commotiocordis

Walking through Six Flags and then standing up for an entire concert in the midst of a not inconsiderable allergic reaction (we're talking it hurt to breathe to the point where I'm actually, finally going to call the doctor tomorrow) outside in 110F-ish weather?

Bad idea. 

But on the up side, bed feels so nice.

Quadruple dose of Benadryl and I'm feeling tons better, though that stuff makes me so sleepy that I'm probably putting the computer up for bed as soon as I finish typing this.

Also, Darren freaking Criss.  Marry me.  He's such a good showman, interacting with the audience a lot.  Also, very good at playing instruments.  Not just oh, everybody who sings on stage can strum a few chords on a guitar; he knows the theory enough that he sort of modulated a bit of one to match the major of the train that was going by, just on the fly on the keyboard like whatevs.  Also did an impromptu drum solo during the encore wherein he sort of pushed the drummer out of the way without missing a beat.

And he played either guitar or keyboard the whole time he sang, and he sang pretty darn well for it being live and him coming straight off of another set of concerts, and my only complaint is that he didn't take his shirt off it was totally awesome.

Adam Lambert concert in Springfield, MO. Be prepared for flail. It's way TL;DR, so THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE IN GLITTERTEXT, OMFG.

So, the counter protest of the WBC wasn't really organized, per se. I'd been looking at the WBC schedule a lot because I secretly hoped for an excuse to counter-protest to show Adam that Springfield isn't some podunk bible belt town. Boom, a few days ago it showed up. (Sneaky, only putting it on at the last minute.) Much Twitter discussion going on spread the word sort of virally through the Springfield and some of the Glam Nation folks, someone made a Facebook event, and someone else who apparently had FB friended the entire freaking town invited practically a million people. College kids like to party, which is basically what this was, LOL.

WBC was scared off and never showed up, even though the sketchy media accounts beforehand only vaguely mentioned that a counter protest would happen, not our numbers (which should have scared them off). I checked the morning of the show and it was up to 200, JFC, and though I didn't expect it to be anywhere near that number because of no-shows or people RSVPing that they'd be there in spirit or some such, it definitely was around that at its peak (as can be seen in numerous vids and pics and such).

ETA: Forgot to mention. My ears have been opened to the truth that is vuvuzelas are required for protesting. Ours needed more, though, because droning is more awesome the louder it gets. Also, we got water balloons thrown at us (by a jerkwad, not a legitimate opponent) from a car, and then said car got pulled over for it like 30 feet down the road by a cop on a bicycle. Hells to the yeah.

Adam came over around 8:15 or so, so many had already filed inside or away (since the protest was only scheduled to last until 8). I kid you not, 99% of the people still there (as they were mostly the ones not going to the concert) did not know who he was. But I kind of started flailing and threw out a JESUS FUCK or two of excitement, which started tipping people off.

And I think partially because I was one of the few visibly recognizing him, partially because bleakone and I were sufficiently glittered that he could tell we were coming to the show, partially because we had the most awesome posters ever (haha, but I think it's true--they were his lyrics, so perhaps he was partial to them for that reason)

ADAM FUCKING LAMBERT CAME STRAIGHT OVER TO US AND SIGNED THE POSTER.


(Like, we were more or less in the middle of the crowd, and yet...) And then he asked "Any other not-ignorant people?" (or some such, exact words escape me a bit because I was flailing to death), which means HE LIKED IT OMFG LIFE IS VALIDATED. Words came out of his mouth and they sounded like rainbows and glitter. bleakone can verify, I was totally freaking out (in a fairly quiet way, but with mild hyperventilation not aided by the omnipresent glittered corset).

He signed just a few more things, we hung out outside for a bit more, then went in to catch the end of Iraheta's stuff and play in the crowd while waiting for Adam. Now, I've watched a lot of YouTube vids and, erm, more immediate video and such of the concerts. I can easily say that of every concert I've been to/seen, we were having the most fun. There was (out of order because I'm just typing since it's 5:15am and I'm still so fucking high from this) a giant beachball being hit around that was removed by security only to be given back to us when we booed, one of our friends discoing to "Staying Alive" with a drag queen up on the mezzanine to the applause of all, a giant chorus of "Don't Stop Believing", and people blowing up balloons and letting them go so they shot up into the air and flew around our heads. I loved it and loved you all and you should all look me up on Twitter, because we were awesome. Also around this time, decided that Tommy was definitely there (we had assumed probably not) from his basses being on stage, which naturally prompted a round of flailing.


Then Adam. Where do I fucking start? Boy was on form. (Which I'm going to blame on we counter-protesters and accept all credit for.) He was feisty and into it sfm. Tons of improv vocals, new dance movies (boy can moonwalk, goddamn)

THE TONGUE KISS
and his "SUCK IT, WESTBORO" immediately after (so I accept credit for particularly that on behalf of our gang, LOL). Fever was the only kiss; I think we were just still flailing during other songs, but there was a metric fuckton of his signature hip-level handwanking and crotch smacking and probably, idk,
20 SECONDS OF BASSFAP.
We got both MW and a long WLL. You could tell he was enjoying it right from the beginning, and that made it such an amazing show (case in point--I got out most of my Kansas City flail on Twitter. This is so TL;DR because I CAN'T FUCKING STOP SMILING).

Side note: AWESOME ACOUSTICS, as expected. One downside, if anyone else goes here, is that the floor under the seats is slanted and . . . idk, made of something slick. I was rocking 6-inch stripper heels. JFC, it was hard to dance. Had to brace my thighs against the seat in front, LOL. (Because I was dancing anyway, obviously. :D)

Afterwards, Tommy and Monte and LP slooooowly walked the. entire. line. of people signing and such. Those men are so beautiful. LP kept walking around the buses and such, doing things (idk) and we'd cheer every time he came out until the point where he'd pause and turn around and wait for it, LOLOL. And Tommy making all of us thirsty people soooo jealous talking about his "apple juice" right in front of me ("What are you drinking?" "Apple juice." "Really?" "*pshhh* No.") and Liz Hill being adorable and signing stuff actually to people, asking their names (I was too far back by the time she came around, sadface, though I asked if she wanted to come riding in St. Louis and she said OMGYESWHERE! But bleakone's horses would have been too far out of the city probably for her to trek to on a show day).

SO NOW EVERYBODY (but Cam--idk, she didn't come out) HAS SIGNED OUR POSTER. NEEDS FRAMED AFUCKINGSAP. Ages later, Adam showed up and did a quick run through, while I and a couple of of our fellow signagers (including aforementioned discoing friend) held up our signs in the background for the ambiance (later, after Adam had moved and the mob thus also shifted, Sutan came over and checked them out as well!), and we kept rocking the signage as the buses pulled away while folks (yay, awesome bus drivers) waved out the windows and honked and such.

So basically, got to protest, got recognized for said protesting by Adam Motherfucking Lambert, there were pretty boys and
PRETTY BOYS MAKING OUT WITH TONGUE IN THE BEST KISS EVER *INCLUDING* THE AMAs

and a whole lot of lewd dancing, and possibly the best audience in the history of shows, and bleakone and I ended up hanging out with aforementioned fellow holding-up-at-buses-signagers just on the grass in that area for probably two hours and made friends, which is always fun.

Basically, I think the best part of the whole deal is that people usually think (I included, most of the time, since I came down here for school from St. Louis) that Springfield is this bible belt backwater, but we pretty much showed everybody that
WE CAN BRING THE GAYYYYYYY.






ETA: PICTURESSSS.

(Click for the big version, and pardon our ridiculously posyness -- only so much you can do when balancing a camera on 6 books and a container of dog food atop a cat tower.)

bleakone's left, I'm right. So, the top poster with the rainbow is the one everybody signed since nobody had silver Sharpies (totally meant to bring one!) and the one that took us the most time printing out the letters and cutting them out individually to make them stencils and then painting and then touchupping, etc. We're science majors and perfectionists with not a scrap of artistic talent, ergo it taking us something like 10 hours to get decently happy with it.

I really like how the bottom one came out all srs bsns (intentionally) because I've thought forever that this line is totally applicable to respond to the hateslew.

Closeup of the rainbow one with all signatures and such!


Pardon the shitty pictures on these last two; done with my phone just now (12:30pm day after show still having not gone to sleep, LOL) while I was too lazy to turn on a light.

Third sign we didn't actually bring up there since we got there late and were in a hurry; didn't want to juggle three, etc. It's just fun, from a tweet of Adam's from ages ago.


And the shirts we made for protesting! I've got to try to see if I can fix the fact that it decided to wrinkle really badly over my right boob, because the iron-on stuff was cheap and fail, but I've wanted to make a shirt with this on it for ages because it's such an important message (and also, for all you nerds out there, a Doctor Who reference!). Didn't actually end up wearing these either, because we wanted to be able to go right into the concert without having to change/throw them back in the car/whatever, but I'm wearing mine today!

(Also, I really, really wanted to make a "Fags are sexy beasts" sign, but I didn't know how Adam felt about that word, you know? Apparently I would have been golden, so totes making it next time, XDDDDD.)

Watching the Democratic National Convention.

Damn straight, it's time for a change. It's time for a change to people giving speeches at this thing that are even slightly tolerable orators. The home care lady that Barack worked with? The lady that followed her with the smile+shrug+excited intonation at the end of every phrase while telling us about her oh-so-sad childhood? Puhleeze.

Other things. I thought I was on a different meal plan than the one I'm actually under, so I spent Monday trying to figure out where some bizarre number of my meals went to, because how on earth could breakfast Monday morning knock me down to 13?

The Recycled Percussion guys were playing outside of the student union last night, which I totally forgot about. Suckage. I had been at the gym, and then I stopped by the library just because I hadn't been in there before, and when I was on my way back I heard the crazy bass. Figuring that somebody in one of the party dorms was rocking out, I ignored it, but as I got closer it clicked and I went to investigate. Seriously kick ass. They made a huge mistake putting the mixer and guitar up on the platform and the two drummers on the level below, though, because I could barely see them. And I only caught the last two songs, but in the second to last one, they had some kind of a power sander out and were sort of drumming using the sparks from that, alternating back and forth between the two drummers. Which was visually pleasing.

There was more I was going to talk about here, but fail at posting it (as I'm backdating this to the appropriate day, but twas ayer) so I don't remember. *sigh*

Did anyone else break into song upon finding out that the Spice Girls actually were on for the reunion tour that's been talked about for ages now? If only they came here (and had free/cheap seats), I'd totally be there.

Oh wow.

I just noticed I'm humming the music to the bobsledding bit of the "1994 Winter Olympics" Sega Genesis game.

That's random.

As I am Midwestern, I find this odd. Though I'm not the hick kind of Midwestern, so that may be why.

Your Linguistic Profile:

50% General American English 25% Yankee 15% Dixie 5% Upper Midwestern 0% Midwestern

GOO GOO DOLLS IS TONIGHT. (But IDK how I'm going to get there, so my going is still an uncertain thing, sadly.)

But on a happier note, I've been a keyboard playing fool this weekend. Just picking out stuff right and left. I got (technically, the family got) this keyboard for Christmas last year or the year before and when it was in the front room, everybody played around on it a lot, but it got moved to the basement where there's no place near it to plug it, so I didn't really mess with it anymore except for occasionally. I decided that I wanted to play it because there's some commercial with just the piano into bit of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" playing a lot on TV and I wanted to learn how to play that. So I brought an extension cord thing down there to plug it in and just hummed that bit over and over (usually just in my head, but sometimes out loud) and picked it out. So I can play the intro to that and the main piano bit really well now.

And then my brother came down and heard me playing that right after I got it and challenged me to figure out the Voyager theme song. Which was really hard as I didn't know it well enough to sing it so I had to just have it on repeat on the TV. This meant that I couldn't figure out just one section at a time, but had to wait through the whole rest of the theme to get back to the part that I was working on unless I wanted to take my hands off of the keys to fast-forward and risk losing the notes. And then I would forget what I had just figured out while listening to the rest of the theme while waiting for it to get back to the spot. And I couldn't slow it down to get it like I could when I was humming the song to myself. I worked on that one for a while and got a large chunk of it, but still not all (as I didn't realize that it was getting really late and when I did, I decided to just go to bed as I'm still not quite over that cold).

And in trying to figure out the Voyager theme, I managed to stumble across the notes for the SG-1 theme, so I fiddled with that for a few minutes before going back to Voyager (because that was going to bug me until I got at least one of the themes).

And today I picked out the basic vocal/piano theme of "Seasons of Love" from memory. And played around with picking out the actual piano part, but then left to go with my parents to buy a new van. (Which is pretty nice, but there's no rear air and the monitor of the DVD player in it quit working exactly one mile away from the place we bought it after signing everything. Which I'm not standing for. As the DVD player was pretty much what sold me on the van. We're supposed to take it back to them to get it inspected on Monday and I'm going to make them fix that. Rear air I could possibly live without if both front windows and the rear vents were all the way open or the front air conditioning vents were pointed straight back at me, but jipping me on the DVD player? No, sir. Especially if my grandparents expect us to drive down to Texas for Christmas this year.)

And the van buying took a really long time (but there was a machine there that for only 25 cents gave you a cup of really good hot chocolate) but I'm glad I went because without me, they would have gotten themselves jipped on the wireless infrared headphones and DVD player remote that are supposed to come with it but weren't with the car. And might have decided to trade in this old van that we don't really drive much as it sucks gas but drives amazingly and is really big and comfortable for the nothing that they were going to give us.

So then I came back and was fiddling with Rent music again and my brother came down and popped in my Rent DVD and I just played along. Because once you get a hang of the key and get your fingers on the majorly used notes, if you know how the song goes, it's pretty easy to figure out.

Though all of this would have been so much easier on my viola. I'm so bad at figuring out what keys go with which notes. And I've got pretty rudimentary technique. Viola playing is pretty much muscle memory for me; it's become almost instinctual that this finger position is an F-sharp and so is this one on the other string and if I shift up it's this finger position and so on. While with the keyboard as I've not ever seriously played it often enough to become really good, so I'm like "Okay. I think that one's an A. *presses key, listens* Yup, that's an A. Count up one, two, three. D. There we go."

I also just practiced random arpeggios, trying to get my fingers a little better at pianoing, and I'm not atrociously slow. Though the whole left hand playing one thing, right hand playing another thing is still pretty much eluding me for anything more complex than simple chords (like no more than two notes) on one hand while the other's doing stuff.

Still. Fun.

Moped around and didn't really do anything today. Went to the hardware store, as our water heater is dying. Like, my parents don't expect it to make the week, dying. Due to aforementioned water heater problems, I didn't take a shower today though I kind of needed to, and as such, my hair feels a bit skuzzy. In retrospect, I probably should have made a point of taking a shower today while it was still working at all, but I didn't so much think of that. I'm not a fan of showers when there's a chance of the hot water dying on you right after you put the shampoo in.

But at least we've finally got the heat turned on. I was tired of waking up and trying to drag my arse out of bed when it's -4º C outside in the mornings and just about as cold inside. Pretty much impossible to get out of your warm toasty bed when it's below freezing, as I'm sure everyone knows. That stupid dust burning smell you get when you first turn the heat on each year pervaded the house for several hours when we did it yesterday, though, which was annoying. I'm always afraid that I'm going to end up getting some variant of black lung disease from the burned bits of dust.

Taco Bell annoys me. Twice in the past week I've been there (which is crazy, as those two times are the only times I've been there in more than 2 years) and both times it's sucked.
First time, it was a 7 layer burrito thing with no cheese, less than a teaspoon of each beans and rice, and about 1/3 of a cup of guacamole and easily more than 1/2 of a cup of sour cream. No other discernible ingredients. The latter two things of course being the two things that I rather disliked out of the 7 layers in question. It wasn't bad, the bites I had where you could get some of everything. Which was about one bite, as it was very layered: the beans and rice at the very front bite, and then just the goopy stuff in the whole rest of the taco. But when you've got whole bites of sour cream: yuck.
Had a cheesy bean and rice burrito tonight (as I decided that I wanted to give them another chance and was in the mood for a taco). It was supposed to be a 1/2 pound thing. Nope. Maybe a tiny bit more than 1/3 of a cup of stuff in the entire taco. On a huge tortilla. It doesn't count as 1/2 of a pound if 3/8 of that pound is tortilla.

So yeah. I'm going to send them an email complaining about that place's bad food. *has now done so*

Did some singing with my sister today, just for fun. We had her mp3 player on as loudly as it would go so we could both hear it and used my mp3 player to record us singing along. We harmonize rather well. She's quite better at singing than I thought she was if she knows the songs well enough and is trying. And though it doesn't sound like it live, when we recorded the first verse and chorus of "Angels Would Fall" she sounded just like Melissa Etheridge. I was impressed.

She tries sometimes to jump octaves like I do, though, and can't get back on the note when she does so, but she'll get better at that simply from playing the viola if she actually sticks with it. That's the reason I'm really good at it, as viola music jumps up and down octaves all the time, especially when you're in the first years of playing and don't yet know how to shift. That and from practice now when I'm too lazy to shift up or just decide to bring it down because my top strings don't sound nearly as good as my lower ones. Or when I'm making up my own part, which I do quite often as viola parts are mind-numbingly boring most of the time (I was quite notorious for doing this all the time in our fiddling group, combining the best bits of all the different instruments' parts and making up my own harmonies when none suited me). Especially the latter reasons because it's not written in and you have to do it in your head. You get good at going up and down.

Plus, I've got an octave below middle C on a good day singing-wise (though that's stretching it, on a normal day I'll only get a C-sharp or D) but though I've got a D, maybe an E an octave above, it doesn't sound as good as I do below. So in church and stuff I'll jump octaves around all the time to try and keep it towards the middle of my range, as that's where I get the best tone (like everyone does, I presume).

I'm not a terrific singer; I can't go very high (and range is what I tend to measure singing skill by, that and being able to jump large/weird intervals quickly and stay in tune, which I'm actually pretty good at) and if you want it to sound really good, you've got to give me a couple of notes between the top and bottom of my range and what we're singing, but I've got a good ear, so I know when I'm off and can fix it immediately, which is better than lots of the choir types I know. Which is handy. And I can stick with a seemingly very different harmony without being screwed up by people around me singing different stuff; it comes from my playing the melody and singing the harmony of "Amazing Grace" at the same time. Which is also nice.

And I'm talking about my singing skills. Don't know why. We'll stop that.

I had a whole long thing about Fiddlers in here where I got way off topic (Off topic? Alexandria? No way!) when I was talking about "Amazing Grace", but I'm taking it out. Because I just need to write down everything about Fiddlers. That was such a huge part of my life for years and I'm really sad to think that I might forget things about it at some point. I'd do it now, but I just looked at the clock, which currently says 3:01am and realized that it's really late. Which is bad. Because I didn't realize when my parents left for church last night so I missed it, and as such they're going to make me go today. And they've got some kind of dumb-arse rule saying that if you don't go when they go, you have to walk. Dumb. And if I go at 10:30, the mass is longer so the whole day is practically gone. So I'm going to have to go at 8. Just so it's only 45 minutes instead of an hour. Which means I've got to start walking in about. . . *looks at clock again* 4 hours and 30 minutes. Damn. I hate it when I'm not paying attention to the time.

Though I tripped and twisted my ankle something fierce last night. Which is going to make walking, though not impossible or anywhere near as bad as my arthritis on a bad day, a bitch. I might be able to squeeze a ride there and back out of my parents if I tell them that it still really hurts. Because *tests ankle gingerly* *winces* it really still does. I hoped it had gotten better, as I haven't moved much in a while like the late night losing (Whoa. Typo. *is tired* I had 'loosing' there. Almost didn't catch it, too.) track of time computer geek I am.

*hobbles to bed*

I want to find out who picks the music for House. Because I love her. It's so cool, I figure they know what she's (I'm assuming she, but could be a man) doing, and are just like "whatever".

Because there are so many House/Wilson songs. All these songs that they picked presumably because they represent House have the Wilson element in them too, which makes it all with the greatnes.

Inspired because I'm listening to "Hallelujah" (the gayest and most House/Wilson song ever) and actually looking closely at the lyrics.

Found a download of "Let's Give Them Something To Talk About". So I'm jamming out to Bonnie Raitt.

I listened to this song like 2 years ago and mused over how perfect it was for so many fandoms. Of course, back then I only had like 3 pairings, all Star Trek. Now, though, after hearing it on American Idol right after NCIS, I'm all "Ooh, so Ziva/Jenny perfect."