obfuscated girl

she is a flower and i am a flower and we are all alone

August will be over in three days. It is ridiculous that time is moving so fast and it is ridiculous that I just keep getting older and older and someday there will be crow's feet.
Here is a list of things I did this summer:

ate watermelon
went to Chicago twice
read some books
got a farmer tan
went to Colorado
avoided being a bridesmaid in Colorado
got ridiculously drunk in front of my entire family
made 74,000 mix CDs
missed my sister
grew my hair out
was unemployed for most of the time
developed an unrequited love affair with vodka and grapefruit juice
(because it's an inanimate object)
read some poems
wrote some poems
read some poems that I wrote
became a version of myself now with 73% more freckles
ate some ice cream
walked a lot
became almost-30
decided that I do not care about being almost-30
met a baby
took some pictures
either lost or gained weight
decided that I really care a lot about losing or gaining weight and that is a problem
drank my body weight in lemonade

Here are things I did not do this summer:
go swimming
go here
or here
or here
get pregnant
bounce checks
fall in love
go to a lot of concerts that I wanted to see
write my memoirs
figure out anything remotely related to what I want to do with my life

Kind of a toss-up, I think.

stable and predictable

My friends Mr. Todd and Mr. Weiss have a dry erase board at their house.
I did not see Biz Markie last night. Instead I sat on a porch and watched cars hydroplane through the section of the street that had flooded because it is never fucking going to stop raining and listened to a baseball game on the radio and took a bunch of pictures on the way home this morning. Baseball's appeal actually has yet to make such an impact that I enjoy listening to it on the radio.
Also I was encouraged by a friend this morning to apply at Whole Foods; they have an opening for a coffee buyer.
So I did. Because I am unemployed, and I like coffee.
This would make three people I know including myself that have Careers At Whole Foods that have Nothing To Do With What They Went To School For, should the unimaginable happen and I got called in for an interview or something.
In other news, not only has Hollywood been out of ideas since approximately 2002, but apparently Kurt Loder is still alive.
Who knew?

i ain't got anything to say to anybody anymore

It is never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to stop raining, ever.

she had 9/10 pants and a very big bra

So things are new! and improved! around here. I very much like the way everything looks and works except for the fact that it takes 87 tries for me to login from this laptop. I assume I will figure out the trick eventually.
I have had five cups of coffee so far today. My hands remain steady, as I am ALL MAN. I also discovered last night that one of the things that the new landlord is doing is putting multiple containers of laundry detergent in the laundry room for usage by everyone who lives in the apartment complex, so like, I don't have to buy laundry detergent. Which, if you have ever been poor, you know this is expensive and also I had been reluctant to haul a giant container of it home even though I have started weight training again and should be hauling things around every chance I get.
I am late on the bandwagon to Weeds, as I mentioned last time, and I would also like to take this opportunity to say that Justin Kirk would be in the top three contenders for New Imaginary Boyfriend if:
a) I was not unsure whether ladies are his type, if you knowwhatIamsaying and
b) I wasn't repulsed by every single thing that came out of his mouth so far in season 2. Wait, that is actually in the pro-Imaginary Boyfriend category.

Because it is a Very Special Day at OBGHQ, here are two (2) mp3s:
1.Les Savy Fav--The Equestrian
(because it is new and holy shit)
2. Biz Markie, "Just A Friend"
(because it is one of the greatest songs of all time, and Biz Markie is DJing here (!!!) on Friday and basically all of my friends are too lame to go, but I am going and I do not care.)
yessssssssssss

mister ambulance driver

It has been raining for three days straight. I spent my Saturday night listening to the rain and watched the news and learned that the stabbing that happened two nights ago a half a block from my apartment was not a domestic dispute, as I had suspected because at 2:30 that morning I started hearing a man and a woman screaming at each other and then sirens, but because of a dispute or argument over A DRIVE-BY SHOOTING THAT HAPPENED TWO NIGHTS BEFORE ON MY BLOCK. The link says nothing about this, but the news did, and of course because it was network news it was (in grave announcer guy voice) "KILLER STILL LOOSE ON EAST SIDE." The man who died was 21 years old.
I am very uneasy. The East Side is Not a Neighborhood where This Is Supposed To Happen.
Rain makes me lonely. I also watched the entire first season of Weeds last night because I had nothing else to do and no money to do it with and no one to do it with, and I just kept thinking how nice it would be if there were someone here with me and how futile it was to think that way, because, much like everything in life, people to cuddle (ew, did I just say "cuddle?") with do not drop out of the sky or into your window or ring your doorbell if you stay in your apartment and stare at the walls and wish very hard for them to do so. Most of the time I am okay with being alone, and this morning I remembered the flipside of being in relationships because I have very thin walls (guy: "I take you out and buy you a dinner and give you money for your rent and you pick a fight?" girl:" I never asked you to do any of that." guy: [platitude] girl: [platitude] [repeat entire conversation three times, repeat, add several "YOU'RE BEING FUCKING STUPID"s]
I like the idea that I don't have to tell anyone where i am going or when I will be back or why I cut my hair the way I did, but it gets lonely. Lonely in ways that I think I am handling better than I was a few weeks ago, but still lonely.
I am also made uneasy by this book that I am reading, which is about an all-black high school debate team from one of the allegedly worst high schools in the country, a high school that remained segregated up until like 1977, where the governor in the early-to-mid 90s, John Ashcroft, successfully and underhandedly diverted funds from a project that would have turned it into a magnet school and given them programs and money that would have, you know, made it suck less, because white parents don't send their kids to magnet schools anyway. There was an algebra teacher in the book quoted as saying "I hate math." To the guy who was writing the book, and also to the kids she was teaching. And so far it is the kind of story where the kids Overcome Impossible Odds and shit, but some of the events detailed and the historical events that made the conditions the way they are make me crazy.
Still no job. Still taking the bus every damn where for interviews only to realize that some of them are placement agencies and the rest of them think that "my longterm career goals do not fit with what [they] are looking for right now." Still wondering who the fuck I am on Sunday mornings. Still doing situps during the commercial breaks.
I guess you just gotta keep going.
And ideally not get stabbed in the process.

obfuscated girl dot com: exploring new and impossibly high heights of self-absorption

I couldn't get that picture off my camera because I canceled that feature and I really liked it.
I do take pictures of other people, too, but I can't fix the red eyes on pictures I take to save my life and consequently my friend Todd here looks like he has some sort of zombie disease but also it is kind of neat, maybe, I don't know:

conversations with redacted redux

redacted (12:23:10 PM): probably you dont want him to write songs about you
recdated (12:23:21 PM): if you could hear those songs in advance
sarahnonetheless (12:23:23 PM): oh but it is my secret goal in life
sarahnonetheless (12:23:32 PM): to have something written about me
sarahnonetheless (12:23:40 PM): perhaps sculpted
sarahnonetheless (12:23:43 PM): in cheese]
redacted (12:24:07 PM): oh if that's all, then you should know that every songs i have ever written is about you
redacted (12:24:12 PM): so you can stop worrying about it
sarahnonetheless (12:25:12 PM): i don't believe you
sarahnonetheless (12:25:32 PM): most of your songs were written well before i ever knew who you were
sarahnonetheless (12:25:35 PM): you lose
redacted (12:26:02 PM): "are you going to the fried cheese curd fair? parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme"
redacted (12:26:08 PM): and "wtf, irl?"
redacted (12:26:44 PM): and "lolcats the musical...better than 'cats' "

Mostly I am redacting his name because I am too embarrassed to ask him whether it is okay to quote him or not. Also because I have nothing at all to say and he is my favorite person in the entire world ever. Also do not go getting any ideas, I am not redacting the name of Conor Oberst here.

conversations with very old men using walkers while crossing the north avenue bridge

Man: "mumblemumblemumblemumblesomethingthatendsinee"
Me:" What?"
Man: "I said, I wish I had all that peppy energy and I wish that I was as pretty as you."
Me: [turns bright red] "Thank you."

I mean, what else do you really say to that?

when we gonna torch the restaurant (sing it) when we gonna pay the guide dog (sing it)

My thighs have been sore for the past three days because I have started doing squats and crunches and things of that nature in lieu of paying off the probably $800 that it would take to rejoin my old gym. Last night I saw some friends play some music in Riverwest and rode home on one of their laps because the rest of the car was filled with amps and guitars and stuff. This is the closest I have come to action in the past four months or so. Both of these things are ridiculous.
Also slightly ridiculous: The fact that the internet thinks that I am a peach. It is not a bad thing to be, considering that once upon a time it thought I was a gaming system, but it shows that I am going soft in my--not old age, but experience. Also the fact that this is what I do on weekends (well that and watch "The Emperor's New Groove" because apparently I am ten years old). And I can't decide whether taking pointless tests on the internet is better than going outside because really, the world just keeps getting scarier.
Hold me.

conversations with redacted

sarahnonetheless (3:17:20 PM): the lord lets you pihb, incidentally,` and remain celibate?
redacted (3:18:15 PM): my only lord is my burning infected loins
redacted (3:18:42 PM): or my belly
sarahnonetheless (3:18:59 PM): wow, i do not get christianity at ALL
redacted (3:19:19 PM): was i a christian when we met?
redacted (3:19:24 PM): i dont think i was
redacted (3:19:38 PM): maybe i was
sarahnonetheless (3:19:39 PM): we never met
sarahnonetheless (3:19:46 PM): are you not a christian now?
redacted (3:20:07 PM): i mean, in the same way that my friend dave is a jew
redacted (3:20:41 PM): it's what i was born into and how i see the world and how i will be identified on my grave
redacted (3:20:56 PM): but there's no god
sarahnonetheless (3:21:07 PM): okay
redacted (3:21:19 PM): unless there is
redacted (3:21:23 PM): in which case, my bad
sarahnonetheless (3:21:44 PM): oh i am sure he won't mind
redacted (3:22:29 PM): depends on if we get the wrathful god who made elijah slaughter 400 prophets of baal or the forgiving god who slaughtered his own son
redacted (3:22:42 PM): kind of a tough call, either way
sarahnonetheless (3:23:16 PM): what if there is the Left Behinding?
redacted(3:23:20 PM): or the god that madonna believes in, with the numbers
sarahnonetheless (3:23:25 PM): there is a verb for it but i forget
redacted (3:23:31 PM): "rapture"
sarahnonetheless (3:23:34 PM): thank you
redacted (3:23:38 PM): there wont be
sarahnonetheless (3:23:44 PM): BUT WHAT IF THERE IS
redacted (3:23:51 PM): unless there is, in which case, my bad
redacted (3:24:22 PM): surely god doesnt want you to believe because you're scared of the end of the world
redacted (3:25:34 PM): unless he is wrathful and waiting to pour out seven bowls of burning flesh upon the land, filling our streets with bodies and our shopping centers with bloodbath and beyond
sarahnonetheless (3:25:46 PM): in which case?
redacted (3:26:21 PM): in which case "blood bath and beyond" is hilarious and i would high five the big man

There are two new links in the links section.

loftus!

Lolla Back Y'all: Lollapalooza 2007
"And that’s when the Hold Steady killed us. Again.

Nowadays everything is played by the time it hits the streets or the stage, or at least we pretend it is. It’s like we don’t want to be rewarded for loving something, like we have to smirk, or draw the line at 'like,' or hem and haw and say, 'Yeah, they’re great, but only in a club.' But why can’t we just love something unconditionally? Why can’t we all react to a band with the fervor and beads of blood sweat devotion like the kids in the front row for the Hold Steady? And when we realize that we are reacting that way – that the Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis band has succeeded in re-energizing our aching bodies, made us realize again the genius of Craig Finn’s lyrics, and made us wonder if Steady guitarist Tad Kubler’s cell phone is shaped like a Gibson Flying V – why can’t we just embrace it, instead of being distracted from the set by our own sense of joy at loving the set? Why is that? Wait, what? That’s just us, the elitist losers, and not everyone else? Oh. That makes sense."
Every time dude ever writes anything it makes me want to resign myself entirely to my obvious future career of husband-hunting so that I may better be equipped to do innovative things in the field of Jello molds.

current library holds

Whatever [sound recording] : the '90s pop & culture box.
27 of 159 holds East
The office. Season two [DVD videorecording] / Reveille Productions ; NBC Universal Television ; Deed
27 of 81 holds East
Blackout [sound recording] / Dropkick Murphys.
9 of 25 holds East
A weekend in the city [sound recording] / Bloc Party.
10 of 22 holds East
Weeds. Season 1 [DVD videorecording] / directed by Lee Rose, Burr Steers.
8 of 8 holds East
Astonishing X-Men. Vol. 1, Gifted / writer, Joss Whedon ; artist, John Cassaday ; colorist, Laura Ma
CHECK SHELVES East
Serenity : those left behind / story by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews ; script by Brett Matthews ; ar
CHECK SHELVES East
House of M / writer: Brian Michael Bendis ; penciler: Olivier Coipel.
2 of 2 holds East
Did someone in the Dropkick Murphys die? I have had that album on hold since approximately MARCH.
ps. the purpose of the above hold list is basically to illustrate that the library is wonderful and has many things and that I will continue to periodically search Bendis in the search function until a goddamn second volume of Alias available thank you and good day I said good day.

Today was sticky and becoming briefly afraid that they had cut some bus routes early (and Milwaukee County Transit Authorities, if you are reading this and still decide to cut the route 15 I am coming down there and we are having fisticuffs) after interview #4 in the past 5 days this morning. It took me an hour to find a bus that would take me home, during which time I learned that pantyhose can actually chafe you where it is tender (no, not there) when it is excessively humid, and Let Go is really fun to sing along to on headphones. Just now, I learned that I picked the wrong weekend to go back to Chicago. I have been listening to the soundtrack to Once on and off for the past three days straight and my new life goal is to see The Frames at least once (HA) before I die. Fuck.
Last night was learning that Because I Said So is the worst fucking movie I have seen in a long time and I wish that my estrogen or whatever did not convince me that it was a good idea to see it.
Diane Keaton falling over things and flailing her arms and wearing wacky hats and misplacing her cell phone in her purse repeatedly because she is wacky and careless and faking orgasms does not constitute good acting, Mandy Moore mistaking her mom's "yes" during aforementioned fake orgasm and walking in on her Doing It With A Man After Which Point She Becomes More Tolerable But Only Slightly does not constitute hilarity, actors who are in movies who are not Mandy Moore or Diane Keaton should really be given things to do, pointing out how many times polka dots are used in the DVD making of extra thing does not make your movie any more endearing, and metaphors about static cling delivered in speeches by sensitive artist type guys does not equal a deeply-felt cinematic relationship. Fie, I say.

This has been Things I Learned.

plz marry me bill simmons

It's been strangely entertaining to see so many people express shock and outrage that [Michael Vick] could have done something so horrible. Um, he has the same DNA as Marcus Vick! That's like being shocked in 2012 when Lindsay Lohan's little sister gets her first DUI. Plus, Vick could have been accused of murdering a stripper, blowing up a shopping mall or funneling his Nike money to Al Qaeda, and people wouldn't have been even 1% as outraged as they are about the dogfighting allegations. You can get away with just about anything these days; just don't tick off dog lovers.
(And by the way, I'm one of them. I wish we could pay Roy Williams to horse-collar Vick from behind 200 times in a row. How could anyone cause pain to a dog? How could anyone want to be affiliated with a "sport" where dogs are electrocuted and you have to buy items with names like "rape stands"? Hopefully, this leads to a real-life Longest Yard sequel where Vick gets jailed and eventually leads a team of convicts against the guards, who summarily kick the living crap out of him for four quarters and turn his ACLs into fusilli. The end.)
the rest is here

if there's nothing missing in my life then why do these tears come at night

Apparently my memory of Britney Spears videos made them out to be a lot more scandalous than they actually were. I thought in the video for Lucky (AND SWEET MERCIFUL JESUS WHY IS THERE A SIMS 2 VERSION) she drowns herself in a bathtub, and in the one for Slave 4 U there is a snake, but neither of these versions seem to exist anywhere. These things are very important when you have spent the weekend with your sister driving to Minnesota analyzing Britney Spears's career trajectory and whether C-sections are unnatural even if the mother's life is at stake and maybe it is natural selection if the baby does not, you know, make it. We are probably terrible people.
This weekend I met my new second cousin. His name is Samuel David and when I met him he was two days old. Everything about him is tiny and he kept making jazz hands and crossing his arms over his head in his sleep and making little scrunchy faces. I wonder whether babies dream. I refused to hold him at first because I was absolutely convinced I was going to drop him, but I did not, and he didn't wake up or have any sixth sense of ALERT ALERT PERSON WHO HAS NO IDEA ABOUT ANYTHING HAVING TO DO WITH BABIES IS HOLDING YOU DANGER WILL ROBINSON.
And I want one.
I was afraid this was gonna happen.
For YEARS I stupidly prided myself on being one an anti-baby crusader and the planet is overpopulated and I am gonna give my kids global warming and also complexes about their height and probably I am too selfish to have kids and I would throw things at them and a vicious endless cycle would be created. However, I know enough not to take babies to get their teeth whitened. That makes me about FIVE STEPS AHEAD of lots of people. I am now also secure in the knowledge that I would not drop the baby. And I am reacting internally to about 45 different things when I think about this and it is so difficult to articulate, and I don't think I am just reacting to the SQUEE IT WAS SO CUTE portion of the afternoon. I saw the exhaustion in my cousin's eyes, and I saw the fact that Sam was squalling for about an hour before he fell asleep, and I was informed of the fact that he had been awake until 3:30 in the morning. Babies are work. I cannot learn how to work in that way right this second. I am obviously in no position to run out and get knocked up while making sure that the knocker-up was insanely attractive and well-adjusted to maybe balance out some of my genes at this stage in my life, but I also think that assuming that I would make a terrible mother is just another form of self-loathing. I doubt that I am going to turn into one of Those Ladies who cries at Pampers commercials, and I am not going to throw myself into the next relationship I find for the sake of The Not Existing Quite Yet Children. I am just saying, Lord, if this is really what The Ladies are here for and however many years of feminism are for nothing and that is ridiculous too because the implication that you can't have both a career and a baby is still around or whatever, I am maybe down with that.

Maybe.

manifestish

note: in parts, this could almost be part of my friend's advice to me about write down the negative things you think about yourself and then replace them with positive things--I apologize for subjecting you to self-therapy, internet, and the following is mostly because it is a quiet night and I do not have shit to do except string sentences together and be in the library where it is air conditioned and also because I can.
I am not sure if I am tired because I am lonely or lonely because I am tired. I am tired of the national news and the OMG AT LEAST THE CHILDREN ARE SAFE angles they are working on the bridge collapse in Minnesota. I am tired of 90 degree heat. I am tired of my resistance to air conditioning but also I have gotten through almost the entire summer without it so why start now. I am tired of not having anyone to go to the state fair with. Because secretly I really, really want to go and now you know and now it is not a secret, even though odds are you found this website because you are looking for that one picture of Martin Starr or "screw her gently when a sleep." I am tired of my lack of balls. Not literally. I am tired of being tired. I am tired of looking at other people's websites and marveling that the fact that they actually write about things and have stories that have beginnings, middles and ends whereas you are lucky to get one relevant or complete sentence out of this thing. I should be tired of comparing myself to PLACES ON THE INTERNET, but apparently I am not. I am tired of thinking that I am not a good writer. I am tired of thinking that I am not a good anything. I am tired of being poor and thinking that Paul Westerberg really didn't have all that much to complain about because there was a song or a line that he said or sang about learning how to live on $60 a day.
I am just tired.

watch this space

Sometime within the next couple weeks we are going to start playing Extreme Makeover Website Edition
or This Old Website
or Trading Websites
or whatever other crappy pun you can exhaust the idea that everything is going to look brand-new with
and it is because this guy is remarkably smarter than I am, at least at internet fuckery, although I could probably outwit him on naming the members of Pavement and also the important character developments in the last season of Ugly Betty, and maybe diagram sentences
and it is about time, because the way I am typing these non-sentences means that there is going to be whitespace inbetween each and every one of them and that makes me absolutely crazy
and the software he is creating is called Spark or something
and apparently there will be a built-in RSS feed
and it is very exciting, and I think that as of October something this website will be four.
Which means that at least when I die, there will be a lot of overwrought melodramatic shit for you to read. And now it will look better.
In other news, my cousin just had a baby, and babies are small, and we are going to see it this weekend. An email I just got says that the induced labor did not work because the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, but he and my cousin are doing well. Pause for BABIES!
After this weekend my sister will be like 3000 miles away. And I have like three possibly very real (as opposed to imaginary) job prospects including one interview Monday, and I do not feel quite so hopeless.