foomart foomart

B is in the air on his way to Nantes now, and I'm here, chillin' with the critters and hoping Jersey City jury duty isn't too painful. I have to call tomorrow evening to get my reporting instructions for Tuesday. I'd done jury duty a half dozen times in New York, including grand jury duty twice, so it'll be interesting to compare how the two cities run theirs. They say right on the notice that if I don't sit on a trial my term of service is just two days. That's pretty cool. But I have to be there at 8:30 AM, which is very definitely not cool. And I have no idea where the court building is, so it's time to do a bit of research. And I'm making five bucks a day! This is the closest thing to a job I've had since February 2002! 7:45 PM

News Brief
Dateline: Duhville

There's too many of us there's too many of us there's too many there's too many of us there's too many of us there's too many there's too many of us there's too many of us there's too many there's too many of us there's too many of us there's too many...

5:43 PM

I've changed the blend at the radio station a bit. I've taken pretty much of the English-language stuff out, all the rock (old and new) and punk and rap and oldies. I also took out the electronica but I may put some of that back in. As it is now, though, it's pretty much "world" music with a high percentage of reggae and dub. There are a number of cover songs still there, and the old psychedelic Krautrock and the like, so you will hear stuff in English, but now there's a smaller chance it'll be a recording from the mainland E.E.U.U. (I've left the Hawaii stuff in there, too, because it makes me happy.) 1:01 PM

I hate Hate HATE Sundays. I think it's just completely outrageous that there's no mail today, no deliveries at all, because of one specific religion. It's amazing to me that laws like this are still on the books in this enlightened day and age. (And more of them keep getting signed, as fast as the Chimp can scrawl his name, one letter at a time, tongue stuck out like Charlie Brown writing Dear Pen Pal in his neatest script. All based on one book, you know, the Chimp's favorite book? The one I'd bet money he's never read, since I think he's illiterate? But that's another post.) It's just such utter bullshit that some throwaway line in a 3000-year-old work of fiction means I don't get any mail today. So the protagonist in some novel rested on the seventh day. How is that relevant? How does everybody think this means THEY should get the day off too? What did YOU do on the other six days? The seventh day off clearly only applies to people whose jobs are creating the heavens and the earth and all that. Everybody else, get in the fucking truck already and bring me my damn mail! 10:38 AM

Stupid wind! Yesterday's rain knocked all the leaves off the trees in front of the condo yesterday. The whole sidewalk was full of them when we came in last night, and I had big plans to go out today and bag them up to have a supply of browns for over the winter. Unfortunately, last night brought high winds and this morning when I went out there was garbage all over the place, and all the leaves had been swept cleanly away. I cleaned up the trash, which has probably already blown back all over the place, and I did get a trash bag full of leaves from where they'd drifted into various corners around the property, but it's a tiny fraction of what I'd hoped to stockpile. Ah well. 11:40 AM

Back in front of a cozy crackling monitor where I belong. Fangs-gibbon dinner was lovely; sad, of course, for me and for AH and PH, both of whom had lost their mothers this year, but everyone there was warm and friendly. One of the guests there is a minister of some Protestant denomination. His daughter had some stickers and she made one for him, and hugged him to surreptitiously stick it on his back. What do you think it said? If you guessed KICK ME, guess again. It said I LOVE GOD. My eyes rolled clear back in my head.

After dinner we took a nice stroll around Stockbridge, where we drank tequila and peeked in the Holsten Gallery. It was closed but had several Chihuhuhulies visible through the windows. We went to Fff's house after that where we were supposed to paint a wall but never did. Today was spent making plans to get back home which all broke and reformed as everybody figured out what the hell they were doing. Why we can't ever do this in advance, I'll never know. We checked out Cff's new store where she's selling her housewares to people with more money and fewer cats than us. Got back to the big house, where we pretty much packed straight into our ride and took off, which was fine. Everybody's super nice up there, and a lovely time was had by all, but I was definitely ready to go.

Got home and I made an omelette with salmon, cream cheese, dill, and capers which was seriously BANGIN'. Very much worth doing. If we weren't out of eggs I'd make another one. Mm-mm-mm.

8:52 PM

Ok, so we're about out of here. I just finished up a quickie design "job" (a fun collage of AD for the evite for his 40th birthday party) and sent out the files. Now we're waiting for water to boil to parboil the veggies, and I'm sitting here in t-shirt and underwear with gak on my hair to make it soft and shiny. (s-e-x-x-y!) We're off to Stockbridge, home of Alice and Arlo (who still lives in the church near BY the restaurant, in the bell tower) and the late Officer Obie. We'll be chez ff, a stone's throw from a boneyard which includes an area the locals call Sedgwick Pie. The rich Sedgwicks are all buried in a circle so that at the end of the world when they all rise up the first thing they see will be other Sedgwicks. There is at least one maid buried there, and at least one dog, but Edie was Not Invited.

We're supposed to be in the city in under two hours so I must get moving. I've got to find an appropriate sweater. I love that about the drive up every year; all these cars full of once-a-year families in their once-a-year sweaters. We're driving up in AH's car. I have volunteered to sit in the way back seat for the ride up, facing sickeningly backward and very aware of the car behind us every time she stops short. I'm thinking I'll bring a flask.

Thankful for salud, dinero y amor and that the worst year of my life will soon be over. Full report will inevitably follow. Really gotta go now.

9:41 AM

I used to read Jane Austen books and wonder what the hell those people found to do every day. Only the men ever had to commute to London for any kind of job, and half of them didn't even have to do that since they were simply wealthy. I guess some of the stuff the women did took time. Planning a walk on a nice spring day could involve ten people and three days, what with sending messages back and forth and analyzing the writer's hand and the quality of the letter and all. But really, they had a lifetime with absolutely nothing to do. I never understood that.

But now that I'm a layabout my own self, I find it really remarkable how the days just zoom by. I have my list which I tick off every day, and there's always stuff that has to get done around the house, but really, it's hardly an eight hour workday. It's cool. I could be stuck at some soul-sucking job wishing I had more free time to do the stuff I wanted to do. Like right now I'm going to go install a birdbath. Then I'm gonna do yoga and meditate until I feel like stopping. I ain't mad at that.

3:38 PM

So there I was, listening to The Hot Dogs, the record by The Hot Dogs and I was thinking how much I enjoyed The Hot Dogs, the record by The Hot Dogs. It's not at all like Custardpaws & Mr. Freezy (sorry, no link, that group and record seem to have been Sovietted out of history). The songs are much tighter, faster, and shorter; only two tracks break the three-minute mark. I wouldn't go so far as to call it punk, though, since I'm sure the young people have a new word for that sort of short fast songs now. Besides, it's much more interesting than that, stylistically all over the place, from straight up pop to reggae to a sort of almost rockabilly. I bet these guys would be a lot of fun to see live. The lyrics are quirky and clever, of course, featuring universally-relatable themes including being drunk, being in trouble, and pants. In summary, you should immediately purchase The Hot Dogs, the record by The Hot Dogs. The end. 12:32 PM

Hokay. You click on this now.
11:26 PM

WE ARE NOT GEEKS!
Granted, we were on the first PATH train to go from Hoboken to the newly-reopened World Trade Center PATH station.


And, granted, we were in car number 893, the first car of that train, and, yes, we took a picture of the engineer.


However, we did not rush for the railfan seat, nor did we stand in the aisle and look out the front window. Not like these guys. These guys are geeks.


The new station is pretty good looking. Instead of the underground mall that used to be there, it's all open and airy. (Bonus points if you can find me in the picture.)


The new turnstiles take Metrocards! And they're wide enough for us Giant Ass NJ broads to get through without turning sideways. Hallefuckinglujah. (Maybe one bonus point for finding me in this one.)



Here's something you rarely see, shiny clean tracks with no garbage or urine or critters:




You can kind of see outside to the construction zone where the buildings used to be from the station. It's going to be awfully cold come wintertime, what with the whole lack of walls thing, but they say it's temporary.


From the outside, it's completely disorienting. The big entrance/exit here is kind of where the exit used to be that went up through the bookstore on the northeast corner. The exit we always used to go through would be around the corner, a little way down the street that faces the big beige building.


The place where the cranes and shit are used to be a RILLY TALL BUILDING. Like it would have taken up pretty much the whole frame of this photo. It's still extremely strange and surreal to have that empty space there. It's not a punch in the stomach like it used to be, but it'll never stop being really fucking weird, I don't think.

There were a handful of protestors there, family members of people who died in the towers. They don't want the PATH trains to go under the footprint of the two buildings like they do; they want the whole area to be considered sacred ground and not built upon. I disagree. Seems to me the nutters who flew airplanes into those buildings wanted nothing more than to flatten them and for nothing ever to grow on that land again. And they got pretty close, even to the point of the towers getting edited out of all kinds of movies and TV shows as though they'd never existed. Fuck that. I think to not use the PATH tunnels, the same ones that were there and survived the attacks, would be another surrender. No, thanks.

6:24 PM

Blugh, what a lame day. B didn't make it to the repair shop in time, so it's two more days without the big red mixer. It's been like 11 months already, though, so I think I'll get over it. My chest thing is still bothering me, but I intend to get over that as well. It's just really annoying not to be able to take a proper deep breath. And the yoga thing never happened today either. Like I said, a lame day indeed. The plus side is, I found a recipe for a scarily delicious sort of faux mashed potato dish, which uses cauliflower instead of the potatoes. It covers up the cauliflower taste with a metric shitload of butter and cheese. It's goooooood. We're trying out recipes to bring for turkey day, and this one would be a candidate if we didn't know they were making an enormous drum of mashed potatoes already, like they do every year. So the search continues, tomorrow we'll try this broccoli and cauliflower dish.

So little to report. Is it better to write about not having anything to write about, or just not write? Probably just not write, huh. Ok, I'm going to stretch a bit and hit the sack.

11:59 PM

5unny.
6:04 PM

Dammit, this is what I get for being motivated. I started doing my usual exercises and I pulled a muscle in my chest. Nothing but gentle yoga and Reiki for me for the rest of the day, though even the yoga is questionable since it hurts to breathe deeply. Stupid backward pushups. Stupid exercise. Don't know why I bother. Oh yeah, it's to fix my stupid weak shoulder that I fucked up a year ago, and it was working, too, until today, dammit. 2:27 PM

B's gone to Bay Ridge to spring our mixer from the repair shop. He'd burned it out last xmas making stollen, and just this month got around to taking it to be fixed. I'm looking forward to having it back. Maybe we can use it when we make some nice healthful stuff to bring to Stockbridge for the turkey thing. I'm looking around on the Inter-Net for appropriate recipes, but mostly today I'm being lazy. I'm working my way around to doing my daily list, but also waiting until B gets home to start doing yoga, so I'm doing everything very slowly. 1:43 PM

I'm slowly working my way through the Blogsisters' blogroll, and I've got to say I'm disappointed. Many if not most of the bloggers in the list have sproggen or are about to. This isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, if the blog is otherwise interesting, but when it's not, when they define themselves by their offspring and have to mention them in every post, I'm out of there. And way too many of them do.

I've found a few broken links and abandoned blogs, a few frightening ones (whoa), a few written by people who don't use capital letters.

There are some good ones in there, though, and I'm bookmarking them individually for further observation. I'm sorry that my distaff bias hasn't paid off better; I guess I'd been spoiled by the likes of misbehaving.net, which is chock full of smart women with things to say. I'd forgotten about all the silly breeders and dizzy bints out there with Diaryland accounts.

5:58 PM

This B3TA challenge has some really clever entries in it. Worth your time, I say. 9:58 AM

I haven't pushed The Divided in a couple of days. Do you like David Gray, that kind of music? If he sang about men? This is along those lines, but more so. Clicky clicky buy buy! 1:41 AM

Show night 2, and I am starstruck. The venue includes the Public Theater* as well as Joe's Pub where DG and SB played. Right now there's a play on at the Public called The Story which attracted many stars, Angela Bassett and Phylicia Rashad among lots of famous types, most of whom looked familiar but I had no idea who they were. Suzanne, my merch selling comrade, had to point people out to me left and right as they milled about in the lobby where I was set up. That's not why I'm starstruck.

S@ndra Bernh@rd played again, no catfights, same show, same trip to the coat room, same everything. Nothing noteworthy except that my old schoolmate Will was there to see the show. I gave him a foomart pin, so if he finds it in his pocket when he's near a computer, hi Will! But still not starstruck.

DG played next, and played a knockout show. Then we sold a ton of merch, even more than last night. And I met T's imaginary girlfriend A, who apparently does exist, or so she claims. But it wasn't until the crowd started coming in for the next act, of whom I can't find any mention anywhere in Joe's Pub's ads or their website or anything so I don't know who they are... it wasn't until then that Isaac fucking Hayes came walking in. My eyes fell out like a cartoon wolf. Now that's famous. I didn't say anything, of course... "Hi! I completely spaced one of your songs a couple weeks ago! I have ALL of your records...on my computer..." uh, naah. But—but—Isaac fucking Hayes! Like five feet away! Eeeep!

*which reminds me, I have to locate and digitize the tape I bootlegged there, of the songs from Up Against It.

12:55 AM

What a shit mail day. Some useless catalogs and a letter from Putnam Investments. I expected it to be a "we're sorry and we've fired all the bad guys so please don't take your money away" kind of thing, but instead it was a notice that they're implementing a new fee for users who trade too much. If they think you're market timing, they'll charge you a penalty. They have a lot of damn gall to send a letter like that at a time like this. Not that it affects me, of course, this is a 401(k) from a job I left in 1997 and I never touch the thing. But still. Putnam of all people should shut the hell up about dodgy trading. 3:51 PM

Well, the shoe dryer thingy seems to have worked pretty well. It's the first time we've used the thing; we got it for xmas a bunch of years ago but never took it out of its case. It's a ridiculous item, but it's performed its one trick pretty well, I think. The shoes seem to be dry and don't smell. I still put them up in the sun for a while just to make sure they don't go funky. That happened two pairs before this one, and it's not something I want to repeat. 3:41 PM

I showed up at the gig and they let me know that they'd just come up with the idea we should sell CDs and stuff from two locations. I got a major crank on, because I'd spent the day making lovely signs, all of which pointed at one location. Whatever. I got over it, right about the time the drink tickets arrived. (Drinks there are ten bucks apiece, so those little chits are seriously valuable!) I wound up selling posters and pins as well as CDs, and the other woman set up by the exit and just sold CDs. It worked out well and we sold just under half of the huge box o' disks. A big selling point was that half the performances had been recorded at or near that very venue. That means many of the people buying CDs had been at those shows and could theoretically be on the recording if they'd made any kind of recognizable noises. The new pin set also sold well. I'll probably make a few more of them for tonight.

DG went on at 9:30, and we couldn't set up our stuff until the 7:30 show was all done and back in the dressing room, because the 7:30 show was S@ndra Bernh@rd. She and DG have a weird snarky junior-high thing going on and I'm not sure why. I know they were both on the Jon Stewart show back when he was on MTV. I remember watching it. The other guests were Jake from Squirt TV—loved his little show back then, too—and a guy who decorated cakes with portraits of Jon Stewart and the guests. SB didn't like the way hers came out and was really mean to the poor guy. Of course she also did the usual try-to-imitate-DG and gosh-it's-harder-than-it-seems thing that so many people feel compelled to do when they hear her for the first time. I don't know if this was the beginning of their little feud, but it's definitely grown since then, with the two of them making snarky comments back and forth in performances and interviews and stuff. So we had to wait to set up until SB was safely back in her dressing room. And of course we got to experience her whole act. She's singing now. She covers "Little Red Corvette". I won't say what she covers it with. Let me just say there's a tambourine involved and leave it at that, mmkay? As a singer, she's a pretty good comedian. Between her last song and her first encore, she popped out the stage exit and went straight into the: coat check. Um, isn't your dressing room THAT door over there? Didn't matter, she came out a few moments later minus the shirt she'd been wearing, and did her encore in bra and hot pants. Whoa. She's one gangly gal, she is.

So there was no actual cat fight between the dueling divas, but there's always tonight, since some brain donor booked both women for both nights. Quite the Lineup o' Luv, there. We shall see.

DG played a nice set including my top two favorite songs that she does these days. I sold lots of merch afterwards. Then we went to Round the Clock for the traditional coffee, drinks, and dessert with the crew. The usual suspects were there, along with the other woman who'd sold stuff (and is also DG's new personal assistant,) and a film guy who'd been in Glasgow when we were there. He knew Alison the lighting person from before, and it seems now he's going to be involved with some kind of project with DG. He and I talked about wristwatches and lucid dreams for a while, and I recommended the movie Waking Life, like I do to everybody.

Oh, and Garth was there! Yay! He came down from Winnipeg for the shows. We love Garth.

People started to realize how late it was and how early they all had to be there the next morning, so we paid up and split. We had to try a couple cabs before we found one to take us to Joisey, but we did and we zoomed home with lovely wee-hour swiftness. Hooked up the shoe dryer thingy (we'd walked to the venue during a torrential downpour) and crashed.

10:18 AM

Whoa, that was a long day. I ended up making a squizillion pins, totally replenishing my DG stock so I'm ready for the two shows. I also made up a buttload of signage. Doesn't seem like much but I've been doing it pretty much without a break since that last post. Now it's time to shower and go to the venue and sell, sell, sell. 6:13 PM

Gotta work. Don't wanna work. It's pissing rain out there, and the day's slipping away, but don't wanna work. I have plenty of time, it seems; apparently I'm only selling stuff AFTER the 10 PM show, not before. So I hear secondhand; nobody's actually told ME that, of course. In the email with the digi postcard several days ago, I also agreed to do the sales, but when I talked to the tour manager yesterday she asked me whether I'd be there tonight or not. Hello? Communication: it's what separates us from animals. Ok, let me go get this crap done so I have time for my own stuff today. It shouldn't take me more than a couple hours to finish the job at this point; I got a bunch of it done yesterday. Still don't wanna. There's a whole big internet out there which demands my immediate attention... 10:52 AM

Okay, this is really it. It's just that I'm finding out a lot of new information and I can't resist talking about it. From now on, all diet-related posts will be on the Boring Diet Page. Go there if you want, ignore it if you want, ain't no big thing. 11:52 PM

A potential new member of the Daily Blogjog: Blogsisters. I just found this site, but it looks like a goodie. If nothing else, they're worth bookmarking for their extensive and potentially groovy blogroll. Nothing I love more than working through a like-minded blogroll. And I usually click on the sites with women's names first, so this should save me a lot of time. 8:07 PM

Argharghargh. We're trying to make plans and nail down airline tickets for the trip to Venezuela in December. The last two weeks in December have pretty much been the plan since there was a plan; we'd spend xmas down there and do the ashes thing. The hitch is, Dad left a note outlining his wishes and they include his friend BP. BP lives in Hawaii and can't go in December. But K has made plans with a lot of people down there and they are all going to try to get there around that time. K thinks we should do it without BP; I think she's not going to be able to relax until this job is done. My brother thinks we shouldn't, and that doing it over xmas, even though none of us give a rat's ass about the holiday, might be a bad idea. And BP said to go without him; maybe he doesn't want to go/can't deal with the situation, maybe it's just plain bad timing. The holiday season is, naturally, a busy time for him, and he's got a visitor coming from the mainland right around then. But there's this box of ashes that need scattering, and all these other people have altered their plans to be sure we'd have a way to get where we need to be, and they knew my dad and want to be there.

Now that I write it out, it seems like the smart thing would be to go there some other time, when BP can go. It's early enough that we can let the boat people know to change their plans, and we'd probably save a bunch of money by not traveling during the high holiday season. The prices are going up every day at this point. I guess there's no reason it has to happen during December really, either. We had planned on xmas there again this year when we were there last year, but now that everything's turned upside down none of that matters. I think what matters is that we're all there, whenever that turns out to be.

7:18 PM

England kicks Bush's arse! Wish we were allowed to do the same to the unelected brat over here. 12:43 PM

Oh, by the way, the God Street Wine site's come back up. 12:15 PM

Got a button order last night from some kid who wants a bunch of one-off custom pins to put on his bookbag. He couldn't believe the price I quoted him. He'll be so chuffed when he gets these. This is the kind of job I love doing. I make enough money to cover the parts and shipping, he gets a passel of one-of-a-kind buttons with just what he wants on them for dirt cheap, everybody's happy. He's apparently pretty good at some computer game; one of the designs is a screengrab of his character, a big pile of pixelated muscles who's reached level 22 and has 531 HP, which I take to mean some kind of D&D-like hit points. I'm guessing those are high numbers, since he wants to immortalize them.

I've also got to bang out a couple zillion DG pins for the new albums today. It'd be helpful to me to have gotten advance copies of both CDs, or access to the original files, but I only have a copy of La Serpenta right now. I don't think Defixiones exists anywhere yet. So I'm making La Serpenta pins to sell at the shows tomorrow and Thursday. I'll be selling advance copies of La Serpenta Canta there too, even though the official US release isn't until December 1. If by some fluke there are copies of Defixiones there tomorrow night, I'll grab one and knock out some Defix pins for the Thursday show. It's my dirty little secret: I can pump out hundreds of buttons from scratch in a day if I don't have to deal with other people and approvals and crap.

That's one Reiki principle covered for today...

11:51 AM

I'm thinking Lo must have gotten the package by now, so I'm gonna go ahead and link to his site. You can buy his newish record Henry's House at good ol' CD Baby, and check out his old band God Street Wine (that's a Trouser Press article; their site godstreetwine.com seems not to be working this evening) and read about their albums here. You can buy some of them here, and there's always Amazon for the rest. The band broke up a while back, but music is forever.

While you're on your music-buying spree, here's the first of what will be many reminders: buy the Divided record. They're young, they need the money. Don't put that credit card away just yet.

7:58 PM

Dear My Subconscious,
Please stop ignoring obvious dreamsigns.
Thank you,
Me 10:53 AM

I enjoy the fine Damn Hell Ass Kings family of products as much as the next guy, but, christ, enough already with the stupid rays and two-toned parallel lines. Is there only one designer for all those sites? Does this designer have any other graphic ideas? (I mean besides the woodtype fonts.)

Scanning through the DHAK list made me remember how much I used to love TWoP (note the rays) and also made me realize how totally over it I've gotten. I'm pretty much over television in general, really. I just don't have the patience to sit and watch more than an hour or so of anything. And movies, forget it. I get way too restless and want to get back to my very important dicking around on the internet as soon as I can. It's a darn good thing I won that TiVo three years ago. If I had to sit through commercials, too, I'd never watch a minute of TV. I wouldn't get rid of the set, though. I like having a television even if I only watch darts (don't I wish) and the Weather Channel once in a while. Besides, people who don't have TVs are far too often supercilious snobs about it, and I'm not sure it's possible to say "oh, I don't own a television" without sounding like one of them, unless you lost yours in a tornado or something.

11:24 PM

Two pals in two bands from two Portlands have two CDs which you must purchase immediately:

The Divided - Blueprint for Happiness

The Hot Dogs - The Hot Dogs

You still here?
Get shopping! Both sites have sound clips available for your listening pleasure, and e-z online ordering for your convenience.

5:18 PM

Hi, again, Mom! I guess you might need a little cheering up today. So it goes. 4:54 PM

Post moved. All diet posts can be found on the new Boring Diet Page. 1:16 PM

Guh. Just wrenched myself out of a dream where school had started 3 days ago and I hadn't been to any classes and I really was trying to do well but I was off to a bad start and I'd signed up for the diving team but I didn't know where the practices were and my Uncle F lived in Brooklyn so I went to visit him there but I got lost on the way back to Manhattan and decided to take a bus to Amsterdam instead so I got to what I thought was Amsterdam but couldn't find anyplace to buy weed, just casinos, so I got back on the bus and realized it was going way out into the Dutch countryside and it was 3 in the morning and there weren't any more buses back to Amsterdam at that hour and I didn't have any money and couldn't find my house keys so I knew I'd have to find my way back to my uncle's house in Brooklyn but I didn't know the address and anyway I was stuck in this very gezellig underground concourse in Holland with homes and bars and stuff but the woman who was being nice to me got suspicious for some reason and tried to make me pay for two nights' lodging but I'd only just gotten there and it started to look like she wasn't going to help me get back to Amsterdam after all and I just broke down and freaked out about school and being lost and my dad dying and then I woke up.

So now I have a whole pile of completely unfounded stress in my stomach. I tried to get back to sleep with the intention of lucidly dealing with it all, but some barking dogs outside eliminated that possibility. I'll do some extra yoga today, I think.

10:07 AM

There is classical music blaring, just blaring from the parking lot next door. All my windows are closed up tight, and it's still loud enough that I could identify the piece if I knew what it was. I know without peeking that it's coming out of the speakers of one of the white-haired skinny old man's motorcycles. I love my neighborhood.

Our other neighbors in the apartment building across the way include Smokey Joe, aka Mork. We named him Smokey Joe because several times a day he walks over by the dumpster, smoking a cigarette, and stands there, Walkman on, cap on, in his Army jacket, stilly smoking. Then he walks back in. Sometimes he carries a small bag of garbage, but usually he's just out there to smoke. I saw him once without the cap, and he's shiny bald on top, but with long salt-and-pepper hair on the sides. Our former next-door neighbors named him Mork because of the Walkman. They believed he was getting orders from the mothership on those headphones. He's got a brother who walks with a walker, and a piece-of-shit former sports car which he starts up and runs every weekend. I've actually seen him drive it out of the parking lot from time to time, unlike his piece-of-shit pickup truck with the cap on it which is completely full of stuff. I think it's their only closet space. They lined the windows with paper bags at some point, to prevent theft or sun damage, I don't know. Mork is the only neighbor I've seen who's ever acknowledged the heartbreakingly skinny stray cat who lives in the area.

We've also got a neighbor who's got the physique and posture of C. Montgomery Burns, and the head of Beavis. He tends to wear high-water pants or shorts which show off his skinny, pasty legs. I walked behind him for a block or two once, past Moe's Bait and Tackle, and he was weaving and wobbly. I don't know if he was drunk that early afternoon or suffering from something else.

Our other neighbors include Rae Dawn, who keeps getting new cars with Delaware plates, and the Red-Headed Poof, who once woke up to find "Sex Slave" written in the snow on his car's windshield. There's Rene, who may actually really be named Rene. He's a nice little man with a bad limp and a wife who's always hanging out the window of their second-floor apartment. We can't forget the Noisy Family, no matter how hard we try: every trip they take features the parents bickering and the three children whining, wailing and grousing as they get buckled into the car. Every time. I don't know why they bother. There's the Security Guy, who was the only one who tried to get to work after a particularly huge blizzard, ultra-suspicious super spy Bora Milutinovic and his scruffy little dog Floormop, happy bickering couple Victor Navasky and Betty Friedan, and the Guy Who Lives For His Stupid Corvette. He's got a German Shepherd and a girlfriend who once applied deodorant in her car, in full view of our former neighbor (the one who named Mork and the Red-Headed Poof). This wouldn't be too notable but for some reason she removed her shirt to do it.

The last one I can think of is the Backy Uppy Guy, who's got a honkin' big flag on his honkin' big minivan in which he sits with the motor running for hours at a time in the summertime. He also has a backup alarm on his car which meep meep meeps several times a day with its wheezy screech since his parking spot apparently can't be reached by going forwards. I'm not sure he knows what the D setting means on that thing.

These are the people in my neighborhood.
These are the people in my hood.
These are the people in my neighborhood.
And most of them are up to no good.

5:25 PM

Still trying, still not getting there, but still trying. 4:59 PM

The following post was brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of Commas. Please give generously. 12:13 PM

And, just like that, Teresa Nielsen Hayden de-cranked me and made me snort loudly. I'm still too cranky to ROFL, much less ROFLMAO, or, god forbid, ROFLSHISTC, but I did, in fact, LOL. 11:45 AM

Cranky cranky cranky cranky cranky cranky cranky cranky. 11:39 AM

Got my Hot Dogs record in the mail today. It was already in the CDDB when I stuck it in my computer. That's the sign of quality! I also finally got a gently pre-owned copy of Rodale's Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, too late for this year, of course, but I have big plans for next spring. I'm starting a new level in the worm bin this week, too, finally having harvested all of the castings from the oldest one. I don't post about the Squirmy Irmy all that much these days, but they're thriving indoors, outdoors, and in the big potted plants. The ones in the worm bin are still making fabulous art out of the Jersey corn cobs from this summer.

Speaking of fabulous art, MAN is my brother getting scary good at what he's doing. The boy needs his own atelier, and stat.

10:38 PM

Challenges. Life's all about the challenges, right? If you try and try and can't do something, that should make you just want to try harder, and figure out another way to make it happen, right? Right? 4:25 PM

I...am so ordinary. I fall right smack dab on the clapper of the blogger bell curve. Granted, that's pretty left and south of center, but I'm pretty sure the box I'm in is the fullest one on the chart today. Which is good! Everybody should think like I do! 11:57 AM

Dang. The post office seems to have lost an eBay package of mine. I bought a cheap assorted bunch of glass tubes and pipettes and crap for dribbling chemicals onto picture frames. I'd been using plastic medicine droppers but the chemicals are too caustic to do that long term. Besides, how cool are pipettes? Don't you just love it when you see a scientist type putting a drop of something into each member of a row of test tubes, using the precision thumb-on-straw technique we all perfected back when we used to also do the straw-paper worm trick? Okay, I still do that, but that's not the point. In any case, there was no sign of it at the post office so now I hope the sender put a nice clear return address on the box and will get it back soon. Or that it just shows up here. My fear is that the delivery person just left it in front of my door and somebody stole it or it blew away in the high winds we've been having; the postpeople usually don't even ring the bell once when they do that, much less twice. 11:36 AM

Oh! There was a development I didn't post about. (Gasp!) It turns out that John Ringel, the Jersey Devil guy, was involved with the design and construction of several parts of the house of some family friends. He did their fabulous deck, where we've spent many a happy evening, and their excellent kitchen, all cherry wood and lab top, which is where we got the information about the Epoxyn in the first place. And they were thrilled with him and couldn't recommend him highly enough. Love that kind of connection. 9:19 PM

B just acquired a copy of Panther. Anybody wanna talk me out of it? 8:49 PM

hee 5:38 PM

A good day, a quiet day. I thought I'd get some more CDs done but I've been in too meditative a state of mind. From the sitting very still and listening to the wind howling outside kind, to the clearing off a table and wiping it clean kind. Both are good. 2:30 PM

Besides all the fun little stuff I've found out about Bias Peak and Jam, I've learned a few other things today.
1. I've been doing the Plow wrong my whole life, and there's a much easier way to do the Camel.
2. The round rainbow you can see from an airplane is called a glory, and it isn't a rainbow at all.
3. It's illegal to skydive through clouds in the US.
4. Skydivers love to go cloudbustin' anyway, and nudgingly refer to what they drop through as "industrial haze" or say they did it in some other country. 11:30 PM

Hi Mom! 7:01 PM

I've had such a fun day! Seriously! I've been transferring old cassettes to digital format, and it's a total blast. I just designed up a whole CD package for a high school chum*, of his band from when they played a school assembly and I bootlegged it. He went on to front a fairly well-known jam band, so I may have been the first of very many people to bootleg his music. I'm not linking to his site, or any of his bands' sites, yet, because I want the CD to come as a surprise, and I don't know if he's the kind of blogger who obsessively checks his referrer logs or not. It's pretty cool and custom, though, I must say. I will put links up in a few days, and links to other pals of mine who are in bands, as soon as one of them gets their album-ordering capability up and running. (aHEM.) Incidentally, my schoolmate's latest album is available via CD Baby. Just sayin'.

*hint: think pencils

4:03 PM

I've finally figured out that I really don't care if I get paid for a lot of the things I do. I mean, if I have a JOB, I expect a paycheck and stuff, but I just don't do that with my own business. I did a business card reorder yesterday, and the third version of the digi-postcard today. I'd made my money the first time around on each of them, so no new money. Which is fine—I agreed to those terms when I did the first jobs. I was just pissy this morning because the email was too goddamn chipper. It's not worth it to me to negotiate and invoice and worry about sales tax and crap like that for what's probably a pretty piddling sum anyway.

This is especially true with the pins. I like giving my pins away, it's worth more to me to do that than it would be to get money for each one. It makes people happy to get them, makes me happy that I can give them, and as long as I get the usual flow of website orders, and bands* and geeks and non-profits who want custom buttons 4 cheep, plus an occasional corporate job at full price, my supplies are paid for. I think the war-fueled sales burst paid for the equipment. Even though I didn't profit on the anti-war sets specifically, a lot of people ordered other sets at the same time at full price. So now I have paid-for machines and a zillion parts. It's okay if I give them away, and I don't need to chase down business when I really hate doing that. I don't know why I keep beating myself up over something so easily reconcilable. My work still has value even if I don't get paid in cash. The design is the whole part of the job that I like anyway. Well, that, and ordering office supplies. And rolls of stamps. I love rolls of stamps.

The only downside to the whole not-making-money thing is that our accountant gets very dour and disapproving. Aah, we can't afford to pay her ass this year anyway, so who cares.

*Strangers' bands, that is. Friends get hooked up. Because I can, and I want to, and gosh darn it, it's okay if I do!

8:32 PM

So I did the stupid design job, which took like ten minutes, the water came back on, I did some laundry and some yoga, the pot might not be toxic from the mercury spill after all, and things are back to normal. Keep the chocolate coming, though, this upswing could change at any time. Ain't I just a delight? 6:12 PM

My new favorite expression, from a snickerful list at the hi-larious Modern Drunkard:

Trip dog The invisible canine that starts getting underfoot around your tenth drink. Once he arrives he will trip you up the rest of the night.

2:23 PM

Grr! I can't focus on anything this morning, and I'm impatient and irritable. I got an annoyingly-cheery email this morning, hi, how are you, hope the morning finds you well and oh by the way we need you to do something that nobody else wants to do, and for no money, okay? And she spelled my NAME wrong. The radio keeps playing annoying things like way-too-bouncy ska and John Coltrane, which if I'm not in the mood for it, and I rarely am, just makes me want to dig his dead ass up and throw him a bone beating. A beating supreme. (That's just like a regular beating, but with sour cream.) B didn't do the hookups in the studio that he'd promised to do so that I could dub these cassettes to CD and I'm not familiar enough with his setup to do it myself. What's wrong with good ol' patchbays anyway? It's these newfangled computers, these kids today, why I tellya. Oh, and there's no water in the house. I gotta call the water company to find out if it's just us or if there's been a main break and we have to boil for the next three days or what. My file-hauling donkeys are all sluggish today, I think all the files in my queue must be owned by one person each, and they're the ones who got subpoenas and are cowering offline forever. And it's not even time for me to have PMS, that won't be until... oh, wait, it's the 11th already? Well. There you are. Everybody stay out of my way for the next few days, just slide chocolate under the door when the snarling and scratching gets too loud. I'd go back to bed but I had one of my breakfast speedballs (protein energy shake with a double shot of espresso) and all I'd do is toss and turn. Gah! I can't believe there's no fucking WATER! 10:38 AM

Read Al Gore's speech if you haven't already. What's it going to take? It seems the obvious answer for any other place or time would be REVOLUTION, but we're just too goddamn ignorant, lazy, and complacent. What's it going to take to wake this country the hell up? When are we going to realize it IS happening here? 11:59 PM

Right on to the Comment Spam Manifesto. I don't have comments here (this sort of thing is a big reason why,) but I've been irked by these scuzzballs on other sites I like a lot. Die, spammers, die. 11:33 PM

So I got word that my pal Jeff's band The Hot Dogs have a new CD out, and I went straight out and bought it through something called
CD Baby. Now, I'm not in a band, but if I were in a band, I'd use them to distribute my stuff. Every form you fill out has been humanized, every email they send you is like an old fuzzy sweatshirt with a kangaroo pocket. A completely pleasant user experience that I wish were more common in this cold cold world. 7:28 PM

Oh, I thought of one more thing that happened the other night. One of the guests asked about the jukebox, whether it worked and all that. B switched it on as we explained that it's been wonky lately. (probably needs a complete capacitor rebuild, definitely needs a proper lube job, and the selector mechanism is gummed up but I think we can fix that by letting it get warmed up properly and just using it a lot.) The guest announced that she would make it work, and punched in a handful of songs. B punched in a few too. The mechanism traveled over, skipping all the songs that they'd chosen, traveled around again, and finally stopped and played a song which neither of them had selected: the Isley Brothers' Save Me.

I don't think the poor thing could have sent a clearer message. I'm looking up the guy in Georgia who does cap jobs and finding out how much of the machine I have to dismantle and send down there. Or maybe I'll see if I can do it myself... apparently it's a Very Bad Idea to just keep playing it when it starts doing its capacitor crackling thing.

The sad thing is, when we play it a lot it works fine. It's when it sits idle for weeks and months that things go wrong. Poor jukebox. I'll try to do better in the future.

3:23 PM

I've added Misbehaving to the blogroll. It's fairly new, and pretty interesting, especially if you're a techie woman, which I know a few of you are. Check 'em out. 2:11 PM

So. Since the last entry, lots of fascinating stuff happened. Unfortunately, I was in the kitchen for most of it. Somehow this me cooking thing keeps on happening, and I don't think I like it. Saturday we had our friends over as planned, but at some point in the afternoon the direction changed from tapas to Italian tapas and the number changed from five to seven or eight people. I made focaccia, which came out horribly. I'd misread the recipe and didn't plan for one of the rises, so I had to rush it and it came out all hard and horrid. And I put too much salt into the basil oil. Everybody was nice about it but it was definitely the worst focaccia I've ever made. We also made rice balls, though, which came out brilliantly and got raves. We fried up half of them, and the other half is in the freezer ready to go, lucky us. Same thing with the artichoke hearts appetizer. B figured out that if you actually put a thermometer in the oil, and monitor the temperature, deep frying goes really well. Who knew! We also baked up a bunch of stuffed mushrooms with pignoli nuts, which always go over fine, and a nice tray of bruschetta. Our neighbor also brought over a lovely big salad and a nice baked eggplant dish which was delicious. We'd prepped two pounds of shrimp for a shrimp dish, but by the time it got to that point, everybody was full (and shitfaced) so we just jumped to coffees and dessert over a disjointed game of dominoes. Even with the extra people, there was plenty of food in the end, I think. And I know there was plenty of wine.

Of course there were numerous breaks to go up and check out the progress of the eclipse in the telescope. I wanted to yell at the neighbors across the way to look away from their TVs for a second and see it, but was forcibly dissuaded. The evening ended naturally, early in the morning.

The next day, a plan was hatched to watch the second Matrix movie. We'd gotten up at 7 am because B realized the telescope was still on the roof from the night before. Something about your bedmate sitting bolt upright and yelling "oh shit" first thing in the morning just kinda gets your day started whether or not you're really ready for it. Anyway, we cleaned for a while, put stuff away and ran several dishwasher loads of what seemed mostly to be wine glasses. I took a nap around 2ish, and told B that if 4:00 came around and I wasn't up yet, to just go without me to see the movie. Next thing I know, it's a little after 4 and the doorbell rings, and then I hear voices coming up the stairs and realize the movie is going to be shown at our house. Urk. Good thing we'd cleaned up. I dressed, de-drooled, and headed down to where the guys were diddling around with the DVD player. We've had the thing for years but never actually played a DVD on it. So it wasn't quite hooked up. Oopsie! B got it working, and we settled in to watch the movie but I wasn't in the mood for it at all, too wifty and hung over and impatient, so I...headed into the kitchen to cook more. Which is just so unlike me, really it is. I was heating up the oil to fry up the rest of the rice balls when I noticed that the candy thermometer looked funny; the mercury was all split up into little lines instead of being one big mass. I figured I'd forgotten to shake it out before I started, so I took it out of the pan and gave it a little up-and-down motion. PIFT! The lead plug on the bottom popped out, and pretty little globules of lead and mercury sprinkled into the hot oil. Great. I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, probably exposing myself to horrible toxins, then I put the hot pan out on the balcony and the kibosh on the rice balls. Made up some more bruschetta, and prepped the shrimp dish and a spinach/mushroom thingy. It looked like a cooking show, all the perfect little bowls of ingredients all lined up neatly. Once the movie ended, I cooked up those things and heated up some of the focaccia and we ate. Everybody left not too long after that, which was fine, I think we all must have been exhausted. Cleaned up again, diddled around on the internet for a while, and finally to bed.

I did cook one more thing today; chopped up the last 5 or 6 shrimp and made a shrimp and cheese omelette, which was exquisite, if I do say so myself, and I do. I'm well over the cooking thing for a while though, other than the inevitable redemption focaccia which I need to do in the near future to be sure I can.

11:00 AM

Ah, a new day spreads before me, rising in the East like a vast panorama of blah blah blah...zzz...so tired...wonder if the rest of those chiles rellenos would be good for breakfast...this coffee had better kick in sometime soon. The plan for today is to seriously clean house; our neighbors G and C are coming over for dinner. They took care of the beasts while we were away, so it's not like they don't know about the dust yaks in every corner, but I figure when one is preparing food for public consumption, one should make a bit of effort to at least have the kitchen appear sanitary. We also have to figure out what to cook. I'm thinking tapas; we didn't know them when we went through our big tapas phase, so they probably won't be sick of most of the dishes we tend to make, yet.

It's going to be 29 fucking degrees here tonight. Great weather for watching the eclipse! We'll be in the solarium, I imagine, still freezing our asses off since it's pretty much uninsulated up there, but sheltered from the winds a bit. I think tonight will be the big night for the big lime, too. And maybe we'll play some poker. G doesn't know how to play poker. Heh heh heh.

Can I ramble a little bit more? Okay! If the song "The Upsetter" doesn't get the hell out of my head soon, I'm going to seriously lose my shit. Danananananananana...dananananananana...think I better have another cup of java. Java. Uh oh. If THAT sticks in my head, I'm a goner. Urk. It may be too late.

9:41 AM

Po' B. He's stuck in the wilds of Queens, wrestling with bargain-basement hard drives and unmarked jumpers to upgrade the studio's "professional" system, which for some reason requires SCSI drives. In this day and age! For that kind of money! Outrageous. And with a screaming child on premises, for that extra li'l dash o' stress.

Worse than that, I got inspired and actually cooked what looks to be a darn fine dinner (I'll wait while you pick yourself up off the floor) but it looks like he's not going to be home any time soon. Fortunately, there's a Dominican mama where he is, who will fill him up big time. Since he's a veg, and therefore can't possibly get enough to eat, she makes him spaghetti, rice, potatoes, plantains and bread until he goes into a starch coma. Then, when he wakes up, she feeds him more. Hee. On the other hand, he sounded a tad cranky on the phone there; perhaps they haven't taken a dinner break, or mom's not there. Po' B.

7:20 PM

A great big sugar-free birthday cake for Bill this morning! I'm not sure if candles are still legal in southern California, but since technically you live on a tiny island off the coast, I think it should be okay. Happy birthday, gramps. 10:20 AM

I've got to get back into the habit of writing here. There's just been very little to report since I got back. The only significant time I've spent on anything has been fixing the tags on several hundred? thousand? MP3 files, and that's hella boring. Maybe I can spice things up by having a cheese sandwich or something. 9:22 AM

Oh, for fuck's sake... 6:29 PM

Ok, here it is, my travelogue in convenient tabular form. Photos may come later.

Meh.	Not half bad	Loved it!
Neeps. Gross. Stick to the tatties.	Haggis is not gross at all. Same for blood sausage—if you don't examine the ingredients that closely, it's all good.	Lorne sausage, my new favorite. It's kind of like pork roll but more chunky. And square. And instead of ketchup, you eat it with "red sauce" which is, well, ketchup, but foreign.
Loch Lomond's Retail Crescent	Edinburgh Castle, and the town in general. Wish I'd had more time to spend here.	The ubiquitous Costa Coffees who saved us from headaches every morning.
Bud and Miller, everyfuckingwhere	70 shilling ale	80 shilling ale
Blisters	Blister Plasters	Nurofen Plus, with codeine, and OTC UTI stuff, which actually works. I brought back several boxes.
Wee standard pub measures of alcohol.	Double shots, very common, but still not as much as a US pour	Pitchers of vodka and Red Bull. NOW you're talking. What do you mean, how many glasses do I need with that?
Fiat Multipla. They've actually managed to come up with a car that's uglier than the Elephant, and presumably less reliable too. Unfuckingbelievable. Don't miss the other images on the Fiat page, you need to see this thing from every angle.	Good ol' Smart cars. There's one parked in Schiphol airport every time I go through there.	The Baby Merc, high-end CUTE CAR extraordinaire.
Yorkie bars. Go ahead and boycott them, but do it because the chocolate is shite.	Irn Bru... I still have no idea what the stuff is supposed to taste like, but I drank a bunch of it. Their alcopop version is interesting, but I wouldn't make a habit of it.	STP. Ooh, baby. Yeah. Just like that.
The woman on the JFK airport bus who used the expression "I was like..." 29 times after I started counting, which was long after she'd done it enough in her brief phone conversation to be annoying.	Our FIERCELY, FIERCELY PATRIOTIC pal from Lauder's pub. Never has a history lesson been so entertaining.	The sweet, friendly, and attractive, no matter what gender they're wearing, people of Glasgow and Glasgay, and their excellent boy/girlfriends.
Roast beef and mustard crisps. Sadly, not too good, they pretty much just tasted like dijon mustard. There was so little meat flavor, B had one. Nice and hot, sinus-clearing like wasabi crackers, but way too salty.	Walkers crisps in general. They have some really weird flavors, all of which have been creepily accurate.	Chips with everything. My people!
Total lack of MLS coverage on the sports channels over here. Not that it's surprising, but dang. They cover the Romanian League, for chrissake.	Rugby. All you can eat.	Televised darts! I got sucked in like I've done in past years with sumo, world poker, and that euonym girl in the spelling bee. Sweaty fat guys and the fascinating Bobby George. One HUNDRED EIGHTYYYYYYYY!

5:03 PM

Just a measure of my commitment here. I get up, and what do I do first? Do I unpack the stuff I bought for myself, or my stinky laundry? No, the first thing I do is rip all the new CDs we bought over there and add them to the playlist for the radio station. For you. Because I care. I'm pleased to report that at least one of the albums wasn't yet in the CDDB when I ripped it. It is now, of course, and properly tagged; I'm a good citizen. In any case, its absence is always a good sign that it's not something any of us are sick of yet. If you like it weird, click on the Toot-A-Loop over there on the right and wait for all the new tracks to come around. Should be some tasty stuff. 9:29 AM

Made it home, all is well, gotta sleep. 9:40 PM

It's been a lovely week! The show is tonight, and we fly back tomorrow crack o' dawn. I'm just briefly checking in since my Easy Internet card expires tomorrow and we had some time left. A quick overview: we've spent most of our time in Glasgow, which rocks. We've also taken day trips to Edinburgh, Dundee, and the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. I've eaten great quantities of mystery meat and drunk gallons of beer and Red Bull. Still haven't had haggis or deep-fried Mars bars, but I'm thinking I'll be able to find some haggis for lunch, and we can get the fried candy at home anyhow. It seems that that's kind of an urban legend here; that they'll do it, rolling their eyes, if you ask, but it's not as common as I'd been led to believe.

The opening party for Glasgay was last night, and far more fun than we'd expected when we popped in to just make an appearance. The series starts tonight with Diamanda opening it. The hall is pretty elaborate, from what I've seen so far of the backstage labyrinth! It's like Lincoln Center, a thousand backstage rooms and a lot of Very Serious employees.

In any case, I don't have to do anything to get ready to work tonight, so I'm off to shop a little more and maybe see about some haggis. I'll type extensively once I get back home to a keyboard with a full-sized shift key and the quotes where I expect them.

8:37 AM