My new favorite band is Cloud Cult, and, as they are very little known, I feel it is my obligation to tell everyone how incredible they are.
Cloud Cult officially formed in 1997 as an experimental solo project of singer-songwriter Craig Minowa. Minowa also established his own not-for-profit record label, Earthology Records, in order to completely self-produce his own work. Even now, more than ten years later, the band has not accepted a record deal from any major label, despite many offers.
Earthology Records operates from Minowa's basement at his organic farm in Minnesota. It uses reclaimed materials like old cardboard packaging and eggcrate foam for sound-proofing. Initially, thousands of old used CD cases were used for packaging Cloud Cult's CDs. Now that their material is distributed nationally, new packaging is made, but it is printed on 100% post-consumer recycled material with vegetable inks. The CDs are even wrapped in corn-based biodegradable shrink-wrap, which you can eat, if you really want to. Cloud Cult tours in a van that uses solar energy and biodiesel fuel, and they plant ten trees for every thousand albums sold.
In 2002, Craig and his wife, Connie, tragically lost their two-year-old son, Kaidin. Craig's music became an enormous outlet for his pain, grief and search for understanding. The album that followed was Cloud Cult's first to be nationally distributed, and it became the basis for the structure of the band today. One might think that a band with roots in such tragedy would be depressing, but it's actually quite the opposite. Minowa's lyrics express a childish curiosity at the mystery of life, and they are hopeful, contemplative and uplifting.
It's difficult to place Cloud Cult in any particular genre. The band currently consists of seven members: Craig Minowa, who sings and plays guitar, a bassist, a drummer, a violinist, a cellist, and two painters who create the album artwork and also create paintings live during concerts. One of these visual artists is Connie Minowa, Craig's wife. The lyrical content of the music, again, is often dark yet is always optimistic. Minowa continually uses his songs to philosophically ponder life, death and the meaning of it all with a hopeful attitude, boyish charm and beautiful musical style.
And below is a fan-created video for the song "When Water Comes to Life," and then the official video for "Everybody Here is a Cloud." These are only two songs of a ton that I hope some people will soon have the pleasure of hearing! Enjoy!
This blog is pathetic! I haven't posted in over half a year!
Well, this year, instead of making a long list of "resolutions" in the form of tedious rules about drinking eight glasses of water every day and going to the gym three days a week and reading two books every month and not eating fast food more than two times a week, I'm just resolving to be more mindful and present in my own life, making good use of my spare time but not getting too worked up about perfection.
This morning my peacefully optimistic state of mind was challenged already. I had an interview at an optometrist's office, and the job was just divinely perfect for me. The guy who did the interview was seriously prepared to hire me on the spot, full time, starting on Monday, if only I would have accepted the fact that he absolutely positively will not pay me a cent more than $7.50 an hour. POOP!
It was so depressing leaving that interview knowing that I could have had the job...actually kind of working toward my career for the first time in my life, never having to work on Sundays or any time past 7 p.m., commuting about three minutes away from my apartment instead of thirty, and having a sound-minded, intelligent person with good people skills for a boss instead of a moody, uneducated crazy lady...if only I were willing to commit to a fairly major decrease in the quality of life for me and my husband. Plus, it's so insulting to think that that's really all I'm worth to a prospective employer. I know it's not like I have a superb career to my name or anything, but I'm not at all lacking customer service experience. I even have lower-level managerial experience, a steady history of getting promotions and raises almost immediately after getting hired, and great references. All that, and I'm still only worth barely minimum wage.
I'm really not totally sure that I'm ever going to find a better job than what I have now as long as I still live in Indiana. But, I need to learn to have more gratitude for the things that I do have, and appreciate the fact that I at least have a decent paying job right now. I may hate it with every fiber of my being, but it's more than a lot of people have right now. And even if I'm stuck at Bed Bath & Beyond for another two years (God forbid), it's just two years, not forever. I'm working toward something better, and I have a lovingly supportive husband to help me get through it all.
So here's to a year of gratitude, compassion, mindfulness and ambition!
I haven't posted a lot lately because I've been really busy, like I keep saying, but I think it's also because I've had relatively little to complain about. Usually I'm posting for the sake of some rant or other, but lately everything has pretty much just been going well.
Mike and I are doing great. We're really laid back, but we have a lot of fun. We've been going to the gym three times a week, and we're on a huge cooking kick. We've made all kinds of stuff, from stir fry to burritos to chicken with mushroom sauce to meat loaf to Thai beef curry. Tonight we had stuffed bell peppers, which it turns out are extremely delicious.
I loved my first semester back in school to the point of severe nerdiness, and I got a 4.0 for the semester. I'm working on a really stupid one-unit online class now, and I start calculus as a summer course in a few weeks.
Now that I'm out of school for a little bit, I've been picking up some extra hours at work here and there while I have the time to make the extra money. Even work is going much better than usual, even though I've been working more often. One of my managers just left on maternity leave, and it has made a world of difference. Throughout her entire pregnancy she didn't do anything at all, and her attitude and weird directions and everything else really just got in the way for me and other people to get anything done. Now that she's gone all these unfinished, way overdue projects are getting completed, and my area of the store already looks ten times better than it did just a few weeks ago. So not only do I finally not have a huge mess over my head, but I'm getting a lot of credit where a lot of credit is due for me taking the initiative to fix all the stuff that she left completely undone. Plus all the tension that this particular person created has been lifted, which has made it a lot easier for me to work with a lot of obnoxious people. They still bug me...a lot...but I can just ignore it now without it getting to me too badly because so much other stress is off of my shoulders.
And so that's pretty much my life at the moment. Oh yeah, and I have a new band...they're called MGMT. Amazon classifies them under "neo-psychadelia," which I think is kind of the best way to describe them. Watch this video...they totally ride around on owls and kitties! And then the guy shoots this monster with a flaming arrow, and it explodes into a sea of dolphins!
So I totally love that all the ads for receptionists and front desk people honestly consider it reasonable to ask for 2-3 years receptionist or front desk experience. Because if I had been a receptionist for the past three years, I would totally be thinking to myself... What on earth am I going to do with myself now? Oh, I know, I should be a receptionist again!
And, really, what exactly is there to learn about being a receptionist in the second and third year that you didn't learn in the first? How complicated do they really think it could possibly be?
Anyway, I'm thinking about waiting tables. I always pictured myself just dropping stuff everywhere if I were a waitress, but when I think about the huge armfulls of stuff I carry around work and up and down ladders while still helping customers in between, I think I could handle it. And that definitely wouldn't interfere with class schedules, and if I worked someplace busy I could probably make similar money to what I make now by just working on Friday and Saturday nights and then just one or two other times during the week. No benefits, though, that would suck. But it's just a thought.
Last night while driving home after another stressful night of work, I almost hit a rabbit. I didn't hit him, but I almost did. He ran in front of my car and froze in terror at the last second, and I went zooming right over the poor little guy. I didn't realize at first if I'd hit him or not, and when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him still in the road, standing there just frozen in fear, I freaked out and started crying.
Now, I am a rather sensitive girl who likes animals and has never hit a living thing with her car before, sure. But I don't think that kind of thing would normally get me so upset if I hadn't just finished another seven hours at the lovely Bed Bath & Beyond.
All day, every day, I greet people obsessively and practically stalk them with a ridiculous grin, just about begging them to let me help them, just because that's what that company thinks customers want. The people I work for send secret shoppers in after me to make sure I'm doing what they want, whether real-life customers like it or not. And I'm so scared of getting a bad grade from one of their little spies that I spend my time shouting out desperate greetings to people who pretend they can't hear me even though I'm right next to them, or who yell at me or make sarcastic comments to me because they feel oppressed or harrassed.
If it were up to me, I wouldn't be acting anywhere near the way that I do at work. But, unfortunately, what I'm paid to do is to go about playing this role, and when it upsets people, they don't get angry at managment or at the company, they just get angry at me, even though I'm not like that at all. And then at the end of the day there's this little rabbit in the road that is absolutely terrified of me, and it just makes me feel absolutely horrible because I didn't mean to scare him and I don't think I'm a scary person and I feel like I need to go back and explain that I'm not like that. Really, I'm not.
Anyway, Mike and I just now discovered Metalocalypse, and it's my new favorite show.
