I would give a LOT of money to own this pink striped notebook.

more the engrish!

Because I really like pink.

Brendan Perry - Utopia

I am so hungry for new Brendan Perry, I feel like I can’t wait for next year. This is the teaser for the new album, and I love it already. I can’t ever adequately explain how Brendan Perry’s music captures the cynical romanticism of my personality, but somehow it’s like my whole life is in what he sings. And not in some self-pitying emo way either, but in a “kick your own ass and see what you can do and by the way it’s probably going to suck but do it anyway.” way.

I love him. Here are the lyrics to Utopia.

I feel greater than the sum of all my parts
A domestic beast with a hairy heart
Trapped within a walled suburbia

I’ve found my taste is somewhat underground
Between the shadows and the cracks
I’m building my utopia

I need to break free from all that binds
That makes me old before my time
In this world of dystopia

My love is like a bright guiding light
Shining in the darkness of the night
The star of my utopia

In the motion of the sea
in the air that we breathe
Can you feel me?

In the stars and in the trees
In the song of the bees
Can you hear me?

Caged, golden memories
Time has come
to show your true feelings

I know it’s the only way to be
When the same old feelings
come over me

I feel greater of all the sum of all my parts
A space jockey from a distant star
marooned upon dystopia

I’ve found my taste is somewhat underground
Between the shadows and the cracks
I am building my utopia

In the motion of the sea
In the air that we breath
Can you feel me?

In the stars and in the trees
In the song of the bees
Can you hear me?

This had to be my favorite exchange of the night. From the “Cards? What are you, Amish?” to the sad

Jon Stewart: “What are you blogging?”
Stephen Colbert: “I’m just alerting my fans that I will be Twittering tonight.”
Jon Stewart: “What are you… what are you twittering?”
Stephen Colbert “Tweets.”

exchange.

Only now I totally want to simultube at work and bury all my rage in a bottle.

I can’t decide if my new catchphrase should be:

“I don’t want to party with new fillings.”

or

“I caution you, it can be both.”

Lifescore so far today = 0/4, unless turning on the sprinkler counts as a household chore. I am so tired.

Sarah’s Sketches: Strawberry Shortcake

Love this artist’s take on Strawberry Shortcake. The whole thing is perfect, from the elongated limbs to the super-floppy hat to the perfect paper color choice. Anyway, link to her blog (& from there her website/portfolio) above, first seen at Design You Trust.

The background music of this Obama ad? THE WEEPIES!

HA!

That’s so goddamned cool. Maybe the reason they’re not out touring in promotion of Hideaway is because they’re out campaigning?

but it does. Maybe useful as a little self-reminder.

Goal for next week = normal amount of sleep.

Note: Today is SIX MONTHS to the day from when I broke my foot. Yes, I still need special attention about it.

Note Two: It’s August and therefore MY BIRTHDAY for the next 31 days. Fawn on me.

Last night Dave came over and sorted out my cabling issues with the stereo-to-PC. Well, sort of. We didn’t realize that when you unplug the microphone the webcam becomes the default input device, and the initial recording we did is all over-dubbed with our voices talking about how genius we are for getting it figured out. Once he left and I played it back I realized what was up and unplugged the webcam too. I think it’s working out now. That’s going to be a tedious process, but I can just do it on and off while working on other things I guess. Now I just have to keep convincing myself that I do NOT need a 60GB iPod, I need to winnow down my collection. Good luck to me on that one.

It was fun to have company, I fed him dinner and beer and I extracted all his scandalous dating stories for the past few weeks. (Me to him: You understand that what YOU think is happening is rarely-if-ever what SHE thinks is happening, right?) Then he surprised me in a good way by hanging out to watch Project Runway and some Big Bang Theory. I say that finding a straight male who will watch PR with you and comment intelligently on the designers and their work (well, OK one of the comments was “She needs to get eliminated because I don’t think I can look at her teeth for the rest of the season.” but I concurred with that sentiment, so it worked for me.) is a total bonus. We also agreed that the winning design was dog-ass ugly and like some sick “Barbie dressed in South Florida couch cushions” kind of nightmare. I don’t experience enough intelligent, aware straight men in my life, I decided. Or maybe he’s just a unique specimen.

Twas funny trying to get  food ready, since I told him that I would be most delighted to serve him dinner,  and whatever package-tearing-open or unwrapping of pre-cooked ingredients was necessary would be an absolute joy to me. (Whatever, I won’t pretend to be a cook even for someone who’s doing me a favor.) Anyway we had lemon-dill roasted chicken breasts, ceasar salad, some kind of rosemary potato salad and my favorite-ever bread (olive-oil and sea-salt ciabatta) all from Straub’s. The funny part was that he’s a beer drinker and obviously I am not. So I wanted to be all good-hostess-y and buy some to have handy. So first I had to text MyTodd™ in L.A. “What kind of beer does Dave drink?” (Answer: Guinness) so that went on my list to purchase. Then I realized that if I went to the store after work (4pm) and he came over at 6pm the beer might not have time to chill. I twittered to ask if this was the case, leading someone to respond “can’t you just buy it cold?” leading me to feel like a total asstard, because yeah - of course I can. I was thinking of wine, which is the only alcoholic thing I really ever buy. So, requisite humiliation, check - I headed to the store only to determine that there are multiple types of Guinness, and I had no idea which was the right kind (for the record, from Dave: “Any Guinness is the right kind of Guinness.” then he tried to explain to me something about one you drink from a glass versus one you drink from a bottle with a rattling thing in it, and something else, but my eyes glazed over a little.)

Anyway, it was a fun evening with a productive outcome and I am glad to have had some human contact when dirtybastardassface MyTodd™ is out of town. Now to get on with ripping all that vinyl.

Oh, and a note to SD: Please enjoy the monastic, family-friendly vacation you have planned and don’t let thoughts of black vinyl bondage tape anything else distressed damsels hidden in your secret lair distract you. Have fun!

It’s Sunday evening, which means I am melancholy. And Todd’s going out of town for almost 2 weeks, and that means I am a bit forlorn. And it’s almost my birthday, which means that I am likely on my way to a full-on refuse-to-get-out-of-bed bout of mehateworld depression.

However, it’s also storming with some gorgeously ear-cracking thunder outside, and it’s cool here and the fan’s blowing on me. It’s quiet and the laundry’s all done. My whole world doesn’t seem completely askew, and I spent the weekend listening to nothing but Weepies, Steve Tannen and Deb Talan. (ordering the back-albums from their solo careers=one more birthday gift to me from me.)

(Oooh, that’s really rumbly out there.)

Anyway, my head’s all full of good lyrics and what MyTodd™ would call “that folksy crap music.” It makes me feel peaceful and not alone, and I am pretty OK with that.

G’night.

This came from here so go there.

more cat pictures

Does everyone know about these but me? These random snippets this guy slaps on the end of all of his shows? It’s really hard to get your Tivo to pause exactly on one of those things, and science forbid you should overshoot it and let the episode end, you can’t get back to it without watching/fast forwarding the entire episode again. But anyway, I liked this one.

CLP - Vanity Card #210
I believe that in order to walk through grief, fear, loneliness, despair, confusion and anger without recourse to drugs, alcohol, over-eating, over-sexing, or the endless mind-numbing distractions provided by Western culture, one must become a spiritual warrior. I further believe that the pay-off for enduring suffering, for soberly embracing the inevitable bouts of emotional pain that life brings, is wisdom and serenity in the face of calamity. But make no mistake here, the path of the warrior is treacherous and cannot be walked alone. To survive, he must have brothers and sisters-in-arms to carry him when he buckles. When we lived and died in small tribes, this principle of mutually supporting one another through the trials of life was deeply woven into the fabric of the group mind. With the advent of towns and cities we were forced to live with the daily dilemma of being desperately alone and yet desperately needing one another. Which is why we are, by design, always seeking new tribes. With that in mind, I humbly offer a simple guideline to evaluate the efficacy of any tribe you might encounter on your path to becoming a spiritual warrior: if they ask for your money or access to your crotch, run away. If they ask for your money, smile unceasingly, never blink, and guarantee to make you a demi-god, running away will not suffice. Change your mailing address and briefly reconsider drugs, alcohol, food, sex and TV.

My parents have been bugging me for years to get all my vinyl out of their house already. Well yesterday I finally got to feeling like it, so I went out there and got one of my dad’s turntable/stereo systems and all my records. It was a huge PITA to haul all that stuff into the house, and it’s now only resting in my office, it still has to go up one floor to its final home in the bedroom. But OMG, so worth it.

Most of the full albums I had on vinyl have long been replaced by CDs, but the 12″s, the remixes, some of those things just aren’t available digitally. (Especially because I liked some obscure bands whose stuff isn’t exactly at the top of a label’s list to digitize.) Plus the sound is amazing. I am happier than ever that the house next door is vacant, because there are inappropriate levels of audio emitting from my place. (at the moment New Order’s “Touched by the Hand of God” from the flip side of the Blue Monday extended remix 12″. Joy!)

Of course my long-term plan is to rip all of these tracks onto my hard drive so I can have easier access to them, but for that I have to go buy some kind of cable that my friend was telling me about, and for THAT I have to go take a shower and get my happy ass to Best Buy or somewhere, and I am not yet in the mood for all that. But in the meantime, oh so much happy musical goodness. And so much geeky joy to come in the ripping and cataloging process.

Unfortunately I have discovered that chihuahuas are NOT enthralled by bass. They’re a smidge testy at all this noise.

You know, I’ve seen his sex tape, so it should come as no surprise to me that Colin Farrell is swinging some serious pipe, but this picture, with him looking so (too, IMHO) skinny (for a role, it must be added) makes that abundantly clear.

Click for full size.

Listen to what I am listening to here.