obfuscated girl

more fucking, less war

yes, that is the slogan on a sign that Matt & I saw on CSPAN's coverage of the National Republican Convention protest. Crazy kids. Another favorite, though it says volumes about me that this was my favorite: "DICK + BUSH = FUCKED." Matt's contribution, which we surprisingly didn't see, was "SHAVE BUSH." Oh, my boyfriend is clever. I am wondering why massive protests of this scale didn't take place at the Democratic National Convention--it's pretty tempting and easy to say that, well, it's because Kerry isn't actually evil, but I still wonder. Are the Republican kids too well-scrubbed? Uncreative? Ideas?
sigh
This weekend was largely spent staring at screens of varied sizes. (Boy, oh boy am I indifferent to the relative attractiveness level of Olympic divers. Especially Canadian ones. Yep, couldn't care less about them.) This, I have found, along with the person whose company I am in most weekends (no, not the baby Jesus), is the best way to get over a week in which you find, then lose a job and become exhausted and despondent as a result. Had dreams about smoking again, along with other, more complicated ones which would violate the rule of Lady, Nobody Cares About What The Fuck Your Dreams Mean if i said anything else. Also,
this movie was gorgeous, although I'm still very upset that I cried over the SAME THING THREE TIMES. Meanwhile, this one pretty much lived up to its hype. And as I mentioned earlier in the week I am off in about an hour to see Troubled Hubble, which will most likely make me feel old and tired because it's an all-ages show and I will be surrounded by 14-year olds.
listening to: Nick Drake, Way To Blue: An Introduction to Nick Drake
newly obsessed with and would be happy as punch if someone decided that I was cute and deserved a present because of that fact, and so I can stop listening to snippets of it at Barnes & Noble: Future Soundtrack For America
(end)

you're the only one who really knew me at all

...Hello.
I just realized that I've worked so much out in my head today that I have very little ability to put it into words. In light of the fact that Alleged Three Month Long Temp Job starts Monday, I reverted quickly today to my old half-employed habits of sleeping in and then staying in bed to read an entire book until almost noon (I am on an unintentional kick of reading books with the word love in the title) at which point I got one of my last checks from the half-job from a batty old lady, then felt depressed, listless and warm, none of which dissuaded me from walking downtown to catch a bus to Matt's house, the safe, cat-hair resplendent confines of which I am writing this from.
Some productivity did occur. I give myself that. The review is finished, and, Jesus, people, even though the link I just provided you streams the entire album, GO GET IT RIGHT NOW. And then I spent the rest of the afternoon watching a Sex and the City DVD and thanking Christ I have never been broken up with via Post-it.
My train of thought has just been derailed (way to follow the metaphor through!) by the arrival of the boy. I go now. Have a good weekend, Mr. Internet.

listening to: the Postal Service, "Against All Odds." On repeat.
(end)

and my clothes don't fit me no more, i've walked a thousand miles just to shed this skin

I spoke too soon.
After Day Three of waking up at 5:30 in the goddamn morning and making the commute for 50 goddamn blocks on the city bus to get to work, my supervisor told me to call the temp agency, and the temp agency told me to go home because the assignment had been canceled, and it Wasn't Me, It Was Them, and etc. etc. And so I walked for about ten blocks in tears, again, as always, because I really thought this was going to work, that I was going to Work Someplace That Mattered and Do Something Meaningful With My Life. Instead I'm exhausted, wandering downtown and watching people in suits scurry back and forth and wonder what it is that keeps them going, worrying like hell how I'm going to pay rent this month.
The blow has been slightly lessened by the fact that I proved myself resourceful under duress and called temp agency #2 and asked if the assignment they offered me yesterday which I turned down because, you know, I had a fucking job yesterday, was still available. And it was. And it will allegedly (I don't trust anyone right now) last for three months, and it's only a little bit less than the wage I made for TWO DAYS OUT OF THIS WEEK. oh, I'm sorry, I'm still a bit bitter.
The fight continues.

(end)

here we go again...

okay, I hope that this is the last time that I have to say this for a while:
I HAVE A JOB.
after spending the morning crying in public because August is almost over and it feels like fall and I would soon have spent three seasons now being unemployed or barely employed and NOTHING HAS CHANGED NOR IS EVER GOING TO CHANGE EVER, (breath)
I got a call from a temp agency, and I start at the Humane Society (see the archives to understand the irony of this) tomorrow morning. Doing clerical things. Full time. And, like a puppy, if they like me they will keep me. OMG I HAVE A JOB.
It's like what people say about falling in love, except change "stop looking and it finds you" to "have several thousand nervous breakdowns and it finds you."
Oh, and I finally got the promo copy of More Adventurous today. Location/existence of published internet review TBA. Maybe.
Best day ever.

listening to: Rilo Kiley, "I Never"
(end)

oh and

Which random shout by the guy from Teen Girl Squad are you?

not struck dumb, I'm just dumb, that's all

All right, angst baseball fans, The "About The Girl" page has undergone a minor overhaul (I love saying that)
and the "Top Ten" section has also changed.
It is gorgeous outside today and I am inside updating this because a) there is some sort of Megatron Gorzirra pollen in the air that caused me to sneeze seven times in a row as soon as Matt and I walked half a block this morning, and b) Matt has ABANDONED ME for a BACHELOR PARTY that he DIDN'T EVEN TELL ME ABOUT until LAST NIGHT. [/indignant capitalization] One of the only times I laughed during the only time I watched "Last Comic Standing" last season was when one of the comedian dudes made a joke during his standup about how if you go to a strip club make sure that none of the strippers have glitter on them, otherwise you come home covered in stripper dust. Or something.
In stranger news, I came across an internet petition to recast the role of Blair in the to-be-filmed Gossip Girl movie. Apparently Lindsey Lohan is set to play her. Not like anyone cares except me, and the people who are petitioning, but fucking hell, these people are vicious. The film is going to be terrible either way. Can someone please overlook the fact that the franchising potential is huge and just let them be books? No, no I suppose they can't.
So today I am going to have an Embarrasing Girly Movie Festival (titles tba), because it's been a really long time since I've had one. And because I've already cried once over a special on stray dogs in NYC on the National Geographic Channel. I mean, I'm the only one here and I'm embarrassed. But first, I'm going back to sleep.
There would be a proclamation of how much I love weekends here if I didn't strongly feel that to a certain extent the past seven months have been a prolonged weekend.

listening to: Mike Doughty, "Madeline and Nine"
(end)

why i have been up since 3:17 this morning

...actually, I can't answer that question because I HAVE NO IDEA. Drinking vodka sours in pint glasses on a school night and me don't mix. This may be part of the problem. It still doesn't explain why my brain started shrieking "WHEE!" at three in the morning, and even after I gave it vast quantities of orange juice and read to it, it still would not shut the fuck up.
Sigh.
And so for reasons unknown, I'm awake, and have resigned myself to that fact. And am on the internet. And it's not helping.
Can anyone tell me why two out of the four Family Guy episodes showed during the marathon on Wednesday involved Stewie and Brian singing? I don't typically enjoy musical numbers, especially not cartoon ones, and these were no exception, but the material surrounding them was enough to make me laugh aloud when I was alone in my apartment, something it takes a LOT to make me do. unless I'm telling myself jokes. Because I am the funniest person alive.
see, I'm not making any sense. However, there are advantages to being awake--20 minutes ago I looked out the window and saw the most gorgeous sunrise I think I've ever seen--I longed briefly for a digital camera but then I realized the image probably wouldn't translate that well. You kind of had to be there.
This weekend will involve the following: After about six months of periodically piping up cheerfully and hopefully "Let's go to the ZOO!" when the boy asked me what I wanted to do, we're finally going. And there will be food. I WIN.
That's really the only thing that's a given, actually. At some point I am looking into reorganizing my finances/forfeiting food for a couple of days so I can get More Adventurous, despite this review. Hate the Pitchfork. Hate. It. So. Much....
And I just now found out that I have to wait until October 19th for this one, which is good in some ways becuse..well, I would liketo think that I can come up with fifteen dollars by then, but I don't fucking know anything anymore. The kids at Comet (tee hee, it's in the AOL City Guide) were playing both of 'em last night, so this is what brings up such envy. We are fast approaching the fall record release season, and if that's not enough motivation to get a better paying job, I don't know what is.

listening to: the sounds the world makes at 6:32 a.m.
(end)

heaven ain't close in a place like this

First of all, some plugs (still operating under the illusion that my audience is wider than three people):
Please go here and buy shit. It is Doomcorp, and it is the future, and even if you don't find it highly comical you can get a nice pair of shorts with a fist on them. Don't you want a fist governing your ass? Yes you do.
And when you're done there, you can help me pay my phone bill.
Now that all that's out of the way, I can happily (or not) report that I did absolutely nothing of consequence this weekend nor today. Except get misty-eyed over Sex And The City and get a phone call that I completely did not expect from an old friend in college. I had a misguided crush on him before he revealed his gayness (I had never actually befriended or seen a gay boy up close before), and then we were inseparable for like two years, and then he went to a party and met two boys who decided they were both in love with him and he disappeared with them to Florida (this was when people wrote letters, children), and I got letters for a while and secretly worried that he was going to wake up one morning bleeding in a bathtub with no internal organs and CALL 911 written on the bathroom mirror, and we slowly lost touch.
And he's back.
And I'm happy and confused and aching inside for something that will take me back and make me a wide-eyed eighteen-year-old again, because I am so sick of nearly everything in my life right now, and hearing voices from the past fuck me up more than I care to explore the depths of.
I can't think of/don't have the energy to include half the rest of the things that I was going to talk about, so I will leave it at this: Oh, my god, we suck.

listening to: somewhere, virgins are being ritually sacrificed and it is very, very warm, because Matthew and I actually agree on a band.

god bless us, every one.

after a few stumbling blocks, I have updated EACH! and EVERY! one of the pages within this site. Two of them BY MYSELF. Give it up for me, I'm the fucking best.
Look for frequent updates to those sections as well, as I (at this point) have too much free time and (sort of) know what I'm doing.
And I did it all for you, babies.
It's ya weekend present.
listening to: the sound of my own smugness
(end)

in due time we'll finally see there's barely time for us to breathe

Solitude is doing scary things to me. I have been instructed to do a "research project" at work, the details of which I won't get into for fear that I will get so angry that I rip my monitor off the desk and throw it at the wall. But basically it means that I wasn't in the office all week and I don't have any excuse to be anywhere and as we all know, or at least have been told by me before, that my degree of motivation to do things for this woman is for shit. (I have decided that it's not actually my motivation, full stop. If I cared about what I was doing, and/or was getting decent hours, and/or didn't want to beat her every time I heard her voice, I'd be happier. I think.) Fear of no money is doing even scarier things, like motivating me to attend an interview yesterday for A TELEMARKETING JOB, which is a degree slightly lower on the job scale than shoveling pig excrement. (This one, at least, would come with perks: tickets to the Milwaukee Rep's plays, including this here one, assuming that I got the job and it became something more than a stopgap measure. Which I doubt. Doubt the second one, I mean. If I am turned down for a TELEMARKETING JOB I am going to have no other choice but to kill myself.)
(NOTE TO BOY: Steve Martin is also my platonic husband, I don't care if he was responsible for Bringing Down The House and Cheaper By The Dozen. Okay, I care about the second one maybe a little. But I see it more the casting director's fault for involving Hilary Duff in one of my favorite books from when I was ten. That's right. Casting director....)
To top everything off, the weather here has felt like October all week. Fall is my favorite season but this shit is making me have twinges of nostalgia for something that hasn't actually passed yet, which makes me feel rather frantic and like I lost something. I am not all that fond of 90 degree weather, and I also suppose I should be rejoicing because my electric bill will be smaller, but sweet Jesus bring it back please.
And the announcements of the fall tour season have begun, more premature than babies and Christmas: Q and Not U are coming, as is a Latest Flame Records showcase that includes Troubled Hubble and Crime & Judy, the latter of whom are currently touring New York and (eventually) playing the (omg) KNITTING FACTORY. That's my GIRL. Word is bond, that is truly how we do.
Is it sick that I want to get a better job mostly because I want to be able to attend these? And start buying music again? Is it really awful that the biggest thing that I miss is creature comforts, that I was trying to remember the last time I bought a CD and got really, really sad? Is that pathetic?
Well, the paying bills on time and everything and the not having to periodically beg my sister for free bagels would really be swell, too.
There are several things in motion right now that may change my circumstances that I don't want to talk about just yet. Which is convenient, since I think I've exhausted everything I have to say.
Oh: I PROMISE to update the other sections on here this weekend. hand to god.

listening to: the Postal Service, Such Great Heights

(end)

BANZAI!!!

It was recently pointed out to me that my entries on Mondays frequently involve me crying about how I Can't Do Anything Right Meaning Most Things That Involve Hand-Eye Coordination And/Or Speed And/Or Dexterity And I Hate Myself And Want To Die. This is because the boy often makes efforts on weekends to get me involved in things that require one or all of the above attributes, and because there are times when I look at him and he is so lovely and muscle-ridden and lean and dextrously...speedious (wtf?) I feel like the elephant to his gazelle. An elephant with a nice ass, but an elephant nonetheless. One of those extra-pathetic looking Dr. Seuss elephants.
While this assessment of Mondays is accurate, it's not accurate today, bitches.
After a Saturday of doing nothing much in particular, we had a Midwest-o-riffic Sunday by eating huge breakfasts and going to the State Fair, where the cuteness of chickens was cooed over, eyes were rolled behind backs of obnoxious carnies and the guy dressed like a cream puff, and this ride was ridden. Please understand: I had a lifelong fear of that thing. My sister was the adventurous one in the family, not me. I was terrified of the slide where you slid down on gunny sacks. My sister tried to convince me every year that we went to the Dane County Fair to ride it, and every year I refused.
(In a way, I feel kind of bad about this. Why, after holding out for so many years, am I so easily swayed by a member of the opposite sex? Granted, I care about this member in particular more than I do most, but what the hell? Was it a need to impress him after breaking down so easily other times? was it to assert, by my screams [which were very, very real] and knock-kneed clinging to him afterwards that I am the girl and he is the boy? Because that's what girls do: we scream?)
I think that he was a part of it, yes, but only a part. I think some of it had to do with the fact that I just had a birthday, and I am now four years away from being 30, and even if I am far away from the place where I want to be, maybe in the meantime I can confront some of these things that are holding me back, so to speak. And for real: despite the bruises on my collarbone as a result of the mechanisms holding me in, and the fact that I was feeling phantom upside-down suspension anxieties in the backs of my thighs this morning, I can only think of one other thing that's as big of a rush.
And that subject is definitely Not For You.

So: what are your fears?
listening to: Ryan Adams, Love is Hell Pt. 1
(end)

cocaine is a hell of a drug.

hello...back.
let me just state for the record that I hate coming back to Milwaukee from Chicago, and this has been discussed betwixt myself and many parties, and the point consistently arrived at is that comparatively our skyline is so, so weak. I need skylines. I crave smog and ladies with unsensible shoes running around everywhere and terrible traffic and buildings you have to crane your neck to see properly. What do we have? The Allen Bradley clock. Hoo.
So I spent the day being freaked out by these guys (seriously. they're really. really scary), strongly and loudly reaffirming my vows that I.am.NOT going to go see this movie even though all we saw was an anaconda and sharks that were comparatively wee, and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of a cooler in my dad's trunk. If the past two months had a unifying factor, it would be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which calls to mind both a sense of economic hardship and a sense that I might possibly be regressing.
And when I came back after having a whole day of freedom from checking things obsessively on the internet I discovered that Rick James is dead. And I can't take credit for this because I lifted it from my source but I am shamelessly going to repeat it and leave the commentary on the countless thousands of repetitions and/or variations on it unspoken:
I'm dead, bitch!
Poor Rick James.
And I found this story that basically confirms that all of GWBush's trumpeting that the economy and job market was getting better is a bunch of shit. This does and does not make me feel better. I enjoy the president being wrong but I don't enjoy finding out things that may be responsible for stunting my job search attempts. because, as always, everything is about me.
I will leave you, hangers-on, with that. I am sleepy and I want to go finish this book. I am having a Rick Moody renaissance right now. If only you people knew how disappointed I was when I found out that this movie was not based on this book...
however, I will save the unreasonable expectations I have for that film for another time.

listening to: Frou Frou, "Let Go"
The Pogues featuring Kirsty McColl, "A Fairytale Of New York"
(end.)

all my plays have tragic endings

The biggest discovery I have made today about what happens when I am left to my own devices is that I am not as lethargic as I make myself out to be. (I hereby nominate that last sentence in the category of Most Awkward Opening Sentence Ever.) As in: Today I swallowed my pride and went and jumped headfirst and applied for a job in the World Of Retail, which I swore I would never ever ever EVER do again, especially, certainly not in a place that specializes in froofy wedding invitations. I hace said this before, but I mean it this time: I am approaching the place where I cannot afford to be picky or hold out for anything. If my calculations are right the sum total of my paycheck for next week at this stupid goddamn job is going to be in the neighborhood of 20 hours. Possibly less. This is NOT what the governor promised me at my college graduation. No one ever told me that I was going to be 26 and still periodically getting money from my parents, who can't AFFORD to give me money; that I was going to be excited at finding bruised apples on sale for 60 cents at the grocery store, that I would wake up with a terrible, all-encompassing knot of anxiety in my stomach every day so far this week.
I am grateful for the things that I have. I am grateful to have parents that help me when they can and do things like take me and my brother and sister to the Shedd Aquarium (s'happening this Friday, because they gave it to my brother as a birfday present...TWO YEARS AGO; it is infinitely sad to me that it took us that long to get our shit together), that I have my health, that I'm (still) in love, that I haven't drastically alienated anyone in the last couple of years that I'm aware of, blah blah blah.There comes a certain point when you realize that no matter how much love surrounds you you are not living, you are scraping.
Anyway. After working today, accomplishing the application (and nine others, and one phone call, and one faxing of resume, but the nine others don't count because they were over the internet) and the Cheapest And Least Nourishing Except For The Apples Grocery Run Ever, I discovered that three (3) episodes of The New Obsession came into the library. And so that is what I have done tonight, and what I am taking a break from doing right now. This one in particular made me weep like a little girl, precisely because I want to spend 56 years sharing a bed with the boy and have him still say "Bitch, get up and make me breakfast" (disclaimer: he does not actually do that now), but I DON'T WANT TO BE DEEEEAD WHEN HE SAYS IT.

Yes. I am excellent at being alone.

Also, the song that played in the ending montage, which I found out was Craig Armstrong: Let's Go Out Tonight (i heart the internet), killed me. (Ha!) Or perhaps just the usage of it. Go find it and tell me if it makes you cry or not. Or don't; just listen to it.

listening to: Cursive, Burst and Bloom
also: the thunderstorm outside, which may or may not be a byproduct of that hurricane or whatever, said the extremely informed girl...

oh. HELL. yes.

The Boondocks is coming to the Cartoon Network. Actually, this could either be very, very good or very, very bad. And even if it is very, very good that doesn't mean that it's going to stay alive (see: Clerks. With the political climate being what it is, I potentially worry for the future of...something that hasn't actually started yet. This information is via Negro, Please!, which is my new favorite, um, blog (i still have trouble saying that word), partly because it is not the chronicles of a self-absorbed twenty-something female, in Manhattan or otherwise. (coughSMITTEN)(coughcoughME)
Other news: John Kerry is going to be here this afternoon, and I must say that after the National Convention I feel a bit better about getting behind the man. (The myth, the Lurch.) This doesn't mean that I'm going to the rally, as large crowds of energetic people always tend to annoy me. But hooray swing state campaigning nonetheless.
This weekend was spent acknowledging loudly and complete with interpretive dances that Hamilton Leithauser is the loveliest man in rock and roll right now. And that his stage presence is as though he is constantly being given electric shocks. And that we would call him either "Hambone" (my sister's choice) or "Hammy" (mine) if we married him. I am emphatically not going to marry him, but if anyone who reads this has his number I will send you cookies. (And Modest Mouse wasn't half bad either. And by "not half bad" I actually mean "the best fucking show I can remember going to in a long time on that large of a scale and first example I have ever seen of a singer singing THROUGH HIS GUITAR.") The weekend was also spent discovering that basically there is no way to get around the fact that I am an HBO whore; I rented the pilot of "Six Feet Under" and while some of it is slightly uneven I think I've got potential to become addicted to that as well. Which brings me, full circle, to the other website I was going to plug, which I will do ungracefully and quickly because I just looked at the clock and am going to be late for appointment #10,045 to find me a new job. Which will work. I'm sure. Suffice it to say that I stayed up way past my bedtime reading recaps of the show last night, which is slightly contributing to the fact that I'm so sluggish today. Plug!