Since when were you so generously inarticulate?

I am inexpressably happy, typing away and listening to my Lastfm station, which is playing a gorgeous moody mix of...er, mostly 1970s and early 80s punk and post-punk from Australia. I feel alive!

But suddenly I am crestfallen. Nay, distraught.

"Why do I have the musical taste of a fifty-year-old man?" I say to H. He has been working at the kitchen table, creating a sort of lightsaber thingie for his bike out of a cold cathode light (I know, right? He is a GENIUS. Hawt!!).

For a moment I think maybe he hasn't heard me. Then he nods.

"A bitter fifty-year-old man," he says, patiently and without looking up.

In the year of the scavenger

I've loved David Bowie since 1983, when I was in the third grade. Shan't bore you with the details, none of which are particularly original, I'd imagine--but one of the many reasons I hold him in such embarassingly high regard is his marketing genius. He sells it like the rent's due and makes you think it was effortless. And he flirts with you while he's doing it! Sigh. So anyway, my point was, imagine the utter delight that bloomed when I stumbled across this article, entitled 10 Creative Lessons From Bowie in Berlin. [As any Bowie fan will tell you, Everything Changed in Berlin. His Berlin period is often spoken of in the same hushed, reverent tones that some people reserve for discussions about Malcolm X going to Mecca.] The article very tidily sums up and dissects Bowie's moves during this pivotal period of time and suggests non-rock-star-life applications of the same strategies. Good stuff, and a great treat for Bowie dorks like me. Via When I Grow Up.

The Confrontation Song

Persephone made my morning by posting this, and I thought perhaps you could benefit as well. [Assuming you derive the same tremendous amount of pleasure that I do from, ahem, Les Miserables. If you do not, it's okay to go read a cool blog right about now. Hurry, go!]

I can't forget but I don't remember what*

Some days it really does feel this way.




Courtesy of the wonderful and inimitable Wondermark.

*With apologies to L. Cohen.

The best parts

I've added a new section to the sidebar there -- scroll down a ways and you'll see THE BEST PARTS, which is (perhaps not surprisingly) an ongoing compilation of the best parts of the books I read. Send me yours, will ya?

In which we all have a laugh

This photo makes me giddily happy. Sure, Gervais is no baby coyote, but just look at him! Delightful.

And the Ass [did not see] the Angel

This is just fantastic. Enjoy.

PS, Sorry for the rude title, Dustin and Dylan--but it was too good not to. xo.

Somewhere out there, a proofreader weeps.

My co-worker took this photo at CVS last night. It is the back of a pack of Planter's Trail Mix--specifically, the section of packaging that features nutritional value. The photo quality is not great but if you look closely you can just make out that all of the values say "0". And "FPO" means "For Position Only"--meaning this was not the real thing, it was an agency mock-up meant to be approved by Planters and then updated with actual info.

Whoops...

The world is so full of a number of things

This is a wonderful piece on pneumatic tubes and their various uses in the past, both actual and projected. If you're like me, and the bulk of your exposure to this distant technology comes from Terry Gilliam's (brilliant/biting/absurd) film Brazil, then you may be in for some surprises. But even if you knew that pneumatic tubes were an integral part of the New York postal system [among others?], I suspect you may learn something pneu new. I think what's most fascinating about this is the parallels between it and the internet, as mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs; the transformation from something physical and quite literal into something altogether more mystical [some would disagree with that word] though obviously no less scientific. For me, the line between science at its coldest and romanticism at its weepiest is usually quite thin and blurry.

NICE THEMES FOR VARIOUS APPLICATIONS

1. Coins
2. Nautical
3. Maps
4. Science/Botany
5. Victoriana
6. Art Nouveau
7. Libraries/Reference materials
8. Black and white with dark red
9. Chocolate brown with dark grey

You're looking at me with some unrighteous intention

It started the way many things in my life do: as a joke. My mom, as perhaps is only right, finds my admiration for Mr. Nick Cave repugnant (as well as the man himself). Naturally, I have made a sport of emailing her truly terrible photos of him*, under guise of actual electronic communication. Late last week she decided to strike back, and began filling my inboxes (even my work account! Cheeky, that.) with random ugly photos of random ugly people, primarily old men making terrible faces.

Enter my co-worker J., a graphic artist. She heard me squealing at my computer on Friday, and when I told her what was going on she expressed a great interest in contributing. And so this was volleyed to my mom's inbox:


The photo was met with great enthusiasm, which my mom conveyed to me via email:

I'm going to leave work, come over right now, and wash your brain out with soap. After I pick my bleeding eyes up off the floor. And sterilize them.

I found all of this quite hilarious, so I forwarded both the photo and my mother's response to my friends T. and H., the latter of whom responded with his own work of art (that is me at age 16):



I found all of THAT quite hilarious, so I forwarded the photo to my mother.
She skipped the middle man and went right to the source:

Dear H.,

You and the photoshop you rode in on are both grounded. For life.

~An Irate Mother.

Clearly, no friend of mine would give up at that point, while the getting is so good. Thus, H. responded both in words and in art:

Dear Irate Mother,

I understand your irateiness but before you yell at me and say that "irateiness" isn't even a word I submit to you this recent picture taken at a Nick Cave show where you can easily see who the "bad seed" is that has steered your innocent easily led daughter into the arms of that mad Aussie crooner. I will accept an apology from you of course after this evidence is viewed.

H. Ramos



The third party in that photo is my friend T. I laughed for the better part of the day. ("That will teach her not to cross an unemployed Mexican with Photoshop," H. said [at this rate, I will be sad when he finds a job.].) I called my mom and urged her to go to her inbox. She laughed so hard that I could hear the tears streaming down her face. And she ended the whole affair in her typically lovely way:

Mis respetos. [Spanish--literally, my respects.] I laughed until I cried. And then I laughed again.

xoxo

p.s. T., we need to talk.
p.p.s. H., your apology is graciously accepted.



*Like this charming shot, which even makes me tired:

I hear it in my head, real low

Taken from a discussion on GoodReads: change one letter in a book title, and--bam!--completely different concept. The last five are mine (she typed, proudly), and the seven before that are a friend’s contributions. Some are slightly edited for clarity/style. Add your own in the comments!*

Mein Krampf - A certain failed Austrian artist drones on about his bodily ailments.

The Right Stiff - Tom Wolfe explores the growing phenomenon of space burial.

Infinite Pest - A talented author loses all control of his manuscript and the footnotes go on forever.

Lady Windermere’s Fin - Inbreeding in Victorian England.

Lady Windermere’s Fat - Mr. Wilde draws attention to the dramatic increase in obesity in Victorian England.

Eyes on the Pride - A group of tourists on safari are separated from their jeep.

The Brothels Karamazov - Heidi Fleiss meets Dostoevski.

In the Miso Soap - Ryu Murakami’s horror about a failed Japanese entrepreneur who creates miso-flavored bath products.

The Toad - Cormac McCarthy’s searing apocalyptic novel about a man and his pet frog.

Chime and Punishment - Roskolnikov gets confused and ends up in a Victor Hugo novel ringing church bells.

James and the Giant Perch - Roald Dahl’s children’s version of Moby Dick.

Stranger in a Strange Band - Michael Smith finds happiness as the new drummer for the Rolling Stones.

The Gropes of Wrath - The Joad family history as told by Henry Miller.

All’s Hell That Ends Well – The pessimist’s guide to life.

How Green Was My Galley – A famous Naval cook’s recipes for the rough North Atlantic crossing.

Bender Is The Night -- Essays by alcoholics.

The Old Man and the Spa - An old fisherman, after a weary day, decides to treat himself to a day at the spa, where he gets Dead Sea salt rubbed on his back to recuperate.

Farewell to Army - Hemingway’s protagonist, instead of ditching his comrades, gets kicked out when they discover he is homosexual.

The Snogs of Kilimanjaro - Harry falls in love with a hyena as he lays dying on the mountain and dies sweetly in its embrace.

Tender is the Right - An old primer for compassionate conservatism.

Rove and Consequences - A thoroughly fact-checked non-fiction account of evil, power, and evil.

The Snobs of Kilimanjaro - Tanzania becomes a playground for the nouveaux riche.

Harry Potter and the Giblet of Fire - Trainee wizard laid low by appendicitis.

To Kill A Mockingbard - William Shakespeare finds himself the target of a madman.

The Thongs They Carried - Wandering fetishists search for their place in a cruel world.

Lord of the Rungs - An epic gymnastic trilogy.

Lard of the Rings - Fitness-challenged hobbit discovers the downside of elven cakes.

Gone With She Wind - Tragic tale of love lost due to flatulence.

Homeo and Juliet - Love and death in the ghetto

Grates of Wrath - Angry drainage workers’ lives during the depression

Homlet - An embryonic leader gets eggsactly what he deserves [oh man, kill me.]

The Buble - Really long historical novel about the rise and fall of a populist singer

The Adventures of Furious George: When Animals Attack

The Round and the Fury - Historical fiction based on Al Gore’s life after the White House, leading up to his aggressive anti-global-warming efforts.

Midnight in the Garden of Food and Evil - The life and times of a bulimic vampire.

The Princess Cride - Popular 1980s tale retold in a combination of modern and archaic English.

That Was Then, This Is Cow - How to cope with the onslaught of absurd children’s names

*If you’re one of the clever devils who came up with any of these titles, and you’d like for me to either remove yours or add your name to it/them, please let me know!

It's a good Friday, indeed.

If one conducts a Google image search for "nick cave," this is one of the results, with the caption, "not nick cave."

A L'autre Bout Du Monde

Uh-oh, it appears I've lost so far at this March NaBloPoMo. Ah, well. Let's get right back on the old horse, shall we, darling? Heigh-ho, then.

Facts Which I Do Not Often Share:

1. I have a small yet intense and very secret crush on Steve Carell. There is something so earnest about him, so sad and yet sweet. It's very romantic, his allure.

2. I love miniatures.

3. I would love to live beneath the sea. If I could convert my lungs somehow...

Wow. That might be quite enough, actually.

I was born like this; I had no choice

Things Which Serve As Further Proof That My Mother Is, Indeed, Fantastic:
1. The fact that she writes emails such as this one, which was titled "Note to Parents" (she works with a lot of parents), and then sends them only to me:

Please note that Elijah and Elisha are two distinct names. One is not the other. They were two distinct historical figures; one was the servant and successor of the other. Do not name your child Elijah and call him—or, what is worse, expect others to call him—Elisha. I, for one, shall refuse to call Elijah, Elisha. It shall never happen, as surely as I shall never stop wincing and/or twitching when I hear YOU do so. If you persist in this madness, then you may as well name your daughter Marie-Therese and spell her name Griselda.

Draw lead... all mine

OMG!
OMG!
OMG!

And also, OMG!

So precious - all the things you can't live without

After months of strong-arming, our friend H [not to be confused with my H]agreed to go to last night's Tim Finn show with me. It was to have begun at 8. We stood in the rain until about 8:15, at which point the venue finally saw fit to let us in. The opening act (about whom there had been no publicity) came on at 9. She was quite young and quite lovely, with a beautiful voice and sweet lyrics, an acoustic guitar and one of those harmonica holder things. I was envious of her skills, until she decided to play Blackbird [note to fledgling performers: it's never a great idea to cover the Beatles, particularly a song as well-loved as Blackbird. For future reference, you may also want to consider staying away from Zeppelin and/or Stones covers. Just looking out for you, my lumplings.] and started it over not once but twice, saying each time, "Wait. Sorry. Let me start over. Sorry." Then there was a syrupy-sweet, twee song about a roadtrip with a boy, in which each of them is lonely "but we've got love in our hearts" and which also rhymed "Louisiana" with "eating a banana." She introduced this song to the mostly mid-50's-aged audience (for whom, by the way, the venue thought it would be a good idea to set up folding chairs. FOLDING CHAIRS. At THE TROUBADOUR.) by saying that she was going to play "a really, really cute song." At that point I texted H with a request: "Kill me." (As it turned out, his phone was nestled against a pack of gum in his pocket, so after about five minutes I leaned over and mentioned that perhaps he should check his phone for text messages.)

Once the adorable lass left the stage (after begging to be able to play "just one more" -- good night, really?), it was not too much longer until Tim came on. AT TEN-THIRTY. He was quite jolly, in the highest spirits I've seen yet. Which unfortunately meant his intensity was quite diminished. I don't know, maybe it's just that the thrill is gone. I had a great time, but there was something lacking?

And then some woman shouted out, "Message To My Girl!" which prompted me to say loudly and rather rudely, "That's NEIL, you idiot." H. was amused and disappointed, both, as he had been threatening all along to request Neil's solo work; he felt the uninformed woman had stolen his thunder. (I found all of this very disrespectful. I am very protective of my harem.)

At any rate, when the show was over, at midnight-ish, H summoned up the strength to offer up, "That wasn't too bad."

And... SCENE.

I've laid awake all night just putting the whole world right

A friend of ours is a great enabler of this Nick Cave fixation I've got currently. He burned all of the albums he owns to disk for me, and has also loaned me this biography. In what I thought an odd twist (though probably not that odd; still, I found it odd, and -- oh, I'll be quiet now), I came across the following passage:

While The Birthday Party were recording [in Melbourne], the New Zealand new wave pop group Split Enz were working in Studio 1 on the follow-up to their massive hit True Colors. On occasion a member of Split Enz would wander uninvited into Studio 2 and proclaim that the music The Birthday Party were making was uncommercial and would never reach the higher echelons of the Top Ten.

Er... wow! I wonder who that might have been. It does sound like something a frontman would say, doesn't it? A frontman concerned with commercial viability? Snicker, snicker!

What a very small post, no? Small and unkind. I shall try harder to be more meaningful.

You weren't much of a muse, but then I weren't much of a poet

Given my lifelong interest in language and my similarly long-suffering side project of mastering both the understanding and execution of a variety of accents [don't ask; it's just something one does, in my family -- though of course if you're truly interested you are welcome to ask; between my brother and myself we have a decent-sized chunk of the world covered. He is better with India, Pakistan,Iran, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Spain and the whole of North, Central and South America (!); I do well with England,Ireland, Scotland, Russia, Italy, New Zealand, Japan and North America], you might imagine the near-panic that occurred recently due to a very realistic dream. In the dream I was with an Australian co-worker who was giving me details about a new print project. But I could only understand about every other word. Said co-worker does have a tendency to mumble, so I thought perhaps it was him -- until a Kiwi co-worker arrived on the scene and, when I asked him to repeat what the other guy was saying, I realized I was unable to get about 50% of his speech as well. It dawned on me then (very cinematically, I might add) that I was losing my ability to understand non-American accents.

Yes, yes, paging Dr. Freud. Stop that snickering, please; it's rude.

For a normal person, this was akin to losing the ability to, I don't know, dial a telephone or open a bottle of wine, i.e.: dreadful and possibly tragic.

Gentle reader, please pray with me that these dreams do not continue.

Famous people

I just stumbled across this. Mad genius.