three in one project: episode two. (june 19, 2011; 17:54-18:54)

this is episode two of my three in one project. in case you missed the first one, you can find it here. with the explanation given already, i'll cut straight to the tracks. hope you enjoy. or are at least mildly amused.

"turtles and hellhounds."

this song's suggestion by annie. quote: "a chipper/catchy song, with lyrics narrating some pathetic event as it unfolds before our eyes? i.e. a dog eating your birthday cake."

thanks again for the suggestion.
song title: turtles and hellhounds.

"dewey's departure."

this song's suggestion by neil. quote: " Dewey's first day at army camp, he is sad, misses his friends trace and neil, and he relizes he forgot his pants."

thanks again for the suggestion.
song title: dewey's departure.

"thundering cultural hall."

this song's suggestion by steve. quote: "44 dwarves and a bearded woman playing church ball in the thunder dome.

"thanks again for the suggestion.

song title: thundering cultural hall.

dr. dohn m. denison secondary school.

"Dr. J.M. Denison S.S. is a public high school in the York Region District School Board located on 135 Bristol Rd, Newmarket, Ontario, Canada and it opened in 1989. Additions were built in 1991, and a new technological studies wing was completed in late 2009. The school is just south of the border between Newmarket and East Gwillimbury, but the school address is in Newmarket."

--wikipedia 

 
sometimes i'll commit to doing thing only because it'll make me do something i wouldn't do if i just had to say yes or no at the moment of the opportunity. such is the case with a local music venue's singer/songwriter competition. i received an e-mail last monday saying that they were having a week long equivalent to a battle of the bands where five (i think) people will play a twenty minute set of their original stuff. winner for audience and judge's choice. realizing it was an interesting opportunity, but i wouldn't do it if i got there and didn't have to, i immediately wrote back and signed up. so now i have to, which is a good thing. it's intimidating, but i'll survive at any rate.

the predicament this puts me in now is what songs to play. my current game plan is to do two songs on guitar and then two to three (depending on time) on the ukelele. i'm deciding on my guitar ones, as i've a few i can readily use. however, my ukelele ones present an opportunity to spew some creativity as i've got two songs with the music laid out that i would love to use, but no lyrics as of yet for either. so i'm looking for things to write about. wikipedia's random article generator (a favorite passtime)has been helpful for this sort of thing in the past (and is the source of the article at the top of the page), but it's still not proving very helpful. 

so. here's the scoop. i'm posting two songs up with their working titles i had pertaining to where they might go. it would be very helpful for me if you could post a comment stating what each, or one of the songs make you think of so i can possibly use it as a basis for writing the lyrics. you can feel free to use the working titles as a basis for your ideas, or forget the titles altogether. if i choose yours, you won't get much out of it... but i'll mention your name and buy you a soda sometime. 

the songs.

(oh, and as a sidenote, these aren't the whole of the songs, just the gist so you get the general feeling. also, i look angry in both videos. i'm not sure why that is.)

good day to grow a beard.

peruvian tracy. 

thanks again in advance.

george michael.

my friend laura is currently undertaking a project having to do with grief, made up of visual and written components. whilst discussing it, one thing she pointed out is the fact that often grief is sourced in the death, not of people, but of relationships or opportunities. and that made me think of george michael.

i should have thought of wham, but i thought of george michael. forgive me, andrew.

this is one of my top ten songs of all time. possibly my top five, depending on when you ask me. this is the song i listen to when i'm grieving, so to speak. not death related grief, but for grief related to everything else. end of a relationship? missed internship opportunity? red head didn't return my flirtatious advance? time for some wham.

i could go into an in-depth analysis of why this is. but i shan't. suffice it to say that this song is perfect for it. this song is a lament of the loss of something loved, the acceptance of a loss, the celebration of the future. i can dig that.

that being said, i don't want you, two readers, to think that things are bad right now. things are going well for me, and i'm enjoying them at that. this conversation just sparked this thought and i thought i'd share it in case either of you needed a good break up/grief song. it is, in my opinion, the best of its breed.

and in case you need a pick-me-up more than a break up song, don't worry--we're still covered. enjoy!

check a box, before you go go.

--trace.

p.s.--one of these days i'll have a reason to post the best "things are great" songs. i guess... i gotta have faith.

quando quando quando.

"do one thing everyday that scares you."
-eleanor roosevelt

in other words, you should be going out of your way to do frightening things everyday. i think eleanor was on to something. as of recent, i've been trying to implement this little gem. in lots of ways.

we'll assume that 'to scare' can be defined as instilling fear. the merriam-webster dictionary defines fear as "an unpleasant, often strong, emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger." danger is defined by the same source as "exposure or liability to injury, pain, harm, or loss." therefore, in order to fulfill this advice, i need to do something that the excites anticipation or awareness of potential injury, pain, harm, or loss. when i map it out like that, it's not so hard.

using the preceding as our jumping point, if i do one of the following things a day, then i'll be following eleanor's words of wisdom.

• correcting people.
  
• cooking something that i'm not experienced at cooking.
  
• doing most anything in front of large crowds.
• doing things i've claimed to be good at.
  
• submitting applications.
• participating in competitions.
• dancing.
• looking down from heights.
• trying particularly foreign foods.
  
• giving presentations.
• showing people personal works (music, writing, etc).
• going into particularly dark places.

now, of course there are many things on this list where saying they scare me is a bit of a stretch whereas others are a bit more unnerving. eating a somewhat frightening foreign food is nothing close to looking down from heights. and heights aren't near what other things may be. however, everything on that list at the very least make me uncomfortable. and at that, many of them are things are things i do pretty often, and even enjoy doing. again, foreign foods are always fun. they still can make me a bit uncomfortable. that's the whole point, though.

it is my belief that eleanor advised this because we're simply a big bunch of sissies in far too many ways. indeed, i am often nothing but a big sissy. and how does one cure one's self of sissiness? by making his or her sissy self face the music. eat a bug, sing to a crowd, and go cliff diving.

and so i shall. sooner or later.

freshman year.

hey friends and others.
so, about four years ago now, i was a freshman in college living in helaman halls on byu campus and living the dream. part of said dream was to make beautiful music. what instead was realized was the creation of noise loosely described as music. that being said, over time it's been fun to share my wastes of time, and am finally putting forth the effort to do so. these tracks were done with the blessed hammerhead rhythm station and windows sound recorder along with film quotes as you'll hear. at any rate, it was a monster pain editing all of them, so it makes me all the more proud of them.

also worth noting before we get started are two things of practical application. one, i'm still unaware of a way to simply post these tracks as wav or mp3 files, so they're still being posted as movies(yes, the visuals are boring, but i can't be bothered to actually do anything visually for stuff i made four years ago). if you want to be able to download any of them, just get a hold of me or leave a comment and i'll just e-mail them to you. and second, while some i'm quite proud of, others were more me just playing around and trying to figure out how to work. for this reason, i'll only be posting the worthwhile ones, which are few, but there just the same.

so, here are the tracks, loosely in the order of which i favor them. i wrote these under the name "coat hat and cutlass" in case any of you burn these on mix cds and distribute them among friends. then when they ask who they're by, you can express that it's by coat hat and cutlass but they stopped putting out tracks a few years ago and sound very hip and knowledgeable.

as you mixed.

super micro fun.

frankly reanimixed.



your one unheard message.

try to enjoy.

the learning machine.

as you may have read in last month's issue of alternative press, there have been rumors of me finally recording an album after years of playing shows to audiences of anywhere from one to six people. while some of you may have been spreading these rumors, and many more of you hoping they were true, up to this point they have indeed been nothing but rumors. with this in mind, i'm happy to announce that such is no longer that case, and in fact, you'll be able to have a copy of my debut 'the learning machine' for your household come this summer.

that being said, things are very much still in development. the eleven track album currently has seven songs guaranteed their respective slots and the remaining four slots have a few potential tracks to fill them. i won't bother telling you what's included as the song titles will unfamiliar to everyone, but eleven tracks it will have. also, though the seven certain ones are fully written, there has been no recording as of yet. that and then deciding what to do with the tracks once i have the album assembled. while i would love to actually have a proper album produced, i may just wind up burning my own and selling them for two dollars. that being said, if any of you have any insight on producing an indie album, do tell.

anyway, shortly put, look for 'the learning machine' in some format this summer, and you'll find it. i'll keep relevant updates coming on here. until next time,
trace.

little yellow demons.

*disclaimer*
if you've children in the room who are already picky eaters, you may want to shoo them away. if they are adversely affected by the opinions held in this post, the writer hereby dismisses all responsibility.

i hate corn. i hate the smell, the taste, and the texture of corn.

that's basically the summation of this whole post. now, of course, the rest of the post is explaining what that means.

now, i want to be clear. when i say "i hate corn," i'm using a very general term ("corn"), to describe a very specific food (plain corn). i explain this because i don't want people who have been kind enough to feed me before (particularly my mother and people from my mission) thinking that they gave me meals i had to gag down. in complete honesty, i can remember very few meals past the age of thirteen that i had a sincere dislike for. why is this? because if corn is in it's proper place, it's really not all bad. let's take a look at corn's pleasant side, shall we?

good corn.

corn is basically good when it's not left to its own to taste like corn. corn in a casserole? delightful. corn on the cob? what a treat. popcorn? no one could question it's appeal. however, you'll note that in each of these, corn is one of two things. a) fresh, or b) part of a greater whole. one of these two elements must be present. much like myself. if i'm not a) fresh (as in, "funky fresh," not as in sexual harrassment "fresh"), or b) part of a greater whole (with other people), i can become very unpleasant to be around. possibly because of my smell. that could also be the same as corn. however, i guess corn's smell dissipates when with other things. i'm not sure mine does... but i digress.

see? i can enjoy corn in a sense. if it's not overpowering, it's fine.

but all too often, i get a glimpse of corn's darker side...

bad corn

i wonder if corn just needs a chaperon, because it isn't bad when it's supervised. it's only when we leave corn to it's own design things get bad. really, this is only canned, creamed, or frozen corn served as a stand alone. a side. something to be eaten kernel by kernel. yes, rest assured, it is that bad. to me, anyway. i'd like to say that's not the same as me like we compared earlier, but i'll let you all decide for yourselves.

the smell, the taste, the texture. i cannot bring myself to enjoy corn in this capacity. i'm sorry, and i'm sure that most of you disagree with my frightening caricature of the corn kernel. however, i stand by my position. sorry corn, you're like the friend i only want to see if you're with other people i want to see more. or like me, as i generally am the friend people only want to see if with other people they want to see more. dig?


well corn, have a good day. i'm sure there are still plenty of people in the world that are still happy to devour your wicked little self. now if you don't mind, i'm going to hang out with my friends, the peas.

revelations from the noggin (fairly boring).

thanks is owed to my friend lee-ann for her post on her blog (found here, if you're curious) that featured some tests she took from the noggin website. now, not only do i love taking pointless quizzes, and love noggin from my teenage days, but i'm also eager to find distractions from lots of things. you may have noticed that from the slur of posts over the last little bit in comparison to my usual consistency in posting. you could say i'm blog vomiting, or blomiting, these days. or maybe blogiting... i can't decide.


anyway, some results for you. and some commentary.

this one may or may not be accurate according to which element of my life you want to take in for examination. on the whole, i'll say that's fairly accurate.



this one isn't very accurate at all. i watch gossip girl when i'm the mood for just about anything, because i'm always in the mood for gossip girl.







key word: jolly. when you're jolly, you can get away with any flavor. you can also melt in pockets--don't read into that.





i didn't realize this test was just for girls until half way through, and it was only about six eight questions long, so i finished it anyway. besides, the semester is starting soon so i need all the tips i can get. sadly, this one didn't prove all that helpful as i already planned on wearing plenty of plaid.

and to end on a strong note, one more bit of evidence that i should have been born with a horn growing out of my forehead, just like i've been saying all along. we all knew that i had to end this slur of quizzes with one that was accurate.


well, that was a waste of time for both you and me. hopefully you didn't bother reading unless you were as bored or desperate for distraction as i was when i wrote it/was doing my research for it.

and by way of announcement, mark williams is very cool. we once lit a small, paper mermaid on fire. i'll have to tell that story another day. it was fun. i have pictures too.


so long, everybody.

rabbit holes (radio version).

i'm in the middle of a weird phase right now.

life right now smacks a bit of when i wake up from sleeping in and can't quite make out what's really going on. even when i do, everything still feels just a little bit off. my daily schedule, hobbies, ability to do random things, none of them quite seem to fit the usual sound, smell, taste, feeling, or appearance of life. maybe it's from all the pizza.

i had a much bigger, much moodier post written up already. i wrote it over an hour's time whilst watching 'westworld.' (on a side note, that was a very good library find. i'm thoroughly enjoying it. it even stars yul brynner for all you 'king and i' types.) i was going to post it, but as i realized it was around three pages long, remarkably melodramatic, and really just annoying (as i would imagine to any reader), i decided to simply e-mail it to myself and forget posting it. maybe i would have thought otherwise if bothered reading it. it was too long and moody, though, so here you go instead. you should be glad i did so. all two of you that will read this.

basically, this post is just here so i can satisfy my need to post something after writing such a long post, and in turn not posting it. this is a sort of sad excuse for a post. like eating a cereal box because you threw away all of the cereal... yeah. just like that.

and now, since you bothered reading, here's part of the last post. it was the light hearted climax of an otherwise heavy handed piece of writing. it has an ironic history about it in context, but i'll leave it for now. if you're really that interested in it you can ask me, you two readers.

and i one day hope to smoke my awkwardness and everything else with it into extinction. figuratively, of course.

see you later. i promise the next post will be a bit more uppity and a little less johny raincloud.

facebook fiasco. (an apology and explanation)

well, this was a little embarrassing...

i'm assuming most of you are completely familiar with facebook (as you probably found this blog via facebook), but in case you are not... click here.

anyway, when i first arrived home from my mission, upon much encouragement, i obtained a facebook account and it lived a happy two month life. after two months, however, some problems arose. it seems in my facebook infancy i was a bit naive (much as i had been when i used myspace) and just added whoever requested me as a friend and accepted any old application invite sent. this lead to problems as between the (at times, racy) crew i had assimilated and the applications i had carelessly added took a toll on my poor account and it was malfunctioning in bizarre ways and was getting bizarre messages and wall posts to boot. rather than attempt to purify, as it was already falling apart, i simply deleted it and started a new account. (be my friend on my real account here, if you so desire)

well, i did so and all was well. i re-assimilated all my old friends and none of the same worthless applications or weirdos from before. all was well.

here's where things got confusing for some of you (and for me as well, as will be explained). it turns out that facebook never actually deletes your account. instead, it will render it as inactive, but retain all your friends, photos, conversation history, so on and so forth. i remember that i had quite a few photos on my old account, and being uncertain if i had them on my computer, i decided to hop back on a year later and reclaim the photos, which it let me do without problem. in order to prevent confusion and people wondering why they have two trace lund's with on their friends list, i did what i could to make it so the profile was essentially invisible. i deleted any friends i recognized or had conversations with and put all my account settings to private so that i could only see everything. people i didn't even remember i didn't bother deleting since i had already been deleting things for twenty minutes. i got lazy. besides, not like anyone that i didn't know would even notice if i randomly appeared again for two days on their friends list.

well, all was well and good, or so i thought, until i was hit with a rather entertaining (if not disturbing) message from a friend. he had (i'm guessing) been tagged in one of the aforementioned photos and noticed that they belonged to me, with a different name. he attempted to add me as a friend and said this:

hey man. is this your new drag queen name account or what? = P.

i didn't exactly grasp what in the world he was talking about, but it did make it clear that my "bullet-proofing" my account didn't work.

i wrote him this response from my real account:

hey bro. sorry about the confusion. remember last year when i got a new facebook account? maybe not... anyway. that's my old account. i just realized i still had loads of photos up on it and i'm trying to get all of them off and on to the computer. hahahahahaha, and thanks for your assumption that i have a drag queen name. did you like it? hahahahaha.

so all i know now is that apparently people can see i have two accounts up, it is causing at least some confusion, and for some reason my friend mentioned drag queens. needless to say, he wasn't the only one that was confused.

to do what i could in the mean time, i removed the photo of me in hopes of making it clear that it was not my actual account.

the message was sent this morning. autumn offered some insight when she mentioned that she had found the account somehow (which confused me because i thought the thing was invisible to everybody else) and mentioned that the people i had on my friends list were all pretty weird.

now things started coming together. i didn't bother looking (i just deleted the account again... i'll check if i have the photos elsewhere), but apparently the people i didn't bother deleting were all a bit... colorful. colorful enough that when i mentioned the whole thing to autumn, she said, "i wasn't sure... they might have been drag queens, i guess."

for the record, i don't remember every adding any as friends. however, i added anyone who sent a friend request and i don't even know any of these people... so let's just let it go.

and now it is done. so, don't worry about it folks. if you see anything by "traxy land", no, it is not my drag queen name, it's simply the name i changed the account to so people would know it wasn't my real account.

sorry for the confusion, and please never bring this up again. thanks!