Because when you think about it, it's impossible for something to be both new and improved


I cleaned the kitchen.  Yay. 

i want to be bone-thin, skeleton skepticism

Okay, after a weird day of dreary, low 60s, fall-ish weather and a long drive with several new cd's and then a long rambly journal entry about being lucky enough to be saddened by the passage of time, and then after several hours' deliberation, I have come up with the following list. The urge to do this was planted several days ago by this post.


Also, I must preface this by saying that Top 25 Songs to Listen to and Top 25 Songs of All Time are two separate and different lists for me. What follows is Top 25 Songs To Listen To.


Top 25 Songs To Listen To: (in no particular order)


1 "Jackass" – Beck

2 "Get Up" – Sleater Kinney

Song #1 from mix tape from guy who turned out to be a HUGE ASSHOLE but admittedly had some good taste in music.

3 "Girls Singing" – Mates of State

4 "Crash Into Me" – Dave Matthews Band

5 "Anna Begins" – Counting Crows

I sang this song to myself, once, when I was very very sad.

6 "Nothing Better" – The Postal Service

7 "She Will Have Her Way" – Neil Finn

First heard this song on Sports Night and loved it, even though if I'd known of it before, I would have totally been pissed that it had been co-opted.

8 "War on War" – Wilco

9 "Jesus, etc." – Wilco

10 "Jockey Full of Bourbon" – Tom Waits

My favorite opening sequence of a movie *ever* is in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law, over which this song plays.

11 "Sun on the Moon (Live Version)" – James Taylor

My ducks are all in a row.

12 Graceland – Paul Simon

The whole album... totally cheating, but god probably won't strike me down for it.

13 "Walk of Life" – Dire Straits

14 "Black Steel" – Tricky

All of Maxinquaye is melded together with the experience of driving back and forth on I-70 between college and home in the dead of the night.

15 "You Really Got a Hold on Me" – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

Every time I hear or think of this song, I tell Other about the time that Smokey Robinson sang it on Sesame Street and this big U wouldn't leave him alone. That was AWESOME.

16 "We Live Again" – Beck

17 "Give You My Lovin’" – Mazzy Star

18 "Float On" – Modest Mouse

Perhaps too recent to seem to have staying power, but there's something about this song that makes me think it has a permanent spot.

19 "Light Up My Room" – Barenaked Ladies

20 "The Boy with the Arab Strap" – Belle & Sebastian

Asshole song #2, although I've listened to this one so much that it's lost the connotation.

21 "Drive" – The Cars

heh. yeah.

22 "In Spite of Me" – Morphine

Boggling.

23 "Champagne Supernova" – Oasis

So very high school - in a good way.

24 "Crossbones Style" – Cat Power

Luckily, though the asshole's mixed tape included a Cat Power song, it was not this one.

25 "Blue Umbrella" – John Prine

Although this song commits what is to me the cardinal sin of lyric-writing - it rhymes a word with itself - it is so crushingly beautiful that it makes the list anyway.

So there it is. Just enough indie crap to turn off the mainstreamies, DMB and BNL to destroy any potential indie cred, and enough throwbacks to the California rock of my childhood to confuse everyone else.


Okay, I just got really excited about Sven's Top 25 because it also includes "Anna Begins," and I'm getting all warm and fuzzy because Megan here is also pissed off that "Bohemian Like You" is being used in a damn car commericial. (Aside to any Dandy Warhols reading this post -- you almost made the list, buddy, but not after that stunt. Hope the gazillions of dollars they probably paid you is worth it.)

times new roman sucks.

Saw Napoleon Dynamite today.  I walked into the theater knowing nothing more about it than Other wanted to see it - didn't know the plot or even who was in it.  It was a really fucking strange movie, strange in that way that you might realize 10 years from now that it is great, and it's not bad per se now, just really really strange.  Wow.  I do recommend seeing it, because, you know, it might be great. 

The other items in the cultural buffet I've set up for myself these days include Invisible Man, which I'm reading for the second time (for my master's exam), Queen Bees and Wannabes, which was a birthday present, as was Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism, and, finally, Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches.  'Tis a strange mix. 

 

when will i ever learn to live in god

So because I am more and more compelled to spend time making stuff - small quilts, knitted stuff, scrapbook pages, &c - I finally pushed for switching my pretty small room with the medium-sized bedroom.  Other was heroically willing and cheerful about the massive cleanup and furniture-dragging-around that this required, even though the first setup didn't work out at all, due to both of our inherent personality traits.  Anyhow, I now have a 6-foot craft table that at the moment is covered in papers from the last 6 years' worth of schooling and teaching, but that will change soon. 


The first Day of Moving sucked a lot, considering that most of our furniture manages somehow to be both crappy and extremely heavy.  Nothing quite like dropping the 3-ton desk that you HATE on your damn foot.  But the second Day of Moving was gloriously satisfying due to the infusion of Super Sliders.  I was initially skeptical of the power of these foam/plastic jobbies, but they actually worked.  Thanks, Super Sliders!

 

Yeah, yeah, boss - twenty-four!

Well, I spent the first night of my 24th year (or technically 25th, considering that the first year is 0) driving through a spectacular thunderstorm (not unlike the one that's happening right now), doing 45mph on back roads, dodging hoppy-frogs crossing the street and keeping an eye out for critters.  We saw, and did not run over, a raccoon and a skunk.  I dreamt about frogs and deer. 


The lightening is really cool, lasting for several seconds, lighting the sky this pinkish purple color and crossing our entire field of vision. 


Time to go eat a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and some ice cream.  Glad to know I've matured a lot since I was 5. 

a dreamer dreams she never dies

My Other and I laugh about how different our dreams are. Mine tend toward mostly boring Italian Neo-Realism-ish scenes set in combinations of places familiar to me, while his tend toward stark metaphor. It's pretty funny sometimes how obvious the representations are. For instance, and this is just an example, say his father got some medical news that while potentially serious is also early along enough to probably be dealt with easily. He might have a dream that night about bad men in black trying to take his father away.


But the same type of news I got yesterday caused me to have this psychedelic dream about a chipmunk berating me (telepathically? in a really deep voice?) about how he was misinformed about the policy of whether or not he was allowed to bring his favorite toy along (apparently he was, and apparently I'd told him he wasn't, and apparently he *really* missed his toy) and then he turned into this little white whirling dervish and bit my leg REALLY FUCKING HARD. Blood spewed out Monty-Python-style, and I woke up clutching my leg because as far as I was concerned, dream pain was real pain. Also, I was holding the JaneDog and protecting her from the psychotic chipmunk. It hurt, but at least I got to feel like a good mom.

I've got a right hand, and I've got a man, but I don't have a right-hand man.

Here is a story about me applying for this job. (This perfect, perfect job.)


Last Monday:


Me: Hi, I'd like to apply for a job?

Owner of Awesome Clothing Store: Okay, here's an application.

Me: I brought a resume and cover letter...

OoACS: Okay, just fill out the application and staple all that together. No hurry, because I probably won't look at it for a couple of weeks.

Me: Okay, thanks!

Last Tuesday:


I e-mail my advisor and ask him to be a reference.

Last Thursday Night, After Business Hours


Advisor writes back, says of course!

Last Friday Afternoon:


I go in and drop off application, resume, and cover letter. Girl working there says that owner is gone and that she's doing interviews on Monday, but that my application will still definitely be considered. I leave town for the weekend.

This Monday:


Nothing happens.

Today:


I go in, wait 15 minutes to wait for owner to get there. Have a nice conversation with the woman working there about good places to take dogs for exercise. Owner arrives.


Employee: She's here about the job.


OoACS: Oh, I've already done interviews.


Me: O-kay... I turned in the application on Friday... [at this point I'm trying to figure out whether or not to say that she told me that it didn't have to be in for a while, decide not to because how good could an interview be that I wrestled my way into anyway?]


OoACS: Yeah, I did interviews yesterday. I'll keep all the applications on file in case I don't find someone.


Me: Alright. [I leave.]


GREAT. Fucking WONDERFUL.

weblogs wobble but they don't fall down

Well, smssv.exe came back. My e-mail stopped working and I looked at Task Manager, and there the little bastard was. So I found this very helpful page and did everything I understood how to do and it seems to be gone again.


I have the potential to be very bad at virus combat, considering that the instinct I'm continually repressing is what I like to call "slash and burn," although more accurately it could be described as "delete everything you see." Don't know what it is? Send it to the Recycle Bin! Luckily, my early suspicion - that most of those things might actually be on my computer to do good rather than evil - seems to be turning out right.


This instinct is probably a remnant of an attitude that runs in my family. My uncle had a philosophy of car maintenance that dictated that when something fell off, you put it in the trunk and if the car was still running after a week you threw it away.


In other good news, I have located my Recycle Bin.

and for the love of Jesus, could you people please change the ad at the top of my blog from redneck jokes? you mention redneck jokes one time and all of a sudden you're stuck with that stupid ad for eternity, apparently. so assuming this is computerized, here, this should help it change.


Democrat John Kerry John Edwards George W. Bush Reagan Election MoveOn Politics.


Update: Damn it! Want more, eh?


Teresa Heinz Kerry Laura Bush NAFTA universal health insurance Howard Dean John Kerry John Ashcroft Iran Palestine Israel Canada.


Clearly I will never be able to handle G-Mail.

Sher-ri, don't like it -- lock the taskbar, lock the taskbar

I was just searching for the internet link to the picture of "PandaMelon," one of the gigantic cement panda bears curently decorating the streets of Washington D.C. Unfortunately I can't find it, so if you want to see it really badly, you can e-mail me and I will send it to you.


Anyway, PandaMelon is pretty cool, so I wanted to set him as my wallpaper but I can't change the size of the photo at all, so basically what you can see right now of PandaMelon is the top 3/4ths of his head. Which is actually pretty cool, because PandaMelon appears to be peeking out of the monitor at me.


ANYway, I was doing a google image search and the obligatory side ads popped up. One of them said, "Discount Panda! Check out the deals now! aff http://www.ebay.com." This is disturbing for the following two reasons.


1) E-bay really should not be selling pandas.

2) In all likelihood, E-bay is not selling pandas, but is just plugging in whatever you search to their ad. This is disturbing, even more so than when you type in something you might actually buy from E-bay, because it's like that thing you do where when your annoying little brother is repeating everything you say, you say something like "[Name of little brother] is stupid and I hate him." And, of course, this would either result in an exact repetition, at which point you could say "haha, you just called yourself stupid," or it would result in him stopping. For three seconds.


So stupid E-bay isn't even smart enough to know when not to repeat whatever you've just said. Although in an alarming development, searches for some swearwords (because I really wanted to see an ad that says "Discount Crap! Check out the deals now!") and then some run-of-the-mill nouns, and the results were either no ads at all (apparently nobody's interested in cornering the crap market) or generic ones. Which leads me to believe...


E-bay is selling pandas on their website!

Americookie, almost as good as nookie*

Today, Lou's first issue of _Teen People_ came. Because we consider ourselves hands-on owners, and are concerned about our dog's value structure, we looked through it to see if it would be appropriate for him. We came to the conclusion that reading _Teen People_ is just like watching TV only not noisy, and we plan to sit down with him and look through it together, so that we can talk about it.


During our trek through the seamy underside of celebrity-worship, we came across an ad that for some reason involves JLo in tight pants bending over with her ass to the camera. We laughed, and said derogatory things about the ad, and then later (because we (that is, humanity) are basically monkeys with nice clothes, and monkeys are imitative,) I said, "Hey look, I'm JLo!" and stuck my ass out at Other. I did this a couple times and we laughed.


And about 20 minutes later I realized that I'd thrown my back out pretending to be JLo.


Today's Lesson: It's Hard To Be JLo.

*but not quite.

and lo, the season of small explosions is upon us.

The Animal Rescue Site is celebrating its second anniversary. There you can click to donate food to animals, and buy cool stuff to donate more food to animals.

Road Test: Jane Dog

We've been getting up early 3-4 mornings a week and taking the dogs to the park to run out some of their energy. Jane, who we got at 5 weeks old, has always been shy and skittish, although since we've been going to the park she's gotten better. We've met some young children, smelled them, been petted by them; seen loud tractors and cars; seen bikes and senior citizens on walks; and we'd walked around the park grounds on leashes.


Other would take Lou Dog on walks at night on some of our days off from the parks and Jane Dog and I would watch from the window. That, to her, is what 'walk' meant. Once we tried to take the two of them on a walk together and they almost killed us about 75 times, tripping us with the leashes, tangling themeselves up, running off in different directions.


Finally though, today, we went on a real walk - starting from the back yard and walking around town. Always before, she'd been scared of everything and very bad at remembering not to pull on the leash, but today she was great. She's learned to slow down when the leash gets taut, to walk on the right side of Lou, to sit at intersections, and not to bark at people, squirrels, cars, bikes, or any other moving objects.


And the best part is, she'll sleep all day.

the sign in the cafe window says, 'finally, a place to sit,' and I say, 'amen!'

I have the stupidest sunburn ever. Remember those Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes? Well you *might* be an academic if you have a book-shaped tan line.