I generally try to steer clear from gender-stereotypes and/or making trite, overused statements that girls in shows like Dawson's Creek make (can you tell that I'm out of the loop on current horrendously girly television shows?), but seriously:

I do NOT understand boys.


And loosely-related, I've realized this week that I have the inability to differentiate between the two spellings of stear/steer and have had to (several times this week) look it up on the internet.

I think I'm gonna have to stop discussing driving-related stuff in conversation.


And not related at all:

After spending a good half-an-hour reassuring a kind soul that it's okay to be socially awkward, even though it might not SEEM like it sometimes, I apparently took it upon myself to demonstrate this fact by immediately getting uncomfortable in the conversational presence of a new intern who had come over to introduce himself to me and blurting out that I had thought he was imaginary.

Which would've been ok to blurt out if he'd been in on any of the lengthy conversations me and my cube-mate have had about whether he really exists or not.

But since he wasn't, I suspect I shan't be seeing him anywhere near my cube again any time soon.

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The first thing that popped into my head this morning was Erin McKeown's face, and I've gotta say, I didn't mind it one bit, since she is the cutest thing ever invented.





Mmmmm, yes.

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I never ever check to see what google-searches/referalls have gotten people to this blog (though it's been a regular topic of discussion over at my vegan food blog), but I'll be damned if I'm not thankful that I just randomly decided to check it out today.

I cannot stop laughing...

"Making fake braces"
"Self fucking"
"Pia Zadora naked"
"unsure of grammar"
and
"hold his pee"

God bless you, sitemeter, for bringing unexpected and idiotic joy to my day.

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I think if I were to choose a song that I'd *WANT* to be the soundtrack to my life right now, it'd be THIS one. And I'd be running down the streets late at night with someone, like we were getting chased, hand in hand, breath rasping in my throat as I laugh and the cold autumn air whips at my face, and then we'd jump in a car and drive really fast somewhere, and then we'd jump out of the car and I'd pound on someone's door and they'd answer it all groggy-eyed and half asleep, and I'd kiss them for no reason other than to do it, and then I'd jump up and down and cheer a little bit and run back to the car, and then we'd drive really fast somewhere else, and then maybe we'd stretch out under stars or beneath a bridge by a river, and then maybe I'd throw me getting laid somewhere in there. But mostly just because it's been a little while.

Picture all that in time to the song, and perhaps you'll feel me.

ADDENDUM: Then again, perhaps THIS SONG, which keeps finding its way into my earphones, would make a useful soundtrack instead. (I blame Maura for the fact that I even know this song. Even moreso for the fact that I now find it mortifyingly catchy.
Damn you, woman.)

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"The world is certainy a sudden place."

--Frankie, from McCullers' The Member of the Wedding

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Reasons I Think I Am Either Getting Old or Have Mono

1. In the past couple weeks, I've fallen asleep during the last 30 minutes of pretty much every movie I've watched. Even if I'm watching it at 7 o'clock at night.



2. I find myself getting all crotchety and thinking the following whenever one of two sets of annoying folks in my neighborhood are having their usual late weeknight parties:
   
   What a fucking waste of space these stupid white spoon-fed suburban assholes masquerading as hippies are, moving into the neighborhood, never seeming to actually work (unless partying and drinking counts as work) and yet somehow affording their quaint little apartments, and having this jack-ass sense of entitlement that gets them outside shout-talking or playing guitar at 3:30 in the morning and apparently blinds them to the fact that, despite the fact that *they* clearly don't have any sort of job or motivation or usefulness, some of us actually work and have to get up early in the morning.

The second one is clearly an indicator of mono. Clearly.

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How do you know when you really DIG a musician?

When they can sing a song that gives the notion of trepanation a wicked erotic charge.

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Yesterday, I'm sitting at a light, in the process of driving my car around aimlessly for 20 minutes so that a) my battery can recharge (it was dead yesterday morning) and b) the flat tire that I'd just pumped full of fix-a-flat can fix itself (have I mentioned the awesome love affair I have with my cars?), my head is completely clogged up from the stupid virus I've had for the past week, and I'm hacking like the little whooping cough kid who shows up on the Simpsons every once in a while, my lungs about ready to come crawling out of my mouth and bitchslap me for kicking the shit out of them, coughing so hard that my chin and neck are surely wobbling uncontrollably like some sweaty 500 lb. man, coughing so hard that little bits of spittle are spraying in a fine mist over my steering wheel, and the dude in the car next to me (who had way too high a voice for someone trying to mack on somebody else from their car window) goes to me, as the light turns green, "Hellooooooo there, sexy," with absolute seriousness (had he been joking and poking fun at my complete sick grossness, I think I might've turned and grinned the shit outta him in appreciation, but this was 100% seriousness) and I just thought, This is my life?

I then finished the rest of my drive and returned home to Crazy Electric Guitar Neighbor jamming out on his balcony with his crazy Sammy Hagar-esque riffs for the whole neighborhood to enjoy. And I thought, Yes. Yes it certainly fucking is.

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I must be one of the only people around that gets hand-clappingly geeked out to receive a message on their answering machine that says, in a horribly Transylvanian accent, and by a voice that sounds like no one I know and yet everyone I know, "Good evening, I vant to drink your blood" and nothing more.

Whoever it was who left it: a tip of the hat to you, my delightful Transylvanian friend.

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The Thing That You Will Be Like Yeah I Don't Care

Last night, as I was shout-singing The Pixies "Debaser" on my way home, I realized that I should probably look up the lyrics finally.

And I did.

What I'd always shout-sung as "And I am moon shock! I can loose ya!" (which I clearly knew COULDN'T be the lyrics since they made absolutely no sense) is actually "I am un chien andalusia," which is just wicked cool because it's alluding to Dali and Bunuel's movie Un Chien Andalou, which makes me feel extra-specially hip since the line about "Slicing up eyeballs" always *did* make me think of the title image from this very film, and which makes my misheard lyrics actually somehow surrealistically appropriate.

So I rock.

And Frank Black rocks even harder.

And all in a delightfully surrealistic type way.

Perhaps one day you can be surrealistical and cool just like us. Perhaps.

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Poetry

Seriously, Brigit Pegeen Kelly makes every word feel like this lush, decadent fig against your tongue. She never ceases to floor me with her poetry...

THE DRAGON

The bees came out of the junipers, two small swarms
The size of melons; and golden, too, like melons,
They hung next to each other, at the height of a deer's breast,
Above the wet black compost. And because
The light was very bright it was hard to see them,
And harder still to see what hung between them.
A snake hung between them. The bees held up a snake,
Lifting each side of his narrow neck, just below
The pointed head, and in this way, very slowly
They carried the snake through the garden,
The snake's long body hanging down, its tail dragging
The ground, as if the creature were a criminal
Being escorted to execution or a child king
To the throne. I kept thinking the snake
Might be a hose, held by two ghostly hands,
But the snake was a snake, his body green as the grass
His tail divided, his skin oiled, the way the male member
Is oiled by the female's juices, the greenness overbright,
The bees gold, the winged serpent moving silently
Through the air. There was something deadly in it,
Or already dead. Something beyond the report
Of beauty. I laid my face against my arm, and there
It stayed for the length of time it takes two swarms
Of bees to carry a snake through a wide garden,
Past a sleeping swan, past the dead roses nailed
To the wall, past the small pond. And when
I looked up the bees and the snake were gone,
But the garden smelled of broken fruit, and across
The grass a shadow lay for which there was no source,
A narrow plinth dividing the garden, and the air
Was like the air after a fire, or the air before a storm,
Ungodly still, but full of dark shapes turning.

--Brigit Pegeen Kelly

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"Apres Moi, Le Deluge"

Regina Spektor is that little girl who, at age 5, unexpectedly stands up in front of her parents' dinner party and, fingers scrunched around her poofy taffeta skirt, begins to sing so joyously that all goes quiet, her fingers obliviously pulling up her skirts until her underpants are showing, spinning and hopping, bouncy curls spinning and jouncing, while she belts out her song to the butterflies and moon and her cat Piddles, and everyone just stands there wanting to love her and bottle her joy and keep her 5 forever.

She is that.

And it is amazing to watch.

She started the night with an acappella version of "Ain't No Cover," beat her drumsticks on a wooden chair next to her piano for "Poor Little Rich Boy," sang accompanied by a beat-boxing Only Son to "Hotel Song," and charmingly flubbed up a nonetheless beautiful cover of "Real Love" by John Lennon, capping the night off with "Samson" as stars lit up the stage behind her.

She is beautiful. She is hypnotic. Her voice is so spooky and wonderful that it sometimes feels like you're witnessing the trembling wail of an angel. And she is filled with the big big joy and wonder of a little kid, smiling bashfully, talking shyly to the audience, giggling at herself in the middle of a song, curtsying and blowing kisses at the crowd, and, most importantly, infusing everyone in her presence with the pure bliss of childhood love, just for that short period of time until the house lights come back up and you have to go back out into the big world.

She makes you happy to be alive and to be able to see such beautiful things, and that's no easy feat.

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