scissors happy

vote for panda

2011-02-24T09:39:00.004-06:00

when i married pos, he came with a few things neatly built in: a house. a car. an insurance agent whom he and other members of his family had used for years. so adult! i was a bus-riding renter who had filled out an online form to cover my apartment's contents in case carol, the elderly hoarder next door, fell asleep (or died) and a candle she had forgotten about burned all of her newspapers saved since the mid-80s and gutted our building.

i didn't realize that "i have an insurance agent" could mean "i will now receive totally ridiculous and insanely unprofessional emails from this person."

the first email was to announce her sister's dog's participation in some online beauty contest or some shit like that (i didn't really read very closely). i saw "hello to my family and friends" and assumed that she accidentally CC'd me. i mean, seriously, i've never met her; all i know is that she did FUCK ALL for us when our basement flooded with sewer water this summer after the city's infrastructure basically crumbled after a flash flood. that was an increadibly pleasant experience and i certainly don't resent my ruined basement, lost youth (goodbye to my CD collection and years' worth of writings, mementos, and irreplaceable items), or the fact that i was five months pregnant and surrounded by city of chicago fecal matter and gallons and gallons of bleach. interesting that FEMA came to our door, looked at the damage and wrote us a check; THANKS SO MUCH, INSURANCE LADY, FOR YOUR ZERO ASSISTANCE. i mean, what's insurance for, anyway, if not for us to pay hundreds of dollars a year and then be turned away when we actually need help, due to fine-print exemptions?

Hello to My Family & Friends:

We have entered Panda, my sister Rosalie's long coat Chihuahua, into the BISSELL'S MVP Photo Contest. Because of Panda's unique coloring/markings, we felt he had a good chance to win. With your help, if Panda wins, we would love to donate the first prize money, $10,000, to the Hinsdale Humane Society. Additionally, Panda would be featured on the Bissell Pet Vac advertisement.

Panda is Charles brother. Charles is my Long Coat Chihuahua that is a volunteer at the Hinsdale Humane Society. He is on the Pet a Pet program where he visits the assisted living facilities bringing joy to many of the elderly residents. See their picture together attached.

If I have sent this email, please know I consider you family or a close friend. It is not often I do something like this, however, it is for a good cause. The Hinsdale Humane Society would benefit greatly to be the recipient of this prize.

So, PLEASE VOTE DAILY for PANDA. Just in case you forget, I will send you a reminder each day to Vote till the contest ends. If you wish not to participate, please reply to this email and write UNSUBSCRIBE ME in the Subject line.

i guess i could have unsubscribed, but i hadn't read that far. i obviously was not voting daily for panda.

the second email arrived the next day and said:

Reminder, please vote for today if you have not voted yet.

Thank you.

i deleted it, annoyed. the third arrived five days later. it was in giant, bold letters:

Last Day to VOTE for Panda., in this session Lets come in strong to get him into the finals.

Grand Prize will be donated to the Hinsdale Humane Society. Thank you to all my wonderful family and friends for voting.

the only reason i am sharing this is the fourth email, which just did it for me with its ridiculousness. there are so many unintentionally hilarious things about this email. also, how does she know that i didn't vote? and i kind of doubt that it's "ok too."

she's pissed about BLIND CATS. so fucking awesome.

Sorry to say, Panda did not place.

Sessions 1, 2, 3, and now 4 Blind Cats have won...Panda is not only the wrong species, he's not blind. Therefore, I choose not to enter him into the remaining sessions 5-12.

Blind Cats have a much bigger following than a cute little Chihuahua named Panda could have. However, I want to thank all my loyal friends and family who took the time every day to vote, I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

Each and everyone of you know I would drop everything to help you, so your taking the time to help me for a good cause speaks volumes to me. I know who you are, and I really love you for being so wonderful....and those who didn't vote, I know who you are, and that is ok too.

concerted effort: j

2011-01-31T23:55:00.004-06:00

i last posted on october 26 - a little over three months ago. my entire life has changed in those three months, and for the better. babyfriend arrived on november 19. she's a girl (! - despite my firm belief all throughout my pregnancy that she was a he, despite the ongoing morning sickness, the acne, how i carried high, my constant craving of sweets, and all of the other old-wives-tale signs that it was a girl) - a beautiful, funny, strong, smiley, sweet, and chill baby girl we named naomi siobhan. i have been off work, sequestered in the house (in the dead of winter - not that i mind at all), feeding and changing and holding and playing with this little person who i have absolutely no idea what i did to deserve. so, yeah, i've been a bit preoccupied.

bands:
j. tillman to justin vernon

worst band name:
jimmy eat world. i like them, despite their terrible name

number of songs by the j artists:
at start: 766
at end: 684

dates:
7/21/10 - 9/2/10 (that seems forever ago!)

highlights/surprises:
band with the most tracks before deleting anything: jeff buckley (91) and johnny cash (83)

deleted:
well, you know, lots of random crap that i hadn't even heard of before and decided was entirely inessential in my life. also, a bunch of random jeff buckley live tracks. you know, i adore him. he was beautiful, his voice was beautiful, i have beautiful memories of listening to his beautiful album grace during beautiful times in my life. his death was tragic. it is also tragic to release every inch of tape that happens to have his voice on it. diminishes the beauty.

james blunt. it was a goal of mine when this project started was to listen to back to bedlam, decide if it is any good, and, if it isn't, which i knew it isn't, delete. so i did listen. and it is bad. he has a creepy little china doll face when he sings with his bizarre voice. i first heard "you're beautiful" at a record store in galway, ireland, and thought that it was a woman singing. i can't imagine any additional releases of his selling at all. we shall see.

lessons learned/randoms:
i don't know a lot about the jam - or even when i discovered them - but i have had their greatest hits cd for at least ten years and good god do i love "beat surrender" and "town called malice."

i actually really love jamie o'neal's "all by myself" - i happened to have gotten it from cd's valentines day mix in 2003, which he entitled "i was drunk and it was dark and you were there."

"canned heat" by jamiroqui - shit yes. napolean dy-no-mite besides, that song is rad.

jane's addiction's nothings shocking and ritual de lo habitual are amazing. perry's onstage banter during lolla in 2009 was so lame that it made me sad, and i have disappointment towards that bullshit married to rock "reality" show he and his missus participated in.

rabbit fur coat by jenny lewis and the watson twins is outstanding. i didn't like acid tongue quite as much, and jenny and johnny is okay but not all that memorable.

i don't know how i obtained it, but there's a song called "love ain't just a four letter word" by jenny wilson that's totally bizarre and awesome. ditto "intelligentactile 101" by jesca hoop.

"head on" by the jesus and mary chain is perfect.

i didn't really know who joan armatrading was when a friend asked me to go see her at wolf trap outside of dc in 2000 and i just fell in love with her voice. "down to zero" and "love and affection" are two of my all-time favorites.

"take me home, country roads" by john denver was a karaoke favorite when we went to west virginny to go tubing/skiing/drinking in 2003.

johnny cash is much loved in my house. pos' dad was a huge fan, so he grew up listening to and admiring his social justice power-to-the-working-man no-bullshit music. johnny and i have the same birthday (um, different year). ecf and i were talking about what to name the babyfriend, and he let me know that there is a syracuse football player named Prince-Tyson Gulley - most likely because his parents loved prince and mike tyson. therefore we decided to name my child cash-coyne: for johnny, for wayne, and because it is ghetto fabulous.

i love joni mitchell. love.

"angel of the morning" and "queen of hearts" were my favorites when i was little - like six or seven. juice newton (i loved her name) played the rock county 4H fair one summer and i was pissed - like, PISSED - that no adults wanted to take me. just a kid and already totally suffering from FOMO (that would be "fear of missing out").

who is this just jack character? when i hear that, it reminds me of the will and grace minstrel show character jack. i think the just jack band/guy is a brit and awesome.

there. proud of self. will get to the Ks in due time - i'm not done with them yet despite starting them in september but i've been, you know, busy. i was listening to the killers while i was in labor - and i'm not even all that big of a fan. just dedicated to the cause, friends.

concerted effort: i

2010-10-26T20:05:00.004-05:00

so, you (and there is only one of you, methinks) may have noticed that i have not been blogging. i have my reasons; for example, i am going to give birf in a month. i have been preoccupied. i will do these as i can - i'm up to the Ks right now, so i need to go back and blog the Js as well.

i'm driving to work now, so my hours of walking and el riding and listening to the ipod has turned into a happy ride with NPR. i don't feel the slightest bit guilty that i am now driving - i took public transit for 10 years and do not miss the waiting, the crowds, the germs, the ignorant assholes who let pregnant women stand while they "don't notice." i haven't been reading or listening to music the way that the train used to force me to, though.

bands:
from i'm from barcelona to ivana xl

worst band name:
i'm from barcelona? i am kloot? i monster? take your pick. although i love you but i've chosen darkness, while not succinct, is a GREAT band name.

number of songs by the i artists:
at start: 223
at end: 187

dates:
6/21/10-7/6/10

highlights/surprises:
band with the most tracks before deleting anything: indigo girls (71)

deleted:
india.arie's second album, "voyage to india." i kept her first album, as it was earnest but cool singer-songwriter guitar-driven acoustic jammy stuff, but then i got bored.

lessons learned/randoms:
omg the indigo girls are fucking boring. eb has a great story about how her walkman was stolen out of her locker when she was in high school, but the thief had taken her indigo girls tape out and left it - that is hysterical. i have so many indigo girls albums because my good friend in high school was obsessed with them and would give me one of their cds for every holiday and birthday so that i could also understand the importance of this band to her. in retrospect, maybe she was trying to tell me something.

i only have four iggy pop songs, but they all feel really iconic and are awesome.

my parents' first date was to see ike and tina turner, which is hysterical, because my parents are and were SUPER SQUARE. my favorite is "river deep, mountain high." it's too bad that ike is even mentioned on these songs - tina is the badass and the talent.

interpol is a band i never think about but enjoy when they are playing.

INXS. hearts.

the isley brother's "summer breeze" makes me think of drinking malibu run with cranberry juice and eating half-price burgers and chainsmoking at the toledo lounge in 2003, when my favorite bartender would play this on the jukebox and slip me free drinks. this song even reminds me of how the bar smelled - water damage and stale smoke. sigh. good times.

concerted effort: h

2010-07-04T14:20:00.003-05:00

bands:
from haale to howe gelb (who and who?)

worst band name:
hootie and the blowfish, of course. legendarily bad. if i had a hoobastank song or two, that would win, but alas, no.

number of songs by the H artists:
at start: 291
at end: 222

dates:
6/2/10 - 6/21/10

highlights/surprises:

band with the most tracks before deleting anything: hole (53) and hanson (46). they really don't have a lot in common.

i downloaded harvey danger's little by little when they posted it for free online when it first came out in 2005 and you know, i really really like it. "little round mirrors" is a fantastic song, and the entire album is smart, fun and good. you can still get it here.

i love horace andy's "feel good all over." i first heard it at my friend's apartment in brooklyn on a steamy summer day and i got all excited because it sounds like an elderly woman who has nothing to be happy about but is anyway. spoiler: horace is a raggae dude who was in his 20s when it was recorded.

my love for hanson has been documented before. i will just say that i had a drunken conversation with pos' cousin's girlfriends after a black keys show and we were talking music and she is a total hipster and we started naming guilty pleasures and i mentioned hanson and she got really intense and was like "DON'T EVER APOLOGIZE FOR LIKING HANSON." turns out she is a total superfan. so, yes, hanson still has a fan base, hidden amongst those you wouldn't ever suspect.

deleted:

to the chagrin of many of my friends, i really don't like the hold steady. that guy's voice is totally annoying. the guitarist is from my hometown. i have tried to listen and enjoy and just can't.

a hot snakes album. i saw them in dc. that's all i remember. the album is pretty forgettable as well.

the particulary bad hootie songs. yes, i kept some.

lessons learned/randoms:

i was at my eye doctor's last week and they were playing one of those really bad top-40 radio stations, and hootie and the blowfish's "hold my hand" came on in between some katy perry monstrosity and no doubt's "hella good." that single came out in 1994, yo, SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, and it's still getting played on top-40 radio, and it still fits in. their debut album (the only one i own) went platinum SIXTEEN TIMES. so hootie and the blowfish are not revered artists, and their subsequent albums went nowhere, but me and 15,999,999 other people liked them enough at one time to pay for the cd. listening to this for the first time in forever, it's not that bad. it's cargo-shorts college-town jangly pop with acoustic guitars, so this band paved the way for the dave matthews band's popularity, along with a handful of non-threatening southern dudes with earnest love songs (edwin mccain, sister hazel, fastball, other bands you haven't heard from since the 90s). i actually think it's pretty awesome that darius rucker ("hootie" as he will forever be thought of) became a country star and has had three #1 country hits, especially considering a black dude hadn't been at the top of the country charts in 25 years.

hot IQs is a fun denver band who i got to see open for someone once (and i got a cute little button that looks like a calculator with HOT IQS in the "screen" area, like where you could type 55378008 and turn it upside down and it would say "BOOBLESS" to the delight of other 5th graders, and i made it into a magnet that resides on my fridge). anyway, look for "retromuff," which is my favorite.

eb put hip hop hoodio's "dicks and noses" on a mix cd for me a few years ago and its super juvenile but i love it. they're a latino jewish rap group (yes) and some of their lyrics include "you like our dicks and you like our noses/you see a jewish guy and you forget where your clothes is."

heartless bastards' female lead singer sounds . . . how shall i put this . . . a little, err, "touched"? she has a great gravelly voice, don't get me wrong, but there is this odd twinge of daniel johnston mentally deranged that i detect layered in there.

hole. the irritating thing about courtney love is that live through this is completely amazing (many people believe it's because kurt wrote most of the music) and celebrity skin, while irritating in that grating starfucker hollywood namedrop mode that courtney wants you to be envious of, it is also a really solid album. i fucking LOVED that band in high school. and now . . . and now. the wrong one died.

i said to pos near the end of this installment, "i should be done with the Hs tomorrow," and he replied, "the real question is, when do you get your life back?" i laughed so hard i teared up.

i'm running a little behind - i'm almost done with the i's already. the j's are gonna take forever.

concerted effort: g

2010-06-02T22:09:00.006-05:00

bands:
from gang of four to gypsy and the cat

worst band name:
get him eat him (both songs were deleted)
(also: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, howeverthefuck that's pronounced - apparently they broke up in 2006)

i didn't do this category for the previous letters. i should go back and do so.

number of songs by the G artists:
at start: 570
at end: 375

dates:
4/23/10-6/1/10

highlights/surprises:
band with the most tracks before deleting anything: green day (53) followed by guns n roses (50)

deleted:

a live girl talk set. i often have an aversion to live albums, especially if they aren't off of the mixing board, and a live dj set from a guy who just presses play on his laptop kind of defeats the purpose, right? pos and i saw the girl talk set at lollapalooza last year or the year before. fucking asshole kids with their asshole fashion and asshole dancing. i had never been surrounded by a more annoying group of assholes in my life. proof that i am approaching too old.

this may be unpopular to admit to my hipster friends, but most of guided by voices. i don't get it. sorry. also gone: all of grandaddy. couldn't force myself to care.

more than half of gwen stefani's vapid, retarded solo album.

i tried to delete a godsmack song and pos removed it from the "maybedelete" playlist. foiled again!

lessons learned/randoms:

and i thought that eminem had a persecution complex - em has nothing on w. axl rose (or, you know, bill bailey). supermodel-beating homophobic racist sexist piece of shit (although he claims that songs like "one in a million" are just, like, misunderstood, and he loves elton john. wait . . . so does eminem). i'm not gonna lie. i like some guns n roses songs. i kept a few. the singles mostly, and the ones that i somehow know by heart, because as a kid in rural wisconsin, you don't listen to "get in the ring" and think "what an angry, petty little man," you think "hahaha, he just said some nasty shit. this album rules." also, i can't listen to "welcome to the jungle" without thinking of jim carrey (in a daring dramatic role) poorly lip syncing in the dirty harry movie the dead pool (and the members of gnr attending his funeral). omg i just watched the jim carrey scenes for the first time in like 20 years - liam neeson! what are YOU doing there? also, i am pregnant (yes, for real, eeeeeks) and even though i am only 15 weeks along and there is no way that babyfriend can hear, much less understand, i don't like listening to piss and vinegar. bad mojo.

greg laswell covering kristin hersh's "your ghost" is beautiful. i love that song. both versions. michael stipe is on kristin's.

sigh . . . i really dislike genesis. pos really likes them. they stay. unfortunately. that's what i get for marrying a prog rock fan who was 15 in 1985.

i love george michael. he's a literal hot mess and really needs to stop getting fucked up (and fucked) in public, but he is awesome. even if the lyrics to "father figure" makes me throw up in my mouth. i like how he spent the 80s and 90s projecting a complete "i only fuck supermodels" vibe, just to come out later and be like "oh, by the way, i'm totally fucking gay, so, yeah, anyway . . ."

ghostland observatory are this random electroclash band that i thoroughly enjoy. surprisingly, they are from austin.

i only have three goldfrapp songs and i like. might look into more.

big hearts for gorillaz. i overpaid to see them in dc a few years ago, but it was still mad fun. cartoon band better than fat albert's.

listening to green day's dookie made me feel 17 years old. i actually really like american idiot, even though i hadn't listened to it all the way through until now. not quite sure how well it translates to broadway, but still a fun powerpoppunk record.

on to the H's.

concerted effort: f

2010-04-26T22:11:00.002-05:00

bands:
from fabienne delsol to fyfe dangerfield

number of songs by the f artists:
at start: 454
at end: 367

dates:
3/31/10-4/23/10

highlights/surprises:
band with the most tracks: flaming lips (120)

faith no more's angel dust is one of the best hard rock albums evah. "be aggressive" and "everything's ruined" fucking KILL.

even though i like feist, she can get pretty effing boring.

i love fiona apple. always have, always will. when the pawn (i am not going to type the whole name out) is an excellent album and one of my staples.

i really like florence + the machine's lungs. i was really disappointed with their show at the house of blues last month. their cover of robert palmer's "addicted to love" is awesome - pick it up from one of these posts.

i don't speak french but for some reason i always end up with random french pop songs in my itunes (perhaps i have plastic bertrand's "ca plane por moi" to blame - me and ps, driving in a shitty borrowed car in dc ten years ago on our way to shows, this song on an old mix tape turned up loud). i dig the france gall and francois hardy i somehow acquired.

fujiya & miyagi - love them. awesome electobritpoprobotrock. i saw them open for peter bjorn & john with cd and zp a few years ago at the 9:30 club and i thought that f&m were way better than pb&j. i love "collarbone," and the hood internet's mash-up "the new collarbone" is with dr dre and snoop and i fucking love it. get it here.

the face's "ohh la la" - never get tired of that one. and i like that it's ronnie wood and not barfy old rod stewart singing. not that ronnie wood isn't gross. he is. not as sick as bill wyman, though, of course.

deleted:

the futureheads debut and franz ferdinand's second album - i've seen both of them before, and was pretty meh about them, and their albums are pretty meh for me as well (although i am keeping the first franz album because i bought it when i was on vacay in rehoboth with mob and cd and i am nostalgic like that).

the foo fighters album there is nothing left to lose - except your dignity, i suppose. that's harsher than it needs to be. they're fine. i just want the first two albums and have little use for the rest of them - although "one by one" is a great song. i really like the foo's first album - it's so quiet and not-nirvana (or later dave grohl projects like them crooked vultures or queens of the stone age) that i was really taken with it when i was in high school, and "walking after you" on their second album is super-perfect creepy-stalker lovely. then they seemed to lose the plot - perhaps around the time that grohl donned a fat suit for their lame "learning to fly" song's heavy-rotation-on-mtv-designed video. but maybe that's just his power pop group and he has his other projects to make different types of rock with. while i know better than to care about musician's personal lives, i have to believe that he seriously fucked over louise post, if veruca salts' resolver is any indication. the fact that he is co-owner of the black cat in dc makes me completely appreciate him.

a bunch of frente! songs that i found on music blogs. i had a moment where i remembered liking them a lot in high school, so i downloaded a bunch and now they are making their way right back out of my library. not a good name for a band. not a good band.

i was torn about deleting the frank zappa song "ride my face to chicago," because it is a song about chicago, but then i just went ahead, because it is a song about riding frank zappa's face.

lessons learned/randoms:

so you know how some couples have a pact where each person gets to choose the one person who they are allowed to sleep with if the opportunity ever arises, and the other person can't get mad? this usually works best when the person is a celebrity or world figure and not, like, your neighbor. early on in our relationship, as a joke, we decided that pos' is eva green, and mine is wayne coyne. yes, i could have picked anyone in the world, and i picked wayne. first of all, i think he is soooo cute. i love his graying curls and beard - in fact, when pos' hair curls in a certain way around his face i get all excited and say "wayne coyne hair!!!" secondly, he is a creative genius, and i love his raspy voice. so this past halloween, i was in new orleans for work, and i heard a rumor that the flaming lips were staying at my hotel (which i believed, as it was the voodoo music fest weekend, i was at the w, and i had spent the previous night drinking with kiss in the lobby bar. and when i say "drinking with" i mean that we were in the same room drinking at the same time). i texted pos with this information, excited that i might run into wayne. he texted back something like "i know that he's your one, but please don't sleep with him." which i thought was soooo cute and charming. i think pos wasn't taking in consideration the other half of the equation - your one has to want to sleep with you, too. i personally think that wayne is too classy to fuck some random star-struck girl who is staying at the same hotel - maybe that's why i chose him in the first place. as for ms green, my husband is a very attractive man, but he doesn't spend much time in france, so . . .

anyway, have i mentioned that the flaming lips is probably my favorite band? my brother had me listen to the soft bulletin on a discman while driving home from my grandma's house on christmas night 2000, and my jaw literally dropped. i used to buy that cd for everyone for every occasion, i just wanted everyone to have it and love it the way i do. "what is the light?" is one of the greatest love songs of all time. i make sure to always try to go see the lips when they are in chicago, which is almost every year, and i always feel like i am at the best birthday party that was ever thrown for me. i even carry around a piece of orange confetti in my wallet from last december's show at the allstate arena - they just make me so goddamn happy!

concerted effort: e

2010-03-30T22:40:00.000-05:00

bands:
from eagle seagull to extreme

number of songs by the E artists:
at start: 585
at end: 439

dates:
2/28/10 - 3/30/10

highlights/surprises:
band with the most tracks: elastica with 52 (this is more than the number of actual songs that they ever wrote - this includes a BBC Radio One session that they recorded and some covers)

deleted:

a ton of eminem. i had a few of his albums and i never listened to them, and three days of that shit was more than enough. i'm all for creative license and artists' rights and freedom of speech, but fuck, i don't want to listen to shit about some douche rapper raping and killing women. i kept a few tracks but i'm not really all that interested. he has quite the persecution complex.

"more than words" by extreme. very 7th grade for me. no use for it.

the elected. now i know that i only like jenny lewis' contributions to rilo kiley. blake sennet, on his own, is a whiny mess.

about 20 songs from everclear. oh, is this song about how you grew up poor with bad parents and then you did a lot of heroin, and you love your daughter? i do love the song "now that it's over" - a great fuck-you break up song. their cover of "brown-eyed girl" is really bad. what's awesome is that when i was trying to figure out what song we should dance to at my wedding for the dad/bride dance, my sister was like "how about 'brown-eyed girl'?" it gave me a complex that my own sister doesn't even know what i look like, or care enough to have noticed that my eyes are blue.

lessons learned/randoms:
every time i hear "the boy's bad news" by eagles of death metal, i look around for my phone - it's the ringtone that pos chose for himself when he calls. i love that song. that laugh at the beginning! it always makes people jump when my phone starts laughing.

when "u make me want to drink bleach" by easyworld (from the album better ways to self-destruct) popped up, i was expecting a dirge mess with possible emo overtones - but it's a really pretty song! apparently i have the "stylophone mix" of the song - how DO i find these things? - so i can't vouch for the original, but i like it a lot.

echo and the bunnymen - rad. "the killing moon" is fantastic, and "bring on the dancing horses" and "lips like sugar" are perfect.

engelbert humperdink is due for a resurgence - maybe quentin tarantino can use some of his songs in an ironic way and make all the kids want to sing along like he did with "son of a preacher man" in pulp fiction. the name engelbert humperdink alone is fucking amazing.

i love erasure - listening to them for two days was like a big gay dance party for a commute. my favorite is "drama!" - i was once extolling the virtues of that song to mob and he said that he and his friends always substituted "one homosexual drama after another" for the lyrics "one psychological drama."

eva cassidy had such a beautiful voice. so sad that she died so young. also gone too soon: elliott smith. you must have to really want it to be over to stab yourself in the fucking heart. stupid.

sometimes amazon.com makes a mistake when they send you your order. i was just talking to mc about this - he and jk hosted a bacon dinner party (i made these - seriously - and everyone made comparable ridiculous and amazing bacon-wrapped and bacon-stuffed food. i can't eat bacon for weeks, if not months, now) and there was a shrink-wrapped cd called bellydancer superstars 3 or something, and mc said that it was randomly mailed with the books and stuff he had ordered, and didn't bother to send it back. this happened to me a few years ago - it's how i ended up with the very best of edith piaf. this might be sacrilege, but i thought the biopic a few years ago was too boring to finish.

of all of the shows i've been to, i think the most fun i have ever had at a concert was elastica at the 9:30 club in dc in october 2000. peaches opened and i'm sorry, but she was terrible. there was this strange guy with her named gonzales who sort of provided beats for her with his boombox. i was already totally drunk and booing (as were many others) and she was like "you fuckers better not be like this for elastica." no worries, peaches - i fucking love elastica. i was so wasted i curled up under a green line metro bench when it was time to go home. i'm so glad i got to see them - i read in a recent spin that justine is now a painter in america with no plans to return to music, and donna became a born-again.

elton john. hearts. huge hearts. what's funny is that i LOVE him and HATE billy joel, and since they always seem to be touring together, i will not pay money to sit through billy joel. elton is trashy and classy and recorded some of the most senseless, weird pop ever (see: my years-ago analysis of "grey seal") but can still convey amazing heartbreak and love and longing. when not singing about the lion king - that shit is lame.

the song "fuck it" by eamon is so juvenile. love it.

a new viewpoint in the ongoing debate.

2010-03-17T10:07:00.004-05:00

this was taped up on a support beam in the pulaski orange line el stop's parking lot this morning.

and yes, i did submit it to passive-aggressive notes. strangely, it looks a lot like the note i found taped to my apartment's front gate a few years ago ("opera singer: close your windows or shut up. we don't want to listen to you"). that one was actually published in the passive-aggressive notes book.

concerted effort: d

2010-02-27T16:21:00.011-06:00

well, that took longer than expected. i thought that i would listen to the rest of the Ds and move on to the Es while on my delayed-but-amazing honeymoon to kauai, hawaii, but the last thing i wanted to do while lounging in the sun at our perfect beachfront resort was to listen to duran duran or the dresden dolls. we weren't there for the tsunami warning, but damn am i glad that it turned out to be nothing.

bands:
from Daft Punk to Dylan at the Movies

number of songs by the D artists:
at start: 882
at end: 763

the band with the most tracks is, of course, one of my old standby favorites, depeche mode, with 96. surprisingly, i don't have violator. i mean, i have had it in various formats over the years, and know that album quite well, but it never made it into my itunes library. i will have to go wading through the giant plastic storage bins that now house my cds and find it. remember when your cd collection was a thing of pride, an alphabetical library that you encouraged friends and visitors to peruse, and you would lovingly pack and repack way too many boxes of cds every time you moved? now i just toss them into a box in the basement and wonder if it's worth my time to try to sell them on amazon (because, really, who buys cds anymore?).

dates:
1/20/10 - 2/27/10

highlights/surprises:

"yours" by dan black. fun!

"holiday in cambodia" by the dead kennedys is seriously a great song and is going onto my next car cd mix so that i can road rage my way to the train in the morning. "pol pot!"

dan le sac vs scroobious pip. need more. i played "thou shalt always kill" over and over two or three years ago when i found it online, and all of their other stuff is also infectious. love it.

i saw the album cover to david gilmour's about face in the album-flow itunes function and i swear i thought for a minute that pos had downloaded some lame american idol kid singer's album. sorry, i'm not a huge floyd fan, okay? sorry. he's kinda pretty in that photo. that, or he looks like buffalo bill from silence of the lambs. one or the other.

i ADORE david bowie. ("you betcha" will always belong to him - not to that conniving pathetic idiot governor drop-out). i got really into bowie my freshman year of college and for a while it was all bowie, all the time. my favorite bowie song is "young americans" because it's terribly catchy and he sings his ass off, but i also love the old ziggy stardust songs, the rehabbing-in-berlin low songs, the mid-90s collaborations with nine inch nails. david bowie is the dignified male madonna - ever-changing, always gorgeous, the very model of fashion. love him.

the distillers are the band that hole wishes it could be. i just got the new spin in the mail and courtney love is on the cover and i was just like "good luck selling any copies of this one." people need to quit giving her copy space.

the dead milkmen were a favorite of my older brother when we were young - he was a member of the columbia house record club and got beelzebubba on vinyl (part of the ten-records-for-a-penny scam that they used to do). while best known for "punk rock girl," we would listen to that record and laugh and laugh - i mean, "smoking banana peels" is comedy gold when you're 11 years old. our mother, who has probably the most literal sense of humor ever, was APPALLED by them. she was dead serious when she sat us down to dissect the lyrics sheet, to DISCUSS the ISSUES that were in the album, such as how the song "bleach boys" was about SUICIDE, which was a VERY SERIOUS THING. whatever, mom - "i'm so bored i'm drinking bleach!"

deleted:
most of the darkness' debut album. death from above 1979's album "you're a woman, i'm a machine" (all but the title track). everything that friends gave me by the decemberists - they are wretched, as this list of top-five-overrated-indie-rock-bands attests to (i agree with almost all choices on this list - i do love spoon, though). lots of "where the hell did this come from?" crap.

lessons learned/random:

i need to find some more delta spirit. "trashcan" is fun.

we saw the dead trees open for the features and the whigs a few months ago and they were the best band that night. i bought the fort music ep at the show and should get the new stuff - they were really good - guitar-driven but lackadaisical. apparently they are adam green's touring band.

david gray is like a cup of irish breakfast tea the way i like it, with sugar and milk: soothing, sweet, toasty. does that make him sound boring and lame? i mean it as a compliment - he is really one of my go-to musicians to make me feel calm. which is funny, because i played white ladder over and over the spring i broke up with someone, and i played life in slow motion over and over the autumn i fell in love with pos: two very different feelings wrapped into his beautiful voice. "the one i love" opened my wedding mix that we handed out as a favor - i suppose that sounds retarded, but that song does mean a lot to me. random awesomeness: he was in the venus in furs from velvet goldmine.

pos really digs the dirty projectors. i'm kinda "meh" about them. "stillness is the move" is a cool song but i don't know - i can't really get into them. also, pos is really into deerhoof - we saw them a few months ago - but i am lukewarm at best.

let me tell you about how i found myself kissing daniel johnston. (ps: i don't think many women can say this about themselves. and that is not bragging). it was not long after pos and i had just watched the documentary about his life and music, and we were in austin for sxsw in march 2007. we stayed at a se rious dump that was nowhere near downtown or anything not-shitty (hello bikinis sports bar and grill, your brunch was unsurprisingly nasty). daniel johnston has a rather memorable voice, and he is hard to miss, physically. we were coming upstairs for the night and passed him hanging out on the motel balcony/hallway outside his room, smoking and chugging a 2 liter of mountain dew, and we went to go say hi. i introduced myself and shook his hand, but he kept calling me marjorie and said "looking good!" we asked for a photo, and he was with a bunch of guys who couldn't have been older than 22 (his new band, i believe). one of them said "only if you kiss him," and that seemed reasonable (unshaven cheek, not mouth - please). pos didn't seem to mind - he was in the photo but i cropped him out because we are not really interested in having our names and photos all over the internet, and BOTH of the people who read this blog ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED. after the photo and kiss, he got really shy and awkward - the whole thing was pretty awkward. i don't have a lot of his music, but he is an interesting guy.

concerted effort: c

2010-01-19T23:36:00.000-06:00

seriously, if it takes me a month for each letter, we're looking at this project lasting over two years.

bands:
from C-Mone to Cyndi Lauper

number of songs by the C artists:
at start: 637
at end: 497 (i am getting better at deleting the shit i don't want or need)

dates:
12/15/09 - 1/17/10

highlights/surprises:
band with the most tracks: coldplay (96)

candie payne - fun 50s-girl-group-inspired dance pop, less gimmicky-seeming than the pipettes.

"take it to fantastic" - cannonball jane. catchy. kinda strange.

i have a few tracks from the album "On Cutting Ti-Gers in Half and Understanding Narravation" by candy bars. terrible name for a record, good songs.

i have two somgs by cameron mcgill that make me want to look for more stuff by him. well done, sir!

i love carl carlton's "everlasting love." so freaking cute and great, i will forgive his momma for naming him carl when his last name is carlton.

carla bruni: france's first lady. former model. former love interest of many famous musicians. i don't understand a word of her songs, but they're beautiful.

um, it's pretty awkward that chris garnea is a dude. when "not nice," the only song from him that i own, came up on, i was like "oh, what a nice rachael yamagata song!"

not deleting courtney love's solo album "america's sweetheart" was an act of charity. it is breathtaking in how out of touch with normalcy/reality/tunefulness it is.

deleted:
most of the carpenter's "singles: 1969-1981." missing from that compilation is "bless the beasts and the children," the theme song to the most terrifying middle-school-curriculum young adult novel and movie that we read and saw in the 7th grade and fucking scarred me. correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't the story's climax involve a bunch of loser kids being shot while on a bus?

cinderella's "don't know what you got" from a shitty power ballads compilation i bought at target a buncha years ago just for the song "sister christian." hmmm. yes, delete. don't judge me for the pause.

most of collective soul's greatest hits. yeah, i said "most of." yeah, i know.

lessons learned/randoms:

the clash are fucking awesome. this is a lesson i knew but sort of forgot. "hateful" is a favorite.

i have a cover of cold war kids doing fiona apple's "fast as you can" live and it is worth finding. actually, here ya go.

"when water comes to life" by cloud cult. yes.

i liked the clientele when i first heard them, but now, meh. i deleted everything except for "k" and "since k got over me" and that's pretty much just because my name starts with k. too lame to admit?

cocorosie - good for two tracks just to keep shit weird. three is too many.

i've been listening to pandora at work and like a lot of what i hear but the only album i have purchased as a direct result is charlotte martin's "on your shore." it's pretty - sort of tori-esque piano-driven rock and ballads without the aggressive weirdness. pos was impressed that i found her, as he really likes failure, her husband's band. also, she was in the miss usa pageant in the 90s.

wow, i forgot how annoying counting crows is. delete.

dragging my ass to work on a misty january morning listening to the cure felt very appropriate.

conversation i just had while playing "i drove all night":
pos: wow, you've got quite the selection going tonight.
me: i'm finishing up the C's!
pos: what the hell is this?
me: cyndi lauper!
pos: you just said that like i was supposed to know.
(time lapse: 3 minutes)
pos: this song is horrible. she should have drove home.

next: d. maybe i will be done in a record-breaking 29 days.

animals! i like them!

2010-01-11T22:38:00.003-06:00

i start interviewing for an open position in my division this week. i have over 60 resumes for a job that only requires 3 year's project management experience and the pay is in the 40s, and almost everyone is so over-qualified it makes me wanna cry for them. there are applicants who are certified in things i don't even know what they're talking about, a guy who used to do i.t. for wal-mart's headquarters ($84 an hour), people older than my dad . . . oh, yeah, and pos' ex-girlfriend (um, seriously? are you being a stalker or are you for real?). interviewing people is really nerve-wracking - like, are you really as good as you seem? are you secretly an asshole and i will only discover this slowly but surely, when it's way too late? are you going to end up being a sociopath? if this dude came in for an interview, i would hire him. if only it were that simple.

i still think that working for me would be better than this job. well, maybe.

ready, set, calm yourself with this adorable collection of photos of a fawn and a bunny.

all animals, all the time (sorry, really) tonight: these photos of animals in utero are gorgeous creepy.

i swear that i'm not sitting at home in a sweatsuit and laughing at cathy comics and gluing magazine cutouts of baby animals into my special happy-thoughts notebook.

i really really love florence + the machine right now. lungs is an awesome album. just downloaded a not-shitty cover of "addicted to love." i put "falling" on my 2010 new years mix that no one except for friends i see on a regular basis has yet received because the fucking automatic machine at the post office is a LIAR and apparently, even though it only charged me $1.05 per padded envelope i was sending out, it was supposed to have charged me $1.59, and i have a stack of returned envelopes sitting in a bag in my kitchen that i am angry at. so, if you're waiting for yours, you'll get it - when i am not too pissy to address the situation.

okay, one more animal link - this lab rat (about 1:40 in, but watch the whole thing) chose cocaine over food and water and self-injected itself until it died. if only it had been able to join others in a fellowship that featured the jesus factor.

sometimes old tried-and-true tricks don't work (click to make larger and be sure to read the professor's note). bonus points for this kid.

a new nomination for the worst album cover of all time here.

sensitive supermarket advertising ploy here.

so, like, where do i sign up? i just hope that he looks like this. speaking of dudes who look like that, pos and i went out to dinner and to see avatar in 3d on friday (it was, of course, spectacular and retarded at the same time) and our waiter was this really over-talkative and sweaty d&d kid who was like "and how are you on this fine second weekend of the new year? can i get you a drink, madam? sir? ahhh, yes, excellent choices, excellent. i'm going to go get those for you and then swing back around to tell you about our scrumptious specials." he seriously said, when he came back, "just so you know, i'm not merely your waiter tonight but a wizard who will conjure up whatever it is that you choose from the menu." pos and i stared at each other in a silent competition to see who would lose composure first.

this probably isn't real. but oh do i hope it is. click to enlarge.

accidentally inappropriate: my favorite. here are some games and puzzles that should have been double-checked.

i am currently wading though the C bands in my itunes for possible deletion and overall need to vary what it is that i listen to. this morning, on the train, i was listening to my three coolio songs and i was thinking 1) remember when this was considered good? 2) maybe this was never good and 3) i hope no one can hear this coming out of my earphones. if it had been mc trebek, maybe i would have shaken my ass a little.

i'm really looking forward to having kids.

another excellent "people asking the stupidest questions fathomable on yahoo answers" link.

okay, fuck it, i lied - two more animal links - a news item and a really great photography collection posted by the guy who made the amazing american psycho homage/talking heads cover video (it's a must-see).

husband home soon. must meet him at the door with a bourbon, his slippers and folded newspaper.

10 items or less

2010-01-06T22:36:00.004-06:00

i said i would blog more, so dammit, i will.

my friend cl has a new blog about cooking, gardening, and cooking things that she gardened. it is called my way around the kitchen and can be found here.

hmmm, which one for iced tea? oh, yes, of course. (insert dubm joke about how there should be a selection of hot cocoa for his wife. although, i don't really think she's hot, just . . . difficult to understand, hard to look at, and hard to look away from).

i like the screenshots i've seen of bad questions asked on yahoo questions, and the amazing responses that they receive. such as this.

ahh, college roommates. my freshman year roommate was literally insane and even though we only lived together for three months, she scarred me. i kept a page from one of her sociology papers that she wrote before being expelled and it is seriously so goddamn deranged that i bust it out every now and then - hj staged a dramatic reading of it at the last bookclub meeting (the plague - only got to page 75, even though it was my suggestion. sorry fellow bookclubbers) and it was met by peals of laughter and howls of derision. to be transcripted here someday soon. anyway, yeah, i bet these guys became lifelong friends.

why the face, wisconsin? i love you because i am from you and i hate you because you're you.

why i love graffiti: because, deep down, we are all 12-year-old boys.

i know that this was first posted in june, but it is timeless and so bizarrely soothing to me. i want the mp3 (link expired on this site). [time lapse: 4 minutes]. aaaaand, done. thanks, hypemachine!

name fail here. name win here.

husband is home. gonna go. not terrible for the first post of linx in foreverever.

i am literate: booksh i read in 2009

2010-01-02T22:06:00.003-06:00

i need to stop reading books that i hate reading, know that they suck, and resent taking up time that could be spent reading things i actually like. here are the books i read, ranked in order of lovelovelove to utterly terrible.

the handmaid's tale - margaret atwood (how is it possible that i had never read this before?!?!)
life of pi - yann martel
a mercy - toni morrison
the best american nonrequired reading 2008
the lovely bones - alice sebold
so big - edna ferber
never let me go - kazuo ishiguro
the time traveler's wife - audrey niffenegger
fat pig: a play - neil labute
freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything - steven d. levitt
housekeeping vs. the dirt - nick hornby
ripped: how the wired generation revolutionized music - greg kot
how sassy changed my life: a love letter to the greatest teen magazine of all time - kara jesella
the contortionist's handbook - craig clevenger
the brief wondrous life of oscar wao - junot diaz
at weddings and wakes - alice mcdermott
the kite runner - khaled hosseini
the professor and the madman: a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the oxford english dictionary - simon winchester
lowboy - john wray
cherry - mary karr
something borrowed - emily giffin
american wife - curtis sittenfeld
julie and julia: my year of cooking dangerously - julie powell (i fucking hated this book)

"i am the sun, i am the new year, i'm the way home" - the breeders, "new year"

2010-01-02T13:07:00.005-06:00

i was able to get some drinks with cl and ea at 42 n. latitude when they were in town from eugene for the holidays and it was much too short of a visit. ea told me that he has a friend who i have never even met who reads this blog and misses my regular posting. since it's a new year and all, and i have to come to terms with the fact that the days at the office will likely never again return to me lazily reading the interwebs and posting when i feel like it, i want to make a bit more effort to post.

speaking with ea, cl, our mutual college friend (and fellow chicagoan who i only run into at mike doughty shows) sr, and their collection of friends at latitude, i made a little list in the notebook i carry around. it is:

www.qwantz.com
Master + Margarita
blog more
Lava Lamp = cold vodka in pilsner with jello shots inside

thank you for your recommendations, friends, and i hope to see you more often.

anyway, i haven't been reading the news or keeping up with emails during my little holiday break. i have been shredding old papers, organizing closets, cooking (i baked snickerdoodles for pos this morning - ag and i had a joke about how the way to seduce teddy kennedy would be with gin and snickerdoodles. i got his memoir at myopic books and it is on the short-list of books i want to read soon, meaning i'll probably get to it by 2015), hanging out with family and friends. saw crazy heart last night - who knew that colin ferrell could reasonably pass for an american country star? i liked the movie a lot - it felt really authentic and was bittersweet funny.

but this is a news story (jan 1 is the deadliest day of the year for people getting run over) i just read, and i agree - driving pos, eb and sf to brunch around noon yesterday, some assface got off of a clark street bus and started crossing the street. i didn't see him around the bus and was tooling along at a normal 30 mph and came within a few feet of hitting him (cue slamming on the brakes, swerving, honking, my heart thumping itself out of my chest, his lame sneer at me with the bravado only a certain subspecies of young idiots seem to have). jesus, chicago pedestrians - you need to fucking stop wandering and darting out into the street when there is oncoming traffic, particularly when it is my car that you are tempting to run you over. i don't need to add "vehicular manslaughter" to my list of 2010 goals.

concerted effort: b

2009-12-13T22:06:00.004-06:00

whew, that took longer than i thought it would. at the rate i'm going, i ought to be done by 2014.

bands:
from b-rich to buzzcocks. b-rich is the immortal artist who recorded "whoa now!" - a really bad rap track that samples the jefferson's theme song (and that's pretty much why i didn't delete it)

number of songs by the B artists:
before going through - 1,314
after going through - 1,031

dates:
10/13/09-12/13/09

highlights/surprises:

when i started, 152 tracks were by the beatles; i deleted em down to 127, thanks to the repeats we had after we burned a friend's remastered magical mystery tour and past masters. i can barely barely barely tell the difference between the new reissues and the old ones; essentially, they are no better, they are still the same songs i used to listen to on a memorex tape that i copied off of my brother's cds in 1991. i suppose for the obsessed beatles fan, remastered in stereo is something worth getting excited about, but whatever. as onion columnist jackie harvey said, "I know I should buy a CD by Lady Gaga because she is very popular, but I'm still not sure she has the staying power of the Human League. Besides, I'm saving up for the new Beatles box set CDs. I've heard that I haven't heard the Beatles until I've paid for all their music one more time!"

other than the beatles, the most tracks were: 110 belle & sebastian, 76 ben folds and 70 beck. i have only seen one of those bands before, and audience members were doing the air violin.

there are a lot of bands that start with "black" - crowes, grape, hollies, keys, kids, lips, moth super rainbow, rebel motorcycle club, and star

i really liked what i heard by beautiful small machines and beauty pill. should look into more stuff by the brunettes. baby teeth is super hit-or-miss - the song "all that i can do" is amazing, but the other stuff i had mostly got deleted. i liked making myself listen to bright eyes, bob dylan, and bjork, as they are albums that i have owned for years and never listen to. i love blur and the breeders very much.

i decided that buzzcock's "everybody's happy nowadays" belongs on my 2010 new years cd.

even though they are no where near "good," i decided to keep all of my babes in toyland, bikini kill and bratmobile tracks. i miss those days.

the bee gees make me want to rollerskate.

i came really close to deleting most of big wreck's second album (it's not-a-so good), but the first one is so very much the summer of 1998 for me that i didn't.

blind melon's debut album = not as bad as you assume.

shit that needed to go:

two albums by the books. sorry, i don't get it.

a lot of unneeded (like 40 tracks) of ben folds/ben folds five/ben folds live. i like him . . . except for when i don't.

be your own pet, except for "the kelly affair," as it is written from the perspective of a character from the best movie of all time.

"all i want is you" - barry louis polisar from the juno soundtrack. ugh - what sounded so sweet and adorable in the movie is so cloying and twee when you actually try to listen to it out of the context of "honest to blog!" and "homeskillet" dialogue. actually, rewatching juno on cable, i now realize that the whole movie is cloying and twee. along the same lines, i deleted a lot of songs from the band the boy least likely to [stay on my computer] - also twee and cloying/annoying. with titles like "hugging my grudge" (which starts out with a harmonica intro), vomit. i did keep the boy least likely to's song "rock upon a porch with me" because it is kinda cute. that is all that is needed, thanks.

babyshambles, pete doherty's new band. sorry, i cannot think of one solitary moment when i would ever want to listen to this. art brut is right: he is a very bad man.

there was this really odd project i was a part of in high school - some major record label would periodically mail a mix tape to my journalism teacher with a form attached for a student to review the songs, and i was the one who most wanted to do it, so i was exposed to all sorts of new bands right after they had been signed. i would love to see the reviews i sent in, for real. i wanted to be a magazine journalist, preferably at sassy, rolling stone, or spin. i am now glad that i did not. anyway, i distinctly remember that there was a song called "feel me dying" by the blue up?, a band that did nothing and went nowhere, but the female singer was really offbeat and the song was a favorite of mine for a while. a few years ago, in a fit of nostalgia, bought the blue up?'s album spool forka dish on amazon for one cent and it was uniquely terrible. finally deleted it . . . except for "feel me dying," of course. i just wikipedia'd the band, and the lead singer apparently has/had a webcam where she jerks off for the world to watch. klassy.

time for the Cs.

concerted effort: a

2009-10-13T20:53:00.003-05:00

so i was recently a little dismayed to look at the 14,500+ songs in the itunes i share with pos and realize:

1) since we loaded everything to our new laptop in january, we haven't listened to much. well, somehow, we have listened to peaches' song "the inch" 48 times (really? i don't think that was me, even once), and others in our "top 25 played" look like the soundtrack to a day's outing for a group home (ie schizophrenic) - joss stone, joy division, sisters of mercy, mandy moore, dirty projectors, deerhoof, al green, indigo girls covering dylan, jamiroquai, depeche mode, everclear (what year is this?), beastie boys, metric, etc. we have over 14,500 songs and have somehow managed to get a duet between the girl from belle & sebastian and the guy from screaming trees into a most-listened-to list. this is odd. it makes me sad to see so many amazing albums just sitting there, "date added: 1/24/09" and "last played: [blank]." apparently i haven't listened to most of my favorite albums in full since january, if not well before then.

2) i have the habit of acquiring new music without really knowing what it is that i am downloading/buying/borrowing. i love music blogs and troll them weekly for new bands to check out, covers that are sometimes terrible but often amazing, old gems that are new to me. yesterday i found: a new flaming lips song, david gray covering "like a rolling stone" in 1993, new dizzee rascal, old ok go, some stuff i have never heard of but were on a best-new-music list (the postmarks, julian plenti), etc. also, and this is not typical, i bought three albums on itunes yesterday - the new air, zero 7 and david gray. i sometimes collect a bunch of new songs (and i say "collect" because i might be teetering towards "hoarding" although there are not 17-year-old newspapers and cat skeletons involved - thank god digital music is stored magically and invisibly in the pretty glowing clamshell of a laptop and does not require actual space) and never quite get around to listening - really listening - to decide whether i should keep it, delete it, or look for more from that band or musician. so i can easily scroll through the list and wonder "who the hell is jenn grant? or sundayrunners? how did i ever acquire so much badly drawn boy when i do not recall ever listening to him? why didn't i ever delete that james blunt album?"

3) i need to clear some harddrive space, and get more of pos' old cds imported. getting married means that you merge almost everything in your life. so i suppose it's time that our computer stores less tori amos and more slayer.

4) i like projects, especially ones that i can do on my commute (and justify that i play tetris on my ipod instead of doing anything productive).

so i am going to go through all of my songs and listen to them, and delete the crap, and rediscover old stuff i love and forgot about, or face my demons and admit that some of my old favorites are actually really bad and that while i might OWN lou reed's "transformer," it's not like i have ever listened to anything on it other than "walk on the wild side." and why do i have so many smashing pumpkins albums if i hate them?

so, ahem - A

bands:
from A-Trak to Azure Ray

number of songs by the A artists:
before going through - (i didn't know that i would be blogging this so i didn't check)
after going through - 696

dates:
9/14/09-10/13/09

highlights/surprises:
"come crash" by a.c. newman (i like the chorus, which is "christine, come crash on my floor")
"miss you" by adiam dymott
"lightbulbs" by the answering machine
"one crowded hour (live with strings)" by augie marsh
some guy named adrian champion mashed a bunch of rap tracks with white stripes songs. some aren't so hott, but the jay-z vs nas diss tracks back-to-back are fun.
there's a song called "the day before you came" on abba's more gold that is really fucking strange and i like that there is a shout-out to marilyn french.
i listened to nothing but alice in chains for two days - and i quite enjoyed myself. "over now" is my favorite re-discovery.

deleted:
some live tracks by art brut
an action action album
some super-terrible and random antony and the johnsons tracks - i don't think i will ever be in the mood for that
that nonsensical song about jessica simpson by adam green
some dickcheese rock by acceptance
this drowning-cats-sounding track by adrian orange & her band
a few other non-notables

lessons learned:
it really is a shame about amy winehouse
at the drive-in was FUCKING AWESOME (i knew this already, but i forgot just how much)
the avalaches' "since i left you" is really fun (i just wikipedia'd it and it says that the album was "assembled from approximately 3,500 vinyl samples")
do not put your husband's art of noise tracks into the "maybe delete" playlist

on to the Bs . . .

yeah, it must be wednesday night.

2009-09-23T21:19:00.002-05:00

went to the jewel after work to buy bacon and tomatoes so i could make this (it's just okay - tastes kinda like a soggy blt. gonna throw it back in the oven for a while).

older professional man in line in front of me: buying a 12-pack of miller light cans and a box of chocolate chip cookies.

younger professional man in line behind of me: buying a giant can of foster's and a frozen pizza.

i feel ya, dudes.

i google-image-searched "hump day" to add a graphic but i am not going to post any of those.

this made me laugh so hard.

2009-05-06T19:42:00.003-05:00

the top equation is mine. the second was written by pos after he must have noticed the piece of paper discarded by the laptop, and left to remind me that i am dumb.

love him.

this is my 500th post

2009-01-22T16:51:00.013-06:00

(according to blogger. i did not personally count them).

to celebrate, and to avoid actually having to write anything, here is a collection of internet objects d'arte that i have collected and like.

obamapalooza

2008-11-06T11:19:00.011-06:00

pos and i headed down to grant park around 7 or so, taking the el to the loop and walking. have no fear, capitalism is alive and well: there were people selling obama t-shirts, pins, towels, bracelets, glow necklaces, flags, etc, every ten feet. i liked the black shirt with the white american flag printed on it with the words "my president is black." we walked up roosevelt to michigan avenue, where there was a very strong police presence, mostly standing and watching the throngs of people. they had flexi-cuffs on hand in case we started to riot. i liked walking past the johnson publishing company building - they publish jet and ebony - and see their awesome framed obama covers. the mood in general was excited and chill.
we had to access the park through the congress street entrance, near buckingham fountain. there were supposedly two lines, one for ticketholders and one for those without. the crowds of folks just trying to get to congress to cross the bridge into the park was giant and there were people joining the lines so constantly that all i could see were people. we ended up running into my friend jw and his wife so we stood in line with them and slowly inched our way across the bridge. one check-point person looked at pos' ticket and the crowds were held back by police on horses, so it was slow-going. everyone in the crowd was checking online and texting to find out the latest election returns. when we found out that obama had won pennsylvania, everyone started screaming and jumping and cheering. some guy ahead of me was streaming cnn on his phone and held it up for me to watch. as we made our way closer, we found out about ohio, and it was more collective good cheer and excitement. the second check-point was a dude waving me through when i opened my handbag for inspection, and a woman looking at pos' drivers license and ticket. that was it for security. i was sure that there would be metal detectors, wands, pat-downs. i guess 175,000 people was too many to search.
when we were finally able to get into the park itself (mounted police were good at staggering the crowds), a bunch of people broke into mad sprints to get close. at this point, probably 8:00 or so, a fence had been erected to help divide the field and allow for police to walk through. the field was a quagmire of people, fences, distant tents lit up where i assumed media and VIPs were, and a giant screen for us to watch cnn. we lost jw in the initial jockeying for position, but pos and i ended up wandering around and meeting up with other friends. the crowd was courteous, friendly, excited and energetic. it felt like we were at the largest-ever tv-watching event. i liked how the screen would cut to a normal "election night 2008" image when cnn would break for commercials. whenever mccain would win a state like arkansas or whatever, everyone would boo. and the obama numbers kept piling up. it became quite clear, after pennsylvania and ohio and HOLY SHIT, florida too, that obama would be winning. but then he won virginia, and everyone got really excited and hushed and waiting, and right around 10:00 cnn flashed a screen that said "barack obama elected president" and everyone went apeshit, hugging and crying and screaming and jumping and laughing.
we had about an hour to kill before obama came out to speak. we watched mccain's concession speech, which actually riled up a lot of people around me. he was doddering on about how this was such a momentous event for black people, and people were yelling at the screen "it's not about that!!!" i was standing next to an older black man and his white ladyfriend, and when mccain was talking he just kept shaking his head and saying "for everyone. this is for everyone."

we got to dance a lot, as they kept piping in songs to keep us occupied. stevie wonder, some motown, some country (barf). i wish there had been bands and shit. a preacher came out and delivered a nice prayer, a woman came out and sang the national anthem (i think she got some of the words mixed up) and some guy came out and led the pledge of allegiance. i couldn't tell you the last time i did the pledge; high school maybe? and then the next president of the united states, barack hussein obama, came out and spoke, and he is such a beautiful speaker, one who inspires millions of people to feel like someone out there does care that you are alive and struggle and have to make choices and are fed up with the past eight years of insults and bullshit, and you want someone who you can look at and be happy with the idea that "you speak for me - you represent me - and i am proud of you and proud of america."obama's speech is here, in case you ever want to go back and read it.

and we clapped and shouted and cried and i said to pos (kidding) "now we can have a baby" and it was amazing to feel like you were a part of something historical, beautiful and healing.

oh, and pos spotted bill ayers on the way out. i looked him up online later and that was indeed him. he was in the field with all of the other excited chicagoans. no special VIP access for him.

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

election night (at long last)

2008-11-04T11:58:00.009-06:00

music for kids who can't read good has a nice election day mix of mp3s for you, as well as one of the best gif animations i have ever seen. adorbs!

pos got tickets for us to attend the grant park obamafest tonight. we were a little concerned about the huge amounts of people and the possibility of it being a clusterfuck of crazy, but we decided that we want to be a part of this monumental historical evening, and we will have further proof for our kids that we were once awesome.

kos!!!!!!!!!! kb no more.

2008-10-20T22:08:00.007-05:00

got married. perfect day.

here is our wedding favor mix cd track listing:

Love Songs We Love
October 11, 2008

The One I Love – David Gray
These Arms of Mine – Otis Redding
Maybe I’m Amazed – Jem
Sunshower – Chris Cornell
La La Love You – The Pixies
What is the Light? – The Flaming Lips
Satellite of Love – Lou Reed
At Last – Etta James
Brighter Than Sunshine – Aqualung
All You Ever Wanted – The Black Keys
The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
I’ll Be Your Man – The Black Keys
I Never – Rilo Kiley
Marry Song – Band of Horses
By My Side – INXS
Just Like Heaven – The Cure
Sick of Myself – Matthew Sweet
Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve
This Will Be Our Year – The Zombies
All I Want is You – U2

just super

2008-09-24T13:55:00.001-05:00

the pumpkin president (?)

2008-09-24T13:47:00.002-05:00

i love mark ryden's work - it's beautiful and creepy and full of murderous stuffed animals and meat. i just don't really get this one, which is a limited edition to support obama.

(check out other paintings here. "california brown bear" and "the magic circus" are two favorites. he has a lot of abe lincoln stuff, ag, so brace yourself.)

i was never a true believer, but i like the sentiment.

2008-09-23T21:53:00.002-05:00

can you tell who my man is this november?

2008-09-23T21:51:00.001-05:00

i approve of this message.

2008-09-22T20:56:00.002-05:00

*special thanks to RM - sorry for the failed shout-out - i posted fast in a rare free moment.

no thanks to ECF. bossy!

too busy to even say hi. so here is another one.

2008-09-15T16:18:00.002-05:00

a collection

2008-07-29T14:30:00.005-05:00

not really a review

2008-07-25T16:45:00.003-05:00

saw the batman movie (btw, i don't know anyone who refers to it as the dark knight - everyone just refers to it as batman) at the imax theater on wednesday. i like the imax theater for the visuals and sound effects, obviously, but also because there is assigned seating (and no seat is a bad one). the show was sold out but there were two very long, open rows in front of us. about three minutes before the lights dimmed, a long line of mentally retarded people filed in, all wearing bright orange chicago park district t-shirts. my immediate reaction was "fuck, man, are they gonna be able to be quiet for two and a half hours?" i felt genuinely bad for assuming that they were incapable of watching a movie, but some of them were pretty disabled. and you know what? they were way quieter and more interested than the douche behind me whose phone rang about halfway through, or the (figurative) tards who talked through the previews. so, yay for the retarded field trippers! i know that when pos and i decide to have a child, it will be retarded for sure. it's called karma, and we deserve it.

i think that this guy wrote an "i'm perplexed at why everyone liked it so much" review of batman just so that other media would pick up on it.

got this little clip from popbitch:

   During the filming of The Dark Knight
  Heath Ledger kept a notebook to help him get
  in character, detailing all the things that
  he felt the Joker would find funny.

  The first entry:  AIDS.

i liked the movie. it was a little long, but thoroughly enjoyable. heath ledger was the best part (tears). it was also very chicago, and i got to geek out by recognizing streets, buildings, and locations. like, I TOTALLY walk across that bridge EVERY DAY when i go home!!!!

good advice

2008-07-25T16:44:00.002-05:00

snapped this photo with my phone outside my office this afternoon.

"you can be my alphabet and i will be your calculator" - sia

2008-07-24T17:21:00.000-05:00

i like this page. WTF?

interesting wedding traditions from around the world that pos and i ought to incorporate into our upcoming nuptials found here. i hope i get tar dumped on me and kidnapped - you know, to make the day special. we've already agreed to not do that retarded "let me delicately feed you a piece of cake and HAHAHAHAH i just smashed it all over your face!!!" ritual that i have seen a few too many times. also not making the list: him going searching for the garter belt up my dress (with his teeth, as i had to watch many an uncle and cousin do at their weddings and have scarred my retinas) and then flinging it at a bunch of single dudes. some traditions are meant to die. btw: my old boss the verns made me a garter belt. it is very pretty and a very inappropriate gift. i am inviting her and her husband to the wedding. i hope she gets shitfaced and dances sexy.

a helpful, handy chart for pos to rate how good i am at the wifely duties (circa 1939) found here. i get demerits for red nail polish (harlot!) but points for letting him sleep in on sundays.

but . . . but . . . i didn't think star wars nerds went outside . . .

pretty cool: someone placed a bunch of album covers together so you can see the real, full picture. tom jones on the inxs skateboard is my favorite. this is in a similar vein but better: show what the famous album cover cut out. there appear to be 31 pages of them.

rad duck hunt lamp (and how to make your own) here.

this website is okay - you upload a photo and then it makes it look like you cut it out of the newspaper in the 70s. here is me and a handsome devil at lollapalooza last year using the special old-timey program. where did the rest of my eyebrows go? lolla is coming up again - next weekend, acutally. got my man jms coming in from brooklyn, excited for radiohead and nin and a buncha other stuff.

a collection of diabolical monsters in spanish. number one is fucking awesome - some sort of fanged muppet with a horn that is supposed to be a scary unicorn but is really just funny. my spanish sucks - is that supposed to be "cat unicorn"?

i like lists, and i like schadenfreude. here is filmthreat's list of the 50 coldest people in hollywood - as in, stalled careers, unliked, etc. great quote: "The easiest way to keep a movie theater empty is by flashing 'Starring Jennifer Lopez' on the screen."

this list of things you should never buy is freaking me out. am i doomed because i use hair conditioner and saran wrap? fuck man, what doesn't kill you?

i'm a huge fan of the fail blog. this one is classic: family planning fail.

whew. twice this week! maybe i am back to blogging. i just needed a little rest is all.

hi.

2008-07-23T11:20:00.000-05:00

yeah, i was gone for a while. i mean, not really, just from this.

from best week ever: a collection of the 50 punniest business names. i dig the bike shop called "cycloanalists" and "a salt and battery" fish and chips place.

jerk-off material for democrats: it's obamaporn (sfw).

finally, they're all in one place: the best (worst) local newscasters moments are here.

jk sent me this list (with videos) of 15 celebrities who put out albums (and shouldn't have). sometimes i think back to shit i did or said when i was like 15 and i cringe, so i can only imagine what haunts joey lawrence when he can't sleep. also: corky had a band (#9).

jk also sent this website, which is the self-proclaimed best page in the universe, and i appreciate the rants. a good one is "fashion tips for women from a guy who knows dick about fashion."

this taxidermy museum (in the basement of a funeral parlor) is fo-sho on the must-do list for the next time i am in wisco and have time to drive the 45 mins up to madison. pos and i actually made a (free, low-tech) website for our wedding so that people can know where they're going and all that, and i didn't bother with the "area attractions" page because, really, this is it: a fucking fiberglass cow statue. cool, right?

if this video of what comes out of your cell phone when it is microwaved for one minute (satan himself, so it appears) is for real, i'm real scared.

cl sent me this factual and funny blog: things younger than mccain. which would include the six pack, frozen waffles, zip codes, duct tape . . .

i love awesome-mugshot roundups, and i love the commentary about these particularly alarming-looking (alleged) criminals.

wow, i really haven't posted in a long time. before the bill o'reilly "do it live" clip was in my life. and oh, is it. pos, for a few weeks, could not stop imitating the freak-out (which he does quite well). i am worried that when the priest asks him if he takes me to be his (l)awfully wedded wife, he will say "i do. I DO IT LIVE." excellent electroclash dance track "tribute to an american hero" video found here (from death from below). nsfw (hitler youth, animal kingdom sex and bill on repeat saying "fuck it fuck it"). tis magical.

okay, i am going to sped out for a second and post a page on the cutest fucking animal i have ever seen. ag, please buy me an "i heart quittens" t-shirt for my birthday (airbrushed, if possible). also, it's in like dutch or something, so i feel cultured and not pathetic to be pointing out a page of kitten photos.

this seriously made me laugh: darth vader plays the blues.

ag's gots a poem published in vol 7 of stickman review: read here. and ds got some of his poems published in ditch: read here.

since i'm no longer in my 20s, and since i have lived with pos, i have tried to cook more, try new recipes and ingredients, not be afraid of mistakes, practice how to chop and boil and broil and bake. i need look no further for inspiration. behold: the black metal cooking blog. calling your recipe "frostbitten molasses cookies entombed with ginger" is just genius.

remind me to call the caterer to make sure that there will be flaming cocktails, because i want to light my wedding dress on fire (it's not like i'll ever be wearing it again). also, i want the scorpions to be playing during the reception. also, i hope a dude in jeans and a tshirt whips it off so he can beat me, flames engulfing the many layers of fabric. best reception evah!

a thing of beauty: a tattoo of patrick swayze as a centaur.

cracked did a photoshop contest to reveal the truth about tattoos and most of them are pretty good.

mj just sent me this today: it's one of those tattoo slideshows, but this one is different. like, really low-rent and sad. it's a baltimore news station's contest for . . . well, i guess the best one. be sure to read the captions. the irish springer spaniel made me laugh. as did the wolf with the rose in its teeth. that pretty much sums up bad tattoos right there.

if you have a few minutes (seven, actually), watch this segment from THIS AMERICAN LIFE about the wiener circle, a popular late-night hotdog stand in chicago (whatever you do, leave cheese off of your fries and burger. their cheese is more like orange wallpaper glue). it is (in)famous for the fact that white drunk yuppies queue up to be screamed at by the black counter people, and insults and barbs ensue. i have never gone there for food at night because i don't want to get involved in that kind of scene, but i used to live nearby and would walk past it on my way home from the bar and heard some eyebrow-raising shit being screamed. the comments on this page about the video are interesting.

this is pretty much the best thing i have ever read on the internet: the travel diary of a maasai tribesman who went to london to run the marathon. best part: "I miss meat and blood very much. Not vegetables because they are food for a woman. There is milk here but blood is better because it gives energy. English tea with sugar is good and we tried Coco Pops, but the nicest food is croissants."

will try harder and post more often, empty promises, etc.

2008-05-08T15:25:00.004-05:00

i guess i have been too busy/distracted to bother blogging. sometimes i lose interest. i would tell you what i have been busy with, but it's not terribly interesting.
sp told me the best joke. it is:

q: how many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

a: well, the number is pretty obscure, so i'm sure you've never heard of it.

hahahahahha. she also sent me this list of what it means to actually be a hipster.

two of my fave gays sent me this article because they remembered that i am from the same shameful little town of hatred - AND they get to see it first-hand in october. poor dears.

i don't really have the time (today, at work) to watch these, but i hear that my boss is out tomorrow . . . it's the 50 best parody commercials. i have to say, the commercials have always consistently been the best thing about snl, and they are constantly referred to. the other night i had some sea bass and when i took a bite i commented to ag and pos "wow, that's terrific bass!" just like the super bass-o-matic 76 commercial. db and i say "someone's been wearing bad idea jeans" if we are disapproving of certain life choices. i say "colon blow" more often than you would think. taco town, and discussing the taco town meal (served in a commemorative tote bag with salsa) still makes me laugh. happy fun ball is rad. the best-ever is liberty robot insurance, for when the metal ones come, for sure. there's a ton on the list that i have never seen before, so i'm excited.

more creepy russian playgrounds can be viewed here.

ida mae russell sills' obit was written by her son and is touching, but odd (how's this for a zinger?: "Ida's marriage to Karl was a three ring circus, engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering.")

i really don't want to talk too much about my upcoming wedding because, believe me, if the most interesting thing i have to talk about is that i am getting married, then i am a failure, BUT - i really need for someone to get this lovely decanter for us as a gift.

i really like this site - people submit photos of them as a child, and then one of them now in a similar pose.

i sincerely hope that these blog-related tattoos are fakes. jesus, people. oh, and don't forget this douche, too.

this made me very happy: someone wrote responses to a postsecret sunday collection. it's what most logical people would want to ask the very-nice-people-i'm-sure-just-what-the-fuck-is-WRONG-with-them artists.

okay, that's enough for now, right?

Logan Likes Mary Anne! (February 1988) - Logan and Mary Anne like each other.

2008-04-09T17:21:00.007-05:00

i got this link off of jacquoff: apparently, eating butterfish does the same thing to your ass as alli.

funny: cracked did a photoshop-the-worst-cereal-you-can-think-of contest.

cannot. escape. the. judging. it's sidewalk psychiatry!

mad magazine wasn't just for dopey kids - it's awesome that the nyt compiled this interactive fold-over collection that shows just how political and smart mad was.

i have watched this a few times this week already - file this link away as an all-time-best example of the randomness that is the internet. it's an excellent edited collage of dangerous and stupid (and some rather painful) things that have happened to reporters while on the air. grape-squashing lady is included, of course.

public service announcements don't have to be terrifying - they can be funny and charming, like this brit tv spot on watching out for bikers on the road.

pharmacy bar (favorite in world) turned 10 and i wasn't there to celebrate. tears. i'm headed back to town for work soon, so i can bask in its gorgeous glory soon enough.

i have talented friends, part one: ds got a poem published in autumn sky poetry and right hand pointing. ds, shouldn't that be called rooker hand pointing?

haha inside jokes are the best hahahhaa.

i have talented friends, part two: cd and zp have started a food blog, the bitten word, that features recipes and their experiences with them from the many cooking magazines that they subscribe to. i made the roasted asparagus last weekend and it was delish. i am really tempted to make the chocolate stout cake and secret-eat the entire thing by myself, cuz it looks too good to share.

kool: leaving a disposable camera on the sidewalk (tied to a bench with string) and asking strangers to take photos.

more beautiful randomness: a blog dedicated to listing the really bad outfits that claudia kishi wore. you know, claudia. from the babysitters club. her use of feathers and geometric shapes in primary colors was very influential to 1988 elementary school fashionistas.

best cross-promotional marketing campaign ever

2008-04-07T21:25:00.000-05:00

i was at the jewel on sunday, buying all the fixins for lasagna, and with the receipt came some automatically-generated coupons.

one was for alli, the fat-blocking drug that advises on its website "You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work."

the other was for cottonelle fresh flushable moist wipes. aka baby wipes for adults. aka perfect for wiping up alli's gift of anal leakage.

i guess the computer saw all of the cheese i was buying and decided that i was a good candidate for both products.

new stuff

2008-04-02T21:36:00.003-05:00

should try to blog more often, etc.

things i like linking to:

tattoos. here is a collection of knuckle tattoos and here is taking tattooing/body modification to a whole new retardo level (tattoo the whites of your eyes)

classiness. like this airbrushed truck (slightly nsfw, if topless ladies are a no-go)

the things that people do to occupy the little precious time that they have on earth. like collect and post bookmarks online. or take photos of your pre-packaged meal and post a comparison next to its advertised image, like this german project, or make a blue velvet-inspired cake, or carve their food to be cartoonish and kool.

surreally retarded websites. like this one, and this one. i think the same person made them. and then there's the "obama will" website, which i don't really get, nor do i think it's all that funny.

movies re-made for the cyberwebs, just to make us laugh. like jewno, and fight club as told by squirrel puppets.

speaking of squirrels: i fucking love them. i would totally adopt a de-clawed squirrel and let him hop around my living room. while they are dressed in seasonal costumes, of course.

a fun read: radiohead for dummies (part one).

because size six is disgusting: sweet valley high gets re-made for generation spoiledasstanorexicimplantskank.

depressing-as-shit: russian playgrounds.

how really smart people kill themselves: build a robot and make him do it.

it's gorgeous and historical and not just full of politician's hookers: i heart the mayflower hotel. i got to nap there once.

brilliant: pulp's "common people" illustrated through an archie comic.

please note that MY gangland memoir was not a hoax.

2008-03-17T22:07:00.000-05:00

i've been busy. other than the usual distractions from blogging (job, nightlife, sleeping) i have also been spazzing about planning a wedding. we set a date (oct 11), got a church (full-on catholic mass), found a venue (a 20-acre garden with a nice reception hall in the town i grew up), hired a string quartet (my requirement was, i shit you not, that they learn to play the verve's "bittersweet symphony" for when my dad walks me down the aisle), and we're meeting with a dj tomorrow. the dj is going to have to be imported up from chicago; this sample party planner is the typical wisconsin dj's idea of how to do his job. do i want him to play the hokey pokey and "wind beneath my wings"? well, thanks for asking first, i guess. all of the father/daughter dance songs are really creepy - "i loved her first"? "daddy's hands"? "butterfly kisses"? vomitocity: 11.

people always be sendin me some links and shit, yo.

from jk: dr steve brule is a wine expert, and a drunk.

from tk: the assimilated negro interviews the brilliant snark behind stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. i am happy that he seems like a thoughtful person, not like some bloggers, who, while funny, seem a bit lacking in the anger-management-skills and sell a lot of ad space: "this site pokes fun at ME. that's why I use pictures of myself. those aren't taken out of irony. this is the shit that I do. I need to call myself out for all of the stupid shit that I take for granted. why do I need $300 bike rims? why is a $10 sandwich considered normal?"

useless: an online quiz to find out what punctuation mark you are. when i first took it i was a , but now i am a ?. how :

i was never a fan of the coreys back in the day - i was a river phoenix fan, because he seemed so much more intelligent and talented. the giant cruel irony is that he's the one that died of a drug overdose, of course. have you seen the pathetic ad that "the haimster" (more like hamster - that dude is a fug rodent midget) took out in variety that is begging for work? he has totally busted meth face, and he couldn't even put down the cigarette for a photo shoot? he looks dressed to rock out to creed circa 1998. in response, tb sent me this video, one of his favorites, which features corey a good 15 years ago, totally slow on downers, where he explains that he has put his partying days behind him and he's in good shape and on the ball. is it common practice in LA for has-beens to produce ads that remind people that they're not dead (yet)? d.e.p.r.e.s.s.i.n.g.

jk sent me this "spot on" (to swipe a goode olde english term from the jolly good chaps - can you tell that i've never actually been to the uk?) celebration of jeff from coupling. what i like about that show is that it was a miserable fucking failure (FOUR episodes aired) on nbc, which used the exact same scripts as the totally awesome and celebrated bbc version of the show. it is the purest proof that americans "don't get" british humour. i really really hope that when little britain usa airs, it's just as funny as the original.

it really has gone too far: thanks to my ~~boyfriend~~ FIANCE pos for the depiction of the last supper featuring star wars characters. happy easter and may the force . . . etc.

it's shit like this that makes me love the internet: garfield minus the cat equals the depiction of one very alone man.

and it's shit like this that makes me love humanity: minnesota smokers found a loophole in the smoking ban where smoking in a performance is allowed. so if you want to light up at the bar, just wear a costume, or speak in an accent, or recite something. i'm pro-smoking ban but LOVE this.

they might be losers, but they're smart: failed presidential candidates discuss what's not being talked about enough.

good news for all of the jermajesty jacksons and pilot inspektors of the world: your name won't fuck you up (too much). your parents, on the other hand . . .

an awesome time-killer: word to your website.

a flashback to my last apartment building: an article on hoarders. delta burke had 27 climate-controlled storage units full of porcelain dolls? horrorshow! and a little hard to believe - i mean, do designing women reruns really pay that well?

strange and enjoyable: food fight video.

fantastic news: the metro, one of the best venues in chicago to see bands, is ditching ticket master. it's about time that monopoly got busted up - i am sick of paying almost $50 to see a band whose list ticket price was $27.50.

i probably would have rather seen the real "internet people" edited together for the song, but this is a strangely nostalgic animated video about all of the fools that we have forwarded to our friends over the past few years. btw, i still don't understand "it's peanut butter jelly time," and i'm still waiting to think it's funny. a clip of a morbidly obese child dancing to it only slightly improves its watchability. thanks for the link, sf - see you in hell.

pos is my han solo.

2008-02-28T21:53:00.001-06:00

well, i'm obviously giddily retardedly happy about being engaged to the man i love - thank you for all of your nice comments and wishes for us. i don't want to plan the wedding - i just want to be engaged for a little bit before i have to stress out about chicken entrees and flowers and how i'm going to do my hair and all of the picky little details that some women might relish but what i run away from. all i know is that i want richard ashcroft to play during the ceremony (like, him, not my ipod playing richard ashcroft) and i want a unicorn to whisk us away at the end of the night. our friends can tie beer cans with string to his tail and write "just married" in shaving cream on its back if they want.

when i called people to tell them the news, ecf was like "huh, i thought you were already engaged" (thanks for paying attention, friend) and was like "hahah, i'm looking at the new york times online and there's an article about wearing slutty wedding dresses!" thanks for the link, and thank you oh so much for surfing the cyberweb when i call you to tell you about the thus-far-happiest-moment of my life. TFA!!!!

here is some randomness for ya:

two food photo blogs - this one is a comparative analysis of fast food sandwiches, with photos from the ad and what it looks like in reality. super funny and gross. the other is from ab, a collection of reader-submitted photos and reviews of meals they get on airplanes. so simple and so weirdly fascinating. even

uzbekistan

airways serves food, which is more than I can say for

america

’s shitty bankrupt airlines. i wonder if japanese airlines offer pepsi ice cucumber.

those canadians really like their graphic and disturbing PSAs on workplace safety. here’s a new one, compliments of jk. americans don’t get all riled up about workplace safety as our friendly northern neighbors, but we love to freak out about meth – jk sent me the gross PSA here and awesome meth mouth warning here.

here’s a PSA of sorts. i love this so much. and i don't know why.

had i known that the bible was filled with such awesomeness, i might have actually read it during my weekly CCD class. thanks for being a steward of my faith, ab.

you want to know what's funny? dorky kids and their ridiculous science fair exhibits. rad rad rads. thanks for the link, rm.

having a hard time deciding if you really are stupid enough to be a republican or pussy enough to be a democrat? take this quiz.

ralph nader is gonna run again, blah blah blah. dude, you're kinda an asshole. i was in dc a few years ago, walking around on a gorgeous april day, like 78 degrees, and i saw a guy with a sour look on his face and wearing what appeared to be an overcoat purchased in 1978, and sure enough, it was him. i think that maybe he should get a girlfriend or become a big brother or something, and leave the rest of us alone.

is life is saudi arabia seriously this boring?

here's one of the best craigslist for-sale ads that i've seen.

vagina purses! but are they made of vagisoft fabric?

random and entertaining: quakers!

pos sent me this collection of star wars figures that look nothing like the character but more like actual people. speaking of which, cracked had this great list of the 10 biggest wastes of talent and number one is the star wars christmas special, which aired in 1978 and is legendary for how fucking stupid it is. someone cut it down into 5 minutes (embedded on the cracked page) and i think it's worth a watch, just to cringe at bea arthur singing along with the cantina band and to see chewbacca's family staring lovingly at harrison ford, whose too good for that shit. oooooooh did i love me some han solo when i was little.

job sent me that congratulatory ecard this week, and various people sent me birthday ecards - surprisingly, all of them were from someecards. well, not surprisingly - they're fucking funny.

i said yes.

2008-02-24T23:28:00.002-06:00

pos asked me to marry him saturday night.

"sometimes i doubt your committment to sparkle motion"

2008-02-20T23:00:00.001-06:00

i started a new blog, blacklisted. it's a collection of rants and complaints about things that seriously bother; so far, they have fallen into the categories of "television," "politics" and "celebutards." please participate - you can email a rant about what you blacklist to blogblacklisted@gmail.com. photos are also welcome. this is in no way meant to replace scissors happy, which i am quite fond of.

i was so freaked out when i heard about the fire at the station nightclub - not that i would ever go see great white, but i have spent many a night in a shitty bar watching a not-that-great band, and being burned alive will never be on my list of things to try. it's five years later and the survivors are still pretty fucked.

everyone agrees, larry craig: you is gay, AND a liar. even your friends think so.

thank you, last 50 photos posted on livejournal! i get the best shit off of there. just click on an interesting photo and let it lead you to the weirdness that is livejournal, and the shit that people post. i found the entire collection of the baby do's and dont's that way - they apparently come from a book, which i guess no one needs to buy, since it's all online.

i used to read national geographic's children's magazine when i was little, world. they were always talking about koko the sign language gorilla. is this the same bitch, the painter gorilla named koko? she's talented. i kinda want one. i once saw an art show of paintings done by cats, too. i liked the little smeary paw prints. addendum: i just went looking for koko info, and read about her nipple fetish in wikipedia, and the several sexual harassment lawsuits that her handlers have filed. i don't want to know anything more about her. it's over.

pos sent me these awesome photos of receipts that oh-so-hilariously swear at you: one from home depot and one from some british restaurant.

rm sent me this awesome obit from the nyt. why don't i ever know about rad old people until after they die? i sooo want my obit to refer to me as a "trickster" - and in the headline, no less.

a bunch of my friends keep forwarding a new discovery, stuffwhitepeoplelike. it's funny because it's true. the writer's workshop one makes me laugh and laugh and then cry as i read yet another really poorly-written short story for my tuesday night writer's workshop. i love that class - i am white, after all.

i quite enjoyed watching this . . . project . . . of 207 people entering grand central and then freezing for five minutes, and then continuing on like nothing happened. remember the "flash mob" craze, or what the media thought was going to be a craze? i like it when they're filmed and edited down to a nice short.

tb randomly sent me this clip from donnie darko, as well as the sparkle motion dance routine, and it reminded me what a great movie that is. and the bat for lashes video is genius, too.

pos and i are headed out on a much-needed long weekend. it's my birthday tuesday! your present to me can be to contribute to blacklisted. it's my new favorite hobby. i will post some of my own rants soon.

blacklisted.

2008-02-09T18:22:00.001-06:00

i'm taking what would tyler durden do? off as a link. it's one thing to write trash about celebutards and annoying famous people, but shit like this post about obama's grandm a isn't funny, it's disrespectful and wrong. don't read the comments section of that page if you have eaten anything today.

we're going to see a lot of crazy hateful shit this year, cuz either a woman or a black person is going to be the democratic nominee, and there are a lot of truly fucked up people out there who hate women, minorities and themselves. add the anonymity of saying whatever you want on the internet, and we're in for a disgusting ride.

do not want.

"baby, i love you, but: are you retarded?"

2008-02-07T22:19:00.000-06:00

the "baby, i love you, but: are you retarded?" quote was sent to me today by my adorable boyfriend, pos, who kept insisting that led zeppelin are playing bonaroo, which was incorrectly reported yesterday, even after i sent him this correction and the bonaroo website and the explanation that LEZ ZEP is playing, not LED. lez zeppelin is a lesbian led zep cover band. it's awesome that he kept insisting that i was wrong and that i am the retard. he did retract his statement (eventually).

that's okay, though - i deserve it, as i yelled "you are a MORON" at him last week - he was driving erratically in the alley and almost hit a light pole (i had already told him to slow down and to please stop his excellent project of driving fast in reverse and then forward again to flatten all of the snow banks in the alley near our garage door).

stuff from the cyberwebs:

enjoy how dumb you are with this map of the world and very few seconds to identify the country you're supposed to click on. togo, anyone?

i hadn't had the pleasure of visiting awfulplasticsurgery.com in a while, but i'm glad i did, because that shit never fails to amuse. check out the leathery old granny in a bikini that was posted on jan 29 (barf) and the totally bizarre ass implants posted on jan 30.

ha ha: alice in chains used to look like poison, tori amos was totally a smelly pirate h ooker, and dr dre was kinda effeminate. here are six musicians whose lame first attempts at fame are funny and awkward. you should totally click around the site its from, cracked.com - they have some mighty amusing lists and articles.

i like to read/waste time, and i like the truly random; ergo, i dig the rules of thumb website - where people give unsolicited advice and impart knowledge like "It will be a bad winter if squirrels build their nests low in the trees" and "When you're playing blackjack, assume that any unseen card is an 8."

being mean to courtney love will never get old.

i have these big beautiful dreams of starting a really unique and awesome participation blog that people really enjoy and it attracts thousands of visitors a week and people can share and upload stuff - like postsecret without being creepy. these guys have the right idea: the fail blog (link stolen from goldenfiddle), which is photos of failure and is supa funny, and a good-concept blog where readers submit photos of them jumping in art museums.

my (very sweaty) mayor wants to make chicago world-class and fancy and shit. good luck, bubs.

robin morgan, who is a rad old feminist and who was awesome when i went to one of her readings in 2000, wrote on the total bullshit directed at hills for being a lady, and she's right. i'm not the biggest clinton fan, but if she's the democratic nominee, then she's my girl. still pulling for obama, though. in case you haven't seen it, here is the will.i.am "yes we can" song that he made with his famous friends - i just think that transposing the song over obama's speech is cool. yes, i am aware that this man is also responsible for the black eyed peas, so i can't say that he is not evil, but i like his work here.

i am so obsessed with the 50 latest photos posted to live journal page. it makes me feel like i don't know anything about the rest of the world, and also that we are all the same. lots of russian and japanese people use lj, apparently. and stupid morons like the stoner girls who post photos of themselves getting high. not a good idea, ladies. i guess i'm just lucky that the internet didn't exist when i was that age - i just wrote embarrassing and ridiculous shit in my journal and the retardo zines my friends and i made that had a circulation of like 25. just like this blog!

anyway, i also score the best clip art and photos off of the last 50 lj photos page, like the weird baby do's and dont's in the past few posts and this post's trainspotting poster. i actually have that poster - it is laminated and i had to tear it in half to smuggle it out of the only decent bar in kenosha when i was in college. i have hung it in every apartment and house i have lived in, the last poster i allow myself to keep as decoration - it is currently on the inside door of our pantry. i'll open the door to find something to cook for dinner and end up thinking in a scottish accent.

these photos are so fucking cute i could cry.

cleva: erykah badu's new video has her reenacting iconic record art. she makes a killer grace jones. erykah is rad. we have the same birfday! different year, though.

"hey carrot juice, i wanna squeeze you every way until you bleed"

2008-01-31T23:05:00.000-06:00

pos and i are taking a creative writing class at this great little place called story studio chicago (the owner is our teacher and she's really funny and a good instructor). we need diversions on these coldass winter nights. we end up going out to eat every tuesday before class at a place near the studio - we've done cuban and pub food, and this week we went to a thai place. they brought us little wrapped thong tham nai (that's what the package said anyway) that i am guessing are thai fortune cookies, though i eat thai all the time and this was the first place that gave us anything like this. my fortune was awesome: "everyone agrees you are the best." pos' was just weird: "laughter is the sun that drives winter of the face." um, yeah, okay.

i've seen the in bruges preview a few times, and while i'm not a big fan of colin farrell, i LOVELOVELOVE martin mcdonagh, who wrote and directed. first of all, he's gorgeous. more importantly, he is a fecking awesome playwright - i saw the lieutenant of inishmore in new york and the pillowman at the steppenwolf (excellent eighth date with pos). also, he won an oscar two years ago for his short film six shooter. am excited. it is sure to be funny and violent and rad. here is the new yorker article i read in 2006 - i had never heard of him before and i was supa bored while i was getting my feets done at the nail salon so i read the article and it convinced me that i needed to track down any and all of mr mcdonagh's works.

speaking of theater . . . harvey keitel stars in jerry springer: the musical in new york (title role, no singing). um. hmm. pos really loves the movie the bad lieutenant, and it was on IFC not too long ago, and i had to go upstairs after the part where he pulls over two teenagers and then jerks off while making one of them show him her ass and the other suggestively lick the air. too creepy, thanks.

it's football time, and football time means pigs in a blanket time. instructions: take a "little smoky" wiener doggie, wrap it in 1/3 of a pillsbury crescent roll pre-cut dough, and bake it til it's golden. dip in mustard, eat too many. which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite urban legends: the exploding dough can. watch these while you eat them: a collection of super bowl ads from the past.

i'm curious to see teeth - i have a feeling that it's going to be awesome and non-retarded, and lots of people will be squeamish and maybe some awesome cultural references to the vag will happen. also, random: roy lichtenstein's son directed? i would love to see roy's version of the movie poster if he were still alive - a big ole vaginer with spots. i like the trailer - "it's what's inside me!" of course, if i wait for netflix i can watch it while sitting on my new vagina couch (instant craigslist classic).

i would have totally wanted to go to camp electric youth when i was in the 4th grade - i fucking loved debbie gibson. i grew up and moved on; sadly, deborah did not. not unrelatated at all: my brother made sure to email me the deets on the new kids on the block reunion. i'm still embarrassed by all that. my first concert. my first obsession. my first experience with being a total fag hag.

it is winter, and in the winter i craft. some years i make pot holders and some i embroider tea towels. some years i do paint-by-numbers and some i make collages (arty ones, okay?). i have been doing a few easy and quick paint-by-numbers this winter while watching tv so that i can "warm myself up" and move onto the totally fucking rad birthday gift eb and sf gave me last year, which is a photo of them plus me and pos that was magically transformed into a pbn kit. i am so worried that i will fuck it up, and that we'll all come out looking like mongoloids. anyway, sb sent me this site, full of tampon craftiness, like the tampon toupee (so realistic!) and tampon easter bunny (so fuzzy!). what's awesome is that the feminist (genderific, actually, was the term we used) activist group that ag and i started in college, stingray, actually featured a tampon-crafting portion of our year-end party. to make a tampon stingray, you just pull it out of the applicator, spread it open, and draw eyes on it. not hard to do, but economical AND adorable.

playing the free rice vocab game is like taking the SATs, only this time you get to help feed the world's poor, not fuck yourself out of getting into a good school.

in case you didn't know, drugs are bad.

which leads us to the latest klassy kollections of tattoos on the smoking gun: bad tats on women. this one is pretty disturbing - i think i know what she was trying to do, but it just comes across as being a child-abuse statement or something (very "hands are not for hurting"). and what is this one supposed to be - an earthworm? it's not just the ladies - here is a collection of recently-arrested morons and the odd mugshots they take - what's with the red face art?

i am pleased to announce that i have finally found my blog's mascot. i don't know who you are, and i don't know just how mentally unbalanced you are, but you should be my new bff.

bullshit i read somewhere else.

2008-01-23T22:01:00.000-06:00

some would say that the worst thing about american idol is the shameless manufacturing of celebrity. true, true - but i would argue that its utter disregard for allowing the american public to mock the failures of the mentally unstable is worse. so, uh . . . go watch and cringe here.

jk sent me these really old and seriously creepy ads. awes-some.

mike huckabee was the keynote speaker at my work's convention this fall in san diego, and i was fully prepared to roll my eyes to my coworkers and mutter about what a douche he was while he spoke. instead, he came across as funny, warm and sane. he is on record for having really conservative and wrong views, but he is so good at making himself come across as a human who you might disagree with and not as a sociopath bible beater fuckface, as many of his republican colleagues appear to be, and which, quite frankly, he most likely is. interesting. michael stipe has similar, confused feelings.

back in the day, ooooohhhh, did i love me some stipe. i thought he was GORGEOUS. here he is with heath ledger at a marc jacobs show this fall - tears. i recall that he was also friends with river phoenix, and the heath/river comparisons are pretty spot-on. so if you're an oscar-nominated, young actor, maybe you shouldn't return michael's calls. oof. not funny. oh, and here he is, so very randomly, being dismissed from jury duty. how is that news?

anyway, i started talking about huckabee and ended up talking about heath. bound to happen i suppose. here is a really good non-partisan comparison of all the gentlemen (and a lady) running for president. some of them are still considering themselves candidates?

i already know who my brother (almost 34 and still really into star wars) would vote for. first school board, then president, and someday the emperor of the inter-galaxy council or whateverthefuck they tried to explain in episode two but i was asleep for.

and this is just sick. don't click if you're squeamish about body modification and/or moronic-ness. similarly, here is a page of science-inspired tattoos. um, cool.

2 girls 1 cup has a scholarly paper written about it. it got an F. i have not watched the video, because i don't hate myself, and i have heard enough about it so that it feels like i have seen it. btw, it has its own wikipedia page. that just seems wrong. thanks, jk, for keeping me updated on this important cultural juggernaut.

in the spirit of the dead pool, yet somehow more tasteless, here is a website that has visitors vote for when amy winehouse will die. if you're closest, you win an ipod! young people dying is not funny, but when you're a rich crack addict wasting all goodwill and talent, you don't have very many people to blame (other than your skeevy husband and your wigmaker).

i stole this off of death from below - a feed of the last 50 images uploaded to livejournal. it cautions that it may be very nsfw, as it is randomness at its finest. i'ma gonna bookmark this, methinks - it changes a lot and may be a new source of amazing clip art. also: people are really odd.

some dude (hey check out his name) from the wapo hates on the juno soundtrack - and you know what, i'm with him, for the most part.

i fucking hate cathy, perhaps even more than i hate the family circus (that's a tough call). even when i was a kid, the comic about the football-shaped lameass bitch with the stringy hair and some schlub boyfriend seemed pathetic to me. ag sent me this page (she has equally disgusted opinions). there are fans of that tripe? christ. this shit's depressing. someone give me some chocolate and a shoe sale, cuz i'm a woman, and that's what makes us happy!

oh, fuck today, and this post. just wanna go home. go here and look at parasites that want to be inside you.

it's hump day.

2008-01-23T21:26:00.000-06:00

sometimes dead pool isn't all that fun(ny) - i feel genuinely bad about heath ledger. no one had him on their list, of course, because his death is too random and unexpected. here's a fun fact: the westboro baptists - also known as the "god hates fags" psychopaths - are planning on picketing his funeral (brokeback mountain, gayness, etc). expect hilarious signs about how he's now in hell. these are the same fuckfaces who protested matthew shepard's funeral, funerals of american soldiers who died in iraq (god is punishing america for how gay we are), funerals for trapped miners (shafts, i guess?). i can't wait for them all to die and to realize that god doesn't hate fags, he hates them.

good to see that no one is already trying to cash in on a young actor's sudden death . . . oops, too late. stay klassy, best buy. (thanks to jk for link).

on a lighter note . . .

don't you hate it when you and your partner are at a bar and talking to a tasty blonde who you're both really into, and they're married to a hott piece, and you want to ask them to swing, but not sure if they'd be down? just look to see if they're wearing a discrete, klassy swappwatch. they are! score! thanks, rm, for the link. which one did you get?

my friend ea found a way to submit a blog to make it read in lol-cats language. here is scissors happy - be sure to read how retarded the dead pool list becomes.

this is intense - a world clock that ticks away at the births, deaths, global warming, species extinction, abortions, hiv infections, cars produced, etc etc. why can't it be heartwarming and magical - like flowers bloomed and cotton candy eaten and crack rocks smoked by winehouse?

repulsive: ever wonder what a group of greedy bald eagles who dove into a truck full of fish guts looks like? here ya go. thanks rm.

ever since i read kitchen confidential during xmas break i have had a little crush on anthony bourdain. here is a rad excerpt from an onion av club interview:

AVC: Have you eaten anything particularly disgusting in the last few episodes you've shot for No Reservations? Anything that's more disgusting than the still-beating heart of a cobra, say?

AB: Well, last season, the Namibian warthog experience was as bad as it's ever been.

AVC: Was that the anus that you ate?

AB: You know, pick a part. It was all equally full of sand and crap in every mouthful. And it just had this permeating odor of burning reflux.

AVC: You once said that the most disgusting thing you've ever eaten was a Chicken McNugget. Do you think the warthog asshole was worse than that?

AB: Given the choice between reliving the warthog experience and eating a McNugget, I'm surely eating the McNugget. But at least I knew what the warthog was. Whereas with the McNugget, I think that's still an open question. Scientists are still wondering.

you've probs already seen this, cuz i've been really slow at posting, but here is a livejournal thread that cd sent me of people posing with album covers, and a lot of them are really clever and funny.

another excellent onion feature: random rules with dave attell, where they flip through his ipod and ask him to explain. i loooove him. i went to one of his shows at the improv in dc in probably early 2001, and one of my friends knew the waitstaff, so we always got to sit in the front row and get free drinks. he was doing some bit that required audience participation, so he asked me a question and he loved my response so much he kept talking to me through his set and after the show. had i not been shy and sort of morally normal, i probably could have ended up having a really interesting night. ah well - youth is wasted on the young.

i was pretty excited to get if i should fall from grace: the shane macgowan story from netflix, but when it arrived it was broken in three peices (just like shane's teefs!). i'm actually surprised this doesn't happen more often - those little red envelopes aren't terribly sturdy. we watched it over the weekend when it was for reals like -5 degrees out, and it wasn't very good. i DID get tickets to see the pogues when they come to town in march, though. it's a pretty early show (doors at 6:30) on a wednesday night. and i am going to get more drunk than i have been in a long time. that is a promise.

randomness

2008-01-10T19:16:00.000-06:00

"there really are no accidents" say these canadian PSAs about workplace safety, complete with blood, explosions, impaling, burns, etc - and they're right. and gruesome. canadian PSAs rule - i still really like the domestic violence one, because it's in-yo-face and fucked up, and actually makes a strong statement.

i'm reading unmarketable: brandalism, copyfighting, mo cketing and the erosion of integrity (it's got footnotes, so i feel like i'm in college again) and i was led to this collection of riot grrrl articles from the early 90s in mainstream press like seventeen and newsweek - they're a bit unintentionally hilarious and so very dated. i was going through a box from my parents' basement when i was home over the holidays and i found a little note mailed from erin smith from bratmobile that thanked me for the stamps for her zine but she still needed two bucks, and she told me that they would be playing in madison that spring and that i should check them out. i had totally forgotten about this piece of paper, and i think it is so rad that i have the perfect little memento to such a time period. i was just a girl in a rural midwestern town waiting to grow up so that she could movethefuckaway, and without music and zines i would have totally fucking hated my life (instead of "mostly"). i have intense nostalgia for the american culture of the early 90s these days.

i found this article on "shopdropping" and saved the link because i thought it would make an amusing addition to the blog, and, interestingly enough, i just read in unmarketable about the author (she's chicago-based) getting busted for shopdropping cards at the american girls store, where she is now permanently banned. i wish they would ban me - pos makes me go buy his niece a gift certificate every xmas and i don't wanna get their creepy catalog anymore.

yes, the dead pool is macabre, and maybe a little bit mean-spirited, but sometimes candidates beat their addictions, illnesses and craziness - here's an article about natasha lyonne, who i had on my 2006 dead pool list (she was strung out for a few years there, hitting the tabloids for threatening to rape her neighbor's dog). she seems to be fine. for now. brah ha ha ha ha.

enjoy it while it lasts: even the douchiest jerkoff republican pundits are feeling the love for obama. as for his loss in new hampshire, all i have to say is that i lived there for a year and those people are not good representatives of the american public at large.

in case you were wondering what natalie merchant has been up to . . . yeah, me neither. this is mostly an article on bands and artists who were critical darlings and had sizable fan bases but now find themselves without recording contracts.

the record industry is in shambles, article 2: david byrne sets you straight on what the future of the industry will look like.

and, here's the third: this article describes how the riaa is now saying that copying a cd that you purchased to your computer and, say, listening to it as am mp3 or downloading it to your ipod, is stealing. i will be thrilled when those bastards get a fucking clue and completely collapse in on themselves.

and, finally: this situation basically sounds like a stanley kubrick adaptation of a robert cormier book made in 1972 - sadistic teenagers lashing out at one another in a totalitarian institution. (dude, i am the cheese fucking blew my mind when i read it in the 7th grade).

everyone dies eventually.

2008-01-08T18:55:00.000-06:00

the 2008 dead pool is up and running - check it out here. interesting lists this year - my favorite is js' choice of mr mcfeely from mr rogers.

here is my list - a good combo of the sick/insane/cracked out/condemned and the old.

Bhumibol Adulyadej (King of Thailand)
Nouri al-Maliki
Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Bea Arthur
Lauren Bacall
Chuck Berry
Osama bin Laden
Ernest Borgnine
Fidel Castro
Carol Channing
Walter Cronkite
Olivia de Havilland
Phyllis Diller
Pete Doherty
Kirk Douglas
Farrah Fawcett
Blake Fielder-Civil
Joan Fontaine
Betty Ford
John Forsythe
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Estelle Getty
John Glenn
Billy Graham
Andy Griffith
Jesse Helms
Lena Horne
Deborah Kerr
Jack Klugman
Jack LaLanne
Doris Lessing
Jerry Lewis
Nelson Mandela
Jayne Meadows
Ricardo Montalban
Maureen O'Hara
Les Paul
Nancy Reagan
Oral Roberts
Andy Rooney
Mickey Rooney
Jane Russell
JD Salinger
Ravi Shankar
Britney Spears
Gloria Stuart
Studs Turkel
Abe Vigoda
Amy Winehouse

i really dig kirk's shoes and socks combo in that photo.

feel free to leave the names of those that i forgot/should consider for next year in the comments section. i feel like i could certainly branch out more in the areas of elderly world leaders, shady rappers, hunted terrorists, accidental ODs and cancer.

dearly departed

2008-01-04T16:45:00.000-06:00

congrats to my friend bc for winning the 2007 dead pool! he's horribly pop-culture-obsessed AND he had anna nicole on his list, so he beat me (i was second place) by 68 points. i only had a total of 50 points last year, so i am proud of my improvements. here's to a very bloody 2008!

pos has a new blog for the 2008 dead pool - check after the 7th for the lists and then be sure to read it through the year for all of the notable deaths and for my cute boyfriend's witticisms.

to those on my list who died last year:

some of you died too young (Tammy Faye Bakker, cancer, age 65) and some of you should never have been born (Awad Hamed al-Bandar, hanged at age 62 with his asshole friend Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, age 56). i LOVE the books of one of you (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, age 84) and always meant to get around to reading another (Norman Mailer, also 84). the remaining two were married to presidents - Lady Bird Johnson, a ripe old 94, and a 90-year-old ex-Mrs Reagan, Jane Wyman.

special shout-out to Brooke Astor, who finally got bored with this shit at the age of 105. i will always have a warm spot buried deep into the cockles of my tar-black heart for her, simply because she didn't die in 2006 and thus make me earn negative dead pool points. my research has improved and i'll post the 2008 list once everyone has submitted their lists.

the 200GR8 mix

2007-12-29T17:33:00.000-06:00

i started making and mailing out new years / holiday mixes for friends scattered and near a few years ago. the first one i made was almost all xmas music, but done by bands i like and a few classics thrown in, and ecf had the audacity to tell me what a piece of shit it was. now i just make mixes with my favorite songs of the year, with an emphasis on tracks that i doubt everyone has. almost all of these songs are finds from my beloved music blogs, and i can honestly say that i had not heard of over 80 percent of these bands a year ago.

i have to say that "going to a town" might win for my favorite song of the year. it's super sad and poignant and quietly political, and rufus has a beautiful voice. one track that i listened to non-stop this year is the arcade fire's "keep the car running" but i was pretty sure that everyone i made a cd for would already have it.

everyone who hears "thou shalt always kill" repeats random lines from it in a bad british accent for days afterwards.

make your own - go to hype machine and happy downloading!

200GR8!

1. all fired up - tralala
2. nicest thing - kate nash
3. collarbone - fujiya & miyagi
4. i go to the barn because i like the - band of horses
5. lake michigan - rogue wave
6. straight lines - silverchair
7. bounce that - girl talk
8. you made me like it - 1990s
9. bad education - tilly & the wall
10. stuck for the summer - two hours traffic
11. blue bird - the rosebuds
12. you broke my heart - lavendar diamond
13. thou shalt always kill - dan le sac vs. scroobius pip
14. going to a town - rufus wainwright
15. all that i can do - baby teeth
16. violets - candy bars
17. rumors - josh ritter
18. paris is burning - st. vincent
19. oh my gosh - man like me
20. bang theory - world leader pretend
21. don't give up - noisettes

year-end wrap up: boox

2007-12-28T16:02:00.000-06:00

this is what i read in 2007. i think that i could do better and read more. thanks to my newish and borderline-ridiculous commute (an hour and 20 minutes door-to-door that requires brisk walking, a bus AND a train), i expect to read even more this year.

i put a star next to the ones i recommend. i read too many books that i am "eh" about. i always have to finish them, even when i don't like them.

the devil in the white city - erik larson*
family and other accidents - shari goldhagen
love is a mix tape - rob sheffield*
little children - tom perrotta*
another bullshit night in suck city - nick flynn
best american nonrequired reading 2006*
appetites: why women want - carolyn knapp*
back when we were grown-ups - anne tyler
a long way down - nick hornby*
the dive from clausen's pier - ann packer
possible side effects - augusten burroughs*
nirvana's in utero (33 1/3 series) - gillian g. garr
runaway - alice munro*
eat the document - dana spiotta
pretty little mistakes - heather mcelhatten*
the year of magical thinking - joan didion*
the virgin suicides - jeffrey eugenides*
best american nonrequired reading 2007*
truth and beauty - ann patchett*
america: the book - jon stewart/the daily show*
kitchen confidential - anthony bourdain*

my favorite of the year was probably love is a mix tape. i have no idea why i read that entire anne tyler book - it really sucked.

what my mom wants for christmas

2007-12-19T23:19:00.000-06:00

Hi Kids,

Just in case you need/want a Christmas suggestion from me, I'd like some music by Joss Stone. While in England we watched her perform twice on TV and I really liked her. Then just the other night when flipping channels I saw her performing with L Rhimes. They also had tapes of them talking. It was awful to see Joss Stone take a backseat to Rhimes. Joss has "IT" plus a superior voice. I'd also like home made "vouchers" to spend time with you for going to the movies, bike riding, and just hanging out. And there's a kitchen tool that spreads out dough very thinly make by that company that has home parties that Danny has for his pizzas that would be wonderful to have. I just can't think of the name of the company (not Tupperware). I think I already asked for a pizza stone - or 2 - which would be very convenient and take out the excess calories when I make pizzas at home.

For your dad, who has "no" ideas I came up with the following: a cell phone with a select number of minutes that we could repurchase as needed. He really won't get into using it like the you kids use yours or even as I use my own. But when he has a real need, then at least he'll have one. He also needs a new fragrance. That 360 just doesn't do it for me anymore. Yow! I can say I now hate the smell. Any ideas? He also needs to replace one of those magnetic necklaces that was purchased by Dale Moore. I'm not sure Dale is even in business anymore, so if you have a source, you could get it and I could reimburse you. I also plan to get him those shoe liners your Aunt Nancy is now selling (30) which I think he'll enjoy as men make her best customers. Last year the books on Ireland that Jenny gave us were a real hit so if coffee table books on England/The Lake District/The Cotswolds/ Wales/Scotland or on New York City can be found, those would be great, too. Did I tell you how much your dad loved New York? I got such a kick out of him saying it made him feel young to be there. I guess that means we'll get to go there more often.

Hope this is helpful. And do let me know if there are some things you would want. We have just another week to shop. I don't go shopping on Christmas Eve! Also try to come home earlier in the day on Christmas Eve.

Love,

Mom

items

2007-12-19T22:15:00.000-06:00

we never made it to the hollyday party we were supposed to go to on saturday night - we drove a few miles in horrible snow and wind - people were only going 35 or 40 on the interstate - and we turned around and went back home. we were watching tv and a clearblue easy commercial came on, and the tagline was so fucking amazingly funny i was bawling i laughed so hard (i had also just drank half a bottle of wine). watch it here. brilliant.

pos had me go to the american girls store to get his niece a gift certificate, and some businessman douche ahead of me in line said to the cashiers, a little too loudly, "so where's the adult room with the blow-up dolls?" they all lightly chuckled to his completelyfuckingobnoxious joke, and i just stared at him with pure hate. he then paid for $240 worth of shit for the darling little girl in his life. ick. ick. ick.

yumz! quick recipes for 101 easy-to-make appetizers! since it's from the new york times, the most respected newspaper in the world (err, it is still, right?), i don't feel matronly or lame for posting this - i feel well-informed and fascinating.

popular mexican musicians keep getting killed, most likely by drug gangs. why can't someone get on this north of the border? i've got a list.

i had a brief love affair with the retardo splendor that is "lolcats" (that walrus and his bucket thing is still funny to me) but i had forgotten about them. and then i saw this, in which one replaces housecat/walrus with mangled third-world-country baby and . . . well, not totally lol, you know?

tb sent me this - it's rap and hip hop, in graphic detail. i dig the threadless shirt that visually demonstrates "mo money mo problems."

an actor from my all-time favorite movie, beyond the valley of the dolls, died in november (michael blodgett wasn't exactly a household name, so i just heard about it). god bless you, lance rocke - "golden hair, bedroom eyes, the firm young body, these are the tools which he plies his trade." if it had been z-man i would have been truly crushed. pos posted a shout-out to lance rocke on the dead pool page. speaking of dead pool, i have two weeks to have a lot of old people (or just one or two young ones) die - i'm in second place, but trailing by 68 points. i have been working on the 2008 list and it's a good one.

tori seriously is the HBIC - she kicked two bitches out of her show because they didn't appreciate it. tori fans are VERY INTO HER, so it was probably rather disconcerting for her to see two front-row-dwellers walking around and not worshiping her/cutting themselves. watch video here. also, the ear farm has given her song "yes, anastasia" the 8+ treatment (where they write about and post songs that are longer than 8 minutes). who knew that's what the song was about? i've never tried too hard to decipher tori's lyrics - they're almost always about god, sex and relationships, just described in very strange terms.

speaking of ear farm, here is an amazingly great mp3 mix: 10 songs by artists that sassy featured under their "cute band alert" feature. the ear farm dude hadn't known what sassy was and said, "If I was a girl growing up in the early '90s I'd probably be lamenting the loss of such a well put together magazine directed at young women." preach on, brother. i never tire of mentioning how much i loved that fucking magazine, and how bitterly disappointing it is to become an adult (prior tirade in this post).

pos went and cut down a tree for us this year when i was busy with some lame weekend work shit, but we got to decorate it together. maybe next year pos and i will attempt the mountain dew tree. he has few vices, but diet dew is one of them (puke). he was so proud that he found two cans of diet code red mountain dew a few weeks ago. i will blame these sodas when he dies.

here is a photo gallery of kids squirming and crying to get away from the super-creepy dude in the white beard and red velvet suit. santa is pretty traumatizing - you have to sit on his lap and tell him that you're nice and he should give you stuff? you ask him to enter your house while you're asleep? he can ALWAYS see you? get that fucker away from me.

elaborate performance art or new depths of self-obsessed narcissistic "celebrity" (term used very loosely) worship? not only can you buy vincent gallo's sperm and sex, you can also buy his childhood bedspread, as well as random junk from his basement. the charles manson painting is . . . not very good.

i am unfamiliar with livejournal communities, but this one looks promising - pages of tacky and retro shit from old catalogues.

great article and interview with nick hornby about the differences between his new book, being marketed as a "young adult" book, and his other works.

do you feel bad about downloading songs for free? do you feel like you just cheated a struggling artist, like madonna, out of her hard-earned money because you didn't pay for that "like a prayer" mp3? now you can send a thank-you note and some money, guilt-free, with this highly entertaining program: dear rockers. a sample excerpt, for axl rose:

I’m sorry, I hope you won’t invite me to “get in the ring,” but I downloaded some of your soon-to-be-finished songs from the soon-to-be-released Chinese Democracy. It made me feel good, it made me feel cheap and it made me feel guilty. So in return, I wanted to give you back the $17 (one dollar for every year you have spent polishing this gem in the studio/writing/recording/ranting). We all know that this is going to be the greatest album of all time. (Sorry, Kid Rock).

karl rove must really fucking hate hilary, because he wrote a memo to obama on how to beat her. he's right. for the first time. no hates for hill - i just don't think she can win, and i am SO OVER the republitards and the utter shambles that our country is in.

lovely day

2007-12-15T21:05:00.000-06:00

life is good. we finally got internet access at the house - we were indecisive and lame about it for almost two months (don't want to get a phone landline, don't want to pay shitty installation fee for direct tv's version of wireless, etc) and finally got a verizon broadband thing that i plug into a usb port and am magically connected. so now i think i'll be able to post a lot more often. i had to pay some bills online last weekend so we went to the burger king because it has free wifi. you know shit is bad when the burger king has internet access and you don't. so i am pleased as punch that it's fixed.

had an interesting morning: hung over from yesterday's work holiday party (nice lunch and open bar at the james hotel - i won a fuzzy hotel robe in the raffle - and then on to rossi's, an old man/iron worker bar downtown where we hovered around a bar stool with a piece of shelving that the bartender gave us balanced on top to play left-center-right, a dice game involving chips and binge drinking), we went and saw shellac at the hideout (site of pos' and my legendarily great first date). it was a noon show - they had free donuts and i drank mugs of coffee, and then listened to loud noise rock that was actually really good. steve albini is a good front man - charismatic and funny, but also aggressive. impressive for a 45-year-old music legend who looks like i could probably beat up. they took questions between songs and sat on the stage and sold shirts afterwards - normal-seeming guys who are generous to their fans.

i have an inbox choked with shit to post, since i haven't properly blogged in weeks. here's some good stuff . . .

the new york post proves once again that it is the klassiest rag on the planet. love those domestic violence jokes. speaking of which, i really love this unaired canadian psa against domestic violence. domestic violence isn't funny, obviously, but a psa where someone says "you fucking bitch" is a little bit funny. maybe i just think that things that make me uncomfortable are funny. that's a question for a mind wizard (therapist). anyway, it's nsfw. thanks to rm for the ike headline. and i really love feministing, the blog that the psa is off of - they are collecting donations for website upgrades. even though they met their goal, i slid some cash their way and you should think about supporting blogs that you read/appreciate. like this one. i kid.

speaking of nsfw, here are photos of an art exhibit dedicated entirely to the golden girls (and those with an elderly lady fetish).

i just finished reading miranda july's short story collection, no one belongs here more than you. check out the story "majesty" - she rivals joyce carol oates in straight-forward creepiness. the book's site is a series of notes she wrote on her kitchen appliances. i really like her "learning to love you more" project. she doesn't make me want to poop back and forth forever or anything, but she is really interesting.

oops - gotta go to a holiday party. more soon. for reals this time - i gots wired!

happy birfday pos

2007-12-07T15:49:00.001-06:00

my bf is 37 today. bitch is old.

sorry that i am a crabass who hates her job and bitches about it probably too much (and i grind my teeth at night cuz i'm thinking about how much i hate my job, which wakes you up, and that is so gross, but you just touch my face and i stop and you are still, inexplicably, attracted to me).

i loves you!

"bobbing like some pigeons lookin for a crumb"

2007-11-28T19:52:00.000-06:00

i haven't posted because i don't have internet at home (we really need to get on that) and cuz work is supa bizzy.

wow, i just annoyed myself with my mizzpellins.

bettah lame than never.

nostalgia: when i was in dc i hung out at toledo lounge (second in my heart, back in the day, only to the pharmacy bar - read about both here) and got to be friendly with a server named chris. he even took me to popeye's for lunch once (long story). his band the nighties would play small venues in town - like velvet lounge, and i saw them sweating their asses off on the little stage at the back of dccd when it was still open - and i thought they were rad. kate from the glorious hum posted about john bustine and i remembered that chris had played with him as john bustine and the woolfs, and so i went a-googling and found these nighties mp3s on the wapo's site (i love you, wapo, i really, really do). i moved to chicago and chris moved to new york and i hope he still plays music, cuz he's a cool guy and i liked his band. i used to listen to "the mouse" cranked up in my little office at corps network and sing along - "when the cat catches the mouse he says whoo-ooh-ohh-ooooo."

i did this and you might want to, too - send yourself (or someone else) an email to be delivered whenever you want - like, ten years from now. dear future me, did you ever allow pos to cut the little pebble embedded into your palm out with his pocket knife? cuz he really wants to.

beth ditto is the current bust cover girl, and here is an interview with spin. i like her. she really doesn't give a shit about what people think.

here's an article about marc jacobs, patron saint of handbags that i adore and covet, and martyr of the fashion industry. now that he's older and hotter and has a sketchy young bf, people be hatin on him. don't you fuss, marc, and could you maybe do a kelly green leather handled zippered bag with silver hardware? thanxxx.

ea sent this to me - a 20-year-old wisconsin woman wins Best Mommy 07. she sounds really smart and responsible. i recently read something that made me smile - someone was discussing the notion that parents want to be kool and liked, and the person said "why would your kid want a 40-year-old friend?"

update on fb's professor who brutally beat his wife to death with a chin-up bar while she wrapped christmas presents: he now admits that he did it. surprise. what a shitty xmas.

SIGH. another fucking terrible tattoo found here. why? WHY?!?!?!?

rm sent me the above link, as well as this one, to the best marketing and branding scheme i have laid eyes on. the jacket's lining is THAT soft.

and, finally, big personal-life news: tb and js got engaged! my big brother is gettin hitched. they're planning a may wedding in chicago. i'm very happy for both of them.

ch-ch-ch-changes

2007-11-21T18:57:00.000-06:00

i'm not gonna change the template to the blog (i used to use the white background/light circles design that blogger offers and when i changed it to what it is now, all of my photos in old posts got jacked up - check this out for an example) so when i get bored i switch out the links. i added a bunch and took out some. the ones i removed are either because they are never updated or because i don't ever visit them anymore.

let me know if there are any that you miss or if you have recommendations for new links. i try to stick to blogs only, or corporate websites (mcsweeney's, the av club) that try to keep it bloggy-style.

here is a memorial service for the links i removed. i feel badly that i am removing my own brother's blog, but whatevs, he hasn't updated it in a year.

the syracusan

pressure release

plant camp

not fooling anybody

that's my girl, asshole

what would jesus blog?

the post in which i finally get around to telling you why my blog is named as such

2007-11-12T19:17:00.000-06:00

my friends and i all try to make each other's 30th birthdays special. i got a giant vagina cake; ecf got a surprise recreation of his bar mitzvah (1990 fashion and music, plus his mom located the unused napkins that she had saved, as well as the comic book decor that ecf himself had designed). it would have been jenny chang's 30th this weekend; a bunch of her girlyfriends from childhood, college, and dc all converged in chicago for shopping, millennium park, the art institute, the hancock building, dinner and drinks on saturday. jl stayed with me; i didn't even know her (or sp) when i lived in dc; i met them at jenny's bachelorette party and then saw them again at jenny's wedding. we went for drinks when i was in dc this spring; jl and i laughed that this weekend was seriously the fourth time we've ever hung out, and she feels like the kind of friend that i have had and have relied on for years and years. i am so thankful that we were able to honor jenny's memory this weekend, and that she brought so many people together, because she had an excellent taste in friends. happy 30th, jenny! i miss you.

jl took that photo out of the window on the 96th floor of the hancock building saturday evening.

anyways - here's the snips n clips i have collected. you know, i always meant to explain why i call this blog scissors happy. firstly, i love the word scissors, and i love the actual physical design of a pair of scissors. i even found a great necklace at the renegade craft fair of a tiny little pair of silver scissors that probably makes me look semi-mental at work, but whatevs, it's cute. but that's not really why. i have always been "scissors happy," meaning i always cut tons of shit out of magazines and newspapers, and tear stuff out of, like, pamphlets and newsletters and other reading materials. i made two (totally embarrassing now) zines in high school and wanted to be a journalist (music and culture, not of new york times quality - more like details or sassy or spin), and i have always been a big magazine person. i have binders full of articles, art, band interviews, clippings, postcards, and stupid shit that i have saved over the years because i like reading them and because they are evidence of what has influenced me and are reminders for things that i should learn more about. so the advent of the internet was sort of a dream come true for me, because i don't have to keep making those heavy-ass binders stuffed with old pages and papers (well . . . i still do, but it's way less now than it used to be), and i can share all of this somewhat useless but totally entertaining and interesting shit with everyone. i'm like the grandma who can't wait to give you a stack of yellowing newspaper articles she cut out of the paper for you. annoying but endearing.

mildly amusing radar experiment: wear super-obnoxious/offensive t-shirts in public and see what people say. i'm thinking that reactions in new york vary greatly from those that would be gathered in, say, dubuque, iowa.

this article basically reads like an onion article, including quotes from the american ferret association. hey, how fucking excited was the AFA's pr person to acutally be called about something other than the only questions i can fathom that one would ask them, such as "why are ferrets so gross?"

so i posted the random cbs station's openly gay celebrity slideshows, and found a link to this article ($1,000 bagel) on the same website. i think i love you, random cbs station's website. this slideshow is entertaining - especially when all they have to say about braveheart's blooper is, simply, "mel gibson" (slide 19). so is "what a way to go" (very classy name - it's a collection of strange deaths. that's seriously how tennessee williams died?) and a good dead pool tool, the 2007 celebrity death slideshow. wow, wcbstv.com - you're kinda tacky and totally distracting. i wanna work for you.

IAFYAF has a link to a slideshow that demonstrates that winona ryder is, basically, a music slut (not this kind - this kind), and made a mix tape for you to download, too.

the asshat pants man gets fired - read about it here.

stole this off of mj's blog - rawhawhawhawhw.

when was the last time you read a positive article about a catholic priest? i am (lapsed) catholic and all of my leaders are embarrassing me. this one stalks conan o'brien - his letters (a few excerpts in article) are retarded. he signs them "padre" and writes them on parish stationary.

and, finally, while this isn't like my ultimate nightmare, my mom doesn't know about the blog (and dad doesn't know how to turn on mom's computer), and i totes related to the (funny) anguish of this onion article.

"basically, i wish that you loved me / i wish that you needed me / i wish that you knew when i said two sugars, i meant three"

2007-11-07T18:40:00.000-06:00

saw tori amos last night. i was really surprised that there were so many dudes there - the crowd was half men, half women, i would guess. there were also a fair number of superfans, as well as severely annoying "if i just shove my way to the front, i win" bitches and a few people standing very obviously by themselves. tears for them. tori has become more of a performance artist than your typical singer-songwriter-with-a-piano. for starters, she is a tiny little thing, all lean and angular and kinda cyborgy, and she attacks her piano in more of a squatting lunge than actually sitting on a bench. and she does this in heels, for hours a day. no wonder she looked so muscular. she performed using two of her "personalities" or whatever she's doing with her american girl posse phase - she came out in a black wig and very high-fashion sequined tank dress with metallic leggings and heels, and she was aggressive and sexual, humping the floor, touching herself, and being snarly in general. she opened with "cruel" (all of her old songs were redone in ways that made them more rock, for the most part) and when that was done pos turned to me and said "HBIC." it was funny, and true. halfway through the show she changed outfits and personas, wearing a retarded metallic leopard-print jumpsuit romper and a red wig, and she finally said hi to the crowd and was more chipper in general. it was a good show - two hours, lots of old reworked songs and some of the better songs off of the new album. it was a bit too overdramatic for me when she did "me and a gun" (a sad song about being raped from her first album that is usually a capella); she sort of made it into an angry stomper while fondling a butcher knife and then grabbing a prop gun and pointing it at the audience. sometimes a little restraint helps make the point.

a lot of the songs sounded the same - that was pos' one complaint, and i agreed. maybe that's why a girl over in the next section vomited and retched really loudly during the usually very pretty old tori standard "winter."

okay, so on to something that most people will actually care about . . .

nr sent me what she refers to as her new favorite blog (traitor): it's a collection of photos from abandoned chi-chis. random. divine.

i neglected to tell people that it's nsfw when i sent out this collection of paintings on nude bodies that kk had sent me. i was still too speechless to properly address the semi-porniness of it - they're really creepy. so consider yourself warned.

i hope that this guy is joking in the way that i hope that ann coulter is an elaborate performance artist - watch video here.

do yourself a favor and download all of the kate nash songs that you can find. she's like a non-annoying lily allen - young british girl with a guitar singing about souring relationships and unrequited love. i adore the songs "the nicest thing," "merry happy," and "foundations." itunes doesn't have her complete album (made of bricks) so go to hype machine and see what you can find.

how the fuck is it only 4 pm? i've been sitting at this desk for at least 27 hours.

2007-11-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

tomorrow's onion rip-off-a-page-every-day desk calendar headline: "special olympics investigated for performance-enhancing hugs."

here is a great and funny article about how the clothes make the man that i read in the week (best news magazine evah) and was reminded of it cuz mj posted it. it's by that ex-orthodox jewish guy who wrote the new memoir foreskin's lament that sounds super funny and good.

horses may only be disabled unicorns (no horn, lack of magic) but this was one of the weirdest/funniest televised sporting events of all time.

you know how you'll sometimes sing along with a song that you dont know the lyrics for, so you just sort of fill in the spaces with gibberish in the right tone? meet amy winehouse, who has to do that to songs that she actually wrote.

you can go to this website to enter your political concerns and it tells you what presidential candidates most match your ideals. apparently former senator mike gravel (D-AK) shares a 90% similarity with my beliefs. interesting - considering i know nothing about this dude. best of luck, man - i am 90 percent behind you. although, isn't he kinda . . . too elderly? i mean, he's six years older than mccain, and bitch is OLD.

ea forwarded this post that features pages from a 1977 jc penney catalogue, and it's pure comic gold (and avocado, and burnt orange). i had TOTALLY FORGOTTEN about my dad's late-70s swim trunks that came with a matching button-down shirt until i saw a similar ensemble here.

nick hornby has a new book coming out. even though it's "teen lit" i'll still read it. good interview here.

very random: there is something really lame about some cbs channel's website putting together two slideshows of openly gay celebrities (it has a freak-show, looking-at-animals-at-the-zoo element to it) but then again, this wouldn't have been half as populated with confirmed gay people 10 years ago, so at least it shows progress. all i know is that i am surprised to learn that lesley gore is gay. lezlie gore.

there were some people missing from that slideshow, including at least one of these guys, but maybe they just kept the emphasis on "celebrities" and not "sad, delusional hanger-ons."

speaking of delusions, saw lars and the real girl this week (i am kinda obsessed with real doll owners) and it was pretty good - the story line involving all of the townsfolk being really understanding and pretending that his sex doll was a real girl was totally not believable, but ryan gosling was great and i just found his delusion that she was real to be really sad. i don't know if many real doll owners believe that their doll speaks to them and is a real person, but my favorite, davecat, loves fucking his. and being non-sexually intimate as well, of course. here he is in an excerpt from the hour-long bbc documentary (it's a must-see) and - ta da! - i found his blog.

and, finally - elderly prostitutes.

my retarded goth/druid roommate sophomore year got really pious about how important and special halloween is. we, surprisingly, don't talk anymore.

2007-10-31T18:48:00.000-05:00

some wendy's employees (the girls in red yarn braid wigs and weird holly hobby clothes) passed out free breakfast burritos in front of the wrigley building this morning. it was egg and sausage wrapped in a tortilla. i ate it at my desk about 10 minutes after they handed it to me. it was . . . salty. that's about it, salty. i also got a coupon for a free breakfast combo at wendy's before the end of the year. i am a big supporter of good breakfast. i try to eat cereal or yogurt in the morning before work, but pos and i almost always have a good brunch on the weekends. i don't like a lot of fast food breakfasts because most of them are like eating a salt lick, and the worst meal i think i have ever had was at the atlanta airport at like 5 am at this nasty burger place called krystal's - my flight from sarasota to atlanta the night before had been fine, but then my second leg to chicago was delayed and canceled for no particular reason. i was sent to a dumpy motel and given a $5 meal voucher (hey, THANKS, five bucks goes far) and by the time i got myplate of krystal's i was delirious from bad travel, little sleep and no food. my breakfast was gluey plain grits, a cold biscuit, some "eggs," and a patty of meat that, upon placing into my mouth, i immediately thought "this is what salted horse tastes like" and spit it out.

it's okay if my breakfast was kinda gross this morning. i have meatloaf sammiches for lunch (mmmm - cold meatloaf on white bread with butter) cuz i made two meatloaves the other night in my newfound domesticity, and candy abounds all over the office. btw, the word "loaf" is repulsive.

the nyt talks to fancy chefs (including the guy from moto) and chocolatiers about halloween candy and what they'll be passing out.

excellent commentary on radiohead (and madonna) from the guy in mogwai found here.

i bet we'll have a ton of trick-or-treaters tonight. i don't think i've ever had real trick-or-treaters since i've lived on my own - most parents don't want their kids entering apartment buildings or knocking on the dilapidated doors of shared houses. a lot of houses and yards in the neighborhood take decorating for holidays very seriously - huge blow-up pumpkins and tons of cottony spider webs and lawn ornaments and skeletons and ghosts. it looks strange to see all of this crap around their virgin mary statues in their front yards. one house has a stone goose statue on the front porch and it gets an outfit change for holidays (a cape and a hat of varying holiday prints). i don't ever want to be like any of those people. a carved pumpkin, maybe. that's about where i draw the line.

this is so sad and deranged - and further proof that very little good ever comes out of craigslist.

so i didn't go as carol to jmk's halloween party - i spent all saturday unpacking and doing laundry and i didn't have the time or gumption to gather elderly lady accoutrements and to make myself look old and crazy. i borrowed pos' michael meyers mask and a mechanical jumpsuit he had at an old job. i looked pretty creepy. they all had me run downstairs and cross the street, staring up at them in the window, but the photos didn't turn out. it was rad when an old woman drove by and i was just standing there, in my mask, staring. here is a photo of me on the front porch. i met lots of people at the party - an amy winehouse, a hooters waitress, a slutty girl scout, a slutty sailor, a slutty punk rock girl, a slutty bumble bee . . . notice a pattern? there was also a nun, and the guys were all fully dressed - darth vader, walter from the big lebowski, the dude from the big lebowski, a stereotypical mexican (poncho, sombrero, cap gun). it was fun. i like halloween parties because everyone talks to each other.

i am happy with the resurgence of the unicorn as a cultural reference.

2007-10-30T19:45:00.000-05:00

i neglected to mention that tc sent me the betty white motivational poster that i posted last time. she also sent me this great page of similar photos.

i never dug doogie howser and that how i met your mother show looks like tripe, but neil patrick harris is suddenly growing on me - for this promo for the new harold and kumar and for his halloween costume. and he's gay. call me, nph - we could be good friends.

pos and i watched the live forever britpop documentary (at the rec of i am fuel, you are friends, paired with an excellent britpop mp3 compilation) and it was kind of a mess with no real story arc or point, other than to demonstrate the unintentional hilariousness that is noel and liam gallagher (i love them) and to show that jarvis cocker has the grossest, longest, tapered-candle-lookin fingers ever - they look they belong on nosferatu. oh, and he is very unwashed lately. i do love this is hardcore, though he discussed how that was the worst period of his life - it is a fantastic britpop album, through and through.

jmk sent me this npr link to a spoon show in dc, with opener the ponys. when we went to see spoon in chicago, we dawdled at the sushi restaurant beforehand so that we wouldn't have to see the ponys. i am so fucking sick of them - they open for everyone all the time in chicago, they played lolla, and i even ran into their set at sxsw in austin. ugggh. they suck.

ecf sent this to me, noting that when he first saw the headline he was pretty sure it was about me. i'm not going to get into it, but i have been known to not let things go and to use the internet for nefarious purposes - when warranted, of course. because i do not like having money stolen from me, and i will let that person know. and YES i am still pissed about getting ripped off on ebay, okay? i am entitled to be a little bit crazy about it. ooops - scaring boyfriend, and i just moved in. i best gets to chillin.

my friend cl is in the new york times this week! with a photo, too, of her measuring a huge tree, and all because she's one of those people who actually do shit about the environment, not wait for others to take care of it (like me). can you grab me one of those spotted owls, cl? they're cute. i want one.

and, finally, i like it when rich assholes go to jail: the douche who spent millions having 50 cent, aerosmith, tom petty, the eagles, and kenny g play at his daughter's bat mitzvah (i wonder which ones his 12-year-old daughter was a fan of) was buuuuusted for basically being a war profiteer. fucker.

i'm gonna eat spanish tapas for dinner and i can't wait. i'm also finding it difficult to come up with a decent header for this post.

2007-10-26T18:42:00.000-05:00

saw queens of the stone age last night at the riv. the opening band, the black angels, sucked so bad that i eventually yelled this at them when they finally got off the stage (i was a little boozed up and half the crowd was booing). i'm not the biggest qotsa fan but it was fun. the crowd was 90 percent dudes and it has been a long time since i have seen a mosh pit and body surfing. pos really wanted to go, and since i am taking him to see tori amos in a few weeks, i figured that it was the least i could do. after we left and were walking to the car, we decided to duck into a pizza place and get a slice just so that we could use the bathroom. when i was waiting for him a nice and seemingly normal guy who had been at the show started talking to me and it made me really happy to know that, despite my advancing age and domestic-partnered status, i can still get hit on.

speaking of shitty opening bands, that horrible shrieker kristeen young was fired from morrissey's tour. she really did blow. we have the same name (i'm a k, too, SO MUCH BETTER than christine or, as my parents originally named me until my grandmother bitched about it for six months and my mom finally had it legally changed, cristine - and thank god, cuz that's hideous) except kristeen spells it retarded. there have been so many bad openers that i've seen, but sometimes you hear a really great band for the first time. like when i saw the white stripes open for sleater-kinney in 2000 or early 2001 - THAT was a good find.

skanks millions to death from below for these links: i dont understand how this works but it freaks my shit out because i can make her switch. weird! and this is a totally bizarre newscast - first of all, it's disgusting. secondly, their reporting is unprofessional (did she seriously just say "leave a log"?). and thirdly, people actually live in eastern idaho?

speaking of bizarro newscasts, jmk sent me this video of wayne coyne doing the weather on an oklahoma city morning show. i love his suit and undone bowtie, which i think he wears every day. kinda homeless looking but very hott!

jmk also sent me these: this news article describes how to punish someone you catch mid-robbery in your home, and this article is almost too painfully retarded to read. it will fit in nicely as a topic of conversation at jmk's halloween party this weekend, as most people are going as characters from the big lebowski. i'm most likely going to go as carol, so i need to figure out how to do my hair in a crooked beehive and locate some fake roaches to put into it.

have a good weekend, peeps. i hope my middle finger feels better soon. i think i jammed it when i was moving shit around this week and i need it to feel non-arthritis-y so that i can use it for uses both proper (typing, holding things, typical finger usage) and improper (non-verbally demonstrate my displeasure).

new alarm clock works shockingly well.

2007-10-24T18:42:00.000-05:00

i am moved. i have a new home. the dudes from USA movers came to my apartment at 8:30 on saturday morning and they left pos' house before 11. js thinks that they're on meth, they bust ass so quickly, but they are seriously the best (and cheapest) movers in chicago. i took the last two days off from work to unpack and do laundry and go to target (we seriously spent over $400 there. other than my new alarm clock and a $30 shower curtain, nothing else cost over $20. WTF?!?!?!?!?) and to cook dinner together (i hope this little tradition lasts).

i just looked up my new alarm clock on the target website and FUCK. almost all of the reviews are lousy . . . mostly because it fucking shocks its owners. maybe . . . since those reviews are over a year old, they've fixed the problem . . . sigh. so now its sole purpose is to get me out of bed AND it scares me? least favorite item in house now. (this is why i should read product reviews BEFORE i purchase something).

i "hate" it when people use "extra" punctuation, which actually "changes" what they mean, including apostrophes ( like "get your nail's done") and "quotation" "marks." jmk sent me the link to the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, and they have a great list of "other snarks" as links, such as crummy church signs and literally, a weblog. i hate that too. i know a couple and i really like them but it literally drives me insane to listen to them tell a story, as they literally say the word literally in literally every sentence. for reals. lits.

remember all the hubub about the chicago marathon? the onion did the best job reporting on what really went down. that shit makes me laugh and laugh. i fucking love the onion.

jmk sends me stuff all day at work (he sent me the above onion article). i finally convinced one of the less-retarded IT guys to download itunes onto my computer for me (it got lost when i had to get a new harddrive and i have suffered with the horribly-1998 windows media player) so now i can listen to jmk's music, as well as get my goatlord fix. anyway, he sent me this and he claims that it scares him. freud would have a lot to say about it (and he'd probably agree).

the rumors are true: james blunt really will fuck anything that moves. here he is pining away for a triangle on sesame street. he has a creepy weasle face. i like it when tully gets down. and i guess anderson cooper will be on soon, too. i used to have a little crush on him. it's the hair, okay?

the "preppy murderer" (TOTAL PRICK - read his sick story on wikipedia) got busted for selling coke, along with his girlfriend, who fell in love with him when he was on trial for murdering a girl in central park whom he had just picked up in a bar (his defense: it was rough sex that got out of hand). this reminds me - while i was unpacking i had e! on for background noise, and they had this "investigative reporting" (exploitation journalism) show on crime groupies - women who go after serial killers and convicted felons. they did a segment on danielle steele, who knows a thing or two about loving crazies, addicts and cons (sooo romantic). also, this reminds me of the errol morris first person dvd that pos and i watched - he interviews a bunch of randoms simply because they're interesting. one episode, "the killer inside me," is about a woman who dated a serial killer when they were teens, wrote a book about it, attracted the attention of the gainesville killer, and then they fell in love. when the judge asked him if he had anything to say during his trial, he started singing to her and she stood there beaming. she's totally fucked up. she wrote a song and made a video that's included in the errol morris show; she performs it in white face makeup with tiger stripes and it's about death row. or something. if you're into the bizarre, serial killer groupies is a good excursion.

these people (russian?) are my nominees for creepiest pet owners with a website. for starters, that's a goddamn puma, and secondly, the bathtub scene is porny, and thirdly, that poor chicken . . .

run!

these british designers want to help properly clothe you and find the most flattering fit - even if you are shaped like a brick or have a "hateful" (hahah) figure like "the bell." i am having a hard time deciding which shape best describes me and which shape (if any) i would prefer. one thing's for sure: gray tank tops with gray workout capris is no one's good look.

and one last thing from jmk: the ending of seven, filmed with stuffed animals.

where troubles melt like lemondrops, away above the chimney tops

2007-10-17T22:35:00.000-05:00

just wanted to give a shout-out to recent additions to the in rainbows cover art made by fans.

check out the link here.

i quite enjoy this project and hope that this becomes a trend.

on a similar rainbow note, i love the cover of the new cat power album.

"and i'm not sorry/it's human nature" - madge

2007-10-17T20:51:00.000-05:00

packing blowz.

just wanted to take some time out of putting random items like a unicorn cake pan and a cd book of burned discs into the same box. i spent some time this week updating my address, being all proactive so i don't miss mail and such, very adult of me. it's amazing how many fucking people you have to tell - not just the post office but the dmv, your bank, all of your credit cards, your insurance company, your 401k people, the student loan people, the gas company, the electric company, the cell phone company, ticketbastard, and all of the magazines you subscribe to. i canceled my renters insurance. i closed a credit card that i hadn't used in a while. people only give a shit about your new address when you owe them money.

anyway, i read this in radar and wanted to share . . .

SAME AS IT EVER WAS
From anthropologist Donald Brown's list of more than 300 behaviors and social characteristics that are universal across all human cultures:
thumb sucking
tickling
language employed to manipulate others
preference for copulation conducted in private
gossip
disapproval of stinginess
nepotism
husbands older than wives
oedipus complex
belief in religion/the supernatural
socialization that includes toilet training
licking wounds
male domination of the political realm
baby talk.

you can read the whole interesting list here. i am pleased to learn that there are not (have never been?) cultures in which it is totally fine to just shit yourself and carry on with your day.

obligatory IN RAINBOWS post - i am a blogger who likes music, after all.

2007-10-12T18:40:00.000-05:00

when i told summer to go away, i meant to retreat slowly, not ditch me hardcore. it dropped like 30 degrees overnight and now i am all chilly and unprepared. i love bitching about the weather, by the way.

going to see spoon tonight, and i got tickets this morning to see tori amos in early november at the vic (which is general-admission and only fits about 1,000 people, including balcony). i saw her twice in high school: once in july of 1994 at the barrymore in madison that was great, and then a shitty one in october of the same year at the madison civic center. the show was cut real short, as she stopped playing about a half-hour after coming on stage, clutching her chest and walking off, and some dude came out and apologized and said that she wasn't feeling well and that we'd "have to do it again some other time," but there were never any refunds or rescheduled dates with these tickets honored. when we left, confused and disappointed, we (i went with a friend whose name was, seriously, aura) saw her loaded into an ambulance out back. this was very pre-internet, so we never found out what that was all about - i think i read somewhere that her management team cited food poisoning, but someone told me she did too much coke.

tori's best albums (boys for pele and from the choirgirl hotel) came out when i was in college, and i still listen to them, but i stopped caring for a long time. i'm pretty sure i went and saw her in college because i have a "raspberry swirl girl" necklace (which i obviously don't wear anymore), but i've blanked out on when and whre that was. i got the new album this summer and while i haven't bothered to look into her five personalities (i guess they all blog or something) and feed into the tori fanaticism, the album is okay and it ought to be a cool show.

wow, nice tangent. i guess i still am a superfan! or just pissed that my teenage high schooler self paid a lot of money to see a musician she loved and was treated to a shitty show and no refund. and never got any good gossip about what happened, which probably bothers me most of all.

on to the linx:

yay! michael k (my favorite blogger) interviewed in gridskipper here about why new york rulz.

the wapo reviews the new radiohead - they like it fine, but have a lot more to say about how it's being distributed (free, or pay what you want, or be a superfan and spend $80 for a deluxe cd/vinyl/book extravaganza). pjl ordered the boxset and burned me a copy of the 10 tracks and while i will always favor bends and ok computer era (and i do really like kid a and amnesiac, though it took me a few listens to get into them), hail to the thief and thom's solo album were dense and boring, and i was worried that this would continue the trend. it's not amazing, but i like it. you can buy/not buy it here.

this is a great project - people submitted what they thought the cover art for in rainbows should be and some of them are total radness.

two mysterious deaths (one a drag queen, one a twink drifter) in four days at a disabled gay man's apartment who wanted company and probably paid for theirs - sounds like a bad episode of law and order. click here.

i think that real dolls are gonna be all the rage (as a topic, at least) when lars and the real girl comes out, and as more and more articles and documentaries come out. i'm fascinated/totally creeped out by them. they now have a MALE real doll, for the lonely gay men and straight ladies out there who are too awkward to even be able to convince a real person to sex them up (or maybe they just prefer the latex silent version). why did they have to make the male "real doll" look like such a fratastic douche? also, i think he is named after charlie sheen, who, i learned this week, hacked up his real doll and threw it in a dumpster - pure class, and the picture of sanity, that one. click here for a very nsfw (BUT ITS NOT EVEN REAL, BOSS!) view of rubber charlie.

oh, and and for your average lonely social reject into japanese animation, or "anime," as the kidz call it, there is - anna mae! get it? the huge eyes and tits scares me. there is nothing "real" about that one. the whole thing is too creepy. which is worse, gross exaggerations of the female body or eerily realistic ones? shudder, either way.

cuteness overload: tiny baby animals on fingers just a click away.

slate has a new, interesting slide show: the history of the vibrator! here's a sample: "Vibrators came back into the mainstream in the 1990s, thanks not to radical feminists but to the Reagan administration. With the public health threat of AIDS looming, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop mailed out a list of safe-sex options to every household in the land in the late 1980s. Vibrators were on it." it's, uh, nsfw.

new horrible tattoo, courtesy of death from above - click here.

we almost lost a musical genius last week. and no, it wasn't mandy moore (my OTHER equally embarrassing guilty pleasure).

okay. have a good weekend.

i'm done with summer. please end now.

2007-10-09T21:56:00.000-05:00

so the chicago marathon was this weekend and it was basically a death match clusterfuck (even the ny times wrote about it here). firstly, i don't understand why the fuck it's in the 80s in OCTOBER. global warming clearly exists. secondly, the marathon was totally poorly managed and fucked up. tc and sb ran it - here is part of an email she sent the next day:

Despite the statements the race director has made in the news, I can assure you that there was not enough water/gatorade along the course. Most of the official race aid stations I approached either didn't have gatorade or didn't have anything at all. The runners around me and I resorted to running off the course to find water fountains, drinking out of the nasty ass reflecting pools/fountains in front of residential high rises and running into convenience stores to buy liquids.

gross. also, she didn't even get to finish - they called it off when she was on mile 16. what a pisser.

postsecret brings people together, sometimes in creepy ways that i wont be participating in, but hey, that's cool for you if it makes you happy; i'm glad that SOMETHING does. sometimes i wanna slash my throat after reading the latest collection.

reality tv is unethical and lame: When the sister of a woman who appeared on ABC's "Extreme Makeover" committed suicide in 2004, the contestant sued the network for wrongful death and other charges. The contestant, who was competing to win free plastic surgery but lost, claimed that her sister had felt so guilty about mocking her appearance on the program that she killed herself. ABC settled the case for an undisclosed amount last year.

what's not to like? - bunnies, playdoh, and my favorite stones song. watch her e.

super funny post from death from above here.

i'm not sure if there will ever be peace in the middle east, but at least the oasis vs blur feud is officially over.

is bob barker as big of a bastard as everyone says? he's like everyone's favorite rich uncle, who gives you crates of dish soap and avocado-hued dishwashers for your birthday, and you know that he's a dirty old man with wandering hands, but he cares so much about neutering, so you forgive him for it. well, another employee is suing and describes it as "an atmosphere of terror on the show." come to think of it, bob does look like the undead, so . . .

the best iphone review published this fall via mcsweeney's. thanks to ea for the link.

i looooooove it when local news anchors fuck up. i spent a lot of time watching various links online - some fellow nerds have even compiled lengthy best-ofs. this one is short and super funny, i'm gonna assume that this guy was demoted to covering church carnivals. people sent me some after i shared the ones above - zp sent me this weather man (screamy freakout) and this slip-up, which is the only proof that someone at fox news has insight (they predicted that it would be on youtube). tb sent me this excruciating sports reporter's horrible report - the four minutes feels more like 20.

so, yeah, back to packing up my apartment. i need more boxes.

parking lot art

2007-10-05T16:12:00.000-05:00

this is one of my favorite works of art in chicago: a huge blown-up photograph printed onto a tarp hanging on the side of a columbia college building in the south loop. i get to see it from the orange line when i ride north in the mornings. i took a photo of it lollapalooza weekend when we walked past the lot.

click to enlarge - the small size on the blog doesn't do it justice.

new barfroom!

2007-10-04T14:46:00.001-05:00

the bathroom has been redone, just in time for pos' sister to come visit (she lives in ireland with her husband and three kids, and she and the youngest are arriving tomorrow) and for me to move in (october 20 and i need to start packing). behold the difference that new tile, a new window, etc can make.

no more tub floor appliques! no more mysterious hole patched up with plastic and duct tape! i love new construction smell.

and i love pos. he's so cute and sweet and he set his phone so that it plays matthew sweet's "girlfriend" when i call him.

unicorn!

excellent before and afters. we had to return the curved shower curtain because it stuck out too far.

i had the kooky "three's company" theme song in my head for the first three days i was in town.

2007-10-04T09:48:00.000-05:00

i hear that san diego is a really nice city. i wouldn't know - i pretty much worked the entire time i was there, attending meetings and receptions and dinners and even a work-related 5k. the best times i had were: going to star club with jmk, which purports itself to be one of the top-20 dives in the country (it was gross and very well-lit, not a good combo, but fun and cheap); going to some really swank mod bar in the barrio with some clients and not being able to get a cab to come out and pick us up for well over an hour; going out for mexican and beers with coworkers, which included jmk and five girls, and a table of cute brits sent him a beer to cheers him and tell him that they don't know how he does it, but he's the man. it was cute - we were even sitting around the table in a way that made jmk the center of attention, like we were his harem.

i watched vh1 while getting ready in the morning and that is apprently the only time of day when they play videos, and i saw all sorts of lame shit but i also caught the new silverchair song, "straight lines," and i swear to god that i cannot get it out of my head. i don't even know if it's any good - it has hooked itself into my brain and will not let go. download here and be warned that it might follow you around, too. alls i know about silverchair is that they were famous at like 15, the lead singer was manorexic, and he married natalie "torn" imbruglia. and i have never liked them. until this song.

stereogum released a ten-year anny collection of ok computer covers (that was 10 years ago? wow), and has now done the same with REM's automatic for the people (at the 15 year mark, which makes me feel even more old now). i was so excited for this album to come out - i got really into REM when i was 14 - all of my birthday presents that year from my friends were the back-catalogue cds and they all came in longboxes (remember those?). i had my dad go to musicland (the same one that i would later toil in for a quarter over minimum wage) on the day that automatic came out because i had to babysit, and we all know how very important it is to get an album the day it comes out. i fucking worshipped michael stipe - i thought he was hott and sensitive and brilliant and i stopped eating meat and it was like the best moment of my life when i found out that my mom had to go to athens, ga, for work, and that she was going to bring me along. anyway, go enjoy the covers. not as good as the originals, of course.

stole this from goldenfiddle - it is "what happens when you take a good idea and a retarded idea and mash them together" - lolsecretz!

also from goldenfiddle - a page featuring all of the directorial and commercial work of david "seven, zodiac, fight club" fincher. i can't watch these at work cuz i am blocked from downloading quicktime (as well as itunes, which is why i suffer constantly. i am forced to use the shitastic windows media player and i hates it).

i rarely trust companies' assertions that they give back to the community (walmart can suck it), or that they want to protect their consumers (like, this page on the rj reynolds website is clearly only there to cover their asses), and it doesn't impress me that you can now get apple slices at mcdonalds when the menu looks like this, but this dove commercial is really good, and i heard the ex ceo of mcdonald's speak in san diego, and he made me want to build a ronald mcdonald house for sick kids and their families with my own money.

radar interviews siouxsie sioux. she has very interesting plans for michael vick if he ever runs into her. she wrote one of my personal anthems (though it is, like "christine sixteen," spelled wrong) - "christine, the strawberry girl."

and now: a stuffed uterus. but safe for work. really.

for people who hate to work, and want to fly low-tech computer animated helicopters, click here.

not sure how this will be, but am curious to hear the reviews: new strange film where they splice interview audio with kurt cobain so that he narrates a documentary about his life. trailer found here.

headline.

2007-09-26T21:11:00.000-05:00

you can go ahead and blame my job for my silence. oh, and i'm going to san diego for like a week for work, so i might be silent for yet another long stretch. OR i might be so bored in meetings that i sneak in some blogtime. we'll see how it goes.

jmk sent me this clip of old dudes mocking indie rock. funny.

sb sent this to me and told me to thank pos for saving me from my otherwise-inevitable future: as the woman that lives in this apartment. my favorite part is when she throws cat chow on the floor like she's scattering corn for chickens on a farm - and the cats go apeshit.

interesting article. great headline. from jmk.

my friend daniel is a man of many talents: he ran for congress (new haven green party), rooker pointer, groom-to-be (and i'm a bridesmaid), and a poet. his latest is published in the apple valley review - go here, go down to daniel sumrall (i counted down to the 34th name) and clickit. i like it. i don't know anything about poetry, but i like it.

my mom called me to let me know that she saw some white comforters at tj maxx (she and my dad are kinda obsessed with hitting that store at least once a week - i fear that they will turn into my aunt barb, who, upon retirement, went to target, walmart, shopko and kmart EVERY DAY after her daily breakfast at hardee's. then she moved to florida, where i can only assume she keeps a similar schedule. her life in general is gross). i had told her that pos and i wanted to get a white comforter or duvet, meaning like at christmas or something, and it's funny that she went looking for it right away. i mention this because it got me to thinking how weird it is to call it a "comforter" - like, boo hoo, i am sad, i will wrap myself in this warm down-filled blanket and calm myself down because that is its purpose, a big swaddler for adults. this reminds me of when pos and i park in lots that require your ticket to be validated by the store or movie theater so you don't have to pay full price. we wander around looking for the validation machine or the customer service desk and one of us will wimper "will someone please validate me?" and the other person will say something along the lines of "you ARE a good person. you are worthy of being loved" - you know, to help them feel better, to validate their self-worth.

yeah. anyway.

WTF is with the phil spector hung jury? oh, and his 27-year-old wife is a total dumbass - surprised?

heather from iafyaf interviews brmc here.

the nyt hangs out with tina fey here.

you know my love for hideous tattoos: here's one that's retarded, here's one that's fucking stupid, and this guy is pretty much simply terrifying.

off to cali.

"an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars... our great depression is our lives" - tyler durden

2007-09-18T23:19:00.000-05:00

my job has been su-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-cking hardcore lately, but i keep doing awesome personal-life things, so i feel schized out - boo hoo during the day, radness at night and weekends. in the last week i got to see wilco play the pritzker pavilion, a frank-gehry-designed beauty in millennium park, for $10 lawn seats (the view didn't suck, though - special shout-out to pjl, who staked out an amazing spot front and center of the lawn, a mere 20 feet from expensive tickets - i made the right choice when i hired him in august). they played for like two hours, including older stuff that i love, and jeff tweedy was in friendly spirits, saying goofy shit like "NAILED IT!" after a song. the show was supposed to be a benefit for a homeless organization, and they handed out commemorative magnets after the show (too bad they're ugly). chicago critic snark jim derogatis rated the show nearly perfect. hearing "california stars" live was perfect for me.

also in the last week, got to see rilo kiley, black rebel motorcycle club, and won tickets to see an upright citizens brigade sketch and improv show. all were great in their own, very different ways. i was surprised with the number of underage screamy girls at rilo kiley, shouting at jenny lewis about how much they love her, and was thoroughly creeped out by this nasty old dude with a greasy white ponytail and hmo glasses who was leaning against the railing a few feet away from us and didn't watch a single song - he was too busy staring at said underage girls. hurl in my mouth, seriously. brmc was awesome because they're dark and hott - "killing the light" is one of my favorite songs of the year, and i wasn't all that excited when pos bought the new album when it came out, but i listen to it all the time. and the upright citizens brigade show was funny - three cute jewish boys and their special blend of humor and pathos. eb and i went on a little dinner and comedy date because sf, her husband of four months, is aways being sent to other cities for work, and i wanted to treat the lady to a night out. without, like, paying for anything.

irish musician simple kid opened for brmc, and as soon as i saw him i wanted to hate him - hippie hair and headband and poncho and banjo and harmonica in holder. but then he cued up his laptop, played his multimedia show on the screen and stared playing, and he was really funny and smart and the music was good - he reminded me of early beck. his duet with kermit the frog was a little too precious for me, but i'm gonna have to look into his albums.

jmk likes to tell me battered-women and women-are-stupid jokes. he also sent me this excellent onion news network story about how there are no battered women, okay? they're just clumsy, alright? my name is motherfucking luka, man, so if you hear something late at night . . .

pos and i had a bet where i won $20 because i knew that ed from live is the waiter in fight club and he didn't believe me, but then he won it back because i thought that the soundtrack was by the chemical brothers, but it was by the dust brothers. nerds.

my mother sends me and my siblings shit like this. too bad this wasn't around when i was growing up - she would have bought it for us fo sho.

you know, i spend a lot of time on the internet - reading the news, trolling for new music, communicating with my friends over email and the blog, finding information - and sometimes i happen upon the inexplicable and the so very random. i spent a lot of time looking at these people.

this is pretty amazing, mostly because that outfit is EXACTLY what i just bought online yesterday.

i love directing you to mj's blog - he posts the best shit, like this.

check out this awesome video by awesome chicago band office.

and i will leave you with three videos to face your phobias, courtesy of three posts from one day on best week ever: claustrophobia (that wave pool looks so refreshing), evil clowns, and dane cook singing.

i have to go to bed now so that i can get up and go to the job that i am really not liking right now. pisser.

home improvement: not just a terrible tv show.

2007-09-14T18:42:00.000-05:00

pos owns a very cute brick house on the southside of chicago, a block away from his parents and around the corner from his brother (he is an ideal irish catholic son). all of the houses in his neighborhood (garfield ridge) are 1950s tract houses, post-wwii american dreams, and pos' is a little brick raised ranch with three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a front room, and a basement. it has beautful wood floors and pos keeps it in great shape. other than the obvious difficulties of my move (longer commute, farther away from my friends, no gay bars and coffeeshops and overpriced bistros that i often need to be surrounded by in order to feel safe and happy), i am so excited to get to live with pos in his cute house. i already have grand plans for our typical wintery nights that involve very wholesome activities like cooking dinner together, shoveling the sidewalks, drinking tea, me working on a paint-by-number and watching netflix together - my very own 1950s american dream! who knew i was so goddamn domesticated?

to get ready for my move, pos and i painted his bedroom over labor day. i am not the first girlfriend to live with him, which is fine, since, before we started dating, i had decided that i was done with men my own age, that unattached boys under 30 are narcissistic whiny bitches, and that i would make a fabulous second wife. i didn't want a bitter divorced dude who resented women and their child support payments or, worse, a widower who will always mourn the perfect angel he lost and who you will never live up to, but someone who had already been in a long-term committed relationship and it didn't happen to work out and he learned from it and is better in the long run from it . . . which is exactly what pos is. even better, in retrospect, that he never did marry his girlfriend of years and years, they just lived together. i met her at a wedding this summer and she was very nice and even though i don't feel like an adult (just a 14-year-old who gets away with a lot), i love that we can all act like adults and that i can move into an adult house with my adult boyfriend and live an adult life. i just hope that he doesn't make me hide things like my bee gees lunchbox or welcome back kotter board game or shitty thrift store art, as they are currently central pieces of decor in my apartment.

so anyway, the ex asked him if she could paint and he said of course, so she chose blood-red for the front room (one accent wall) and lavendar for their bedroom, with one wall rag-washed a dark purple. this was, of course, hideous, but up it stayed for years, until i asked if i could paint, and he said PLEASE, and we went with a nice blue ("lakeshore") for the bedroom and a nice brown ("smokehouse") for the accent wall in the front room that we'll probably paint this weekend.

the most exciting thing, though, is that pos is redoing his bathroom. i had asked if he could please fix the broken tiles in the shower before i moved in (his home repairs had involved a sheet of plastic and some duct tape), and he agreed, and went one further and decided to update the whole room, which technically could use it but wasn't necessary. we went to menards last night and spent almost two hours loading up a huge cart with a new sink, faucets, mirror, cabinet, towel racks, all of the stuff that you need in a bathroom and never think about. we're getting a curved shower curtain rod like a hotel room (seriously, when did i become this domesticated? i am unfamiliar with this bizarre giddiness over home improvements and repairs) and we spent a lot of time debating the attributes of various shower heads. i was so surprised at how inexpensive everything was - did you know that you can buy a good, normal toilet for $100? i'm not one to know anything about such things, but that doesn't seem much to me, considering how useful a toilet is.

one thing that pissed me off, though, was that we were standing in the aisle at the store with a huge overloaded cart, and this lame dude in a menards vest and a creepy mustache walks up to us and asks pos if we're finding everything all right. he smiles and says yeah, thanks, and i start to say "actually, we still need to find a faucet for the tub . . . " but the guy just ignores me and is all like "are you redoing your bathroom?" and is totally kissing pos' ass, and doesn't even acknowledge me for the entire three minutes he stands there, wasting our time with small talk. what an asshole. i'm a woman, so i don't know anything about important manly shit like picking out a new toilet paper holder. fuck you, menards man. i get very senstitive about such things, and noticed that the only women working at menards are either cashiers or in the plant section. granted, it was 8:00 on a thursday night, but fuck off.

when db and i were little we would sing "save no money at retards" to the tune of the jingle "save big money at menards." even as a kid i knew they sucked.

photos: the bedroom before and after, plus some flowers i planted in pots for the front porch.

the important issues that define our world.

2007-09-12T18:48:00.000-05:00

i have a site meter for the blog, which kind of tracks who reads my blog. it's hard to deduce who it is most of the time - a lot of the addresses are unknown, and i happen to know that my work computer and the computers of co-workers who know about the blog show up as being in reston, va. it's funny for me to wonder about who these people are that are reading. like the uiuc person - who are you? you read all the time, and i have no idea who you are.

the site meter is free, which is a good price for it. it's not very accurate, it doesn't really tell me much of anything, but the two features to it that i really enjoy are "by location" and "by referral." by location is, obviously, where my peeps are at, and by referral is how random people found my blog. i love seeing that people found me linked off of other people's blogs, or from the technocrati boxes that the wapo uses in their stories that i link to, or that they typed in a series of words that, sometimes improbably, led them to reading me. one of my favorites was the term "hot sexy lade" (i think they meant lady), which was what some sexually-repressed person from saudi arabia googled - and, rather disappointingly for them, i imagine, scissors happy showed up.

i stole the chinese hospital sign photo from mj's blog, and i am going to now adapt one of his ongoing blog features, where he lists noteworthy names that he has come across. a sometimes-feature new to scissors happy: weird referrals from the site meter!

some of them aren't weird, per se, but they really demonstrate what it is that people are searching for online and happen to coincide with things that i have posted. apparently, at the end of the summer of 2007, people are really interested in hanson reportedly being oprah's worst guests ever, the fact that anderson copper is a tool and/or gay, and bizarre uses for scissors.

"anderson cooper is a tool" - 8/22/07 - boulder, co
"ghetto shield" - 8/23/07 - unknown, united states
bachelorette size queen - 8/28/07 - bern, switzerland
david bowie doesn't wear fur - 8/28/07 - unknown, united states
"rick springfield's teeth" - 8/30/07 - henrietta, ny
"oprah's worst guests hanson" - 9/5/07 - halifax, nova scotia, canada
"worst guest on oprah,hanson" - 9/5/07 - king of prussia, pa
"do you want whale sperm with that?" - 9/7/07 - chicago, il
fallin get me happy - 9/7/07 - saletto, emilia-romagna, italy

oprah hanson – 9/7/07 – unknown, united states

hanson music band oprah's worst guest – 9/8/07 – unknown, united states
oprah hanson worst guest – 9/8/07 – henryetta, ok

boot and rally you pussy - 9/8/07 - unknown, united states

"anderson cooper" "hott" -gay - 9/8/07 - germany
asphyxiation scissors - 9/9/07 - milwaukee, wi
"anderson cooper" "wit" -gay 9/10/07 - germany
hanson oprahs worst guest - 9/10/07 - duluth, ga
anderson cooper is a tool - 9/11/07 - gainesville, fl
hanson on oprah worst guest - 9/11/07 - regina, saskatchewan, canada
asian head scissors - 9/11/07 - unknown, united states

also: a huge number of people find my blog through image searches for this.

having a job really takes away from the things i enjoy doing.

2007-09-10T18:58:00.000-05:00

i really thought that i would have more time to blog, but i was wrong.

happy one-year anniversary to me and my magical unicorn boyfriend! pos sent me a pretty bouquet of flowers to my office on friday, which was a total surprise and which girls really like, especially at work, because work sucks and it is often that the best part of my work day is when he calls me. he usually asks to speak to me in his tom brokaw voice when i answer my phone and pretends to be calling to ask me about the fleecing of america or some other such nonsense. he bought me a beautiful marc jacobs watch for our anny (i try not to be a label whore but i am for marc jacobs) and i got him an 8 gig nano that i filled with bands that he likes and songs that he bought on my itunes account when i wasn't looking (although i did delete devo's "working in a coal mine" and that horrible "evidently chickentown" song, because i hate both of them). i could have cut a bitch when apple released the new fancy nanos like a week after i had purchased pos' gift and like the day after i had opened its packaging to load it with songs. i must admit that i really really want an itouch (despite its lame name) now. all things in due time, i know - i just get mad tech envy.

pos and i celebrated in style this weekend - we saw the flaming lips on friday (check out pitchfork photos here) and went to the hideout block party saturday to see art brut, the frames and andrew bird (our first date was the friday night of the hideout music fest last year). the flaming lips were amazing, as always. before the show a group of guys in red jumpsuits passed out thousands of red laser pointers, tossing them into the crowd. this made waiting for the band to start quite enjoyable - everyone was flashing the lights all over the venue, shooting one another, laughing. in its own strange way, it really got everyone in a happy and friendly mood. the band emerged from a silver spaceship thing from the ceiling, except for wayne, who walked down the spaceship in his giant plastic bubble and rolled around on the crowd's hands for a while before taking the stage. later in the show, he held a big circular mirror up, they turned off all the lights, and we were instructed to shine our lasers at him. it was beautiful - a man made out of red lights beaming lights back at us. i suppose that if i didn't love the lips so much i would think that their alien/spaceship/balloons/costumes/lasers schtick was retarded, but i think that wayne is a total genius and i love that his music is entirely life-affirming and fun without being insincere or simple, and his critiques of bush and the war in iraq are the same. they make me really happy. i smiled and laughed and danced and yelled throughout the whole show. the hideout was fine. the music was okay. i think that i need to stick to indoor venues to enjoy seeing a band at this point - i'm sick of festivals.

enough about me. here is good reading:

jmk sent me this brilliant onion article - "pitchfork gives music 6.8." the best sentence is the last one. i don't even bother reading the bitchfork anymore. self-important and wordy bastards. and yes, i know that i just linked to their flaming lips photos - they are a necessary evil in my music-obsessed life.

tc and sb did the chicago city chase race in august and she blogged about it - so rad! i love that their team name was "strangely asian" - which is what we always tell sb he looks like. tc is allowed to say this, as she really is asian. check out her cuddling the alligator - so cute! she called me at like 10 am to see if i could google a clue for her but i was asleep and the unsecured internet signal i was leeching off of was so rudely taken away from me, so i was of no assistance. sorry guys - but it looks like you didn't need my help anyway.

this just strikes me as a really bad idea.

i have tons more to post but work has to win out. i leave you with the knowledge that there is more than one man out there with the hairy-armpit/burlesque-dancer-crotch tattoo. see evidence here and here.

just hit shuffle

2007-09-04T22:01:00.000-05:00

today's song: "as tears go by" - marianne faithful (watch a 1965 clip of her lip synching the song on british tv here).

best known (unfairly) as mick jagger's ladyfriend and sister morphine herself, marianne is often overlooked as being a great musician. she has released some cool stuff - i have to admit that i don't have a lot of her music, but i do really like "broken english" and "wherever i go." i'll have to check out her recent collaborations with damon albarn, jarvis cocker, pj harvey, beck, and other similarly rad artists. she re-recorded this song in the 90s and her voice is totally ravaged by smoking and her long struggles with addiction - it's strangely beautiful and touching.

check out her wikipedia page for her notorious history - she makes lindsay lohan look like a girl scout. they don't happen to mention the urban legend that the cops, during their 1967 drug bust, found mick eating a candy bar that was sorta, um, inside of her.

and now for something totally bizarre: marianne, dressed as a nun, singing "i've got you, babe" with david bowie during the ziggy stardust era. tv used to be so compelling.

the unfinished post

2007-08-30T19:12:00.000-05:00

pos made some comment about bloggers last night and i said "whatever, dude, you have a blog" and he said "i don't have a blog - i have a RANT." noted.

carol moved out. she is gone. in her wake are two empty apartments (empty except for the bugs) that look like they haven't been cleaned in at least 20 years. the landlord let some scrap metal guys come and take all of the ancient appliances. the doors were left wide open (of course) to the unit that she lived in across from me, and pos and i ventured in for a quick look. it looked like a crack house - peeling paint, disgusting bathroom, clouded-with-filth windows, everything just decaying. our apartments are very old but, when actually kept up, really charming - old fireplaces, built-in bookshelves and hutches, moulding and woodwork throughout. hers will require thousands of dollars in renovations. i would suggest torching it for the insurance money, but i think that would probably burn out my apartment, too. freaked out by the bugs we saw in her kitchen, and then seeing a bug on the rug under the coffeetable, i am miserable with the thought of vermin and nastiness coming to live with me now that she's gone. we even threw out my rug (it was only $5 on clearance at urban outfitters and a dirt magnet anyway, impossible to clean or vacuum) in disgust, because i don't want anything germy and nesty available for them to make a new home in. puuuuuke. when i first moved in i loved my apartment and was totally ready to settle in for a few years, but things change, especially when you don't plan on them changing. i'll be moving in with pos (!!!!!!!!!!!) in october, so at this point i just want to make sure that none of the little fuckers move with me.

excellent blog feministing posted this mad tv sketch that mocks the dangerous minds/freedom writers cliches of the nice white lady teacher who saves the inner city kids from themselves. this is awesome for me because my mom is actually a nice white lady who teaches alternative ed to kids who were expelled from the school district.

the onion av club discusses tv shows that were popular and then suddenly were forgotten or shoved aside (the o.c., twin peaks, miami vice, etc). the clip of arsenio hall (i loved that show when i was in middle school) interviewing vanilla ice is great - that bitch has always sucked, and i love how the entire discussion is about a beef between him and mc hammer. i can't believe that this was EVER culturally relevant. i like your spangly outfit, robert van winkle - i'm totally gonna shave some verticle stripes into my eyebrow tonight in homage.

i'll get you, pussy f ace!!!!

from popbitch: The Black Widow: Sheryl Crow's cold hand of fate

Perhaps Owen Wilson's real problem was to get involved with Sheryl Crow? Because Sheryl is the Black Widow, The Angel of Death. Sheryl and Owen dated at the turn of the century. Only seven years later Owen's life is in disarray. Join the club, mate.
* Ex-boyfriend Kevin Gilbert - died from autoerotic asphyxiation.
* Ex-boyfriend Lance Armstrong - testicular cancer.
* Crow had a hit with Leaving Las Vegas, based on a book by John O'Brien, who committed suicide soon after its release.
* Ex-boyfriend Kid Rock - has Paris Hilton sniffing around him now.
* She was Jacko's backing singer. Need we say more?

i have two options: finish this post or wait until tomorrow when i actually have time. i think i'll just post it and maybe i'll even find time tomorrow to write a new (and way better) post. YAY. we all win.

“Great fury, like great whiskey, requires long fermentation.” - Truman Capote

2007-08-28T19:33:00.000-05:00

tc got me the best xmas present last year: the onion daily calendar, one of those tear-off paper cubes. every day i get a good chuckle out of it, and i hang the ones that especially speak to me on my bulletin board. today's is good - an op ed column entitled "women have to stop starving themselves past the point of hotness."

pos and i recently went and saw a terribly juvenile and profane (in all good ways) movie, superbad, and one in all bad ways, the ten. superbad is awesome. the ten sucked so badly that, 20 minutes in, pos whispered to me, "if we leave now, we can still make the bourne ultimatum" - which, incidentally, was playing at a theater miles away. he now feels entitled to make me see a horseshit movie despite my objections as payback. the cast looked great, and i thought it looked funny in previews. i was wrong.

i love this craigslist post, and i love this one, too, for entirely different reasons. and i totally want to be friends with this guy, because he made me laugh.

here is another smoking gun mugshot collection of interesting shirts worn by interesting people.

i came across cnn explaining beth ditto to their readers and was touched by the gesture. i then went trouncing around looking for random beth stuff and found this video of her singing "sweet dreams (are made of these)" with mika in scotland last month, but it wasn't as good as it should have been. also, she writes a weekly advice column called "what would beth ditto do?" for the guardian. sigh. brits are so much cooler than americans.

i am very sorry that i neglected to give eb a birthday shout-out last wednesday. to celebrate, we went to north pond for brunch on sunday, which was a bit expensive and didn't totally blow me away (though i did enjoy my soup, i shouldn't have ordered the trout. not brunchy enough and i was jealous of everyone's french toast). that's okay, though, because one of my hobbies is going to overpriced restaurants. i can't wait to drag pos to otom, which is a more mainstream (and cheaper) version of moto. eb had requested months ago to get her a handbag for her bday, as i am a handbag fiend and she trusts my taste, but this has spiraled out of control for me. i still haven't found the perfect bag for her, and i am afraid that i might be taking this task a little too seriously. in the running are bags i found at aldo, nordstrom rack, that's her bag, and strange cargo. i need to just bite it and pick one already.

i love pineapples and vintage ads. i don't think that jezebel is really on to something here, but it would be funny if they were right.

jmk and i just ate lunch in our sad cafeteria room on the 2nd floor and pretty much just said terrible things about our co-workers and laughed. we also talked about halloween costumes and i said that i ought to carry around a box of alli and wear a shit-stained skirt and he said that i ought to walk around and drop "tracer foods" out of my skirt, which totally grossed me out and made me laugh, as he had sent me this random clip from adult swim a long time ago, in which dr steve brule tells you about tracer foods in his "digestive problems" lecture. the best work john c. reilley has committed to film (but not for long - the exquisitely-retarded-looking walk hard will be out at xmas, featuring jack white as elvis and paul rudd as lennon). check out "digestive problems" and then watch "cool clothes," "fruits and vegetables, brules rules on milk and on leaves, his report on cars, etc. digestive problems and tracer foods remains my favorite.

jmk had also sent me this a while back, noting that it's too bad i don't have a use for them any more. it's true - i haven't been a smoker since april 1. when i went to connecticut for work last week i got to attend a lecture and meet the dude who invented chantix. he's an awesome dutch middle-aged guy who looks like pete townshend and was really nice to chat with. he seemed pleased to meet someone who had actually used the drug that he spent 15 years in a lab creating. also, it is called champix in every country but the usa - the fda didn't like the name and made them change it. i AM a champ, though.

my friend ea sent this website out a while ago (i am cleaning out the inbox, or partially) and i was also both repulsed and amazed. i think that it's great for the disabled, the elderly, and terrence howard. what was even better is that his friend hit reply-all and said

You can play twinkle twinkle little star if you start with the older guy and move left. Here's the notation:
Old, Asian, Chump, Asian, Old, Old, Old
Asian, Asian, Asian, Old, Black, Black
Old, Asian, Chump, Asian, Old, Old, Old, Old
Asian, Asian, Old, Asian, Chump

wow. just . . . wow.

rm let me know what really caused the twin cities bridge collapse, and i'm not surprised, as BIRDS. ARE. EVIL. although, i will admit that this bird is amazing and awesome to watch - from a distance, on my computer.

yay! i love it when self-hating hypocritical flamers whose entire careers are based on persecuting other gay men are exposed for who they are! this story could only have been more awesome if george michael had also been there, fellating him. i bet his wife and kids are thrilled.

i'm sure you've already seen this, as it happened last friday during the miss teen usa pageant (you were watching, right? wasn't everyone?) and was sent to me many times, but it just doesn't get old. so pretty. so very pretty. and so fucking dumb.

what is it with grossly misshapen diseased chinese men? this dude's hand looks like a bag of penises (or huge dildos, actually). thank you, as always, jmk.

tb sent me this great interview with danny boyle - he talks about sunshine and the plans for the trainspotting sequel (rads).

nr sent me something very disturbing (and super hilarious if true) last month - tmz mentioned that hanson was oprah's worst guest ever. ummmm - really? worse than tom cruise? worse than james frey? worse than ANYONE ELSE EVER? which, naturally, really really made me curious, and i even asked a friend whose sister is a producer for the big o, and even he told me that she had never heard that - so either oprah employees are sworn to secrecy (most likely) or this story is just funny and wrong.

and, finally: the great debate of our time discussed. other than, naturally, "who's the boss?" i go with judith light on that one.