I need to get my long post done. Just done already. It’s still sitting as a draft. I’ve been busy, though, in good ways.

Here’s a medium-sized post.

I’m reading Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino because Salman Rushdie recommended it. Yes. I caught the tail end of the segment on NPR and then read the piece on the “You Must Read This” page. Rushdie wrote,

I first read Cosmicomics in my early 20s, and it’s a book I’ve gone back to again and again. It is possibly the most enjoyable story collection ever written, a book that will frequently make you laugh out loud at its mischievous mastery, capricious ingenuity and nerve.

Mischievous mastery? Capricious ingenuity? Sign. Me. Up. So far, so good. I started reading it way too late last night so I was unable to read too much, and I was cheated out of my morning reading time on the train because the train never arrived (and yes, I know it was Columbus Day, but my train line runs on every holiday other than Thanksgiving, Christmas, the 4th of July and Memorial Day or something). But I went for a run already, had some food and I’m in for the night — so bed, a book and some tea sound perfect.

Also, one of my more interesting Netflix selections arrived and I started watching it - again, too late in the evening to be able to focus before nodding off. This time, it’s a documentary called Zoo. I’ll state outright that I’m not very squeamish about the sort of fringe elements of culture or the darker side of humanity. I’m rather fascinated. One of my favorite books is Lolita (happy 50th anniversary, btw!) and I’m a big old fan of Ian McEwan, who writes beautifully and explores topics such as incest (The Cement Garden), suicide pacts (Amsterdam) and S&M (The Comfort of Strangers) in his delicate prose.

According to the summary on Wikipedia, Zoo is “a documentary on the life and death of Kenneth Pinyan, a Seattle area man who died unusually after engaging in sex with a horse.” Zoo is short for zoophile - a person with unusually strong fondness for, attraction to or romantic interest in animals. This is different from bestiality in that bestiality involves a sexual act between human and animal; zoophilia is the interest or attraction to animals. There’s a line to cross, apparently.

Anyway - as far as documentaries go, the first 20 minutes or so looked promising and I will finish watching it in the next few days. It was quite the hit at Sundance in 2007. After that, I have the documentary about suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge called, appropriately enough, The Bridge.

And finally, it struck me this morning that Santogold has taken a good dose of inspiration from Siouxsie Sioux. This is not a bad thing, but it just hit me on the drive in to work this morning. Submitted for your comparison, “Red Light” from Ms. Siouxsie Sioux and “My Superman” from Ms. Santi White.

Red Light

My Superman

This seems to be happening a lot lately - I’m getting tired far more quickly, far more intensely and far more frequently. It’s stress; I know this. I can feel it.

I tried to engage in some retail therapy tonight with a friend from work. Normally, I can find something at Century 21 to scratch that itch. Tonight? Nothing. I tried on some fall boots, some dresses, browsed expensive handbags - and nothing smiled at me devilishly, saying, “You know you want me… take me home tonight. I don’t want to let you go ’til you see the light.” (Yes, that’s Eddie Money. What of it??).

However, I did find boots that I want, but I’ll have to wait until they hit stores later this month. I’ll need to try them on since Shorty McShortersons gals like me who have a bit’o'meat on their bones (and/or well developed calf muscles) have been known to run into problems with tall boots. There’s a whole issue with the boots being designed for much taller, willowy lasses. Those lasses usually have plenty of wiggle room all around their calves in tall boots because the widest part of their leg is at the top of the boot; for me, being short-legged, the widest part of my calf is much lower down the boot (say, near a tall person’s ANKLE) and makes it nearly impossible to find ones that will zip up over that part of my leg.

That said, I remain hopeful that I will try on the new Angora boots from Born and find them to be PERFECT.

And hope springs eternal. Just like my hope that I’ll find a suitable apartment in a non-ghetto area within my price range, ideally on the lower end so I’m not spending 50% of my monthly income on rent. 50% already goes to paying off school loans and credit card debt and car insurance and car payments and other sundry expenses like gas and visits to the doctor and PSE&G bills and the occasional mad dash to the British food store. So, if I want to have money for, I don’t know, food and toilet paper, I sort of have to find something on that lower end.

Since I haven’t been providing high quality narrative posts or commentary lately (or in the last few years, depending on your tastes) here’s a song. Perhaps it’s a bit “twee”, but I love the harmonies. It brings me right back to high school choir and madrigal singing ensemble.

It’s called “Chicago” by Lucy Wainwright Roche (yes - her half-siblings are Martha Wainwright and Rufus Wainwright):

And, OK. Here’s another treat. Speaking of harmonies, here’s a song called “Melody Day” by Caribou.

For quite some time, it’s bothered me that I didn’t know the actual ending of that aphorism. I like to think of myself as a culturally literate person (English and psych majors: please enjoy unpacking that one), so this was especially annoying.

So I used the magic of the internets and looked it up. The full thing is:

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Of course. Of course! I can see now why we’ve truncated it thus - a) we’re inherently lazy and b) beggars are so passé.

Why am I even talking about this? I was thinking about how I wish it was the weekend already. And about my wishes and hopes for the weekend. I know I will have a good time, but I also hope to get some good pictures. My ultimate wish is to get a decent photo of myself. This photo of me with a cocktail umbrella behind my ear (from the one and only drink I had that night) isn’t the most “professional” thing to have up on Facebook. My primary contacts (and reason for joining) are work-related, so there won’t be “eva gone wild” photos coming any time soon.

Also, they don’t exist. Not only because I don’t allow photography (much like the Louvre and other great cultural centers) but because I don’t go wild. If I get a second drink, that’s a lot.

NOTEWORTHY: My friend Sara (coincidentally, the friend with whom I will be spending the weekend) has another review up on PopMatters, yo. Check it - she saw Earlimart perform and wrote about it. You can read it. And should.

Not as noteworthy: I’m watching Akira because while I’ve seen it before, I couldn’t remember a thing about it when it came up in conversation last week. I’ll probably fall asleep 20 minutes into it just by virtue of being in my own bed again, but I can hang onto it for a bit. I am sending back two Netflix tomorrow, so that means I’ll have two fresh ones heading my way shortly. Tasty fresh Netflix.

Fleet Foxes will be playing in NYC at Webster Hall on October 5th. That show is already sold out. Here’s hoping they add another date in NYC or Philly around then.  The 5th was iffy anyway since it’s a friend’s birthday and I don’t know what will be going on.

But damn, would I love to see these kids live:

And the song”English House” in pure audio format:

My friend Sara wrote a review of Siren Festival and it’s up on PopMatters, with a little gallery of my photos from Siren. For which I got a photo credit! It’s very exciting. We were emailing about it way early this morning and it started my day off juuuuust right.

It’s especially nice because it’s Sara’s piece and I like it. She’s able to write about music without sounding like a 12-year with a crappy thesaurus (which is my impression of my ability to write reviews of just about anything…)

I just realized that might sound like a back-handed compliment. The point is that I like her writing style. She wrote another piece reviewing the Grand Archives playing at Johnny Brenda’s in Philly (where she tells me I must go sometime to see a show - and I intend to. It’s just a matter of finding a friggin’ weekend where I’m not scrambling to play catch-up with the stuff I didn’t get to do during the week. Ugh!). Sara and her friend Kaleb also have a great blog — ASYNDETON — on Tumblr (link also on my blogroll).

It’s a great name for a blog.

Why?

Because.

Here’s a definition of asyndeton: “a stylistic scheme in which conjunctions are deliberately omitted from a series of related clauses. Examples are veni, vidi, vici and its English translation ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Its use can have the effect of speeding up the rhythm of a passage and making a single idea more memorable.”

And reading that phrase brings this song to mind. It’s absolutely grown on me. I like to turn this shiz up in the car and drive around like a moron, slapping my hand back and forth on the steering wheel.

Veni Vidi Vici -Black Lips

For the last four days, I’ve had the same song stuck in my head. It’s by these guys, right here.

That guy, Brandon Summers… and this guy - Benjamin Weikel - playing Dynamic Drummer Boy:

Together… they are… The Helio Sequence!

And here’s the song that’s been lodged in my head for the last 96 hours - “Can’t Say No” by The Helio Sequence.

The “making of” video…

…for this music video for one of my favorite Radiohead songs off of In Rainbows.

From Mother Jones:

“On the haunting “House of Cards” from last year’s In Rainbows, Thom Yorke seemed to exhort a lover to let her old life dissolve and “get swept under” with him; exploring this theme of dissolution by pointing lasers at a suburban party and using computers to reconstruct the reflected data into a surreal, pointillist 3-D image of the scene may seem a bit on the elaborate side, but remember, this is Radiohead we’re talking about.”

Good fun from The Black Ghosts

I ran today. Not a crazily impressive distance or speed, but it was good for me. I was proud. And sweaty.

I climbed today. Again, not crazily impressive difficulty or anything, but I did better than last time and that was important to me.

Now I am tired, but feeling good about what I accomplished. Yay, physical activity!

I’ve always been very good about keeping my brain from turning to mush: getting new (purely intellectual) hobbies, learning new things, reading books, watching films, etc. But I haven’t been at all concerned with keeping the other physical aspects of me from turning to mush until fairly recently. It’s exciting and new… like The Love Boat theme song (RIP, Aaron Spelling - you gave us that, too).

In the “no pudding-brain” category, though, I have excitement brewing as well. My friend Sara gave me a guitar and I’m going to pick up where I left off in September and learn to play more than the two chords I still sort of remember. I have some books, I have a few friends who play (and will help me tune the guitar) and a spiffy new chord chart I printed off last night at the suggestion of my friend LJ, who proceeded to share chord progressions. I will figure them out and be able to appreciate them eventually, but I had to give a little “whoa” and mention that my brain doesn’t think in music - or at least not yet.

My history with music is spotty. I took piano lessons with my brother when I was younger, and the teacher was kind of a bastard who criticized my short fingers and inability to play scales properly. So that sucked. Then I played the flute in late elementary and middle school. The music teacher there was also an ass who told me that I shouldn’t be playing the flute since my fingers were too short to reach the keys at the end. So I joined the choir and that was fine - was in the madrigal group, sang a duet once or twice, was in the school musical, but nothing extraordinary. It kept me musically active, but without the crap.

However, those two summabitches gave me the biggest insecurity issue about my short fingers. My fingers are short (like the rest of me) but not unnaturally so; I certainly don’t have strange puppet fingers or anything. Standard size guitars have proved a bit rough for me to play between short fingers and bum wrist, so I’m really encouraged by the fact that the guitar I got from Sara is a bit smaller than a standard guitar (just not a baby version).

It’s getting late and I have been needing copious amounts of sleep lately. I don’t know what’s up. Maybe it’s the change in the weather - the warm 80+ degree days are not something I’m used to. Neither is the sun. And it was different in California… it was that much-lauded “dry heat.”

Here, in the mid-Atlantic, we have wet heat. And it’s certainly not as sexy as it sounds in other contexts.

Perhaps I should sit down and list every single internets meme they boys from Weezer have included in this video. Damn. I shouldn’t like this, but I do.