrea, the one thing that illuminates them from other forgettable acts is the soul they put into their music.

Now i wanna learn the guitar so bad.

And that concludes the Life & Times of a Lemon on a Saturday Night.

Squashed #5- Blues meets electronica/experimental

it's 0300 in the morning and i am bummed out.

oh how i hate result nights for American Idol!I've never been a huge fan, but this season's peeps are utterly amazing - watch it to believe it!darn im a sucker for it now, and two of my fave personalities just got the boot. boohoo. gbye, danny & asia'h.

"alright now, that is enough. now show me the music."

uhh.

on a bright note, here are a couple of performances i really enjoyed this season that are eternally etched in my goldfish memory.



David Archuleta may be 17, but he sure sings with alotta soul. that performance really moved.



100% rocker-chick approved, David Cook!

That's A.I./blues for you!To complete the post tonight, we've got some Cyanide Valentine with some pretty good chillout electronica. Sorta stumbled upon them earlier in the day while i was idling about, and much as most electro-music makes me froth at my mouth, Cyanide Valentine is, surprisingly (to my delight), quite a gem. A couple of songs off their album reminds me a lil of the Prodigy, & the downtempo ones make for really great company in the night. Some sound somewhat futuristic, some sound slightly freaky, some just plain indie & laidback & bluey - but overall an excellent mix of different sounds. Unexpected, refreshing. i like it. I like how spacey it makes me feel. Spacey like a)the experience of vastness of space & b)the state of being spaced out. Seriously!

Best thing is : You can get the album here - for free! Generous lot they are. It's definitely worth a listen. Thanks much Cyanide! Great stuff.

All the lagging while loading this post is making me sleepy.yawn.yeah i believe Bed's calling out to me.

Passes out.

Bhangra night.

Shimmy along to the most funky zombie dance you'll ever see in your life .. and 'rofl' your guts out!!!


and to go along with the whole nonsensical/multi-cultural theme tonight, here's another:

Beach House - Gila

haha.

Rhythm of the rain.

It's the rain, again.
The wind howls through the lil aperture between the window panes.
The music plays.
And suddenly the world feels safe.
The howl is no longer menacing
Against the backdrop of reverbs & chillout beats
Against the lure of reverie.

All of nature has come to orchestrate
Come, dance to the music, the howls,
& the rhythm of the rain. -Lemon, Murder'd. 08

(So naturally The Tea calls out to me on a crummy day like this. While sipping my cuppa amidst histrionic gesticulations, the radio playing in the background of the equally crummy haunt caught my ear and sent me searching high and low for the song that has got to be on my playlist tonight!uhh yeah shucks, it's pop. i told myself i have to be strictly folk/rock today.Oh women, we fickle-minded lot. Must be the rain.)

*Jonas Brothers - When you look me in the eyes

Kinda a teeny-bopper type of song. But we all need our girly-girl-loves-boy-bands moments. Enjoy!