Hum

Old East Coast Song?
Chelsea Burns
Maybe an answer to Cohen's Chelsea Hotel?
Missing Macs?
Again and Again
Nice big cool lab flat huge screens and soooo quiet...ah...
Why...here...now...
????
???
??
?

Juxtaposition de un ratito

I listened to/watched the video of
Myriad Harbour by The New Pornographers
while reading about
Mick Foley as RAINN volunteer/spokesman
I like it whenever I see such a story...It means that it's going to become more common. Plus, for all I know, that guy might've helped people I know.
To me the juxtaposition of the song and the article in my life at the same moment made lots of sense.
Crazy hair, too.
~~~~
More M. F.

Prairie grasses

This is an old song has a video with a model and all that, but my idea is just to listen to it and think of...oh, prairies and grasses.
Wicked Game
Sort of the video is not as fun. It harkens back to youthful, never-skinny-enough anxiety. Which I always knew was foolish. Some things are diet and some things are genetics.
Like, way to ruin the whole atmosphere of the song, thinking about things like that!
I was quite amused to read that the model is very fond of cheese.
The outside world will always encroach to nibble at the edges of your perfectly constructed romantic fantastic song.
Thought: Prairie grasses might be used to weave baskets.
Learned some things about baskets and taught someone how to braid yesterday. Scraps of leather hung off a wall. One of those interactive exhibits. The instructions were all about Strip A B C and he couldn't figure them out.
"I tried and I concluded I suck at braiding."
I said: its just like this, you put one in the middle and then you always cross over, left side and right side, the one in the middle.
I showed and then told him to do it.
"Your instructions were a lot easier than theirs," he said.
I should see Brokeback Mountain one of these days.
10 Items Or Less was the last thing I saw.

Childhood songs for the end of the day

Rapture by Blondie, of course, and also, the "like a record baby" part on "You spin me right round" kind of makes me think it sounds a bit like "Reykjavik," and I wonder if it also seemed like that for the person who decided to put it on a video titled "Iceland volcano erupts..."

Someone has a smile

The morning was lousy. Face still aches. But the day got better. Talked with some really awesome people. A guy who breaks rocks for a living told me in Spanish that when he's sitting in his chair with his hammer, he's like Obama. Cats are also around to brighten my day, although I don't have one in my home. That will be later.

Sequence

Sequence: a rather beautiful word.
Some things were rolling around in the head today, but the recollection may or may not precisely render the sequence in which the thoughts occurred.
Staring at the top of a fountain. (That would be, the water spouting up, splashing against the sky.)
New: Night of the Hunters.
Have to think of Hunter by Bjork.
(But I had heard Hunter! Before I knew it was by Bjork. Some woman sang, like kind of a lounge/jazz singer version of it...oh it could give you chills...when you're driving in rural Michigan at night at the end of a long road trip. What the hell radio station played that...local? A signal from Canada? No I could not have made that up. I need to go back there...)
But Hunter by Bjork...there's a bear in it.
Bear stuff again.
Once in a while, bear stuff happens.
Like that time I was talking about needing a new fetish for a necklace.
To replace the broken foot turtle.
A few minutes later, a man asked us to roll down the window.
Said he was Zuni.
This was in Gallup, I think.
Wanted to show us bear fetishes.
I couldn't buy one.
"I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you. Good luck."
Dreamed about him and some other people that night.
They talked about me.
There was something very weird in the interaction.
It made me dream about people talking about me.
Not bad talking either.
Not resentful talking.
But "that was mysterious, that was weird."
That kind of talk.
Like there was this woman who talked to me on the Michigan farm when I was 16 and told me I was pretty when I didn't feel pretty and then she left and it seemed no one but me had seen her, but she was a flesh and blood woman and it wasnt' even mysterious until I read the journal entry years later and it was like...
what was that...
a goose drank from the fountain.
First it dipped its head in the pool
then arched its neck and looked at the top of the spray
It repeated the action several times.

Hmmm

TV from friend's facebook post since I don't have it.
O'Reilly, Stewart, and poets that get to visit the White House

Oh

I think I did like this movie.
Scott Pilgrim...
I did watch it under the influence of 3/4 bottle 2 buck chuck but liked it much.
And maybe I should watch it again. At least the credits. It's in my nature: I do like to see how many females contribute to a movie.
And regardless of past media portrayals I do think the SPIRIT of feminism should be and can be an all woman's thing and an all man's thing too. Wasn't there a line...something like...
"Blood in the cherries when they pit woman against feminist."
--Girl Disappearing.

Want to see

Homelands: How Women Made The West

It was supposed to help

I checked out this book that (I thought) was supposed to help. It's supposed to get you smarter, financially. And it's like memoir-ish and so it should be fun to read, and yay! But instead, this book, this book that was supposed to help, makes me need a therapist. Which I can't afford, so I have to read one of those books about angels or something. Here's the part that if I had a weak heart would have left me dead on the floor, and pretty much killed me inside:

"My annual salary was $86,000 a year before taxes. It has not budged much the last couple of years because the newspaper industry has not been doing well so well. I realize that $86,000 is more than what most Americans make, but in a city as expensive as DC, it doesn't go as far as it would in other parts of the country."
--Hot (Broke) Messes by Nancy Trejos

Yeah? What? Did you say...
No I did not read that. No, no...please...make it...
It's too late.
WTF
Okay, maybe I didn't read far enough. Maybe there are gigantic looming medical bills that eat up that salary. Because if not....
Do you have giant black holes in your life that you just throw $$$ into?
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I will not throw up.
I need to breathe now.
I need to get some water.
This too shall pass...
Please rewind my life.
Too late. Okay.
Moving on...moving on...moving on....
~~~~~
It's rather hard to take someone seriously when the person make a generous salary and went into debt by buying expensive cosmetics, going out for drinks, and taking vacations. I did have some exposure to that culture she speaks of, and she has a lot in common with a small but prolific group of people in that area. Maybe it will help them. They will buy the book. I appreciate the mention of websites.
Moving on to other things...

Ha

I just think this is kinda funny. Recently I took a break from thinking and decided to ingest something. I finished an essay called Pentimento by Nora Ephron in I Remember Nothing. Pentimento is about how N.E. idolized a certain older woman writer.

"I went to see her at her home on Martha's Vineyard, which sat on a rocky beach near Chilmark. The interview is an embarrassment. I did not ask a tough question, and, by the way, I didn't have one." --N.E.

And then decided she didn't much like her after all.

"When she returned with the knockwurst, she said, 'His daughter, some fine writer, eh?' I said I didn't know, my shoulder now healed. She said 'What kind of talk is that? You don't know a fine writer when you hear a fine writer?'" --N.E., quoting a letter from the writer she idolized, about a waitress who said nice things about her.

"Well, in the next twenty minutes, by the time I had indigestion, it turned out it was your father she was talking about..." --N.E., still quoting the same letter.

I read it while eating Tillamook cheese that is "freezer-burned or something" according to the person who bought it, sandwiched between toasted slices of a loaf of sourdough I got at the 99 cent store. The cheese didn't take bad. It was just crumbly. So it was quite delicious.

"I have a pile of her letters. When I look through them, it all comes back to me--how much I'd loved the early letters, how charmed I'd been, how flattered, how much less charming they began to seem, how burdensome they became, and then, finally, how boring." --N.E.


Although some part of me enjoyed reading this and I didn't think what I was reading was particularly great, I felt drawn to it anyway. Maybe because it did not seem great. And I do not seem great. So it was a fine thing to read.

"Here was a thing Lillian liked to do: the T.L. Most people nowadays don't know what a T.L. is, but my mother had taught us the expression, although I can't imagine why." --N.E.

"T.L. stands for Trade Last, and here's how it works: you call someone up and tell her you have a T.L. for her. This means you've heard a compliment about her--and you will repeat it--but only if she first tells you a compliment someone has said about you. In other words, you will pass along a compliment, but only if you trade it last." --N.E.


I didn't think it was great but the mediocrity of the subject matter resonated. And, it's by a great writer. Could it be, we are both great, but I just didn't notice our genius?

"This, needless to say, is a strange, ungenerous, and seriously narcissistic way to tell someone a nice thing that had been said about them." --N.E.


"It's a delightful letter, isn't it?" --N.E.

Hello sun

Desert sun.
Evaporating up the water you poured on the plants.
Yes, there are parts of the world where you have to water plants at a certain time of day apparently.
HFWG Go Sightseeing
Seattle looks so sunny.
HFWG in Ballard
That one's cloudier.

Life

was famously compared to a box of chocolates.
sometimes it can also be like a bunch of buzzards gobbling up strips of carcass.
But anyway.

A review which amused

me! "He may spend the third record trying to retreat further into time, perhaps yearning for the simple rustic life of an amoeba."
Fleet Foxes - "Helplessness Blues" by Jaime Gill
However, maybe not quite...
"In 2009, he stated that he discovered virtually all of the music he listened to by using online file-sharing program Napster. He also spoke of his support for online file-sharing and the positive effect he believes it to have on music, both as an art form and as an industry."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Pecknold
"The band's frontman, Robin Pecknold attributes much of their success and popularity to illegal file sharing."
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Foxes

So what happened to her?

But then what? Why did she change like that? And how did she look when she got old? She
is frozen there, in the passport photo, like someone you could know and see on the street tomorrow.
"Shermund's Work changed in the forties, in style and in voice, yet the underpinnings of the change began in the thirties--her faces became stylized and less realistic, and simultaneously her humor became less poignant."
--Funny Ladies, page 64.

As I thought of expressing those questions, someone played Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes. Seemed appropriate. (Somewhere in the world, other people live by orchards and vineyards...)

Something about it made me want to go reread a thing I once read (long forgotten the book or article I read it in) about Jean Rhys. About how someone who stayed with her reported overhearing her go through a kind of terrible crisis, somehow acting out feeling tormented, abandoned. (However, is there any chance that she knew someone was listening, actually?) I had a thought at a stoplight today, about how very picky some women are about life, how actually, they have so much self esteem, they express it in a way that looks like lack of self esteem, how it turns into something strange. Mmmm. Maybe that will be pieced together later.

Land Of The Big Tire

I surely do hope that I will be able cobble together enough $ to be able to visit this summer or fall the Land Of The Big Tire.
Thought Interruption: Oh music from other room. I used to LOVE this song in wee, wee-est teenage years. You're Unbelievable. I never knew the name of it or the group but as soon as I heard it in the other room, I was like...that song...is good...I heard it before...Under The Milky Way.
And long before that, in upstate NY, there used to be such a cool park for kids, all full of gigantic tires half buried in the ground and such...actually I barely remember it, but, it was pretty great. That must have been a power spot. Those tires must have been, like, infused with devas, with elemental intelligences.
Maybe so is the big tire. Infused with all the thoughts of the little kids, still going, "Wow, big tire!!!" and all excited to pass it. And some adults might still be excited, too.
Land of the deva-infused, elementally intelligent tire.

Softball arm

Another great part of Ren Fair: a young blond women with a fantastic softball arm showed up. The guy in the dunking tank had been yelling all those "throw like a girl" insults at a ten(?) year old with fairy wings. She had actually hit the target twice, but not hard enough. Well, softball arm showed up and she had ten throws. After nine, she had only hit it one time, and once again, not hard enough. Then....beautiful, glorious splash on throw number ten! The fairy wing girl looked quite ecstatic, and ran over and gave the blond woman a high five. It really did seem like the people were happier there than they were at "the happiest place on earth." I also love how they're so in character. And, I loved the guy who tried to get me to go look at some military stuff at the end of the day, as I wearily trudged past him, and as a final entreaty he drawled, sardonically, "Yooou caaan siiit dooown agaaain." Too funny.

Synchronicity can be fun

Like the time I was talking about an artist's resemblances to some people and then a new picture (and I found out, a lot of other info) went up. But first, noticed the picture. Sometimes I think my subconscious does something kind of neat with whatever's going on in the universe. I saw this new picture and then I went, wow, that is weird. At the time, it almost looked like I could've messed with my own, I don't know, high school photo or something, in photoshop, and changed the hair color...that was kind of strange. And nature! And stones. That was kind of fun synchronicity.

Through a strange combination of circumstances I had free tickets to a show for kids not long ago. "The Hero Composer." Although the show ended by saying something like, music is the real composer, still, I was thinking about the tradition of who are the conductors, the composers, and the exceptions to the rule...some things along those lines, I don't recall the exact thoughts...what I recall is that I was bouncing my knee up and down very agitatedly, but didn't realize it until my seatmate put a palm on it and made it stop. A few moments later I realized that instead of bouncing my knee, I was gnawing on my palms. I stopped.

Only 2

Need much better camera on phone.

Le Bon Tradition

Yesterday a splurge(!) occurred. Ren Fair may often be happier than the happiest place on earth, but of course, there were a few wrinkles to contend with. A very enjoyably "bawdy" (isn't bawdy the most Ren Fair word ever?) troupe of women performed on stage, and their act was followed by another one with a group of men. As the first troupe departed, a well-dressed woman in the audience was telling others "This is the THE performance of the day." Their cheerleader. But, the men, though funny, were not better the first act. However, they certainly had the most audience members and the loudest participants and they were by far the most popular. I was much less energized watching them, but I seemed to be in the minority.

At the end of their show, an older woman with impressive cleavage (Ren Fair is brimming with impressive cleavage) with some kind of little cup or ornament wedged in between them, went trudging up the aisle. The man on stage urged people to see her if they were interested in recordings. "Just shout, 'Hey Tits!'" "Hey Tits!" the women and men enthusiastically shouted. Tits, however, seemed rather unjovial as she continued her grim little march toward the back. To his credit, the bawdy balladeer seemed to notice. "Just shout, 'Hey Tits?'" he quizzically repeated, in a quieter tone. They gave a hearty endorsement for the next act, another bawdy, mostly women's troupe, but the audience thinned out considerably, and the troupe performed to about one quarter of the amount of spectators. Is this the "most men don't like watching women's stuff, but women will watch men's stuff" phenomenon again?
Pretty enjoyable day overall, though.

life can only improve

after beginning the day like this. y: y r u moving around so much? z: oh i was thinking of this article and feeling annoyed by how it justifies tenure.
y: what's wrong with tenure?
z: well when i was at school there was this guy who had a problem with sexual harrassment but no one could do anything about it because he had tenure. he wasn't allowed to have females work for him. then i did and everybody kept coming up to me about it and the secretary sent another student to tell me things like i shouldn't give him my number or e-mail. and then the head of the dept. called me in and i told her and she was like "i'm sure she wouldn't do anything like that!" she didn't want to get the sec'y in trouble. i didn't want to get her in trouble. so i was like, whatever. and then she told me 'i expect if anything happens with him it will be your choice.' so it was like she was saying if he did something bad it would be my fault. i didn't even think he was that bad but he had a problem. this woman taught feminist courses! it was f'ed up.
y: well why does tenure matter. just go to the police and make a statement.
z: they're not going to do anything. unless he does something really bad, like rapes someone, there's nothing they'll do. and it shouldn't have to come to that. they should be able to reprimand him, to say, this is not okay, this is not professional. but they don't because he has tenure. if he didn't have tenure, they could reprimand him.
y: i'm not talking about tenure. that's a separate issue. you can go to the police.
z: but they're not going to do anything
y: you can go to the police and make a statement
z: but what's the point if they don't do anything?
y: (calmly) you can go to the police...
Z: (UnCalmly) TheyAreNotGoingToDoAnything! ICan'tBelieveHowManyFuckingTimesIHaveToTellYouThat!
JesusFuckingChrist!
~~~~
should be uphill from there...

Multiples

Its a good song like many others are. Spring Haze. Words seem to be limiting little descriptors, but...Vrooom! GOOOOOO(Sitting in car, jar of lemon curd, chocolate crackers, misty hills, coolness, drives to countryside, traffic, too bright too hard high school, hallway friends vs. art class, way too sunny outside, chemical signs on the lawns, church, back in the car, eating sweets, eating other things, thoughts of places in the past, descents into small airports, sacred emptiness, misty hills, distant coolness, back in the car again, volume knob, sticky fingers, parking lot)OOOOOOD.

Oof

Damn, these guys (& girls) are too smart for me.
Oxidate It Or Love It / Electron to the Next One
~~~~
So I actually like it very much.
Thought: they really should consider them for actors if there's ever a movie version of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which I think I'll be finishing up soon.

The belles

A dream in the morning ended with an encounter with some belles. They were standing in the grocery store, by the fruit, and they were big and beautiful. They were sturdy and had hourglass figures. Maybe they wore white. Maybe they were about to sing. Every part of their limbs and any part of their bodies that were exposed to the world shone from the inside, almost translucent, the color of rich dark brown apple cider.

Funny things

Here are some funny things about "The Artist." Most of the time, she looks like her own self. That's number one. Number two: she strangely resembles (not exactly, but it's enough) an aunt. Which happens to be the aunt that I supposedly resembled to my grandmother. Number three: Sometimes, especially with more make up, and when her checkbones look especially high, she resembles a different aunt. Number One is of course, she is just herself.
But number two and number three, I suppose, they are like extra little sprinkles on a cake. Important little sprinkles.
Angels.
~~~~
Number two resemblances: almost anything from the Scarlet's Walk era. And many many others. Again.
Number three resemblances: A bit more rare. But...this one. (Eye makeup, high cheekbones, purple shirt.) Maybe this one.

All this music stuff!

Thoughts on Major Tom (Coming Home): I'll wager there's ton of people in some way connected with the military who feel an affinity for the song. It sounds like it could refer to something one's dad might do, especially if you're forced to wait half of your life at a young age for a homecoming. And even a tiny child can remember the first delicious meal of a tuna fish sandwich and fritos brought home from the airport.
Years later, there was Camel Rock, Really Cool Old Indian Ruins and a not as thrilling but still rather fun science museum to visit. (The adults were more excited about the science museum, however.)
"Oh, Star Wars" the adults would say, knowingly.
Maybe some of our parents were at that party where the new chief of staff sang New York New York. Another classmate! Maybe one of these days one of them will become president? Or maybe not.
It kind of makes me think of a cream cheese commercial.
It kind of makes me remember...actually I heard a different version of "I have a pretty girl/she is an army girl..."
Actually it wasn't really sung like that.
The version I heard was..."I have a pretty girl / she is a NEW YORK girl."
A NEW YORK girl.
You know when you drive around with the NY license plate and you're out of state and other New Yorkers honk at you?
That's a nice feeling.
Is that why they charge you $$ if you don't send it back.
I must say, I feel quite happy that Loretta Sanchez has continued to bother the military about some things since I think they deserve to be bothered about them. When I saw her on TV a time ago, I liked her questions a lot more than the female JAG lawyer's responses to them.
There's a version of Mary on Tales of a Librarian.
Back aches...it ain't fair, it ain't right!
Plans to make a more intimate acquaintance with Icy Hot, a hard and vaccumed floor, and child's pose. And eat plant food.
Also, at the end of the Major Tom (Coming Home) video, it's kinda like the young military wives are singing with burgers and drinks from the PX as the ship falls burning to the ground.

A Particular past time

was:
Sticky Fingers Lemon Curd +
Thin Dark Chocolate Afrika Cookies +
Spring Haze
In the Car.

There could be

Food Psychics.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.
I want to believe.
The Particular...

Datials

Datials? I meant details. But then I typed datials again. Datials it is.
Funny, hmmm? Perhaps, but perhaps not all can be funny in this word. World. Datials. Maybe it can be a new world. Word. As is, as in, educate the peeps about the datials. The decorum one should exercise while dating, especially while young and perhaps not entirely unstupid.
So. Why does this come up. It's because a lovely friend posted a sad but important article by Liz Seccuro. The details of this piece also served to remind me that maybe not all girls have been interviewed about their beloved Duran Duran. Details in this piece reminded me of how icky I felt when watching their "All She Wants Is" video and how freaking stupid weird colored drink stuff is all featured in it and is so...ick. I suppose their attentions? intentions? were not nefarious when they came up with that brilliant artistic concept, but...that just doesn't excuse the rest of the world. Does it.
And actually, I'm not really sure. Opposite.
So. It's actually a bit fucked up.
It's totally arguable until they brandish the stupid drink.
I also had a great need to enunciate most of these words in a faux British accent properly deep lady school marm type of voice while I typed this.
Hah.
Triumph except for feeling like my back is killing me.

Save The Kids...

I am really tickled this comes from a place near Shamokin.
I always had to say that name aloud, knowingly, to myself, when I drove past the sign for it.
"SHAMOKIN!!!"
English Teacher Writes Racy Novels
(I.e.--"Shamokin" is like "smokin.'" Like the curls of smoke I used to stare at drifting from my mom's mom's cigarette. As in, that English teacher is...ha, ha, ha....)

Culture

I've been mostly enjoying a book called Talking To Girls About Duran Duran. That reviewer has criticisms but most of the stuff he talked about did not occur to me. The only really annoying part I found were two overly misogynist paragraphs about Paul McCartney's ex-wife. They threw me off and made me eat some (kinda healthy) cookies I was probably better off without. Betrayal's worse when you get lulled into a false sense of security. I had to put it down and do something else for a while. (Went and watched Jane Eyre...Who Married Up...Farewell Mr. Rochester...oh there's the Jane Eyre trailer.) But other than that, I've enjoyed a lot of it. And looked up some stuff. (M: Hey, Shiny Shiny is kinda fun to watch isn't it? I think it's before our time. Hey what about Hang On Now.
Y: You know what this makes me think of? Bad eighties music!
M: Look, she's all alone in this big empty room...
Y: There's no way you are getting me to download this.)
~~~
A preview before Jane Eyre showed Forks Over Knives. (Yeah, how come those poor people are always eating so much Taco Bell anyway?)
Maybe good to go back to Brave Sir Robin.
(She would never wish to throw a fruit bowl in his face / as her feet were throbbing / and she fumed over Sudoku / Nor ever did those aching feet yearn / to kick him in the head / Brave Brave Brave Brave Sir Robin / And never no / not even once/ No never no / not even--STOP)
~~~
Y: I just finished another box of the cookies.
M: Breakfast of Champions.
Y: But they're healthy! I'm going to read you the ingredients. Concentrated fruit juice (pineapple, pear, peach), coconut, organic brown rice flour, chocolate chips...there are really hardly any chocolate chips, that picture on the cover of the box is very misleading. So really, it's like I had fruit juice, coconut, and organic brown rice...
M: Whatever lets you sleep at night.
Y: (Does violence with the empty box.)
They're cheaper than Kombucha.