The Afghan Whigs – A Most Unreliable Narrator

Infatuated with a lunatic and cornered by the muse

I’ll warn you, if cornered, I’ll scratch my way out of the pen
Wired, an animal
The claustrophobia begins
You think I’m scared of girls
Well maybe
But I’m not afraid of you
You want to scare me then you’ll cling to me no matter what I do
Tell you a secret
They shared a needle once or twice
I loved her, she loved me
We slept together a couple of times
You think I’m proud of this
Well maybe
But the shame you never lose
Infatuated with a lunatic and cornered by the muse
And it goes down every night
This must be what jail is really like
And I will scratch my way out of this pen, again
Lonely?
Maybe
Or maybe not
It all depends
Your ideal, your image
Your definition of a friend
If what you’re shoveling is company
Then I’d rather be alone
Resentment always goes much further than it was supposed to go
what jail is like by afghan whigs

I don’t know what has been my deal lately with Afghan Whigs, especially Greg Dulli. This is the second night in a row that I’ve been sitting here listening to various mp3s that I have spanning nearly their whole career. I felt like, to be honest, my whole life of emotion listening to their music. I felt pain, sorrow, pity, fear, love.
What was worse (or cute if you are into that sort of thing) is that on the way into work today, I was bopping along to them in the car cranked up and car dancing. I’m a wonderful car dancer BY FAR. Which brings me to this past saturday night: so there is this live band playing at my party, which is total coincidence. I won’t mention the details but in short those in my party were COMPLAINING about the loud music. Hell even paul acts like an old man when it comes to listening to music. The car stereo can’t be above x or else he pitches a fit. Home stereo is the same thing. Right now I’ve got head phones on so I can enjoy the sultry tones of that which is Greg Dulli.
It’s not really a choice of music but when I listen to tunes I want to feel like I’m either at a show, being sung to, being fucked while at the show or feel like i’m being possessed. I want to feel ALIVE when i listen to music, not this pamby ass shit that they pass for music these days. pfft on that.
let me in, i’m cold. all dressed up and no where to go.
Today was the grandiose day that I had to go to Anger Management training, and to be truthful, i thought (and expected) it to be a joke. The joke it turns out, was on me.
I hate these interpersonal training classes they give at work. For the most part, they are always taught by undereducated fuckwits who keep it boring and snoozefest. So yes, I was pleasantly suprised when we actually had someone teach the class who held a doctrate and worked in the field of mental health and has been teaching this for years! Woah. Impressive. Makes me wonder what WCOM does sometimes with its few brain cells.

white trash party

if i had a buck for every time i started mucking around with the design of TLC, I’d be a rich woman today.
I also realized that I could probably name several weeks worth of chronicles with afghan Whigs song titles and not repeat myself once.
They (Whigs) broke up earlier this year — Dulli is apparently going to be working full time on The Twilight Singers — pffft. Now we will bow our heads in silence for 60 seconds in memoriam of the Whigs’ breakup.
*crickets chirping*
moving right along, it’s been a quiet Sunday (you know, no fighting or anything) — and paul and i watched a few crappy movies on teevee while i dicked around looking stuff to do. we adopted another pug, this one is called Lili, and is Wednesday’s sister. They are paternal twins but from far away look identical. I call them the girls, and paul keeps saying when i move out, lili is going with me.
so thus begins our story.
a few weeks back, upon seeing my shrink, she and i started talking about sex, when i started opening up more about how i was feeling sexually — which is nothing. she suggested that i see her in a few weeks instead of a month and start talking about these issues at hand so that grow past them and carry one. i agreed.
last week, i took a spin in my new car up to see her, and things started pouring out. things i knew that i hadn’t discussed with anyone, let alone paul, in a very long time. i sniffed few times, i used urn charm containing my fathers ashes as a touchstone as i talked. fear. abandonment. lack of commitment. these were some of the issues concerning my and things that needed to be addressed. paul and i had tentively brought the wedding up to 5/01 instead of 9/01 and my shrink (correctly) was detecting that the closer to the wedding we got, the more put i closed up inside. which is true, I’m not going to lie about that — it’s like there should be a club for my ex boyfriends (such as in the show drew carey when all of kate’s boyfriends held a support group for her at the warsaw) to comment on my past behavior and how i have hurt/affected them in the past.
but i digress.
and i digressed a lot when i spoke to my shrink that day as well. i found myself jumping from one issue to another and yet in my mind it all made sense. here i had thought i was getting along marvelously well but inside I’ve been screaming for something (anything?) to get out.
i know a lot of it has to do with how paul and i interact with each other. a friend of mine had notated that in our office, our computers were facing away from each other — which he said seemed odd. i had obsessed about that one for sometime and brought that up to paul, when paul mentioned that it had been my idea to place our computers away from each other as i had wanted my space. which, of course, i had neglected to mention when i had spoken to said friend.
if i could spell out paul’s and i’s relationship, it would be under a lot of misunderstanding (on my part), misinterpretation and sometimes lack of an overall picture. paul wants to move forward and i want to stay here (where here is, is sometimes hard to distinguish). i used to think, when things got bad, that it was because of the boyfriend, and not something within me that had to change. but with paul, it’s different, how different i don’t know, it just is. i know that sometimes things seem to be more perfect when I’m with him and when I’m away from him i miss him like crazy. but in everyday situations, it always seems to be when i get antsy and it takes extreme events to make me realize that i love him.
which is bullshit, i should be thankful I’m with him everyday and not stirring up trouble to see his reaction.
but in all honesty, the only fault that i found with him is that sometimes his own lack of confidence in himself in the regards of us. it’s like, why torture me with the whole argument of “when you leave…” scenarios when you are just creating another wide open door for me to step through?
we wage this war on ourselves sometimes, and I’ve started working on being more calm within myself and not jumping the point when it came down to who was right or wrong in silly stupid arguments. but you know, as they say, pimpin’ ain’t easy.
x0x0x0x0x
lisa
ps: I’ve sent emails on starting a reading club on yahoo, and the response was pretty fucking overwhelming (honestly, I’m surprised that many people still WANT to read – considering the advent of the interweb and such). If you want to join us, you can find us on yahoo as the lisa chronicles book club. I’m on yahoo as modgirllisa, so shoot me an email, sign up, just have fun.
pps: what i had also forgot to mention, was a funny (to me) incident at the shrinks office. she had said to me “do you write?” when in speaking with in means about other methods of therapy, and i just gave her this level stare and she responded with something like “you don’t like to write?” and i said something like “it’s not that, i have been writing a journal on the internet since 1995 or so”. i think, in all my times with her, I’ve never spoken about things that made me happy, including writing. so with her permission, she’s on the TLC mailing list and with my permission, she can browse my archives. i love therapy 🙂

if i can move it with you

i’m a big dork.
big big dork.
i was bitching and moaning for about 2 weeks before I went to Mayumphis that I had lost my 1965 cd. Looked and looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. Went into my bedroom today to play some cd’s in my stereo. Guess what was in the cd player? And this AFTER i went and bought another copy! ARGH! well. Two copies of 1965 are always doable :).
Greg Dulli owns. What can i say?
———
The last few weeks have been emotional hell. Remember the time when I used to say that I lived for melodrama? I’m regretting that now. I am even finding myself to be participating in games i swore i wouldn’t play. It’s not about whose lying to who or whose doing what to who, it’s more like whose doing who and why. And other stuff. Peoples feelings are getting hurt left and right and the more I try to stay out of it, the more in the thick i have become in it. I find that anything I do say will tip too many people off to to many different situations that I’m in. I’ve been thinking left and right and it seems the only words that have been coming out of my mouth lately is “I won’t tell.” And it’s fucking pissing me off. ARGH!
And the irony is that it’s being told to me, the online diariest.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Sorry I find that really hilarious.
HAHAHA.
goddamn. I can’t wait for two things:
1. This week to be over.
2. To move in October.
———
Mad props go to the following people:
Shelly: She’s been ultra serious about getting her life rearranged and started a new diet. 12 pounds have been lost so far. Congrats Shell!
Jaffo: is one of the very few journals that I read. His comments are often more about slices of life according to him and often right on target about how he sees the world. He wrote an entry on “losers” and such and it was so in tune with how I felt (and mostly less bitchy, more articulate and he doesn’t ramble as much). HOWEVER, it seems to be missing from his website. I’m assuming that since NOW he’s received a lot of flack about it (so he told me) that it’s gone. Jaffo, you big skunk, put it back up there and fuck what other people say. How am I supposed to worship the ground you walk on if you act like a big dork?
———
Lets see, nothing else really going on at the moment. LWE is this week and I meet the crew from Userfriendly which proves to be exciting. I have a date with a Ufie (ya well, heh) and other fun stuff is occurring.
———
In case you haven’t heard, Halo 13 has been released by Trent and the gang. Starfuckers, Inc. rocks my socks!
x0x0x
moi

i keep coming back

on July 16th 1998, i had made the decision while at work one day to start doing an on-line journal. this wasn’t anything really new to me, other than the fact that i had been writing and posting my journals on and off for about 3 years before that. however, i never had any continuity or any real schedule — but it was time to change that.
i had been browsing the web on and off and finding similar sites and decided i could indeed write not only better but more productive than those who were doing it already.
on that day, i sat down and wrote my first entry and thusly the lisa chronicles were born.
in that year, i’ve shared a lot with those who have come here. the site initially was getting about 25 hits a day (normal for me back then when random people would find it) to over five times the traffic now. i started a counter later on that month and as you can see, nearly 15k worth of unique hits have hit my site. now i’m getting 5x the traffic along with nearly a 100 people subscribed to the mailing list as well. several hundred people eagerly await, daily, for any words or tidbits that i may dish up. sometimes i’ve been silent for a few weeks and others i’m posting several times a day.
my site has been recognized by other sites as being unique and one of a kind. and while people, in the “scene” had known about me for years via “simunye” and my exploits around the web, new people were coming and liking me for what was presented here and not for any past rumors that they may have heard. one night when i was in Memphis, mike and i were at taco bell. i had been drinking and was lollygagging around in the ‘stang, when i had commented “I will forever be known as an on-line diarist”. and then i had said it with such disdain and contempt. the next day, i got an invitation from The Unreal World to apply on being a member (and no, i haven’t heard back from them yet).
i suppose there are many worse things than being known as an on-line diariest. i could be a crackwhore, but i suppose that is beside the point. in the last year i’ve cried, bragged, loved, lost, took chances, became frustrated, just basically lived. in my own hindsight, i no longer read others journals and i no longer read my own. why? because in the past when i had become enamored of a site such as mine, it became a tossup of whether i was living my life or i was living through them. i started having memories of things i knew didn’t happen but my own involvement within that site made me think i did. Or maybe it was my split personality Sam who thought so, who knows.
Regardless, thank you.
Thank you for everything. The next year proves to be even more exciting as I’m finally getting my supple young ass off the west coast and move back east (confirmed and set for October). I love you guys, even if you are all just big big freaks.

———

My friend Dan (he’s a big freak) asked me one day to make a wav saying “You’ve got mail”. And so I did:
mmmmmmmm……you’ve got mail
mmmmmmmm……you’ve got oral
The second file was generated for Pawl, who also asked me to do the chorus to James Brown’s “Sex Machine”. That file won’t get put up.

———

I’ve been slacking, I know, however, taking a cue from several people, if you click on lisa above in the above nav bar, you’ll learn even more about me than you ever wanted to know. but it is slightly amusing.

———

Back in early July, I started a club on yahoo!. and it’s been pretty amusing. go join in the fray and sign up worship me some more — you know the usual stuff. i’m on as g0desslike. that shouldn’t surprise you.

———

and lastly, i’ve been thinking, with all the changing going on around here, the name of the site will no longer be “The Last Word: The Lisa Chronicles” but “Girl Extraordinary: The Lisa Chronicles”. And just where does the word “Girl Extraordinary” come from? Simple:
“Neglekted”
By Afghan Whigs
I know a girl, extraordinary
Suggested something, unsanitary
The rest of the words are located on the whigs site. What can I tell you, Greg Dulli is god. And that song is so me. So is “What Jail Is Like” from the album “Gentlemen”. If you are planning on getting any cds soon, I so highly recommend that one and 1965. I’ve converted so many people to Whigism. I own.

———

I will be at LinuxWorld Expo August 9-12th. I’ll be meeting a bunch of ufies as well as just hanging out. In October, I’ll be heading to the Linux Showcase in Atlanta, again hanging with Ufies. Y’all come and find me, kk?

———

And finally, in the spirit of the 1st Anniversary of The Lisa Chronicles, I was thinking of regging the domain name girlextraordinary.xxx (xxx stipulating whatever TLD i choose: com, org or net) and using that for the basis of journals instead of simunye.org. Any ideas?Thoughts?
Reason?
It’s time for a change, and while the nick Simunye will always be associated with me, it’s time for something new. hell, i need to pay for
iwubpawly.org still, but that is another story 😀
i want feedback on this 🙂

———

And I’ll leave you with these words:
What Jail Is Like
By The Afghan Whigs (of the album Gentlemen)
I’ll warn you, if cornered, I’ll scratch my out of the pen
Wired, an animal, the claustrophobia begins
You think I’m scared of girls, well maybe but i’m not afraid of you
You want to scare me then you’ll cling to me no matter what i do
Tell you a secret, they shared a needle once or twice
i loved her, she loved me, we slept together a couple of times
you think i’m proud of this, well maybe but the shame you never lose
infatuated with a lunatic and cornered by the muse
and it goes down every night
this must be what jail is really like
and i will scratch my way out of this pen
lonely? maybe or maybe not at all
depends your idea your image your definition of a friend
if what your shoveling is company then I’d rather be alone
resentment always goes much further than it was supposed to go
ich liebe dich.
ihr inneres und mein inneres immer zusammen

bedhead

that scary person to your left is me, after waking up on 6.18.99. I spent the morning paying bills by phone before heading to work. i heard it through the rumor mill that some people have a thing for sleepy femmes and bedheads.
I’m His Slave
So my copy of Afghan Whigs Congregation arrived today. Is it me, or is our mail delivery person a LITTLE too cheery? For the last few days I’ve been home when she’s delivered packages and she’s a little too giggly to be a mailman. But anyway, I’m trying to decide if I dig this cd right now or not. Admittedly, I own quite a few Whigs stuff. But not everything. The other day I was at ebay.com and saw a HUGE ass listing of Whigs stuff. I almost choked. I wanted it all. But one of my major problems is that I spend WAY too much money on-line on crap I really don’t need. But anyway, I’m digressing. So, my obsession with Greg Dulli and Afghan Whigs — where it began and where it is:
By Lisa M. Rabey, ESQ.
I remember back in 1994 or so, I was working at this high falutin junk jewelry store called Accessory Place (if you know of Claires, it was like that but more upscale). Anyway, I was in college and working there and working at Harmony House (a record sto’). And I would go clubbing at The Orbit Room, primiarly on Wednesday nights for Alternative A-X. I also went on Friday/Saturday nights to Jimmy’s, 54th Street, Sundays was at Magoo’s. But ANYWAY, I keep digressing.
So, it’s 1994, and I remember driving to work one day and hearing “Debonair” and I thought “OHHHHHHH!” obsess obsess obsess. I recall sitting at home on Sunday nights watching 120 Minutes (before it became shit. music stopped being good after 1994) and saw the video for that and Gentlemen, and was instantly in lust with Greg Dulli. But, at the time i was hella poo’ and my cd collection was less than 20.
Fast forward a few years later and it’s 1996-97. I met my friend James on-line and we got to talking and he was telling me how one of his favorite bands was Afghan Whigs — and I was like “ohh yeah — I like them.” Of course, I was only familiar with stuff from Gentlemen which was their “breakout” release. He sent me the lyrics to my curse saying they fit me to a T. He was right.
So, it’s 1998 and James moves from Florida to the Bay Area. We hook up and he tells me that the Whigs are going to be in concert. My friend Jen from work is a Whigs fan as well, so we went and checked out Greg and Co. at The Fillmore, and it was lust at first sight, lemme tell you.
we fought our way to the front and all night i sat there, drooling on James’ shoulder (he’s a short fuck) watching Greg prance around in a fedora and a boa. His lyrics are sublime and sensual, he’s got attitude, he’s funny, he’s — short. BUT HEY! that’s alright! I can deal. he’s one of the VERY few men who i would let slide by (sorta speak). I immediately bought 1965 and fell in love. really. It was then I started thinking about who i was and what i wanted from life. This was PASSION. This was DRIVE. This was AMBITION. This was HOW I WANTED TO ALWAYS FEEL.
I played the cd religiously, getting Darryl hooked on it on the morning commute. I would throw the cd in, crank it, and for the long commute sing loud and strong while caressing the steering wheel. Darryl is so lucky he is gay. I would have been mackin’ on him left and right. darryl fell in love and i got him a copy of Gentlemen and planned on burning him a copy of 1965, but somehow i’m not smart enough to figure out how to burn music on my stupid Crapintosh at work. It’s appropriately named Imhotep. hehe.
And there you have it. I’ve been buying, when I can, music left and right that they have produced. Mike told me that Greg did the vocals for the soundtrack for BackBeat and I immediately had to get that. Can’t let anything get away from me. The funny thing is, that for the single of 66 that they just recently released, they do a cover of Hole’s “Miss World”. It’s kinda funny — and sorta sucks. But I’m SOOOOOOOOOO in love with their remix of 66. It’s so damn NUMMY!
But there you have it. Jonathan wonders why I’m always quoting AW lyrics, honkyfoo thinks I’ve been hitting the crack pipe, Mike thinks i’m obsessed, James just nods his heads and smiles. Darryl just asks me to burn him more copies. And I dream of a husky voice that can shake it like THAT! and hairy bellys too, but that’s another story.
obsessions part deux
as you may have figured out, i have obsessions about things. sometimes it’s about people other times it’s about material stuff. here is a list of what’s keeping me occupied recently:

afghan whigs: (well duh)
darth maul: I know own the following darth maul crap: legos, body wash, watch, lip balm, two posters, 8 inch figurine, gimme MORE!
imhotep: the evil priest from the mummy.
SIP: i’m both katchoo and Francine. how cool is that?
Judybats: they are back together! yah! they broke up when Alan and i did — now they are back together — well sorta. jeff heiskell (the lead singer) has new backing band — but paul noe is with the nevers who i might see in nashville! how rad is that!
venti mocha fraps: buy me one and i am yours forever.
my new purse: this things rocks. i’ve been wanting something like it since I saw that insipid movie Hope Floats. And I’ve been searching high and low for it. The closest I came was various stores that carry magnetic poetry lunch boxes. And for 25 bucks it wasn’t worth it, considering how flimsy it was. So then a few weeks ago, I was out doing the girl thing, and saw at the beneFIT counter that small trunk. It was PERFECT size and perfect price too. Anytime I go somewhere that might sell something similar to it, the cashier always try’s to sell it BACK to me. I have open it up to show off all my junk because no one believes it’s my purse. 🙂
Flowers: My birthday has come and gone now but that doesn’t mean I still have stopped getting flowers. I got so many flowers at work that I started sneezing and developed some sort of hay fever action. But the flowers are damn lovely. My father, who I thought forgot my birthday, sent me a dozen roses which arrived today. he’s a week late, but, better late then never I would suppose. He even remembered how old I was. I was sort of impressed.

Cam it baby!
As we all know, I occasionally run a cam from both work and home. The home cam hasn’t been on for nearly a month and the work cam I have been very sparodic in showing. There were a few technical difficulties (mainly that i haven’t fscked with linux enough to get it going — and i’ve been dallying in winders recently) and that i’ve been bored with it, but it came back up due to recent requests.
so guess who went and got a cam (not, by any means, and easy task for this person to do)?
last night i spent about 30 minutes attempting to tech support via phone to get it running — when it finally did it was some weird geeky strange virtual date. i showed them my crib, they should me theirs. i got silly and started showing body parts (this is my belly button — this is my knee). i stopped before i ended up disrobing on cam. NOT HAPPENING BUD! lemme tell you. showed ’em my RAD JudyBats posters and my kick butt flocked Darth Maul poster (they want — but I don’t give it up that easy). It was, a lot of fun. About five hours later, we called it a night and respectively went to bed — separated by a few thousand miles of dirt.

NP: Catherine Wheel – Black Metallic — from Ferment.
This damn song always makes me cry.

love is the answer (i’m gonna voodoo u)
recently, there has been a rash of lisa-fanatics. yeah sure, people like my stuff — but this is different, this is like, people who want to DATE me and shit.
and frankly my dears, it’s scaring the shit out of me.
and it’s not like some piece of email radomly sent my way (ie: “Lisa I must have you — it must be so.”) — it’s more like, REAL PEOPLE TELLING ME that they like like me. And it’s always frightened me, especially when it’s not returned back. i appreciate that you think i’m a crazykindajazzy chyk and stuff — but, please, i’m not interested.
i always seem to be everyone’s favorite ex-girlfriend (read EX) but i’m telling you, you don’t want me. i’m neurotic, manic depressive, megalomaniac, obsessive, anal retentive, bitchy, and i have ISSUES MATTERS AND CONCERNS! i’m a handful. i’m NOT worth the effort or the investment for a relationship. i’ll only break your heart because i will never be what you want me to be or i’ll be too much for you to handle. i’ll disappoint you, trust me. i’ve been down this road TOO MANY TIMES. and the other problem is if i did like you and i invest a lot into you, you’ll end up crashing on me. and i won’t do that again. EVER.
so, please, i won’t make you happy — trust me on this. just go find someone more your speed that will love you for you, because i’m not that girl. i’ve got an ex-bf i live that is driving me mad as it is, i don’t need more people to complicate my life.
the end.
x0x0x0x0x,
moi