Sky Touches Sea

Ceci N'est Pas Un Defense of Twilight, per se...

2011-12-02T11:30:00.004-05:00

But it is a defense of the right to enjoy Twilight. That's right: Hi, haters! I realized that the over-intellectualization of the Twilight mockery had gone way too far when I couldn't even muster faint enthusiasm for the newest movie. Not because everyone's right and this really is the abject nadir of everything wrong with women, Mormon women, popular culture, teenagers, and the world and I finally came to my senses, but because the amount of energy expended in asserting same everywhere I turned has gained sufficient gravitational pull to suck my small joy in vampire trash in and disassemble it.

Look, the first time I saw Twilight it was specifically to make fun of it while eating and drinking and smoking with my girls, after a "my life sucks and so does the weather" little crying jag, and it was totally hilarious and fun and it also has Robert Pattinson brooding around hotly. So for those reasons alone, I stake my claim that it's perfectly entitled to exist. Then the funny thing was that we had so much fun mocking it that I thought it might be fun to read the books, y'know, for a laugh. It would be less accurate to say that I hated the project I was stuck completing at work and more so to say that my soul was severely allergic to the project and no epi-pens for souls exist. I was dying of soul-hives. I therefore also reasoned, as soon as I picked up the first book and found that it would be no worse than some of the junk-food I've read, that I could dole out the books to get me through the assignment. Which I did and it was an awesome plan and it totally worked. The second movie came out not that long after and it was a great lady date for oohing at the hot brooding, laughing at the stilted acting, and reveling in a little supernatural action.

Obviously there's been a "Twilight backlash" for just about as long as there's been a Twilight lash, and that's perfectly normal. It IS ridiculous, it ISN'T well written, the acting IS hilarious. But the same is true for a whole buncha crap: Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, our president, the GOP debates, all of these fall to the same criticism. The Kardashians and Toddlers & Tiaras are, I would argue, about a billion times worse than all of the above wrapped up in an Internet nerd bacon macro and yet we all just shrug and roll our eyes at them. But a little while back, on my birthday and the release of Breaking Dawn Pt. 1, the A.V. Club posted a sort-of defense of Twilight's fans.

In essence, it acknowledged Twilight's shortcomings and the ridiculous nature of its scary devotees and its annoying omnipresence among certain demographics and then posited that since we all know and accept these facts, it's okay to let it go a little bit. It was short, it didn't flesh out that many of the criticisms that haters (could we call them FullLighters? Twisofts? No, Twisofts should be fans who aren't obsessed, people like me...wait, why am I even trying to come up with yet another name for a specific niche of people to define in absolute terms their relationship to an ephemeral low-brow cultural moment that will be as gone as the Love Boat in as many decades?! Why do we collectively waste our time like this?!) typically hurl in some misguided bid to Just Make It All Go Away, and it was perhaps a bit curt in its dismissal of the haters.

That being said, the response in the comments (and if you know the A.V. Club comment boards, then you KNOW what I mean) was stupendous. It was the world wide web version of a maenad frenzy, scraps of flesh (the flesh belonging to anyone who in any way had the temerity to suggest that Twilight isn't worth the bother or its critics are anything less than earnestly concerned for the well being of teenage womankind and Western Civilization) passed hand to hand over the angry mob and sown into the earth by the thousands of feet churning the blood soaked soil. Except that when I put it like that, the maenads, although terrifying and not-very-nice to their victims, sound kind of awesome and impressive, and this was not at all exhilarating or spectacular and was instead a creepy example of hive-mind and suppression of dissent.

I didn't wade in, I usually don't. I did throw a few likes at the one or two people who were able to express themselves in a coherent manner to raise some concerns about the motivations of all the vitriol. See, the thing is, I'm totally a judgmental and angry person, myself, so far be it from me to throw shade at people who want to get their judge on. I think I'm less so than I used to be, but that good old mainstream culture rage is the province of the young, so that makes sense. And maybe this is all no different, really, than complaining about pre-fab pop stars or televised national cheerleading competitions, but it gets all murky and disgusting as soon as it turns out that all that hate for Twilight is for your own good, Ladies!

Just say you think it's stupid and it grosses you out and you don't ever want to have sex with someone who likes it and move on. Don't paint it as some revolutionary justification for domestic violence that will have tremendous echoes through the ages after it corrupts the tender, weak girl minds that it enraptures. We don't need Twilight to give tacit approval to domestic violence, we already have Chris Brown invited onto Good Morning America to see if he can break a window because it enrages him to be asked about Rihanna's while he's promoting his new album.

Oh, it doesn't count because who watches Good Morning America? Okay, well, then I guess the fact that the album he was promoting, F.A.M.E. (Forgiving All My Enemies, because, as his mother says, he is the second coming of Christ, and therefore must forgive his enemies, even the ones who think it's not cool to beat the shit out of your girlfriend on the way to an awards show) hit number 15 on the US charts can just stand in for that little publicity stunt to say that we as a nation are determined not to let a man who has publicly demonstrated himself to be an abusive partner fail.

Or the surge of #winning, and the fact that Charlie Sheen milked his latest outrageous publicity to the last drop before "reforming" once again, with naked contempt for the audience and celebrity machine that make it all possible. I've heard, and have acknowledged the validity of the point, the minor outrage that while it's okay for Charlie to shoot his girlfriends and roll his cars over the cliff and smoke crack with his goddesses while there are toddlers in the house and explicitly mention his boss's Jewishness when he's mad at work, poor Mel Gibson gets the cold shoulder for some anti-Semitic ranting when he's caught driving drunk and taking the pulpit at his church to excoriate the flock for listening to gossip about his dissolving marriage and knocking up some gold digger from Eastern Europe and threatening to kill her if she doesn't blow him in the Jacuzzi and accidentally grazing his baby when he's trying to get his hands on the gold digger to knock some sense into her.

My opinion is that it's okay for Charlie and Chris and Alec Baldwin to (again, publicly) be abusive domestic partners because they pay lip service to the idea that we're an enlightened society, and they're really very progressive, they just act like cavemen because the fame game is such a whirlwind and it's okay if you're on drugs, while Mel Gibson does not at all toe the Hollywood line in cultural matters and defiantly stepped out of line to get all Jesus-y and therefore does not have open arms willing to rock him back to the box office because he sneered at those arms, he found those arms decadent and depraved, and now they're not there. But he thinks Satan's out to get him for being one of the 5% who aren't afraid to re-post this status on Facebook, so let's not shatter his illusion.

And yet you might, if you listen for it, find people saying that we need to take Chris Brown's soapbox away from him, probably because of those photos of Rihanna's face, possibly because of the race factor, though I really doubt that plays as big a role as his fans claim when they very angrily demand that his detractors really must shut the fuck up.

Let's take it as a given that the only people that Twilight could plausibly be claimed to influence in matters of "what's okay in a relationship" are the young. How is Twilight going to get the job done any more efficiently than our cultural celebration of men who have repeatedly demonstrated that they are abusive to women? "It's creepy that he breaks into her room," says the internet. "He disables her car, just like an abusive husband might," they screech, leaving aside the fact that in the context of the actual story, the car is not disabled to stop the girl from leaving her relationship, but to prevent her from visiting someone who has an uncontrollable tendency to explode into a violent wolf, just like the story has established his pack leader once did with the consequence of maiming his fiance's face. "Yeah, okay, and that guy is supposed to be a good guy!"

Hm, that's true. Of course, the event is used to demonstrate the full Monster-ishness of the other side of the supernatural coin in the Twilight universe, so basically if you're going to be upset about the fundamental unfairness of sexual politics in contemporary culture, or the fact that yes, vampires and werewolves endure because of the ease with which they can stand in for or illuminate human attributes and impulses, then you've got a mountain of material to work with, and much of it more better than Twilight. But I don't want that to sound like I'm waving a magic "they're werewolves" wand at the fact that one of the peripheral characters fucked his girlfriend's face up when he got really upset once upon a time after seriously answering the "he stalks, he meddles," charges, because the other thing that really gets my goat about the Twilight hate is the constant bait-and-switch.

Whenever the questionable subject matter of a beautiful monster slavering over his girlfriend is answered with the gold standard of fucked-up plots, Wuthering Heights, the criticism always, always changes to "Wuthering Heights is Literature." Yes, it is. Man, them Bronte's, am I right? They're awesome. I love 'em. That doesn't make it okay for their plot to be riddled with abuse of all varieties, if that's your actual view of the danger of Twilight. If that's the Danger of Twilight, then Wuthering Heights is a perfectly valid response. Whether it's better written or part of canon should make no difference.

"Twilight's literally the actual worst writing I ever literally read, literally." Yeah, I know. A lot of people know that. That is not a ground-breaking opinion. It is hyperbole. But if you looked at it because it's the cultural phenomenon of the moment, and you found it poorly written to say the least, then rest assured that it's a proud entry in a genre which does not hold its authors to the highest standard. I think its great that there are people who make a conscious effort to only read great writing, to seek out provocative ideas and challenge their intellects. I don't think that to do any less is somehow reprehensible. To refuse to challenge yourself or to avoid intellectual stimulation, that's reprehensible. Enjoying vampire fiction is no better or worse than enjoying science fiction, etc. I grew up reading Star Trek novels, you're not going to hurt my feelings by telling me that Twilight isn't great art.

"I know some people who kind of enjoy it, for a laugh, that are normal, but they're obviously not the majority of the audience and that worries me." This, and all the casual stereotyping and dismissal of the soccer moms and lonelyhearts and creepy teens, turns my stomach a bit. Guess what, after you round up enough labels to toss in the garbage for enjoying a vampire novel and movie series, you're looking pretty marginalized yourself, Person Who Must Not Be Any Of These Labels. And the superficial judgement and mockery of "creepy older women," "ugly women," "awkward girls," well, that kind of speaks for itself. Like, wow, I'm so broken-hearted that you don't like me because I saw a Twilight movie, you're such an obviously attractive person inside and out.

"Well, I've seen Twilight, (only because of RiffTrax) and therefore I can say..." This is the answer anytime anyone calls out a detractor who has plot points mixed up, or is getting irate because of a summary they saw on a movie showtimes page. It's not that I don't want them to argue that they don't like it. I want them to sing it from the mountaintop if they don't like it, much like I'm here to say that Valentine's Day was terrible. I just don't want to hear the (only because of RiffTrax) clause every single time. It makes me sad. It's that old truth that the bullies only bully because they're afraid of being bullied. Fucking admit it, you watched it. You wanted to see what the hell the fuss was about and it sucked. Or be real and say you watched it, you kind of liked when a vampire ripped another vampire's head off, but the rest of the time it sucks because it's teenagers moping. Listening to arch-conservative Mike Nelson ain't really buying you the cred points you think it is, anyway.

(I love MST3K, I like what I've heard of RiffTrax, I don't think Mike Nelson isn't funny because I disagree with his politics, I'm just pointing out that the implied or explicitly stated instinctive dislike and mistrust of Twilight because of its prudish Mormon author is being ameliorated by a modern [and therefore lackwitted, in a lot of ways] conservative commentary.)

"It's not even a good vampire story, anyway." Says who? I got vampire clout, baby. I knows me some vampires. You, anonymous internet poster? I don't buy for one second that the guy who posts all day every day about the Simpsons' recent seasons is really up to speed on what's what in VampireLand. These books are clunky, but they have a couple of good conceits that make it interesting, and there's not much new under the sun when you're dealing with monsters as old as vampires or werewolves. So it doesn't matter that they're not great art because, you see, a fresh idea for someone who likes those old monster myths will more than make up for a less than stellar execution. That might be a bit tacky to admit but it's true.

Okay, I've vented my spleen. I feel a little better. I might even be ready to meekly enjoy Breaking Dawn, which I have now waited a full two weeks to see. I mean, we're talking low-vampire-libido. See your doctor type stuff. But I don't want to have magic-wanded Sam and Emily's little dirty secret. So, you're right, the cautionary tale of dangerous relationships gets a happily ever after in Stephanie Meyer's universe. Not unlike the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy.

The Idiot's Guide to High-Wire Balancing?

2011-12-01T12:15:00.010-05:00

http://www.adn.com/2011/11/30/2196495/lieutenant-governor-calls-for.html

Well, now we know that "climate warming means more people are using Arctic waters," thanks to Alaska's lieutenant governor.

Finally, that pesky Is Climate Change Real debate has been settled, and it only took a lieutenant governor! And here I thought it was just going to drag on and on as the pro-business-at-all-costs segment of the political ARG within which we helplessly live dug their heels in and refused to listen to reason or results...oh. Oh, I see.

"If this is going to mean to global ship transportation what polar air routes mean to global air transportation, I think Alaskans would like to have a part of it."

So now that there's a piece of the action that doesn't involve hurting the feelings or profit margins of any Job Creators (also known as overlords, or sometimes captains of industry), it's rill rill important we don't miss out on the cutting edge of climate change's impact. Okay. At least you didn't throw in a caveat about whether it actually exists or insist that equal time be given to representing the theory that a bearded guy made the planet and everything on it and got a notarized testament giving stewardship to mankind. What kind of opportunities are causing shiny cartoon dollar signs to spring up in place of his eyeballs?

"Just get some big-ass boats and tear the fucking shit up out of the sea ice," Treadwell mused thoughtfully, twirling the waxed villain mustache he somehow grew around both his everyday Hitler smudge and formal-wear Satanic goatee.

Sure, no problem, it's just some ice. Who needs some frozen water floating on top of the regular water?

Photo by Mape_s under CC Attribution license

Aaaand the plot thinnens. The Parnell administration's insistence on being a hysterical control freak has pitted its members against charismatic megafauna before and the little Lego man in charge himself has said that trying to protect the habitat of polar bears is taking the food right out of his oil-baron-babies' mouths, but wow, I didn't know he was ready to take it outside and settle it with them mano-a-pata.

Actually, now that I put it like that, I'm imagining Parnell and Treadwell taking a boat to challenge the greedy oil-revenue blocking bears and I'm liking what I see...

Eh, I don't know if Treadwell's evil. He might not actually sport Fuhrer facial hair. He might not even actively want to harm the Arctic life that inconveniences "responsible" resource exploitation. I'm just so out of patience with that point of view that I want to put on fur drag and join the gang of polar bears occupying vacant buildings in Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Region and trying to pick off drunks and hobos passing by. I see dodgy 2006 references to increased bear numbers and clashes with populated areas, but I guess the big show happened mid-September this year, resulting in a modestly successful viral video that's scary, but not gory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIr0qtJaVg8

or http://www.anadyr.org/videos/masha-i-medved for somewhat closer to the horse's mouth

An unrelated bit of trivia is the regional attempt at lifting the Russian ban on indigenous polar bear hunts back in March, announcing they would share a quota with Alaska. The official position continues to refuse to allow any hunts due to the impossibility of monitoring catch in remote and isolated areas like Chukotka, and due to Putin's decision to personally oversee bears in addition to other cool animals he likes. Which, okay, he's a scary dude, but you gotta admire his panache.

Such Stage Presence

2011-11-25T23:08:00.002-05:00

[Idioter's Note: Much of what follows was discovered in a draft folder. Mercy.]

Today, Alicia looked at me for a reply to some very quotidian query, and I nodded sagely before pronouncing, "Verdigris, verdigris! Verdigris, verdigris! Verdigris, verdigris...Om..." I went on to sing a few more recognizable lyrics from Furry Green Atom Bowl, by Robyn Hitchcock, before she quite caught on, but once she did, she was delighted.

"Such a good show," she enthused, once she got the reference. "Such stage presence! We're so lucky."

I'm paraphrasing a bit, but these quotes are largely accurate. This is also, basically, perhaps disappointingly, what I wanted to get at a month ago. After she said this, I of course agreed wholeheartedly. We saw Robyn Hitchcock host a showcase at HoCo Fest last September in Tucson, and it was a fantastic experience all around.

First of all, to get there we left the gorgeous Jimenez mountain range in Los Alamos (and the charms of the Laughing Lizard can't be overstated) and drove hard to the southern border of the country before swinging west to Tucson, under the blessings of a heavy-if-not-perhaps-full-moon. Then we scrabbled up a hilarious cabbie and caught the Meat Puppets for the second time that fall, and it was as enjoyable as Bumbershoot, only this time we knew we would be delighted and accordingly crowded quite close to the stage, enjoying a near front-row view. After sunning by the pool with dips to maintain our core temperature at a livable level, and after finally finishing Spook Country by William Gibson, we got ready, had another hilarious cab ride to the Hotel Congress, and waited anxiously as near the stage as we could be (which was functionally still first or second row).

I want to tell you my heart nearly stopped when Robyn Hitchcock cut his way from the bar along the side of the room to the door backstage. And when he took the stage. And when he opened his mouth. And the rest of the night. It's a miracle I survived. He shared the night with some musicians, I'd say friends but I'm not sure whether he hand-selected the occasionally interesting trainwreck that is Victoria Williams. I know that sounds mean. Imagine how mean it is to insist that people who are watching a man whose work they have held in the highest possible regard, whom they have cherished and idolized and functionally worshiped since they were teenagers surrender that chance to see a performance that they had lusted after for, literally, decades (I'm rounding up because that is a privilege you are accorded when you are OLD), so as to make room for the fumbling non-performance of someone who is occasionally not able to finish a song they start because they're so wrapped up nitpicking their own performance.

Don't get me wrong, I think it sounds like a far worse hell to be that performer than to watch, and wait for the show to get back on track or someone else to start playing, and I appreciate that as uncomfortable as it might be to watch, it's more uncomfortable to be in that position, and bees sting us because they're more afraid than we are and all of that. I seriously do get that. But I'm sorry, did you hear me? Robyn Hitchcock is sidelined for this mess? Oh, I kid. It was an awesome night, stumbles and all, and it was just terrific to get good and exposed to Howe Gelb and Steve Wynn, so it was a success if only for that!

But that dichotomy, between someone who has the respect for the audience to, say, address them as peers, or speak to them in a frank and personable matter, and someone who addresses them (and I'm deeply sympathetic) as potentially hostile captives who might be taking camera videos (and I didn't, Victoria, though I did snap a pic, but that phone was stolen so chalk it up to karma) to show their parents and get you fired by the school board is stark when you're confronted with such a showcase. It speaks to the magic of interpersonal relations that an individual can address a large audience and for that audience to feel that they are directly, personally engaged with the performer.

It's something that you see referenced a lot, but when you experience it, you realize that it may just be bandied about a bit more often than it ought to be. While I might want to see more of Robyn live (oh, I do, btdubs, if anyone wants to spring for tickets/airfare) and I would still want to press forwards to be as close as possible to the performance, to feel as personally connected as possible, nothing will ever be able to take away the experience that I had in September of 2011. I connected with an artist whose works have touched my life long before I was able to see them in person. That feeling is rare, and I enjoy it both in such a celebrity venue as an Elvis Costello concert (believe me, I want to SQUEAL just thinking about how close he was, how it felt to look him in the eye directly as he sang) as well as when I catch the eye of another working Joe or Jane and recognize that spark of aliveness, of presence, leaping out of their gaze.

Consciousness is a wonderful thing, people. We need to cultivate it. I've met dogs who put some of you to shame, and that's no insult to the dogs. Recognize your fellow individuals and take joy in the meeting.

And that's when I realized the spam bots were the only people in the world

2011-11-18T19:31:00.002-05:00

I was going to write some whole thing about the divorce between physical work and the constant application thereof necessary to survive the world and the phony work ethic it inspired in the modern, post-industrial world wherein "work" is considered to be a cerebral application, except that it fails to meaningfully engage the mind or spirit and is often transparently only used in the service of the bizarre thousand niches that have sprung up around the middle class and the institution of a regular work day and schedule such that everyone is routinized in the exact same way regardless of the exact nature of their employment and so on and so forth....but DULLSVILLE!

Also I'm just tired and cranky today. I only blog on tired and cranky days because I don't have the pep to do anything else or enjoy life, so I'm driven to the computer screen so that it can make me tireder and more cranky. I spend the interim thinking of posts that never make it.

I'm obviously not missing anything in the cyberspace, though, the only messages I get are spam bots asking me to come to their website or add them on an instant messenger, and the only followers I get on Twitter (okay, this is not technically true, I actually have a few very cool followers which in turn makes me feel very self-conscious and pee-shy about twitting) are weird empty spam bots that think I will follow them back and be told about working from home part time to earn $7,000 a month. The spams write me nice messages sometimes. And they make it look like this blog has pageviews. Thank you, spams, I didn't realize you were the right guy for me all along, this rom-com is OVAH!

Then be careful / And watch how you treat every living soul

2011-11-13T01:22:00.002-05:00

See, I'll put those lyrics in the subject line, because I'm listening to Band of Horses right now, and enjoying them so much right now, and feeling those words, and then I'll log into this blog in a few days and the stats will say that, like, seven people looked at it and I'll get all excited and then the traffic will say it was all huddled refugees from Google and Bing trying to look those words up from when they were hearing them and feeling them and I'll know they just clicked this link and then blinked at it (thickly [let's be honest, they're not the best and brightest]) and then hit the back button. Fuck em! Wait, that's not how I want to treat every living soul...

Unless you define the soul as being a purely human conceit and possession. Then I could probably get behind some soul brutality. Heh, Rise of the Planet of the Apes came out and was positively reviewed and so far as I know at least a modest success at the box office and heralded as slipping quite a bitter little animal rights agenda into its thrills and chills, but here we are, it's gone, and the dawning era of the Brotherhood of Animalia has yet to cast its first rays onto the plain of The Battlefield Of The War Between Kingdoms, Phylogenically Speaking. Or even the plain of Understanding And Appreciation Of Life In This Weird, Generally Life Barren As We Know It Neck-Of-Space. Completely hopeless.

Not dissimilar to that aforementioned terrible idea of dabbling back into the irresistible pool of NaNoWriMo. There are a lot of really funny tweets and such mocking NaNoWriMo and I just want to say that as someone who isn't writing steampunk, fan fiction, or zombie stories, they are really funny. Always get a chuckle. I can't stop quoting a tweet which is now annoying inaccessible because every time I try to use the actual Twitter website it seems to exist only as a means of making me insane with frustration. But it were really funny. Hitler jokes. Need I say more. And yessss, sue me, I'm still sort of half-assedly working on that project for NaNoWriMo, no Hitlers involved (in this one). It progresses very slowly, but whatever, it's an idea that I'd been kicking around for a while, so anything is good for it.

I'm such an accursed fool, and also my L key keeps sticking

2011-11-10T01:52:00.003-05:00

I signed up for NaNoWriMo again, because that's the kind of not-learning-from-experience fool I am. At this point, at least, any novelty or apprehension are gone, long since burned away by abject failure, which is actually the only way I ever get anything accomplished, so I guess in a way this is good news for me. I'm also not trying to shoulder any crushing "Great American Novel" burden this time, which feels good.

OH, YOU WONDER WHERE I GET OFF WITH THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL?!

Me too. My grandmother cursed me. Anyway, this time I'm starting out way, way, way behind and I'm taking a light-hearted-to-say-the-least approach. Yeah, and I'm also sticking a lot of stupid multi-hyphenates in the ol' blog, so what's it to you?

In other news, I entered the RockyGrass Academy today! Woooohoo, unless I don't get in, in which case BOOOOOO to you, RockyGrass. I entered guitar and banjo as my first and second preferences; if I get in either way I'm going to be sweating stress bullets from now 'til then since the bands-in-residence for Academy are the Punch Brothers and the Infamous String Dusters, both of whom I love and adore.

Oh, what, you want to know why I'm nattering on about lotteries for summer festivals and drinking discount wine out of a plastic cup instead of working on my "novel?" Well. I had a good reason, I swear, it's just escaping my memory at the moment. Oh, yeah, that's right, I have computer schizophrenia from looking at a screen all day. I knew there was some excuse.

Even I am getting angry at myself for the amount of Sting that I have listened to recently so please feel free to hurl abuse at me for this transgression and thereby improve my "Keep your head up, girl, feeling good, everything's for the best, mellow truths by a rich punk made good" listening life.

Many laughs at the idea that Sting endures abuse and misunderstandings at the cruel hands of the homogenous New York City can be had here:

Important re-enactments of Gordon Sumner's pre-Police, pre-Sting days as a teacher can be found and enjoyed here:

Where else can you see Sting zooming by on a flying carpet? And what is that hilarious dart of his eyes as he utters the words "Every cake you bake," after referencing I'll Be Watching You with the lines "Every breath you take, every move you make?"

^^ The Hottest Gordon In Recent History Ever? ^^

Demonology

2011-11-05T15:49:00.006-04:00

I like to say egregiously blasphemous things to Alicia Skye from time to time, usually invoking her name in some way, just to get a rise out of her. Not a "don't talk about our lord and savior that way" rise but more of a "don't say Beetlejuice three times in the graveyard" rise. And then if I ever really get called out on the big What If God Was Actually Real And He Plays The Tapes Of This Back In Front Of A Big Throney Sort Of Judgement Stand, I either make a spooky horror movie sound or toss off a flip reference to the incomparable Paradise Lost and the rebel angels that decide to make the most of their loss in the battle for Heaven.

Last night I was particularly cheerful, I suppose because it was Friday and I would have a weekend and I had mostly finished training at work, and so I immediately began crooning my favorite goat-getter, which is inserting sister's name into the Randy Travis song He Walked On Water (although please note that that song is about Randy getting his granddad mixed up with water-walkers, so I'm not even really taking the blaspheming initiative, I'm just riding his coattails) and started the old enjoyable rowdy-dow with her. However, because I was all full of beans from being off work for the weekend, when my immortal peril was broached, I went a step further and trotted out that old beloved chestnut, "who would want any truck with a dude who would get bent out of shape about having a laugh."

The Church of the SubGenius would call it, Fuck 'Em If They Can't Take A Joke, I believe, but I've always greatly preferred Discordianism*, so let us speak no more of that.

Anyway, as I was shuffling around today, having slept poorly, dreamed distracting dreams of inconveniences and logistics as I all too frequently do, perhaps a glass of wine too many the night before, fearing a tickle in my throat, and so on, I flashed briefly on the conversation and found my brain muttering like an angry teenager who also heard that if you use honey you can give yourself dreadlocks and who probably listens to Rage Against the Machine or something. It was all, "Look at this tough guy, big tough guy, 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.' Sticks and stones, buddy."

I did have a healthy little laugh at myself and the fact that my internal monologue when I'm under the weather is voiced by the love child of Judd Nelson in Breakfast Club and Christian Slater in Heathers. Buuuuut, that teeth-gnashing, surly, duster-wearing internal monologue is also right. At the very least, you'd expect God to be the bigger person when it comes to people speaking uncharitably or being dazzled by golden calves. And honestly, I can't respect a creator who insists on retaining copyright to literally everything. It's called Creative Commons, look it up, it's way more fun and you get to see what other people do with your awesome drum machine beat or something.

It's unseemly for a deity to revel so nakedly in being a One Percenter.

Hey, whaddaya know, my head feels a bit better! Switching out of JuddNelsonChristianSlater Mode now, and signing off with much grats to the wild world of wikipedia for any remotely accurate quotes of anything.

*If you want in on the Discordian Society

then declare yourself what you wish
do what you like
and tell us about it
or
if you prefer
don't.

There are no rules anywhere.

The Goddess Prevails.—Malaclypse the Younger, Principia Discordia, Page 00032

I never realized Humes were so talented! They would be a credit to any Monster Club!

2011-11-05T12:30:00.001-04:00

Daddy FatStacks Money

2011-10-24T20:15:00.003-04:00

That's what I'm not rolling in. But someday soon I will be, because Another Day, Another Job. This time customer service at [Large "cool" Company]. At least their corporate culture is based out of Seattle, and therefore raises certain expectations for the work environment. Not to be too blunt, but the less time I have to hear co-workers one-upping each other about which one of them is gay, because that's inherently hilarious, the better. So yeah, I'll happily take the lesser of two weevils right now. And of course, a paycheck will be a delightful novelty.

Things I Wonder About: whether the fact that the chemical explosive thrown at Occupy Maine might have been random teen chaos will be taken as a sign that "Everything's fine, because it wasn't a politically motivated bombing," and not as a sign that "Nothing's fine, because we literally take a giant step closer to living Idiocracy every day." I hadn't ever seen Idiocracy until Corin rented it a few weeks ago. The opening reveal of our terrible future was entertaining but too much of it was already true or close enough to true for me to find too many chuckles. Oh, how elitist of me.

Halloween's almost here, how cheerful and exciting. Last Halloween was nice and good, actually, pretty great, but also very un-Halloweeny in that I was camped in a field listening to Cajun music and bluegrass music and western swing all mixing in the Louisiana darkness (and being introduced to the innovative drive-thru-daiquiri-stand). I think this year will be a bit more of the typical Rah! Rah! Rah! although we are going to be out of town again. I hope Asheville has some awesome haunted houses and ghosts.

I heard the saddest thing today: a man talking about how he had been getting his art published and preparing to move to take a job working in the field, until he was offered a higher salary to stay in W.Va., paraprofessionally. He stays pretty busy with that, I gather. I want to be a filthy hobo with a scribble before I settle for [impolitic and uncharitable assessment retracted], but it's so hard to do, just look at me now. It takes a dedicated effort to make myself work on anything, and it really feels like you have no time when you work a 9-5. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep? 8 hours of work, 2 hours of commute, 1.5 hours of getting up, out of the house, packing for the next day, 8 hours of sleep, 1 hour of mandated lunch, 3.5 hours of leisure, you can see how it just doesn't seem long enough to start a project, or finish one. The compromise I'm going to try in the now is working four 10-hour days instead of five 8s. Maybe with 3 days off I'll be able to get or sustain any momentum at all. Hey, maybe I'll blog more.

At Arm's Length

2011-10-13T23:13:00.005-04:00

I find that it's all too frequently hard enough to juggle the mundane details of "normal life" and the sense of perspective or priority that contemplating current events can and probably should inspire. Now, I also think that this is pretty typical, certainly of cultural or sociological peers, maybe of humanity, probably always and forever amen. That doesn't mean that I don't try to keep that perspective alive, but that I don't beat myself up or live in terror of slipping up and revealing that yes, I have a short list of pop indulgences that I allow myself. This gossip blog is okay, that phone app is okay (well, not to digress into parentheticals already, but I actually just cleaned house after deciding that most apps are NOT, in fact, okay, but I guess that warrants its own short post some other day), mouthbreathing at the TV is okay for this or that piece of programming, etc. And while I might unabashedly say that I don't think it's healthy to spend all of our time staring at various LCD screens or paying attention to the arbitrary contrivances of the handful of producers in television or whatever it is that I don't do or try not to do, I also generally don't get all bent out of shape at people who disagree with me. That is, the worst that can happen is they natter on about some person that was on some show that I never saw and what they're doing now and I might inwardly shrug a judgey little shrug. Oh, fine, I might have a snide word in private afterward, and I might be the person I'm judging. But on the whole, I save my soapbox and my anger for the general, not the personal.

I'm starting to think that's just a case of the reciprocity of the affliction and the afflicted, though. Kind of like how, and it's been pointed out much more clearly and concisely by better than me, one of the fundamental pitfalls in the public perception of evolution and a minor point of contention within the field is the neglect of the habitat in the case study of a species' development. That niche that gets exploited or dominated by some adaptation also was created by the interlocking puzzle pieces of the variety of life and their interplay with their surroundings. So what? Well, I guess in a sense, I mean that perhaps the nature of my disapprobation of reality television, 24/7 celebrity culture, and the tidal wave of individualized, real-time updating software is like a negative image of certain facets of that to which I'm reacting. Ew, that was wordy. The garbled maelstrom of trivial, facile information that seems to be a self-perpetuating white noise inspires a disinterested blanket of pooh-poohing. Much better.

But does that nose-in-the-air dislike that I know I'm not alone in feeling only make it that much easier for the new mainstream to burrow in snugly? And is that human difficulty in taking the long view making our new TMZ world seem bigger or more jarringly different from its precedents than it actually is? Wikipedia tells me that WNBC has its roots in the second US broadcasting station, transmitting in 1928. I can't address the impact or implications or even the historical perspective of the transformative power of technology on society in any reasonably informed way, but I can sure wish I knew more about it. And I can also deeply suspect that it's impossible to make definitive statements about the ramifications of a smartphone or a new low in television, or about the importance of a trend in programming, because we can only truly know such a thing from an external view, and due to the dizzying speed of innovation in technology, we're still just a stone's throw from its infancy.

That doesn't mean that I can't have gut feelings about the relative value or lack thereof of cultural trends, though, and nor should it. I may only have my lifespan to hold up as a ruler but when it contradicts what's bandied around as conventional wisdom or a rationalization of contemporary pop culture, I'm grateful that I at least have that bucket of years to tell me better. That is, as titillating as the idea of a famous and celebrated courtesan might be, as much as we like a whiff of scandal perfumed by money, power, or art, Rachel Uchitel pursing collagen filled lips as she explains that she needs televised therapy courtesy of Celebrity Rehab as badly as any chemical dependency due to the psychological issues that drove her to play mistress to a string of famous names strikes me as scraping the barrel a bit. Again, let me offer the disclaimer that maybe I'm some boring conservative dinosaur that just doesn't understand that in the future the robots will see this footnote in Celebrity Rehab's history and be inspired to create the great period drama of their day.

But I honestly don't think so...I mean, much as I might have an anarchist heart, the education gap of yesteryear often resulted in a ruling class that wasn't capable of feeling more deeply than their toiling serfs, but which was certainly afforded a certain veneer of civilization that at least made for more interesting fodder. And the spectacle of Old Hollywood produced films that stand the short test of time to which we currently put them. The Kardashians, on the other hand, are the product of the modern Los Angeles aesthetic bankrolled by OJ's lawyer. Their time in the spotlight resulted from being one degree away from said lawyer/father and their tennis stepfather, their location and proximity to people marginally more famous, and their shameless self-promotion. I know, I know, it was so genius when that self-promotion angle first got worked a few decades ago (in our society, I also can't claim any great knowledge of pop history, more's the pity), but the clever has long since worn off and only vulgarity is left. I'll be the first to stand up and say that I loved Smithereens not least because I wanted to cover my eyes in empathetic shame for the protagonist, but man, at least she was beating those streets on her own two feet.

The publicity machine is all self aware and stuff these days and it's unsettling to see the uncritical coverage by any and every media outlet afforded the Kardashian clan when their catapult to prominence was a feud with Paris Hilton and a "don't...stop...don't stop" leak of a sex tape with an irrelevant singer's brother. Or the gainful employment of chipper fools who do an adequate job of reading anonymous tips about people who were on TV once a handful of years ago, and if they're particularly good at being chipper and/or reading those tips competently while facing the right camera, they themselves become part of the news cycle that employed them. I confess, I wish that that self-consumption was more destructive in a cannibalistic sense, but I don't see any signs of slowing, do you?

Okay, so that's kind of a weird little spin through my take on what passes for entertainment at the moment, and let me preface the next post by saying that while a lot of it is patently silly fluff, I take it as seriously as I have seen it taken, most particularly by kids as young as 7 or 8 that I have worked with. Or by adults, even more frighteningly. NO I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT HEIDI GOT BACK TOGETHER WITH SPENCER, PLEASE TELL ME MORE. It's getting a little late for coherence, so I'm going to publish this and then look at it with a beady, critical eye in the morning, and then explain why some of these thoughts were bubbling through my brain while I was enraptured by Elvis Costello. I should've just taken some notes and written the thing immediately after, because it's had too long to marinate and it's gotten all unwieldy and giant and fuzzy.

Oh, I Just Don't Know Where To Begin

2011-10-12T23:36:00.007-04:00

Once upon a time...wait, stop, stop. More than once upon a time, I succumbed to the siren song of the BMG and Columbia House music subscription services that used to be found in any number of publications. Lick and stick your choices, get 8 or 10 or 12 tapes or CDs for a penny or the price of one, plus shipping and handling and plus a vague commitment to buy some more later, all at a competitive rate with record stores. However, one last time I succumbed to the seductive ease with which one could buy an entirely new musical persona and get a starter kit for a new library (to the extent that I could have been said to have a library in those days, which is to say to no extent) and at this point I was no spring chicken. I neither gleefully intended to rob them ruthlessly with a false name on the form or a disingenuous "I've never heard of that person in my life" when they called to collect, nor did I really firmly have a plan or the disposable income to live up to that X albums in the next Y years part of the form. I simply reasoned I would work something out later and carpe diem in the spirit of the good old days.

This was fine and good. I know that one of the CDs I got in that initial package was Mazzy Star's Fade Into You, which had been a spur of the moment re-acquisition. There was some compilation of the Specials, with which one can't go wrong. I feel pretty certain that I upgraded one or possibly two Radiohead albums that I had owned on tape to CD with that order. It doesn't matter, all those albums are lost or stolen in Portland. What's fun is what happened after, when I forgot to cancel my membership and kept receiving the "Pick of the Month" which I would have to return or pay for.

Returning a CD you didn't expressly order is one of those tasks which for me is infinitely more difficult to complete than actually ordering the CD, working a couple of hours in some hopeless, dead end job, and paying the bill. It's obviously much more difficult than sidling into a music store, doing an awful job of acting casual, secreting an album under the corner of a flannel shirt and picking the magnetic anti-theft device away, although the terror of a shy and quiet nerd committing a misdemeanor does make any alternative more appealing. Obviously if one had the money to buy the CD it's much more better for everyone to simply walk into the store and purchase it in the manner of a good citizen, anyway. But while these actions are perhaps less difficult in some indefinable manner, they have none of the mystery, surprise, and jackpot feeling of opening the mailbox and slapping your forehead when you see a flat cardboard rectangle with Columbia House in the sender corner.

On this occasion, I was handed said cardboard rectangle with an admonishment and immediately began thinking of how little I wanted to handle the return, coupled with the grim teeth-gritting that accompanied fledgling music snobbery (Unwarranted? You bet!) and the certainty that whatever was in here that had been "selected for me" by the company, it wouldn't live up to my exacting standards and would have to go. But in the spirit of fun and unexpected packages, I opened it.

(That's what was in it.) Okay, so here's me, grasping to be cool and knowledgeable and blah blah blah, and here's this best-of by a guy who definitely has name recognition, written or mentioned in a positive context to the best of my recollection, definitely had the right look on the cover...so I figured okay, I'll open it, I can probably still return it if it's terrible...

Obviously no such thing happened, even if the music on the disc didn't fit neatly into some easily digested of-the-moment subculture. Instead it became my lifeline - after all, I really was getting a bit on to be defrauding the mail-in music clearinghouses, and running out of addresses besides (in the interest of full disclosure, I can certainly recall being party to another foray or two, though I don't recall if I ever got my own box of free-ish music again). And those clearinghouses were running out of patience and relevance with and in the world themselves, although I haven't checked the back of Parade magazine in a long time. So this disc was my alpha and omega of Elvis for a long time. That naturally changed when I had the good fortune to befriend someone with legitimately good taste who could offer me a hand and pull me up from time to time, but I swear there's a flash of green on black across my brain when I think the words Elvis, Costello, Attractions. The full track listing of the CD is here. It is certainly not bad, although it must by necessity leave a whole lot of ground to cover.

Elvis Costello is one of those artists, and if you know what I mean then you know what I mean, one of those acts with whom your relationship is lifelong, whatever its nature at any given moment might be. While I might have gone months without hearing one of his songs (well, however long it's possible to go, whatever, it might not be months), if I see Amazon offering an album on sale I'll grab it, if I see a tidbit I'll read it, if I chance to hear a song out of context or by happenstance in my own library, I'll stop and listen to it. If I need to express some thought eloquently or be cheered or be sunk, I know that I have a friend in his catalog. I even, probably due to the occasional prompt from his mailing list, check his website every so often. So I had gotten some cute emails about his latest tour and the unique set piece being used, and checked the dates sporadically, and found one that would have worked but which passed unattended after we (myself, Alicia, and Adrienne) realized we were poor, broke, and impoverished and retreated to our various mountain hideouts.

Then, on my mother's birthday, I was passed a note by a very smug looking Alicia. Annoyingly enough, I can't find the exact slip of paper at the moment (and if daylight uncovers it tomorrow I'm posting it and deleting this sentence), but the gist was "Happy Early Birthday, You're Going To See Elvis Costello On Saturday [2 days from the note], Way To Steal Mom's Thunder." Needless to say I was completely perplexed, as I had no, I mean NO idea that he was still touring the US, let alone in our state, let alone at a beautiful old historic landmark theatre 50 minutes from our house. We received the tickets in the mail the next day and obtained one more so that Corin could come along.

The ticket says Orchestra Right, Row B, Seat 2. That is, the front, save for the pit, which was used for some sort of weird class oppression, but more on that later. I have no idea how there were front row tickets available two days before the concert. Corin had to settle for the front row of his loge box, alas, but reported that the loge and balcony seats were not sold out. NOT EVEN SOLD OUT. The box office was open when we got there! This world, it deserves everything it gets, I tell ya. But at least it means that broke jokes waiting for their paycheck get front-ish row seats.

I promise you that it really didn't sink in until we were seated, and the lights dimmed and then rose. I had experienced a mild little wave of agoraphobia or social phobia or whatever the hell it is that kicks in when I go out for something at night these days, but that was all swept away in the adrenaline of seeing the band take the stage. When they immediately launched into the first song without a word, I admit I began to think that this would take the form of a contemporary Dylan show, wherein he has hardly a word to spare for the audience (though plenty of devilish and mischievous looks, don't mistake me for anyone other than a Dylan defender till I die)despite having had the elaborate set to look at while we waited, but I was happily proved wrong in short order.

For the general vibe and structure of the show, I'll refer you to the man himself's site, as he's covered events pretty thoroughly, although I'm happy to elaborate if there are any questions. Also, I spent the last few days soaking in the pure joy of the experience and consequently didn't want to risk diluting it or harshing my mellow prematurely by trying to come up with the setlist from memory, but this looks like just the ticket.

Special joys for me include Substitute, which is one of my fave-favorite Who songs, Everyday I Write the Book, which I love beyond all reason, Red Shoes, I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down, High Fidelity, his wonderful acoustic Slow Drag With Josephine, and the insane, insanely great performance of I Want You. It was so amazing. I can remember my brother catching me tearing up to that listening to it once a million years ago, suspiciously asking me what was wrong with me that a song had made me cry, and having no satisfactory answer, and here it was a decade later and I was watching it meander painfully through its own heartache and that of I Say a Little Prayer For You which was woven in through the last third. Of course, on that note, let me draw attention to the beautiful, eclectic approach to This Wheel's On Fire. The surprise to me, both in its inclusion on the wheel and its prompt win on the first spin, was Clubland. I don't know why, I suppose it is after all on the best-ofs and so on, but it always seemed like the sort of song that would be dismissed as a bit fluffy, but which I always liked and for whatever reason the vocals always struck me a bit to the core. I suppose those are likely candidates for its inclusion on those best-ofs. At any rate, it was exciting to hear as was any and everything they deigned to play, and they deigned to play a lot.

Oh, the pit? Yeah, well, I'm very happy for the youngish man who got tickets down front somehow on the day of, because he was so into it and he was a fan. The soused older crowd getting tanked and getting in fights over who was sitting with whose man? Nah, not so much. At least they had a worse view than us for much of it, though they did get the pleasure of a personal visit from the man to select some more audience members to take their chances onstage. They had little cafe tables set up with a complimentary bottle of wine, though their snacks were decidedly not upscale as I saw mostly bags of Cheez-Its. It was impossible to feel too negative, though, as the show itself was so uplifting and revivifying and because the audience, despite feeling generally not that familiar with Elvis Costello, was extremely warm and enthusiastic.

Okay, should I wrap this up then? And save the second part for its own post? Probably. It's late and I have taken the LONG road on this one.

Coming up on the next blogpost: Celebrity and Entertainment, in one corner the Kardashians, in the other Costello. Stay tuned. Ain't unemployment grand?

Okay, How About Just Life Crises?

2011-09-17T19:32:00.003-04:00

I guess there are a couple of problems with meta empty posts about a midlife crisis that may or may not be occurring *cough cough*: 1) I'm kind of shortchanging my life if this is the midpoint! I realized that dumping gasoline on the fire doesn't really help solve the problem, so instead I'm going to be ambitious and self-affirming and shoot for a thirdlife crisis (no relation to Secondlife™) (shudder) (no offense). 2) More accurately, I'm just having a "stop the world, I want off," "no, hang on, I'm getting back on, stop it again" moment. 3) I'm also just pissed off that time ticks by in a linear fashion. 4) Meta empty posts don't make you feel better because you don't vent any spleen.

An example, perhaps. When I was a youthful high school teen, all I wanted was to be done with high school. It may not have been the miserable, suicidal gauntlet that serves as the shorthand cliche for one end of the teenage spectrum, but it was definitely an angst filled, feelin'-misunderstood, fumblingly awkward gauntlet. As my graduation slowly staggered into sight and towards the viewer, I dreamed a lot of big dreams. I ticked off a lot of boxes from whatever Peterson's How To Go To College guide was being passed around by the guidance counselor or had been bestowed upon me secondhand, and a stream of pretty catalogs arrived in the mail. They were excellent dream fodder. I would liken the intensity with which I pored over those brochures to the cartoon depiction of a kid from ye olden tymes lingering over the women's lingerie in a heavy old Sears catalog (ah, remember those?).

So there I was, mentally inserting myself into the photographs of undergraduates laughing and having class outdoors, all LL Bean sweaters and casual semi-circle on some lush grass, and I offhandedly mentioned that Ithaca was really gaining traction with me, and my father double checked to make sure that I knew there wasn't some Family Ties style college fund waiting for me to choose the private university I liked best. Oh...yes... But weirdly, even as I filled out the forms and really halfassedly applied for a couple of scholarships at the local state school, in my mind the anticipatory movie wherein I was LL Bean'd comfortably onto the lawn in front of distinguished old stone buildings kept showing.

Roommate appears to be an attempt by life to make up for me never living any of the 70's summer vacation horrors described by Judy Blume? In mind-movie, suitemates are totally cool and awesome and worldly. Cafeteria is crowded with strange faces and circus-grade meat? Mind-movie has cafe style dining and, like, ethnic takeout in a lively dorm commons. My floor votes to not be the sole academic floor and thereby nullify rules designed to make it more studious? My hand is the only one that goes up when the RA asks who here requested the academic floor? Well, in mind-movie none of this is necessary because while everyone loves jamming over to the library for super hip research, and everyone's ready to pull an allnighter, everyone also loves to just be cool and have a good time. And classes? Well, while real life classes seem to be anonymous, inconveniently early, boring, and while I in fact do not see any reason to continue going to them since exactly zero of them have new besties or soulmates, in mind-movie I'm out on that lawn, man. It's just the most bitchin' liberal arts class out on the lawn having a laugh and I'm totally there and participating.

The only time that I ever could reconcile real life and mind-movie during that first year was when I would get booted from the library computer lab at close. Logging out of the MOO, closing the Beastieology site, grabbing any books that I may have brought under the self-delusion that I would get some kind of work done, and then heading down the steps to cross the campus in the crisp dark air, I could be anywhere. The lights above the sidewalks gave a little touch of glamour to a simple campus and I could imagine that I was not in West Virginia and that I was not going to scuttle past the other residents of my dorm to my empty room, skip class the next day, or go and unfairly resent my classmates for not being exotic enough.

Now, I could have made the most of the situation, or just let go of those preconceptions instead of dwelling relentlessly on them, and had an awesome time. Or on the other hand, I could have been savvy enough to chase scholarships and financial aid and gone to some private school I'd looked at, and the result would probably have been me holed up and miserable, missing class. Maybe not. Given how far in the sand my head was, I'd have to say probably so, though. I had a 0.0 gpa my first semester, so I think it's safe to say that I probably needed to take a break and decide what I wanted. Or just that I wasn't ready to move out and attend to my own education. I was definitely in coast mode from high school, though, so I invested almost no intellectual energy in any of my classes and reaped a predictable reward. I could have gotten a lot out of them but it was just so great to do nothing and rot.

Pulled between impulses to be a total nerd at a really serious college and a total badass who didn't follow no rules, I pretty much sat at 0,0. That's a graph joke. Kill me. I'm at 0,0 again. A harrowing brush with custodial work has me feeling scared straight, but I've been so good at not using my degree that I think it would be difficult to start trying to now...and I'm also unconvinced that I really want to, other than if I was a lab tech again or something. Which makes me think that if I want to have a grown up job, and not in any of the normal ways that one does with a biology major, then I might should go back to school. Obviously this is also a case of 'oh, no, Brer Fox, not the briar patch.' But I need to know to what end before I can really start narrowing down where to apply and what for.

Do I try to burrow into academia? Do I try to equip myself for a professional career in the real world so that I can at least not mop all night to put bread on the table? Do I try to use graduate school to catapult myself into creative production with supervision and mentorship and an acquired work ethic? Advice is appreciated. Oh, and yeah, if we're not all pie-stealing hobos in the immediate future (which I have to admit, I welcome equally).

My Fiftythird Midlife Crisis

2011-09-14T19:09:00.002-04:00

On Peanut Butter Sandwiches and Disappointment

2011-04-07T19:49:00.002-04:00

I woke up to a lengthy debate about the refrigeration of peanut butter, a subject on which I have strong feelings. I used to put p.b. (for brevity's sake) into the fridge without thinking about it. It just seemed easier and tidier: jar foods in the fridge, box foods on the shelves, that kind of thing. The joy of opening a new jar was that it had been stored on the shelf and spread with ease, not like those cold, half-used jars that sat in a miserable clump on the bread, clinging and thereby destroying the slice (you know, if it's cheap, manufactured bread, at least) when you tried to spread it. Then I realized that while it might be in a jar like jam and jelly, it was not made of fruit and sugar and it wasn't going to mold over and kill me with invisible bacterias if I left it out. Blameaux, delightful, soft, spreadable sandwiches were mine for the having. So why did the jar under discussion this morning say "Refrigerate after stirring?"

A ha, it's because just like the five gallon tub of co-op peanut butter that my family stored in the bottom of the pantry when I was a kid, this is a more natural butter, one which separates during storage into its component oil and legume gunk. So if you stir it up and then keep it cold, the un-hydrogenated oil won't slither back to the top. But then you will be stuck with the same old encrappening of the bread. Not worth it in my book but it's not my peanut butter. However, when I felt peckish a few minutes ago and remembered that p.b. was available for all listless, sleepy, lazy, and peckish people to enjoy, I found one jar on the counter already. It was all stirred up and staying that way - maybe refrigerating it just kind of stuck - and it was tough to spread and the color was off and I ate it anyway and by the end of the sandwich I enjoyed it. Kind of.

This is day three of the Juneau revisiting and as always, I find myself really identifying with the sentiment that you can never go home again. Or maybe I just still haven't gotten a really good night's sleep. Seeing all my lovely friends is well worth the visit alone, though, so I'm glad for that and grateful to have them and the chance to see them again, up close and personal. And it's not like beautiful mountain vistas get old. I felt a thrill when I saw my first eagles (it was while coming in low for a landing in Sitka, they were flying over a little pond to roost together on the other side), and it's just staggering to see the ravens again and marvel all over at how gigantic they are. And I love to be yelled at by ravens.

However, after going out on the town last night, I feel an equal sense of recognition at just why it is that I was so ready to leave last fall. I guess at the very least I can state that seven months wasn't long enough for the small town, fish bowl effect to get any less claustrophobic. And maybe it just feels extra odd to be in what was my home and to have it be so familiar, and yet also changed in the process of changing hands to the boys. Or it could just be that I turn into a grouchy bear when I don't have a den in the back to retreat to, though I don't have any real complaints about couch-dwelling so far. I caught a persistent migraine during travel and I've been struggling to beat it, although for all I know it's gone and I have only a hangover to thank for today's aches and pains.

Showering today, I found my mind had been hijacked by Steve Miller and all I could hear was "Fly Like an Eagle." Would I lie about this? But it's true, time does keep slipping into the future, and so far it feels like Juneau is that one Family Ties re-run that's always on when you check. If it was a fresh plot, I'd stick around, but I can only watch Alex P. Keaton learn some very special life lessons on his road trip so many times.

Ohhh, really? O RLY???

2011-02-09T16:03:00.002-05:00

So, I just finished the soul-crushing experience of completing Wal-Mart's online application. As always, after filling in previous employment information using yet another unique but completely user-unfriendly set of entry fields, there's another unique but completely user-unfriendly navigation series to flesh out my background, and another series of "what would you do" personality questions (only 65 this time, wow, thanks!), and following an instance of the page freezing and dying and losing most of the data I'd input, I got the following message:

You have completed but did not pass the assessment.

What does that even mean? Jesus Christ, Wal-Mart, I should have "blended my opinion with the disagreeing employee to come up with a new option," instead of "discussing both of our ideas to come up with a compromise that's mutually satisfying?" Wal-Mart doesn't tell me I didn't pass any of their ridiculous bullshit. I clicked no on all employee theft and that's all that should matter to you, you joke store. And clean your fucking bathroom.

In other news, it turns out I really, really hate corporate online applications.

Et tu?

2011-01-22T22:50:00.004-05:00

Alicia is trying to get ahead of me in the world of blogging. The blogosphere. The Disjointed States of Blogerica. Her strategy is simple: start myriad blogs, let those blogs meet and produce offspring, form an army of blogs and circle my single blog like an evil parade of cannibal Conestoga wagons.

But what good is an army of blogs when you can't even take care of your firstborn, Alicia?

That's right, read it and weep, your last update was June 29, 2009, very nearly a full year and one half ago. Me, I've updated, like, at least three times in the last couple of months! So your efforts to outrank me are doomed to failure. However, she does have some good ideas. Maybe she'll even let me contribute. Links:

Dr. Commercial, MD

Sticky Icky Politicy (it should have a goddamned "k" in the Politicy part, goddamnit) (Zeusdamnit) (whatever)

Ahhhh, you can't make it up.

2011-01-20T16:40:00.002-05:00

I knew that reading the comments on Salon.com's...less than probing look at Portlandia (first episode up on Hulu through today so hurry) should prove entertaining, but at first they were disappointing, dull, "yes, they are!" "no, they aren't!" And then, in response to someone saying that they had spent "10 miserable months" in Portland, this little gem came along:

message from the front

Well @abbafui, I'm sorry you had such an awful experience in Stumptown. Maybe you just didn't fit in or or something.

I'm a lifelong Oregonian, with dual citizenship in the Thoreauvian rural outback and Portland itself. I haven't seen the series yet, but it's a bit of gentle fun at the expense of Portland's enduring and carefully nurtured stereotype, as I understand it. To be effective a stereotype needs a kernel of truth at its core, and judging from the previews, this comedy has a lot of fun with certain somewhat extremely drawn versions of certain truths about our fair city.

It's easy to find things to irritate in any city, if that's what you're looking for. Portland has its share. But, like any somewhat geographically isolated, medium size city it is a very complicated and multi faceted place. Sure, we have our ridiculous neo hippie/yuppie types, but we also have a very large number of extremely high quality, very friendly craft brew pubs, an insanely diverse and creative musical scene, and yeah, even a disproportionate number of nude dancer bars.

It's a great place, with a lot going for it, filled with a LOT of very friendly, if quirky people. You have to spend some time here to really "get it"; much as you would anywhere. But, to compare us to SF or Seattle is to completely miss the point. I'm sure you could find just as much to delight and irritate in both of those cities as well. After all, you can change your location, but you seldom change yourself much.

—porsadgaiRead porsadgai's other letters

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Ah, Porsadgai, don't you hear yourself? YOU are the subject.

No offense to my lovely, lovely Portland friends, of course - I had such beautiful sunny days in that city, honestly - but there's something so unique to skewer about it. And the show is awesome!

True American Dog: Boy Scout Leader Ties Forbidden Knot

2010-12-29T13:47:00.001-05:00

True American Dog: Boy Scout Leader Ties Forbidden Knot

SUCH a delight.

Corin is so good at editing

2010-12-13T20:56:00.002-05:00

He put together the footage shot on our last night in Juneau, which we spent with a few friends at Windfall Lake cabin - the sun broke through as soon as we got out to the lake and it was a really beautiful night with a lot of love. Big props to Corin for distilling it with his usual flair for editing and sound.

Time? What time do you think we have?

2010-11-16T04:18:00.003-05:00

This would probably be a good time to take a break from writing. After all, I've just started after what, three days off? At least? And after all, it's going pretty slowly at the moment. And I've just hit another lull in story, action, plot, and all those other things with which my novel has only the most passing of acquaintanceship. Oh, and let's not forget, it's after four in the morning. Phew, good thing I'm on the internet.

I have also been entirely disobedient of my own rules, watching television, surfing said internet, sitting and staring at the wall, so on and so forth. However, we have also been legitimately distracted by and concerned for our sick puppy, Rufus. Rufus is a sweet little boxer mix whose pictures I am too lazy to get up and look for, because it will mean going close enough to my bed to risk a perilous fall into bed, perchance to dream. Several days ago, Rufus became listless and his tummy was upset (read: coughing up puke onto many surfaces in the house that were better un-puked-upon) and from there he crashed into terrifying, debilitating illness. So, nursing him has taken a bit of time and a good deal of psychic energy. He has been stronger and has started drinking water again on his own, though. His increasing speed, dexterity, and strength in fighting us off when we come to hydrate him or give him antibiotics gives me some hope.

Also, it seems when I leave the house for anything I feel entirely too distracted to settle into writing again that day. In the case of yesterday, however, I was not one bit sorry, because Alicia and I went to Mountain Stage. We had purchased tickets some time ago anticipating that it would sell out, which it did, and the big name draw (for us, at least - I suspect a sizeable chunk of the audience was there for Trampled By Turtles) was the Weepies. I guess they took the last few years off to start a family, so I feel doubly lucky that they came to our backyard so soon after getting to W.Va. They sounded great, too, and all that, but the big thrill of the night was getting introduced to not one but two bands that I think are going to be keepers for me: the Infamous Stringdusters and the Punch Brothers. Don't ask me how or why I wasn't already familiar with either of these acts because I don't even know. I don't know, man, I lose my touch, man. (Did you ever have a touch to lose?)

As a postscript: we also went out afterward in hope of getting to hear some or any of the artists from Mountain Stage at the Empty Glass jam, but no luck. Sadness. Disturbing? Seeing mentions of or hearing bands that have been playing in the area since I was a teenager.

Some terrifying statistics:

2010-11-05T22:53:00.003-04:00

Total

Current Day5

Average Words per Day456

At This Rate You Will Finish OnFeb 18

Days Remaining25

Total Words Remaining47724

Words per Day to Finish on Time1909

Weeeeellllll...Despite the very best intentions, I have not been hitting the daily word count necessary to crank out 50,000 in 30 days. Yesterday was a job interview at Amazon, for a seasonal customer service gig, and so I can't feel too terribly badly

about getting distracted. Today is a bit more difficult to explain. I may have to recluse myself while in reclusion, which is now possible due to the excellent surprise of some private space for Miss Alicia and myself that our parents were able to carve out while we were gone.

Speaking of our last hurrah, it was a spectacular success in many ways and a wonderful experience. I'd never spent any time in Chicago proper, and it was a lot of fun. Emily was too gracious, and her new place was adorable. The L (not the El) was easy-breezy and luckily everywhere we went when we ventured out of Emily's neighborhood was a short walk from a station. We managed to connect with a couple of old friends, which was delightful, and we also got a chance to say one of the two Mamet plays that are being performed in rep at the American Theater Company. Oleanna was a truly intense experience, unsettling, uncomfortable, excellent.

The haul down to Lafayette got pretty tiresome, mostly because when we stopped for a break, we slept in a rest stop, and while I had good sleep due to sitting in the passenger seat, 3 hours was still not enough. But I'd a thousand times rather be driving weary through new territory and getting to see Arkansas and Mississippi than just be taking a tedious spin through

Indiana or Illinois. We were wiped when we got there, though, and pretty much all we were capable of was setting up the tent and getting some provisions in town before passing out for the night. The next couple of days were relaxed celebration, Cajun food, Cajun music, and a magical last night listening to a bluegrass jam getting a couple of saxes, a melodica, an accordion, and a whole lot of swamp flavor, as well as some electric brain-melting country a stone's throw away. Total bliss.

Our expectations for the culture were mostly based on Ray, the Cajun firefly in Disney's Princess and the Frog. Ray happens to be our very favorite character, and we weren't disappointed - I can't wait to spend more time in Louisiana in the future. Maybe next BlackPot? For now, though, it's time to bunker down.

As a bonus and as a means of spreading the love for Ray, I can't recommend the following highly enough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbvK557F24A

According to this, I need a bottle of champagne...

2010-10-22T18:06:00.002-04:00

To smash on the prow of this blog, of course, because it's the re-launch! The grand re-opening! The re-writing of posts with greater than biannual frequency!

Who remembers last November, when I failed to reach even the quarter mark in NaNoWriMo? I do. That was a hot mess, and being as I love hot messes, I registered to try again this year. So in slightly more than a week, I will be holed up making attempt number 2. How am I feeling about it? Optimistic, dude: I dropped out of life, so now I'll have no pesky distractions, including disposable income. This does of course mean than Cabin Fever risk factors have skyrocketed, but whatever, whatever.

I have a loose idea, which basically consists of rolling the small handful of loose ideas I had into one big, even looser amalgamation. I'm not comfortable delving further into that vague concept yet, though. Probably later, when I'm stuck and I want to do anything but write. I'm also semi-retiring from Facebook and email, leaving this blog, banging on the guitar, visual art, and....jogging or something. If I make it more than a week, I will be pretty impressed with me.

What to do with this dwindling free time? Fritter it on the soon to be eschewed internet, for sure; monkey with the template of this blog, obviously; but best of all, one last Road Dog run for glory! Chicago beckons, and we (Alicia and I) figure we'd better do it now while we still have the paltry leftovers of our awesome and amazing road trip south. After that, Black Pot will be our introduction to Louisiana as we strike into Cajun country for camping, gumbo cook-offs, and traditional music. Oh, yeah, and Halloween.

After last Halloween's debacle, I've been pretty reluctant to give much thought to dress-up or celebration, but it looks like my last minute lifesaver is going to be the ol' witch safety net. I think I can live with that, and it's low maintenance/preparation enough that I can just go with the flow. Fingers crossed, anyway. We set out on the road encore tour tomorrow so once again, here we goooooooo.

They foam at the mouth, they do.

2010-02-24T13:40:00.002-05:00

Of course by they, I don't refer to "the job killers," "wolves in sheeps clothing [sic]," "outside interests," or "eco-terrorists." I was actually thinking of the weird and pathetic gang of bullies that have nothing better to do than crony around the comments to every vaguely or specifically environmental story in the paper. I couldn't help but notice that every pro-SEACC comment as well as every comment asking people to moderate their extreme characterizations to accomodate some middle ground were voted at least one thumbs down, while every rabid indictment of SEACC's (and any pro-environment local's) soundness of mind or moral character had multiple thumbs up. So in addition to spending their time reiterating on the comments section of every story or letter just how impossible any development or economic benefit is without clearcutting the Tongass or at the very least handing it off in backroom deals and hoping for the best, the anti-greenie meanies also spare a few seconds to vote up any likeminded comments and vote down any dissent, however calmly or even tepidly stated.

Why do I even do it to myself?!
Reading the comments section on the Juneau Empire's website always fills me with a peculiar blend of nausea and anger-blindness (you know, when you get really mad and consequently have difficulty seeing straight?)...a very distinctive bouquet. Leaving aside how very little I think of the Empire itself, its site is strictly amateur hour. I can't stand a newspaper that forces me to close repeated intrusive pop-up ads that obscure the stories and links. And once I make it past the advertising barrage, I get to read the new faux-populism of a wannabe tea-bagger from down south who moved up to be a mini-demagogue in Juneau and the admiring flock of disciples policing the comments for any heretical points of view. God, how I hate the Empire.

Addendum to Friday

2009-11-15T02:11:00.003-05:00

So, work ended up involving a walk at the glacier with the kiddies, which was very beautiful with the fresh snow:

Good Morning, Juneau!

2009-11-13T12:54:00.003-05:00

Things that will put you in a grrrreat mood on your way to work:

Photo totally stolen from Amy Dieffenbacher's Facebook!

- Light snow outlining all the trees and covering the ground; creamsicle sky with late sunrise

- Mug of perfect-strength Seattle's Best that Alicia made (plug for Seattle's Best, even if it is the house coffee of McDonald's these days)

- "Town Called Malice," the Jam

optional:

- Bacon, egg, and cheese croissant

And for once in a lifetime, the other drivers on the road didn't act like they were getting paid to commit vehicular homicide! What a day. Now if I can just haul a couple of four year olds around all day without losing my mind or my tires' grip on the road, we can head into the weekend. I had a dream last night that I was frantically trying to get rid of company so I could start writing at midnight on a Friday, which I choose to interpret as a sign that my dumb brain is finally ready to stop procrastinating and put in some solid catch-up work on my plotless novel. Woo hoo!

It is the autumn of the ye-ea-ea-ear...

2009-11-03T18:45:00.002-05:00

I have been feeling very, very blah lately - blah about Juneau, my job, my personal life and creative output...my lack of ungodly riches...so, like a fool, I pinned all my hopes for kickstarting some fun back into life on Halloween.

Halloween is a very wonderful holiday, truly one of the greats (my all time personal favorite is Easter, but Halloween is right up there with it). Dressing up is so awesome, and kids trick-or-treating is so cute, and it's a nice cheerful and morbid celebration during autumn, a perfect backdrop for cheerfulness at fall leaves scurrying around in the crisp wind and for morbidity at winter's approach and the death of another year. Halloween is also a dangerous holiday, however, as people tend to party a little too hard when they get all mob-frenzied at the high turnout at the bars and the abundance of interesting or...shall we say titillating costumes. Last Halloween, for example, I dragged my feet, was totally broke, had no costume, and then threw together a very fun get-up and proceeded to utterly alcohol poison myself into oblivion. What a crazy night, what a terrible hangover, what a crushing case of the next-day-shames.

This year we vowed it would be different, and devised a gameplan for what we would drink, how much we would drink, and more importantly what and where we would NOT drink - buying drinks at bars was strictly forbidden because it's a money-suck and because it leads to over-intoxication, but drinking a pre-determined amount at home was projected to be both cost effective and a good way to ensure controlled conviviality. I instead poured money into costume supplies with some vague, grandiose vision in mind. Then I got the blahs, and those costume supplies festered in their plastic JoAnne Fabrics bags while I refused to do anything productive at all until the day before Halloween when I started stitching. I also had a few Miller Lites, I'll admit it, and who knows if they affected the following day, or if the cumulative stress of work and hating the season change (dreading winter) and not wanting to be marooned in Juneau at the moment were enough on their own, but I woke up on Halloween with a headache that waxed and waned throughout the day.

Between that and a spat at the house, and perhaps the impossibly high expectations for the holiday that had been built in group plannign and discussion for at least a month prior, I collapsed in a total break-down, and my headache turned into a sort of stabbing-icepick-in-the-brain pain. I barely scraped it together to get dressed as company came over, and was reluctantly pressed into makeup duties in the bathroom, and eventually plastered my own face over, and even got my arm twisted into having a couple of drinks before leaving the house, but the joie de vivre was long gone. However, I had already purchased tickets to the Reign of Terror haunted house at the JACC, so I had to go out at least to use those.

That haunted house was perhaps the worst that I have ever seen, ever. Words fail. Although the words "haunted tent" do describe the scariest thing in it, if that tells you anything. Honestly, the only time there was anything remotely unnerving was when one of the rooms was just pitch black and you had to make your way to the shredded doorway on the far side - and I can get that thrill for free at home. We need an investigative reporter to tackle the question, "What did 35 high school students do for the 5 months that they allegedly spent working on this haunted house?" And also, "If they had a budget, where the hell did it go?" The entire thing consisted of high schoolers lurking in plastic sheet cubicles shifting from side to side and occasionally shrieking, one pup tent with someone in it shaking it, and a legitimately creepy mattress set-up that looked ready for a massacre, if only one had shown up. I guess it was kind of funny, if I'm being charitable. And it would probably be really scary for kids! But scaring kids isn't hard.

Anyway, we went out to the Alaskan afterwards (after I was berated in a rainy parking lot to at least walk over with my friends as I tried to duck out and head home), and The Great Alaska Bluegrass Band was a pleasure to listen to, and a pleasure to take one sedate waltz around the dancefloor to, and I was all too happy to sit and look at all the creative costumes for a little while before heading home to get mad snuggly on the couch.

The next day Alicia gave me some tough love and forced me to figure out what I could do to be happier in Juneau so I wouldn't bail on her during winter break and leave her homeless. One of those things was putting up or shutting up, so I signed up for NaNoWriMo in an effort to get my lazy self to do more than start and shelve a writing project. Now I have to write oodles a day or I'm dead. But I'm glad I did it, it means there's something that I Really Need To Do in the evening, instead of shlubbing around doing nothing and feeling sorry for myself. Current word count: 1,049. X_x I'm cat meat.

2009-08-12T04:05:00.000-04:00

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The Bob Dylan Show

WaMu Theater
Seattle, WA

Mon, Oct 5, 2009 07:30 PM

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Event:	The Bob Dylan Show
Venue:	WaMu Theater Seattle, WA
Event Date:	Mon, Oct 5, 2009 07:30 PM
Order Date:	08/12/09
Order #:	10-57025/SEA

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Random Text Messages

2009-07-18T21:59:00.002-04:00

1304389****: Hey
Me: Who is this
1304389****: It's Nate, michaels pretty cool don't u think ;)
Me: There are so many Michaels in this world, I wouldn't feel comfortable generalizing.
1304389****: Wait do u like anyone
Me: Yes, I like my friends a lot B-)
1304389****: Wait who r u
Me: Wait, how deep does this rabbit hole go? Are you playing Matrix mind games with me, Nate?
1304389****: no my friend gave me da wrong num and I don't no who u r
Me: :( sorry you don't have the right number. But look how much fun we had with this mystery :D
1304389****: pants
Me: Trousers.
1304389****: But who ru
Me: Just another pawn in the game of life.

2009-05-26T22:23:00.001-04:00

You purchased 1 ticket to:
______________________________

_______________________________________________________________
The Bob Dylan Show & His Band-Bob Dylan,John Mellencamp,Willie Nelson
Louisville Slugger Field, Louisville, KY
Wed, Jul 8, 2009 05:30 PM

WITH FRONDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS ANEMONES?

2009-04-13T02:00:00.003-04:00

Spring 2009

I haven't blogged in a long time. Like for real. I also haven't done a lot of other things. But I have done still others. One thing I did was make Emily a stuffed elephant. And myself a stuffed rabbit. My creativity is not without a pulse. I firmly intend to get some stuff on the still-defunct website, too. The weekends have been occurring in rapid succession, but also passing by with great haste, leaving nary a trace of their existence in time's cruel forward march. Seriously, right about NOW is when I wish I actually just taught school, so I could have the summer off. It's something to think about.

A Little Bit Of Broadway, 4:40-6:00, 2/22/08

2009-02-22T20:58:00.005-05:00

Knowing Me, Knowing You - ABBA
Opening: I Hope I Get It - A Chorus Line
Jet Song - West Side Story
Joanna - Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Jolly Holiday - Mary Poppins
Light My Candle -RENT
The Trolley Song - Meet Me In St. Louis
Mimi?! Speravo Di Trovarvi Qui - Baz Lurmann's Production of Puccini's La Boheme
Quiet, Please, There's A Lady On Stage - The Boy From OZ
Tomorrow - Annie
Dance: 10; Looks: 3 - A Chorus Line
Oh, What A Beautiful Morning - Oklahoma!
Mack The Knife - Threepenny Opera
Defying Gravity - Wicked
By The Sea - Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Take Me Or Leave Me - RENT
What Do You Do With A BA In English - Avenue Q
Ease On Down The Road - The Wiz
Oh my god, we wrecked this show. We did everything wrong. Ten thousand regrets.

...Yawn.

2009-02-15T04:31:00.002-05:00

We (Alicia and I) went to bed all kinds of early last night, as we'd had respectively difficult Fridays. Of course, mine was sort of normal difficult, meaning coaxing children to put on their coats when they'd rather sit under a table and blow raspberries at any adult exhorting them to "make good choices," while hers was extra super hard, like facing Juggernaut at the end of the first level in the X-Men for Sega Genesis video game but your controller only has a couple of reliably working buttons - she was hell of sick (just a perk of my job I like to share with the people that I see in my life) and had a couple of tests that went down pretty nasty and raw. We were in bed by midnight and that meant we got to wake up luxuriating in pools of sunlight at about 9 or so this morning! She headed to Eaglecrest with Boni while I held down the homefront, listening to my soft rocking Valentine's Day mix and making valentines like it was an assembly line. I also washed dishes. I guess getting up early of my own accord puts some kind of work ethic in me. Josh and I headed out for a V-Day lunch after he got himself together and we had pretty hilarious misadventures at El Sombrero and exchanged valentines. After some sunset photo-ops, he brought me home to find some very sleepy snowboarders and borrow some duds for the wearable art show - you won't catch me there because I'm as outraged by the ticket prices today as I was the first time I heard of the whole shebang. JEEZ, like it's even worth that much! Anyway, between Alicia, Adrienne, Boni, and myself, we were able to kick Nick out of bed and smear enough make-up on our faces to scrape ourselves over to R&J in the nick of time. Nick put it best when he said that the show accomplished what he had previously thought impossible: making him even care about Romeo and Juliet. I'm in the same boat; the play itself always left me all kinds of cold, but this format really gets me into it! Tomorrow (or tonight, since it's after midnight now, I see) is the last show, so let me say that anyone who hasn't seen it really, really ought to, as it's pretty spectacular. There's a matinee of Dying City, too. Following, we forced Roma to stay open long enough to make us some pizzas and invite us to stay to eat after they caught us trying to take our boxed food to the bench outside like hobos. I have a 3 day weekend, so I'm basically super-jazzed, as Jimmy Tickles of Strangers With Candy fame would say. I want to finish my book tomorrow - I'm still reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, because I always misplace it and then eventually find it next to my bed. I think this book of magic has a spell of its own to confound me. I'm so into this book that it will kill me to eventually finish it...I just read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book in a day and as I watched the pages whittle down I got progressively more upset it wouldn't continue indefinitely. This occurred at the same time as a conversation with Josh about enjoying one's time in a pursuit and having to break away as compared to enjoying one's time in a pursuit and continuing it until one might beg to be let go - we were talking about working in Antarctica, but it was very timely, as I was simultaneously lamenting every page closer to the end of The Graveyard Book...so I guess I know which camp I'm in: ride the mother out. Time to see if Alicia's up for some pre-bed Yacht Rock, so faretheewell.

Ouch

2009-02-10T02:13:00.004-05:00

This morning I was walking down the (not very big or impressive) hill to my car, thinking to myself, "Oh, it figures, there's a traffic jam blocking me in, I wonder if they'll get it sorted before I have to get involved to help push or something," when my feet both flew out from under me with no warning. I came down, as did my coffee mug (whose lid stayed on reasonably well, but who sprayed coffee hither and yon) and the outgoing mail I'd been carrying (the aforementioned hither and yon).

I heard people calling out asking if I was alright from their various vantage points of shoveling or spectating the traffic jam (the road was so slippery that a person was stuck half in and half out of their driveway, unable to get enough purchase to make any significant progress in one direction or another) and I wallowed up to a sitting position, feeling foolish, compelled to reassure them I was even though my brain was being flooded with a number of increasingly panicked nerve reports on my hand, and utterly confused. I looked to my left and right hoping that I would see something to give me a little navigational input as to why I was so confused or what I should do next and sure enough, saw my glasses lying a little more than halfway across the road - oh, dear, I need to mention that I wasn't on the sidewalk, because it's very inconsistent in terms of snow cover, and is often icier and more slippery than the road, and then you might have to wade up and over a berm to get to your car, so it's easier to just walk in the street, particularly as low traffic as ours is.

So, back to the story: the glasses are lying a little more than halfway across from me, and I dimly hear that the driveway car has made it in and the car behind it has started moving...why this car decided to start up when a person was sitting in the street is beyond me, but I, fearful that they would run over my glasses, leapt to my feet for a dash out to grab them. This brave leap instantly became a gross and terrible fall to my knees as my feet went out from under me with no warning...again. At this point, I gained a measure of respect for the degree of iciness and the magnitude of slipperiness, and instead crawled out to the glasses. The car had braked when it saw that the person who had merely been sitting dangerously close to their path had decided to soldier crawl all the way into their path, and became stuck.

Glasses clutched in hand, I turned around and crawled back to my scattered possessions, and sat up to inspect them. "Are they broken? They must be!" I thought, and answered myself, "How can I tell if they're broken?" "I don't know, try putting them on and see if it works." It did work. I then collected my coffee mug and mail and tottered up to my feet and over to my car, re-assuring people who continued to ask that yes, I was indeed alright, offering lamely, "I just needed my glasses!" Once I safely got to the car, I tossed my stuff in and got the brush out to start clearing off the snow and what-not, whimpering the whole time because my hand felt so terrible. I was initially quite convinced I would need x-rays and casts and who knows what else, but it seems that it might just be an epically jammed or sprained thumb, and there's not much they can do for that that I know of. I have whiplash, and my knee is bruised and skinned, and my thumb just sucks, and looking back on the bafflement and confusion I felt in the road, I think I came pretty darn close to knocking myself out in that first fall. And I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt.

However, my weekend was KILLER, despite sleep deprivation, life's many thousand little annoyances, and whatever else I can think of to complain about, because I saw R&J and Dying City. Both good. R&J was the most fun that I've ever gotten out of Romeo and Juliet, seriously. It was way sexy and way funny and I felt much more emotionally invested than I've ever been able to in all that overwrought teenage drama. Plus the tickets were free because I identified "Rock Around The Clock" when they played a snippet on the radio. LULZ, as Josh would say. Dying City was considerably less fun, except for all the fun you'll have comparing themes and topics with your theatre-mates afterward! I'm all about the various manipulations we see in the show, but there are lots of good, sound, valid points to make besides that. Highly recommend both and there's only one weekend left, so get off your ass. If you go to R&J, you may see me, whooping it up.

Celebration Time, Come ON!

2009-02-01T23:57:00.002-05:00

I have, as of today, officially watched a football game from start to finish, and a Superbowl game - talk about two birds with one stone. I was cheering for the Steelers, and good for me. That 100 yard touchdown interception thing was a big deal, even to a non-fan like me. I was whooping and dog-pounding it Arsenio Hall style. Sadly, neither Alicia nor I won any money in the weird little gambling pool we entered, and so we owe $20, but I still call it well worth it for the thrill of getting my hopes up that I would win the $40 pot for the 4th quarter scores and have my team win. After the Cardinals threatened to come from behind, I was glad to settle for just having my team win.
Another cause for celebration is finally getting Netflix 'Watch Instantly' to work on my computer! I flipped out when I realized that Internet Explorer wasn't connecting to the internet (you need IE to Watch Instantly), and that this was a common experience, not some weird quirk of my own I could fix, but Josh alerted me to a Firefox plugin I could use and it saved the day. It also saved the night, as it allowed us to watch Back to the Future on a whim. I saw BTTF 3 recently, and BTTF 2 a couple of years ago, and while they both have their good points (2: it's so weiiird, plus it's not afraid to go pretty dark. 3: ZZ Top, hoedown, Marshall Strickland.), they're also not really that good (2: it's sooooo weird, plus cheese overload on the 80's cafe. 3: relentless whimsy and cutesyness, and nobody cares if Doc gets laid - hey, Doc, why don't you take a little of your own medicine? I notice you don't mind messing with the time stream when you're...hm...saving your own life or getting some tail!) and they can leave a tired-of-the-future taste in your mouth. However, watching the original was as refreshing as a crisp breeze off a sparkling surf on a sunny beach in a balmy season. Watching the original was like lying down in a bed made of memory foam and having sleepy puppies blanketing you, then waking up to a tall glass of fresh squeezed o.j. Watching the original was like having the power of flight. What I'm trying to say is that it's really good. Maybe the lesser-than sequels tainted my memories, maybe they shouldn't have left the Huey Lewis out of them, or maybe I just needed a good solid decade off from watching it obsessively (by the way, I was pretty into this movie when it came out. I have fond memories of the novelization that I got at KMart). Since then, I've been Netflixing like a madwoman and I don't see any end in sight.
I also watched Krull this weekend, after it forced me to buy it for ten bucks at Fred Meyers. Does anyone remember "The Computer That Said Steal Me," by the way, since I just reminded myself of it? I love those emotionally fraught 80's juvenile fictions. So angsty. Who wasn't afraid of dying in a Cold War armageddon? And yet I'm revolted by the preternaturally adult culture foisted on kidsthesedays. I mean, who isn't - or actually, I guess some people probably just think it's cute when 7 year olds dance like the Pussycat Dolls and sing fucking Hannah fucking Montana, and dress exclusively in adult styles or slogan t-shirts, but it ain't me, babe. I'm all for not pulling emotional punches on kids (and I'm sure that there are perfectly true arguments contrary to my opinion, certainly the weird tragedies and sucker-punches hidden in children's movies and books set a certain pessimistic tone for life), but I'm not for basically forcing them to emulate impossibly older age groups as soon as they're able to consume any kind of pop culture. Last week a kid at Head Start asked me to pass them the "Hannah Montana." Pointing at grapes. Purple grapes. They meant purple. BLEARGH.
In cheerier news, I'm excited for both the Thunder Mountain plays, I hear they're killer!

Hotter than Hott.

2009-02-01T23:54:00.001-05:00

Life Is What Happens When You're Busy Making Plans (Sometimes...Sometimes Bad Is Bad)

2009-01-25T23:17:00.003-05:00

I totally tacked a Huey Lewis quote on to the end of the title because I hadn't heard that song in ages until I threw on the HL&theN DVD I got at Fred Meyer's. Yes, it's true, I've fallen in love all over again - I don't know how I could ever have forgotten a love so abiding. It's been all Huey all the time since Friday evening when I picked up a decently comprehensive best of. I am driving everyone crazy with the News, and I don't even care! Fortunately, Alicia and I usually get our fanaticisms in sync and once again, we're on the same page, here. One need only see the filthy Facebook group she started to know that it's so - but where I take it the extra mile is that I would even be up for it in the present. The biggest jaw-dropper in this whirlwind weekend of believing-in-the-power-of-love-back-in-time was not the wiki news that his grandfather invented the red wax they seal cheese up in, or that he got a perfect score on his math SATs (which I already knew from Behind the Music, thank you very much), but that when Emily walked into the house and was informed that she had just missed watching "We Are The World," featuring a little HL, of course, she calmly informed me that her friend met and is distantly in touch with Huey Lewis. I basically flipped shit all up and down on her, unsurprisingly.
Moving along, since wallowing in Huey Lewis and the News was not at the top of my agenda for the weekend, it naturally follows that in fact, all my grand schemes came to naught. Yesterday kicked off with a tremendously underwhelming Silverbow experience - as they all seem to be these days. Fact: the "jalapeno corn chowder" does not taste of jalapenos, nor is it a chowder. Fact: I am g.d. sick of getting the boot from the back room for "private events" every 5 minutes. Let me be, Silverbow, you know you already raped me for like twice what everything should cost, and you know that you are evil, evil, evil for moving the drip coffee behind the counter and being a total miser with refills. The next thing you know, they will charge for refills on hot water! (That joke originates in the fertile crevices of Adrienne's brain.) Anyway, we hung out as long as we could, and then we swung by Rainbow, where I got some choice lime oil that smells like green lollipops. Hot!
Next, Alicia and I were off to Mendenhall Peninsula, for some kid-sitting. We watched three little people, and they were all pretty well delightful. I am getting kid fever, dare I say. I enjoy hanging with the small ones, even when I'm trying to mediate the delicate negotiations of how much of Mary Poppins we can watch. Leaving, the stars were intensely intense, as they are out that way - the one reason that I would leave downtown to live anywhere else in Juneau. We tried to find Boni, and found her bicycling down Engineer's Cut-Off, homeward bound. After extended discussions in the frigid outdoors, it was determined she should just head downtown with us to hang out and drink wine, but by this point her bike had frozen unrideable, so I had to drive her to her house oh so slowly, her holding the door open with a foot, and holding the bike out the door with both hands clenched tightly. Our crackpot scheme worked. However, too much wine and too late a night have left my Sunday a bit out of sorts, and in the interest of ever accomplishing anything, and in the interest of not pickling my poor liver, I think a break from the sauce is in order. Besides, it's not like I've got enough spare brain cells to waste on purple drank. (I don't actually drink purple drank.)
On the upside, today was faaabulously beautiful - sunshine to spare. We had fun taking goofy pictures of ourselves, and of the sun shining through our eyeballs, and through our hair, and so on and so forth.

Tomorrow the work week swings back into gear, and some members of our household are experiencing some extreme dread and panic about that - isn't it awful? It's one of the worst feelings of the modern world, and we start practicing it when we don't want to go to school the next day and continue through the working life...I insist that I need a heap of money to live a life of true leisure - after all, I want to enjoy it, don't I? In a timely fashion, the Screen Actors Guild awards that Corin is currently watching are running their in memoriam clip montage, where I get to be horrified and shocked by all the actors I didn't know or had forgotten died this year. For example, the angel from Barbarella is no more!!!! "An angel doesn't make love, an angel is love," what a smooth line. And Paul Benedict died? My goodness. Nothing ever stays the same. Corin's got us all trying to figure the exclusion of Heath Ledger from the montage...my guess is he died just in time to make it into the last one. As far as self-congratulatory meaningless awards shows goes, this one is pretty entertaining and mellow - a room full of actors celebrating each other - Sean Penn making an ass of himself dropping "comrade" bombs and trying desperately to evade Mickey Rourke's allegations a few weeks back that as these things go, Penn's not the least homophobic guy in the room - Brits taking awards down left and right, and Meryl Streep winning everyone's heart with her rambling, enthusiastic, possibly boozed up gushing. The final thought: I need this cold to go away, immediately.

This Blog Brought To You By Kirsa And Adrienne

2009-01-24T05:37:00.002-05:00

We just got in from a night out - a little night out, if you're imagining some crazy fliff-flinging party with limos and champagne and strip clubs. Basically, I skipped out on going to Adrienne's work party and the JUMP festival, and we met up afterward, and pretty much just hung out at the Alaskan, where Sean Tracey and his band were playing, and playing well, as always. IT MUST BE REPORTED: SEAN TRACEY'S BEARD IS BEARDY INDEED. A beard unchained. That is the bluegrass gossip for the day.
Next on the agenda: random Myspace messages. Sometimes a person gets a random Myspace message. This does not mean that Myspace is evil, only that we must summon the strength to answer them. For those of you (Adrienne [Adro]) that think that Facebook is so much better because you've never gotten a random message there - random Facebook messages DO exist, and you will see that the Internet will always catch up with you in the end, no matter how far or how fast you run. Just wait until you get a Facebook message from someone you don't know and have never heard of; it's a lot weirder than a Myspace message, because everyone expects friend-whoring on Myspace. So that is the Internet gossip for the day.
Plans for the weekend: kid-sitting the big T (and friends), cleaning my messy room, learning how to write a website code, and just chilling out! I have a ton of pictures to update, too, which I plan to do. Oh, and I need to send my friend Brooke a package that has been eons in the making, as well as ship my Netflix out, as well as return a Zappos order I'm not in love with, as well as finally pay rent, because the school has finally given my sister her student refund! So the post office will be getting some mad love tomorrow. The recycling wouldn't look amiss at the dump, as opposed to our kitchen, either.

CRAPPY! IT'S ALL CRAPPY!

2009-01-11T00:00:00.002-05:00

I have totally lost track of all and any things I thought of to write about in the last couple of weeks - goodbye forever to them. My brain is stretched pretty thin between trying to get caught up on and aware of what the hell I'm supposed to be doing at work, spending an obscene amount of time in the office on Friday doing just that, and staying out crazy late. Also, tragically, I fell for the oldest trick in the book for like the millionth time - spending money in bars. Daaaang. I was broke to begin with, now I'm totally poor until my next paycheck. Like dragging sticky, barefoot children around the grocery store buying Fruity Pebbles poor. (I hate Fruity Pebbles, a lot.) Anyway, that doesn't put me in a good mood today I can tell you. I've been feeling pretty out of sorts all week, though, so I can't really figure out which negative attitudes go with which external events. Ever since last weekend, which got totally scratched out by having to do little tasks and chores unavoidably, I have a mounting rage-frustration problem, because I never got to just curl up in a ball for some alone time or passive entertainment or extra sleep or whatever else I want that doesn't involve responding to or interacting with other human beings. I mean, fortunately I don't have a super-abundance of close friends, but it turns out even a handful are too many when you need to drop an iron curtain between yourself and the world. Where is my isolation tank? I really need to know.
I haven't seen Wittenburg yet, but I've heard extreme mixed reviews. While I think it's awesome when people are creative and when people make the effort to produce something or to be actively participating, I also definitely don't want to waste time consuming crappy artistic endeavors. I mean, there's a reason that I don't read Danielle Steele. Obviously anything that involves Faust, Luther, and Hamlet (not to mention Brandon Demmery, I love watching him, he's so great!) has already guaranteed my attendance, don't get me wrong, but the theatre's season so far has felt very inconsistent.
I haven't really kept any New Year's resolutions...insofar as I even had any - I still haven't had the peace of mind and time to sit down and draw some up. I have been trying to eat more healthily, and have so far not shockingly broken this resolve. That said, I feel like any resolutions I may come up with will be predictable, prosaic, and destined to fail. Man, I am a regular Pollyanna over here. Oh, speaking of Pollyanna reminds me of the copy I had as a kid, which in turn reminds me of a funny thing I was mentioning to Alicia today - I think I've figured out why I had so many little terrors of losing my fingers as a child. (To recap, I thought that if the Easter Bunny came to my house and found out I wasn't asleep, he would cut off my fingers, and I had some traumatic dreams of a mysterious plague that caused ones fingers to fall off if a fly landed on them.) Alicia is having a weird little skin problem with her hands, and I joked that it was leprosy, and suddenly visualized the cover of the children's illustrated bible stories book I had as a kid.

This may or may not be the right cover -
I thought it was a lighter blue, and frankly the dude in this picture is super creepy, but it's definitely the right feel.

I remember walking into the living room one day to find my father cutting pictures out of it, and being totally shocked at the book-vandalism - he was cutting them out to decorate a letter to my aunt as a joke, them two being a couple of hi-jinking lapsed Catholics, and he was surprised that I rushed to the book's defense. He said he didn't know where it had come from but had found it lying around the house. I wonder if it didn't turn up in a box of children's books that a guy down the block had been giving away... Anyway, I enjoyed reading them, of course, because there were a lot of Old Testament (the old one, the good one, the weird one) stories in it and anyway I just devoured them along with any and all books - the story of Louis Pasteur? Check. Walter the Wolf? Check. Some dude named Peter or Paul doing some weird miracle? Check. A dog that builds a giant eggshell around itself to regain the love of his mistress when she would rather play with chicks? Chick, I mean, Check. Jesus going among some lepers and curing them? Check. By the way, what's it mean lepers? Oh, that's just some disease where body parts rot and fall off, dear, don't worry. Of course I worried! I had a childhood fear of leprosy the way I have an adult fear of mad cow disease - which is to say irrational but stronger than Charles Atlas. I suffocated and panicked at the thought of descending into some crude stone pit of lepers rotting left and right, but of course would turn to the appropriate page and dwell on that very thought. And of course on the flip side, I would imagine having leprosy and bidding farewell to friends, family, and a normal life as they shipped me off to a lingering death in a leper colony. So maybe all that weird finger phobia was an extension of my horror at the idea of Hansen's Disease. And maybe I owe it all to Tales of the Bible or whatever! Now that I've been googling the L word, I find that in fact I still need to mentally chant "there's no way you have leprosy, Kirsa," continuously in order to keep myself from running shrieking into the street begging the world to call me an ambulance and the CDC. 108 cases in the US in 1999?! Here are some bonus LeperLaffs, on the house:

Some Christmas Photos

2008-12-25T19:19:00.000-05:00

Juneau Christmas

The Night Before Christmas

2008-12-25T04:16:00.002-05:00

Oh man, all day at work I thought, "Get off work, go home, take nap, have a wonderful Christmas Eve." But then in reality, I had to get Alicia and go to the store because everything closed at 6 today, and then there was no nap. None. So instead I was very tired and fragile all evening and I felt persecuted every time someone looked at me the wrong way. Also, we watched the very un-Christmassy Superbad. Then again, what is Christmas-like about my siblings insisting on going out to the bars? I guess Christmas and bars go together pretty well, but I never thought it would be family members who have family and a really nice Christmas tree and a cozy living room in town that would be those sad hobo wastrels drinking away the holiday.
I heard "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins today, on the radio, and it was awesome - but then the weirdest thing was that they played that song from Flashdance (is it "What A Feeling?" I feel certain it's by Irene Carr, whatever the case) next, which could not have been coincidence, but seems like a very strange pick for the occasion.
I still haven't finished all presents, but I guess I'll just get to what I get to. I'm so tired that the act of blogging has slain me, so I need to call it a night and go collapse.

Additional Housekeeping

2008-12-20T13:27:00.003-05:00

I forgot to say that the funniest little tradition we have going right now is me reading bedtime stories out of Grimm's Fairy Tales (on my Kindle, woo woo) as we sleep 3 to a bed like little immigrant sardines in a tin. Alicia's head is by my and Adrienne's feet, and she is in the middle. Yes, it is a little weird. So are we!
I also enjoyed being nose-poked by two excited sled dogs this morning, one of whom warbled a cheerful get-out-of-bed song to me. They were ecstatic that one of the bed's occupants would indulge them in some sleepy ear rubs and gentle promises of "just a few more minutes, guys," and so now I must be true to my word and go hang out with the dogs and continue the crafting fiesta.

Frozen Boiling Frozen

2008-12-20T00:27:00.003-05:00

Adrienne is housesitting for our fave Talus-Heavners, the Talus-Heavners, and it is sweet! There are two dogs that we love very much, and they are well-behaved and affectionate and don't smell terrible unless they eat Yummy Chummies for tricks, and a bigger Christmas tree than ours and with more decorations (our tree is very nice, but there's something homey about a tree covered with a variety of ornaments, which we have not yet built up)...and....a hot tub, of course! But with a hot tub comes the experience of freezing your way into it, and it feels like being boiled in oil after your skin has experienced the frigid air. However, the joy of bobbing around in the boiling oil sipping on a spiked egg nog and looking through the vaporous mists for stars is a pretty good joy. Speaking of frigid air, one of my favorite things happened today: My damp hair froze while walking from the house down the driveway to my car. Not from the house to my car to driving to work, but literally from the house to the car - that's like 200 feet!!!!!! (maybe Matt will post a comment to correct this wild under-exaggeration) (on the other hand, maybe said Talus-Heavners are enjoying their break from Juneau, even though it means they miss out on more sunny days here) (ha ha ha, suckers!)
In other news, I just got the Charlie Brown Christmas album on iTunes for $5! I was prepared to pay ten, so that was extra-awesome. It has been rocking me, along with the Christmas With The Beach Boys album I got. Adrienne is very bah-humbug, which I continue to strive to change, because for once I am very into the holiday spirit of things. However, I am also very behind in present manufacturing, so I better get back to it!

please vote this funny on funnyordie, I don't want to die!

2008-12-18T01:06:00.000-05:00

Stepdad - watch more funny videos

Do What You Love (The Money Will Follow)

2008-12-17T23:49:00.002-05:00

That is the title of one of the many self-help books I received over the years, particularly in the teen-age years when my family (awesomely) would give me books designed to help give one a sense of direction in life. Think "What Color Is My Parachute?" Another one was "Careers For Bookworms." You can imagine - although nothing would be better than the leisure and security of a small town librarian, it would have to be a pretty awesome small town, and also I lack the motivation to seek to be a librarian, because those little note cards in the catalog drawers would bamboozle me every time. Anyway, the book in my subject line had all sorts of Myers-Briggs tests in the back and stuff to diagnose potential careers, but the title has bounced around my skull for lo these many years as a sort of litmus test for successful job-having - "do...what...you...love." Although I have had some fun jobs, I doubt that I could fairly say that I "loved" the act and art of delivering newspapers by 5 AM, the finesse of speedy ice cream scooping or cake decorating, or even the intuitive reading of 6 bottles of old sewage water that have been incubated in a room temperature fridge for 5 days. Driving around for my current job, as I do (to Headstart, to the office, to an elementary) I have figured out what I really love to do, tirelessly. And before you interject, it's not just since we've had these horrifically frigid sunny days! Even in the most Juneau of Juneau weather, I don't ever think I'll weary of looking at mountains rapturously. I could fairly be paid to sit and watch mountains and appreciate the nuances of their endless beauty without ever shirking a minute of my time. Alas, they do not pay for this occupation, so the book lied. If I could write really good poetry about it, maybe I could eke a pittance, occasionally. If I could take amazing pictures, maybe with a fluke streak of luck I could get a bunch of posters printed and some sort of syndication deal, probably with awful motivational captions. If I was an artist, maybe I could get some litho prints made up to hawk to the tourists. I admit that the sight does inspire poetry, but there's the capital investment of sitting around looking and writing during the scanty daylight hours (aka the work day) to consider. So, just to put it on the record, the parachute is colored impossible.
For any who weren't 'invited,' here's a couple of recent picasa albums:

PHOTOBACKLOG

31st Birthday

The Filth and the Fury

2008-12-07T15:50:00.002-05:00

I would have to characterize this weekend as being one long and tiresome bout of self-disappointment, with a small break for hilarity and several much-needed breaks for awesome. Hilarity was the Foot Fist Way, which was ridiculously accurate in its depiction of small town martial arts. Awesome was "Heartbeats" by the Knife, which somehow just hit number one in our household, meaning that at any given point, no matter how hungover, asleep, grouchy, or depressed you might be, you might be summoned inexorably to the living room for a dance party when someone starts blasting this jam. It sounds so good that I can't believe it's not a physical necessity like air or water. In fact, I have consumed more "Heartbeats" than I have water, which probably explains the uncalled for lingering of said hangover.
I'm tired of the word hangover, by the way - it's like, what does that even mean? Ha, okay, sorry, I'll stop cracking myself up by being awful. But seriously, I prefer a term like "self-inflicted stupidity ramifications" or something. It really brings home how dumb I was on Friday night. I get to blame a little tiny bit of it on the fact that of course there is never time to nap before stupid First Friday gallery walking, and I really needed a nap. When I'm really tired, it exactly mimics drunkenness (I mean, like, exactly - poor judgment and impulse control, near black-outs, the works), and I guess compounding that with wine, mead, and cider on my way out the door didn't help. Still, there was no call for the ensuing series of debacles. I really like to dig into regret, if you can't tell, and beat myself up until some magical absolution is granted. Said absolution has so far failed to materialize.
So have snow tires on my car, although I moved my old snow tires out of the garage and into the back seat as a first step towards remedying that. Some people are highly skeptical of their continued efficacy, so now on top of getting around to calling tire places and waiting on hunger-strike for them to take care of my bidness, I also have to live in fear of their telling me that I have to buy new ones. I know, I know, why don't I just buy new ones...maybe I will, but anything would be better than the tires I have on now - I don't understand: my first winter in Juneau, I never even got around to changing the tires. Oh, no, never mind, I just remembered that I lived in student housing and had a student job, no wonder it wasn't no thing. Anyway, a couple of days ago we got some snow, and I thought, "Okay, okay, gonna have to get up early and it'll be a whole rigmarole getting the car out of its spot and into the street, parked in the worst spot on our street as it is, but hey, if I can just slalom down to glacier highway I can make it, after all, Corin never changed his tires last year and he made it somehow." The reality of the situation was a little different, as it turned out. Alicia helped me until she had to go catch the bus, by which time Adrienne was coming out to move her car (conveniently parked behind me), and so it was Adrienne who witnessed the slow tragedy of me sliding down the hill, perpendicular to the road, blocking it utterly and praying fervently that nobody came along to demolish me or sit impatiently as I tried to fix the situation. Nobody did, and I managed to get the car pointed in the right direction...actually, I managed nothing, the car, the snow, and gravity sorted the whole thing out independently. But then I slid into the neighbor's snow bank, blocking their garage, and encouraging them to come out and help us try to get it unstuck. That done, I begged Adrienne to wait for me to park my car and found a spot on 12th St that I could almost park the car in. With the help of a couple of passing strangers, I got it parked sort of in the right place, a few feet off the curb. Then Adrienne let me borrow her car and my bacon was saved.
Sloth and sorrow all weekend also means that as of now, 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon, I didn't really do anything good with my free time. I'm going to see Theatre in the Rough's The Little Prince in an hour, and I keep telling myself that afterward there will still be time to do something, anything...but you know how it is when you don't believe yourself. I guess my headache lifted (mostly) with the soothing balm of coffee, but I've still got the mopes.

Q OF S X 3 = !!!!!!!

2008-11-23T19:02:00.002-05:00

Last night I escorted Miss Alicia to Quantum of Solace, as I had promised her I would. Having seen it twice without her, I definitely didn't want her to feel excluded from the Bond network just because she has a busier schedule. So yeah, that made viewing #3. She loved it as much as I do, and she's so much more expressive as an audience member, which enhances the viewing for the rest of the theatre: fist pumping, gasping, cackling (although this has quite a lot of humor in it, as did the last one, this was the first time I heard a full audience laugh at jokes, and it was due to Alicia's brazen chortling), disbelieving whispers of "How DARE M restrict his travel!!!!" I thought this (the third time) was the best because I could really chew on what was happening, and appreciate the details. I have Daniel Craig fever, obviously. Basically, that's what I needed to report on the internet, so I thought I'd blog it. Oh, I really liked the opening titles for this one - the song was by Jack White, so it's super good, and the visuals are very cool. Alicia said she saw some rolls on one of the ladies, so good on you, title designer. I liked the Casino Royale visuals, very psychedelic, but Chris Cornell caterwauling all over the place is a trifle painful.

Also, I'm working my way through the initial twenty or so viruses of working with kids in a Headstart class. Mostly just sneezes, so far.

Video Round-Up!

2008-11-03T05:23:00.002-05:00

Notes From Thee Aboveground

2008-10-20T19:25:00.003-04:00

Driving Up To Juneau

From ALL HALLOW'S EVE (or something)

Whoa, man, wow. Basically all of October, blog-free. There are a couple of albums. Halloween was pretty big - as is always the case when you actually don't want to go out and don't think you're going to enjoy yourself, I ended up crawling home well into the wee hours (honestly, they were becoming not-so-wee by the time I got in)...not literally crawling, but I was a mess. I am so glad that I linked up with a friend, because I lost everyone at bar close and was in no state to go it alone. But the Wharf was full of familiar faces, so all came out well. Yesterday, in addition to trying to recover from Halloween, there was the gothic hafla, or the Gothla, where Adrienne and Alicia's troupe danced, so there're some pics of that in there, too.
Other than that, what news is there? Still jobless, but I have an interview tomorrow, which I hope goes well, because I need a job, and it should pay alright, and I think there are benefits, and I also hear the scheduling is flexible. So if I have to work... Seriously, I wish I didn't! I love having free time, even if I did go into a bit of a funk.
There's some election thing coming up. Now Palin and McCain have both been on SNL (and he was pretty funny), and it's so weird, man. All of this hoopla is; the state of media coverage and the level of national debate and the priorities in campaigning/selecting a candidate....it's all becoming too meta. It's a caricature of a stereotype. The only real-seeming (or I guess I mean non-institutionalized constant) element would be Palin, because she can't stop out-doing herself in saying the wrong thing or contradicting her boss. Or else the fix is in and she's supposed to be doing that? Blech.
Our house is messy again. How does it do that? Make it stop. At least my room is not the volcanic explosion of material goods that it was, although I haven't gotten rid of nearly enough stuff. We made a foray into the garage today and it was horrid. So much water damage from the burst pipe that we're probably seriously going to end up tossing most of it (which is awesome!!!), but I don't want to pay that damn dump fee, cause it's going to take a few loads. I guess I should stop blogging about nothing and go clean, then.

My Brain Is A Shipwreck Of Flotsam And Jetsam

2008-10-06T22:46:00.003-04:00

West Virginia

^^Check out my sweet pics ^^

As my time in W.Va. winds down, the disturbance levels in my brain's fractal landscape wind up. I find myself jumping from one worry to the next: How am I getting back to Juneau? Where will I get a job when I do? Where else will I get a job? How fast can I get a job? How long can I drag my feet before getting a job? How badly do I need a paycheck? How will I save enough to be in Europe as long as I want? When will I get a return ticket from Europe (!)? What will I do after that? What am I doing with my life? Should I go back to school and take more classes? Why can't I fire the people I don't like at my old job so I can work there again? What if I took classes in Fairbanks? What if I wanted to move out of Alaska? What is even going on? Is there a Great Depression Part Two? And so on. It is unhealthy for my relaxation.

Corin and I were going to take a ferry from Bellingham, but it turns out that the winter prices are worse than the summer prices (don't know how that works, those slimy bastards), and it would be over a thousand dollars...whereas the ferry from Skagway will just be ~$150. But of course, that entails driving to Skagway in the Scion. I drove from Skagway to Whitehorse and back a couple of winters ago, as some may recall, and it was beautiful and lots of fun and there was no "maybe there will be snow on the ground," there was most definitely a good deal of snow on the ground, but the big difference between that trip and this one is that I had snow tires at the time. The Scion was recently outfitted with new all-weathers, but that's it. So far the roads we'll be on seem to be good and fine, with no more strenuous precipitation than flurries, but if it was all snowy and icy...well, this is yet another thing giving me panic attacks when I lie down for quiet time at night.

I'm surprised at how little I've "done" while home. Shopping didn't hold much appeal, particularly since I don't have tons of spending money, and we haven't been going to movies very much (which is a shame since everything closes in a week in Juneau, and the screens and sounds down south are nearly always bigger), and I didn't really see any music...I am a failure. I'm nearly as pasty as I was when I got here. Probably a day or two in LA will sort that out in a painful sunburn kind of way. I really mostly just read. But I'm getting disappointed with the one I'm on, a little thing about extinction, because it repeats itself too much and wanders, so I might just skim through the rest of the chapters and then cast it aside scornfully in favor of finally digging into that Poincare. And then go on Amazon and review the extinction book scornfully. Why do I feel suddenly unenamored of it? It started out so promisingly; I was set to revel in it after the intro and a chunk of the first chapter. Sadly, after that chunk, it seemed to reset and begin that chapter anew, and what new tidbits the second version had were repeated in the third. It's like the points of the chapter are outlined and then a game of Telephone is played with them. I got it 40% off, so it's not like I've been disenfranchised, but I just had higher expectations for it.

We watched Paris, Je T'aime a couple of nights ago (a film composed of 5 minute shorts by various notable directors with various notable actors, all set in Paris), and the final film is a killer. I'm glad it ended on what was for me the emotionally strongest point, though. And surprisingly, I think perhaps Wes Craven's piece was my other favorite. Probably didn't hurt that it had tasty old Rufus Sewell in it, as well as Oscar Wilde, but I liked it.

I'm going to be 31 this year. That is so totally weird. Fortunately the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, will be out to help me cope. Stock the Blue Nun!

I <3 This!

2008-10-04T13:26:00.002-04:00

Chris Schneider, whomever he may be (and doesn't he seem oddly familiar, perhaps even beyond reminding you of Chris Elliot?), is a hilarious re-enactor of a Wasilla City Council meeting from 1996, which of course includes Sarah Palin, potential VP.

Ho Very Much Hum

2008-10-01T02:04:00.003-04:00

In terms of events, my life is a pretty slow news week at the moment. They would be running footage of some ducks spotted at a local wading pool that's closed for the season if it were broadcast news. However, that is extremely useful in terms of projects, because I have successfully finagled the slightly older Rosetta Stone I got on ebay to work with Windows Vista, saving myself a heartattack at the thought of having thrown a hundred bucks at something I couldn't use, and at the thought of having to actually try to sell something on ebay (as opposed to threatening to sell everything I own on ebay, which is very different and gives my ticker no pause at all). Even better than installing it, I've started using it, which is to say that if you need me to tell some Italian that a fish is white, a bird is flying, or even that a man is falling off a horse, I'm your gal. The default noise the program uses to tell you you foolishly clicked the wrong answer upsets me. It is, in my mind, an orchestral symphony of despair, compressed into two discordant notes - I thought about why it makes me jump out of my skin every time. Was I so uptight and were my expectations so high that it was actually crushing to be told that I'd made a mistake? Was I so invested that the occasional, unavoidable mental blink that led me to click the first yellow (or giallo, if you like) thing I saw, rather than the correct yellow thing was the kind of failure that warranted a full flinch? Then I realized, no, it was none of these things. It simply put me in mind of the scene from the Goonies where they have to figure out some moldy old sheet music and play an organ made of bones while the floor collapses with every wrong note. A-ha...that and some old animated movie with a staircase into the sky falling away behind the protagonist (I reluctantly think it may even have been the CareBear movie, tripe though it was) left me with a slight childhood phobia of floors falling away to reveal a gaping oblivion. Mystery solved. I still flinch, but at least I don't worry that my subconscious is going to beat me up in my sleep for getting one adjective-noun combination wrong.
Speaking of ridiculous childhood phobias that I suffered, I think we can officially erase black holes from the looming terrors in my mind when I put the lights out. I finally waded through a very nice book (Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, by Kip Thorne) that has been suffering abuse in my custody (as books sometimes do...think of my home as the Guantanamo Bay of book interrogations) for the last five months or so, on loan from a very nice person. I figured if I kept putting it back, he would come looking for his book, and then when he saw the tender loving care I'd given it (left in an abandoned purse that I'd been slinging it around in in case I felt like reading it, the purse left under a stack of abandoned clothes I'd been discarding in a very specific pile as they each got too doggy to wear without washing - well, I don't like washing sweatshirts until I have to!), he wouldn't renew my loan. Joke's on him, now, because I read it and I don't need to extend the loan!
Wait, I digress. My POINT was that I enjoyed the book very much, and probably even learned a thing or two, and definitely sharpened my appetite for armchair physics. So there I was, all worked up, spitting mad that I don't have the mathematical background to actually understand things that would be good to understand (particularly after Thorne kept banging on about how important the esoteric mathematical field of topology was), and that things like quantum gravity are so impossible to even begin to understand, but wanting more armchair physics immediately.
So I go to see Ghost Town (and Ricky Gervais is still funny), and then stop by Books-A-Million, a store that never pleases me, but I figure hey, I'll just see if they have any physics books. They do. They actually had quite a bit more than I'd expected. Visits to this store in the name of physics are so much more satisfying than those made in the name of biology, let me tell you. A confession: I knew that I wanted some armchair physics reading, but the back of my mind was like, "Oh, uh, physics, huh? Maybe they got, uh, one of those ol' books about Heisenberg (a man who was undeniably attractive in his youth, and also the dude that came up with the uncertainty principle, which I just really like, okay, okay, and was played by Daniel Craig in Copenhagen, are you happy now?!) that you keep wishlisting on Amazon..." But come on, back-of-my-mind, like I remember any of those titles or authors? That's what the wishlist is for, to keep track of them. What do I see on the shelf? "Uncertainty: Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg and the Struggle for the Soul of the Universe." But in order to keep it totally real, the rest of my mind had to gang up on the back of itself and form a coalition, and that coalition wanted something more science-y and less history. For now. And then what do I see? "The Poincare Conjecture: In Search Of The Shape Of The Universe." Ah. And on the back, a message from the author, hoping that anyone who was not actively anti-math would read this book and be heartened to take further math afterward. That could be me. And a couple of shelves over: "Three Roads To Quantum Gravity." Well. Okay. If I'm going to mad about not understanding these things, I may as well be mad about not understanding them despite my best efforts. So I got them, and I didn't get any music magazines, and there the matter stands. Maybe they will be horrible - certainly a few people take issue with the quantum gravity book, and one person is very offended by the Poincare book's emphasis on facts and history rather than colorful analogies, but at least they will be a jumping off point?
If you see me with Invisible Man-esque bandages swaddling my head, it's just because I fractured my brain.
Of course, I may have already fractured it trying to assess the "Science" shelves at Books-A-Million! There was LITERALLY no organization at all. Alphabetized? Nope, in no way. Maybe just separated by discipline, then? Not at all - a book on neuroscience lay cheek by jowl with a memoir about meeting Feynman that was itself nestled against a primer for defending evolution against intelligent design. My favorite was when several copies of a book would be stacked neatly on a shelf, and several more copies of the same book would appear on a different shelf - not as part of any kind of display that might pick and choose from the collection as a whole, but apparently just because there was some shelf space open over there and some extra copies of the book in question on hand to fill it. This happened a few times. I almost pulled them all off to start organizing it myself, but if I wasn't up to summoning one of the teenagers angsting around the store in smocks to complain, I probably wasn't up to fending them off until the job was finished, either. For the record, my books at home are in no way organized, except for the ancient encyclopedias I took just because they were free.

Friday After Next

2008-08-29T16:50:00.002-04:00

I don't recall off hand if they ever made a Friday After Next in the popular Friday Ice Cube franchise, but they should have.
I just got back from grabbing a chocolate milk and the king of donuts (the bavarian cream cruller) at the Breeze-In and am now lunching at work. Adrienne dropped me off and is supposed to deposit my check en route to the big surprise of the week, possibly of the month: she has sneakily enrolled in one of Alicia's math classes without telling Alicia. What a shock it will be when she finds out!
However, this meant that we were in a rush, and I was trying to check out when the Biddie Brigade struck...a meandering fool in front of me who didn't grasp the concept of the two sides to every register (it is my opinion that this does increase efficiency significantly) and kept sidling me out of my life so she could hog on the credit card machine, and then asked for change for a dollar - lady, you fool, cash, like print, is dead, just ask Egon Spengler - while a couple more of the women of indeterminate middle years piled up behind me. Then another cashier arrived and those ol' hags swooped in despite having just arrived in line. There must have been a hella sale on Aqua Net to scrunch their perms up with and they all needed to get to Wal-Mart to beat the rush.
But we made it out in good time, nevertheless, and I'm enjoying some leftovers from the halibut curry that Adrienne and I made...so good, but I can't find any of the anchovies we dumped in. Bad luck scooping, I guess. I'm thinking about knocking off early and afternooning with Alicia if she's not busy because I have to come in tomorrow to put on some BODs anyway.
The tragedy is that for whatever reason, we are not sampling, which means that I will not see mi amor Italiano...um, pidgin Italian, how ching-chong of me. By the way, I've figured out that of the languages of the world, my Italian is truly dismal. Life: it's a hard row to hoe.

Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's Late Blogging-y

2008-08-22T01:05:00.003-04:00

Photo Catch-Up

So I was also late posting photos to the internet for family types to see, so I'll link to that album here and get some catch-up synergy going on.

Anyway, what's new? Very little, sort of. Lots, to put it another way. About as much as you would expect, looked at a third way. Summer's drawing to a surprisingly quick end, and for the first time since the last time I dropped out, I'm not going to school, except this time it's not because I dropped out. My job is almost over. I have progressively descended through layers of the gradient that leads from "not in love with" to "severely hate, would chop own limb off to avoid going to," like a modern day Dante of sewage water, and now that it's all pretty much almost over, I just don't really care anymore. The work itself is still pretty fun, and going on ships is still pretty cool, and a couple of my fellow workers are so much fun, so eff it, y'know?

Last night Adro and I stayed up (after a quick session of Apples To Apples with Carley) watching the remade Casino Royale (is it even called a remake? the original was such an awesomely weird farce) and drinking Blue Nun and of course paid the piper today (that ol' nun was riding me harder than 8 bitches in a bitch boat, whip and spurs, had a hand clenched in my brain and a saddle on my shoulders and wouldn't let go for nothing till about 4:30), and I will confess that I pretty much am on this Daniel Craig kick because this cute crewmember (actually, the only cute crewmember we deal with) puts me in mind of him. *Le Sigh*
OMG, I just glanced at that wiki link to see what kind of garbage I was liable to be linking here, and instead I see that this is a man who publicly declares he wants to be cast in a Star Trek project because he's such a fan. As Whitesnake once put it, "is this love." It is totally a ringing endorsement of the crapness of the Star Trek franchise that they didn't descend on him like a school of casting piranhas. Mmm, Star Trek.

This is the last night of our amazing housesit at the Koester's, tragically, but we have greatly enjoyed our stay with Old Man Tucker, their dog, and too much of a good thing would just give us airs and make us set ourselves above the common man. Back to our apartment tomorrow. Corin is leaving town on Monday. I am kind of upset about this because even though he should really probably leave Juneau if it's not working for him, it's scary to think of your little brother picking up stakes and heading to LA of all places.

This just in, Brian Blitz still can't pronounce my ding-dang name.

I'm planning on heading back to West Virginia for some lay-low time with the folks once I get that daddy-fatstacks PFD ca$h.

Okay, I'm sort of petering out at the moment because I'm sleepy from that slamming party last night, and I'm missing the last of the daily gossip with the gals - we just recreated every bad chick flick movie by dancing in a train around the kitchen island with ladle/spoon microphones singing Aretha Franklin in our jam jams, and I nearly peed my pants from laughing so hard - so I'd better just stop my rambling and leave it.

Sampledelic

2008-08-08T02:23:00.002-04:00

So, Adrienne and I sampled the Serenade of the Seas today...this is the best ship to sample, hands down. It's so great compared to the other ones because I've never been treated with anything less than disinterested neutrality by crew members, and frequently with a good deal more than that. They don't make a big stink about finding the environmental officer to fetch us, they don't act like we're a terrifying security risk, they don't try to intimidate us because they want a different pH reading, they just take us down, finish the paperwork, and escort us out. Today there was a new environmental officer (and the pain in the ass environmental officer on a different ship-which-shall-not-be-named-but-is-actually-surprisingly-hellish just left, thank goodness, so it must be the time of season for staff switcheroos) who was like a scruffy Croatian Andrew McCarthy - on second thought, Andrew McCarthy is the definition of scruffiness, anyway - and get a load of this, he took us on a handwashing detour after sampling before finishing up our visit. That is truly unprecedented. I usually just try to filch some hand sanitizer on the way out. Anyway, it was nice not to have that antagonism you find on some of the other ships. Oh, and the other great thing about the Serenade is that it tends to be at the last dock in the row, which has its own parking lot (parking is murder by day in the downtown) and which boards at a low enough deck that getting down to the sample port is a one-flight hop skip and a jump. Sometimes there are endless tortuous stairs and ladders and you've got to drag the sample kit and keep up with the jumpsuited engineer disappearing around the corner, and the air my god the air, the various different operations leaving heavy, specific, but very localized smells that just hang in the air - chlorine here, food there, garbage here, laundry there. But I've got it easy anyway, because often as not, someone offers to carry whatever I've got just because I'm a girl. The extended sampling that Dan and I did was particularly tragic, because he was sick as a dog and yet had the cooler (the bigger of the two containers, a full-sized cooler filled with full bottles of treated wastewater) and of course nobody was offering to take his load, meaning he was teetering at the top of each stairway. Meanwhile one of the lesser engineers had my bag, the smaller one (although I think he was very unpleasantly surprised by how heavy it was, as we had crammed an unusual amount into it for the occasion - it's usually quite manageable). Ah, well, it's pretty easy to smile benignly on chauvinism and admire it as chivalry when it comes from an international crew that I see for like an hour tops and means I don't have to carry heavy things.

Like, Totally Wow

2008-08-02T03:11:00.003-04:00

I lost a whole month to post-school lethargy (June) and then a whole month to job dissatisfaction (July). Ugh. My next post will have to chronicle the sheer weirdness of getting down in the cruise ships, which I've been doing, but there's too much to go into here, because conditions are not ideal. Some bright spots at the moment include the handicrafts that Adrienne, Alicia, and I will be selling on the internet and perhaps in town. They're going to be pretty awesome. They're actually not "handicrafts," they're accessories and jewelry. That's respectable. We're also well-stocked in the art department, and I've really been enjoying having the time to read or watch DVDs, even if I'm also reveling in low-brow. I've classed things up now that I've started reading The White Goddess, though: Robert Graves' "historical grammer of poetic myth" or some such. Adrienne seems to instinctively dislike it (or to be more accurate, says it 'makes her sick' and 'looks difficult') while I feel like it might prove to be the only signpost in my life's deserted highway at the moment. It just bludgeons you over the head with Follow Your Muse messages. How convenient that Graves won't be around for me to sue when I'm a destitute muse-following hobo. One of those dirty ones with dyed hair and a dog on a whimsical improvised leash and collar that just sits and begs. We dyed our hair (lie-locks for Adrienne, deadly nightshade for me). Step one is complete.

I subbed a radio show for the first time in quite a long time. I didn't prepare overly; my computer's totally on the fritz and so any music on it is inaccessible, and my iPod has the functionality of a mud pie, lately. Instead I brought a handful of old CDs (meaning not a lot of new stuff, and some regrettable overlap with previous shows) and Adrienne, who has commenced sitting in fascination at the control computer screen scrolling through the artists but who refuses to talk on the air, and tried to find some stuff in the library. Mostly unsuccessfully. Now we are playing a best of 90's club mix, as you will see.

In The Mix 8/1/08 Playlist:

One More Time - Daft Punk
Public Pervert (Carlos D Remix) - Interpol
Rhythm Nation - Janet Jackson
In The Closet - Michael Jackson
Express Yourself - Madonna
Real Love - Mary J. Blige
It Could Be Sweet - Portishead
One Night In Bangkok - Murray Head
Theme From Mortal Kombat - The Immortals
The Salmon Dance - The Chemical Brothers
Make Room - Prince Paul feat. Mally G, Erick Sermon, & Sy Scott
Je Veux Le Voir - Yelle
Angel - Goldie
Enjoy The Silence - Depeche Mode
Slipping Away - Nine Inch Nails
Little Things - Lamb
Sally - Gogol Bordello
Chunari Chunari - Abhijeet and Anuradha Shriram
I Had A Dream I Was Falling Through A Hole In The Ozone Layer - Deee-Lite
International Date Line (Simian Mobile Disco Remix) - Ladytron
Dare - Gorillaz feat. Shaun Ryder
Subterranean Homesick Alien Blues - Radiohead
Heart Of Glass - Blondie
Homme - Brazilian Girls

Long Time, No Blog.

2008-05-25T21:14:00.002-04:00

Well, so, I graduated, and the final push up to the end of the semester and the resulting attempts at decompression kind of eclipsed the ol' blog thing. It was so hard to finish school when I had just dicovered Achewood comics that semester. I spent all my time reading about cartoon cats and otters and bears, but nevertheless made it through. The following few weeks have been spent at work, at Analytica, which is going fine...it's been getting busier lately, which is certainly preferable to slower, and I would say that I have a decent handle on tasks there, except that I screwed up Friday afternoon...it is what comes of several days' short sleep and the Friday afternoon-ness. This weekend has been gloriously beautiful, and our house is hellishly messy, and so today is my cleaning day, except for a break to post some pictures of a trip out the road:

Sunny May Day

We have a new goal here at Chez Hughes-Skandijs - to garden! We're in the beginnings of plant mania.
Alicia is away in Pelican for a weekend of debauchery, leaving Corin and myself to take care of the house, and now that he's at work, the burden falls to my shoulders, to which task I really should return now...

WOOOOOOOO!

2008-04-13T22:06:00.002-04:00

Yes, String Theory pretty much rocked FolkFest 34. We cleaned up on physics jokes. Surprisingly, there was quite a good crowd for them, as most of the compliments we received were for dropping Mandelbrot references, mentioning relativity, and so forth. And now Rachel is going to make lasagna tonight, and we're watching the Ween DVD that Josh just got, which fortuitously advises one to eat plenty of lasagna till you know that you've had your fill (man, Sarah just called "Roses Are Free" creepy, dude you know that is one of my favorite songs!!!!), and generally basking in the after glow. But I have to get my homework done tonight because I just remembered that I work tomorrow morning! Argh!!! Corin taped our set and will be editing that footage for youtube, which I will post here, and we also got the cd of our set, and it's...not...terrible...

What, In The Mix AGAIN?!

2008-03-29T03:20:00.002-04:00

How was open mic? It was okay! O.K. = two little letters that are a hell of a lot better than awful. Sure, there were rough patches, we messed up, etc., but it was pretty much all in very acceptable, even cute, ways. It was fun. I look forward to smoothing some stuff out and giving it another shot. In other news, I love Willie Nelson, and I'm being struck by that as I play the Pet Shop Boys' cover of "Always On My Mind," so that's some true Willie love. Red headed stranger and what not. Yay that it's Saturday tomorrow, boo that then I work the next 3 days after that. I got a job analyzing water in various ways for this summer and beyond. How do I feel about that?

3/28/08

Far Away - Doc Scott
The Other Side Of You (Momus Remix) - Stereo Total (shouted out to Lindsey Baker's unborn baby girl!)
Big Time Sensuality - Bjork
Tristesse Joie - Yelle
Alpha Beta Gaga (Mark Ronson Remix Feat. Rhymefest) - Air
Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
I Believe - Simian Mobile Disco
I Don't Feel Like Dancing (Dance Remix) - Scissor Sisters
Slow Hands - Interpol
Golden Skan - Klaxons
DVNO - Justice
If I Ever Feel Better - Phoenix
Fuck Friend (CSS Remix) - Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya Ya
Lucky Star - Madonna
Circulate - Rex The Dog
Fire In Cairo - Digitalism
Trans-Europe Express - Receptors
Pogo - Digitalism
Got To Give It Up - Marvin Gaye
Be Gentle With Me - Boy Least Likely To
Love Today - Mika
Never Be Alone (Lost Daze Club Mix) - Justice vs. Simian Mobile Disco
Always On My Mind - Pet Shop Boys
Parle A Ma Main - Fatal Bazooka Feat. Yelle
Tell Me Something Good - Rufus and Chaka Khan
My Moon My Man (Noise Boyz Classic Remix) - Feist

Auro-ro-ro-ro-rora!

2008-03-27T05:29:00.002-04:00

Yesss, it turns out that the solar wind is listening to me! We were checking the aurora-cast after no luck seeing the lights last night, and someone was saying from here out to the weekend should be kicking pretty good, and clear (and freezing) to boot, and I said several disparaging remarks about how when I lived in Kenai seeing the aurora was an all-the-time thing, and on a much larger and more interesting scale of activity than we generally see all the way down here. Cut forward several hours and holy schmoly, the sky was lit up nearly as awesomely as I've ever seen it. We (me, Alicia, and Adrienne) drove out to, uh, the west glacier trail-ish? Is that what's by Skater's Cabin? I think so. Anyway, it was super awesome.
Also, I love my history Wednesdays, it's true.
Also, I think we're playing the open mic at the Alaskan tomorrow. Yikes...

In The Mix 3/21/08

2008-03-22T03:16:00.002-04:00

So I almost forgot I was doing the show tonight!!! Because it's my parents' last night in town!!!! But neither sleet nor snow nor, um, dread of night, or something like that, and all that other rubbish, jolly good.

Public Pervert (Carlos D Remix) - Interpol
Radioactivity - Kraftwerk
Turn It On - Ladytron
To Forgive But Not To Forget - Outside
A Sunday Smile - Beirut
Harold And Joe - The Cure
Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down) - Ween
Homme - Brazilian Girls
Rainbowarriors - Cocorosie
Entertain Me - Blur
Bohemian Like Me - The Dandy Warhols
La La La (Sharp Floor Rage Remix) - The Freshmaka
Money - Dynamichrome feat. Alistair Foster
Remind Me - Royksopp
Wildcat - Ratatat
Then the power went out on my board and the whole desk!!!!!!!! It came right back on, but the station had gone off the air and I had to wait for a computer to boot up before I could keep playing music.
Golden Hours - Brian Eno
Eugene's Lament - Beastie Boys
Silent Sigh - Badly Drawn Boy
Heart It Races - Architecture In Helsinki
Policy Of Truth - Depeche Mode
Cell Phone's Dead - Beck
Telephone Line - E.L.O.
Remedy - Jason Mraz (Okay, look, I've taken a lot of flak the last few days for not hating Jason Mraz, which is the primary reason for my playing this.)

3/14/08

2008-03-15T03:19:00.006-04:00

Pi Day! Albert Einstein's Birthday! Talk Like A Physicist Day!!!

Okay, I kind of phoned it in; I usually try not to repeat songs too soon, but I got lazy. However, they all seemed like genuine good fits at the time, so I stand by my choices. Josh came in to take a Clueless personality test (he's mostly Cher) and pick the last song, which is awesome if you like Thundercats. If you don't, why are you even at this website?

One More Time - Daft Punk
Kelly Watch The Stars - Air
It Could Be Sweet - Portishead
Crystalline Green - Goldfrapp
Movin' On (William Orbit Remix) - Blur
The Lobbalong Song - Quickspace
Do It Again (Wagon Christ Remix) - April Stevens, Luke Vibert Remix
360 Degrees - The Coup
Disco Science - Mirwais
I Can't Go For That - Hall & Oates (dedicated to "my rotten apple of a sister" who always bails)
Flight Tonight - Avalanches
Writing To Reach You (Deadly Avenger's Bayou Blues Mix) - Travis
Golden Skan - Klaxons
Over Fire Island - Brian Eno
I Would Die 4 U - Prince & The New Power Revolution (dedicated to Jesse Y.)
D.A.N.C.E. (MSTRKRFT Remix) - Justice
Love Me Or Hate Me (Remix) - Lady Sovereign
DARE- Gorillaz featuring Shaun Ryder
I'm Bruce (Dimension 5 Mega Mix) - Fantastic Plastic Machine
Happiest Girl (Orbital Mix) - Depeche Mode
Never The Same - Supreme Beings Of Leisure
Radio # 1 - Air
Spiders - Money Mark
Washington, D.C. - Magnetic Fields
California - Mates Of State
Franz Kafka - The Valentines
Pieces Of The People We Love - The Rapture
Wildcat -Ratatat

Mysteries and Marvels, Galore

2008-03-10T22:32:00.002-04:00

First of all, guess who's playing Folkfest this year? A little known outfit called "String Theory" (Josh put the quotation marks on the application and apparently they thought that's the right way to spell it) which includes me, Alicia, Josh (despite being quotationally challenged), Sarah, and Adrienne-the-mandolin-bandit. Sarah spices it up with a cello, Alicia provides the requisite fiddle action just in case we need a show-down with the devil, and Josh and I hold down the strum fort with guitar. Whew. A month to practice. This band only came into being on a lark when we saw an application sitting around Josh and Sarah's place. The power of quantum physics compels us.

Sunday, 3 PM, we take the stage, be there (or listen on KTOO) or be square.

Now, on to other, more complex matters - a mystery CD entered my life and is possibly the best mix ever made. I mean, the more I listen to it, the more perfect it is. It had bands that I had never gotten around to hearing, that I had read about, which made it all the sweeter when I googled the lyrics to find out what was on there, and I'd be all like "Oh, damn, so that's what ____ sounds like, no wonder I always thought I should give them a listen!" It is the sweetest. But where did it come from??? I didn't make it, Corin didn't make it, Alicia didn't make it, and Josh didn't make it. That rules out people who lived with us and frequently ride in the car. I've conspicuously mentioned it around friends, but nobody has stepped up. I'd just like to know, that's all. It's like manna. Playlist? Okay:
The Start Of Something - Voxtrot
Tender (some weird bass'n'drummy remix) - Blur
Waterfalls - Why
Gardenhead - Neutral Milk Hotel
Without MSG I Am Nothing - Mclusky
The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side - Magnetic Fields
Point Of Convergence? Dunno, no match on the internet but that's the most oft repeated phrase
Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above - Cansei De Ser Sexy
I Saw Her In The Anti-War Demonstration - Jens Lekman
I Take Time - The Knife
Temptation - New Order
Building On Fire - Talking Heads
Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura
Load It - The Bear Quartet
Whites Only Party - Dears
This Lamb Sells Condos - Final Fantasy
Cellphone's Dead - Beck
Goods (All In Your Head) - Mates of State
Some non-English track which is very jubilant and wonderful, almost sounds familiar, but I don't know what it is.

Do you know who made this CD? Was it you? Tell me and let me give you a key to the city.

I'm on the radio this Friday night, by the by, 11 PM on KRNN, unless something happens. Perhaps the show will be more consistent this time.

It's almost time for this talk by some un-embedded journalist covering Iraq, or something, which I guess I'll go to since I have time before band practice (band practice!), so sayonara, pals.

"At ease, Sergeant," Mal Hombre said...

2008-03-02T19:32:00.003-05:00

So, yeah. I've got two history classes this semester, which means that I get a lot of history in a week! Then add in the awesomely good talk that we had at the school this weekend, by this British diplomat type who worked in Iraq recently and Afghanistan extensively, which was fasssscinating. I ordered his books, I liked it so well. We read Dispatch, by Michael Herr, for my US history class, covering the Vietnam War, and it kind of blew my mind because it was so personal and direct. It crushed me. In a good way, if that's possible when you're being crushed by a war book. Fortunately, I get a breather in the modern European class, with Freud, which is not crushing me or blowing my mind.
Physics is still blowing my mind, which is reassuringly status quo.
And I did okay in Genetics!

In The Mix, But Not Alone

2008-03-01T04:05:00.003-05:00

So Alicia, A.K.A. Applejack Heartattack, joined me in the studio tonight. Our struggle over the music ended up netting us a pretty decent playlist, I think. Yep. It was the night before Meredith's birthday so we went out w/ her briefly beforehand, and it's the LEAP YEAR! Yay! And I took my genetics test today and it was not so good, but ah well, that's what the rest of the semester is for. I will redouble my efforts. I don't think there's any earth-shattering new news to report. I'm excited for the ol' parents to visit. Silkscreening's going okay again, and I can't wait to do the next couple of projects I have lined up in there...yeah, man, they're gonna be good.

2/29/2008

Homeless Club Kids - My Favorite
Friends Of P - The Rentals
Piku Playground - Chemical Brothers
Toop Toop - Cassius
Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan
Don Go N Do It - The Rapture
Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above - Cansei De Ser Sexy
Polyesterday - Gus Gus
I Take Time - The Knife
Adventures In The Scandinavian Skin Trade - Hector Zazou
Once In A Lifetime - Talking Heads
Like A Feather - Nikka Costa
Red Alert - Basement Jaxx
Kiss You Off - Scissor Sisters
Tenderoni - Chromeo
Sugar Water - Cibo Matto
Fidelity - Regina Spektor
Wraith Pinned To The Mist - Of Montreal
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police
Evil - Interpol
God Is A DJ - Faithless
Free Man In Paris - Joni Mitchell
007 (Shanty Town) - Desmond Dekker
Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
West L.A. Fadeaway - The Grateful Dead

Nay-Sayin'

2008-02-26T21:49:00.002-05:00

I have vetoed everything across my desk today. My desk is the space in front of me, and the things that cross it are the conversations people have with or near me. The way I like to veto (I only wish it could be with a giant rubber stamp with red ink) is by flatly contradicting what they say. This may mean being wrong, or it may also mean tangling with some similarly argumentative people. What it all really means, of course, is that I didn't get a good night's sleep and I feel bad about being an unmotivated, underachieving student, and consequently I must be a contrarian grouch-at-large. But business is good, so the train keeps a-rolling.

I have, yet again, blown off other homework in order to do my physics homework, because it is my fun class, and I enjoy doing the reading/homework, but because I think it is so neat, I am actually not very repentant about doing that. Particle physics! Man! It's all so crazy, and yet so deceptively simple/complicated/made up as people go along. Anyway. Time for class, and for this trivia we just discovered: Olivia Newton-John is the granddaughter of Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Born. What?!?!

Descent With Procrastination

2008-02-25T22:11:00.002-05:00

So, here it is. Another paper due, another opportunity to get online and screw around. Or make an emergency soup run with Adrienne. Or do something else, anything else. Actually, I have begun the preliminary steps of writing it, so things could be worse. But how did I get so behind in art of all classes? I now have to use all of tomorrow and the next day and the next day to make it through our midterm presentation unscathed. That's okay. Except I have that genetics test this week. I'll study at night, since I'm doing art all day. Good plan.
Alicia and I were just discussing the night skies of late (for those of you in far off places, it has been clear at night, or partly clear at night, a cause for great wonderment), and I think that there are very few things that are as viscerally thrilling than stars and moonlight and great big clouds moving across in a hurry. Speaking of thrills and viscera and the overlap thereof, I heard this song on the radio, right? And what I liked about it was that it had a cacophony built out of different melodies, each pretty unassuming or even pretty by themselves, but the combination of which sounded raucous, just because they were playing against each other. So then I thought, this is overwhelming in the way that life is sometimes overwhelming, in that there's not something bad or wrong about any single part, and there's not even anything wrong with the combination of those parts, but at the same time, they combine to produce a whole that is quite different from any of the parts. And it is hard to keep track of them separately. And so on. I won't belabor the metaphor, but I was also thinking that of all the various forms of art, I don't think any of them achieve that effect as efficiently or effortlessly as music. And I'm not hating on any of them, and it's not like I make music, I'm just saying I think it's true.
Much Ado About Nothing opened this weekend, and it was pretty darn awesome. First, Corin was great and I promise I'm not only saying that because he's my brother. He was great in his own right. Second, Brandon was phenomenal as Benedick, and Sara W. was terrific as Beatrice, and Jake Waid was a kick-ass Don Pedro. Third, they need to stop holding opening night audiences hostage at the end of the show to talk theatre. Do it at the beginning or don't do it at all. This is ridiculous. And put a damn bucket in the lobby to collect money, don't pass baskets like we're at church, with all the ridiculous peer pressure to contribute, and to put enough in, and so forth. I'm poor and uninsured, too!
Lastly, I saw I'm Not There, and it was so good that remembering it brings me not just a mental but an almost tangibly physical joy. I loved that movie. I was surprised how much Dylan trivia they actually incorporated, and I was surprised by how well all the metaphor and translation into fiction worked. It was beautiful.
Okay, that's all, time for work...

Stay out all night, be hung over all day, nap all evening, do In the Mix at 11.

2008-02-16T03:09:00.002-05:00

2/15/08:

Ooh - Scissor Sisters

Running Up That Hill - The Chromatics
Let's Get Physical - Goldfrapp

Kafka - The Valentines
Playgirl (Felix Glitz Clubhead remix) - Ladytron
Planet Rock - Afrika Bambaataa, Soul Sonic Force
Eye Water - Cassius feat. Pharrell Williams
Polaris - Zero 7
In The City - The Chromatics
Christiansands - Tricky
Gravity Rainbow (Van She remix) - The Klaxons
Bossa Nova 3003 - Pizzicato Five
Emerge - Fischerspooner
Ooh La La (Phones remix) - Goldfrapp
I Don't Know The Half Of Holding Back - Hot Chip
NYC Beat (MSTRKRFT remix) - Armand Van Helden
Youth Alcolholic - Fox N' Wolf
Lysergic Bliss - Of Montreal
Two Step Twice - Foals
Sinnerman (Felix Da Housecat remix) - Nina Simone
This Could Be - Metronomy
Far From Here - Tiga
Trash - The Whip

Snow Time! :(

2008-02-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

Please to excuse the out of date Google Earth image, but this is useful for geography anyway. As you can see, the yellow and red square denotes the half of the driveway reserved for our apartment, which is in fact in front of a garage that is also designated for our apartment, and which has been occupied by a deceased Ford Taurus for over a year! That is so terrible! We could be parking off-street, and instead we're circling the block like chumps. This car is up for grabs for stealing, but the brakes are shot, so be careful. I also don't think that it will start after all this time. I wish that Magneto from the X-Men would come reduce this car to its elemental constituents and then rebuild them into an awesome sculpture, or a working car, or an extended garage, or a little boat, or really anything non-lethal and non-Volcom car (so named for the tacky Volcom stone sticker it came adorned with). I'm at my wits' end.In other news, Juneau-ites, despite living in the frozen wasteland of Alaska, have no idea how to drive when it snows and they are awful. If I wasn't busy using my awesome skills to not wreck into any concrete walls, the median, or other cars, it would put me in a homicidal rage. Shoot, to be honest, it does, but I just try not to let it get to me. Don't pull out in front of me frantically when the entire road behind me is empty (hint: you're going to spin out halfway across my lane, dum dum), don't tailgate me furiously when you see me pull out in front of you half a mile before you get to where I am, don't speed up behind me at red lights, the list goes on and on. You can't start driving like some Dale-Earnhardt-stickered-asshole when it starts snowing, you are in fact supposed to drive less like that.
Alicia said I woke up in a creepy mood today.
We dressed like beatniks for our U.S. History Since '51 class today, but none of us have any berets, and when I wear my sweater, which I have to because it's cold, I look more like an Elvira-esque goth. C'est la vie, it beats last week when I had a mohawk and a very mid '90s grunge look going for feminism.
It looks like only 2 of my plants actually died when we went home for Christmas, which is nice. The avocado has started growing new leaves to replace all of its previous light-gatherers, which crisped up and fell off.
I really want a dog.

Addendum

2008-01-27T19:33:00.000-05:00

How silly of me, to have forgotten one of the best and one of the worst bathrooms on campus, and one of the mediocre to boot! I'll be brief:

Egan Library 1st floor: Despite its relatively high usage rate, this is usually a very clean and very secluded bathroom, probably from having a forest of bookshelves in front of the door. One drawback is that the automatic sinks on either side of the sink counter frequently go wonky and don't work, but fortunately there are like 3 regular sinks between (I think there are more sinks than stalls, it's very mysterious). It's not earth-shattering, but it's nice.

Hendrickson Annex: Such a mysterious building, such a mysterious bathroom. To be fair, the only time I visited this location was when the construction was still so recent that it all smelled like sawdust and paint, but nevertheless, I was overwhelmed. The floors and stuff feel cheap, like your footsteps echo and so on, and the ceiling was weirdly high, as I recall. And I think it's locked, which is also weird. Fascist, really.

Whitehead 2nd floor, a.k.a. the computer lab: Ewwwwww, this is so terrible! I think this is actually the worst, worse even than the Mourant 2nd floor. A visit to this guy is a visit to awkward-ville, population you. From the fact that you can hear every rustle and twitch of any computer users in the room outside to the sad clip-art man imploring you to leave the light on when you leave because the fan is attached to it, this bathroom seems to be an experiment in punishing users for answering the call of nature. I detest it.

And there you have it, I think I've covered all the bases, now. Special thanks to Corin for reminding me of a couple of oversights.

In The Mix And Beyond!

2008-01-26T03:05:00.000-05:00

Whoa, man, whoa. It was a tense minute getting in the building for my show. Gotta get me one of them keycards. Anyway, what up, fools? Not much here, just trying not to make any dead air ('cause then I'd be a homicidal maniac...) and yet distract my mind from the fact that I had to get up and leave Hot Fuzz literally minutes, possibly seconds from the end, because I just ran out of time before I had to head down here. It was soooo funny, y'all, on the real - I remembered that I liked Shaun of the Dead, and I had just thought that maybe I should see it again because I had been so tired I had trouble staying awake to finish it when I saw it, when Corin suggested we rent Hot Fuzz, by the same gents, and I acquiesced, and indeed, it's too good. And it has so many choice cameos in it! So hoo-rah to that, but talking about it ain't taking it off my mind, so I'd better change subjects.
Oh, here's a good note: the class that I, er, was not enjoying so much? Well, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the last lecture, in spite of myself. And there was not much changed, so maybe, hopefully, I'll just start liking it instead of disliking it. I mean, I enjoyed it despite the 3 or 4 classmates getting up to use the restroom mid-lecture. It's only an hour and a half, people, just hold it! Besides, do you really want the 1st floor Anderson Bldg. bathroom? Nuh uh. I mean, it's not the old Whitehead bathroom, but it's not much better...well, just how do the bathrooms on campus rate? Not to go all George Costanza, but I have opinions! Best to worst:

Soboleff 2nd floor: It's awesome, let's face it. Aesthetically, with the bold color choices, sorta private for a public bathroom, infrequently frequented due to being stationed across from a warren of teacher cubicles, and a higher class of clientele for the same reason, you just can't go wrong. The downside? No seating or parlor area.

Egan Library 2nd floor: It's not that great, but it's infrequently frequented as well, I think because you have to brave the steely glare of the circulations desk to get there. Also, I just kind of like the use of space in there. Good feng shui, except for putting only one towel dispenser in it and then putting it on the wrong side, somehow. Still no parlor.

Mourant 1st floor: I know, it's shocking to put this guy in the top three, but I think the facts back me up. First of all, it's scarce used, which I think we've determined is a major thumbs-up with this judge. Second of all, and perhaps most importantly, it's located in the middle of a stair landing filled with delightful lounge furniture. White leather couch, tucked in a private nook? Yes, please. Bumping it down to third is the fact that it seems to get less janitorial maintenancing, or maybe I just have bad timing.

Soboleff 1st floor: I'm talkin' 'bout the art hall privy, here. It's tiny, I mean it's probably actually a converted closet, but I like that it locks up all the necessities into so little space. It's like the Murphy bed studio apartment of bathrooms, but it has interesting graffiti and color use due to its proximity to all the art students, and there's just something timelessly classy about it. I think I just like the tile they used for the floor. And it has an old fashioned sink, no counter, so it feels less institutional, and hence less public, which is priceless in a public bathroom. Also, you're conveniently situated next to both the art studios and the multi-disciplinary lab, so it doesn't matter how small it is, it's all about real estate, real estate, real estate.

Anderson 2nd floor: Okay, despite its privacy, this bad boy has some drawbacks that keep it out of the winner's circle. For example, how private can it be when the door is gappy in its frame and there's no fan? Also, if there's a lab class upstairs, people tend to lurk by the door, waiting, getting drinks of water, or just plain spying. Pervs.

Egan Classroom Wing 1st/2nd floor: Tie! It's all luck of the draw between the two floors, sometimes they'll be crappy (no pun intended), sometimes they'll be great, it all depends on how many freshmen have been stampeding through the building and how recently the trusty janitors have been by. They're pretty bare bones in their layout, but as we shall see, better bare bones than rotten, gangrenous bones.

Anderson 1st floor: It ain't a human rights violation, but it ain't all that. One of the toilets has a truly awful seat, but is in the bigger, handicapped accessible stall, while the other is a normal toilet but is in a tiny stall such that one has no elbow room. And they protrude oddly from the wall separating them from the sinks, so it's like some kind of shoe peep show, inviting any passersby at the sink to dwell on your feet and your secret identity. Not that I think about these things when I'm in there. Also, with all the biology, chemistry, and fisheries classes packed in Anderson's two classrooms, two labs, and various offices, heavily trafficked. Tsk.

Hendrickson 1st floor: This may be a controversial choice, but I really don't think it's the worst bathroom on campus. Is it bad? Yes. Awful? Yes. Frequently bad smelling, messy, with toilet paper holders that seem to have been designed for the sole purpose of NOT letting you get any toilet paper out of them? Yes. And the lighting is like something out of a slasher film. But still, it could be worse, after all, they're relatively out of the way, and you know pretty much everyone who turns up in them, since they're by the MDL. After all, it's not like they're as bad as...

Mourant 2nd floor: The pits! Dirty, heavily trafficked, weirdly designed, always trash on the floor, people give you the stink eye if you pause to look at yourself in the mirror (I still haven't figured out why, unless it's that they want privacy - look where you are, love, there's no privacy here!), there's that weird wall so people can't look in while they're walking by but which shields potential company from your eyes when you walk in, leading to heart attacks when you realize there are people waiting to jump out at you from looking at themselves in the mirror...you get the picture. And who's beating down the door? Cafeteria dwellers! *shudder*

Playlist 1/25/2008!

Rock Wit You - Michael Jackson/Daft Punk (dedimicated to Carley Lynne)
White Lines - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Galang - M.I.A.
Tenderoni - Chromeo
Staring At The Sun - TV On The Radio
White Pepper Ice Cream - Cibo Matto
Love Stoned - Justin Timberlake/Justice
To The End - Blur
Like A Feather - Nikka Costa
Broken Mind - Rory Stitt
Crystalline Green - Goldfrapp
Lovers In The Backseat - Scissor Sisters
Lollipop - Mika
Hung Up - Madonna
Ready 2 Wear - Felix Da Housecat (for Joshie McGalbraith)
International Dateline - Ladytron/Simian Mobile Disco
Fire In Cairo - Digitalism
Ice Cream - New Young Pony Club
The Walk - The Cure
Music Sounds Better With You - Stardust
Disconnect The Dots - Of Montreal
Sanssouci - Rufus Wainwright
Your Cover's Blown - Belle & Sebastian
Fish - Mr. Scruff

With Much Gnashing Of Teeth And Wailing

2008-01-18T16:51:00.000-05:00

Heh. Heh. That was some silly New Years blog. Gin+Tequila+OMG I'm Such A Nerd = Blogging on New Years Eve. What a dork: Okay, so my travel back to Juneau was the biggest nightmare since the Nightmare On Elm Street, practically, only Johnny Depp was nowhere in sight; there wasn't even Robert Englund to confuse me by being both a melted, vengeful janitor with razor gloves and the charming turncoat alien from V. That's V, mind you, not V For Vendetta, a poor adaptation of a pretty good comic. I used to be so scared of those aliens. But Diana was totally kick-ass, let's face it. I used to talk into a desk fan to make my voice sound like the V aliens. I just realized that instead of going to Lady Day @ Emerson's Bar and Grill, or hanging out with Clay before he leaves town, or cleaning my room, or doing homework, I need to go rent the second half of the V television series immediately and watch it straight through.
Well, I digress from the travel whining. It took me 50 hours to get from Seattle to Juneau, instead of the usual 2.5 - 4. It started out pretty okay when our flight was cancelled, and at first it looked like me, Corin, Alicia, and Carley were all going to be stranded together - fun! But then they all got re-booked on the next flight and I got bumped to the next day, because their customer service agent confided that she thought they would get to Juneau later, while mine said that she didn't think anyone would land there that day. That was annoying. They all left me, and I was tired because I'd only slept a couple of hours, but then I got a hold of Lindsey and he invited me down to his place. He fetched me from the street, and we ate and stuff, and we went out to a whole bunch of bars and a show, which left me deaf but happy, and then we watched a ridiculous movie and slept a little and then we had crumpets (which kick serious ass), and it was back to the airport for me. Also, renting cars by the hour that are distributed around town is such a good way of doing things. So I get through security lickety-split, and I'm feeling pretty good about everything, and we take off, and I'm like, weird, you can't see ANYTHING outside the windows when we start descending, because the cloud cover is so thick, and we're told that we're going to prepare for landing early so there's no fussing when we get closer and it gets bumpier, which I am all about, let's do it. And then we're flying and flying and flying and flying and flying and finally they tell us that we're circling over Sisters Island, and the weather in Juneau sucks, and we try to get closer once but it's all crappy and Juneau tells us not to pursue such interests, and we go to Sitka. So we're on the tarmac in Sitka for a while, and finally they say that anyone that wants to go inside the airport can do so because it's going to be at least a couple of hours, and I stretch out across the seat onboard and have a nap, and then they boot all of us off and we're stuck in Sitka, and then finally they say we're going to try to land in Juneau again, at which point it's so late that I have now missed all possibility of seeing Mr. Marmalade at Perseverance (this being the last night) and that SUCKS so royally that I could honestly cry at the thought, and the x-ray machine is broken so all carry ons, etc., have to be manually inspected, and that takes forever, and then we try to land in Juneau, but we're doing the old landing pattern (what that meant I only found out later) and it's still windy and it felt like I was floating in my seat except for the incessant and amazing pressure in my head, which was kind of scary...everyone loves a good "this is it, we must be going to crash" moment, don't they? And then we went back to Seattle and I was rebooked for the next morning, 6 AM, and we slept in the meditation room (which is frighteningly cold, probably to discourage sleeping there), and the next day I got to go to Ketchikan, where the landing jarred my shoulder so badly that I still have pain and weakness, and Wrangell, where they said they were going to try and get refueled quickly enough to leave before the snow got "too bad," and Petersburg (which was definitely not as scary a landing as I'd been told it was, maybe because of what direction I was coming from), before landing in Juneau. And we made it and what not, so whatever. The luggage pick-up was a sea of baggage from all the crazy flight delays and re-bookings, they just threw it all on the floor and let people look for their own stuff, which you would think would be a triple nightmare, but instead Corin showed up and we found all our stuff instantly. And then I went home and took a shower and went to my first class.
It feels like we've already been through three weeks of school, not one. People are falling behind in their classes, getting bored and spacing out, getting frustrated trying to juggle classes like it was almost midterms or finals, I don't know what's going on here. I hate one of my classes, passionately. I generally like the rest. I've got a lot of reading this semester, but I guess I'd rather that than doing any more computer labs or what have you. I'm going to have to start quietly dosing some of my classmates with lead paint chips so they can't talk about the crazy math stuff they know and thereby ruin my life. Thinking of plans to achieve this end goal consumed my mind last night until I karmically slipped on the ice getting out of my car and whacked my head on the door frame and raised an egg an inch or more high. It hurt, too. It hurt this morning, washing my hair and forgetting about it until I go to scrub vigorously and hit the knot. Sorrows! I'll just have to take out this pain on said classmates, what else can I do?
So my room makes me mentally ill, I think, because it's so messy and I'm so glum. Or does mental illness cause messy rooms? Actually, both are true and it's a vicious cycle. I really need to clean up this weekend. It honestly looks like the room had a bunch of stuff in it and then vomited it forth in the midst of death throes. Which is not conducive to happiness. But I just want to watch V! And catch up on sleep, oh, yes please. It's a wicked old world.

2008 bitches

2007-12-31T23:47:00.000-05:00

Who is going to tell me not to be too drunk to blog? That's right, nobody, on account of nobody can take away all the gin/tequila I drank, so nobody can make me too undrunk to blog. There are some funny stories to tell here, on Enrique's roommate's internet, so I must respectfully wait until I'm sober enough to tell them/draw them: that's right, I have to start drawing again, so here's where I start. I'm not going to tell you how many times I hit backspace, because it's too hard to keep count/too shameful to celebrate...happy new years', bitches.

Pet Peeves, Pals, and Priorities!

2007-12-10T22:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, here it is, one of my very number one pet peeves: When people (any people, anywhere) underestimate the dogged Hughes-Skandijs sibling loyalty. Don't crap-talk my siblings to me, people, cause it ain't getting you nowhere but on my bad side! Now, obviously I don't mean if there's some legitimate complaint that for some reason you want my input on or think it will help by talking to me, no, no, but just in that gossipy way. I don't want to gossip about my bro-bro or my sissy-pop.
Another one is when people are rude to me when I'm stuck at work. There's no excuse. Oh, what's that, you've just suffered three tragic losses, your pet ran away and you got in a fender-bender fifteen minutes ago? And why does that mean you get to be a psychotic bitch to me? That's right, it doesn't. Take your spelt and...never mind, I want to keep my job.
Still another one is when people don't take the 15 seconds (okay, maybe 30) to email one sentence that says, "hey, I know I'm not keeping in touch right now, I feel bad but life is crazy." Trust me, I've sent and received this, it's better than nothing. I know because I've gotten nothing. Nothing's the kind of thing that makes my blood boil, because it means that I'm not worth thirty. fucking. seconds. So if this means you, then look out!
Anyway, enough of that. I went to Wal-Mart (yes, Wal-Mart, crucify me if you must) with Alicia because she was looking for cheap props (bet you feel bad about that crucifixion now), and it was so bizarre. Well, we were pretty odd ourselves, but Wal-Mart really stepped up with its A-game in the crazy people sweepstakes. We were both feeling pretty loopy when we got there, and not long into our visit, Alicia tried on a robe for a test drive. She then wore it for the rest of the shopping trip, which took a total of 1 hour and forty-five minutes. There were several moments when she collapsed in helpless amazement at my razor wit, or because she was exhausted. So exhausted I appeared to have a razor wit. We looked at nearly everything in the store, including some flannely, fleecy fabrics that had pictures printed on them in astonishing detail, and as I dragged out a bolt the better to see what was going on, two employees stopped at the other end of the aisle and laughed at us. We laughed back, and then one said, "That's you. I'm not joking, that fabric's you." I said that I could see where she would say that and then we beat a hasty retreat before they could imprison our souls in a bolt of fake fleece with Wal-Mart voodoo. Over in the Christmas seasonal aisle, there was a whole lot of shiny to look at, but then the other customers started an uprising against us and our professional Wal-Mart shopper ways, and they were all middle aged men and they kept sidling too close with an unmistakably hostile air about them (the possibility that they merely keep a surprising number of store detectives in reserve for robe-wearers has been discussed), so that we would have to move on, and finally we cut and run for the back. Did you know you can get a dvd of 150 "classic cartoons" from the "golden age" of animation for just $5? You know that's code for awesomely creepy shit! But I didn't have the cinco bux necessary. I just cracked myself up typing bux.
So here's the tragedy - I had to turn in a paper for history today, and it was such a fun class, and it was such an easy topic, and I totally put it off and put it off and my paper sucks really hard and it's too short. That hurts my soul, y'all. AND I didn't study for evolution so I'll probably end up with a B in the class. Bummeroonie. Ha, I done cracked myself up again!
Okay, I'm hot to trot to other web pages now. But I'm almost free until next semester, woo hoo!

Long Time, No...Whatever.

2007-12-03T20:10:00.000-05:00

Man, I am a bad blogger. This is not dissimilar to previous efforts to keep journals, dream diaries, and maintain any long-term, consistent, creative output: great while it lasts, totally not a daily thing. I wish it was. Maybe if I wasn't always procrastinating everything else, too, I wouldn't feel too harried to post, because lord knows I spend enough time dicking around on the internet. Speaking of lords and Lords, we just had a creationism/evolution debate in my evolution class, and I was on the creationist side, and I have to say, we kind of won. Obviously this was not due to our amazing proof of God's direct intervention in the formation of physical existence and development, but rather because our dogged nit-picking was more specific than the evolution defense. If I had gotten the evolution end assigned, I probably wouldn't have spent a lot of time preparing, either. But on the other hand, I do love to argue, so maybe it's just the thirty years of squabbling which prepared me to make as many disingenuous, tenuous analogies as necessary to avoid agreeing with the other side. And I'd say my fellow bible-warriors were quite valiant as well. At any rate, we did the only thing that I cared about , which was to not make a mockery of presenting a creationist opinion in an evolution class (I mean, do NOT get me wrong, I don't think the one really has anything to do with the other, and I'm annoyed that we have to discuss it at all, but I just didn't want to set up a punching bag for the class to feel smug.), and the teacher then addressed the main points in the current school cases and so on, so it ended up being time pretty well spent.
What...else...I did really poorly on my last o.chem test, which is a bummer. If only I had studied more. Now I really have to worry about passing the class, which is just stupid of me. Alicia said she washes her hands of me because of my negligent attitude towards something I need if I want to graduate, and I guess she's got a fair point, even if she's got a less than sisterly idea of support. If she ever reads this, you can bet she's going to chew me out for saying so.
Outside of school, the play is going well. I enjoy my character, but I have to do more with her, because she's still pretty flat. And not in a good way (If you're wondering what a good way of being flat would be, when I typed flat, the song "Flat Beat" by Mr. Oizo popped into my head.). I like the reindeer dance we learned. After we close, I get to leave Juneau and go home, but I bought a roundtrip ticket, unlike some people, and that has wiped me out, so now my present buying is on hold. Although I got a present for one person. Who could it be? The mystery continues. I'm excited to go east. Yesss, rude people and concrete! Perhaps the bitter, bitter cold of the last few days is influencing me.
I have class tonight, which means I can't participate in the sonnet class that Keith Baxter is teaching at the university, and that really harshes my mellow, you know? But since I've been so headachey and fatigued the last couple of days, I'm not sure that I'd be up to it. But Keith is so cool, surely he wouldn't bitch out some students who just want to be able to speak Shakespeare better...oh, wait, I just remembered Sybil's awesome class over the summer: "Say the lines, you stupid fucking idiot! From the loins!" So I guess nobody's safe where the mercurial Brits are involved. And that's a good thing. I'm telling you, I was born to the wrong nation. I'd be much more content in an entire country of cynical, sarcastic, dour, frigid bitches. Ha, ha, just kidding, kind of; they're so much more than that. Anyway, my point being, I meant to stick some photos on here and I don't have my camera with me so I can't, so never mind and this post is over!

"In The Mix" playlist 11/23/07

2007-11-24T03:23:00.001-05:00

I like to dance, even if I often do it rather badly.
Genesis - Justice
Rendez-Vu - Basement Jaxx
Here Comes The Hotstepper - Ini Kamoze (by request, thank you very much)
Peek-a-Boo - Siouxsie & The Banshees
Black Plastic - Ladytron
Heartbeats (Rex the Dog Remix) - The Knife
Technologic - Daft Punk
Downtown (Simian Mobile Disco Remix) - Peaches
The Salmon Dance - The Chemical Brothers
Little Kids (Ladytron Remix) - Kings Of Convenience
Le Disko - Shiny Toy Guns
Without You I'm Nothing - Placebo feat. David Bowie
We Are Your Friends - Justice vs. Simian Mobile Disco
A Forest (Tree Mix) - The Cure
My Feelings For You - Cassius
She's My Best Friend - Of Montreal
Big Time Sensuality - Bjork
Bring The Pain (Chemical Brothers Remix) - Method Man
Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters
Victim Of The Crime - Phoenix
A Gap Has Appeared - Field Music
Runaway - Nuyorican Soul
Run - Air
I Believe - Simian Mobile Disco
Spirits Drifting - Brian Eno

I'm Sleepy.

2007-11-14T19:03:00.000-05:00

Like, for reals. And I'm hungry even though I ate. I need stuff! (naps, food, blankets for the naps, birthday presents)
I know I'm going to be very disappointed in myself if I don't pass chemistry, but I keep not putting effort into it - like bare minimum effort.
I think I'm taking a lot of liberal arts classes next semester and that is a cheerful thought.
Anyone have any suggestions on mass spectrometry and proton spec? I could use them. Before 5 PM.