Interview with Juliet Simms of Automatic Loveletter :: CD Giveaway!

A year ago I saw Automatic Loveletter live and talked for a moment with one of the guys in the band who gave me their record, Truth or Dare. So for a year now I've listened to it on a weekly basis -- I love hooping to emotional music and Juliet Simm's heartfelt songs totally inspire me to dance.

This year Automatic Loveletter is again on the Warped Tour and I got a chance to talk with Juliet backstage. We touch on songwriting, style, feathers, mutants and spirituality - check out the video!

Giveaway!!
I got a copy of Juliet's new, beautiful acoustic CD 'The Kids Will Take Their Monsters On' to give away to one of you fairies! And as a bonus, a super deluxe red and blue feather thingy I made that oozes with bohemian gorgeousness! :) Just leave a comment and I'll write your name on a piece of paper and put it in a hat and pull out the winner on August 20th. Which is my birthday -- the Vedic (ancient Indian way) of celebrating your birthday is to give presents to others instead of receiving them yourself. So I'll do that!

If you put a link or talk about this giveaway on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, secret meeting, breakfast table, etc. you get an extra piece of paper in the hat for each mention! Just leave a comment saying how many entries you're in for. I believe you.

Juliet meeting fans. See the feathers hanging on her booth? She makes them. She's the Feather OG. See video for details :P

Warped Sights :: Don't Be a Terrorist

"So... there's a band playing on the Main Stage right now, how long are you gonna talk on the phone..?"

Kiss guy, thumb up right after a score.

She's reading Beyond Birth & Death by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada :D

A delicate tip jar sign from the booth of a ska punk band called The Sheds.

Warped Styles :: in California

Call me a stalker but I like taking pictures of people. This is at Vans Warped Tour shows yesterday in Mountain View and today in Ventura, California. Actually I have more pics and will post them later when I get the chance. Right now I'm driving to…Kansas?!! From Cali. That's 24 hours. Wish me luck blessings love rainbows star dust fairy dust genie bottles and my little ponies all going 55 miles per hour at the most. Smart & safe driving. As everyone passes me left and right.

These shirts caught my attention as Hanoi Rocks are from Finland. I asked how they found the band and the guy on the right said through his mom.

Can you see the matching heart sunglasses?

Whimsically punk.

Top 4 things that caught my eye in California:
1. Tattoos Everywhere. (yes a tattoo post is pending)
2. People try to avoid plastic water bottles and hang aluminum drinking bottles on their belts, pants and bags, more so than I've seen anywhere else. Awesome.
3. Every other billboard is an advertisement for liposuction or plastic surgery.
4. Surfers! I watched surfers this morning around 5am, I never saw surfers before in my life. In black whole body suits they lie on their boards, flap towards a wave then jump on the board and ride it for 5-8 seconds until they fall in the ocean. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat :D

The black dots are surfer dudes and dudettes.

Lolita Style :: or anime or cosplay or whatever it is

I don't really know anything about lolita, anime or manga - when I think of those words, mainly cartoon images of fluffy creatures and big eyed people come to mind. I suppose there's more to it. However, I love the lolita style of dressing that I sometimes see in the streets. It's so fantastic and extravagantly imaginative. These are some cool images I've had on my laptop for a while in my 'pretty things to look at' file. Doesn't everyone have a file like that?! I'd like to get a peek into your files :)

How coincidental actually - I ran into a Goodwill second hand store today for 4 minutes before they closed and found two cute skirts, a long pink one and another shorter light blue one with lace. They will totally go together in a lolita-like feel :) I just wish it wasn't so hot out every single day so I could play more with clothes. Now it just has to be something tiny and practical every day which is getting boooriing. I miss my layers. I guess this pic of me is a bit lolita-ish.

Ok I wikied lolita fashion and found out there are Sweet Lolita, Classic Lolita, Gothic Lolita, and many other style categories. Most of the pics I have here would probably fall under 'sweet'. Here's an example of the gothic. (My other dress here is quite dark lolita don't you think!)

Ok that's it for my midnight ramblings. I'm trying to stay up all night so I can again sleep all day tomorrow and then drive 14 hours to Las Vegas for Thursday's Warped Tour show. What a sane life I lead :D

6 Months in Jail for Loitering

Loitering around in the state of Louisiana in the Land of the Free at the risk of spending 6 months in jail. Hilarious.

A little update - the Vans Warped Tour started yesterday in Dallas, Texas and will go on traveling around America until August 14th. Philip and me are doing the whole tour, he passes out books all day during the shows and I drive all night to get to the next day's venue. And I sleep all day. And try to hoop every day to keep my body in working order with so much driving and sitting down. And our van still runs on veggie and is not polluting much at all. So all is well. ❤

Every summer during the tour things get very busy and sporadic so I have no idea how often I'll be able to go online. Too bad because I have a million things I want to tell everyone about. I'll figure something out ;) Meanwhile, no loitering!

Ways to Understand Ahimsa, or Non-Violence, part 1

Currently on the Vans Warped Tour, I’m sitting in the shade and reading Bhagavad-gita As It Is, which offers quite a contrast to the intense, apocalyptic punk and metal blasting from at least four different stages. My reading is occasionally distracted by female screams and sighs from a shaking van parked nearby in which, I suspect, a musician is, ahem, rendezvousing with another. Or a fan. Or, whatever, but the contrast is great. 

I’m reading the second chapter which talks about the consciousness or soul as the ultimate identity of all beings. The material body is only a covering and it changes all the time, most drastically at death, when the atma/soul receives another body, corresponding to whichever type of consciousness it has developed during its lifetime.

Arjuna is the warrior of the Bhagavad-gita who decides not to fight, seeing friends and relatives on both sides of the armies. Krishna, as Arjuna’s friend and chariot-driver, tells him that as a warrior, he cannot run away from his duty. Arjuna suggests that maybe he should just disappear to the forest and become a wandering ascetic. Krishna says that it’s not possible. Arjuna’s nature is to be a warrior, or ksatriya, and even if he went to the forest, he would fight there. 

So. Ahimsa or non-violence is one of the very, very basic principles of yoga. I’m now talking about the yoga lifestyle, lifestyle of connecting with the Divine, which yoga literally means - I’m not talking about the popular Indian gymnastics going by the name yoga. ;) Ahimsa, as Buddha taught it, means practically to refrain from killing people and animals. Obviously, this includes eating animals. Animals have a much more developed consciousness than plants and so killing them for food, when there really is no necessity at all, is serious business karmically. 

This is one layer of understanding ahimsa - refraining from hurting and killing other beings, or from supporting people and companies that do.

A bit deeper understanding of ahimsa is what struck me right now as I was reading the purport to the mantra 2.3 in which Srila Prabhupada calls Arjuna’s seemingly compassionate refusal to fight “so-called non-violence”. More about that later, I will leave you in suspense for now, see you in a day or too!