Kneesocks

Why don't I own more kneesocks? Kneesocks are awesome!

Fun to wear AND fun to say.

Chickens

When I walked to the bus this morning, there were three or four chickens and possibly a rooster hanging out on 46th st. Chickens! Just wandering around!

I wanted to take a picture with my camera phone, but they were too far away. I considered getting closer, but -

1. To the casual observer, I would have appeared to be some sort of crazy girl waving my cell phone at chickens.

2. What if I got to close, and they pecked out my eyes? I like my eyes!

Barefoot

Hey, if you're one of those people who's really grossed out by feet, don't read this, okay? I'm telling you this for your own good.

Ro's post on dead worms reminded me of a semester in college I spent barefoot. I'm fairly sure that I accidentally stepped on a dead worm once while barefoot, and I definitely have have a lot of memories of being afraid that I would step on them.

I'm not sure why I spent most of a semester, or at least the part of it that the weather allowed me to, without wearing shoes. I don't really like shoes, and there were a lot of hippies around, and I'm fairly sure that Wendy and/or Emily also went shoeless.

I remember leaving my dorm room one morning to go to class, and discovering much to my displeasure that there was still frost on the ground. I think my feet went numb about halfway to class.

King, the building I had most of my classes in, had marble floors that felt amazing after you'd been walking on hot sidewalks. They were so cool and smooth, they felt like velvet under your feet.

I carried a pair of flipflops in my backpack for when I had to go into stores or the dining halls. A lot of times I just went in barefoot anyway, and no one noticed. The teller in the bank scolded me about it once, and once I had to go to the emergency room for an ear infection and they made me wear shoes.

Your feet adjust to being barefoot pretty quickly, and develop a really amazing layer of calluses. They also get really dirty, which I didn't find that big a deal, but which some people find disturbing. But after a while (warning: This is kind of gross) the layer of dead skin on your feet starts to wear off unevenly and get kind of pitted. I think I started wearing shoes again when I developed a hole in one of my feet that was large enough to stick the tip of my pinky into.

My Weekend

I leave work early to take over waiting for the cable modem guy from Phil. The pots and pans my parents got me from my birthday got here, and there are many of them and they are shiny! Emily arrives. Em gives me a porn mag for straight girls. The cable modem guy shows up, only an hour late. Internet! I reset the router. We make dinner to celebrate the new pots and pans. (Pasta with artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and olives, salad, fried tofu.) We go to the Pretty Girls Make Graves show. We catch the third opening band, dorkily adorable but not good. Pretty Girls Makes Graves are great, they rock much harder than I am accustomed to. We go to the bar. The bartender doesn't charge us. We buy GQ to get change for the bus. Home. Sleep.

We get up and make eggs & bagels for breakfast. Sit around. Go to the thrift store. I buy a shirt that says "Colonial Village Meat Market" and another that says "Elvis" in rhinestones. We eat lunch at the super yummy Middle Eastern place across the street. We make a pie crust. Go to Little Sam's birthday party. Go to a strip club. Home. My boyfriend doesn't want to hear my stripper stories because his college has been fliered by the KKK. Sleep.

Wake up early. Eggs & Bagels. Bake a pie. Head to the PhillyKnitters Stitch n' Bitch. Run into a ton of fellow knitters on the train. Stitch n' Bitch. Fellow knitters enjoy pie. Score some awesome yarn in yarn trade. Bequeath to Emily the "Pound of Love." Septa to 30th St. Walk from 30th St to home. Grab Em's stuff. Train to 30th St. Hug Em good-bye. Train home. Buffy. Knitting. Blog.

Hey Hipster, Put Yer Thang Down!

Colin Meloy has a baby face. It's round and delightfully dorky (the black nerd rock glasses aren't helping), and the faces he makes when he sings remind me of the faces my manager's baby makes. Colin's voice is more nasal life, but not in a bad way. The Decemberists are much dorkier than I expected, which makes me love them even more. Colin balances his guitar on his head and tells stories about Jonathon Richmon and Chico, California. And they are so energetic. I'm exhausted just watching them.

The audience is much dorkier than I expected, too. It's mainly hipsters, by there are significant numbers of both middle-aged men and husky guys with beards, the kind of guy who you strongly suspect may listen to heavy metal and/or role-play. Much to my delight, the husky guys with beards shake it like a polaroid picture.

There's a really tall guy right in front, who initially fills me with an urge to shout, "Hey, Big and Tall! You make a better Big and Tall Door than a Big and Tall Window!" (If I were a little spunkier and a little less interested in self-preservation, I would start a lot of fights with big and tall men who stand in the front of shows. I mean, I know you want to be close to the performers and all, but I can't see, dammit.) But then Big and Tall starts dancing in this slightly spazzy, really enthusiastic and adorable way, and my hatred disapears.

The opening band is from England and called Clearlake, and unlike most opening bands, they are really good. Their songs appear to mainly be about emotional anguish and repression, which I am all for. (At least, am all for in song form.)

The Decemberists play a bunch of songs off of Castaways and Cutouts, some songs off of Her Majesty the Decemberists, and then they play The Tain, the twenty minute song in five parts which makes up their new EP. It's based on an 8th century Celtic poem called "Tain Bo Cuailinge" and WHOA CRAZY.

I was disapointed that they didn't play any of my three favorites (Red Right Ankle, A Cautionary Song, and The Legionaire's Lament). But then the audience refuses to leave until we get an encore, and Colin gets back on stage by himself and plays Red Right Ankle, and it makes me very, very happy.

Addendums & Miscellany

Cat Food Clarifications
I feed the cat both wet and dry food - she gets a handful of dry food with a spoonful of wet food on top of it. I am torn about switching to just dry food. On the one hand, it would probably be better for her, and less gross. There's also the slight possibility that it would cut down on her meowing and batting at my head when I sleep in, because when I get up to feed her there's generally still a fair amount of dry food in the bowl, so it's not like she's starving, for Christ's sake, what is with the freaking out? But on the other hand, it seems sort of mean to stop feeding her something she likes just because I think it's gross. I'm sure I eat things that some people consider gross, and if they made me stop eating them, I might be tempted to bite them in their sleep. But then again, I have opposable thumbs and she doesn't.

I did buy a kind of wet food in a flavor named "Sea Captain's Choice," which wasn't too gross, and had the side effect of causing me to talk like an old salty sea captain while feeding the cat, which was fun. But I suppose I could say "Arrrrr, matey, if ye don't stop meowing, it's the plank for ye," even without it.

I realize that the cat is not a vegetarian. I like it when she kills, remember? Squeamish Vegetarian brand catfood would be aimed at vegetarian owners, not cats. It would still be made of meat, but meat that had been ungrossified through technology, like maybe it would be pretty colors and smell like flowers or something. (I should probably admit here that I do try to only buy cat food consisting of fish and fowl, as it seems slightly more in line with my whole "meat bad!" philosophy than buying Meow Mix Veal Flavor.)

Domesticity
My fifties housewife-ness is getting out of control. Last night I set out to make something nice and simple, and then somehow ended up making miso soup and a ton of rice noodles with tofu and mushrooms and eggplant, and getting every pot we own dirty, practically. Then I knit a beer cozy. (Yes, I've reached the cozy-knitting stage. Run! Run for your lives!)

All Girl Summer Fun Band
If you have been thinking to yourself, "I wonder how Cyn feels about the All Girl Summer Fun Band," the answer is, "I think that they are rad."

Internet
I am less wired than usual, due to a mysterious outage in my cable modem. We called tech support and they asked what lights were blinking and then claimed they would call us back later, which means that it will most likely be fixed sometime next month, or possibly never. Also, do you still describe yourself as "wired" if your internet is wireless? Do people still use the term "wired" at all, or is that hopelessly late nineties?

Mountain Goat of the Month

Because I am full of the brilliant ideas lately, I have another potential product to offer up to any entrepreneurs reading this.

The Mountain Goats CD of the Month.

I mean, he has enough CDs that you could do this for at least a year, even without involving the stuff that was only released on vinyl or cassette. I would totally pay to have a random Mountain Goats cd sent to me every month. And buy subscriptions for all my friends!

John, if you're reading this, make my dream happen! It's brilliant, I tell you! BRILLIANT!

Cat Food

I realize I should have been able to figure this out on my own, but next time, could someone please warn me that "flaked in gravy" is top secret cat food code for "insanely gross"?

While you're at it, could you please explain why all cat food has that gelatin meat jelly gunk? It must serve some purpose other than grossing me out first thing in the morning.

I would seriously pay extra for cat food that didn't have the gelatin gunk in it. Or cat food that was less disgusting in any way, really. Anyone out there who wants to hit it big in the pet food market, just develop a Squeamish Vegetarian brand. You will make a billion dollars, I promise.

The Dark Side of Spring

It must be spring, because I'm having a severe allergic reaction of some sort. I am full of mucus and insanely itchy. I took some cold medicine in the hopes that it would help, because I didn't have any allergy medication, but it just made me very stoned.

If I break out in hives, I'm going to be very irritated. (Get it? Hives? Irritated? Har!)

Guess it's time to get back on the flownase train.

Suzy Homemaker

I was insanely domestic this weekend. It was kind of like I was sucked into some alternaworld where I was a fifties housewife. An alcoholic fifties housewife, who watches a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

On the knitting front, I finished one of my kneesocks, made a wristband, and felted my bag with Jill. (Note: Doesn't "felt my bag" sound kinda dirty? Try calling one of your friends and saying, "Hey, baby, wanna felt my bag?" Tell me what happens.) There will be pictures once I take them.

That's all kind of normal, though. The weird part was the cooking. This weekend I made two super yummy dinners. On Saturday I made pasta with artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes, and baked tofu. On Sunday I made tofu and brocolli stir-fry with soy sauce and miso and garlic.

And (this is the super-crazy part) I made a pie. I made a chocolate bourbon pecan pie, and it turned out insanely yummy.

I had a conversation with Ro about it that went something like this:

Me: Guess what I did today!
Ro: What?
Me: I made a pie!
Ro: You are such a loser.
Me: A loser with pie!

So if you want some pie, just come over. I'll be vacuuming in high heels.

Drinking Non-problems

Today I snagged the last Diet Coke with Lime from the convience store. Awwww, yeah! Somehow getting the last one makes it taste even better.

Speaking of drinking, I'm not sure which is sadder: That my Friday night plans are drinking by myself on my couch while watching Buffy and knitting, or that I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Indie Rock Buddy Needed

I have two tickets to see The Decemberists at the Khyber on Wednesday, the 24th. Does anyone want to come with me?

(Please only respond if I actually know you, and you are Philly-adjacent.)

Even if you don't want to come, you should note that The Decemberists are mother-fucking brilliant. They have this crazy psuedo-victorian thing going on and have been described as "the spiritual successors to Neutral Milk Hotel." Pitchfork basically gave them a rimjob on all of their best of 2003 stuff, so they're pretentious indie rock approved. Their album Castaways and Cutouts is probably the album that my co-worker Monica catches me doing secret chair dances to most frequently.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I should probably note that my boss called tonight when I was listening to Castaways and Cutouts, and said, "What is that awful music you're listening to?" It is only because I like my job that I did not reply, "Songs about tact." So to all the other glowing accolades above, you can add, "Irritates people from Jersey.")

If You Don't Have It You're On The Other Side

I think I'm developing an addiction to the new Diet Coke with Lime. Actually, it's less "think" and "developing" and more "know" and "have a raging." I just went to the convience store across the street, and almost had me a little freak-out when I discovered that they didn't have the Diet Coke with Lime. They always have the Diet Coke with Lime! Always! I even checked, to make sure it hadn't been put somewhere weird, like maybe it was in with the juice or something. And there was an empty slot at the end of the Coke section, which means that most likely a lot of fucking yuppie bastards drank all my Diet Coke with Lime.

The only thing that stopped me from having a full 'roid rage style fit and going all "HULK SMASH" on the soda fridge was the fact that I'd already had one Diet Coke with Lime today, and was just out for an auxilary one on a whim.

The thing is, I can't really decide if I like it or not. I had one, and was like, "Huh. Interesting," and suddenly I can't stop drinking them. (Note: I hear crack is kind of like this. The descriptions I've heard of crack have been along the lines of, "Well, it was really, uh, intense. And then when it was over, I really wanted to do some more crack.")

This intersects nicely with my caffeine addiction, which has gotten to the point where I really just need a nice caffeine I.V. drip, on which I can turn up the dial until you get a buzz merely by being in the same room with me, and I grind my teeth into little teeth nubbins by mid-morning.

Red Right Ankle

this is the story of your red right ankle
and how it came to meet your leg
and how the muscle bone and sinews tangled
and how the skin was softly shed
and how it whispered 'oh, adhere to me
for we are bound my symmetry
and whatever differences our lives have been
we together make a limb'
this is the story of your red right ankle
-The Decemberists

I broke my ankle slightly over two years ago. I ended up getting three plates, six screws, and a wire, as you can see in the x-ray above. (Yes, that is actually my ankle.)

It was more pain than I've ever been in. I can't remember how it felt. I know it hurt, I know it hurt more than anything, hurt so bad that all I could do was beg for them to make it start hurting, and then apologize for begging, over and over. But I no longer know how it felt, the way you remember how it feels when you get a tattoo or stub your toe.

Most of the pain actually came from the fact that my ankle was dislocated as well as broken. It looked as though my right foot had been put on sideways. After a couple of hours, they manually popped it back into place. For a couple of seconds, it hurt more than anything has ever hurt, and then it hurt less, and all the morphine they had given me finally started working. Then they put me in a helicopter and flew me into Cleveland hospital.

In the emergency room, they wouldn't let me move. All I could do was stare straight up at the ceiling, and the room I was in was divided into smaller areas by curtains, so I could hear people talking and moving but couldn't tell if they were in my area or not.

They cut off my clothes. It was laundry day, and I was wearing my favorite jeans, and my Thursday days of the week underwear. I made them take off my hoodie without cutting it, and my shirt, and they took off all my jelly bracelets one by one, and each one hurt.

I was covered in cuts, both from the accident and when they had to break the windshield to get me out. It's called road rash, the scrapes you get all over your body when you're in a car accident. I was covered in glass and blood and over a hundred dollars worth of cheap beer. My hair was coated with it. My clothes were sprayed. My friend Ben, who had been driving, was also covered in my blood.

After they cut my clothes off, but before they un-dislocated (relocated?) my ankle, the sheriff came in to ask me questions about the accident. He asked why I hadn't been wearing a seat belt, and when I said I had, he asked why my injuries weren't consistent with wearing a seat belt. (One of my many, many bruises was across my chest, from the belt.) He said, "So you were driving?" and I said, "No," and he said, "Why were you in the driver's seat?" and I said, "My friend lowered me into it, the car landed on the driver's side." I don't remember what else he asked, or the other reasons he told me I was lying, but I remember saying, "Please, I'm in a lot of pain, don't be mean to me." I was immobile on a gurney, naked, delirious with pain and morphine, bleeding, and a small town Ohio sheriff felt the need to call me a liar.

100,000

So we here on the Life in the Pink staff could not help but notice we have now had over 100,000 hits.

("Staff?" you are saying to yourself, "I thought LitP was just a girl named Cyn." Boy, did we ever have you fooled! We are actually a collective of robots and monkeys on typewriters and pirates and glittery rockstars wearing fairy wings.)

With our 100,000 hits in mind, we have this to say: There is no kiddie porn here. We check our stats logs. We know what you get here searching for. And, no offense, but you kind of creep us out.

Mother Nature Is A Bitch

The weather today, for those of you not in the Philadelphia area, was an affront to mankind. When I woke up today and saw it was snowing (after a week of insanely bright and beautiful days), I promptly went back to sleep. But eventually I had to get up and go to work, and man did I regret it.

I'd gotten soft in my week of unshitty weather, so I managed to forget both my scarf, and the fact that I need to sew the bottom two buttons back on my coat, as it currently is prone to flapping in the wind.

So, snow. Doesn't sound so bad. Except that it was wet snow, and then it rained on top of the snow, and it was wet and miserable and horrid and slippery and gross and why the fuck did I leave LA, again? IT NEVER DID THIS IN LA. The general effect was that god was spitting on you, in a cold, wet, miserable way. The weather, really, just could not have been worse.

More Spam Fun

Spam: "Cyn, do you like virgins?"
Cyn: "Not really."
Mouse: Clicky Click Delete

Does anyone know just how the hell it is legal for them to email me completely unsolicited animated .gifs of dogs performing cunnilingus? Because I got a spam a while ago where the puppy pussy eating was, though not insanely explicit, definitely strongly suggested. For that matter, how is it legal to send me email with animated blowjob .gifs? It's not like they even have anyway of knowing that I'm over eighteen. I actually find the blowjobs kind of more disturbing. They're way more graphic than the dog on girl action (Whoa! Veiny!) and much less amusing.

Love Tool

I keep getting this spam with the subject line, "Are you uncomfortable with the size of your love tool?" And every time I find it in my inbox, it cracks me up, because just what, exactly, would my love tool be?

Consider the possibilities: Vibrator? Appendages of interested third parties? Rophynol? Friendster? The ever-popular cooter?

I think I'm pretty comfortable with the size of all of those things.

I also like to imagine a scene where a very uncomfortable man and a very distinguished looking doctor sit in a doctor's office. "What seems to be the problem?" the doctor asks. There's an awkward pause. "Well, doc," the man finally says, "The thing is . . . I'm uncomfortable with the size of my love tool."

Optional fun activity for the kiddies: Make up alternate lyrics to the Cardigans' late nineties hit, Lovefool!

We're Crazy and I Love It

I have changed my outlook on humanity recently. My historic stance has been that approximately ninety percent of human beings were stupid and boring and generally a waste of skin. I still stand by that. (I am not turning in my misanthrope card quite yet.)

I've started getting the New Yorker again. (This relates, I swear to god.) I had stopped getting it, because they randomly decided my address was undeliverable, and I had to email them and assure them that my address was actually deliverable, and I get lots of mail there, all the time, really, whoever says my address is not deliverable is a filthy liar. There is a certain type of New Yorker article, or perhaps it is just a quality of the New Yorker types of non-fiction essays and profiles, or perhaps just the way I read the New Yorker, but there is definitely something in the New Yorker that takes delight in pointing out how completely bugfuck nuts people are, usually on a case by case basis.

(See also: my entry on New Yorker paragraphs that make me love humanity.)

I'm not sure why evidence that even seemingly normal people are quirky and weird and generally crazy gives me hope for humanity. Maybe it makes me feel less alone, as lord knows I've got a whole heaping helping of quirks myself. Maybe it's because it ups the humor potential of the world by quite a lot. All I know is that it makes me love life, to think that everyone has something (or quite a lot of things) kooky and strange and just plain insane about us. That we each have our own little spark of hilarious damaged beauty.

To quote J.D. Salinger, "Against my better judgement, I feel certain that somewhere very near here -- the first house down the road, maybe -- there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight."

(Salinger Tangent: That is from Franny and Zoey, and you should all read it. Some of you may be bitter about Salinger because you were forced to read Catcher in the Rye in high school, but just sit down and read Nine Stories, or Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and you see that you have been wrong about Salinger all along.)

Lately I've been thinking that perhaps we are all a little off, so to speak, if you look at us right. Perhaps we are all a bit tetched in the head. "A real character," as my mother would say. And the possibility of that really just makes me want to buy the world a coke.

Google

So I did that new meme where you search for your name on google image search, and I found these llamas. I assume that one of them is named Cyn.

Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill

There was a dead mouse on my floor this morning.

Some of you may be expecting a lot of, "Oh, the poor mice don't understand that it's my apartment," fuzzy vegetarian whining about this from me at this point. And, to be fair, I was all, "No kill traps, capture and release, glue traps make them gnaw their wittle feet all off!" for the first month or so of living with the little vermin bastards.

Pre-Sophie, the mice were fearless. They spent all night squeaking in the radiators. They would wander our apartment in broad daylight, and when challenged, just give us these looks, all, "You got a problem, mother fucker?" Phil actually caught one with his bare hands. We tried traps. We tried poison. We tried those little electric dohickeys that make sounds that mice don't like. The squeaking got louder, as if specifically to torture us.

Then we got Sophie. And there has been nary a squeak heard or a whisker seen, except for the whiskers on the very dead mouse on my bedroom floor this morning.

I believe the sentiment I am trying to express here is something along the lines of, "Oh yeah! Eat it, furry little bitches!"

Nature is taking course in my apartment. And once its course is run, I am more than happy to pick up nature with paper towels and put it in my trashcan.

Mimi Smartypants Is A Goddamned Genius

She says:

"I have these visions of sitting on a park bench, feeling the warm breeze lift my hair, sipping on my discreetly-hidden 40-ouncer of beer (maybe some kind of knitted cozy to help with the discretion? Come on, all you knitty girls, get knitting)."

And if you think I'm not knitting myself a 40 cozy after hearing this pure genius idea, then you clearly do not know me. (Best part of this idea: I will need a 40 with me at all times while knitting this, to ensure correct fit.)

I Am In Love With Franz Boas' Mustache

I'm not sure I can really explain how happy this picture of Franz Boas makes me, except to say I have both cut it out of the New Yorker and put it on the wall of my office, and taken a picture of his face and made it the background of my cell phone.

And this! Possibly even better! The mustache! The weird thing he's doing with his mouth! The circle thing behind him! Oh, genius.

Sounds Good!

Lately I've been having lots of conversations where I have absolutely no idea what's going on, but I'm awfully chipper about it. I just say things like, "Great! Okay! Thanks!" in an upbeat sort of voice, and things seem to work themselves out.

Freak City

At Thirteenth and Walnut, the cab driver locks all the doors and says, "Don't worry, I'm not locking you in, I'm locking them out. This is freak city." It doesn't seem to occur to him that the girl with the pink hair he picked up on tenth and Walnut might belong to sympathize more with freaks than with middle-aged white taxi drivers, and instead of saying, "I used to live six blocks from here," I force a laugh.

I like the music on the radio, a version of Scarborough Fair I'm not sure I've ever heard before. When we get to my stop, he gets out and opens the door for me, and says, "Be careful, hon." I say, "Thanks, you too," which doesn't make any kind of goddamned sense, but it has the right sort of intonations.

Yet Another Reason I Should Never Have Children

The scene: Morning. I'm in the kitchen, feeding the cat.

Sophie: Meow. Mrow. Mrow mrow mrow meow. MRRRRROOOOOWWWW. MRRRRROOOOOOWWW.
Me: If you don't stop crying, I'm going to give you something to cry about. (Pause while I chuckle to myself about my really awesome child abuse joke.)

I say things like this all the time. My roommate once called up our friend DJ and said, "Hey, Cyn and I thought of something funnier than rape! Miscarriages!"

I will know that it's a joke. It's probable that my child will know that it's a joke, or at least be aware that I am not really going to harm it. But when my child goes to school with some random child-related injury and when asked, says, "My mommy said to say I fell down some stairs!", Child Protective Services is not going to know that it's a joke.

(Semi-related note: I spent a lot of time as a child unsure whether the word "approximate" actually meant vague or exact, due to my parents habit of sarcastically saying, "Could you be any more approximate?" when I was vague about things.)

For those of you who don't think this is a realistic scenario - ask Jill how many times a day I tell her, "You were asking for it. Look how you're dressed."

Turnabout Is Fair Play

I just looked down and realized that there was one of my hairs on the cat.

(Sometimes I purposely put my shed hair on the cat at work, as he sheds like mad. I consider it revenge.)

Paragraphs That Make Me Love Humanity, From Otherwise Depressing New Yorker Articles

Mapenga turned out to be exactly what you'd expect of a crazy man who lives alone on a remote lake in Mozambique . . .

[Mapenga] paused. "You know, I got treatment, hey," he said to K. . . . "They diagnosed me with A.D.H.D., and after experimenting with this drug and that drug they put me on Ritaln and I am square now" . . . "And Saddam Hussein, and George Bush, and Bin Laden - all these guys - they all have A.D.H.D. Hitler had it, for sure. You'll most probably find Jesus Christ had A.D.H.D."

from The Soldier, Letter From Zimbabwe, March 1, 2004

Cain sent Kenneth and Charlene down to the gift shop for a disposable camera and had them take photographs of his grusome injuries. He pasted them into a flowered "Special Memories" album that he has titled "My Accident in Iraq."

from The Casualty, A Reporter At Large, March 8, 2004

More About Death

I keep expecting to find Adam when I log onto AIM. I'm kind of afraid of it, actually. Some part of me really believes that one day I'll log on, and I'll see his screenname online, and I'll IM him and after some semi-awkward faux-casual conversation I'll say, "Um, I heard you were dead," and he'll say, "Yeah, that was just a big joke, and I saw what you wrote about me on your website, bitch."

It was very decent of him to email me about Neal. Neal and I had very few friends in common. There is the matter of my ex-girlfriend, but she was less of a friend and more of a traumatic event to both of us. (To tell you the truth, I don't even know if she knows that Neal and Adam are dead. And maybe it is selfish of me, but I don't plan on telling her. I would have to track down her contact information to do it, anyway.) But now there is no one that I know that also knew him. I have friends who met him, but they are my friends, not his, and all that they know of him is colored through my stories.

I consider emailing his friends. We could forge an awkward psuedo-friendship based on mutual dead love. But the silences in our conversations would whisper about mortality, and I can already hardly bear the reminders.

If We Never Make It Back To California, I Want You To Know I Love You

The Mountain Goats show was wonderful, despite the fact that John Darnielle was losing his voice. (He actually had an audience member get on stage and sing the last song for him, due to vocal trouble. It was adorable.)

The crowd proved that you can indeed dance to the Mountain Goats, although it is a silly little indie rock dance of head bobbing and shoulder twisting. John played a lot of stuff off of Tallahassee, some things off the new album, and then some older stuff. I recognized most of it, but not all of it. (The advantage of getting into a band later in the game - there are plenty of Mountain Goats albums that are new to me!)

You can see pictures of the show here, curtesy of a very cool girl I met on the bus back, who recognized me from the Mountain Goats livejournal group.

John was insanely nerdy and adorable, and I want him to be my own personal troubadour. Towards the end of the show, he made fun of people whoo!ing in response to a comment about losing his voice, and said, "Yay! John loses his career and goes back to nursing!" (More whooing from the crowd) "I see we have a lot of nursing enthusiasts tonight."

I refrained from inappropriate sponge bath jokes, but it was hard.

In other news, my email server is down, and if you emailed me between 12:30 M and 1 pm on the 3rd, it is gone, baby, gone.

Also, I am completely nocturnal for the next week or so.

No Booting Allowed

Dear Whatever God Decided That Three Beers + Six Hours of Sleep = Hangover,

I had enough to do today without making "Try not to vomit" a top priority item, thanks.

Luv,
Cyn

PS. I hate you.

Super Sized Mountain Goats

I just found out that John is playing an extended set at the Mountain Goats show tomorrow, because one of the opening acts canceled.

EEEEE! EEEEEEEEEE! Mountain Goats with extra Mountain Goaty Goodness! (This is where I melt into a puddle of fan-girlyness.)

I'm so excited.

PS. Just in case you were like, "Well, she's a dorktastic fangirl, but she's not that big a dorktastic fangirl," I found this information out through the Mountain Goats livejournal community. Geektacular, baby.

Hey Straight, You're Always Too Late

I have a new band I'm obsessing over, and they're neither insanely depressing, nor psuedo Victorian! (We're all so proud of me, I know.)

The band is Junior Senior, the wacky Danish gay-straight duo whose catchy Europop no one appears able to resist. (Even Pitchfork likes them! And Pitchfork is full of bile and hate!)

Junior Senior fever is actually sweeping my workplace, mainly in the form of a burnt CD my coworker Monica brought in. Entitled "Nine Stories About Ponies Read By Gore Vidal," it features the Junior Senior album D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat, two different versions of the song Shake Your Coconuts, and then, inexplicably, a bunch of Ladytron songs.

I'm not going to lie to you. Sometimes, my office turns into a Junior Senior dance party. We are shaking our coconuts in the workplace.

I leave you with these slightly disturbing lyrics from "Boy Meets Girl":

"You're busy makin' babies, and telling guys 'maybe.'"
So if you're gonna be a mom, let me be your baby."