Big Hair Little Hair

I had most of my hairs cut tonight. Probably all of them. Mohawky sort of thing. I like it, but I imagine most other people won't. That's fine. I'll bet Carebear'll hate it, but she'll be kind of intrigued, too. Have I introduced Carebear yet? I don't think so. She is a customer crush. My next love. Surely.

Neutral Milk Hotel's Legacy

The Salinger of Indie Rock: What happened to Jeff Mangum?
By Taylor Clark
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008, at 1:45 PM ET
Jeff MangumJeff Mangum

Ten years ago this month, a songwriter from nowhere and his ramshackle band brought out one of the few truly great albums of this generation, a musical curio so gloriously odd that it almost defies explanation. The group called itself Neutral Milk Hotel, and the record, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, is a concept album about Anne Frank in which vocals about lost Siamese twins and semen-stained mountaintops mingle with the sounds of musical saws, fuzzy tape loops, and an amateur psychedelic brass band. It seems like a formula that would blister your eardrums, yet Aeroplane is a gorgeous, much adored work of art. In 2003, the alternative music magazine Magnet dubbed it the best album of the past decade—better than Nirvana, better than Radiohead.

While the record sells better today than ever, you won't see Neutral Milk Hotel onstage anytime soon because, for all intents and purposes, they've vanished into thin air. At the end of Aeroplane's final song, you can hear Jeff Mangum—the band's singer, songwriter, and all-around mastermind—set down his guitar and walk off, and, minus a few months of under-the-radar touring, that's exactly what Mangum did in real life. When the major labels and the glossy magazines and the half-crazed fans came calling, Mangum never responded. There was no breakup announcement, no reason given for the radio silence—he just faded out. After a decade of speculation, sightings, and hoaxes, his story remains a mystery: Why did he decide to disappear? And where has Mangum gone?

Even before his public vanishing act, Mangum was something of an elusive character. Raised in the arts vortex of Ruston, La., he bristled at his hometown's jocks-and-booze ethic and hoped from an early age to unchain his creative spirit. In the early '90s, Mangum and a few friends formed a now-legendary collective called Elephant Six, which grew to encompass dozens of strangely named bands creating eclectic music mostly for their own enjoyment. Yet Mangum himself seldom stayed in one place for long; he constantly hopped from city to city, acoustic guitar in hand. At home in the collective's base of Athens, Ga., or out on his peregrinations, Mangum cut a strange figure: a long-locked, intense-looking man with a gale-strength singing voice who liked to wear garish thrift-store sweaters and embellish the cuffs of his pants with cartoon sketchings.
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Because he suffered from night terrors, Mangum often stayed up until dawn working on his songs, sometimes addressing them to the ghosts in a haunted closet. At first, this method produced modest results: His first album, On Avery Island (1996), showed flashes of promise but had its sludgy and spotty patches. One day, Mangum wandered into a bookstore and happened upon a copy of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. The book consumed him. After finishing it, he spent a few days crying over Frank's story. As he told a Puncture magazine interviewer before Aeroplane's release, "I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine and somehow I'd have the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank. Do you think that's embarrassing?" The songs and lyrics he started writing about Frank could be so nightmarish in vision that Mangum grew afraid of what was issuing from his brain: verses about "pianos filled with flames" and eating "tomatoes and radio wires." At times, he seems possessed, singing on Aeroplane's title track, "Anna's ghost all around/ Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me."

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is so expansive in its weirdness that one of its 11 songs is a rollicking bagpipe jam—yet it would be wrong to call it a "cult" record, since that would imply it's some sort of flawed art-school project. Sure, Aeroplane occasionally sounds like a mariachi circus fed through a broken amplifier, but it all weaves together as Mangum guides the proceedings with percussive guitar strumming, singalong melodies, and his booming, emotive voice. The album plays like a document from a parallel-universe version of the 1940s, inlaid with Mangum's haunting lyrics: "And here's where your mother sleeps/ And here is the room where your brothers were born/ Indentions in the sheets/ Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore." Aeroplane isn't about airtight instrumentation or tricky songwriting—most of the songs have just three or four chords—but about a remarkable range of feeling put into melody. (Mangum recorded his part of the song "Oh Comely" in one scratch take, at the end of which you can hear a stunned band member yell "Holy shit!" in the background.)

When Aeroplane first debuted, sales took a while to warm up. Those who found the record would appear at shows and (to the annoyance of many audience members) collectively drown out Mangum's singing with their own rendition, but this was still indie music's dark, pre-blog era. By the time magazines started paying attention, toward the end of 1998, Mangum already had one foot out the door. Worn down by months of touring, he grew fed up with discussing himself and explaining his lyrics, eventually declining to accept any calls—yet friends say he still fixated on every word written about him. As his bandmates pressed him to capitalize on Neutral Milk Hotel's success, he withdrew more and more. When R.E.M. offered a chance to open for them, he said no. And for the last decade, that's nearly all he's said.

As Aeroplane's legend began to build, Mangum kept himself busy by having a total nervous breakdown. Laura Carter, his then-girlfriend, told the Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing that he spent entire days sitting in his house in a state of near panic, wearing a pair of old slippers and doing absolutely nothing. He became paranoid, hoarding rice for the inevitable post-Y2K apocalypse. Since 1998, Mangum has rejected every interview request save one 2002 conversation with Pitchfork in which he explained his meltdown. "I went through a period, after Aeroplane, when a lot of the basic assumptions I held about reality started crumbling," he said. One of those assumptions was that music would somehow erase his problems. "I guess I had this idea that if we all created our dream we could live happily ever after," he continued. "So when so many of our dreams had come true and yet I still saw that so many of my friends were in a lot of pain … I saw their pain from a different perspective and realized that I can't just sing my way out of all this suffering."

It took Mangum years to rebuild himself after this spiritual crisis—and since part of that crisis was his recognition that music would never save him from his demons, he couldn't very well embark on another record. So he wandered the globe to find spiritual balance, even spending time in a monastery. (Aeroplane's steady sales helped finance the quest; the album still moves a reported 25,000 copies a year.) Occasionally, Mangum flitted ever so briefly into the public eye. He released a disc of field recordings of Bulgarian folk music, then disappeared. Calling himself "Jefferson," he hosted a late-night radio show on New Jersey's WFMU a few times until he was discovered, then vanished once again. Sometimes he'll appear onstage at friends' rock shows for a song, sending the crowd into paroxysms—but when those friends suggest he record his own music, they say he becomes evasive.

Mangum's continued silence has angered some fans, who accuse him of being selfish or "indifferent to his talent," as if musical ability comes with some sort of obligation to society. At least once a year, someone writes a hoax message from Mangum and posts it online—generally throwing in some fanciful verbal junk to bilk fans into believing it's the genius himself wielding the keyboard. Some have announced forthcoming records or tours, while others have revealed the long-hidden sources of Mangum's misanthropy; they've all been debunked. All we really know for sure is this: According to his record label, Mangum now lives in New York City. He recently married filmmaker Astra Taylor. Friends say he still creates art and that he seems "very happy." If he has plans to record more music, he hasn't told anyone.

And if Aeroplane really is Jeff Mangum's final statement to the universe, maybe we should be happy with that—not because of some tired line about going out at your peak (which he likely didn't reach), but because his story is a kind of modern fable. Many fans see his disappearance only in selfish terms: They've been deprived of more great music for no good reason. They can't understand why Mangum would shun success just to shuffle through his days, and, indeed, when musicians abandon this much promise, the culprit is usually drugs or debilitating accidents or people named Yoko. So he must have gone nuts, right? Well, no. After all, what if Mangum is just being honest? What if he poured his life into achieving musical success only to discover that it wasn't going to make him happy, so he elected to make a clean break and move on? We should all be so crazy.

As always, though, hope for Mangum's return still glimmers. Last month brought news that he may play a guy in a lobster suit in a soon-to-be-released conceptual film. But who knows? You can't see inside the suit.

You Make Me Want To Puke

Here is a recent post from MODBLOG, one of my favorite blogs:

"Now THAT’S dedication to body modification
Tuesday February 26th, 2008 @ 12:33 PM
Filed under: BMEBoys

Paul writes,

I’ve been working on a weight loss/body sculpting *mod*for a few years now, and I’ve finally hit my goal, going from over 235lbs down to 155lbs. I’ve been self conscious for a long while, but now I’m happy with where I’m at. It’s funny how self hatred can drive you to self love.

It’s one thing to sit under the tattoo needle for a few hours to modify your body, but I think we all too often write off the thousands of hours (and don’t get me started on the pain) it takes to transform ones physique like Paul has.

"

Anne Frank's love?

Admittedly, I'm hypersensitive to certain issues as of late, but this story really made me sad.

UK paper: Photo is of boy loved by Anne Frank

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23321701/?GT1=10856

LONDON - A British newspaper has published what it calls the first known photograph of a boy Anne Frank fell in love with and wrote about in her famous diary.

Anne Frank, the Jewish schoolgirl who wrote her diary while hiding from the Nazis in the Netherlands during World War II, was captivated by Peter Schiff.

She met him at school in 1940, his family also having fled from Germany to Amsterdam the previous year. At age 11, Anne fell in love with Schiff and later, while in hiding in Amsterdam herself, wrote about how much she missed him.
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Her last mention of Schiff was in 1944, the year her family's safe house was raided by the German security police. She later died in a Nazi prison camp.

Sunday's The Observer newspaper reported that Ernst Michaelis, 81, of London, found a photo of Schiff in a family collection after realizing that Anne Frank was writing about a boy he had known as a fellow student in Berlin.

Michaelis, who moved from Germany to Britain many years ago, said he has had the photo authenticated and that it will be displayed on the Anne Frank House Web site.

Schiff also is believed to have died in a Nazi prison camp.

The Anne Frank Foundation in the Netherlands was closed on Sunday and could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press for comment.

Stuff White People Like

This is a great blog:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

And yeah, almost every single thing does apply to me, I am aware of this.

This post from a different blog, but in the same vein, is awesome as well:

http://www.catsandbeer.com/music/the-top-10-rap-songs-
white-people-love

Antidepressant Deception

This is funny because the original Prozac trial that got the drug into massive popular consciousness is something that we often refer to in my school. Being that we are all a little bit hippy about drugs and such, it is frustrating for us to hear stories like the inception of Prozac, which was based on a study with only 14 people in it. 14 people is NOT an adequate sample size for a rigorous gold standard (randomized controlled trial/double blind placebo study). It is one of the most ridiculous examples of slant and skew, and we laugh about how ridiculous it is that the tactics actually worked.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/
feb/26/mentalhealth.medicalresearch

Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists

Analysis of unseen trials and other data concludes it is no better than placebo

* Sarah Boseley, health editor
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday February 26 2008


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This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday February 26 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 09:56 on February 26 2008.
A single Prozac capsule

A single Prozac capsule. Photograph: Alamy

Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.

The study examined all available data on the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The trials compared the effect on patients taking the drugs with those given a placebo or sugar pill.

When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs.

The only exception is in the most severely depressed patients, according to the authors - Prof Irving Kirsch from the department of psychology at Hull University and colleagues in the US and Canada. But that is probably because the placebo stopped working so well, they say, rather than the drugs having worked better.

"Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed," says Kirsch. "This study raises serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug licensing and how drug trial data is reported."

The paper, published today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine, is likely to have a significant impact on the prescribing of the drugs. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) already recommends that counselling should be tried before doctors prescribe antidepressants. Kirsch, who was one of the consultants for the guidelines, says the new analysis "would suggest that the prescription of antidepressant medications might be restricted even more".

The review breaks new ground because Kirsch and his colleagues have obtained for the first time what they believe is a full set of trial data for four antidepressants.

They requested the full data under freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration, which licenses medicines in the US and requires all data when it makes a decision.

The pattern they saw from the trial results of fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone) was consistent. "Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance," they write.

Two more frequently prescribed antidepressants were omitted from the study because scientists were unable to obtain all the data.

Concerns have been raised in recent years about the side-effects of this class of antidepressant. Evidence that they could prompt some young people to consider suicide led to a warning to doctors not to prescribe them for the under-18s - with the exception of Prozac, which was considered more effective than the rest.

In adults, however, the depression-beating benefits were thought to outweigh the risks. Since its launch in the US in 1988, some 40 million people have taken Prozac, earning tens of billions of dollars for the manufacturer, Eli Lilly. Although the patent lapsed in 2001, fluoxetine continues to make the company money - it is now the active ingredient in Sarafem, a pill sold by Lilly for premenstrual syndrome.

Eli Lilly was defiant last night. "Extensive scientific and medical experience has demonstrated that fluoxetine is an effective antidepressant," it said in a statement. "Since its discovery in 1972, fluoxetine has become one of the world's most-studied medicines. Lilly is proud of the difference fluoxetine has made to millions of people living with depression."

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said the authors had failed to acknowledge the "very positive" benefits of the treatment and their conclusions were "at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice".

He added: "This analysis has only examined a small subset of the total data available while regulatory bodies around the world have conducted extensive reviews and evaluations of all the data available, and this one study should not be used to cause unnecessary alarm and concern for patients."

Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/
25cnd-religion.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate, Report Finds

WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
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The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.

For at least a generation, scholars have noted that more Americans are moving among faiths, as denominational loyalty erodes. But the survey, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, offers one of the clearest views yet of that trend, scholars said. The United States Census does not track religious affiliation.

The report shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that the Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.” The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”

Detailing the nature of religious affiliation — who has the numbers, the education, the money — signals who could hold sway over the country’s political and cultural life, said John Green, an author of the report who is a senior fellow on religion and American politics at Pew.

Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University, echoed that view. “Religion is the single most important factor that drives American belief attitudes and behaviors,” said Mr. Lindsay, who had read the Pew report. “It is a powerful indicator of where America will end up on politics, culture, family life. If you want to understand America, you have to understand religion in America.”

In the 1980s, the General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center indicated that from 5 percent to 8 percent of the population described itself as unaffiliated with a particular religion.

In the Pew survey 7.3 percent of the adult population said they were unaffiliated with a faith as children. That segment increases to 16.1 percent of the population in adulthood, the survey found. The unaffiliated are largely under 50 and male. “Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13 percent of women,” the survey said.

The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.” Pew researchers said that later projects would delve more deeply into the beliefs and practices of the unaffiliated and would try to determine if they remain so as they age.

While the unaffiliated have been growing, Protestantism has been declining, the survey found. In the 1970s, Protestants accounted for about two-thirds of the population. The Pew survey found they now make up about 51 percent. Evangelical Christians account for a slim majority of Protestants, and those who leave one evangelical denomination usually move to another, rather than to mainline churches.

To Prof. Stephen Prothero, large numbers of Americans leaving organized religion and large numbers still embracing the fervor of evangelical Christianity point to the same desires.

“The trend is toward more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that,” said Mr. Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, who explained that evangelical churches tailor many of their activities for youth. “Those losing out are offering impersonal religion and those winning are offering a smaller scale: mega-churches succeed not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.”

The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.

The Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group: about one-third of respondents raised Catholic said they no longer identified as such. Based on the data, the survey showed, “this means that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics.”

Immigration continues to influence American religion greatly, the survey found. The majority of immigrants are Christian, and almost half are Catholic. Muslims rival Mormons for having the largest families. And Hindus are the best-educated and among the richest religious groups, the survey found.

“I think politicians will be looking at this survey to see what groups they ought to target,” Professor Prothero said. “If the Hindu population is negligible, they won’t have to worry about it. But if it is wealthy, then they may have to pay attention.”

Experts said the wide-ranging variety of religious affiliation could set the stage for further conflicts over morality or politics, or new alliances on certain issues, as religious people have done on climate change or Jews and Hindus have done over relations between the United States, Israel and India.

“It sets up the potential for big arguments,” Mr. Green said, “but also for the possibility of all sorts of creative synthesis. Diversity cuts both ways.”

Granola III

I call her around noon on Saturday. She says that she's just waking up; she stays up late. I think she's afraid of sleep. She says that she wants me to come over at like two or so, and then just hang out all day. I propose three.

I'm off to the store for deodorant and shampoo, both of which I am out of. I have to try a new deodorant, because my standby is absent. New shampoo, as well. I head then for the car wash. A man named Jeremiah who works there offers to fix the chip in my windshield in two minutes, so I say go ahead. Turns out later that this was a lie. I am at the wash for at least 30 minutes. They make my car smell like a cinnamon bomb, even though I asked for vanilla.

I get out of the shower around 3:15, hurrying. I know that she hates to wait. I decide to stop at Watson's Flowers, and the girl who works there is just locking up the door as I pull up.

"Hey, are you guys closed?!"
"Yeah, sorry. Did you know what you wanted? Is it something that I could just run in and grab?"
"No, no, don't worry about it...thanks"

I call her and apologize for being late. She's obviously a little angry already. She hates to wait. I stop at AJ's, because I remember that they have a nice flower corner. Payoff. Orange spray roses and purple (dark center) gerbera daisies, with wildflower purples as accent. Large green leaves. Kind of lame Easter ribbon. I'm on my way now.

It's about 3:40 now.

Now it's almost 4:00. I'm getting off of the 60 at Mill avenue. My phone sings and I talk to her for a minute. I tell her that I'm just a moment away now.

I get to her door. She answers. Pretty flowers. Mr. Cat is there. He seems to like me. Scary Eye shows me the top that she is going to wear to a wedding that night. Shoes, too. I help Granola force the flowers into a too-narrow vase opening. She gives me a highly potent small glass of Emergen-C. Things are moving slowly, like a fat man in a foot race. Painful and obvious. It will warm up.

Scary Eye and Adolf (SE's boyfriend) leave for their friend's wedding.

We stand around for a minute, and then sit in the living room. Small talk, short forays into depth.

It's later now. We're talking about many different things. Her seizures. Her having dropped out of high school. She says that she isn't too worried about it. A few hours later, I trick her into honesty. Ask things in rhythm and answers sometime flow the same way. I get into a groove, and then:

"Are you embarrassed about not having your GED or diploma?"
"Yes," she answers a little too quickly, "Yes."

This is when I convinced her that I am indeed more aware of who she is than she thought. That I was able to get her to admit something that she wasn't even sure of herself before then is a little frightening, but mostly exciting. To both of us.

After that, she opens up completely. She takes off her bra. Yeah, I find that weird, but she says that she doesn't like them. Scary tells me the next day that this means she is really comfortable with me, which I already knew.

We play Mario. 1 and 2. We suck at this.

Talk more.

Her house may be haunted. I'm not afraid. Mia is a soul gazing cat, who surely protects us. Mr. Cat is sort of worthless, but I'm sure he'd jump into action if she were in danger.

1:30am now. I tell her I need to leave. She calls her mother to pick her up. Long story. She doesn't want to sleep at home alone, so she seeks her mother. I wait until her mom arrives.

2:05am. Her mom is outside. I walk her to the car and shake the woman's hand. She is pleasant. I hug Granola goodnight and go home.

This would be promising if we hadn't spoken about what we were in it for. She warned me that she wasn't really looking for anything, but that she thought I'd be very valuable to her as a friend, and so wanted to keep me around. We agree to just see where it goes, though I get the impression that she wants it to go somewhere that I'm already so familiar with. Fine. I'm there for her as well.

"Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it."
- Woody Allen, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

To most in my life

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy."
- Robert Anthony

Granola pts II and IIa

So Scary Eye's roommate is Granola. Scary has told me about her before, describing her alternately as "granola," "crunchy," and "sort of alyson hannigan like." These things all of course ignited the deepest hottest fires of my sacred loin, and I determined that she must be mine.

Scary told me that Granola was sort of sad about the then upcoming Valentine's Day, because she was single, read: alone. I was already planning on buying a rose and a card for each of the girls at work (Scary included), so I just added an extra one for Scary to take home to Granola, and I wrote a nice little note to her in a cat card. Well, of course, that went over remarkably well and she thought me to be just the sweetest guy. She instructed Scary to have me go over to their house on that Saturday night so that we could actually meet, to which I kindly obliged.

Problems: On Tuesday morning I worked out really hard, and also did a bit of vigorous cardio. On Wednesday evening I went for a decent hike with my parents and then ate dinner, which kept me up a little late. On Thursday, I had to wake up at 4:30am, which meant that I got like 5 hours of sleep total that night. By the time that I made it to Body Positive at noon, I was feeling like total ass, so I only stayed for a few hours. Louis' grandma had died the previous weekend and her funeral was Friday morning, so I had to get up and go to that, though I was officially full on sick by that point and it was all rainy and cold that day. I went on after the funeral to Body Positive, though I again only stayed for about two or three hours. I went home and basically just passed out until Erin came by later that night with cake and conversation, though I fell asleep while she was here anyways. Then came Saturday, and I had told Chris at work that I'd cover his night shift (2pm-8:30pm). I felt like complete crap, but I wouldn't be able to get anyone to cover, so I just dragged my ass in. I brought a change of clothes for the evening at Scary's, though I forgot my shoes. So I was sick and super tired. Those are the problems. Oh, and I had retarded shoes on.

Anyways, I slammed all sorts of meds on my way to Scary and Granola's house. I took some oscillococcinum for the flu symptoms, and tylenol cough/cold for my horrid death cough and whatever effect it may have on the flu symptoms as well. In any case, I got to their place at around 9:15 or so.

I walk in with Scary to the kitchen, where I find Granola mixing a bowl of brownie mix (hot). She is wearing a very low cut shirt (hot) and sort of tight jeans(whatev), and is frankly not as cute as I had expected based upon the photo that she had texted me after receiving my rose. I mean, she looked good, and was really very pretty, so maybe I just mean that she didn't look the way that I EXPECTED or something. Whatever. She looked good. So then Scary showed me the rest of the house, which was cool as hell, and straight out of the crappy 70s. We all sat then in the, uh, sitting room, and talked for a spell until Scary busted out the crossword puzzle book. We must have finished like 5 of them in total when all was said and done. At that point, Scary's boyfie called and she had to go pick his drunk ass up from a party, so I got the chance to talk to Granola alone for a while. She was nice to talk to, which is of course good. We spoke of varied things, including her parents, her education (or perhaps lack thereof...more on this later), and her past and future in general. Around this time, Scary got home, and I realized that it was around 1am, and that I was supposed to open the bean the next morning so I took off.

Blah blah blah blah blah

I called Granola on Tuesday and asked her if she wanted to go out on Saturday. She said yes, of course. So we're going to go to Mandala Tea Room, and then maybe some other place, though I have nothing planned.

She told Scary later that I sounded all nervous on the phone. We deduced that it was caused by my cough, which sometimes sounds like a laugh. I told her not to correct her, because Granola also said that the nervousness was cute, so I'm going to let that work for me. That's all. Part III presumably comes this weekend.

"For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!"
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Granola pt I

New girl = Granola...More on her when I don't feel like shiz

Fantastic Fashion

Despite some of the crazy and/or ugly hats, I love almost the entire Ralph Lauren Fall 08 line as seen at New York last week. Here are some examples:






(this one would look better on a dude, frankly)




This one /\/\/\is my favorite from the whole RL show, and one of my all time fav dresses. There were two dresses that I liked more, but I can only find this one, by Oscar De La Renta:

LOLCat Bible

If this gets published, I will buy it IMMEDIATELY

http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

superdelegates

Make a little birdhouse in your soul

Birdhouse In Your Soul - They Might Be Giants

I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

I have a secret to tell
From my electrical well
It's a simple message and I'm leaving out the whistles and bells
So the room must listen to me
Filibuster vigilantly
My name is blue canary one note* spelled l-i-t-e
My story's infinite
Like the Longines Symphonette it doesn't rest

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am

There's a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free
Though I respect that a lot
I'd be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts
Bluebird of friendliness
Like guardian angels its always near

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

(and while you're at it
Keep the nightlight on inside the
Birdhouse in your soul)

Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch (and while you're at it)
Who watches over you (keep the nightlight on inside the)
Make a little birdhouse in your soul (birdhouse in your soul)

Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch (and while you're at it)
Who watches over you (keep the nightlight on inside the)
Make a little birdhouse in your soul (birdhouse in your soul)

Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

The Primaries

Okay, so now Yahoo has updated stats:

Hillary Clinton [AZ, AR, CA, MA, NJ, NY, OK, TN, (and American Samoa)] 845 delegates

Barack Obama [AK, AL, CO, CT, DE, GA, ID, IL, KS, MO, MN, ND, UT] 765 delegates

Total delegates needed: 2,025

Weirdest ads ever

So these are supposed to make dudes NOT want to have sex with young girls. How creepy is this?

More explanation

"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains." ~Thomas Carlyle, author.

Primaries

Obama took 13 (probably 14) states, compared to Hilhil's 8, though she took some of the bigger ones.

I lifted this directly from Americablog.com, who also had Obama leading in delegates by like 4 or 5.

Democrats

Clinton: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee

Obama: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah

New Mexico is still undecided -- and very, very close. Vote counting starts again at 11:00 a.m. Eastern.

Republicans

Huckabee: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia

McCain: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma

Romney: Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Utah

Roadrunner III

She texts me on Thursday:

Her: "Do you have to work tomorrow? Oh this is ::roadrunner:: by the way"
Me: I think that I deleted this message, but I said something about not being sure that my mom's car would make it on Saturday (I obviously didn't read that her message was asking about Friday)
Her: "Well I was going to see if you wanted to run with me on Friday instead"
Me: "You're killing me, lol, i have to work on friday. Unless you run at night?"
Her: "Ha ha sure how late?"
Me: "Well, i will get out of work probably around 3 or 3:30 and then i might take a nap, lol. 5 or 6 too late?"
Her: "How about 5. Is that okay?"
Me: "Yeah, I'll shoot for that. How far are we running? I hope you're okay with running like really slow, lol."
Her: "oh please i don't care how fast we run it won't bother me at all. We can go 3 or 5 or 9. You pick"
Me: "Five sounds about right."
Her: "Okie dokie sounds good. I am so excited! Oh do you want to run out here or by your house?"
Me: "Your area. There isn't much good running around here. Or i'm just bored with it, who knows?"
Her: "Okay can i call and give you directions tomorrow?"
Me: "Yeah, totally. Anyways, i have to wake up to open the shop, so i'm off to bed now. Sleep well."
Her: "Whoops sorry see ya tom."

And so then Friday I wake up and get to work, blah blah, fine. I get off at like noon ish, and then at 2 I have to go to this lame coffee class thing that lasts until about 3 or 3:20. After that Duffy, Scary Eye, and I go to Hottie to look at the clothes. They mostly suck, but they had a few things that weren't too bad. Anyways, I leave, get home, eat, turn right back around and head out to meet Roadrunner. By the time I get there, I'm about ready to piss my pants. I don't know WHY, I just really needed to pee. We actually met in the parking lot of a church a few miles from her place, and ran in that neighborhood, so I just slipped into the church and used their bathroom.

We head out and I can tell immediately that it's going to be an embarrassing night for me. I've only run like once since the half, and I can feel that my legs are just not there for me. We get about a mile and I stop to retie my shoes (my new pair). After that, there is a pretty harsh hill that I end up having to walk the second half of. She does this hill routinely, but she never complains about the pace, even when we start walking. I keep up the interest by pointing out various plants on the side of the street and mentioning their medicinal possibilities when applicable. Everything is actually going pretty well at this point, even though I'm totally holding her back. We get to a certain point, and she says,

"If we go left, it'll be 5 miles total. If we go right, it'll be 3. What do you want to do?"

Now, I hesitate to voice my real choice (3, duh), because I don't want to appear to be such a damn baby. But at the same time, I'll probably look even more stupid if I try to do 5 and end up hurting hard. So I end up standing there for a minute, deliberating. She chimes in,

"I honestly don't care if you want to just do 3. That's fine with me."

"Alright, then let's just do 3."

So we turn right and start running downhill. We run fairly solid for the rest of the time back, making only one short walk break. Now here's the analysis.

She is super super nice. Incredibly encouraging. The mother in movies that died during the main character's childhood but remains a solid memory and vision of support. At the end of the hill, she is all "Good job! You did great!" And when we finished, it was more of the same. It's nice being around someone so pleasant. It's like being hugged, sort of. Warm and fuzzy. Care bears. Rainbows. Gay things. Smiles.

She is sort of out of touch with her generation. When I asked her what she usually listens to on her ipod when she runs, she said "Oh, uh, Journey. Ya know, like Hootie and the Blowfish...." and when I asked if there was anything from within the past 10 years, she couldn't think of anything other than Jack Johnson, "who you can't really run to."

She dressed like how my mom would probably dress if she were going out to run. That was sort of endearing, though. We laughed about fashion, and about our lack of it over the years (wearing sweat pants to class, for example). She has an amazing smile framed by dimples like a gold-leaf filigree frame around some John Currin painting. She had braces once. She wants to be a dental hygienist. She has such fantastic teeth.

Anyways, I'm going to see what I can do about seeing more of her. I texted her something about like "I had fun, giggle giggle, we should do it again, teehee," or something. I'll update as necessary.



Ann-Charlotte by John Currin, 1996

AIDS breakthrough research

Swiss experts say individuals with undetectable viral load and no STI cannot transmit HIV during sex

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/
4E9D555B-18FB-4D56-B912-2C28AFCCD36B.asp

Story of my life