24: 11 P.M.

Far Away - Tricky
Another Bleeding Heart - Alex Parker and Jake Parker
11:11 P.M. - The All-American Rejects
Bleed American - Jimmy Eat World
All The Things She Said - T.A.T.U.
Appletree - Erykah Badu
Nada Mio Es Fake - Los Abandoned
Ultrasonic Sound - Hive
Leave You Far Behind - Lunatic Calm
Get Yourself Connected - Stereo MC
Fedime's Flight - Jazzanova
Bad Education - Tilly and the Wall
Everything Will Be Alright - The Killers
Another One Bites The Dust - Queen
Auld Lang Syne - The Decemberists

24: 10 P.M.

PDA - Interpol
Dogs Were Barking - Gogol Bordello
One More Robot - The Flaming Lips
Around the World - Daft Punk
Mirando - Ratatat
Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado/Timbaland
Dead Sound - The Raveonettes
Seventeen - Ladytron
Repeater - Fugazi
Opportunities (Let's make lots of money) - Pet Shop Boys
Out Of Control - She Wants Revenge
Opportunity - You Say Party! We Say Die!
Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
Dancing In The Dark - Bruce Springsteen

24: 9 P.M.

Late In The Evening - Paul Simon
Wild Night - John Cougar Mellencamp
9pm (Till I Come) - ATB
Party Like it's 1999 - Prince
Smooth - D'Angelo
Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
Party Hard - Andrew WK
Flames Go Higher - Eagles Of Death Metal
Dance, Dance - Fall Out Boy
Because The Night (Live) - 10.000 Maniacs
Children (Short) - Robert Miles
Lets Groove Tonight - Earth Wind & Fire
Samo Son Remix - Holy Hail
Night on Fire - VHS Or Beta
Friday Night - Girl Talk
Magic Carpet Ride (Techno Remix) - Crystal Method

24: 8 P.M.

Things Behind The Sun - Nick Drake
Long, Long Day - Paul Simon
America - Simon & Garfunkel
Pink Moon - Nick Drake
Under the Milky Way Tonight - The Church
Esa Noche - Café Tacuba
Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven
Starlight - Muse
Moon - You Say Party! We Say Die!
Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
Bark at the Moon - Ozzy Osbourne
Drops Of Jupiter - Train
Wasp Nest - The National
Sailing to Philadelphia - James Taylor/Mark Knopfler

24: 7 P.M.

Lights - Journey
I'm Goin' Home - Hootie & The Blowfish
Homeward Bound [Live] - Simon & Garfunkel
Long Way Home - Supertramp
Collapsing At Your Doorstep - Air France
Not Going Home - The Elected
Complainte De La Butte - Rufus Wainwright
Free Fallin' (Live) - John Mayer
Blame It on the Tetons - Modest Mouse
My Sundown - Jimmy Eat World
Just Until Sundown - Further Seems Forever
Prairie Wedding - Mark Knopfler - Sailing to Philadelphia
Homecoming - Kanye West
Fix You - Coldplay

24: 6 P.M.

Heart Of Gold - Neil Young
So Far Away - Carol King
Running On Empty - Jackson Browne
Lost+ (with Jay-Z) - Coldplay
The Distance - Cake
Shampoo - Elvis Perkins In Dearland
Bron-Yr-Aur - Led Zeppelin
She's Got A Way [Live] - Billy Joel
Heavy - Los Abandoned
You Are My Sunshine - Norman Blake
When You Say Nothing At All - Alison Krauss & Union Station
Don't I Dream It's Over - Sixpence None The Richer
Eileen's Song - Burlap To Cashmere
Place To Be - Nick Drake
Thank You Lord, For Sending Me The F Train - Mike Doughty
Do You Know What It Means - Acoustic Jazz Quartet

24: 5 P.M.

God Only Knows (1999 Digital Remaster) - The Beach Boys
Panic-Oh! - Los Abandoned
The Witch - Clinic
Conquest - The White Stripes
Playground Love - Air
Speedway at Nazareth - Mark Knopfler - Sailing to Philadelphia
The Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle & Sebastian
No Excuses - Alice In Chains
Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Who Can It Be Now - Men At Work
Little Sister - Queens of the Stone Age
Less Than Zero - Elvis Costello
Psycho - The Faint
Three Hours - Nick Drake
Taste Of Skyroad - Bill Carleton
Walk on the Ocean - Toad the Wet Sprocket

24: 4 P.M.

PYT (Pretty Young Thing) - Michael Jackson
The Impression That I Get - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Sun In An Empty Room - The Weakerthans
Dog Park - Saturday Knights
Two Way Monologue - Sondre Lerche
And Through The Wire - Peter Gabriel
To Germany With Love - Alphaville
Burning Down The House - Talking Heads
Million To One - Two If By Sea
And God Shuffled His Feet - Crash Test Dummies
Afternoon Delight - Will Ferell - Anchorman
Fake Empire - The National
Down on the Corner - Credence Clearwater Revival
Something About Us - Daft Punk
Chan Chan - Buena Vista Social Club

Alterna-24: 3 P.M. (Rain Mix)

The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin
Rain, Tax - Celine Dion
Rain King - Counting Crows - Across A Wire: Live In New York City [Disc 1]
Rainy Day - Coldplay
Slip Slidin' Away - Paul Simon
Rain - Rusted Root
Jung At Heart - Master Cylinder
Lightning Crashes - Live
The Downeaster 'Alexa' - Billy Joel
Riders On The Storm - The Doors
Who'll Stop The Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Thank You - Dido
Reprise - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

24: 3 P.M.

Cradle and All - Ani Difranco
Shadow on the Sun - Audioslave
Lost In a Crowd - Rusted Root
Sunburn - Fuel
My Russia Wovenhand - Woven Hand
A Horse With No Name - America
Daylight Robbery - Imogen Heap
With A Little Help From My Friends - Joe Cocker
The Sun - Maroon 5
House Of Valparaiso - Calexico
Good Vibrations (2001 Digital Remaster) - The Beach Boys
Sun Is Shining (bob marley mix) - ATB
Shadow Stabbing - Cake
You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon

24: 2 P.M.

Tall Tall Grass - Tilly and the Wall
Summer's Here - James Taylor
My Girls - Animal Collective
The Boys Of Summer (Album Version) - The Ataris
Don't Forget About Me - Simple Minds
Take On Me - A-Ha
Cruel Summer - Ace Of Base
Falling Without Knowing - Tilly and the Wall
Everyone Has A Summer - Lovage
Learning To Fly - Tom Petty
Summer Sun - Matt Wertz
Summer - ATB
Summertime - Sublime
Kids - MGMT

24: 1 P.M.

Undeclared - The Dodos
Eucalyptus - The Deadly Syndrome
St. Louis is Listening - Soul Coughing
Youthless - Beck
Skin Is Burning - Burlap to Cashmere
A Place in the Sun - Stevie Wonder
Staring at the Sun - TV On The Radio
Silver N' Gold - Rusted Root
Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder
24 Hours - The Sundays
83 - John Mayer
Call It A Ritual - Wolf Parade
Crack the Shutters - Snow Patrol
Island In The Sun - Weezer
Super Bon Bon remix - Soul Coughing

24: 12 P.M.

Yea Yeah - Matt & Kim
Doomsday - Elvis Perkins In Dearland
1234 - Feist
Video Game Heart - All Girl Summer Fun Band
Time - Hootie & The Blowfish
Come On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners
Sweetest Thing - U2
On The Tower - Sondre Lerche
99 Red Ballons - Angry Salad
Hello Old Friend - Eric Clapton
Rock The Casba - The Clash
Railway Station Dispatch - Bang Bang
Signal in the Sky (Let's Go) - The Apples In Stereo
Next To You - The Police
Way To Blue - Nick Drake
Loves Me Like A Rock - Paul Simon
Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn - The White Stripes

Local Trivia: Reservoir Geese

P.C. and I are planning on taking advantage of today's perfect 65-degree-weather to check in on the goose nest up near the reservoir.

On the way to work today, though, I noticed that a pond I always pass, with a pair of geese that hatched 4 goslings last year, had the pair and five little yellow goslings in tow.

I'm betting our goose eggs have turned into tiny geese by now. I'll let you know what we find.

Unsolicited Advice, XI

Open House.

It's a good TV show.

PSA: Open house

I'm at Brandeis for an open house -- or I was yesterday afternoon, when I arrived here.

It was nice to meet the director of the Cultural Productions program and to talk about "what I'm interested in" -- for the sake of my admissions essay, that is national views of trauma and security; for the sake of my sanity, that is everything on the planet (I know, doesn't sound like much of a sane plan, does it. Sigh) -- but the highlight of the day was seeing that one of the two other students there was a Chinese woman, and asking her where she came from.

"Sichuan," she said. "Have you heard of it?"

But she must have seen my face light up before she even asked. We stole moments between academic talk with the director to talk about the things that really matter: a foreigner speaking Sichuanhua, and whether I liked spicy food or not. She laughed with recognition at all my "jokes" -- that I hate huajiao and so don't like ma po dofu, but that I love hot pot; my calling myself a laowai -- in that sincere Chinese way I've missed.

It was great.

Overheard: Men. Those cads, with their fickle ways, and their...news...

Female patron: Good morning, how are you?

Female librarian: Good morning!

Female patron, slight bitterness in her voice: All the men have their newspapers, I see.

Quantifiable Living: S’mores-firewood scale

Item: Firewood (size, burning power)


Unit of measure: S’mores


How it works: Size of kindling or logs for a fire can be measured in the number of S’mores it can make under ideal conditions. Similar to the definition of a calorie (the amount of energy it takes to heat 1ml of water 1 degree C), firewood can be measured in the amount of marshmallow and chocolate it can melt.

The making of a S’more consists of heating a marshmallow to a sufficient temperature to be 1. crispy and lightly browned on the outside, 2. hot and melted on the inside and 3. capable of melting half the mass of two squares of Hershey’s chocolate (such that the chocolate is neither still cold, nor melting off of the graham cracker onto one’s hand) previously kept at room temperature (70 degrees F).


Examples:

Small twig from living tree: .2 S’mores

Medium-sized stick from dead tree: 2 S’mores

Log from moss-covered dead tree in the forest: 24 S’mores

Log from well-seasoned, dry woodpile kept under cover: 37 S’mores


Elaborations: Ideal conditions here are a wind and rain-free day, and using a firepit or barbeque primed for a fire.

Firewood should be imagined as instantly catching fire and burning at perfect S’more-making temperatures; see separate scale for how good firewood would be at kindling a fire initially, as this scale describes only pure burning power.

Recipe: Hummus plate

Ingredients: Hummus (store bought, in whatever variety you prefer, is fine)
Cucumber
Radishes
Carrots (mini or large, peeled)
Good bread (ciabata, whole grain or French bread)
Pita
Alfalfa sprouts

Preparation:
1. Cut everything up into appropriate slices (cucumber and radish medallions, carrot sticks, pita points) and put into plastic or other containers in a pleasing arrangement.

2. Go to the park (if it’s a nice day).

3. Dip items into hummus as desired and eat them.

PSA: Peking Kitchen

The Peking Kitchen, plain old Chinese takeout restaurant in Beacon, NY that I’ve insisted on taking friends to for the last year and change, has come under new management. The wall hangings are different, the people working the counter are different, and the quarter machines are different. Presumably, the little bathroom with a step-up into it and nothing but a toilet and mop bucket that you have to go through the kitchen to get to, is the same.

The noodles are, I think, the same – though it’s hard to tell when months go by between visits.

The scallion pancakes, like all things fried to death in Chinese oils, are excellent.

Confessions XXXIV

I put a quarter in one of those stupid toy quarter machines at Pizza Hut today, just for kicks, and got a large purple die. (As in "dice.")

I’m thinking of putting another quarter in to see what else I’d get.

…and it’s a heart keyring.

PSA: Buffy slays her last (for me)

I’ve watched the entire run of BtVS as of yesterday, when I saw the last two episodes with a sporadically attendant Prince C. (He punctuated his watching of Buffy with fixing Betty’s passenger-side seatbelt and door armrest, so I’m certainly not complaining.)

It’s taken me three years, or thirteen years, depending on whether you count from the time I started watching my DVD collection from episode one or from the first time I ever saw Buffy on TV, and there’s a preternatural, intuitive sense to how it’s gone. As a teen, I loved the first two and a half seasons of Buffy – very clear moral imperatives with jokes and the undead will get every teen, I think – but I stopped watching when the morals got complex.

And so as an adult, I rewatched the first two seasons of Buffy with a bit more than the respect I had for Dawson’s Creek (which after all was a watercooler show when it first started, and for similar reasons; smart, snappy dialogue and will-they-won’t-they tensions [which is also, I would say, why X-files worked so well those first few years]). I watched season 3, recalling more than I’d thought I would (apparently I watched the whole thing in high school), and left a long blank before trying out 4. Last year I picked up 5 and was struck by its moral complexity and the way it dealt with death in particular – in the past month, I’ve watched seasons 6 and 7, all but the last two episodes of 7 over two Buffyrific days.

This is a formidable show, despite its reputation as a teenagery, vampirey melodrama.

I suspect that the main reason it didn’t stay on the air is its evolution. If it took me 13 years to get from season 1 to season 7, it probably took all the 14-year-olds that long. Buffy grew up too quickly for her first audience and would have had to pick up another one on the way. Many of her original fans would likely have died out. Not many shows require a complete changeover (or maturing) of audience halfway through.

I suppose as the Slayer, Buffy should have been used to needing to grow up too fast and being left alone in the end, though.

PSA: Daffodils

Hubbard Park in Meriden appears to be having its Daffodil Festival this weekend. Prince Certainpersonio and I went to hike up to Castle Craig yesterday and saw giant white tents set up over by the community pool.

So it’s either the Daffodil Festival or a nouveau riche family throwing a wedding at the public pool that afforded them so many memories.

The daffodils are, as I anticipated, pretty.

PSA: Happy Earth Day

Go ahead and pat a tree on the bark today, and thank it for letting us breathe.

You'll feel like an idiot, but a slightly more grateful one.

Carte Blanche: Sue the Obscure

As a follow-up to my previous post on Jude the Obscure, here are questions still plaguing us about Sue Bridehead, Jude's second "wife" (they couldn't be legally married, since they'd each married before), who loves Jude but ends up going back to her hated first husband Phillotson as penance when all her children are killed by little "Father Time" -- Jude's first child from his first marriage -- who then offs himself as well.

"One would think that all my questions would have been answered here [in the previous post], but no. The following quotes, and I think there may be one more but I couldn't find it, niggle at my brain. She seems to be referring to something that is never fully revealed in the novel. Of course there must be secrets in novels and the story is not about Sue, but Jude, right?!?!?...

[See quotes in the comments section of the previous blog post...they're too lengthy to quote here.]

Again, Sue seems to hold deep inside her something that is very psychologically unresolved about Phillotson and especially his body.

Another description of Sue as a child, before her father took her to London, pictures her as a bold tomboy who was fearless. That description is contrasted with a post London description of Sue as quivering.

So my question is, 'What is the secret that Hardy was hiding? Was Hardy describing a person that he could not even understand himself, because the secret was too dark even for him to fully admit?'"

Well. Good question.

First, I don't think it's necessarily true that Jude is the main character, or at least not untrue that Sue is the main character. Sue is at least as interesting as Jude, and at least as psychologically complex -- I think more so.

And Sue was probably abused. Let's face it.

But you're right -- Thomas Hardy doesn't seem to face it. He prances around the question like a five-year-old around a maypole. The question of why he does this is an interesting one, though it falls dangerously close to literary theory, psychoanalyzing an author like this.

That's alright. I don't mind literary theory every now and again.

So, in terms of what Hardy meant by all his hinting, I think it bears repeating, first, that the difference between Thomas Hardy and, say, George Eliot, is that Hardy's books (almost) always end with the main character in a pathetic state thanks to social pressures and/or one mistake made early in life that can never be overcome. The inflexibility of Hardy's Victorian England and, I'd say, the inflexibility of his characters, is what causes this.

Dorothea Brooks (Middlemarch, George Eliot -- one of my favorite books ever), for instance, marries a stodgy professor early enough in life, and ends up happy, though impoverished, with her second husband (ooh -- should have put in a spoiler alert. Sorry. It's still worth reading; shockingly, the appeal of Victorian social novels isn't often the "will they/won't they" suspense). Sue Bridehead marries a stodgy professor early in life and ends up with a nervous condition and the murder-suicide of all her kids.

These are obviously vastly different views of life at work here, not only within the characters and scenarios they create, but between Eliot and Hardy. It doesn't hurt to remember who's actually behind the wheel in driving Sue insane.

And in that light, I'd tend more toward believing that Hardy's reticence in telling what happened to Sue as a child, or what Phillotson may have done to her in their marriage, is more related to Hardy's sense of social rules and a damnable urge to follow them, than that Hardy can't take the darkness of his own intimations.

He had Tess raped, after all -- or did he? [Cue dramatic music here.]

Hardy does seem a tough guy to pin down when it comes to sexual abuse. Most scholars agree that Tess of the d'Urbervilles was raped and ended up paying for that with her life (after stabbing that man to death) thanks to the social stigma put on "loose" women. But it isn't crystal clear; the narrative camera pans politely away at the moment we'd expect to see violence and naked misogyny (pardon the pun), leaving Tess tangled up in a roadside bush with a stranger and ambiguity.

Hardy seems either 1. to be suggesting rape without saying it because it would be socially unacceptable to do so for a Victorian audience or 2. to want to leave the question of Tess's "virtue" a mystery, as he likely believes (as do we all) that even if the encounter was consensual, Tess doesn't deserve the shame and opprobrium that she gets; by not specifying whether it was rape or not, Hardy can get the reader to come to that conclusion without coming out and stating it.

Hardy is less ambiguous about other things (like that Tess is all natural and good), and there are other authors (Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter) who deal with these things (consensual sex not being the end of the world, except to Puritans) directly, so it's hard to know what Hardy's intention is.

It's possible that what Hardy lacked was the language of psychology. Freud wasn't around until a decade or so later, and it seems that lounging on couches was the closest anyone in Victorian times had gotten to being psychoanalyzed.

And I refer to my last-year's blog post on evangelicalism, repression and sex: I do think that there's something to be said about repression (such as in Victorian society) making everything sexier. It's possible that everyone in Victorian England knew exactly what Hardy was talking about, but we bikini-models-selling-cars twenty-first-century-ites aren't subtle enough to read between the lines correctly.

Anyway, that's all a matter of debate, what Hardy himself meant by Sue's half-confessions. It's possible he wasn't more specific because he didn't know how to be; it's possible he was purposefully ambiguous to allow the audience to form more personal attachments ("this happened to me, too" -- and fill in the blanks with common experience); it's possible Hardy himself was abused, and it ruined his life and so he doesn't want to talk about it, or that he knew someone who was. It could be that lacking the psychoanalytical tools forged a few decades later, Hardy made some gesture at explaining something he understood only intuitively. Or it's possible that Hardy assumed (probably rightly) that the Victorians would reject his work if it was too specific or "pornographic."

But I would bet, based on his disgusted reaction to society's disgusted reaction to Jude, that Hardy wrote in a way that he intended to almost fit within the social parameters of his times. I suspect Hardy of having the agenda of wanting to be accepted and to make society more open and progressive (by standing right on the edge of what they could handle), and I suspect the inability to be or do both is what frustrated him, post-Jude.

He should have known that society would kick against his goads, and been prepared to deal with being kicked every now and then. Reformers are never popular, and expecting that he should be was a bit of hubris on Hardy's part.

As for poor Sue, she was too brittle to withstand what came later: the failure of her first marriage, which had been guaranteed from the start, secured her inability to love Jude the way she might have otherwise, and the financial difficulties they met with (thanks to society not putting up with an unmarried couple living together) caused the break in Father Time that destroyed the whole family.

It's no mistake that the child who killed the others was Jude's from a first marriage. This is an obvious symbol of how their pasts haunted Sue (who spent all her time with the kids), especially, and couldn't be overcome. Father Time was dour and delightless, not childlike at all, and not a well-developed character.

Casaubon, Dorothea's first husband, was also dour and delightless, and also dies; but the difference between George Eliot's view of life (and the way she lived it; she lived with a lover much of her adult life, creating a life for herself that was outside the social parameters of her times, and yet, apparently, happy) and Thomas Hardy's is that none of Hardy's characters are ever able to just shrug their shoulders and say "huh. Oh well" when life doesn't go as planned -- and then try again.

Instead they end up dying tragic deaths. In the rain. Alone.

Perhaps more than anything else, I find Hardy's insistence that life should be good (independent of how we deal with it or our choices) and people accepted as they are, and his antagonism toward other people who are also, after all, scared and subject to the same social constraints, problematic. He seems to feel that the smarter, more ambitious types like Jude are owed something by the world, something that isn't owed to those who have work they enjoy and follow rules they understand.

He seems to feel that life should be lived idealistically, transcendentally -- beyond social constructs and rules -- and that's fine. But he might have considered actually moving to the woods and becoming a Transcendentalist if that's what he most wanted.

I'm not surprised that he stopped writing after Jude. But I am sad that he stopped bitterly and judgementally, rather than with a recognition that society was no more to blame for its incompatibility with his ideals than he was. That requirement that all things conform to his will sounds suspiciously like the authoritarian mindset he disliked.

And I'm pretty sure Sue suffered for it.

PSQ: NWhy me?

I got an email today from NYU, and after the initial shock and confusion of hearing from a university that had rightly rejected me, probably for hating their city so much, I was horrified to discover they'd offered to let me move my application over into an interdisciplinary higher degree program.

Luckily, P.C. was here to keep me from hyperventilating -- I've already made this choice, why is the universe against me in this? -- and to ask if there was any money involved.

"Probably!" I said sorrowfully.

But then I looked closer. It was a M.A. program they were saying I could apply to -- and most of those cost money. So probably not.

Phew.

"Well, I guess I don't have to worry about it," I said, and put the matter of NYU aside once again...just like those kids at the end of every Nightmare on Elm St. movie who think they've finally defeated Freddy Kruger this time.

PSA: Jackie Chan

According to this article, which I found on Yahoo! while logging into my email, alarming things are true about Jackie Chan:

"The 55-year-old star of the 'Rush Hour' action films caused a huge uproar after he told a business forum on Saturday that it may not be good for authoritarian China to become a free society ."

That's right. Read that one more time.

I was shocked, too.

I mean, who would have guessed that Jackie Chan was 55 years old???

PSA: Cultural Production

I've put in my deposit for a spot in the Brandeis cultural production M.A. program for this fall.

$300 down, $30,000 to go.

PSA: Jiggedy-jig

Home again, home again, and with no new long trips in sight.

Sigh.

PSA: Some aquatic animals considered unacceptable for themed bathroom decorations

Eels

Leeches

Stingrays

Lobster

Monkfish

Killer Whales

Hammerhead Shark

Barnacles

Crayfish

Squid

PSA: Some aquatic animals considered acceptable for themed bathroom decorating

Frogs

Fish

Turtles

PSA: Copyright pirates beware; actual pirates back in vogue

And they're swearing revenge for the deaths of their three fellow pirates over the weekend.

Obama, proving once again how much more heroic he is than any president since JFK (and I'm not being sarcastic or ironic, here), is pledging to fight piracy.

Next week: ninjas.

Mix: Chill Outz II

"Colorblind" -- Counting Crows
"Dancefloor Destroyer" -- You Say Party! We Say Die!
"Older Chests" -- Damien Rice
"The Wolves (Act I and II)" -- Bon Iver
"Daydreaming" -- All Girl Summer Fun Band
"No One's Gonna Love You" -- Band of Horses
"Superman (It's Not Easy)" -- Five for Fighting
"Blame It on the Tetons" -- Modest Mouse
"Il Ne Te Merite Pas" -- Arno Elias
"Walk On The Moon" -- Asobi Seksu
"Don't Panic" -- Coldplay
"Fair" -- Remy Zero
"The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" -- The Postal Service
"The Limit To Your Love" -- Feist
"Heavy" -- Los Abandoned
"This Woman's Work" -- Maxwell
"Daughters of the Soho Riots" -- The National
"Follow the Cops Back Home" -- Placebo

PSA: To the Christians.

Happy Easter!

Mix: NOW 5.0

"Lessons Learned" -- Matt & Kim
"Horse and I" -- Bat for Lashes
"My Girls" -- Animal Collective
"Dancefloor Destroyer" -- You Say Party! We Say Die!
"For Emma" -- Bon Iver
"Dust Me Off" -- Tilly and the Wall
"Grizzly Bear" -- All Girl Summer Fun Band
"The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" -- The Postal Service
Unidentified song -- Placebo
"123 Goodbye" -- Elvis Perkins
"Ready for the Floor" -- Hot Chip
"Lovers In Japan (Osaka Sun Mix)" -- Coldplay
"Paper Float" -- Cassettes Won't Listen
"Float On" -- Modest Mouse
"Kingdom Come" -- The Mae Shi
"Natural Blues" -- Moby

PSA: The last straws

I brought 150 flexible straws on this trip to Tennessee.

I brought them for drinking Thai iced tea because I'd developed the habit of drinking Thai iced tea through straws specifically in order to "use up" the straws I'd bought in (and had since) college. I finished up the 50 or so of those straws I had left, after donating most of them to the AoH school store, a few weeks ago, but two days ago I found myself searching the box they'd been in for even one more straw.

When I opened the packet of salt, pepper and napkin I'd taken from an airline flight taken in the days when they still served food, to remove the bendy yellow straw from the plastic wrapper, I realized I was addicted.

Subsequently, I bought a packet of 150 multi-colored bendy straws, which, in a fit of packing panic last night, I stuffed into the plastic bag I'd put my most essential items -- pajamas, toiletries, socks -- into for easy transport.

I expect these straws to last me the next 7-10 years, even though I offered some to friend Cheryl's husband Brad, and he accepted. Despite my obvious addiction, I still think of myself as having extra straws.

So if you or your loved ones need bendy straws and are on our TN trip route, let me know. I've got what you're looking for.

Though there is such a town, "Sharon" here means the friend, not the border city.

[My girl says the name of the town near the CT border her family lives in, where she'll be going after work, enthusiastically, as we pass a sign indicating the way to said border town.]

Me: "Yep. You'll be going there...so will I, actually. Sharon and I will pass through there later."

My girl: "You'll be going there?"

Me: "We'll be passing by. I'll wave, actually. Do you know what exit your family takes?"

My girl: "No."

Me: "Okay, well I'll wave to the whole town, then."

My girl: "Okay, good. I'll wave too."

Me: "I'll tell Sharon to wave at the whole town, too."

My girl: "I'll wave to Sharon, too. I love Sharon."

Me: "Me too."

PSA: Tenn. on Ten

Today marks the beginning of the trip to Tennessee, beginning with an NC weekend (not to be confused with NC-17).

Friend Sharon and I will be gone south through 4/19; I don't know how often I'll be posting here. P.C. will join us on 4/13.

Anyone who wants to take this opportunity to steal all my things, please come prepared to haul out about 1,300 books. (And no, most of them aren't worth anything on ebay.)

You may need the entire week to finish...but don't worry. The purple velvet couch is a sofabed.

I hear it's pretty comfortable.

Mix: Mr. T(ea)

"The A-Team Theme"
"Mother (Treat Her Right)" -- Mr. T
"Only Fools Fall In Love" -- Elvis Presley
"Lovefool" -- The Cardigans
"Fields of Gold" -- Sting
"Stay Gold" -- Stevie Wonder
"Tea and Sympathy" -- Jars of Clay
"Tea in the Sahara" -- The Police
Tea Party -- Cartman/South Park

PSA: Big garbage week

It's big garbage week in Plainville.

Anyone who needs a couch, a toaster oven, a mattress, a random assortment of drawers, or parts of any of those, let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

WARNING: This dream is considered grosser than the tomato dream by most (though not me)

I'd had surgery on my right leg below the knee, and I was at a hospital recovering afterward.

There was an adventure going on -- the sort you'd find in a kids' sitcom-length cartoon -- so I was distracted most of the time. But the surgery had been semi-elective: That is, I'd have needed it eventually, as it was some kind of degenerative problem (like my muscles were twisted with each other or something), and it wasn't just cosmetic, but I'd elected to have it sooner rather than later, when I figured the complications would only get worse.

But my leg post-surgery, though it functioned about as well as my other leg, was putty-like, and the skin had clearly been pasted back on. It had the feeling of rubber to the touch, but I couldn't feel anything from the leg -- that is, I could feel the contact in my hand, but not my leg.

The doctors had also clearly done reconstructive work on it, in addition to (obvious to me now) replacing my skin with another kind of membrane. Most noticeable was the reinsertion of hairs into each hair follicle, which was a cosmetic measure. The hairs would never grow again; it was just to make the leg look more natural.

Unfortunately, the doctors weren't plastic surgeons (or weren't good ones) and so hadn't done a careful job of reinserting the hairs. Some follicles contained 50 or more hairs in a clump, sticking out willy-nilly and looking absurdly unnatural.

It didn't matter to me, since like most women, I'm annoyed by having to shave my legs, was glad I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore, and I'd decided to remove the hairs, anyway.

I pulled the individual hairs out individually. I didn't feel any pain, and I wasn't grossed out by the process or the look of my leg as I would have been in real life.

When I went to pull out the clumps of hairs, though, they each revealed a snarled ball of hair underneath -- not only had the doctors failed to do a careful job of recreating a natural looking leg, they'd apparently allowed whole hairballs in there that came out as I pulled, stretching the follicles to unreasonable widths and ruined the look of the leg entirely. I did this for several clumps before I stopped and decided to consult my surgical team. There were a few holes in my leg that stretched out to meet each other, creating larger ones. I could see through those holes into the leg.

As they were pulled out, the clumps of hair passed through a clear membrane that acted as my skin, separating in a very thin layer the internal workings of my leg from the outside world. Instead of blood and muscle, though, inside my leg was an aquatic environment, including tiny sea-creature-like floaty things, and pale blues, pinks and aquamarines. After pulling out each hairball, my rubbery inner skin drifted back together again, but in some cases, it didn't close tightly enough -- it had been too stretched out -- and I worried that the wounds would not heal, and that the inside of my leg would be exposed to the outside world by even the smallest actual breach of the thin, clear membrane skin.

I found my doctors, and asked them what to do about the leg. The team fell silent for a moment and the surgeons looked at each other guiltily.

They told me the operation had had complications, that they'd hoped I'd never find out, but that they'd hit a nerve and also that they'd been afraid I would die for several days afterward. My leg would never be the same, they said. I would always limp, and it would be more likely to break than a normal leg -- but not just break: Break off.

Somehow, before they told me this, my leg had seemed fine and normal. Removing the clumsily inserted hairs had been the cue for my leg to reassert its injury, though the doctors didn't blame me for it or claim that the hairs had been helpful in any way. In fact, they didn't say anything about this or explain why they hadn't told me I was in such a dire situation when I'd started walking around on my ultra-breakable leg, and they didn't indicate how they thought they would have gotten away with their negligence in not telling me, or the negligence they'd clearly shown in post-surgical hair placement.

They looked at the injuries created by my pulling clumps of misplaced hair out of my leg, and it seemed as though they were going to advise stitches -- but I woke up before they could start.

PSA: Because Americans like the idea of education, but not the educated -- making them, ironically, a very theoretical people.

According to Yahoo!, 20% of billionaires never finished college.

PSA: The park has "wireless"

I'm posting this from Hubbard Park in Meriden, CT.

It has "wireless Internet" -- the scare quotes are thanks to the presence of obvious wires hanging from the trees near the backside of the pond.

Also, the daffodils aren't quite out yet, but they'll be pretty when they are.

NYC in numbers, 4/1/09

Hours of driving it took to arrive in NYC: 3

Number of times we got off the highway to search for a WC: 2

Number of times we succeeded in finding a WC: 1

Minimum number of miles we drove before success: 15

Number of miles it felt like before success: 1,457

Number of houses I considered knocking on the doors of to ask to use their bathroom: 15

Number of dollars I paid for a ginger green tea at Starbucks, to use their bathroom: 3

Number of teenage girls locked in the Starbucks bathroom when I arrived: 2

Approximate linear footage of toilet paper strewn about the bathroom, presumably by teenage girls, shoved into the trash can before they left: 30

Minutes the teenage girls stayed in the bathroom after realizing there was a line waiting to use it: 12

Days it took me to finally throw out the rest of the ginger green tea, which wasn't really that good: 1.1

Minimum number of blocks driven down (single side) in NYC in search of a parking space: 10

Minimum number of blocks driven twice in search of a parking space: 4

Dollars spent on parking (overnight) in a parking garage: 34

Bags carried by me from parking garage: 1

Bags carried by P.C. from parking garage: 2

Minimum number of drink cans I had P.C. put in those bags: 8

Number of minutes spent in a Starbucks waiting for NYC friend: 6

Number of minutes spent in much cooler Rohr's coffee shop waiting for NYC friend: 75

Hours later than which NYC friend had expected, that NYC friend left work: 1.75

Number of wines apparently considered to go with dinner: 4

Number that were Merlot, and thus a case of mistaken identity more than desire: 1

Number of bottles eventually purchased: 1

Number of dinner ideas thrown out there before settling on burritos: 3

Number of flights of stairs to NYC friend's walk-up: 5

Number of people on expedition to grocery store: 2

Number of those expeditioning people who were me: 0

Number of main ingredients made for excellent burritos: 3

Minimum number of toppings made for excellent burritos: 3

Number of sauces made for excellent burritos: 1

Number of burritos eaten by me: 2

Number of carried drinks drunk by me: 3

Number of cakes made with mango juice and pineapple, upside-down: 1

Number of muffins made with candied papaya on top, eaten by me, total dinner and breakfast: 5

Number of air mattresses laid out for guests: 2

Number of seconds each air mattress took to blow up: 19

Number of seconds after laying down it took for P.C. to fall asleep: 46

Minimum number of contented sighs sighed by me after excellent burritos, papaya muffins and good company: 17

PSA: Some good location to eat bread and cheese, from my own experience

A Portuguese roll and (Double Gloucester) cheese near the window in Mellinger C101, Grantham, near roommates.

A baguette and (Red Leicester) cheese near the river at Christ Church college, Oxford, alone.

A mozzarella and pesto sandwich (from Pret A Manger) in Central Park, NYC, on a park bench next to P.C.

PSA: Desktop backgrounds of William J. II

Goya’s “Dog”

Paper Fire-breathing Dragon

Matt Nabo’s “Steadman on the Train”

Matt Nabo’s Elephant

Ampersand

PSA: Mr. T party

Tonight, 7 p.m.

Be there, or be pitied.

PSA: Jay Mohr appears to have a ridiculously small dog.

Prince C. and I were walking the streets of NYC yesterday and passing a woman with two Chinese crested and a chihuahua in tow (actually, she was in tow), and crossing the street in the opposite direction was, we think, Jay Mohr, also with a ridiculously small dog attached to the end of a leash.

He said something like "why are you always doing that?" to his dog when it yapped up to the three other minidogs briefly. (This confirmed to us that it was Jay Mohr, since this comment was not at all funny, and leads me to say now "he's just like he is on TV!")

We continued on our way into Central Park, though I did experience a moment of wondering what men with tiny, tiny dogs are compensating for.

PSA: Mitch Hedberg albums worth having

Strategic Grill Locations

Mitch Alltogether

PSA: NYCing the sights.

Today, Prince Certainpersonio and I are walking the streets of Manhattan, partly in victorious relief that I won't be living on any of them.

Challenge: Apocalypse Eventually

Think up the best advice you have for someone either 1. in the Apocalypse or 2. post-Apocalypse, after all technology and remnants of culture have been destroyed, several generations later.

Post it in the comments.

Whoever has the best advice will receive an Apocalypse readiness kit in the mail, or possibly in person, depending. It will be awesome. So comment now, and comment often.

How to find online love, part I: Crafting the profile

Start your profile "I am a vampire and..." and require that any respondents finish the quote in their subject line. Delete all emails that aren't subjected with some piece of the following: "I am a vampire and what? I am a vampire and here's a million dollars? I am a vampire and here's your own spaceship? I mean what the f...Oh, I get it! They GOT 'im!"

Also, mock everyone else by including a sarcastic paragraph similar to your most hated entries:

"I'm a 6' 10" intellectual with a passionate sense of humor and good spelling. I like to make speeches about my high school football experiences in sports bars. I prefer to date a girl I could bench press three of, since I am such a good bench presser that I could probably lift you morbidly obese ladies, too (but don't bother contacting me). I enjoy a girl who could sell an igloo to a moose but who would have just as much fun staying in the igloo as selling it. I can keep you warm, baby. I run marathons and have traveled to Australia."

Include your actual favorite book list, but end it with "also, anything by Danielle Steel."