obfuscated girl

biden!

Then what? Then what? Then what?

You know, I am not completely 100% up on my politics. I am following this election very closely but there are times when I get too deep into it and I stop understanding things and my head hurts and this is what makes me an American. In fact, last night on the phone my sister gave me an American citizenship quiz and I did not know that the presidential branch of the government was called the executive branch. What I am saying here, is that i only vaguely remembered who Biden was and was like "THANK FUCKING GOD IT IS NOT HILLARY OH JESUS," which, there are like 87 problems with holding on to that mindset that I am not going to address here because it's over, it's done, shut up about it, even if she had been picked she probably would have eventually gotten over herself and played nice but that brings up several other questions like she and her campaign were problematic anyway that part of the reason why she didn't get picked was because it would have been so divisive but WHATEVER, it is over. I am playing nice. And this is not about Hillary it is about Joe Biden. And then I watched the link above. And you know what?

I like this guy. I think we can be friends.

In the words of JD:
"...But that's not the issue. The issue is how bad it's going to be for women and for the poor if McCain is elected. So, fuckin', enuf armchair QB'in. Watch this roundup of Biden-attack-dog moments and get as pumped as you can, and try not to think too much about questions like whether the lesser of two evils is ethically sustainable, etc. Just get on board, ok? I don't like the Democratic party either. They suck. They are a pathetic excuse for a left-leaning party. But they are the best we've got, so we gotta support them the way we would a messed-up relative. OK?"

I have been attempting to read (out of order) the Twilight series. It is not going well. Below is the best summary of the books that I have ever read, written by this guy, reprinted without permission.

here's where it gets kinda bad.

i had put an audiobook version of 'twilight' by stephanie meyers on reserve at the library. i pick it up on a sunday.

monday: oh this is going to be a chuckle. chick fic about a girl named bella who moves to a new highschool and there's a vampire clan and her and the vampire don't get along at first etc. let me put the cd in while i drive to work, and then on my way home.

tuesday: why did i drive to work early, why am i sitting in my car listening to this.

wednesday: hey how did i end up eating fast food in my car when it's 90 degrees out and so humid i feel like a walking bedpan and i'm somehow on disc 4 huh.

thursday: eating again. how many discs do i have left?

friday/saturday: it's 11pm and i'm sitting there with my headphones on. all i gotta do is finish this and be free i chant in my head. i'll pretend none of it ever happened.

sunday: not showered, i'm at wal mart, carrying out the next volume in the series. didn't shave on purpose, don't want anyone to think i'm a 15 year old fat girl who is living a fantasy proxy by pretending she is a girl in love with a vampire named edward cullen. i buy a hannah montana folder for my niece and some school supplies to make it look like i'm buying this for some kid. no one is looking at me. hold the book to my stomach. walk quickly to my car. sigh in relief.

monday: at wal mart again, putting down 26 bucks on the next two books. who gives a fuck what someone who works at wal mart thinks about my reading habits? fuck you fuck you fuck you. i walk inelegantly to my car, with a bag of books, and some miscellaneous dude stuff, to make it appear like...you know, i was buying the books for someone's birthday.

tuesday: they get progressively more horrible, and yet, progressively more addictive. you can literally hear the chocolate melt off the page, the nerd candy words. i am bella swan! i lurve edward cullen. omg.

wednesday: i'm at work. it's all i can think of. omg.

thursday: sigh of relief. it's over. there was a human mongloid vampire pregancy with erupting blood and tissue and stuff in the last book. and ... the vampires, they own their own island! they get married! i'm thinking of calling into work tomorrow. no i'll stay up all night and finish it. i'll.. i'm gonna...

friday: drinking again. i'm drinking again.

we have all the time in the world to get it right

And now we take a brief derail into Post Date Game Analysis Because My Life Is Now Entirely Comprised Of First Dates And Filing Paperwork And My Hangover* Seems To Not Want To Let Me Go Back To Sleep.

I went here last night with A New Dude. For privacy's sake I am going to refer to him as AND. AND:
1. is my age, divorced and has a daughter and so even though while we had been talking about everything possible for the last two weeks I developed this fear shortly before getting to where I was supposed to meet him as in when I was walking up the block and went OH SHIT I AM EARLY I AM GOING TO WALK AROUND THE BLOCK NOW FUCK that we were going to somehow not have anything to talk about and our lives and life experiences were so different that there was going to be, like, awkward small talk about Yo Gabba Gabba or Hannah Montana or some shit. Because I am pretty dumb sometimes.
2. is a ginger, and sort of reminds me of a cuddlier/more substantial version of Glen Hansard
2a. this is a very good thing
3. HAS A MOTORCYCLE, AND I RODE IT, and I think it was the first time since I was like eight years old and our neighbor let us ride around the parking lot twice, and let me tell you there is a huge difference between riding a motorcycle when you are eight and riding a motorcycle when you are an adult and think you might be riding a motorcycle with someone to whom you are attracted
3a. disclaimer: I wore a helmet
4. is very smart, and funny, and all those things that I list when I get all excited about a person that I hate fucking listing when someone is all "so what do you like about him" and I would get all gushy and be like "BUT THIS TIME IT IS DIFFERENT" but really it is probably not
5. used to go to the underage dance night at Mad Planet too but we did not know each other and upon further discussion turns out he was an active participant in the Perfect Drug Circle, which was where all the cool kids linked arms in a circle while "The Perfect Drug" was playing and then fell down, and I was like "I silently judged you for YEARS!"
good times

after the sushi and the joyriding we ended up at Landmark because we are classy, and we ran into a very, very, very drunk dude who I used to be friends with in school who at first said hi and then came over and sat his ass down in our booth and proceeded to tell every embarrassing story that he had about me, and there were several, and he also made some allusion when I was like "LUKE I RODE A MOTORCYCLE" and he was like "you've ridden everyone" and I was like "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BOOTH" and obviously he was kidding, but what the hell

AND kissed me anyway.

HE KISSED ME
WELL TECHNICALLY I KISSED HIM FIRST BUT IT WAS A KISSING MOMENT ANYWAY AND SOMEONE HAD TO DO IT AND HE DID NOT SHRIEK AND PUSH ME AWAY OR GO YOU KNOW WHAT I AM SORRY BUT I DO NOT THINK I LIKE YOU
I HAVE TO GO WASH MY HAIR/FILE MY TAXES/OH LOOK AT THE TIME
and not that I am too hung up on wondering whether he likes me or not but that fact, that there was kissing, means two things, at least. It means that the mouthwash I purchased beforehand was not purchased in vain, and it means that I have to now work harder at turning off my brain and not anticipating that everything is going to go straight to hell. because I have made myself vulnerable and gone too fast in my thinking/jumping ahead so many times lately I have lost count. This was a good date, and it was nothing more than a good date. If we hang out again that will be fucking awesome. I am pretty sure we will. If not, so the fuck what?

You know?
*thank you half bottle of coconut lemongrass sake

they don't care about the young folks

y'all I am manga
to make up for the absolute lack of content in this post here is an article about how Caucasians are no longer going to be a majority of the population in 2042
don't anybody tell my dad

so if you don't mind

I have been feeling disconcerted all weekend. I have been feeling that I am more naive about human interaction than I thought I was. Victoria called it "hopeful" last night and I was like "yeah but it's a very fine line." It is not that I am heartbroken--it's just when I get reminded that I am still capable of making mistakes, no matter how much I have grown or changed or whatever the fuck, no matter how much I am trying to reframe them as "life experiences"--hi Emily--there is still a certain type of person who exists who whether he's aware that he is doing it or not is fucking my head right up, and the fact that people are so capable of doing it to each other makes me really, really sad. And the fact that I am never going to be able to tell this person in question all these things without doing it just to make myself feel better (you can't tell a person who has presumably behaved a certain way his entire life "um hi you don't do these things to ladies, generally they don't like it, it is bad for humanity" and expect him to go "OH SHIT YOU'RE RIGHT MY BAD." So instead, there is the Dismemberment Plan.

I brought out Change for the first time in like six months because I was getting burned out on my perpetual loop of The Hold Steady and Girl Talk that I have been basically listening to for the entire month of July, and I had one of those "OH MY GOD THIS SONG I FORGOT ABOUT THIS SONG HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT THIS SONG" type deals. It was this combination of sadness because I am not going to ever be 19 and starry eyed and unscathed by dudes again, and the Dismemberment Plan is not ever going to decide to reform and tour instead of having the one reunion show in Washington DC, and all that was combined with "god damn Travis Morrison what happened to you, how's that thinking the Iraq War was a thing that indie kids should support going for you also I would like the two hours of my life from 2005 when I saw you tour for Travistan back please." But this song? YOU GUYS. THIS SONG.

The Dismemberment Plan--"Following Through"

"I could say I hope I'm not misread but that's all right/I'm quite okay with losing that fight/I can do it anywhere with anyone at anytime don't you forget this is my life and it's gonna be good/don't you know/not a promise or a threat or an ultimatum though I can do those too, I'm just telling you I've got this life/I've got to live/I'm just following through."

I am very much guilty of doing the thing that I did when I was 19--I find music to fit things that I am going through and listen to music to obtain catharsis or sometimes, more often, to hold on to a bad mood. i don't know how common this is anymore among people who are, you know, 30. But this is different, this song--this song is better than therapy. This song is knowing that life is so much more than whether some dude likes you or not and larger than the things he said to you--those things are said by dudes and ladies to each other everywhere and sometimes they mean things and sometimes they don't, and it's what you do with your life outside of the context of whether you are going to Be With Someone Or Not that counts, that your life has to be larger than that, and that it's really, really going to be okay. I am going to go listen to it seventeen more times now okay thanks bye.

someday you will die somehow and someone's gonna steal your carbon

Here is a list of things I have learned in the first two weeks of being thirty.

1. Boys do not somehow become magically less confusing when you are thirty.
1a. In fact probably they are more confusing.
2. I am pretty sure that I have some freckles on my hands that are gonna turn into liver spots someday.
3. While I am not doing wrinkle checks or saddlebag checks or anything retarded like that yet I have added a moisturizer with SPF to my skin care routine.
4. Wow this list is fascinating.
5. Even though boys are confusing I think I am able to handle mistakes and rejection better, but I don't know if that is so much something that was magically planted in my brain on my birthday as something that I have been traveling towards all along.
6. I'm too young to force my crushes.
7. Hangovers definitely hurt more and I think I am stiffer in the mornings now in general and that kind of scares me.
8. I'm not lonely anymore. Well, less frequently lonely.

don't tell my parents, they're wicked strict christians

MY HAIR IS WAY TOO FUCKING SHORT I HATE EVERYTHING

Actually it is going to be okay. It's summer and all. I might get used to it, but it is also funny how I used to keep my hair so short that a friend of mine decided I must be a lesbian and worked the fact that I am a lesbian into every single conversation that we had and now that cut is too short. It is also funny to me how whenever I get my hair cut I have so much hair that within five minutes it looks like a tribe of dark-haired rabbits have mated and then cloned themselves and are planning to overthrow Supercuts and will be making Constitutional amendments about whatever it is that rabbits want, possibly carrots.

Guys Stay Positive is even better than I thought it was, and incidentally fuck you, dude on the internet whose blog entry I read about Tha Carter III who was all "what is this AARP shit, Hold Steady?" There are layer and layers and references to old songs and I am wondering if they are telling one very long story. Here is a link to the Summer Jam Of 2008:
The Hold Steady--Constructive Summer

I will be 30 in a week and one day.
I think maybe I need to stop fucking cursing so much.

yesterday i saw a b-girl crying

I got a lot closer to The Roots than I expected.

SERIOUSLY THEY HAD A TUBA PLAYER IT WAS SO CUTE
There was a moment when they started a medley of basically every rap song that was played on the radio in the last five years & I was like "oh no they are catering to drunk Summerfest people" and then the moment when they played a 20 minute version of "Masters Of War" where I was like "oh no there was a memo to get really high before I came to this show and everyone got it but me" (this came a couple days after I had a conversation with someone, can't remember who where I was like "I am anti any kind of extended solo except for classical music and Wilco. Wilco gets a pass" and seriously there was a five minute drum solo AND A TUBA SOLO) but then they regained composure, or whatever, although you could argue that it takes a lot of composure to perform a god damn five minute tuba solo.
And apart from the fact that I went alone, couldn't find anyone I was supposed to meet, fell off a bench, witnessed about five separate fights (both physical and couples in Ambercrombie clothing screaming "FINE. BE MAD AT ME." and storming away from each other), and a dude getting handcuffed, walked home and spent so much time on my feet that when I woke up this morning I could barely walk, the experience was pretty fucking incredible.

As was Questlove's hair.
Also, there was the girl behind me who screamed "BLACK THOUGHT, YOU THE BEST RAPPER ALIVE. AFTER JAY-Z, NAS, AND KANYE. YOU NUMBER FOUR, BABY."

That was pretty sweet.
The Roots--The Lesson Part 3 (featuring Jaguar)

that's how you let the beat build, bitch

I have been hypnotized by that thing for the past five minutes. I don't remember blinking. What the fuck is it.

this week in hatering

Okay so I am still listening to almost nothing but the Girl Talk record, except right now I am listening to Tha Carter III because Emily was right (CONFIDENTIAL TO EMILY: YOU WERE RIGHT), and I have been reading all this stuff on the internet about how he has Sold Out, Mr. Talk has, and he is Speeding Up The Beats And Vocals To Make Things Fit And It Is Not The Same Thing As Putting Two Songs Together And Having Them Fit Together And The Joy In That, or something. So I went back and listened to the first one, and two things without concrete examples:
#1. Duh he does that all the time on the first record anyway.
#2. Kind of I don't think the point is whether or not the tracks fit together without fucking around with the speed. I think--at least the point that I am getting out of it--is just the sheer joy you get out of hearing it. The sheer audacity of putting a Tom Petty song with some rap song that I still don't recognize because I haven't gotten a chance to read the wikipedia article yet, but just the fact that there is a dude in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who is walking around and thinks like this to put these things together--who loves music enough to do this--like, I can't imagine what being in his brain is like besides having the repeated conscious thought that it is a good idea to strip down to his underpants when DJing live--like, does he ever SLEEP?--there is no point to being all HE SOLD OUT I LIKED HIM BETTER WHEN HE WAS PLAYING IN MY FRIEND'S BASEMENT. I am so tired of people.

In other news: I made my first political campaign contribution last week. I am like totally an adult and stuff.

I am one hundred days away from completing The 365 Project at the photojournal. CRAZY

More than one of my friends have mentioned how much the new Hold Steady record sounds like the Counting Crows, more specifically what the last Counting Crows record should have sounded like, and when they first started claiming that I was all "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU" and now that I have listened to it (Sequestered in Memphis, live on The World Cafe) I kind of agree with them. Adam Duritz is going to start feeling real salty in about two weeks.
PS: You can stream the entire record before it comes out on The Hold Steady's Myspace. But you knew that already and the fact that I am pointing it out to you is just insulting.

It is Summerfest Time here in Milwaukee, and that means:

more underdressed chicks with insanely orange tans on the bus during daylight hours giggling into cell phones very loudly about how they are totally going to talk to Dashboard Confessional after his set

the absolute inability for people who are not at Summerfest to get cabs after midnight

not that I tried to get home for an hour last night and was almost stranded, no

Wisconsin getting the chance to get EVEN HIGHER on the percentage of people who drive drunk list

woo woo

me being a total sucker and agreeing to see the Roots at Summerfest with a coworker next Friday, because I have never seen the Roots live, and probably I will not see the Roots per se but the dude's back in front of me (and the dude in front of him, and so on and so on)

god dammit