August 16, 1977: In Memoriam

I still miss you, Elvis.

Buried Alive

Hi, Spike fans. It’s still me.

No says to tell you she’s still up to her ears in work. This one client of hers keeps sending her stuff to do, and she says they pay her as if they think she’s good at her job, so she’s trying to keep up with them. You should see her. Notes and papers all over the bed and that squawking paper-eating “printer” thing I hate (I’d pee on it if I could jump on top of it) cranking out more every day.

I can’t even get rid of her for very long any more! She was supposed to go see that movie with Mulder and Scully in it tomorrow, but I saw her email someone and cancel. She’s not even sure she’s going to see Furry Guy this weekend.

Now I ask you, how am I supposed to play Texas Hold ‘Em on the internet if she’s working on the box-on-the-lap all day and half the night?

Also, I saw her eat two pieces of pizza at lunch and she never offered me a bite. Not one. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to go chew on the most expensive pair of shoes I can find.

Me, As a Goth?…

This came up the other night while some friends and I were emailing each other and appreciating Jill Tracy’s music. I don’t remember what the actual segue was, but my boyfriend and I started talking about how I’d just missed the whole Goth thing — it was just starting at my school when I was released from it, having paid my debt to society.

I suppose in a lot of ways I would have fit right in. I’m the palest person you’ll ever meet (step aside, Nicole Kidman, and nice try), and one of the most overtly hostile, although most of the Goths I’ve met since then — you get a lot of ‘em in bookstore work — were much more passive than pissy. I have a chip on my shoulder roughly the size of Pike’s Peak, and after years of other people trying to squish me into the role of Doormat, I rebelled mightily and haven’t really been pushed around since.

I wear a lot of black, too. Sue me. Red hair and pale skin = lots of black clothes, although it’s a pain in the ass to keep them up when you take in a mostly-white cat. I even have the obligatory almost-black lipsticks, reds and purples so deep you’d expect only Mina or Lucy to wear them. I used to work in cosmetics; I got a sweet discount. I trot these out every now and then, too — I wore the dark-blood shade of red to a Velvet Revolver concert and fit right in, despite being older than most of the crowd.

I would have hated the music, though. All that Ministry and other unlistenable crap? I even get tired of NiN sometimes, although I could easily listen to “Head Like a Hole” forty times when I cue it up. I would have been the only Goth in the crowd listening to the Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt… All my soundtracks might or might not have fit the mold. I could have snuck “The Shawshank Redemption” past the music police, but I don’t think “An Inconvenient Truth” would have gone over so well.

Other stuff would’ve got me kicked out of the club too. I’m a huge college football fan (there’s an orange lipstick, the exact shade of my team’s color, right next to the dark purple one); I run; I watch “American Idol,” for God’s sake.

And the kicker: I refuse to smoke.

Still, it’s nice to see what might have been.

Me and My Shadow: the iTunes Meme

Before I start, what exactly is a meme? I asked a good friend who didn’t know either, so I figured it was time to display my ignorance to the entire community. (I knew I’d get around to doing that sooner or later.) Well, whatever it is, I’m doing this one, because it’s really cool. I saw it on bibliomom’s page yesterday and was thinking about doing it anyway, and then she asked me. Clairvoyance over the ‘net? Well, why not? Evidently my Dick Cheney voodoo doll works just fine, so anything is possible.

Anyway, here’s the iTunes meme.

How many total songs?

4,707, or 13.9 days. When you give a person with mild OCD an iPod, this is what happens. I put everything I have that’s out of print on it, plus lots of other goodies, episodes of This American Life, stuff like that. I have key speeches from the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Sort by song title – first and last…
Dear God. Abacab by Genesis and 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton. I’m not gonna have a friend left who thinks I’m cool, am I?

Sort by time – shortest and longest…
4 seconds of dialogue from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (“It’s been emotional,” says the big dude at the end) and This American Life’s Back From the Dead post-Katrina show, at 59 minutes 31 seconds.

Sort by Album – first and last…
The A-Sides by Soundgarden and ’80s New Wave Disc 2, from which I burned Duran Duran’s Election Day, among other goodies from my lousy teens.

Sort by Artist – first and last…
A&J Music Productions (WTF?), who did the score to Rize, and 50 Cent, with Candy Shop and Disco Inferno.

Top five played songs…
1. Break It On Down (Battlezone) by Flii Stylz. (I can’t recommend the Rize soundtrack enough.)

2. Don’t Let It Bring You Down by Annie Lennox

3. Real Gone by Sheryl Crow.

4. Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers.

5. Backlash Blues (2005 remix) by Nina Simone.

I play songs over and over and over, a lot of the time. Break It On Down has been played 24 times, mostly on my iPod while I’m running. It’s hands down the best workout song in the world, especially when you’ve seen the movie — watching people krump makes me want to do it myself, in a spastic white-chick kind of way. Real Gone isn’t bad, either, when you’re running. Annie and Bill are in-the-mood music. I’m just in love with Nina Simone’s voice.

Find the following words. How many songs show up?

Sex: 7, Death: 9, Love: 208 (holy shit!), You: 359 (again!), Home: 49, Boy: 27, Girl:41

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle…
Tennessee Plates by Charlie Sexton, Milkshake by Kelis, The River Runs Low by Bruce Hornsby, Bensusan by Michael Hedges, and Hold My Hand by Hootie & the Blowfish. I would not play any of these songs at a party. Well, maybe Milkshake.

I’m not sure what these say about me. I spend a lot of time fooling with iTunes, making mix CDs like the mix tapes I made in my teens — I invented that, you know, it’s just that word got out somewhere and now everybody does it. I’ve got mixes of screaming-angry songs, of crime and prison songs, of place-named songs, of songs to play before, during, or after sex… I live in my iPod. What can I say? Like contact lenses, it’s an invention that’s changed my life in a big way. Without it I’d never exercise, I’d certainly be bored, and I’d have killed someone in an airport by now because they expected me to talk to them. Let’s see that on one of those cute how-I-use-my-i(Phone) commercials. Actually, I bet it would increase sales.

Whoever wants to do this next, let me know! I’m not tagging anyone. But it was a lot of fun. 

Lost in the Internet… Again

I wonder how many people show up here every day, running for our lives from some other site?

It looked like fun. It was fun, at first, when I met all the cool people and left comments on all their posts. And then… It was like when you move into a new house, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, one you rented at what seemed like a great rate until you moved in and realized the house next door was home to Larry the dogfighting impresario, Moe the paranoid gun “collector,” and Curly the crackhead.

At least I got out of the lease.

This is much more promising, even if this first installment is a little shaky. I’ve got several friends over here I’m trying to find, and before long my natural contrariness will kick in and I’ll find I have something interesting to say. Or bitch about. Or rail against. In any case, this looks like a cool place to do it.