obfuscated girl

nemo?

Apparently there is a better word for being a vegetarian who eats fish than "vegetarian who eats fish," and that word is ""pescatarian." I am labeled!

Mysteriously, on the first page of Google results for pescatarian (if you spell it wrong) is a livejournal userinfo page wherein the entire summary of the livejournal keeper and his or her interests is this:
"Bio: iam a vegetarian && i enjoi eatin fish my fave band iz PANiC At ThE dIsCo!!111 woops i Th0T I wAz PrEsSiN` Da ShIfT kEy!!!!@@!
Interests: 2: being a vegetarian, eating fish

I do not understand people.

Also.
It is pretty much useless doing a top ten musical things of 2007 section of this post, but I would like to draw your attention over \here and to the fact that like fourteen out of the top twenty most listened to songs by me in 2007 were by The National. Damn, The National, why must you be so fly.
And I consequently give you the Top Ten Songs That Were Not By The National That I Listened To In 2007, And If I Were A Music Blog I Would Have mp3s But I'm Not So Ha Ha:
1. Radiohead, "All I Need"
Some of the initial euphoria surrounding this song has faded. in fact, a lot of it has, but damn Radiohead knows how to use a string section and do Big Dramatic Things.
2. The Killers, "Believe Me Natalie"
ok so I think 12 out of the 13 times I played it in 2007 were this one time when I called my sister afterwards and enthused about this thing that he did with his voice and it's totally true that when you are...um. yep. you listen to stuff over and over and it is beautiful. I still think it's beautiful.
3. Rihanna, "Umbrella"
Eh? Eh. Eh!
4. Future of the Left-"The Lord Hates A Coward"
YOU GUYS THE DUDES FROM MCLUSKY HAVE A NEW BAND WOOOOOOOOOOOOO
guys pretty much I have this exact thought every single day
also in this song they sing "she's got a lot of pickled onions hanging from her thighs"
5. My Chemical Romance, "Welcome To The Black Parade"
I have no comment except once again getting all effusive and defensive and that is never a good combination
6. Kelly Clarkson, "Sober"
I have heard that the rest of this record is not very good but this song makes me go all shivery and sometimes cry, depending on how tired/pessimistic/menstrual I am.
7. Maritime, "Love Has Given Up"
YOU GUYS MARITIME PUT OUT A NEW RECORD WOOOOOO
8. The Replacements, "Talent Show"
I had a huge Replacements phase over the summer and this is probably my favorite song by them.
9/ My Chemical Romance, "Mama"
Half of those listens were just because I love it and half were after someone told me Liza Minelli did the backing vocals and I was all omg noe shut up.
10. Radiohead, "Reckoner"
I can't even think of what this song sounds like right now. Reading the lyrics didn't help. Damn, Radiohead.

if you spin fast enough then maybe the broken pieces of your heart will stick together but something i see lately makes me doubt

I got an mp3 player for Christmas and as such have joined the first half of the 21st century. It is shiny here. I have also, because of said mp3 player, rediscovered a record that is somewhat responsible for my adult obsession with music and shoddy journalism about music: Emergency and I. In my newly-acquired adult wisdom on revisiting the record, I have made an important discovery: Roughly 30% of the Dismemberment Plan's discography syncs perfectly with the Carlton Dance.
Seriously, mute the volume on this clip

and play this song
the Dismemberment Plan--Gyroscope
and tell me that I'm wrong. GUESS WHAT, I'M TOTALLY RIGHT.

This has been Today In Extremely Important Revelations.

That picture there is my favorite fake outtake from this band's fake album cover photoshoot. If you look at the whole series you can see the progression of Brian's state of inebriation cause he gets all red in the face. Hilarity ensues.
Once upon a time, I wrote things besides music criticism. I have no idea how I stumbled across them this week, but it makes me kind of sad to think about how much things have changed since then. Call it the End of Year/Almost 30/Sick Of Pretty Much Everything Morass. Also call it ill-advised to concentrate this hard on who I used to be, or who I thought I used to be, or how I am misremembering who I used to be and romanticizing a lot of things because things are so fucked right now, because it is also all of those things. Also, it is still up in the air and depending on the day whether or not I consider myself a writer, but I am surprisingly happy with those two pieces*.

*at the very least it is clear that I did a lot of writing in school because only jackasses and English majors call them "pieces"

he doesn't look a thing like jesus

An incomplete list of things I want right now, and I have talked so much about the wonderful world of employment here that a job should go without saying:
1. red wine
2. a new mattress
3. a maid service
4. a haircut
5. extremely impractical things
6. someone who is actually worthy of me having a crush on them, and Paul Rudd does not count
6a. the ability to write things like the above and not get all embarrassed
7. a book deal and the magical ability to write and structure a book
8. my friends to stop being assholes
9. cable
10. all of the seasons of The Wire up to and including the fifth one which is not even on the air yet

I have discovered that Degrassi: The Next Generation shows at 7:30 every morning, and I have woken up at 7:30 EVERY MORNING this week to watch it. I have not started watching Saved By The Bell, which is on at 7:00. They have Canadian accents! And deal with Real Life Issues, such as abortion and decorating lockers! It is adorable!

I could also watch Saved By The Bell which airs at 7:00, but I have more self-respect than that.

I am writing this from the usual place and have had to endure a conversation between Prototype Hipster Girl and Prototype Hipster Boy that has included such gems as "Do you like eighties dance parties?" and "lesbians really don't like men" and also carefully orchestrated facial hair and I really, really should either learn to not wish death upon people so easily or stop leaving the apartment, and I spend enough time alone as it is. At the same time, I like the routine of this place. I like spending my mornings between online job applications smelling how coffee smells while it is roasting and imagining what it would be like to be a real writer, because I imagine it is acceptable for real writers to really write at coffeehouses. Also they have this kind of muffin that has carrots and coconut in it, and that shouldn't work, but it totally does.
I got nothing else.

EXCEPT WAIT: There is a VISUAL PUN in the new banner for this thing. Do you see it? I AM HILARIOUS. And also it is functional because I have no idea what I was thinking when I named this thing and sometimes when I type in the URL I actually cringe.

dirty little whirlwind

Today my feet are wet because one of my shoes got STUCK IN A SNOWBANK on the way to this here place where I drink coffee in the mornings and I had to PUT MY SHOE ON in the MIDDLE OF THE STREET and I could have FALLEN OVER or gotten HIT BY A CAR...

but I didn't. I am just slightly damp. And cranky.

You may have surmised that I did not get the job after the second interview, and you would be correct in that...surmisment. And the only thing that kept me from crying was the fact that if I had gotten the job it would have been a temporary solution, but I would be in the same situation again come March or whatever. I am tired of complaining about this low-grade constant poverty and all the fears that live in the back of my head about What Is Going To Become Of Me etc. But the thing is? If I hadn't been content with temping for three-plus years and had taken time to figure out The Future when I got out of school, I would have gone through this then, too. I have to keep thinking that things are going to get better. The thing about hitting the bottom is that eventually you have to start rising again. Etcetera, etcetera, Oprah.

Meanwhile who wants to enable me to go see my husband for Christmas.

FRIDAY FACTS.

#1. I do not think that my feet have been dry today once. This is due to the fact that I had to wear impractical shoes for a second interview and decided to walk home, which involved plowing through three feet of slush at pretty much every single intersection.
#2. Dave Grohl is a beautiful, beautiful man.
Note: you may think the above is an opinion, not a fact, and you would be wrong.

#3. One of the only things that has kept me from obsessing over my performance on Second Interview is this cover of Stairway To Heaven which has been floating around for a while but which I just heard three days ago for the first time. I keep grinning at my laptop. It is so excellent.
#4. If I do not get this job, and the fact that the only places that have called me back for second interviews are either temporary or 20 hours a week makes me want to either laugh or die, I can't decide, there will probably be crying.
#5. But only a little.
#6. Funeral is still the best winter record.
#7. I miss Calvin & Hobbes especially acutely in winter because of the evil-snowman sequences.
#8. I have stopped adding sugar to my coffee and this makes me feel strangely smug.
#9. No seriously, I need this job. And I am tempted to delete all mentions of this job need and this interview because I am extremely superstitious.
#10. Superstitions are stupid.

i win, dinosaur egg

HEY EMILY,
when we are home for Christmas we are making ice cream, and you will LIKE IT.

Here is a website that I like. It has cartoons. Here is a question and answer session that the cartoonist did.
Here is the answer to "How awesome are couches?"


This has been Things That I Found On The Internet Today.

the immediacy of everything

Little things about the internet still kind of blow my mind sometimes. The fact that I can hear a song somewhere and go "ooh" and then find it within a day on the internet makes me really, really happy. Probably this song could be confused with Iron & Wine/Songs:Ohia/Bright Eyes/Insert Name Of Sensitive Musician Here and the fact that I found it with such relative ease means that I have believed the hype of internet buzz band #49815A, but I don't care, because this song is pretty.
Sea Wolf-"I Made A Resolution"

oh god it is even by a wolf band
and of course the flip-side of all this immediacy means that we can all collectively indulge our respective OCD and not support music and blah blah blah etcetera, but that argument is tired and old, and much more eloquently stated by people who are not me