The Lisa Chronicles – Page 14 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

reviews: music: bloc party – intimacy

I take Bloc Party seriously.
By this I mean that they are one of the few bands I actually listen to and by listen to, I mean that I sit down and pay attention to the music and the lyrics. I like a lot of bands, but there are a scant few that I return to time and time again. Joy Division is one, R.E.M. is another, Elbow is definitely up there and Bloc Party most assuredly rounds out the set.
For me, and I will assume for a lot of people, music is a very personal thing. This is not to say that I do not enjoy my fluffy pop or my occasional foray into old school gangsta rap, I do. But this is to say, that when I love a band, I really take the band to heart. For those who know me, you know how constantly I refer to High Fidelity as a bible to my life — I AM the female Rob Gordon. (Complete with relationship problems, neuroses and other high jinks. But that is for another post.) And like Rob, who arranges his music automusicgraphically, I too also do the same. I can get from one band to another by telling you where I was, when I first heard it and what I was doing (or who I was doing).
If my choices seem a little chaotic at times, that is totally okay. Straight and narrow never won any interesting awards. But this is not really about me, per se, but more about Bloc Party and the release of their third album, Intimacy, a mere 18 months after A Weekend In The City. The album was released digitally at the end of August, with the physical release set for, in the U.K. and U.S., at the end of October. Word on the street is that the title tracks available on the physical release will differ from the digital download, but like the good little fan girl I am, I will have procured both. Silent Alarm, their first album with the stunning single Helicopters, came out kicking and squalling to the world in 2005. A Weekend In The City was their “falling in love” album in 2007 and I wasn’t too terribly surprised to find out that Intimacy is their “break-up” album of 2008. When the title track is entitled, “Ares,” and the song begins with “War! War! War!,” I got the feeling that Kele Okereke was stalking my life.
So, then, I must step back and do a bit of back story before I continue. Bloc Party, like a multitude of other bands over the years, is a band I heard of but never really got “in to,” until I met TheEx. TheEx and I have an interesting back story in that musically, we were perfect. We could, and often did, spend hours talking about music from producers to labels to motifs, sound, lyrics and design. Our joint collection neared nearly 2000 compact discs (60% his), dozens of vinyls (his) and over 100 gigs of digital music (mostly mine). We were concert whores who would travel hours for a good show, only to turn around and come back home that very night. With him, I found my perfect music man, someone who could discuss with me the nuances of music on a variety of different levels and not have to explain to him why I was found of the production values of X album over Y album or why I loved A band over B band.
TheEx was crazy about Silent Alarm and was eagerly waiting for A Weekend in the CIty, which came out in the very beginning of our relationship. And I’m not quite sure what it was about A Weekend in the City, but that became “my” album while Silent Alarm became his. To me, A Weekend in the City became the anthem of our relationship. Every song, every melody, every lyric no matter how distant somehow spoke to me, about us. I could see him in every song and certain songs became “our” songs. Every time I heard “Sunday,” with or without him near me, my heart would swell with love for him, because he would love me in the morning when I was hung over and strung out. And even though I knew that On was about doing coke, to me the lines, You make my tongue loose/I am hopeful and stutter free, was about how I felt around him. He made me feel hopeful and stutter free — I could (and did) tell him everything and anything, anytime and any place.
At the time, I felt that he made me an honest woman and with him, I was so much better off than without him. I like Silent Alarm, but A Weekend in the City had this energy that I responded to, a hunger if you will for living and for life. I liked the simplicity of Kele’s lyrics and the fact that he was able to lyrically say what he meant without going overboard with metaphor and unnecessary imagery. (I’m looking at you Radiohead and Coldplay — fucking wankers.) I adored the fact that every single time I heard the album, I heard something different and that everything about A Weekend in the City resonated with me emotionally and intellectually.
Like most intimate of relationships, TheEx and I did not end with a quiet whimper but with a huge, ferocious fuck-off bang. For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to reclaim my musical tastes but have found that in reality, I was hiding from it. I forewent listening to Pandora, XM and my CD collection on general to podcasts and NPR. I did not want to put myself through musical depression – even with bands that I claimed as mine were also his and by listening to said bands would conjure up all the feelings, the good with the bad.
When I found out Bloc Party had released a new album digitally, with the physical release forthcoming, I was surprised. I was, apparently, not the only one. Bloc Party has been touring almost non-stop since the release of A Weekend in the City, which was released in February 2007. Other than a single released last summer, the synth dance song “Flux,” there has been no talk or announcement of a new album. Shortly after the digital release at the end of August, reviews started showing up by the beginning of September, with a split vote on Intimacy.
People fell into several camps

That Intimacy was an attempt to return to the area that Silent Alarm began, failed with A Weekend in the City and was struggling to fill and was a mixed-bag.
That Intimacy not only returned to the horizon of Silent Alarm but surpassed it. A Weekend in the City? A blip and could be written off as their sophomoric disc (which it is).
That Intimacy failed on many levels, was absolute drek and that Bloc Party, as a whole, are a bunch of pretentious wankers.

For me, I’m apparently in the minority. I love A Weekend in the City more so over Silent Alarm (and thought it was one of the best albums of 2007) but Intimacy is growing on me. I was looking for, excuse the obvious, but the intimacy and the slowness of A Weekend in the City only to be greeted by dance pop and synth experiments hold over from their single, Flux, which at first annoyed me. But it is the lyrics, oh $deity, I love you Kele, the lyrics more than make up for the choppiness of the disc, the messiness that is “Zephyrus” and the overwhelming urge they have to experiment TOO much.
But it is with their weaknesses that they also have their biggest strengths — Bloc Party has no problem selling out arenas, have gained a fairly successful following in the U.S. and tour almost constantly. They have hit almost every major festival abroad and in the U.S. The fact that they have, somehow, managed to get into the studio to record a third album and not only record it but have the production completed in a relatively short time is almost mind boggling. And according to the interview with bassist Gordon Moakes on pitchfork, the band is just as surprised as their fans at the quick turnaround.
I don’t view the turnaround as a negative thing, rather again, I look to the lyrics for the answers. If A Weekend in the City was about falling in love, relationships and living life, Intimacy is about breaking-up and the obvious, almost debilitating aspects of separating from the one you love. From “Ares,” declaring war on the person who wronged you, to “Halo” about questioning the love, to “One Month Off,” at the anger of one’s partner after a long term relationship ends, to that remembrance of the good times in “Better Than Heaven,” to the pitiful, desperate plea of return to that love in “Ion Square.”
Every relationship counselor (and Cosmo issue) will tell you that separation after a break-up tends to follow the same rules of grief that the death of a loved one follows:

Denial. – “Mercury.” “Halo.” “Better Than Heaven.”
Anger. – “Ares.” “One Month Off.”
Bargaining. “Signs.” “Halo.” “Bilko.” “Trojan Horse.”
Depression. “Signs.” “Halo.”
Acceptance. “Zephyrus.” “Ion Square.”

Some songs resonate with better topics than others, but the point is still there. This is Kele’s exorcism against the end of a love that obviously broke his heart. And it is with this, with Kele’s lyrics and the buffing of the depressing themes with synth tunes and dubbeats that most will find to be a turn-off and thusly, a shite album. Some will claim that this is a desperate attempt to grab the glory they had with Silent Alarm and failing while others will claim they are attempting to parody their influences and are bilking too much of their popularity by riding on the coattails of Coldplay and Radiohead. I don’t think Intimacy is a great album, but I do think it is a good one. I do agree that there is, at times, too much going on at one time while at others, it seems almost perfect.
While I would recommend it, I would recommend it after listening to the first two albums — like most great bands, you need to get the scope of the band’s lineage before diving in several albums in. With several months between the digital and physical release, who is to say what the physical album will sound like? And as for me, I unfortunately saw too much of TheEx inside the lyrics after my first spin with the disc a few weeks ago. The beginning of Trojan Horse chilling reminds me of the rituals that TheEx performed before we too made love. Signs, also eerily like the lasting days of our relationship. And Ares and One Month Off remind me of me, in those “OHNOESHEDIDNOT” moods I would would sometimes (occasionally) cycle through. Despite my initial reservation, Intimacy is the tip of the catharsis to push me over the edge. It is not the time for a new love or to sign a new lease, but at least now, I know that one day there will be.

reviews: books: When Will There Be Good News?

[Cross-posted to GoodReads and LibraryThing.]
One of the reasons I adore Kate Atkinson so much is that her books are mysteries that you didn’t know were mysteries until the very end. She has a writing style that I have found to be fairly unique. Her prose tends to border on stream of consciousness and twisted plot lines, but doesn’t come off as being too presumptuous or even at times, wordy. Her gift is for creating characters that are not always what they seem and at the same time, are fully formed and believable. Her latest book, When Will There Be Good News? imagines a world where Joanna Hunter (in the now) is re-visited by the horror of her past, her family (mother and siblings) brutally killed when she was six in front of her. Thirty years later, the killer is paroled and Joanna suddenly disappears. The question then becomes, is Joanna Hunter the innocent she has portrayed after all these years?
This is the third book by Atkinson that features Jackson Brodie, a character she created in Case Histories, who has re-appeared in her previous book, One Good Turn. Ex-solider, ex-policeman, Brodie is now a retired millionaire whose own faults seemingly are also his weaknesses. Brodie, who this time around plays a subtle minor character in the drama as it unfolds, seemingly is one step away from the realities that surround him. What he desires and wants, is what we all desire and want an yet for Brodie, everything is almost out of reach. As with her other books, Atkinson has a gift for sly observation and reporting on and grasping the intricies of the human condition that so many of us either can’t grasp or want to forget.
When Will There Be Good News? is a taut novel but this is the first of her books I have found to be a little bit more messy in the wrapping up of the plot. Things happen, and to Joanna Hunter, Reggie Chase and Jackson Brodie, they seemingly happen for a reason. We root for them in ways we cannot think we would, and we excuse them of their flaws but it is in their flaws (Brodie’s and Hunter’s) that seemingly were a little too gapping to make believable. But in Atkinson’s own problems with the writing, it is also her greatest strengths. Atkinson’s books are not “skimming” books, you really do have to pay attention as she will throw out a word or a line of dialog that suddenly makes some prior related instances, much more sense. Once she throws that word or line out, it will not be repeated or revisited. Miss that key, and the book will not be as good as you think it could be.
I adore her plot twists and devices as it makes her books wholly full filling. I love the fact that everytime I finish one of her books, I can revsit it at another date and find something new that I missed the first time. I adore the fact that she asks questions that may not always have the easiest answers and her answers (and questions) are not presumptious or overworked. Pick up any of Atkinson’s works and you will not be disappointed — she’s not as well known in the States as she is in the U.K., but while this is not her strongest book, this will hopefully push her over the edge.

I wanna be your punk rock curator

Internets, I have a request!
For one of the classes I’m taking, I’m required to purchase a webcam. I went searching on NewEgg and Amazon and found this one. It’s cheap, USB, has built in mic and a clip to attach to my laptop. As I have not purchased a webcam in years, should this one do the trick or do I need to look at something else?
Somewhere around here, I have an old B&W webcam from my days in San Fran and D.C. Here is an example of me circa 1998, with Justin, in our old place in San Fran. I’m getting vaguely excited about seeing him in December, as it would have been 10 years since we last saw each other. I’m kinda excited about posting images of us from then and now, and in this new fangled thing called color! High res even! Technologies, it astounds me.
LIB6080 is an intro class, also a pre-req for future classes, on information technology. This class requires that by completion of the semester, I have taken AND passed the IC³ exams (there are three in total). Failure to take the exams or failure to take and pass the exams automatically fails me for the course. As well as with my other two courses this semester, it is a pre-req for completion of the degree and not necessarily just for future classes in the program. As I have mentioned before, several profs and students have discussed the disparity between the UMich and Wayne MLIS programs.
To wit: UMich: tenure track, academia groomed, focus on technology development, methodologies and research. Wayne State: focus on day to day professional environment, marketable and flexible skill set level, job force ready. This is not to say that UMich does not provide their students with the same skill sets as Wayne, they do to some degree, but their focus seemingly is more on the grooming of future academics in the field of research and development over job force ready. I have spoken to those who have graduated from the program without intent of academic pursuits and did not have a problem getting positions (which also may have to do with UMich’s existing reputation as a stellar school) and those currently in the program who are not planning on a research or academic track.
If I seem a bit obsessive about the two schools, to some degree, I am. I had been eyeing UMich’s SI (as they call it) program for a number of years before I applied and was rejected for the fall of 2008. I know, on some level, why I was rejected but what didn’t help matters was that the SI department posted stats on the applications for the fall of 2007. They accepted 81% of their applicants into the program, so my ego is a bit bruised thinking that I must have REALLY fucked up. The main thing that has me salivating for UMich is their Museum Studies Program, which BEFORE would only accept current graduate students from UMich who would concurrently work on their masters/phd program along with the cert program.
My goal was to get into SI and do a tailored program via SI and the MSP and graduate in three or so years. But apparently they have changed the admissions process and now anyone with a graduate degree in the last five years can apply independently to Rackham for the MSP program. WOOT! I say, WOOT! Cos guess what I have? A newly minted Masters degree! And I wonder if I can do a tailored program via Wayne and UMich? How fuckin’ awesomely brilliant would that be?!? Dammit, this entry was going to posit about technology and my ego and I went on another tangent. I suppose that will have to suffice for another day.

PFT Book Club: An introduction and a Review (#3): Vile Bodies

[Maintenance: Still tweaking the blog and still a bit rough, hopefully the tweaking will be done in a day or two.]
Many moons ago, when Justin and I were dating, we got on this kick to read the entirety of the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels, of which we completed a scant few. Somewhere in my packing is the original list that I printed out nearly a decade ago. And over the years and many hours of classtime later, I am no closer to finishing the list now then I was then. So when Justin and I got back into contact a few months ago, we struck up our original deal to do a bookclub, but this time, the rules were going to be different. We decided to call ourselves the “Pretentious Fuck Twit Book Club” or PFT Book Club for short.
Each month¹, one of us would make a selection from our bookshelves, the other would have to buy/loan a copy out and we’d read and discuss the works. The point of this bookclub was several fold:

To expand our reading tastes into things we may not normally read
To plow through our bookshelves and read the books that we’ve been meaning to read for ages
To find the most pretentious work available as our selections²

The first selection, for the months of June/July was Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. This I selected because of it’s relationship to Jane Austen (supposedly) and its relevancy to British literature (debauchery at its finest!). Justin finished the book, I only got 200 pages in and was subsequently bored to tears, so we called this one good.
Justin’s selection, which we finished in under a few weeks (which was to be August’s selection) was God Knows by Joseph Heller. This one I adored — funny, satirical, sexy, and clearly Heller was a huge influence on Christopher Moore for his book, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. Reading God Knows has piqued my interest in reading more Heller, primarily Catch-22, which I’ve never read.
Now, I have a B.A. in English, a M.A. in Humanities, I work in a bookstore and I’m going to be starting my M.L.I.S. degree in a few weeks — so one could reasonably say that I’m well read. One could say that and one, for the most part, could be awfully wrong. Despite my training and my interests, for an English major, there is scads of classic and contemporary authors that I have not read: Hesse, Dostoevsky, Pynchon, Vonnegut, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Wodehouse to name but a few, and for the next selection of PFT Book Club, Evelyn Waugh.
Waugh is one of those authors whom I keep coming to again and again as someone I should be reading and just never got around to actually doing so. I choose Vile Bodies because it is one of his lesser known but vaguely famous works, there is an awesome movie adaptation of the novel by Stephen Fry and the premise sounded right up my alley.
Vile Bodies, written in 1930, is Waugh’s tribute and satire of the London smart set near the end of the Roaring ’20s, of a generation that was glimpsed so briefly and yet was so influential on so many other works that were penned during the period and after. The story revolves around Adam Fenwick-Symes (a penniless writer) and Nina Blount (daughter of an eccentric aristocrat) as they become engaged and un-engaged depending on the status of Adam’s fortune, which literally changes by the minute.
Rousing out the cast are the friends and acquaintances of Adam and Nina, whose own lives change and upheaval are all taken with sighs of disinterest and complete boredom. But the twist in the book is the facade of their lives and the breaking down on their door by sheer reality — they have become spinning tops of a generation that could (and would not) last only to have the reality of the real world come crashing in upon them. As the characters begin to die off, literally almost one by one, and as others go on to other perhaps more grown-up lifestyles, Adam and Nina find themselves almost stranded, alone, in a world that they were once ruled as king and queen.
When their own world starts to impolde, so the the outside world when another world war calls Adam up to action. The story starts and ends in medias res, and it is for that reason alone that the novel feels incomplete. You get a sense of the period and the culture of the time, of the reality verses the inner workings of the world that beholdens Nina and Adam but I didn’t feel like the story was actually resolved.
However, in lieu of that, Waugh was a master as creating secondary (and tertiary) characters that were fleshed out and held their own in terms of personality and lifestyles, and could have stood alone outside of Nina and Adam, on their own terms. You want to believe that there is more to their lives than just parties, drinking, gossip and debauchery and even when there isn’t – you don’t seemingly care, just as they don’t seemingly care. You’re intrigued by the type of world they inhibit, you want what they want but you seemed aghast to realise that what they want seems so very shallow, but because of who they are and what they do (nothing), that seemingly justifies their very existance. But it’s more about money and standing, peer relations and marriages, it’s a way of life.
The public then was just as fascinated then with the hobnobbings of the upper crust as we are today of the goings and comings of royalty and celebs. Waugh was not the first to lampoon the social set he grew up and mingled with, nor will he be the last. But if you’re looking for something that became the defacto standard of that lampooning that would influence generations after him, he is your man.
Would also recommend the following if your interest in Waugh is piqued: Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin and Snobs by Julian Fellows.

1. We said “month,” but after Tom Jones, we’ve been plowing through our selection every week or so, so we’re are incredibly ahead of schedule.
2. Most of my stuff is still packed and at the rate we’ve been going, we’re pulling future selections from stuff that neither of us own and want to tackle.

Friends don’t let friends waste wine when there’s stories to sell

What you need to know is that it took every freakin’ ounce of my being to not drive ~200 miles today to remove your cock with a rusty spork, throw a smoldering cigarette into the open wound and then hang said penis off to dry from the balcony while I merrily drove home.
And I’ll explain this to you one more time since you clearly didn’t get it the first time: Your problems are everyone’s problems. Even on a platonic level, your actions involve everyone around you, not just yourself. You have never quite grasped, as every other normal human has, that their actions reverberate to those around them, involved or not. And your problems trickled over into my life when I was involved, regardless of what capacity. Your issues have effected not just me, but your family and your friends. The psychological, emotional, verbal and physical hurt you inflicted has cost me time, money (spent on therapy), self-doubt, lack of self-worth, and even to some extent sexual crisis. This is to name but a few. You have no idea how much pain and suffering you have inflicted because you have no conscience. Your big outpouring a few months ago on how terribly sorry you were to have hurt me, you were going to spend a lifetime making it up to me, you were going to get your shit together and you had never meant to be like this, add, rinse, repeat. You may have meant it, at the time, but what has become clear in the recent months is that your words mean nothing. It was a facade because someone (me) told you that you had to make amends for the hurt, pain and suffering you had caused. And I also told you that I could not tell you when or how or where this amendment was going to take place and I was suddenly to believe that you were getting your shit straight only a few months later? Clearly, I am naive, gullible and way to quick to believe that everyone can change that quick.
You believed it to be sincere because you wanted or needed it to be sincere. I told you what you needed to do and that’s what you did. It’s how you run your life. Someone dictates that you need to do X in Y circumstance and that is what you do. Every. Single. Time. You cannot make your own decisions without running to 15 different people to tell you what to do. It’s sickening.
You know why I hung out with you this summer? Because I believed in you. I believed that underneath the hurt, the pain, the abuse and every other cliche was a good man. That ultimately, standing by you and supporting you, as I promised I would to the very end, would be its own reward.
And this is why I’m pissed. I’m so beyond pissed right now that it has taken every once of will power and restraint to not murder you, you fucking bastard.
What I want you to ultimately know is that I’m pissed because you made a mockery of me, my friendship and of my love. You turned what could have been a pleasant memory of a something into nothing more than a horror film that I can’t stop watching. Especially so since you still have NO idea what the fuck you did. It took every once of my strength that day to not lean over and strangle the crap out of you. Or knock some sense into your head.
And to add insult to injury to tell me that you were “thinking” that perhaps in 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years that you were going to start dating again and that I had better be happy for you and if I wasn’t, then so what? And to even add more salt to the wound, to then suggest your surprise that I wasn’t currently dating someone? WHAT SELF-ABSORPTION IS THIS? Please tell me. No wait, I’ll tell you. Clearly, you do not know me, to have gone through what I did with you for nearly ~2 years with you, standing by you, loving you, encouraging you to be a better man, to get on the right path to life and then to have you, hahaha, tell me that I needed to be happy for you to go frolic with someone else? I love(d) you and when you love someone, you don’t let them down, you don’t let them go and you stand by their side through thick and thin. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Really, this is a joke right? You think I could easily transfer all that emotion, energy, desire and love to someone else because we were no longer together? What am I? The whore of Babylon? Seriously! Do you think emotions run that quick and that shallow that I could transfer what I felt for you onto someone else? That sir, took the fucking cake.
And I’ll tell you why I’m not in a relationship with someone else: After finding out about your costly porn addiction, the mere act of having sexual intercourse with anyone makes me nauseated. I may talk about sex, I may flirt, I may proposition but the actual thinking about having sex with someone other than myself makes me queasy. It took me FOUR MONTHS to even feel normal to masturbate again. So do not tell me, fucker, that your problems do not effect anyone else.
1 in 3 women are or were in an abusive relationship.
1 in 3.
You may not have beaten me to a bloody pulp but what you did was just as bad and the effects are just as lasting. The lying, the manipulation, the crying game when you were out of control, the begging for forgiveness, the deception, the duplicitous of your actions. Everything.
I thought that being jailed AND found guilty of assault against your ex, nearly killing me LAST WEEK in the car due to your uncontrollable road rage/anger issues, getting us evicted from a local grocery store for picking a fist fight last summer, the fact that you’ve lost friends and burned relationships all because you are so out of fucking control would be the wake-up call. Clearly, I was wrong.
You. Do. Not. Get. It.
You are out of fucking control and you need some serious fucking help. Moving ~200 miles away and burning your bridges with me is not going to solve your fucking problems.
I’m well aware that the picture painted from you to your friends, family and anyone else is that I am the woman scorned. I am the manipulative, duplicitous hussy who was after your money (hahahahahaha. That’s a good one.), who treated you badly and connived and manipulated my way into your heart and your family. I know this. I know how this will run. And I also know that I cannot warn any future women you date, that I cannot tell them your history and that I can’t, by the act of sisterhood, convince people to string you from your fucking balls and remove your penis.
It’s unfortunate, but, I can’t.
You fucked up. You fucked up so goddamn hard and so fucking often with me that I cannot imagine, in a million fucking years, how I could ever let you back into my life again. I’m sure one day I’ll find forgiveness, towards you, but you sir are to never darken my doorstep again. Ever.
I thought I had worked on forgiving you, but, clearly with the rage that I feel towards you right now that isn’t happening anytime soon.
You cannot make it with “anyone,” because you cannot make it with yourself.
I’ve deliberately removed your name from this post, after thinking long and hard, because I really want to come out of this with my dignity and grace intact. I am me, you almost sucked me dry, but you didn’t. But everyone knows who I’m talking about. And I have no fucking qualms about airing your dirty little secrets because well, I didn’t name YOU did I? Because clearly, I could be talking about anyone. And you can’t get me for slander or libel because your arrest record is public record and I have either character witnesses or surprise, surprise, records culled from public places where other acts of violence took place. Since your name is not mentioned here, you would have to prove beyond all shadow of doubt that I am naming you specifically (which I’m not) and that I’m harming you professionally or personally in some way that detracts from professional or personal dealings.
And the $500 (for grad school apps and the such) I owe you? You’ll be getting that, as I promised as I would, when the disbursement kicks in a month or two. And I’m doing that so that my conscience is clear, that I followed through with my promise and I am not beholden to you anymore for ANY. THING.
For almost 2 years I lived in a smoke screen, lying to people about how “happy” I was with you, because clearly I did not know any better and that I truly “loved” you and this was just a blip! I can make him happy, I can make him overcome his demons, my love will be shining through! Fuck. That. I’m no longer to going to lie, use subterfuge, and deceit to cover YOUR problems and issues which became MY problems and issues. And I have to come to terms with the fact that I was in an abusive relationship that I will be cursing your fucking name when I start seeking therapy at battered womens crisis center. Thank you, for that. I’m sure I’ll really fucking enjoy it.
You are not a “good” man underneath.
Your family, knowing your problems (because OH! They know! He once was violent towards me AND his parents! How lovely was that!), shied you from reality of your situation and cover your tracks with money and false promises.
I do not love you anymore. (Man, that was easy.)
I no longer believe in you.
I do not support you.
May your “soul” rot in fucking everlasting hell, you motherfucking asshole.
It’s finished.
P.S. And I don’t know when you’ll read this, it may be three hours, three weeks, three months or hell, even three years. But I’m totally okay with that, because it means I no longer have to actually deal with YOU because since clearly you did not listen to me the first time, all those months ago when I wrote something nearly similar, to get you to even CONSIDER your complete fucktardness, then airing everything in public? I’m so totally okay with that. You have no fucking idea. I am no longer protecting you. You can kiss my luscious ass goodbye.

Reviews: Books: Break, break of dawn

I’m taking advantage of the “post in the future” feature on WordPress. When this posts at 12:01 A.M. on August 2, I’ll be at $corporate_bookstore flinging copies of the fourth and (hopefully) final book of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series into the (overly) eager hands of her “fans.” And I use that term loosely.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, Meyer’s series is being touted to become “the next Harry Potter.” Where as in HP you had this fantastical world that was built upon mythology, legend, and folklore that essentially breaks down to good versus evil, in Twilight, it is a convoluted twist on the trusty Romeo and Juliet story, and like HP, is made contemporary. Other than the plot and storylines being radically different, there are also two very important slight differences between HP and Twilight: Twilight has enough sexual tensions, longing, desire and drama to cater to every 15 year old teenage girl’s inner sanctum in their heart of hearts (HP has the teenage angst of first love in the later books but it’s damned near chaste and virginal compared to the apparent “searing” heat in Twilight) and secondly, Twilight is so poorly written that it makes HP look like high brow literature.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
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Material World: Well, whores will have their trinkets

The poster to your left arrived on my doorstep today, a gift from Justin who saw it online and knew that I “had to have it.” What makes this poster even more special is that the online print run was severely limited due to the production of the poster was specifically for an event (now passed) and as an autograph tool. My copy is currently still pristinely rolled up in its tube and I’m barely containing myself from fondling it.
Later, when I called Justin to thank him for this unexpected gift, we got to talking about my upcoming move to east side of the state and his plans to move to Chicago sometime in the next few years; “When the market bottoms out,” he says. One thing we discussed was the framing and placement of the poster, primarily noting that he did not bother to get one for himself and secondly, that he’s not a print kind of guy. Which brought the discussion over nesting and when one does and doesn’t nest. Our answers seemed to be in unison that in our current locations, our walls are devoid of anything personal. I, personally, have a stack of prints sitting in storage and now two other prints (the Spaced poster and a James Bond poster I bought while I was in the U.K.) that are still in their tubes, waiting to be aired in all their glory. And come to think of it, I have a lot of prints that I’ve gathered in my travels that still have not seen the light of day.
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Meijering at night.

Growing up, my mother installed a strange power relationship with food into our heads. I’ve never quite figured out where her ideas came from but essentially her idea was that less food in the house the better. Let me explain further: She would sometimes “forget” to go grocery shopping and or she would buy a few packages of hamburger, American cheese slices, saltines, and popcorn. For a family of four with eating habits for a family of six.
We’re large people and a bit on the tall side (I hover near 6′, Mumsy at 5’10” and brother at 7′. My now-ex step-father is about 6’1″.) While my mother is now borderline morbidly obese, my brother and I are just plain chubbeh. We could stand to lose a few pounds, but, we’re both fairly active (then and now) and are not sit at home stuffing our faces type people. We do, however, have large appetites.
It wasn’t that we were poor, Mumsy made a really good living as a home health care nurse (let’s just say, she neared six figures by the late ’90s in Michigan) and she certainly could afford to feed us, but, without fail, every week she would go grocery shopping and bring home the exact same items:
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It's a nice day for a white wedding.

I am currently getting ready to leave to drive to A2 for Erika’s wedding. 006 is going to be my date and we’re also going to be looking around A2 and Ypsilanti for apartments for me on Sunday. I’ll be home sometime Sunday afternoon, in which the new season of Mad Men begins. I’m so terribly excited about the new season, you have NO idea. 😉
Consequently, you can follow me on Twitter as we dance and drink the night away.

Smokers outside the hospital doors

I want to point out that as I was leaving the hospital Tuesday, there WERE smokers outside the doors. I was doubly amused by this as signs are posted all over the place declaring that the hospital is a “smoke-free campus.” Yet, no more than 100 yards from the main entrance, a small island had been set up with lounge chairs and one of those giant smokeless ashtrays. Priceless.
Mumsy has a long history of medical ailments that range from suicide attempts to diabetes to having cancer of the vulva (and beating it) to neuropathy in her legs that severely restrict her movements. (And there is, of course, more ailments and maladies afoot.) She is (or was) in so much pain with her arthritis that she could, literally, only get from her bed to her chair in the living room and back again. She would get up for food stuff and bathroom breaks, but anything beyond that was taxing and painful. It got to the point that any care she could get into the house (therapist, hairdresser, doctors); she did over seeing them in their office.
Then she decided she wanted to have her left hip replaced.
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