Karen O & The Kids - All Is Love (Where The Wild Things Are)

This song is just happiness set to a melody.

Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar

I think Pat Benatar confused a lot of young prostitutes in the 80s. Yes, Ms. Benatar, love IS a battlefield but you know damn well your pimp is not going to let you walk away with all his girls just because you won the dance off.

This explains my love of music!

NEW YORK — Whether it's the Beatles or Beethoven, people like music for the same reason they like eating or having sex: It makes the brain release a chemical that gives pleasure, a new study says.

The brain substance is involved both in anticipating a particularly thrilling musical moment and in feeling the rush from it, researchers found.
Previous work had already suggested a role for dopamine, a substance brain cells release to communicate with each other. But the new work, which scanned people's brains as they listened to music, shows it happening directly.
While dopamine normally helps us feel the pleasure of eating or having sex, it also helps produce euphoria from illegal drugs. It's active in particular circuits of the brain.
The tie to dopamine helps explain why music is so widely popular across cultures, Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal write in an article posted online Sunday by the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The study used only instrumental music, showing that voices aren't necessary to produce the dopamine response, Salimpoor said. It will take further work to study how voices might contribute to the pleasure effect, she said.
The researchers described brain-scanning experiments with eight volunteers who were chosen because they reliably felt chills from particular moments in some favorite pieces of music. That characteristic let the experimenters study how the brain handles both anticipation and arrival of a musical rush.

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Results suggested that people who enjoy music but don't feel chills are also experiencing dopamine's effects, Zatorre said.
PET scans showed the participants' brains pumped out more dopamine in a region called the striatum when listening to favorite pieces of music than when hearing other pieces. Functional MRI scans showed where and when those releases happened.
Dopamine surged in one part of the striatum during the 15 seconds leading up to a thrilling moment, and a different part when that musical highlight finally arrived.
Zatorre said that makes sense: The area linked to anticipation connects with parts of the brain involved with making predictions and responding to the environment, while the area reacting to the peak moment itself is linked to the brain's limbic system, which is involved in emotion.
The study volunteers chose a wide range of music — from classical and jazz to punk, tango and even bagpipes. The most popular were Barber's Adagio for Strings, the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Debussy's Claire de Lune.
Since they already knew the musical pieces they listened to, it wasn't possible to tell whether the anticipation reaction came from memory or the natural feel people develop for how music unfolds, Zatorre said. That question is under study, too.
Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, an expert on music and the brain at Harvard Medical School, called the study "remarkable" for the combination of techniques it used.
While experts had indirect indications that music taps into the dopamine system, he said, the new work "really nails it."
Music isn't the only cultural experience that affects the brain's reward circuitry. Other researchers recently showed a link when people studied artwork.

Happy Mondays: 24 Hour Party People

If you have never seen 24 Hour Party People, I highly advise watching it if you ever had any desire to understand the start of raves.

YDA: For those who are born to create drama

She's all growns up...

That's it, it's official.  My once little girl who will be 11 on the 28th of this month is officially a pre-teen.  She has her first school dance coming up tomorrow.  My sister bought her an early birthday present which is an adorable little black dress with gold polka dots.  She has been trying it on for days now, trying to decide how a little dark gold sweater will look with it, if she should wear her glasses or not for the dance, how her hair should be, etc, etc.  The one thing I noticed is her paying attention to her legs because she had not been allowed to shave yet.  With her birthday days away, I informed her that if she wanted to shave her legs for the first time for the dance.  She first tells me that it's okay, she doesn't need to.  Then, last night before she jumped in the shower, she asked if I could show her how to do it because she thought it would look better with her dress.  As I sat with her in the bathroom going over everything she needs and how to do it, I wanted to cry.  Not because I was sad but because as innocent as she still is with life and the world around her, she's growing up.  I feel like it was yesterday that I was sitting outside her 1st school when she started kindergarten crying in my car because she was growing up so fast and here I am 5 years later having a moment.  After she was done, she came and sat with me on the couch to watch some TV and she hugged me and told me that I'm such as awesome mom.  Let's hope I can stay in the awesome mom category as long as possible.

HISTÓRIA DO NATAL DIGITAL

THE STRANGER

THE STRANGER

These photos were taken by my friend Tanya. Love them, love them, love them! For as creepy as they are, they are all haunting images.

Happy Birthday!

A year ago today, my baby girl was born. I feel like I blinked and she's suddenly a year old. With as much as my life has changed because I'm raising 2 girls on my own, I wouldn't change having her. She always has a laugh for me when I'm not at my best. Those big blue eyes of her's will catch mine and she smiles her scrunched up smile. I got all emotional today while I was telling her stories as she was falling asleep for her nap this afternoon, like how at so and so time I couldn't stop looking at her and when I got to telling her that at about this time her father was holding her because he didn't want to put her down, I felt the tears fall before I could stop myself. He and I weren't even speaking when he passed away because of choices he made but I guess the realization has finally begun to settle in that he's really never going to be a part of her life. Unless I get married, she's never going to know what it's like to have a dad or to be spoiled by her father the way a daughter is suppose to. And that thought made me cry. All I can do is my best to make sure she has what she needs and give her all the love I can possibly give. That's all I really can do.

No Doubt - Just A Girl

I love Gwen Stefani. I've loved her since she came out with No Doubt and they were still some obscure SoCal band that played with Sublime (if you have not ever heard it, go listen to "Saw Red" right now!). I love her style, the way she bought the feminine twist to a band full of guys, one who happened to be her ex-boyfriend. I can't even imagine having to be stuck with the person who broke my heart 24/7 and sing about him to his face night after night. I love how she married Gavin Rossdale and they make the perfect rock couple. I love how they named their kids after things that have to do with Bob Marley. I love her clothing line. She's always put together and shares my passion for the perfect red lipstick. She is, in my eyes, the ultimate woman. Plus, this song just makes me want to jump up and down and throw my girlie self around a room in all the happiness I have for being a girl.