the CUTENESSSS!!!!!

Cute Things,

and in particular cats :)

        Sometimes, one just needs to look at some cute pictures. I have a quite a few folders on the desktop of my laptop, and within them are a great deal more folders. Most likely my fullest folder is the one I have entitled "screensavers", as originally it contained only pictures that I was using for my screensavers, but anyways, it also contains a folder called "bonus", and in that folder is a variety of sub-folders where I keep all my pictures, probably 90 percent of which are random things I've found on the internet. One of the folders therein is entitled "KITTIES!! and other cute things", and it's where I keep my cute pictures, and a while ago today I was just looking at it and I went, hey, this could be the third blog post I need. So, this post is pretty much going to be me spamming my own blog with a plethora of mostly-cat cute pictures. Enjoy :)

Sometimes cuteness and humor go quite well together :) Both can make you smile.

I think this was from that article on cats in the shape of hearts that was my "kitty cat of the month" thing for February.

I've spent quite some time looking at breeders' sites for Norwegian forest cats, and so quite a few of these pics are of adorable baby wegies from such sites, including this beautiful little calico. 

By the way, I found all these pictures on the internet and none of them are mine. I don't know who made this, but it's an amazing piece of artwork, and I actually have it in my art folder as well. I just think it's so beautiful, and it is just a lovely picture of a kitty :)

also from the cats with hearts article I had up for Valentine's day

another pretty calico wegie

That awkward moment when your cat realizes it's not a bird. 

A few of these actually came from my search for my first "kitty cat of the month" once this became my Creative Writing blog, thus all the writing-themed kitties.

Another from that heart-kitty article

A couple more writing kitties

This is actually something I found on the blog of someone else in our creative writing class, and I liked it a lottle too much not to have it in my cuteness folder, and thence in this post.

This is a Pallas cat. They're not a domestic cat, but they're small like them. I first came across Pallas cats in my "Encyclopedia of Cats" I got one Christmas (which actually I still haven't found since we moved). It was mostly about domestic cats and information on them and breeds and things, but it also contained a section on wild cats, including the Pallas cat. I just saw the pictures and thought they were sooo cute :) and so now there are a bunch of pictures of them in my folder, too. I think this joke is referring to the fact that their legs are rather short. Or perhaps the kitty is asking for more chicken legs to eat. I can't say for certain... 

Makes me laugh and think of Composition every time. Hehehe kitties know best :)

more adorable Pallas kitties :) Their big eyes always make them look so surprised. And so cute!!

I'm not even sure I get what a plot bunny is, but this kitty is one of my writer buddies :)

Such a pretty calico wegie :)

This was from another article in my blog's monthlies on "reasons cats are taking over the world". Its caption said something about how elusive they are. It's another adorable gif kitty 

I would love to read this book

These are my current kitties of the month, as it so happens

Somehow this makes me think of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. You could just see this kitty cradling the ring...

Not everyday can one combine a cat and a Chuck Norris joke.

BABY WEGIES!!

like a burrito. Om nom. (another non-domestic cat, in this case a lynx)

Also from the heart  article

This one's a munchkin kitty hehe :)

Sooo little!

also some adorableness from my classmate's blog. I just can't stop giddily giggling when I see it. 

Wow, this post got long! And that's not even the whole folder. But here beyond the violet mist, we love to share the cute, and thus the smiles.

driving me mad

Driving

and why I hate it

        We were discussing in our literature class one day how driving is traditionally seen as a symbol of teenagehood and freedom and all that good stuff, because we were reading a poem some person had written about how their car was their sanctuary and how it was universally this place for all teenagers, how it made them feel free and powerful and at peace. 

        And I just don't get it. I rather hate driving. I mean, I fully understand that the ability to drive a car is an essential skill in today's world (unless you live in, like, NYC or something, which I don't), and so I know I must learn it in order to be able to function and go places and things, but I dread it like normal people dread an essay test. (I would gladly take a good essay test over driving most any day.) I know I have to drive, but I really just don't particularly want to. It stresses me out to no end; I get so tense when I'm driving. As soon as I've pulled in and parked and turned off the car I just let out this huge breath of relief and think something to the lines of Thank goodness, I'm done driving now. 

        It's just, when I'm driving, I have to be so painfully focused. I am not a naturally focused person. My mind dances around from topic to topic as naturally as I walk. I daydream and zone out and find myself lost in my own thoughts many times a day, and it's fine. I can still pay attention in class, still do well on tests (though, granted, I frequently take longer than most people), still carry on conversations with people, still walk places without running into things, and do very well at a great variety of school-related things, and all the while it's alright if my thoughts and my focus are drifting a little here and there. 
        Perhaps some psychiatrist or someone would say I'm, like, ADD or something like that, but I've never really cared for psychiatrists. I mean, I'm sure they're good people and trying to help and everything, and in lots of cases I suppose they do, but it seems to me that things like ADD are overdiagnosed these days, and that children are given too much medicine for things. For instance, there was a girl I knew in Virginia who had ADD or something like that, and she was always on medication. She sat with my friends and I at lunch, and oftentimes she seemed very sad and quiet. Then, one day, she came to school having forgotten to take her medication, and she was so amazingly happy. I had never seen her so jubilant. She was much more talkative and she laughed and she was just beaming all through lunch. I felt like it was the first time I'd ever really met her, and that she was finally allowed to be herself. Yes, she was a little noisy and she had a habit of cutting other people off in conversations, and she was perhaps a smidge (quite a large smidge, actually) hyper. But she was so incredibly happy, like I'd never seen her before. The next day, though, she was back on her medication, and she was slow, quiet, and sad-seeming once more. I'd like to think that she could learn to control things like being hyper and talking over people on her own and that she could be so much happier all the time if she wasn't on medication like that, but it's not really for me to say or interfere with in her life, but still, it made me feel so bad for her, how that day just made me realize, who she really is is being trapped down inside of her all the time. It struck me as quite tragic.
        But, anyways, I digress. Hahaha look, I'm digressing about attention deficit disorder. Oh, there's some definite irony there. I really do digress a lot, though. I suppose it is something of a reflection of how my mind is working. I just love to think of lots of things, and it's so hard to not keep thinking of a bunch of different things all the time.

        When I'm driving a car, I really have to suppress my natural thought process. Behind the wheel of a car, my very life suddenly hinges on my ability to be conscious and aware of so many things that it puts an incredible strain on my brain and my emotions. I must monitor my speed without staring constantly at the speedometer (without even glancing for more than a scarce moment, as the road requires such instant responses), I must precisely guide the wheel of the car so that the vehicle remains on the proper right side of the road, especially when going up hills or on divided roads (we live on gravel, so sometimes it's okay to drive down the middle a little, though it still sort of makes me uneasy), and yet I must not go too far to the right, especially this time of year when the muddy thaw is making the sides of the road soft and my mom warns me that they could easily pull us into the ditch, and I must be aware of the other cars around me and more often than not passing me (I drive quite slowly--after all, if you drive faster, it's just that much harder to control and that much faster you have to process every single thing that's happening, the faster you have to think and act and react--and so basically I drive as slowly as my mom will allow me to), and I must slow down to turn and use my blinker at the proper time, and eventually I'm going to have to learn to use my mirrors though I often ignore those because there's already so much going on to which my attention must singularly be given, and I have to turn at the proper angles and degrees to stay on the correct part of the road, and I have to slow down and stop at the right times, and I have to just generally keep the car so very under control and do the right thing and react the right way at a moment's notice if, say, something leaps out into the road or something, and I have to do all these things and more and be so very in control of the car, and I have to consciously remember that I'm driving, and I have to think about that and focus on that and remember that I'm driving, and I have to hold myself in and lock myself onto that. It's more stressful than calculus. Literally, I feel more stressed when I am driving a car than I do when I am taking a calculus test. Honest to goodness.

        I can't wander off into thought about the intricate relationships of characters on Once Upon a Time, or about my future (which it feels like is in the process of being decided presently), or about the stories I'm writing and where I'm going with them, or about how gorgeous the clear spring day is, or guys I've had crushes on, or about how I'm looking forward to being able to take my bunnies out walking when the ground is clear and firm again, or about Rumbelle, or about the Divergent movie we're going to go see tonight (now that we saw Friday), or what I'd like to be eating right then, or about the complicated concept of 'home', or about the random pimple on my nose, or what I'll do for my blogs this week, or the fun song that's on the radio (I can't even very easily listen to the radio while driving yet, because I'm too tempted to think about the songs), or why we find one color more visually appealing than the others, or any of the plethora of random things I'd love to be wandering off into thought about. The whole of my being must be constantly centered on the concept of driving, and not only the general concept of driving, which I'm thinking about right now, but the precise moment I'm in, and every factor and every thing that is happening around me. It's so hard to stay in that moment and to realize presently I am driving, not I have been driving or will be driving, and I have to deal with it all so instantaneously. I can't forget for a split moment that I am presently driving, which is incredibly tough. It's very hard to be completely in the moment and aware like that. 
        Also, there's just so little time to process things. I like to process things thoroughly, I really do. I can spend quite a bit of time thinking about a relatively simple thing, and even more time on a more complex thing, and I love when I have the time to slow down and think about things. That's one of the things I really like about these blog posts; they afford me the time to slow down and think about things I've been meaning to think about. I mean, for example, I knew going into this post the gist of why I hate driving, but exploring it in this way has helped even me understand it somewhat better. But, see, I can't think like I'm thinking now while I am driving, even if I am now hurrying to finish. I just love deep and best of all thorough  and complete thought, the deep mental examination of various topics.
        I think the longest drive I've ever done was about a 12-mile round trip, from our house to a small town called Harmony and back (which, by the way, I think is quite a lovely name for a cute little town. It's very Amity, in keeping with my next blog post. At least, I think the post on Divergent will be done right after this one. I guess we'll see. Actually, now I've decided that post is coming out next week.), and it was so... exhausting to be so concentrated on driving for, like, 2o minutes solid. I know, a lot of people drive longer than that, but it's just so hard for me. I hate the mental exertion of pinning my mind down so very hard. Also, whenever I go around a curve I feel like I have to slow down so much so I don't go off the road, and I especially hate meeting a semi because they're so huge and it always feels like they're going to hurtle straight into you.  
        Perhaps another part of my problem is that I'm always too aware of some things, namely the fact that there are any number of ways to make a mistake and suddenly bring about the death of myself and my mother in the passenger seat beside me, and the fact that driving is one of the most deadly activities in which people regularly participate, and everything feels so fragile when I'm driving, so precariously hinged on my not making one little mistake and so prone to change in a moment if my thoughts are allowed to wander naturally. My dad asked whether there was any specific incident that had traumatized me to make me afraid of driving, but I don't think there is; I think I'm simply far too aware of everything. They say teenagers feel immortal and invincible, but I don't, not in a paranoid, terrified-of-everything kind of way, but in a realistic, understanding-the-ever-present-dangers kind of way. And so I have to constantly focus, because I know it can immediately change, and this stresses me out. 
       In general, I just really don't like driving, and I can't help it. Here beyond the violet mist, cars are not a requirement to travel about our realm; instead, one may simply walk or fly. 

follow-up: insanely good music

Songs about Insanity

continued

        Just last week, I did a blog post on some of the best songs about insanity I know, and just now, in the shower, I thought of a song, and I went, oh, I should've had that one in my post! Of course, I'm sure I'll still think of plenty more as time goes on, but I just decided to throw this one on here. I suppose I could just edit my original post and throw this one onto it, but this way it can also be another post (in the now-classic tradition of late-at-night-Saturday-blogging) and I know this will be quicker than the post on Divergent I've started, so I'll finish that one next week and use this one for this week. 

        So, what is this song I thought of while in the shower? It's "No Rain" by Blind Melon. 

from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL6tB_0ZJtw

The first line of this song that always comes into my head is that bit, as displayed in above screenshot, where it goes, "it's not sa-ane, it's not saaa-aaa-ane", and so obviously that's about insanity, or, well, not being sane. It's very catchy, too--the line is catchy, and the song as a whole is. This song does have a light, airy, happily insane feel to it, too. It's definitely about insanity much more than it's about the lack of rain. There's another video of it, too, the one that's the actual music video of it, and it further conveys the themes of insanity in this song. I decided to take my screenshot of the lyrics, but here's the link to the music video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58. This kind of insanity is perhaps more related to the kind I explored in my literary program, which is basically like a different-from-societal-norms type of insanity. Really, there's all kinds of insanity, and the songs from my original blog post cover quite a few of them. I should do another blog post on the varieties of insanity, actually. But yeah, this is a very good song about insanity. 

Upon occasion, there are tap-dancing bumblebees beyond the violet mist (which is either a reference to the music video for this song or evidence of insanity, or perhaps both.)

friending

Making a Friend

        I made a friend at state speech today. It was really a great feeling. For time purposes, I shall now give you the tale in brief. Basically, I was waiting to go in to do my storytelling, and another girl was too, and she asked what my story was, and I told her it was from the Lord of the Rings and it was about Elves and she just looked at me in awe, which made me feel really good. Her storytelling was right before mine and she watched mine though I really couldn't watch hers, unfortunately. But after she watched mine, she came out in the hall and actually hugged me and told me she was sure I'd go to all state (as it turned out I got two II's and a I, which, to get to all state, you basically have to not only get all I's but also have the special reccomendation of the judges) but anyways she was really nice and supportive. We hung out and chatted a little more later. She was a lot of fun and she was really big on hugs, which was nice. It also reminded and re-motivated me to make a facebook so I can friend her. I shall do that at some point. 

     Beyond the violet mist today, we cherished the happy presence of a new friend. :)

Returning

        On the bus ride home from speech, I have been writing about my day in my notebook. It's not a journal, per say, but more just an attempt to remember things from the day that I found worth note. It has been a good day and I want to capture some of these feelings, in graphite strewn across paper, to look back on some nostalgic day, and even to concrete them in my head. Despite the best efforts of "daylight saving's time", the light has been steadily dimming and at some point, ten minutes ago or so, I decided the blue evening light was becoming deep enough to make writing challenging, and so I pulled my surprisingly utile miniature flashlight from my purse, and I hold the little pink metal tube in my left hand now, its soft, somewhat weak golden glow smoothly laid upon my paper, where I continue to scratch down memories. Someone mentions that we're almost to school, and looking up I see it is true, so I cut off mid-story, scrawling "bus draws nigh school must pack" in the middle of my sentence before snapping off my little golden light, folding closed my black and white patterned notebook with blue and purple flowers swirled about its design, and guiding my various scattered things into my bulging bag, which I have fondly referred to as my 'bindle' since we read Of Mice and Of Men in American Literature class some time back. (I learned that a bindle is like a pack a traveller makes of a blanket and sometimes a pillow rolled up with things stuffed in it. Though I only roll my pillow inside my blanket and stuff it along with my other things into a bag, I still like the term. It was about the only good thing to come out of that depressing book.) As the bus pulls to a stop in front of the mostly darkened school, I pull on my overcoat and shrug my bindle up, first onto my shoulder and then resigning myself to the fact that my bindle wants to sit down on my elbow instead and will not be reasoned with. I double-check behind myself that I have not left anything on my seat as I will probably never be on this bus again, and then I join the end of the line filing off of the bus. I murmur something to the lines of "thanks" to the bus driver and then stand on the sidewalk in the unfortunately wintery air which dances with a cold evening breeze and look around the parking lot for my mom. She has not arrived yet and so I proceed towards the deserted school with not quite half of the group that rode the bus back.
        There is a little general conversation with the other kids waiting about things like how they did and how tired we are. Once they leave I converse with my teacher and speech coach, who stays to wait until I go. The school's dark, eerie emptiness prompts me to mention sensational rumors of hauntings in a school nearby the one I attended before we moved. My teacher mentions her hopes for what dinner her husband will be making. Just as I am calling my mom's cell phone, she pulls up, and I tell her I summoned her by calling. My teacher laughs and comments on the perfect timing. My mom apologizes for being late, and we all wish one another good nights. I toss my rather large bindle in the back seat of the car and hop in the front. I talk about many things, not least of which is my great fatigue, and Mom talks about things she watched at speech that I didn't and things she did later with Grandma. We discuss dinner; Mom suggests the small pizza place in the downtown. Oddly, I note, I'm not exceedngly hungry, despite the fact that it is after 7:30 (as supporters of daylight's savings time would have us believe, that is) and I had a relitively early lunch. I suppose it is because of the snacks I enjoyed that afternoon.
        As we pull up to the main stretch of downtown, we notice it is already blocked off for the St. Patrick's day partying. We pull down a sidestreet and park there and begin walking towards the little pizza place. I decided to leave my heavy overcoat in the car because I was hot and I thought surely the fleece sweater, leather jacket, and shawl I am wearing under it will be plenty, but as we walk the breeze is colder than I had anticipated and I wish I hadn't left it in the car. There are already people bedecked in various green apparel ambling about the streets, most of whom appear to be in some varying degree of drunkenness. We go into the small pizza place, which never seems to be busy. I decide to get pasta, despite the fact that it is a pizza place. Typically, I would also get a soda, but as I've been consuming a great variety of mostly sugary things all day, I don't. My pasta is fairly good. I tell Mom among other things about a beautiful, poignant musical theatre I saw, which started out seeming like this sweet, lighthearted song about a girl meeting a guy and falling in love and then getting married, and then gave little glimpses of their lives together, but suddenly and abruptly turned to be about 9/11 and her husband dying in a flash, and I think nearly everyone, audience and singer alike, was wiping their eyes by the end of it. I also talk about how tired I am. As we leave the pizza place, I am cold again in the breeze, though while in the restaurant I had gotten warm enough to remove all three of my coat-type coverings (though really my shawl hardly counts as one). We see a lovely patch of vomit on the sidewalk near a bar. "You know it's St. Patrick's day weekend when..." I comment. We avoid it and head back to the car.
        On the drive home, I nap. It feels wonderful and I wish I could just continue 'til morning, but suddenly I am awakened as we are home. I lumber into the house. I would very much like to just get ready for and go to bed, but I still have blog posts to do. I do change into my pajamas first, though. It feels good to take off my traveling clothes, which is what I have been mentally referring to my abnormally abundant layers of coats as, and yet I am filled with the satisfaction of a good, full day. It was truly a full day, and a very good one, too. I saw many good performances, had the opportunity to perform, didn't have any bad incidents, and even made a friend, as described in the post after this one. I love the full days of speech and the beautiful... speech-ness with which they are filled. There is such a joy to them, and a warm, community feeling at the contest. The many pieces one may watch are diverse and wonderful, especially at state. It is a fulfilling and colorful day, and it is made even better when one gets to perform, to luxuriously express those stories on which one has been working for so long and which one knows inside out, to savor each beautiful word as it is precisely formed by one's lips. And so as I put away my coats I feel they have been used for an adventure and travelled a great distance as they are meant to, and at the same time it is a beautifully relaxing feeling to don my comfy pajamas, picking up my laptop and diving beneath my soft blankets to write my blogs with as much speed as I can manage so that I can, after brushing my teeth and whatall, I suppose, return here to finally slip into the sweet sleep that has been calling me, in all honesty for most of the day.
        We beyond the violet mist offer you all this tale of our return from another glorious day of the display of the art of the carefully crafted spoken word.

Insane Music

Insanity
and awesome songs about it :)

    We were on the subject of music in Creative Writing today, and as I thought about what song I would like to be singing in that moment, I realized that many (though not all, I should note) of my favorite songs, especially those I like to sing aloud, seemed to center on a common theme: insanity. Then, when I started thinking about songs about insanity, I thought of even more good songs. And then I thought, hey, this could be a blog post. And so, this is a blog post about songs about insanity, some of which I thought of singing in class today in CW while everyone else was singing with the happy atmosphere of a Friday afternoon, despite the fact that they were mostly singing atrocious country songs. Sorry, I can't help it, I just despise the majority of the country songs people are into these days. I don't like most of the songs in the first place, and then they play them over and over again, and they play them on the bus and in art class and everywhere and it's just like grrrr.... and they just get stuck in your head all the time! So annoying. So, no country songs on this list. Just epicness and insanity :)All of these are songs that I love and can play over and over, and that I'm actually happy to have stuck in my head. 

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77n1mDf6Iqo 
I decided to kick things off with this one, mostly because I actually did sing it in school. You see, for drama class last semester, we used to have these assignments called, "Don't be boring"s. The basic premise was that one had to get up in front of the class and do something, anything, that was not boring. For my first one, I choreographed and performed a short solo lyrical style dance to "Superman" by Five for Fighting, which we had heard the other day in our literature class because our teacher was cleverly relating the song to the tale of Icarus and Daedalus, as she was talking about the many interpretations of literature. I heard it and immediately thought it was beautiful and perfect to dance to, and so when I heard about the DBB's (short for don't be boring's), I quickly resolved to do a dance to it. In hindsight, I think I might rather have danced to "I'll follow you" by Shinedown, a song I have liked for longer and have long thought of choreographing a dance to, but dancing to Superman was nice too. 
Then, for the second DBB, I sang this song. It was pretty epic, singing this song in front of my class. I really did get into it, swinging my hair around and dancing a little (or more than a little) and singing with my whole heart even though I couldn't shove a pitch into a bucket and carry it from a foreign dimension to myself (an attempted quirky slant on the phrase "I can't carry a tune in a bucket"). I even did the insane laugh that first occurs at 1:50. It was pretty epic. By the way, if you think this version of the song cuts off abruptly, that's because "Brain Damage" is almost always played with "Eclipse" immediately after it, and they're designed to flow into one another, though they are two distinct songs. I chose not to do Eclipse in my DBB mostly because I don't really know the lyrics to that one like I know the lyrics to Brain Damage. Brain Damage really does have very clever lyrics, like the part about the paper holding the lunatics' folded faces to the floor, and it takes you a moment to realize that he's talking about news stories, or at least it did me. I don't find this song to be a story, truly, so much as a series of images pertaining to the theme of insanity. It's also got a beautiful, quirky, wonderfully insane sound to it--it's hard to pin down how and why, but it just sounds crazy, just with the way it is. And I mean, the crazy laugh is simply superb, not just at being crazy, but at adding to the whole wonderful crazy feel of the song. It's a pretty thorough analysis of insanity. I'll see you on the dark side of the moon, my friends.

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX4yks_R_FU
One thing I really love about this song is how, from the very first notes, it has such a great energy to it. You will probably have to adjust your volume between these two songs, or at least I did, since "Brain Damage" is significantly quieter than it, but both are extremely good songs. It's a very peppy song, and very fun for we crazy people ;) It's also got this pride to it, almost like "Yeah, that's right, I am crazy. Jealous?". "I like crossing the line, and slowly losing my mind. Are you okay? 'Cause I feel fine! Maybe it's me, I'm just crazy." And maybe I like that. The song just says, I'm crazy and I love to be. It's got this real happiness  and it's so enthusiastic about being crazy. It's easy to get swept up in this song and it's very singable and fun. I actually just found it not all that long ago on youtube, where I was listening to other Shinedown songs I already knew, and I happened across this song, and it pretty quickly became one of my top insanity songs. It's a more modern song than a lot of the songs on my list, but I really like it. It just says "proud to be crazy" all over it :)
Then, there's also "the Sound of Madness" by Shinedown, which I really thought about putting on this list, but ironically, to me, that one is less about being crazy, though the title seems to indicate otherwise. It's a good song, too, though.

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqUa_G1h3pw
In this song, madness is kind of more like a tangent than the main theme, but I mean, it is titled "Lunatic Fringe", after all. I also thought it proper to include it being as it was actually the first song that came to my mind in class on Friday, partly since I'd already been listening to it earlier that day. It even sounds kind of crazy, especially the opening part and then how it transitions into the main part. And the main part as a whole sounds awesome and crazy. It's kind of a paranoid sounding song, a little, and you can imagine it being the ramblings of a mad man, though I don't know what the actual meaning of the song is. But it says lunatic over and over, so it must be about insanity, am I right? And you've got to love that "Uh-oh-oh-uh-oh" part, and how you just have to head bang to it, at least a little. It's just got such a power behind it. I almost feel like it's also about a spy organization or something, in a way, but at the same time they're all crazy. I almost feel like the lunatic fringe is the name of a place. I would like to go explore that place very much. It might remind me of the violet mist.

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoyAg75PsTA
This is somewhat of a different style of music than I typically listen to, actually, but I heard it one day when I was listening to an older, non-classic rock, music station on the radio and it was just really catchy. I like the lyrics and their connection with madness, too--"You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for...'cause you might enjoy some madness for a while...and you wouldn't want me any other way." ;) Crazy people pride! Like the Shinedown song, it really has this "Yeah, I'm crazy" feel to it. It's also got a rather playful tone to it, and it's kind of humorous and very bouncy. It's really having fun with being crazy. It's like he's constantly trying to make someone chuckle at his insanity and to get them to just have fun being crazy with him, or like he's just trying to make someone smile. It's like, c'mon, just be crazy with me for a little while, it'll be fun! I just might be the lunatic you've been looking for ;)

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe500eIK1oA

The alblum picture of this song has got to be the best visual image of insanity of any of these songs' covers. I love how, instead of a head, it's just all these amazing colors and butterflies and swirls coming out. I think it's a wonderful, beautiful metaphor, and it really fits. This song perhaps stands out a little in this list as being one of the more modern, and it's also more mainstream/pop kind of music than, say, the Shinedown song on this list. It is like the other songs, however, in its bouncy, joyous, "Yeah, I'm crazy!"-ness. It continues this multi-point analysis of crazy with the other songs; really, each of these songs kind of looks at insanity from a different angle. It has a very good sound to it, and such a cool flow to it, and a rhythm that makes it really fun when you're singing it. I also like how it has this storyline to it--while, again, I don't know the official meaning behind really any of these songs, my friend and I always used to say this was a song some guy sang when the folks showed up to take him to a mental asylum.  You can just imagine him answering the door and going, "Hello, I remember when I lost my mind," and then he tells the asylum people, "you really think you're in control?" just like he's messing with them. It's really this spirit of a crazy person explaining how they're crazy. It also has a laugh, though not quite as good as the Pink Floyd one. I mean, the song is entitled, "Crazy", for goodness's sake! It's just fun :)

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbgtVFlyCQ
Back to my standard classic rock, we have a great one from Pearl Jam. The influence of insanity is somewhat arguable in this one. It's at very least a tangent in the song, but I think it's a little more than that. Insanity is probably most apparent in the line, "dark grin, he can't help when he's happy he looks insane", but really, the part about chasing thoughts like butterflies makes sense as being about insanity also. The one with whispering winds lead him away also seems insane, like he's in his own little dream world and following winds around. This one's less about crazy pride, though, but it's still a very strong song. I think there's much more story to this song than I really understand, but I still like it. It just sounds like it's talking about a crazy person, really. And I'm pretty sure it is. It fits.

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWdLt3Afjrg

Insanity is more of a tangent than a theme in this song, which is really about pressure and love, but I would venture that insanity is still important in this classic song (which was also on the list of songs I was thinking about doing for my second DBB). In a way, it's kind of saying how societal pressures can drive you insane. Insanity is most visible in the line shown in the screenshot above, but then there's also little references, like the one slightly odd line about kicking one's own brains around the floor, and also the part about screaming, "let me out!" These sound very much to be about being driven insane by societal pressure. I also really like the powerful message about love in this song. It's another strong song, and while insanity is kind of vague in it, I'd say that it's definitely there. It's just that love is more important in this song than insanity is. 

Overall, this is actually a pretty good cross-section of the music to which I listen. It shows songs from most of the genres and the vintages to which I listen. I suppose I always connect with songs about insanity and find them really fun, so perhaps that's why I have such a stash of them. I could probably even come up with more, but this is really a pretty good list. I almost want to quote the beyond-the-violet-mist sign-off I used on a post way back when this was my digital camera blog here, but I think I should really make a new sign off, so perhaps here I'll just refer you to October 2011 under my archives, the post entitled, "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon". I also feel tempted to quote the, "We're all mad here" line from the newer Alice in Wonderland movie here, but if I stuck that in front of a beyond the violet mist, it'd probably violate some copywright. Hmm...

     Insanity is a highly valued personality trait in our flourishing society beyond the violet mist. ;)