Stray Thoughts

This was my first year at ACL (Austin City Limits Music Festival). I absolutely loved it.. it was absolutely worth every cent of the 170 dollars for a 3-day pass. Some of the more ignorant were fussing about how (unlike last year, when they had Muse, Bob Dylan, and co. over) there weren’t enough big-name bands and how the Foo Fighters weren’t closer material. I had my doubts too, and when the heat started getting me and I got a little bit annoyed, i thought so too. As the festival went on, however, I found myself wanting more but unable to b/c I was so tired.

On the first day (Friday Night), I couldn’t attend the entire thing because (obviously) of school being over at 3:35. I was still able to catch Slightly Stoopid, N.E.R.D., and last but not least, Mars Volta.

Slightly Stoopid were ok, but I didn’t REALLY like them. They had the funk, but not the musicality or the pure, raw performance of other bands. N.E.R.D., on the other hand, had the music and the performance. I just don’t like the genre.

Mars Volta can be simply described easily as absolutely ridiculous. My friends and I had looked forward to Mars Volta all day, so we stepped over some people sitting down to get pretty close to the front. Their sound completely blew everyone away (although some may have been due to the amount of pot they were smoking). They somehow managed to play like four songs in the course of 75 minutes, but I think I may have gone into a trance about a halfway through.

The vocalist, the guitarist, the drummer, and the wind guy all had great performance in them. It was as much of an eye candy as it was an ear candy. It hurt my ears a little bit though.

-Continued tomorrow with Day 2 (Beck)

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This year, a new student suggested that the student body do a vow of silence for 3 hours or longer to commemorate the 9/11 tragedy. I participated. It was quite the most frustrating 3 hours I’ve had since maybe the January SAT. It was a cool experience, though. It reminded me of a quote from Star Wars: A New Hope and kind of connected it to the tragedy:

“I felt a great disturbance in the Force…as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”-Obi-wan Kenobi

This is probably pretty much what happened when the towers collapsed…

Sends chills down my spines.

For the world’s sake, please. I hope Obama will be elected to take the world towrads the general direction of PEACE.

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It’s finally my turn to go completely insane over this unnecessarily stressful process of getting into colleges. I have my eyes set on acceptance into Stanford, but since no matter how qualified you are, it’s pretty hard to get into one of these “highly-selective” colleges, I will have to do my darnedest to get a fighting chance.

Of course, it is often said that the application essay is quite possibly the most stressful thing to right about, since nobody knows how to quite write it. My college counselor tells me that it defies every single rule that the school has taught me up to now about formal writing, so it was especially hard to see my first draft turned to scrap because it didn’t defy every single rule of formal writing. Second draft on, I settled on a topic about BSoD’s, because I thought it was unique and had a little “human feeling,” not one of those mechanical essays.

I just can’t wait to be done with this process. After Thanksgiving, most of the pressure will be off, and “Sernioritis” (definition: a psychological disease that often ails seniors because they are done with all schoolwork that will affect their college admittance) will hit. Of course, I don’t think I’ll let myself fail classes, but it will be a good mental break.

Image Credit: http://kevinsung.wordpress.com/

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