So I have this nifty plugin installed in WordPress that automatically filters comment spam from the blog. Honestly, I get more comment spam than actual comments - and that’s sort of OK and expected. This isn’t Dooce (as in, not crazily popular - or at all) and I’m well aware of that.

The comment spam I get is pretty entertaining. Today’s selection was “Shakira porn shakira hips don’t lie naked porn video.” Please. At least keep it current. Or marginally modern. (Hey - let me drop some really hip and timely references to Paris & Nicole fighting or to the whole file sharing/Napster thing so I can be equally on the ball!!)

I had a shitty-ass day. Non-stop crappy nonsense that added up (along with hormonal ickiness and such) to major stress and me sitting in my car when I got off the train, resting my head on the steering wheel, breathing deeply and trying not to cry out of sheer frustration that the day was not yet over. But then I got home, ate some leftovers, and baked some brownies (Ghirardelli, from a mix) and had a hot brownie and mint chocolate chip ice cream sundae. All better.

Also nice was opening up my email to see a request from an academic who’s making a documentary and requested permission to use some of my photos of the Schuylkill River in Philly (which he found on Flickr) in the documentary. No money, of course, but photo credit and a copy of the DVD if the photos are used in the film. That’s pretty cool. I’ll take it.

And now it’s late and I should be getting to bed. The stress tension in my shoulders and neck never quite went away, so I’m going to have a rough time of it tomorrow morning.

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