paper graffiti

When I was in the 5th grade, I read the book Sadako and The Thousand Paper Cranes, by Eleanor Coerr. The book is the story of a Japanese girl living in Hiroshima who falls sick with leukemia, the “atom bomb disease.” She recalls a legend that says if a sick person folds one thousand paper origami cranes, the gods will grant that person’s wish and make them healthy again. This book touched me so much, and I was only 12. I remember how hard I cried–harder, I think, than I’d ever cried over a book–and how much it inspired me to study more history and learn about the Holocaust. Sadako’s brave struggle with her illness inspired her classmates, and after her death they campaigned to build the Children’s Peace Statue in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in honor of Sadako and the other children who were victims of the Hiroshima bombing.

I’ve had a soft spot for origami ever since. I remember after I read the book and started doing the project I was assigned to do, I decided that for the required artistic part of the project I would fold 1000 cranes, too. I had a crush on a boy named Phillip, who apparently returned said crush because he helped me fold cranes during any free time we had–reading hour, recess, after school. He moved away that summer and I never saw him again, but he was the last boy to be truly nice to me between 5th and 7th grade.

When we went to the Dallas City Arts Fest a few weekends ago, I was walking through the Trammell Crow Asian Art Museum when my breath caught. There was a long glassed-in hallway that led from one room of the exhibit to another, and hanging in the spill of sunlight were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of paper cranes in all colors and sizes. It made me think immediately of Sadako and the legend of the paper cranes. I was very glad I had my camera.

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So MOL Junior requested a mix CD from me…well, actually he requested a Neko Case greatest hits CD, and I just don’t feel like I’m familiar enough with her body of work to actually put together a CD of nothing but Neko. So he gets a mix CD from me instead.

I have realized that even though I thought I was off of the mix CD mindset, it’s practically writing its own track list courtesy of my iPod’s shuffle songs feature. I had my iPod on in the car yesterday on my way to meet Shawn after work, and it played about 3 or 4 songs that I immediately added to my mental list of tracks to include on Ronnie’s mix. I have so many songs at this point that the shuffle feature is the only way I manage to not forget about some of them. Luke mentioned yesterday on my Monday morning mix that his iPod’s shuffle feature has pretty much changed his life, and I am totally with him on that. But, my whole life-changing shuffle moment goes wayyyyy back to college, when mp3s were first becoming a big thing.

It was my freshman year of college, and I had driven up to Oklahoma with my best friend. We were in Stillwater so she could visit her boyfriend at OSU and I could visit a high school friend. We parted ways for the evening and I ended up hopping from a party to a club and back to a party again with said friend, her boyfriend, and other people I met that night. I remember sitting in a dorm room, taking shots and listening to the endless stream of music coming from her boyfriend’s computer. His Winamp was on shuffle so I heard everything from Garth Brooks to Tori Amos to Pink Floyd that night. I was amazed at the sheer amount of music it was shuffling through, and that’s when I realized that it was all mp3s. And I took another shot.

How crazy, I thought at the time. I was also extremely jealous because the laptop I took to college had–I kid you not–a 525MB hard drive, about 100MB of which was free for my use. So, no mp3s for me unless I stored them on a Zip disk. But I couldn’t believe how much music he had on his computer, and I thought that was the greatest thing ever. Having all your music in one place, and letting chance just choose your soundtrack for you? Beautiful. Yeah, I knew that there is such a thing as a 100-disc CD changer, but this just hit me harder for some reason. When the iPod came out, I thought, “YES! This is what I’ve wanted since that semi-drunk moment when I stood in awe of John’s mp3 collection! This is the music shuffle I can take with me! I will never have a quiet moment again.”

I made quite a few mix tapes in my stereo days, but CD technology and the mp3 pretty much revolutionized mixes for me. They were so much easier to make–a point which I’m sure Rob Gordon and possibly my boyfriend would take issue with. Where’s the beauty, the blood sweat and tears of it all if all you do is drag files into a window and then press the “Burn” button? Well, to be perfectly honest, I think I agonize more NOW over the contents of a mix than I did when I was sitting in front of my dual deck stereo, with tapes littering my bedroom floor and a garbled, crossed out and rewritten track list in my lap. I made Shawn a mix CD for his 30th birthday that I literally spent weeks redoing. I would obsessively listen to the track order and the flow of the music and the lyrics to make sure that it was perfect…and in the end, I think it was pretty close. It’s one of the mix CDs that I am most proud of.

Now the iPod and the digital music revolution take mixes one step further–you can create any number of playlists for your iPod (or other mp3 player, but let’s face it–in my world there IS no other mp3 player!) that function as your digital mix CDs. Want tracks to workout to? Want to set the mood when your honey comes over? Want the best road trip songs in one place? Make a playlist.

And of course, there is my beloved shuffle feature, which makes your whole iPod function like a mix CD. You never know what’s going to come up–though with my iPod it’s usually pretty Ben Folds and Bjork-heavy. Lately, my iPod also seems to be into Kasabian and The Killers. I guess it’s branching out. But like I said before, Ronnie’s going to have one hell of a mix CD thanks to the shuffle feature. And you can bet your sweet ass that it’s going to have a Radiohead track on it! Just shut up and listen, Fauss.

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MOL Junior asked me:
please explain your tom cruise obsession. is this a tom cruise blog
or what?

My response:

Fauss–I shouldn’t have to explain anything to you, considering your blog could be the “random TV haiku” blog or the “Ryan Adams makes me wet my pants!” blog. Plus, you don’t like Radiohead. BUT since I consider you to be a very good friend, I will explain.

So now everyone’s like, “OMG Tom! He’s so weird! and maybe GAY! but look how crazy he is!!!” and I feel justified.

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I have been leaving the Tom Cruise picture up just for The Keymaster and The Monkey Attack Victim, but I guess I have to blog eventually. But never fear…it probably goes without saying that Tom McCrazyPants will show back up on this blog to be made fun of eventually.

So lately I’ve been getting a rash of spam comments on my blog. I’m about to take the law into my own hot little hands and install a spam filter on my blog software. Ahh, the beauty of running the blog on your own server–you can add all this nifty cool stuff to it. I love it! But if anyone’s interested in questionably legal online gambling, porn and Cialis softtabs (I know MOL Junior is all about the porn and performance enhancement), then please feel free to surf some of my older posts before I clean house and take the spam comments out.

I haven’t really been feeling that creative or finding myself with a whole lot to blog about. So, dear Paper Graffiti readers, what kind of content do you want to be reading? My dashing and witty boyfriend has lots of “features” on his blog, which I’ve done in the past but have come up blank lately when trying to think of new ones. Anyone have any suggestions? This blog is here to entertain you, after all.

If you don’t suggest anything, I’m just going to resort to posting Tom Cruise pictures like this all day long. Please, think of the children.

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