andrewdewaard.com

ive always liked year end wrap-ups, its time to give pause and reflect back on things, and i think thats important, and i also just like to organize/make lists (in some things, some things i dont like to be organized about. like my room). anywho, its near end of 2005 (im done school and thank god cause it was a crazy exam/essay period where i wrote 42 or however many pages of essay while turning into a nocturnal beast living at my work office jacked up on coffee and listening to woxy for so many hours at a time that i emailed them to say “ive been listening for 15 hours straight play my request!” and then 2 hours later she played my request which was the white stripes obviously and said “this was for andrew who apparently has been listening for 17 hours straight”. ok breathe andrew. and ive been thinking to myself, hmmm what were my favourite albums of the year… but wait, how bout get over my music obsession, what actually happened in 2005 event-wise? and then i come across this great article called “The Wonder and Horror of 2005,” by Rebecca Solnit. this is blowing the conclusion, but summarizes her point:

Three surprises, all with ties to wonder and to horror, the one transmuting into the other: extinction as a black cloud out of which a bird flies; a mother’s anguish becoming the one weapon that can pierce the presidential armor and maybe thereby save lives; the destruction of a city and region that drags down an administration with it and maybe hastens the end of a war. It makes you wonder where we’ll be in 2006.

the article is worth a read, and among other things, made me think about how i haven’t linked to anything inspiring or enlightening or interesting in a news sense in such a long time. i used to link to a lot of news stories from commondreams or the nation or the independent or salon.com, my good ol lefty journalism. i have a bunch bookmarked from over the months (i usually bookmark something i find interesting into a folder, and then think maybe i’ll link it, but havent lately) but the last time i was reading so much and commenting on them on my blog was when i was on exchange on australia, quite a while ago. its not like i was bored on the gold coast (i had tons of spare time in sydney living with my sister, but not really bored either). im not gonna deny that i spent a lot of time chatting to people on msn and whatnot, but i was still busy, going out with the american fratboys, getting high with the swedish dudes, going to my crazy aussie classes.

so it wasnt a matter of spare time, but why is a lot of my time now consumed with reading pitchfork everyday, keeping up on my white stripes news, downloading so much music that i now have 140 gigs of mp3s (a tad excessive? its somewhere in the neighbourhood of 28 thousand songs, clearly im not actually listening to all of them), checking mp3 blogs, and just generally obsessing about music? jackie just told me a weird story about this beatles obsessed guy, i dont wanna be a crazy obsessive… maybe i need to lean off music and read more books. wow sidetrack. ok so why was i all into the news reading (besides probably having more time than i do now, i had a lot of reading this year, not so much on exchange… yet i got a 95 average there and not even getting any 90s here, but that has more to do with the quality of australian education… another sidetrack, another time). well it had a lot to do with the apocalyptic leadup and result of bush’s re-election, which was a pretty traumatic time for me, increased by being surrounded by a bunch of (mostly, part from a few) apathetic americans. but then there wasnt a big ‘event’ to follow and i think i kinda lost touch with my lefty news. the tragedy of katrina (and the effect the gov’ts lack of concern for poor people) didn’t really hit me, cause my news intake was pretty weak. lately i feel like im so busy i just need to unwind somehow, and since we dont have cable, i download a lot of music and look at a lot of music news. oh, and i watch downloaded tv with the roomies.

dewaard’s top television programs of the year:

• arrested development
• the office (american version, complete with myspace page)
• aqua teen
• daily show
• colbert report (which has a hilarious fan website, made to look like one of those crazy republican sites. if youve never seen the colbert report, watch this, then go look up when its on or where you can download it. “and they are organized”.)

oh oh oh, this song by the grates is amazing. sexy like karen o. but more playful. and from australia. playing at falls festival in melbourne on new years. which is where i started this glorious year 2005. maybe thats where i’ll start next post.

the grates - trampoline (download)