stoned cats

Cats on cat drugs. Another amusing thing to watch silently from work.

people falling down

Why is it so funny to watch people falling down?

These can all be watched without sound, from work.

james and killer

Time for some bike nerdery. Introducing my preciousessssss...

James is the 2006 16" Jamis Coda Sport that I bought for $375 on the second day that I was in Chicago. The Lincoln Park lady from whom I bought this bike had gotten it for a triathlon and then stowed it away, unridden, in her high rise on the lake, for two years. It is now a commuting powerhouse: it has fenders, so I ride it on rainy days, and a rack, so I ride it on Mondays when I bring an Ortlieb pannier weighed down with five yogurts, five bags of oatmeal, a pound of mixed nuts, two lunches, and a sack of raw vegetables to work. I hate the bar ends and never use them but I won't remove them because then I'll have to replace the grips. I could probably tour with this without adding anything else, although if Olympia's and my plan to grow avocado pit$ into blooming tree$ and $ell them for profit pans out, then I would buy a front rack and front panniers, replace the butt bench for a Brooks B17 saddle, replace my weak little wheels for 40 or 48 spoke ones, replace my balding no-name tires with 700x35mm Schwalbe Marathons with reflective sidewalls, and replace the third chainring for a 24 or 28 tooth one for optimal granny gearing. (Not that I've ever had to use anything but four of my 27 gears - there are no hills in Chicagoland.) I would even consider switching out the flat bar for drop bars with cyclocross-style in-line brakes. These are just the daydreams of a bike nerd at an office job, though.

Killer is the mid-1980s 49cm Fuji Espree that has been converted by a quack into a singlespeed (freewheel) bike. Killer is so named because it will one day kill me. When I first bought it, three weeks ago, there was only one brake, which was practically unscrewed from the frame. The headset was also so loose that I could unscrew it by hand; it rocked back and forth like a pony on springs. And the rear wheel fell off the fourth time I got on the bike (but thankfully stayed slotted in the dropouts - the ride could have ended very differently). The 27" tires are too large for the small frame, so my feet get jammed up when I turn sharply. Very, very dangerous. I went to "Women's Bike Night" at a bike collective last week and learned some new bike skills (adjusting headsets, installing brakes, cables, and housing) and improved this ugly beast, so hopefully I will not meet my death pitching headfirst into a bus. Though it will kill me, it is a fine ride. It weighs almost nothing and there are no gears to fiddle with and I can just glide, glide, glide. The simplicity of the bike is so appealing to me; with the right tools, I could probably take every piece off the frame and put it all back together in an hour. The modifications I would like to make, pending avocado profits, are mostly vanity-related: snazzy colorful grips, snazzy colorful chain, 26" wheels. This is my default bike except when it's raining and when I need to haul crap in my panniers.

Olympia says that a person needs at least five bikes: a beater bike for around town, a road bike for longer trips, a touring bike for hauling crap, a "fun" bike that is exciting to ride, and I forget the fifth. Maybe the fifth is an Xtracycle. Maybe it is a folding bike. Maybe it was only four. N's boyfriend A, who stayed with me last week, has seven bikes. The drooling cannot be contained.

Don't you wish you had those thirty seconds of your life back? Why do you read some self-indulgent lezzie's blog, anyway?

small pleasures

There are some things that make any day brighter. These include:

This video of a bird in San Francisco attacking people's heads (no sound needed for the hilarity).

This sound file of tennis player Michelle Larcher de Brito's on-court death rattles. (The link is in the leftmost column.) I edited her Wiki page to include a section on "Shrieks," which read, "de Brito's shrieks have brought thousands of new fans to the sport." This was deleted immediately.

Filling in the sections of this Venn diagram:


This Prince song (ignore the weird YouTube video). Butterscotch clouds, a tangerine, a side order of ham. L taught me that life is better when you start each day listening to this song, and most days I still do!

e.m. forster

I have been reading some stuff by E.M. Forster recently and he really must have been so nice to be around. Maybe you find secular humanism cheesy, but nonetheless I like this:

Tolerance, good temper and sympathy - they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long.
.
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life, and it is therefore essential that they should not let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I must, myself, be as reliable as possible, and this I try to be. But reliability is not a matter of contract - that is the main difference between the world of personal relationships and the world of business relationships. It is a matter for the heart, which signs no documents. In other words, reliability is impossible unless there is a natural warmth. Most men possess this warmth, though they often have bad luck and get chilled. Most of them, even when they are politicians, want to keep faith. And one can, at all events, show one's own little light here, one's own poor little trembling flame, with the knowledge that it is not the only light that is shining in the darkness, and not the only one which the darkness does not comprehend. Personal relations are despised today.
.
The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people," who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours.
.
I realize that all society rests upon force. But all the great creative actions, all the decent human relations, occur during the intervals when force has not managed to come to the front. These intervals are what matter. I want them to be as frequent and as lengthy as possible, and I call them "civilization." Some people idealize force and pull it into the foreground and worship it, instead of keeping it in the background as long as possible. I think they make a mistake, and I think that their opposites, the mystics, err even more when they declare that force does not exist. I believe that it exists, and that one of our jobs is to prevent it from getting out of its box. It gets out sooner or later, and then it destroys us and all the lovely things which we have made. But it is not out all the time, for the fortunate reason that the strong are so stupid. Consider their conduct for a moment in The Nibelung's Ring. The giants there have the guns, or in other words the gold; but they do nothing with it, they do not realize that they are all-powerful, with the result that the catastrophe is delayed and the castle of Valhalla, insecure but glorious, fronts the storms. Fafnir, coiled round his hoard, grumbles and grunts; we can hear him under Europe today; the leaves of the wood already tremble, and the Bird calls its warnings uselessly. Fafnir will destroy us, but by a blessed dispensation he is stupid and slow, and creation goes on just outside the poisonous blast of his breath.

your tax dollars

My co-workers are cleaning out their keyboards now with pressurized air canisters. "The hair just doesn't seem to get out," one just said. "You can hear the crap rattling around," said the other. Now the first one has upturned her keyboard against a garbage can and is banging it steadily. I tried the air canister for one second. Lots of particles flew out of my keyboard and into my face. Last night I fell asleep around 2 a.m. and woke up with a wet spot on my bed from the half-eaten sack of baby carrots that I had gnawed through during a three hour 30 Rock watching marathon and forgotten to return to the refrigerator. I try to comport myself with grace and dignity at all times. Please tell the Los Angeles County Bar Association to stop spamming me because I simply do not care about their diverse course offerings.

another note about the yoga ball

Look here so when it comes time to politely disgorge gas from your nether eye at work you can usually do so into your padded leather stench throne discreetly and inaudibly and no one knows any better, even if you do sit in the receptionist fish bowl, but when you sit on a yoga ball even the most mind-body controlled gentle byproduct of digestion will be amplified and echoed inside the ball as one reverb-heavy brass note slowly decaying into the otherwise solemn atmosphere of the federal judiciary. Product liability ladies I wish someone had warned of this on the packaging.

play nice

Contra the last post, I was a total bitch to a stranger yesterday because he made assumptions about me based on my race. I went to see Justin Townes Earle again yesterday...more about how much I want to butter this man's biscuit later.

Anyway, at the show, a man standing next to me looked over and said, "Konbanwa! Are you Japanese?"

Now listen ladies I had a rough weekend. Four separate friends bailed on tentative plans they had made with me, I lost hearing in my left ear for two days and Saturday stayed in bed, nauseated by noises, and then I broke two hearts, one Bavarian, on Sunday morning. For most of the weekend it was 45 degrees and raining in Chicago. (June.) I was feeling grim, impatient, and ungenerous. I was certainly in no mood for exchanging essentializing pleasantries with friendly but clueless cabbages.

So I turned to this man, with his awful Japanese accent, with his green bermuda shorts and his fleece vest and his low hiking boots, and I gave him the lookover you would give to a pamphlet on gum disease, and I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Oh come on," I said. "What?" he said. "No, I'm not Japanese, Jesus Christ," I said. I generally do not like to hurt other people's feelings, but I could not hide my disgust with this man.

The man persisted. "Wait, I'm sorry, I just wanted to know if you were Japanese." He was retreating and apologetic and sad. I could tell from his tone that he was an man afraid of vaginas, so I was probably devastating him by rejecting him so thoroughly. Regardless, I looked him square in the eyes and said, "Christ, why can't I just be American?"

"Oh no, sure you can just be American. I just wanted to know - I didn't mean to insult you or bring your day down" - just like that he said it, "Bring your day down," the poor stupid nice cabbage had been taught by someone nice to recognize other people's hurt feelings and apologize nicely, but I just detested it. So I said, "Please, just stop" and turned away from him.

It was pathetic and horrible but I was simply unable to muster the modicum of good will that would have saved the situation from being so unpleasant. He stood next to me holding his beer for two or three minutes, then slowly moved forward in the crowd without looking back.

do you have a good story?

I went to see an orthopedic surgeon today for the wrist problem described in the last post. Turns out I have inflamed a tendon or something, requiring a 3-hour doctor's visit, steroid injections, an x-ray, and a $200 splint - and I have to curtail my biking and guitar playing for 3-6 weeks - totally awesome.

But actually my trip to the doctor was enjoyable. First because I biked there and forgot my lock at home so I had to persuade the security guard to allow me to leave my bike in the freight office and then convince the man working in that office to watch my bike for me. I love meeting strangers and being self-effacing and pathetic and convincing (ask CH how I charmed three free tickets for the Wrigley Field-bound bus from a parking lot attendant last weekend!) and then getting my way. It's empowering. Also, all the guys who worked in the building were really nice to me, including the guy whose job it was to control the freight elevator while watching kung fu movies on a portable DVD player all day. (He showed me his box set of Jet Li movies.) These friendly helpful Midwestern cabbages!

Second, in the waiting room, I was able to polish off an issue each of Cat Fancy, Best Friends (a magazine for dog-lovers), Ceramics Monthly, and Reader's Digest, large print edition. I didn't get to "Highlights," but I have to go back to the doctor in three weeks and it is on my must-read list.

Third, there were posters and pastel paintings and sculptures of hands everywhere.

Fourth, I got a special splint made for me right there, and I was permitted to choose my own Velcro color. Naturally I opted for fluorescent pink, which makes my wrist visible from a hundred yards away and therefore doubles as bike safety gear. The atmosphere in the splint-making portion of the clinic was jovial. There were about half a dozen therapists making splints for half a dozen people with hand and wrist ailments, and you could tell that everybody enjoyed working there. They joked around with each other and with their patients. The man sitting at the table across from me told me about how he had broken his arm simply by falling over, and how three months of wearing a cast had mysteriously made thick patches of "Eddie Munster" hair grow on that arm. He also said that choosing any color other than black for his Velcro would ruin his reputation.

Fifth, there was a blank sheet of paper posted on a door in the splint-making room inviting people to write down how they had injured themselves. "Do you have a good story?" it asked. I quote the responses:

• Opened a bottle of syrup with a knife - yikes!
• Grandpa hit me with his car.
• Lost hand splint surfing in Costa Rica.
• I ran into my fiancee with my bicycle.
• I punched my dad in the arm.
• I crashed my bike too!
• I tussled with an alligator. Chomp!
• I jump [sic] high and came down on thumb
• I got old
• I got in a fight with my best friend over a girl at a bar. He left in a cab. I punched a wall.
• Fell rollerblading and I'm 71
• I got nailed saving my 25 lb dog from a 85 lb lab mix. Held on for dear life of my baby and I'm worse than she is. We are both lucky - due to my good reflexes. It's still a bit frightening. -JI
• I side-tackled someone playing soccer and they fell on me. Ouch!
• I crashed avoiding a deer while in Texas on my motorcycle (in full gear)
• I tripped running a marathon

Hahahaha! Then I was instructed to handwash the fingerless "arm sock" that one wears underneath the splint, and to use toothpaste to "deodorize" the splint itself, and then I left. There were half a dozen men in the freight elevator on the way down, all watching the kung fu DVD alongside the elevator man. The FedEx guy looked over at me and said, "I bet you could take all these guys down, couldn't you!" I put up my dukes and everyone in the elevator laughed. And then I said, "But really, I don't know the first thing about kung fu." And then everyone in the elevator laughed again! I felt really happy about getting along with my fellow Americans even though another version of me would have gotten pissy about being stereotyped as an Asian good at kung fu. Living in a less diverse and more politically moderate place has made me see the value of accepting other people's good humor and good temperaments even when they don't address you exactly the way you want to be addressed. God, I've really been such a bitch!

Anyway. At work now, balancing on yoga ball, typing with hot pink splint, blogging. Judge told me today that I should join the circus.

my birthday is coming up soon

Gift ideas.

butt ball

Due to the overwhelming response of one comment, I feel compelled to write some more about the blue ball I have sat on for so far 15 hours of the last 48.

Observations:

1. My ass hurts.
   
2. My back hurts.
3. My wrists hurts.

But these were true of when I was sitting in my previous all-leather sweat throne too. What prompted all this ergonomic experimentation in the first place is that my posture has always sucked and my left wrist has recently been all sorts of fucked up. It has a turning range of motion of less than 90 degrees now, which is problematic because the things I like doing (playing guitar, piano, typing, speaking with a fake Italian accent while emphatically shaking my hand over my head) all require my hand to be turned at a strange angle. Now the pain is an 8, and I am afraid that my stubborn refusal to see a doctor sooner means that the orthopedic surgeon I am scheduled to see tomorrow will tell me that my wrist must be immobilized for eight weeks.

Anyway, wah wah life is hard. And so is this stupid yoga ball. Some more detailed observations:

1. My ass hurts. A yoga ball is convex. It pushes your tush. My solution thus far has been to shift positions on the ball continuously. I guess this is good for your "core" but it seems pretty hard on your ass.

2. My back hurts. Lower back, shoulders. This might be a sign that I am actually sitting in the correct posture and my muscles are working harder so I feel sore. Or it could be a sign that I am permanently ruining my health. I think it's better for the shoulders though, because my previous chair had high armrests that made me sit with my shoulders hunched up and rolled forward. On the ball I think I sit more with my shoulders back and lower.

3. My wrist hurts. Still. Can't expect a quick-fix though.

4. I am slightly more entertained. Actually, I am infinitely more entertained by the ball, because entertainment by sweat throne was 0, and even .000000001 cubits of entertainment is ∞ more than 0. Some things that entertain me are these games: Try Not to Fall; Lift Your Feet Off the Ground and Try Not to Fall; You Can't Turn Around Without Standing Up First; Stop Squeaking When You Type; Slam Your Hand Down Onto Your Desk To Stop Yourself From Falling; Shrieking and Falling; Buddha. The last game is climbing off the ball and sitting on the floor to read a case.

5. I am extremely self-satisfied. You know, now that I work in an office all day long I have very limited opportunities for creative experimentation. This is why I obsess about the perfect morning gruel meal, the perfect bike for commuting, the perfect clothes for combination bike commuting/office work, the number of cups of water I drink at work. Introducing a ball to my office environment opens up avenues of office furniture experimentation. I love how awesome I am.
   

6. With the ball, my reputation in the office as a moron with a screw loose is rock solid. Did I tell you this? So a while back I told this joke to my co-clerks: "Did you hear about my camping trip? It was IN-TENTS!" They both laughed politely and returned to the topic of conversation. Then a few moments later, one said, "Wait, so you went camping?" Then I had to explain that I had said "IN-TENTS" and not "INTENSE" and there was no more laughter forthcoming from anyone!
   

finally

I am so looking forward to the next eight hours of being 28 and sitting on a ball.

yoga ball

The exercise ball came in the mail today. It came with a pump that was mysteriously covered in an oil that smelled like diesel fuel. Twenty minutes of pumping got the ball close to its advertised 65 cm diameter.
I was unable to insert the plug in all the way so I am certain it will rocket out of the ball as I am sitting on it and send me sprawling onto the floor. So far it smells like shit and is quite uncomfortable, but permits gentle bobbing, which breaks up the monotony of the workday.

I bent backward over it and read a Memorandum in Support of Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment (fittingly, a worker's comp case) with the blood rushing to my head. My co-workers are amused. My judge is out of town.

I almost fell over reaching for an almond that had fallen on the ground. More updates as they come.

stupid things i am mildly excited about

In my life now are several stupid things I am mildly excited about:

1. I decided to take improv classes at Second City, a theater/comedy company in Chicago. I wanted to take a straight-up acting class but I couldn't make the time, but I think improv would be just as good for my goals: challenge myself, learn to overcome fear of floundering, learn performance skills, etc. We shall see how it goes!

2. An exercise ball is coming in the mail on Monday to replace my godawful painful ass-sweat-inducing iron maiden of a office death throne. I had to ask my judge yesterday if he didn't mind that when people came into his chambers the first thing they would see would be a fat Chinese man balancing atop a giant red ball. He didn't seem to mind, but recommended also that I try the wooden chairs in his office. I am also thinking of wearing a helmet so that when the exercise ball pops and my head slams backward into the corner of my desk, I don't die. And perhaps also some sort of welding mask so that the extremely hot milky tea I am sure to be drinking at the time won't spray a hot lactose font into my face and leave it covered in burns.

3. After this weekend's fun in New York, I have decided to revive my online dating profile. It is summertime and it is time for me to start having more awkward meetings with strangers. I don't like filling out online profiles because they are just cleverness surveys and I get awfully nervous trying to find witty things to say. But it's better to answer with evasive cleverness rather than literal honesty, because who wants to go on dates with bores who write that the first things other people notice about them are their asses or Cubs paraphernalia or Dodge Chargers? Ugh. Anyway, I wrote that the first things people notice about me are halitosis, enuresis, and encopresis. This means bad breath, bed-wetting, and fecal leakage. Last night I received a message from someone I am most definitely not going on a date with: "Doesn't 'halitosis' mean bad breath? Why on earth would you want people to know that you have bad breath?" FAIL for so many reasons. NEXT.

(CH and I talked a bit on Monday about how it was impossible to be friends with people who took themselves too seriously. I asked her to define what she meant by "taking yourself too seriously." She said, "Okay, say you break your arm. That's pretty funny! I mean, it sucks and hurts, but if you think about it, it's pretty funny too! A person who takes himself too seriously doesn't think it's funny." This was the best example ever!)

4. So many of the foods that doctors recommend you eat every day are part of my almost-daily diet, including: yogurt, oatmeal, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, leafy greens, almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews, legumes, oranges, raisins/cranberries/other dried berries, grapes (in addition to raisins! I eat the babies and the grandparents together!), black tea, herbal tea, ginseng, vitamin supplements, flax seeds, and dark chocolate. I feel so self-satisfied about my healthiness!

5. I blew a chunk of cash on a new old bike. It's a single-speed (not fixed gear) 49 cm Fuji Espree with 27" knobby tires and slightly raised handlebars in the BMX style. It's slightly too small for me, and the wheels are slightly too big for the bike, so it does that dangerous thing where the front of your feet get caught in the wheels when you try to turn too sharply. Also, there is only one brake installed, so I had a few close encounters with the back bumpers of some cars on my commute to work yesterday. Nonetheless, riding this swift and simple steed gives me unfathomable pleasure.

6. A dedicated bassist joined my band this week and already we sound infinitely better.

7. I jogged to work today and wiped my armpits with a moistened paper towel upon arriving.

name my band

Hello friends, because I want to play some shows at the end of July, the time has come for my doo wop band to acquire a name. The suggestions from band members thus far have been a little too pop- and Seinfeld-jokes related for my tastes; a band that plays oldies covers and harmony-rich piano ballads in 6/8 time should not be called The Urban Sombreros.

I found an online band name generator that gave some excellent suggestions, including

• Nun Against
• Original Nutmeg Of The Idiotic Trail
• Monochrome Missing
• Fax Fuse
• Exasperated Gym And The Bootleg Tissue
• Asthma Face
• Extra-strength Underwear
• Fractional Pattern
• Futile Fidelity
• Nonsense Committee

"Exasperated Gym and the Bootleg Tissue" is truly amazing, but perhaps inappropriate for this band. The name I have been nursing/cherishing for a few years ("Whip It Out/Tuck It Back In") is better for my hair metal project than for the doo wop project.

So, I am at a loss. Please send me suggestions. "[Noun] and the [Nouns]" is always a good template, but no one is exactly a band leader in my band so it should be more equitable. "The [Nouns]" is also good.

"Swine Flu" is probably taken, so don't even bother.

memorial day

A lovely time in New York. I've already written about some strangers on God si love. Maybe I'll write about the people I love later.

:(

Just rereading old chats. I miss this dear friend. :(

11:54 PM me: what are you wearing?

INTERN?!

11:55 PM yowza

loooser

L

W

friend: red blazer

buns

me: V.v.V

friend: made of donuts

me: :(:)

:(|)

+/'\

\m/

<3

27 minutes

12:23 AM friend: poop

poop

poop

poop

PLOP

SQUIRT

12:24 AM me: POOOOOOP

broken social scene

I saw some bands over the weekend at the University of Chicago. The student government had hired a bunch of big name acts for their annual end-of-the-spring celebration, held in a cordoned-off courtyard surrounded by Gothic buildings and filled with 18-22 year-olds. The perimeter of the alcohol-serving area (Miller Genuine Draft BLEECHHH) was lined with orange construction fencing; I'd forgotten the collegiate obsession with the regulation of alcoholic beverages and it felt quaint and patronizing to be penned off in a donkey farm. There were three tables on which approximately 3,000 Lunchables were stacked. These were free and were meant to substitute for dinner, since the concert ran from 6pm until 11pm. Some flavored colored water beverages were free too. I got a ticket because my friend, a grad student there, was able to snag a few extra cheap tickets with his ID card.

I saw Voxtrot, Santigold, and Broken Social Scene.
The first is a peppy pop rock outfit from Austin fronted by this cute young Pete Wentz lookalike in thin suspenders. I don't know why he is touching his face in all of these photos. You know, I was most grateful that he had no tattoos showing because that's not my aesthetic. They were good musicians and I liked the way this guy moved around, but I otherwise can remember nothing else about the band.

Santigold was much more interesting. Before she came out, her two backup dancers/singer took positions at extreme ends of the stage. They were wearing big sunglasses, and huge gold lame bubble bottom blouses tucked in the front into tight black pants. The outfits were ridiculous and not at all flattering (the two women looked like ring-ding-a-ling bells, and the tucked-in part of their blouses made it look like they had scrota). The only source of music was a saggy-breasted white male DJ nodding along with one ear cocked against his headphones and shoulder.

Santigold came out in a fitted gold lame croptop blazer and a tight paisley-patterned bodysuit. I had never heard of her before and my friend described her as "sounding like M.I.A." But actually, she sounded nothing like M.I.A.! Her music is dub! Mid-tempo drum and bass rhythms played by the DJ with simple melodies, sometimes more chanted than sung, by the singer. Some reverb. The backups mostly danced in a jerky robotic fashion and did very little singing. They punched the air as their faces remained completely expressionless. Santigold's voice was flexible and strong, and she was extremely courteous and appreciative in her banter with the crowd. It was overall a lively and entertaining effect.

There was then some milling about while the next band got set up. I am too old to be standing around for five hours listening to music. I especially can't do five hours of dodging around on tiptoes for a good view as 6'5" men stand directly in front of me. My feet were killing me and all I wanted to do was for all the young enthusiastic kids, singing along with an Andy Samberg boat-related song, to quiet down and sit down and let the nice old lady rest her bones. Don't you have some Friedrich Hayek to be reading, hrmm??

Anyway, after their busy tech ran around setting up six microphones and tuning and testing eight guitars, Broken Social Scene eventually came out. Some people really like them but I had never heard of them either. Their gimmick is that there are about twenty musicians in their collective, which allows them to create lush soundscapes live, or at least that is what the promotional materials said. Only about ten of them showed up this weekend but it was still enough for drums, three guitars, a bass, a saxophone, a trumpet player, and an organist, plus four part harmony, at any given time.

I suppose this was all to be admired, but I still could not generate too much enthusiasm for them. First, I have low tolerance for guitar vanity. I once walked out of a show at the Double Door because I was disgusted by the guitarist's matching black and white Gibson Les Pauls. They were not necessary. Second, Broken Social Scene appeared exactly as above: a crowd of nerdy indie rock dudes staring down at their guitars. When music writers write about them, they use words like "coaxing" to describe how they play their instruments, "soaring" to describe how they sing, and "lush soundscape" to describe their sound; all of these descriptors should give you an indication of how dull the experience of watching them actually is. There is only so much of droning perfect cadences with driving eighth notes by one guitarist, florid flourishes by another guitarist, and ringing bell tones by the third guitarist, rumbling organ fill, plus reverb-heavy vocal harmonies in sixths, that one can take. You know sometimes when you have a terrible headache you think it's better just to die than put up with your headache? During BSS's set, my feet-balloons hurt so much I fantasized about having a hacksaw and just sawing through my legs at my shins. One person tried to crowd surf - DANGEROUS, CHILDREN!! - and all I could think of was how relieving it would be to be carried off my feet for a moment. I would risk being dropped on my head from seven feet high for that!

I guess the moral of this story is that I am a crabby old crone. At one point during Canadian Foot Torture's set, I looked around at the faces of the people around me. I like doing this during movies, too. Just try turning around for a second, and what you see is often more dramatic than what is on the screen. What you see is pretty colored lights glowing off the faces of people collectively enthralled by a performance. They laugh simultaneously and their hearts all swell together when the lead singer's voice sweetly jumps one octave above his normal range. Nobody notices the crabby old crone puzzling over their behavior because they are all focused on something else. It reminds you of how close you are to human connection - it is literally all around you - but how you are not able to let yourself get there because you want to turn around and look at it rather than experience it. I hate clapping along to performances, you know. I never feel more alienated.

Speaking of alienation, I started a new blog to document my conversations with strangers: God si love. Enjoy!

not so hard

Olympia and I composed a song together tonight, up on my MySpace page now. It was really fun! We've been attempting to play bluegrass stuff together since she moved in but tonight was the first time that we have really applied ourselves to putting a song together.

What you hear was recorded in one take. O primarily played fiddle and I primarily played guitar, but I had a tambourine under my right foot and O stuffed two egg shakers into her socks (producing the scrotum-like effect you see below). 

Our feet played percussion while our hands played stringed instruments and our voices sang. I am very proud of our authentic jug band-esque resourcefulness!

In other news, when I woke up yesterday the steel wool I had stuffed under the dishwasher looked like this:

Which suggested to me that something from inside the barricade had attempted to push its way out. It could also just have been the pressure that popped the steel wool out, but that is probably wishful thinking.

Even as I speak I can hear the thing scratching around inside the kitchen cabinets (but so far not emerging from the steel wool barricade). I hear its nasty little bubonic plague claws tapping on the hollow particleboard. They sound as big as Lee Press-On nails. Even though I have spread peanut butter-flavored poison pellets for you all over my kitchen, you insist on returning to my countertop for the delicious, delicious "health nut" bread, you dirty fucking chihuahua. When I catch this rat I am going to put it live in a pot of cold water with a cold brick of tofu and cover it and slowly it heat it up to boiling and then the rat will burrow into the cool tofu to escape the hot water and then I am going to cut it up and serve it like an olive loaf, like oatmeal health nut bread, that fucking fucker, and then I will put this rat nut bread into a breadbag and leave it out for its rat family to nibble on. HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW RATS!?!!?

oh when you hold a donkey in your arms you know it belongs

New song: http://www.myspace.com/heavyheavypets3