project 365 #211: art still life

project 365 #211: art still life
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I woke up this morning with a Rhett Miller song in my head. This isn't surprising, since yesterday I finally got it together to put my Wal Mart special CD player thingie in the car - you know, it's one of those tape deck adapter things attached to a cheapass Walkman - and the CD I grabbed was Rhett Miller, The Instigator. This is because yesterday I was in the mood to emo out to that song that goes Am I Gonna Be Lonely For the Rest of My Life? In fact, I wanted to not just emo out but emo out at full speaker cracking volume and wail what's left of my lungs out as I drove down 240. Which I did. And it was good.

Then I listened again to the rest of the CD - most particularly, to this one song - the one that gets stuck in your head - and it goes, I kid you not, like this:

You come and you glow,
You hum and you hover
I cannot believe you are my lover.

Dude. Dude, you're fucking Tinker Bell. Did you not notice that she was a little on the short side?

bridge at malvern hills park

bridge at malvern hills park
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Well, Django's back. That didn't last long. Unfortunately, A's life seems to be too complicated right now for her to take care of what is, after all, her dog and thus there was a whole terrible late night argh argh argh thing with hysterical phone calls and shouting and all that sort of delightful thing. So naturally he's back at my house. He seems a bit chastened and quieter though - he's been back for almost 24 hours and he's only gnawed a bit on one of my Danskos, and since it's one that he already chewed up months ago, the extra damage is not too bad. And the fence reinforcement also seems to have worked. On the other hand, M was home all day with him today and that always helps; tomorrow will be an acid test. God. But I guess we all knew that of course I don't have the guts or toughness or whatever it is that is required to be like my mother or any of the sterner women of a previous generation who had no trouble banishing destructive dogs. Pity, that.

In other news I finally used the Barnes & Noble gift card my brother got me for mother's day and I am deliriously happily planning to never leave the house again except for work. Katherine Kerr! Charles Stross! Charles de Lint! and Iain M. Banks! Also, I got myself more Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica because Tiny Cities Made of Ashes is one of my favorite songs in the whole world. I most heartily recommend, by the way, the Pandora Modest Mouse station. So far of everything I've plugged into Pandora, that one comes out with the most diverse and coollest mix and I listen to it all day at work and it makes me happy. Plus it pretty much always plays not only Ike Reilly but also the Apples in Stereo and this is good.

Bummer Theatre

I have an old cartoon from the New Yorker in a scrapbook - it's Roz Chast and it shows a TV set that's saying "Welcome to Bummer Theatre! Every week something else that's not so hot happens!" In the next panel a man is looking from the TV and saying, "Well, I guess we're going to have to sell the farm." I love this cartoon. I love Bummer Theatre. And right now, I'm in it, drinking black coffee and smoking cigarettes and shaking because I am not, quite honestly, doing real well lately, so I made a mix CD from some random mp3s that were floating around my computer and uploaded it and if you would like them than here, for the next week only, they are. You will note that the Cranberries, Linger, is on this mix because it is one of my favorite bum out tunes but I have to say that if I ever find the person who decided to put it on heavy rotation at Ingles supermarkets, their life will not be happy for some time. I just went to the store and got ambushed by it yet again and this is not, alas, the first time this has happened and I hate it when it happens, argh, because I do not want to get all snuffly eyed in the fucking egg aisle.

Note: Click on the picture and it will become large enough to read the setlist so you can decide if you want this ginormous file or not.

Holiday Music

I confess, I am a total sucker for holiday music. I always have been, beginning in the days when I was rejected, year after year, for the elementary school choir. Teacher: "Almost! You're almost there, Felicity! Maybe next year!" I mean, wtf was she waiting for? My voice to break? I'm a girl, a, and b, if your chorister's voices are breaking in elementary school choir than you have more issues than a nice arrangement of the Gaudeamus will solve. At any rate, I still like it. A good version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen can make me weak at the knees and the other day, when I was awakened by the Persuasions version of Joy to the World, I was just overcome with all this holiday feeling. I mean it was like I got to leave the Island of Misfit Toys for a moment. A brief moment, yeah, but a good moment. Dude.

Anyway. All of this is just a prod to send you over to my friend grabbingsand's blog, where you will find a really fantastically wonderful holiday mix, just for you. Enjoy. I sure as hell am.

I Cannot Resist

Billy Idol has a Christmas album. Be still, my heart - or stop beating faster at the apparent imminent apocalypse, anyway. This is all via Metafilter, by the way, and I was going to just email it to my brother with a snarky note, but then I actually watched listened to (couldn't . . .quite. . watch . . it. . too . . many. . snowflakes. . ) the Billy Idol version of White Christmas and it was so, uh, indescribable that I had to share it with all of y'all. Wow. Words fail me. And you know, Billy Idol is one of those people who I have always had a secret crush on, even though I know that the purer people and those with good musical taste scorn him, and like I also have a crush on Billy Bragg, who is like the anti-Billy Idol, so I realize that having crushes on both of them simultaneously could maybe make the universe explode, but still. Ever since I was a teenager and first saw the video of White Wedding, I can't help it, I've been subject to mild Billy Idol crush flareups.

But those snowflakes. My god, those snowflakes. They may have put a quiet blanket of white death on my Billy Idol crush forever.