lalala

stephin merrit (the magnetic fields) - the nun's litany

Sometimes I do nothing just to sit and feel the pleasure of deciding to do nothing.
I could have fun simply choosing, regardless of what, all day long. And a sane person will choose to be happy. So a choosey sane person will choose freedom of choice. Choosey people will choose to be with the ones who make them feel free, while not incidental. It is a wonderful thing to be able to do, if you think about it, to be able to care about someone (and thus about her/his large choices) but not to impose on her/him.
I'm studying it.
While I study my limitations.

for Virgo this week: Read this joke, told by Jeff Thredgold in his book On the One Hand: The Economist's Joke Book. "An economist returns to visit her old school. She's interested in the current exam questions and asks her old professor to show her some. To her surprise, they are exactly the same questions that she answered 10 years ago. When she asks the professor about this, he says: 'The questions are always the same. Only the answers change!'" The professor's reply should be your guiding meditation in the coming week, Virgo. Your most enduring uncertainties are inviting you to seek new solutions. Questions that have tormented and tantalized you for a long time will respond revealingly to your fresh probes.


q:am I an asshole?
a:most likely

The Bobs, First There Is A Mountain
first there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is lalala

for Virgo today:
Although it’s only Tuesday you should schedule in some moments of fun into the day. Whether you opt to visit the movies after a pizza this evening or spend a fun evening in with lively friends you will feel better for having switched off from work or school for a while!

why don't your horoscopes tell you useful shit?, like "there will be a giant pool of some kinda reddish brown gooey liquid under your dead minivan this morning, so stay in bed", for instance

anybody got a dirge for a dodge?

"Unspoken," A.M. Architect

monday moody playlist

Ray Charles - Sinner's Prayer

Miles Davis and Charlie Parker - Parker’s Mood

Red Astaire - Love To Angie (high rec)

o yeah, and I fear disease and the effect of gravity on my ass too - so to be complete about it, you all have to die and flesh-eating disease has to chew my ass off - then I'll be carefree

I wrote a stream of consciousness about my worries last night before I could fall asleep and I've taken it down since - I hate it and wish it'd go away so I could sleep, but my worrying will never go away, and I just realized why: my list of worries is pretty much everyone who reads this blog plus my parents. You'd think I'd be fretting money or something with the house thing whatever, but I'm not really- it's only money, so I could only lose a house and then live somewhere else, and that would never happen unless something terrible happened to one of the people I'm worrying about in which case my depression would be the cause of loss - see? The stream of consciousness list was a personnel list. So you'd all have to be Dead for me to knock off worrying, basically. Now, do I look at that as "count my blessings" or as "I'm fucked" - ? hmmmmm? Is there another option than glass half-full/empty that I might be missing? Besides, please God bla,begblabla -? [i.e. jackie] Besides, everyone be Happy and Nearby god damn it! -? [i.e. dane] Come to think of it those last two options are glass half-full/empty, now aren't they?

:/

Meanwhile, from DMS: How white are you? I prefer Bud Lite and KFC, but I think I'm still guilty enough for Whiteyton if I get a Schwinn.

M. Ward, Let My Love Open The Door (Pete Townshend)

working the Worry Shift gives me a head egg

self help reading + music

Alpha & Omega - Dub Of Purpose

"People who claim that behind every feature of every organism lies a history of selection from random mutation should try to answer the following question: Why is that the intellectual apparatus that has evolved for human beings seems to be incapable of comprehending in any degree of detail its own complexity? . . . I cannot see what evolutionary advantage this combination gives us – the combination of insufficiency of intellectual grasp together with consciousness that the grasp is insufficient." - from Diary of a Bad Year, JM Coetzee

for virgo today:

Romance is about to get interesting, as mellow and softening influences start moving in. The focus will be on togetherness and sharing, rather than on dizzy, whirlwind encounters.

Karma is definitely on your side right now, so you can expect some valuable payback for . . . blabla[x'd] . . it will start bringing very important people to your side.

This might be it. It's hard to tell from the pics, but it's a stone cape cod, cute as hell. The yard is a bit small, but all the village yards are a bit "quaint" sized. It's 25k out of my range, but it's a few weeks from foreclosure too - so it depends on what they owe on it. Bad news is, it's so close to being nabbed that they actually just took the 'for sale' sign down, i.e. any sale would have to be what they call a "short sale", so its mortgage is transfered before it becomes bank property. All that is too quick for my skittish blood, frankly. Then again, it's not like I haven't been mulling Problem 1 for what feels like a lifetime, and it's almost a certainty that Problem 2 is going to be permanent.

then again, but then again, yeah but on the other hand

"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (Carole King)," Amy Winehouse [I'm sick of this girl, but then again she sure can sing - great cover.]

[doing my taxes day]

did you know for instance that you can write off mortgage interest (on the first 2 properties you own worth up to 500k total - Whiteyton's looking better and better) and facials you get at any spa attached to a licensed dermatologist's office? yes you can . . . guess based on the inkblot evidence, I'm learning to get less skittish at Level 2 - but for a virgo, 'tax code porn' (though not as good as puppy porn) is a potential turn-on

show me a rule, and I'll play in the wiggle room

click pic - c'mon [what else is there to see in this image? a moth, seriously?] my friend Patti sent this test to me - she makes her students take it, and hers came back "Deeply Afraid of Cruelty"

mine: "Your Unconscious Mind Is Most Driven by Sexuality. . . .

The world is a sexy place for you – your erotic self leads the way. Whether this is because you're presently in a great physical relationship or simply want one, you are much more aware of the sexual undertones in situations than most people.

This heightened focus, coupled with your vivid imagination, can make you more likely to have original – at times risqué – interpretations of things that other people might see as innocuous. Your subconscious is telling you that you are very much alive, and have a great deal of passion to bring to life."

[lol o'brother]

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - After I Made Love to You

bonus - William Elliott Whitmore - When Push Comes To Love

you know what school stands for?, TJ asks
no, what?
super central hated oppressive obedience land - I made that up!
I'll bet you did hahahaha . .

"The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them," wrote novelist Margaret Atwood. "There ought to be as many for love." Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to coin at least nine of those 52 new names between now and January 1, 2009. Of course that means you will have to discover or create nine alternate states of love that have previously been unnamed. And to do that, you'll have to put aside your habitual expectations and standard definitions of what constitutes love so that you can explore an amazing array of nuances, including varieties you never imagined existed. Start now, Virgo.


v-day mix:

the shins: strange powers

"Do You Love Me," Clem Snide

Ani DiFranco - As Is

Birdie Busch - Hold Ya

Jeff Tweedy - True Love Will Find You In The End

Iron&Wine is playing Wheaton IL on Feb 15th (in a chapel no less, be still my panties) - FYI, cz if I were anywhere close-by I'd be allllll over that.

Iron & Wine and Calexico - Dead Man's Will (live KXCI)

"heaven"

"Can't Get It Right Today," Joe Purdy

jesus mary and joseph (!), I get a cold and look away for a minute and they win for a change and someone almost dies (!) [and, I kinda can't fathom that they kept playing, actually - isn't there a rule that in case of accidental beheadings you can reschedule, or something?]

I have been awake (and sneezing) since 1 a.m.

(youtube sucks)

It is 5 degrees, windchill -16 (Canadian translation: Really Mother Fucking Cold)

It is SO cold that all the public schools have closed for the day

Except the one I work at

So go find your own la la la and shove it up your asses cz I am one cranky bitch right now

for virgo this week: "Success means controlling your own time," observed actor Rod Steiger. "If you gain control over 60 percent of the time in your life, you are really successful." In 2008, Virgo, you will have far more power than you've had before to fulfill this definition of success. And right now you happen to be in a phase of your astrological cycle when your hard work toward this goal will have maximum impact. The ironic fact of the matter is that it's an ideal time to slave away in behalf of greater freedom.
Johannes Linstead - the temple at Delphi [greekbeatnik]

Today we wrapped up Oedipus in my freshman class and were just shooting the shit in the last few minutes packing up – a couple of the students were talking about if you should eradicate the past or keep it in mind, in their own lives. One said to the other that she wasn’t sure if she should wear jewelry from her last boyfriend now that she had a new one. They asked me what I thought, and I said ‘depends on the karma’, how bad was the last boyfriend? She said, matter-of-factly “Well, he killed my daughter.”

Then definitely dump the jewelry, I said.

"Compared to What," Roberta Flack

[compared to this]

get get get, hoard hoard hoard, home home home

happy Chinese New Year today - it's a Rat year (every 12th), in an Earth cycle (every 5th) - that's like adding earth-signedness to the characteristics of the year - earth signs being us Virgos and Capricorns [methodical, shy, obsessive] and Rat years being ones in which wealth and/or material circumstances are central : The Earth adds solidity to the cunning Rat. This results in a year in which stabilization is prized, slow and steady acquisition of materials/wealth is favored, personal feelings of safety and satisfaction in/through materiality (i.e. nesting and hoarding and saving, etc.) are likely to increase [especially for earth signs and/or people born in a rat year] - the yang will be an increase in generosity towards family and very close friends, and investing in those relationships

[all that sounds incredibly good to me, which probably means it translates to stuffing the mattresses full of cash while being such a hermit that the neighbors wonder if you're the unibomber]

Boozoo Bajou - Under My Sensi

- and I hate the dark, which it is all the time practically.

It's raining like hell - raining ice, thunder, boom boom bla bla - I live on a hostile planet - like Venus or somewhere

This.
2:59-4:55, god damn


bonus track:

"Un été sans fin," Kira Neris

ft.

Eva Cassidy, American Tune
Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Alison Krauss, Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby
Natalie Merchant, House Carpenter
Joshua Radin, Girlfriend In A Coma

“your life is just some stupid story and no one really cares”
update:
I went to see that house. For all the reasons previously cited, I still like my plan. But not that house . . . I thought: men should not live alone. I thought: my father lives alone. I thought: to make that place livable I’d really need my father. And then I cried. All the way home.

Even for all the reasons previously cited, I could never live surrounded by that much accumulated despair. It wasn’t just the ugly (which words cannot describe how ugly it was – some of the walls were carpeted), it was abandoned by the person in it. We walked in through the kitchen, where he (Bob) was sitting. He’d gotten a new television and it too was in the kitchen. He sat on stool watching it. On the (burnt orange faux tile) counter sat clean clothes, in the corner were the dirty ones. In a line were snack foods within reach. He clearly never moves from that spot near the window where he watches the garden waiting for it to be spring (outside man chores) time again. The only sign of life was a 8x10 school picture of a little boy, for whom he’d bought the new television. “Oh you got a new tv?!” semi-shouts the real estate agent at him. He says, “Yeah the grandson wanted it, my son’s wife’s kid”, gesturing at the tooth-challenged face. Every other room but the kitchen was stacked with crap, like houseplants dead so long that they weren't dusty, they were dust.

Tom Petty - You Got (very) Lucky

Tom Petty w/ Eddie Vedder - American Girl [live]