Strange
Thought I knew you well
Thought I had read the sky
Thought I had read a change
in your eyes
so strange
Woke up to a world
that I am not a part
except when I can play
its stranger
After all
what were you really
looking for
and I wonder
when will I learn
Blue isn't red
everybody knows this
and I wonder
when will I learn
when will I learn
guess I was in Deeper than
I thought I was
if I have enough love
for the both of us
"just stay" you say
"we'll build a nest"
so I left my Life
Tried on your friends
Tried on your opinions
So when the Bridges froze
and you did not come home
I put our snowflake under a microscope
After all
what was I really
looking for
and I wonder
when will I learn
Maybe my wish knew better
than I did
and I wonder
when will I learn
when will I learn
guess I was in Deeper than
I thought I was
if I have enough love
for the both of us
so strange
now I'm finally in
the Party has begun
it's not like I can't
feel you still
but strange
what I will leave behind
you call me one more time
but now I must be leaving
—Tori Amos / Strange
I love this song. It's so clear.
April 17, 2008
April 16, 2008
Because there is nothing any sadder than losing yourself in love.
Leaves were falling, just like embers,
In colors red and gold, they set us on fire
Burning just like moonbeams in our eyes.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
Now I'm guilty of something...
I hope you never do
Because there is nothing
Any sadder than losing yourself in love.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
And then you've ask me... just to leave you
To set out on my own
And get what I needed.
You want me to find what I've already had.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
—Rowland Salley, Killing the Blues
FYI: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss do a lovely cover of this song on the Raising Sand album.
In colors red and gold, they set us on fire
Burning just like moonbeams in our eyes.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
Now I'm guilty of something...
I hope you never do
Because there is nothing
Any sadder than losing yourself in love.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
And then you've ask me... just to leave you
To set out on my own
And get what I needed.
You want me to find what I've already had.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.
—Rowland Salley, Killing the Blues
FYI: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss do a lovely cover of this song on the Raising Sand album.
April 15, 2008
This. Would. Blow.
Excerpt from New Yorker piece:
UP AND THEN DOWN: The lives of elevators.
by Nick Paumgarten
The longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999. White, a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week, working late on a special supplement, had just watched the Braves beat the Mets on a television in the office pantry. Now he wanted a cigarette. He told a colleague he’d be right back and, leaving behind his jacket, headed downstairs.
The magazine’s offices were on the forty-third floor of the McGraw-Hill Building, an unadorned tower added to Rockefeller Center in 1972. When White finished his cigarette, he returned to the lobby and, waved along by a janitor buffing the terrazzo floors, got into Car No. 30 and pressed the button marked 43. The car accelerated. It was an express elevator, with no stops below the thirty-ninth floor, and the building was deserted. But after a moment White felt a jolt. The lights went out and immediately flashed on again. And then the elevator stopped.
The control panel made a beep, and White waited a moment, expecting a voice to offer information or instructions. None came. He pressed the intercom button, but there was no response. He hit it again, and then began pacing around the elevator. After a time, he pressed the emergency button, setting off an alarm bell, mounted on the roof of the elevator car, but he could tell that its range was limited. Still, he rang it a few more times and eventually pulled the button out, so that the alarm was continuous. Some time passed, although he was not sure how much, because he had no watch or cell phone. He occupied himself with thoughts of remaining calm and decided that he’d better not do anything drastic, because, whatever the malfunction, he thought it unwise to jostle the car, and because he wanted to be (as he thought, chuckling to himself) a model trapped employee. He hoped, once someone came to get him, to appear calm and collected. He did not want to be scolded for endangering himself or harming company property. Nor did he want to be caught smoking, should the doors suddenly open, so he didn’t touch his cigarettes. He still had three, plus two Rolaids, which he worried might dehydrate him, so he left them alone. As the emergency bell rang and rang, he began to fear that it might somehow—electricity? friction? heat?—start a fire. Recently, there had been a small fire in the building, rendering the elevators unusable. The Business Week staff had walked down forty-three stories. He also began hearing unlikely oscillations in the ringing: aural hallucinations. Before long, he began to contemplate death.
Nicholas White opened the doors to urinate. As he did so, he hoped, in vain, that a trace of this violation might get the attention of someone in the lobby. He considered lighting matches and dropping them down the shaft, to attract notice, but still had the presence of mind to suspect that this might not be wise. The alarm bell kept ringing. He paced and waved at the overhead camera. He couldn’t tell whether it was night or day. To pass the time, he opened his wallet and compared an old twenty-dollar bill with a new one, and read the fine print on the back of a pair of tickets to a Jets game on Sunday afternoon, which he would never get to use. He imagined himself as Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape,” throwing the baseball against the wall.
Eventually, he lay down on the floor, intent on sleep. The carpet was like coarse AstroTurf, and was lousy with nail trimmings and other detritus. It was amazing to him how much people could shed in such a short trip. He used his shoes for a pillow and laid his wallet, unfolded, over his eyes to keep out the light. It wasn’t hot, yet he was sweating. His wallet was damp. Maybe a day had passed. He drifted in and out of sleep, awakening each time to the grim recognition that his elevator confinement had not been a dream. His thirst was overpowering. The alarm was playing more aural tricks on him, so he decided to turn it off. Then he tried doing some Morse code with it. He yelled some more. He tried to pick away at the cinder-block wall.
At a certain point, he decided to go for the escape hatch in the ceiling. He thought of Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” climbing up and down the shaft. He knew it was a dangerous and desperate thing to do, but he didn’t care. He had to get out of the elevator. The height of the handrail in the car made it hard for him to get a leg up. It took him a while to figure out and then execute the maneuver that would allow him to spring up to the escape hatch. Finally, he swung himself up. The hatch was locked.
At a certain point, Nicholas White ran out of ideas. Anger and vindictiveness took root. He began to think, They, whoever they were, shouldn’t be able to get away with this, that he deserved some compensation for the ordeal. He cast about for blame. He wondered where his colleague was, why she hadn’t been alarmed enough by his failure to return, jacketless, from smoking a cigarette to call security. Whose fault is this? he wondered. Who’s going to pay? He decided that there was no way he was going to work the following week.
And then he gave up. The time passed in a kind of degraded fever dream. On the videotape, he lies motionless for hours at a time, face down on the floor.
A voice woke him up: “Is there someone in there?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in there?”
White tried to explain; the voice in the intercom seemed to assume that he was an intruder. “Get me the fuck out of here!” White shrieked. Duly persuaded, the guard asked him if he wanted anything. White, who had been planning to join a few friends at a bar on Friday evening, asked for a beer.
Before long, an elevator-maintenance team arrived and, over the intercom, coached him through a set of maneuvers with the buttons. White asked what day it was, and, when they told him it was Sunday at 4 P.M., he was shocked. He had been trapped for forty-one hours. He felt a change in the breeze, which suggested that the elevator was moving. When he felt it slow again, he wrenched the door open, and there was the lobby. In his memory, he had to climb up onto the landing, but the video does not corroborate this. When he emerged from the elevator, he saw his friends, with a couple of security guards, and a maintenance man, waiting, with an empty chair. His friends turned to see him and were appalled at the sight; he looked like a ghost, one of them said later. The security guard handed him an open Heineken. He took one sip but found the beer repellent, like Hans Castorp with his Maria Mancini cigar. White told a guard, “Somebody could’ve died in there.”
“I know,” the guard said.
White had to go upstairs to get his jacket. He demanded that the guards come with him, and so they rode together on the service elevator, with the elevator operator. The presence of others with radios put him at ease. In his office he found that his co-worker, in a fit of pique over his disappearance, had written an angry screed, and taped it to his computer screen, for all their colleagues to see. He went home, and then headed to a bar. He woke up to a reel of phone messages and a horde of reporters colonizing his stoop. He barely left his apartment in the ensuing days, deputizing his friends to talk to reporters through a crack in the door.
White never went back to work at the magazine. Caught up in media attention (which he shunned but thrilled to), prodded by friends, and perhaps provoked by overly solicitous overtures from McGraw-Hill, White fell under the sway of renown and grievance, and then that of the legal establishment. He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go. The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.
Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another. Still, he now sees that it wasn’t so much the elevator that changed him as his reaction to it. He has come to terms with the trauma of the experience but not with his decision to pursue a lawsuit instead of returning to work. If anything, it prolonged the entrapment. He won’t blame the elevator.
UP AND THEN DOWN: The lives of elevators.
by Nick Paumgarten
The longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999. White, a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week, working late on a special supplement, had just watched the Braves beat the Mets on a television in the office pantry. Now he wanted a cigarette. He told a colleague he’d be right back and, leaving behind his jacket, headed downstairs.
The magazine’s offices were on the forty-third floor of the McGraw-Hill Building, an unadorned tower added to Rockefeller Center in 1972. When White finished his cigarette, he returned to the lobby and, waved along by a janitor buffing the terrazzo floors, got into Car No. 30 and pressed the button marked 43. The car accelerated. It was an express elevator, with no stops below the thirty-ninth floor, and the building was deserted. But after a moment White felt a jolt. The lights went out and immediately flashed on again. And then the elevator stopped.
The control panel made a beep, and White waited a moment, expecting a voice to offer information or instructions. None came. He pressed the intercom button, but there was no response. He hit it again, and then began pacing around the elevator. After a time, he pressed the emergency button, setting off an alarm bell, mounted on the roof of the elevator car, but he could tell that its range was limited. Still, he rang it a few more times and eventually pulled the button out, so that the alarm was continuous. Some time passed, although he was not sure how much, because he had no watch or cell phone. He occupied himself with thoughts of remaining calm and decided that he’d better not do anything drastic, because, whatever the malfunction, he thought it unwise to jostle the car, and because he wanted to be (as he thought, chuckling to himself) a model trapped employee. He hoped, once someone came to get him, to appear calm and collected. He did not want to be scolded for endangering himself or harming company property. Nor did he want to be caught smoking, should the doors suddenly open, so he didn’t touch his cigarettes. He still had three, plus two Rolaids, which he worried might dehydrate him, so he left them alone. As the emergency bell rang and rang, he began to fear that it might somehow—electricity? friction? heat?—start a fire. Recently, there had been a small fire in the building, rendering the elevators unusable. The Business Week staff had walked down forty-three stories. He also began hearing unlikely oscillations in the ringing: aural hallucinations. Before long, he began to contemplate death.
Nicholas White opened the doors to urinate. As he did so, he hoped, in vain, that a trace of this violation might get the attention of someone in the lobby. He considered lighting matches and dropping them down the shaft, to attract notice, but still had the presence of mind to suspect that this might not be wise. The alarm bell kept ringing. He paced and waved at the overhead camera. He couldn’t tell whether it was night or day. To pass the time, he opened his wallet and compared an old twenty-dollar bill with a new one, and read the fine print on the back of a pair of tickets to a Jets game on Sunday afternoon, which he would never get to use. He imagined himself as Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape,” throwing the baseball against the wall.
Eventually, he lay down on the floor, intent on sleep. The carpet was like coarse AstroTurf, and was lousy with nail trimmings and other detritus. It was amazing to him how much people could shed in such a short trip. He used his shoes for a pillow and laid his wallet, unfolded, over his eyes to keep out the light. It wasn’t hot, yet he was sweating. His wallet was damp. Maybe a day had passed. He drifted in and out of sleep, awakening each time to the grim recognition that his elevator confinement had not been a dream. His thirst was overpowering. The alarm was playing more aural tricks on him, so he decided to turn it off. Then he tried doing some Morse code with it. He yelled some more. He tried to pick away at the cinder-block wall.
At a certain point, he decided to go for the escape hatch in the ceiling. He thought of Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” climbing up and down the shaft. He knew it was a dangerous and desperate thing to do, but he didn’t care. He had to get out of the elevator. The height of the handrail in the car made it hard for him to get a leg up. It took him a while to figure out and then execute the maneuver that would allow him to spring up to the escape hatch. Finally, he swung himself up. The hatch was locked.
At a certain point, Nicholas White ran out of ideas. Anger and vindictiveness took root. He began to think, They, whoever they were, shouldn’t be able to get away with this, that he deserved some compensation for the ordeal. He cast about for blame. He wondered where his colleague was, why she hadn’t been alarmed enough by his failure to return, jacketless, from smoking a cigarette to call security. Whose fault is this? he wondered. Who’s going to pay? He decided that there was no way he was going to work the following week.
And then he gave up. The time passed in a kind of degraded fever dream. On the videotape, he lies motionless for hours at a time, face down on the floor.
A voice woke him up: “Is there someone in there?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in there?”
White tried to explain; the voice in the intercom seemed to assume that he was an intruder. “Get me the fuck out of here!” White shrieked. Duly persuaded, the guard asked him if he wanted anything. White, who had been planning to join a few friends at a bar on Friday evening, asked for a beer.
Before long, an elevator-maintenance team arrived and, over the intercom, coached him through a set of maneuvers with the buttons. White asked what day it was, and, when they told him it was Sunday at 4 P.M., he was shocked. He had been trapped for forty-one hours. He felt a change in the breeze, which suggested that the elevator was moving. When he felt it slow again, he wrenched the door open, and there was the lobby. In his memory, he had to climb up onto the landing, but the video does not corroborate this. When he emerged from the elevator, he saw his friends, with a couple of security guards, and a maintenance man, waiting, with an empty chair. His friends turned to see him and were appalled at the sight; he looked like a ghost, one of them said later. The security guard handed him an open Heineken. He took one sip but found the beer repellent, like Hans Castorp with his Maria Mancini cigar. White told a guard, “Somebody could’ve died in there.”
“I know,” the guard said.
White had to go upstairs to get his jacket. He demanded that the guards come with him, and so they rode together on the service elevator, with the elevator operator. The presence of others with radios put him at ease. In his office he found that his co-worker, in a fit of pique over his disappearance, had written an angry screed, and taped it to his computer screen, for all their colleagues to see. He went home, and then headed to a bar. He woke up to a reel of phone messages and a horde of reporters colonizing his stoop. He barely left his apartment in the ensuing days, deputizing his friends to talk to reporters through a crack in the door.
White never went back to work at the magazine. Caught up in media attention (which he shunned but thrilled to), prodded by friends, and perhaps provoked by overly solicitous overtures from McGraw-Hill, White fell under the sway of renown and grievance, and then that of the legal establishment. He got a lawyer, and came to believe that returning to work might signal a degree of mental fitness detrimental to litigation. Instead, he spent eight weeks in Anguilla. Eventually, Business Week had to let him go. The lawsuit he filed, for twenty-five million dollars, against the building’s management and the elevator-maintenance company, took four years. They settled for an amount that White is not allowed to disclose, but he will not contest that it was a low number, hardly six figures. He never learned why the elevator stopped; there was talk of a power dip, but nothing definite. Meanwhile, White no longer had his job, which he’d held for fifteen years, and lost all contact with his former colleagues. He lost his apartment, spent all his money, and searched, mostly in vain, for paying work. He is currently unemployed.
Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another. Still, he now sees that it wasn’t so much the elevator that changed him as his reaction to it. He has come to terms with the trauma of the experience but not with his decision to pursue a lawsuit instead of returning to work. If anything, it prolonged the entrapment. He won’t blame the elevator.
April 10, 2008
Tonight! In concert! 7:30! Yay!
Such a crime
I don’t remember being taken
This love was meant for
Wandering eyes and fakin’
So hot the way you looking
And when he’s on it, man he’s running and he’s booking
Didn’t know what to think in the beginning
But you got me so wet
And then you left me swimming
Keep it coming with the love I can’t resist
I’m so tired but don’t you dare quit
Cause it’s a lie, it’s a crime and it’s just something
That I can’t deny but
You know it looks so good from the outside
It’s a mistake that I’m willing to make
And a promise that I just might break but
Gotta find out how much my heart can take
From the moment I met you
I knew this love was bound to get you
Well I know I know I know you’re weak that way
Looking out the window and it’s only the beginning
People are talking
And my ears start ringing
But I don’t care what they say
Cause they’ll never know me anyway
Cause it’s a lie, it’s a crime and it’s just something
That I can’t deny but
You know it looks so good from the outside
It’s a mistake that I’m willing to make
And a promise that I just might break
Gotta find out how much my heart can take
And I know what he wants
And I know what he needs
I got the type of love
That’s gonna bring you right down to your knees
Bring you right down to your knees
I’m begging you oh please
I want to be the lover
For your cover
How could you deny
This love so great
Love so grand
If you don’t understand
That this love will take you make you
It’ll mess you maybe break you
But it’ll leave you stronger in the end
And I guess it all depends
Cause it’s a lie, it’s a crime, and it’s just something that I can’t deny
You know it looks so good from the outside
It’s a mistake that I’m willing to make
And a promise that I just might break but
Gotta find out how much my heart can take
Now I’m beggin ya please . . .
—Tristan Prettyman / Please
April 9, 2008
April 8, 2008
Your laughter's still ringing in my ears
I drink good coffee every morning
Comes from a place that's far away
And when I'm done I feel like talking
Without you here there is less to say
I don't want you thinking I'm unhappy
What is closer to the truth
That if I lived till I was 102
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
I'm no longer moved to drink strong whisky
'Cause I shook the hand of time and I knew
That if I lived till I could no longer climb my stairs
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
Your face it dances and it haunts me
Your laughter's still ringing in my ears
I still find pieces of your presence here
Even after all these years
But I don't want you thinking I don't get asked to dinner
'Cause I'm here to say that I sometimes do
Even though I may soon feel the touch of love
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
If I lived till I was 102
I just don't think I'll ever get over you
—Colin Hay / I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You
Adore. This. Song.
April 7, 2008
Dammit.
You know how music has the ability to take you back in time? You know how you can mark certain moments, situations, period of times with a song, musician, album?
Well, fuck fuck fuckity fuck that.
So, yeah . . . that sometimes blows.
Well, fuck fuck fuckity fuck that.
So, yeah . . . that sometimes blows.
Only things worth living for are Innocence and magic, amen
Take this silver lining
Keep it in your own
Sweet head
And shine it when the night is
Burning red
Shine it in the twilight
Shine it on the cold, cold ground
Shine it till these walls
Come tumbling down
We were born with our eyes wide open
So alive with wild hope now
Can you tell me why
Time after time they drag you down
Down in the darkest deep
Fools and their madness all around
Know that the light don't sleep
Step into the silence
Take it in your own
Two hands
And scatter it like diamonds
All across these lands
Blaze it in the morning
Wear it like an iron skin
Only things worth living for are
Innocence and magic, amen
We were born with our eyes wide open
So alive with wild hope now
Can you tell me why
Time after time they drag you down
Down in the darkest deep
Fools and their madness all around
Know that the light don't sleep
We were born with our eyes wide open
So alive with wild hope now
Can you tell me why
Time after time they drag you down
Down in the talk so cheap
Fools and their madness all around
Know that the light don't sleep
Know that the light don't sleep
Time after time
They drag you down
Down in the darkness deep
Fools in their madness all around
Know that the light don't sleep
Know that the light don't sleep
—David Gray / Silver Lining
April 3, 2008
Yum in my Tum.
I'm pretty sure this isn't part of the Must-Lose-10-Pounds-By-UK-Trip BUT in it goes . . .
Muggins' Tummy = Happy Little Pudgy Camper
And I have all of my things that I shouldn't do over again
It's Monday afternoon and I'm drinking again
And I know I promised you that the Lord would be my friend
But the Lord and I don't get along so very good
He doesn't speak a word out to me
Like you promised that he would
And I'm telling you
I wish I was a better person
When the clouds roll in and the sky promises rain
You just accept the way she is and you don't even complain
Though you wish that it was sunny and the sky would stay blue
You don't accept a thing about me
And wish that I was just like you
But I'm telling you
I wish I was a better person
I don't want to work at it
It should come naturally
It shouldn't be so difficult
Should be more like honey to the bee
Well the bee has his sting and the sky has her rain
And I have all of my things that I shouldn't do over again
But if I just say the words and I look you in the eye
That I am promising you, I promise
I wish I was a better person
I don't want to work at it
It should come naturally
It shouldn't be so difficult
Should be more like honey to the bee
Well it's Monday afternoon and I'm drinking again
And I know I promised you that the Lord would be my friend
But the Lord and I don't get along so very good
He doesn't speak a word out to me
Like you promised that he would
And I'm telling you
I am telling you
I am telling you
I wish I was a better person
A better person
A better person
A better person
—Lori McKenna, Monday Afternoon
And I know I promised you that the Lord would be my friend
But the Lord and I don't get along so very good
He doesn't speak a word out to me
Like you promised that he would
And I'm telling you
I wish I was a better person
When the clouds roll in and the sky promises rain
You just accept the way she is and you don't even complain
Though you wish that it was sunny and the sky would stay blue
You don't accept a thing about me
And wish that I was just like you
But I'm telling you
I wish I was a better person
I don't want to work at it
It should come naturally
It shouldn't be so difficult
Should be more like honey to the bee
Well the bee has his sting and the sky has her rain
And I have all of my things that I shouldn't do over again
But if I just say the words and I look you in the eye
That I am promising you, I promise
I wish I was a better person
I don't want to work at it
It should come naturally
It shouldn't be so difficult
Should be more like honey to the bee
Well it's Monday afternoon and I'm drinking again
And I know I promised you that the Lord would be my friend
But the Lord and I don't get along so very good
He doesn't speak a word out to me
Like you promised that he would
And I'm telling you
I am telling you
I am telling you
I wish I was a better person
A better person
A better person
A better person
—Lori McKenna, Monday Afternoon
Lovely.
This is the nicest website I've seen in a long time. It's really beautifully done. I'm emailing the Webmaster and letting him/her know that they rock.
KathleenEdwards.com
KathleenEdwards.com
April 2, 2008
you were never anything but beautiful to me . . . which means i've been thinking of you all along
some crazy fucker carved a sculpture out of butter
and propped it up in the middle of the bonanza breakfast bar
and i am stuffing toast and sausage into my pockets
under a sign that says grand opening
while my dog is waiting in the car
i wake up, i check out
i fill the tank and wash the windshield clean
then i'm back out on the highway
and BANG that's when i remember my dream:
we were standing in a garden
and i had a machine that made silence
it just sucked up the whole opinionated din
and there were no people on the payroll
and there were no monkeys on our backs
and i said, show me what you look like
without skin
science chases money
and money chases its tail
and the best minds of my generation
can't make bail
but the bacteria are coming to take us down
that's my prediction
it's the answer to this culture
of the quick fix prescription
but in the garden of simple
where all of us are nameless
you were never anything but beautiful to me
they never really owned you
you just carried them around you
and then one day you put 'em down
and found your hands were free
so now it's early in the morning
at the longitude of memphis
and the sun is setting sweetly on hong kong
and the big plan is just to keep spinning
cuz the big bang is only just beginning
and sometimes it's all that we can do just to hang on
and what i meant to say is muah which means i'm thinking of ya
which means i've been thinking of you
all along
—ani difranco / garden of simple
and propped it up in the middle of the bonanza breakfast bar
and i am stuffing toast and sausage into my pockets
under a sign that says grand opening
while my dog is waiting in the car
i wake up, i check out
i fill the tank and wash the windshield clean
then i'm back out on the highway
and BANG that's when i remember my dream:
we were standing in a garden
and i had a machine that made silence
it just sucked up the whole opinionated din
and there were no people on the payroll
and there were no monkeys on our backs
and i said, show me what you look like
without skin
science chases money
and money chases its tail
and the best minds of my generation
can't make bail
but the bacteria are coming to take us down
that's my prediction
it's the answer to this culture
of the quick fix prescription
but in the garden of simple
where all of us are nameless
you were never anything but beautiful to me
they never really owned you
you just carried them around you
and then one day you put 'em down
and found your hands were free
so now it's early in the morning
at the longitude of memphis
and the sun is setting sweetly on hong kong
and the big plan is just to keep spinning
cuz the big bang is only just beginning
and sometimes it's all that we can do just to hang on
and what i meant to say is muah which means i'm thinking of ya
which means i've been thinking of you
all along
—ani difranco / garden of simple
Dumplings and beer.
I had a pretty vivid dream last night. I was with my older sister and we were at the beach. We were told a tsunami was coming. There were HUGE waves. We scrambled to leave and on the way to safer ground, Sarah insisted we stop to get:
1. Dumplings
2. Beer
3. Ice cream
4. A couple books
I was pretty worried that there wasn’t time to stop, but we did. I dropped a beer on the way out and had to run towards the waves to collect it. I grabbed it and ran back to her. We crossed a NYC street, on our way to my apartment. And we were happy and laughing.
What in the HELL does any of that mean?
(I’m pretty sure I’ve only had dumplings once in my life.)
1. Dumplings
2. Beer
3. Ice cream
4. A couple books
I was pretty worried that there wasn’t time to stop, but we did. I dropped a beer on the way out and had to run towards the waves to collect it. I grabbed it and ran back to her. We crossed a NYC street, on our way to my apartment. And we were happy and laughing.
What in the HELL does any of that mean?
(I’m pretty sure I’ve only had dumplings once in my life.)
March 31, 2008
And for a while she forgot his sins
Lejos and Mary
Lay dazed in Liula
Dreaming of tropical signs
As Lejos lay sleeping
She knelt over him weeping
Feeling the weight of his crimes
It seems he cut a man down in a Tennessee town
And he's just licking his wounds for a spell
But it won't take long for the boys to catch on
And soon he'll be running like hell
Run Lejos run
This ain't no time for that ball and chain
Run Lejos run
Climb on that pony and ride like you never done
Ride like you never done
Well their love it was long
It was gentle and strong
And for a while she forgot his sins
And she kissed him for love
She kissed him for luck
She kissed him one time for a kid
Well they came in without a warning in the hours before morning
They come-a blasting through the windows and walls
And when the smoke it did clear
somebody cried out he ain't here
Killed ourselves a woman that's all
Run Lejos run
This ain't no time for that ball and chain
Run Lejos run
Climb on that pony and ride like you never done
Ride like you never done
—Ray Lamontagne, Narrow Escape
Lay dazed in Liula
Dreaming of tropical signs
As Lejos lay sleeping
She knelt over him weeping
Feeling the weight of his crimes
It seems he cut a man down in a Tennessee town
And he's just licking his wounds for a spell
But it won't take long for the boys to catch on
And soon he'll be running like hell
Run Lejos run
This ain't no time for that ball and chain
Run Lejos run
Climb on that pony and ride like you never done
Ride like you never done
Well their love it was long
It was gentle and strong
And for a while she forgot his sins
And she kissed him for love
She kissed him for luck
She kissed him one time for a kid
Well they came in without a warning in the hours before morning
They come-a blasting through the windows and walls
And when the smoke it did clear
somebody cried out he ain't here
Killed ourselves a woman that's all
Run Lejos run
This ain't no time for that ball and chain
Run Lejos run
Climb on that pony and ride like you never done
Ride like you never done
—Ray Lamontagne, Narrow Escape
A one-person crusade.
Man, this makes me so sad.
Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at 65
Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at 65
March 28, 2008
I'm too proud to beg for your attention and your friendship and your time
And interesting sound check version:
Everything I do surrounds these pieces of my life that often change
Or maybe I've changed
Sometimes seeming happy can be self destructive even when you're sane
Or only insane
But don't bother waking me today
Here I am
I'm so young
I know I've been bitter, I've been jaded, I'm alone
Every day I'll bite my tongue
If you only knew my mind was full of razors
That cuts you like a word if only sung...
But this is my song
It is my song
Now I live every day like there will never be a last one till they're gone
And they're gone
I'm too proud to beg for your attention and your friendship and your time
So you can come and get it from now on
Here I am
I'm so young
I know I've been bitter, I've been jaded, I'm alone
Every day I'll bite my tongue
If you only knew my mind was full of razors
That cuts you like a word if only sung...
But this is my song
It is my song
And it's you
It is you
Here I am
I'm so young
I know I've been bitter, I've been jaded, I'm alone
Every day I'll bite my tongue
If you only knew my mind was full of razors
I'm not sure I can take it
I'm nothing strong to hold to
I'll wait to only hate you
My mind is full of razors
That cuts you like a word if only sung
But this is my song
—Brandi Carlile / My Song
March 27, 2008
A song for every one of us
This is the sound of one voice
One spirit, one voice
The sound of one who makes a choice
This is the sound of one voice
This is the sound of voices two
The sound of me singing with you
Helping each other to make it through
This is the sound of voices two
This is the sound of voices three
Singing together in harmony
Surrendering to the mystery
This is the sound of voices three
This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust
This is the sound of all of us
This is the sound of one voice
One people, one voice
A song for every one of us
This is the sound of one voice
This is the sound of one voice
—Wailin' Jennys / One Voice
March 26, 2008
March 20, 2008
But sometimes we forget who we got — Who they are and who they are not
Well I walked over the bridge
Into the city where I live and I saw my old landlord
Well we both said hello
There was no where else to go
Cause his rent I couldn’t afford
Well relationships change
Though I think it’s kind of strange how money makes a man grow
Ah, some people they claim if you get enough fame
You live over the rainbow
Over the rainbow
But the people on the street,
Out on buses or on feet
We all got the same blood flow
Oh in society every dollar got a deed
We all need a place that we can go and feel over the rainbow
Some times we forget what we got
And who we are and who we are not
I think we got a chance to make it right
Keep it loose
Keep it tight
Keep it tight
I’m in love with a girl who’s in love with the world
Though I can’t help but follow
Though I know someday she is bound to go away and stay over the rainbow
Got to learn how to let her go
Over the rainbow
But sometimes we forget who we got
Who they are and who they are not
There is so much more in love than black and white
Keep it loose child
You gotta keep tight
Keep it loose child
Keep it tight
Keep it tight
Keep it tight
—Amos Lee / Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight
Seriously, dude.
If you have the opportunity to run up or down one, two, or even three flights of stairs, PLEASE don't take the elevator. Seriously. ESPECIALLY if it's just one flight.
I work with some lazy pieces of shoe . . .
I work with some lazy pieces of shoe . . .
March 19, 2008
I hate hate hate hate
. . . the dentist. Hate.
Hate.
Wah.
I'm feeling very unenthusiastic about today. Got a very LATE start. Have crappy-ass dentist appointment. Must finish up a redesign for work. Don't want to go to the gym after work, but that would go against Healthy Mug 2008 Rule #2 of "Go to damn gym, Pudgy McPudgso.
Wah, again.
Hate.
Wah.
I'm feeling very unenthusiastic about today. Got a very LATE start. Have crappy-ass dentist appointment. Must finish up a redesign for work. Don't want to go to the gym after work, but that would go against Healthy Mug 2008 Rule #2 of "Go to damn gym, Pudgy McPudgso.
Wah, again.
I do not need a big house or the ability to fly
They're building up big houses
Back behind the school
Where we used to drink our beer on Friday nights
And pretend that we were lovers in your car
We can't afford to live there
So we drive on past their marble and glass
Hoping that this blue collar town of ours
Won't ever lose its balls
I was just a little girl
When your hand brushed by my hand
And I will be an old woman
Happy to have spent my whole life with one man
Behind that school we found romance
We laid in the dirt and took off our shirts
While the lucky ones would fly away
On planes to other cities, other towns
Now they're building up houses
Big enough to lose your love
Big enough to never even see
One another in the dark
One man, one town is all I need
A simple plan to guide me
Through the simple life I lead
I have seen the ocean and I have seen the sky
I do not need a big house or the ability to fly
We'll remember the summers
The crumbling town streets, running from police
And acting like we'd leave this place
The minute we ever had the chance
—Lori McKenna / One Man
Back behind the school
Where we used to drink our beer on Friday nights
And pretend that we were lovers in your car
We can't afford to live there
So we drive on past their marble and glass
Hoping that this blue collar town of ours
Won't ever lose its balls
I was just a little girl
When your hand brushed by my hand
And I will be an old woman
Happy to have spent my whole life with one man
Behind that school we found romance
We laid in the dirt and took off our shirts
While the lucky ones would fly away
On planes to other cities, other towns
Now they're building up houses
Big enough to lose your love
Big enough to never even see
One another in the dark
One man, one town is all I need
A simple plan to guide me
Through the simple life I lead
I have seen the ocean and I have seen the sky
I do not need a big house or the ability to fly
We'll remember the summers
The crumbling town streets, running from police
And acting like we'd leave this place
The minute we ever had the chance
—Lori McKenna / One Man
March 18, 2008
Pretty cool.
No idea how my Mum found this site, but it's pretty cool . . .
http://producten.hema.nl/
Anyone want to translate this for moi?
http://producten.hema.nl/
Anyone want to translate this for moi?
She’s obvious despite herself
Jodie wears a hat although it hasn’t rained for six days
She says a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront
She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance
She’s less than sure if her heart has come to stay in San Jose
And her neverborn child still haunts her now
As she speeds down the freeway
As she tries her luck with the traffic police
Out of boredom more than spite
She never finds no trouble, she tries too hard
She’s obvious despite herself
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront
She says all she needs is therapy
All you need is love is all you need
Jodie never sleeps ‘cause there are always needles in the hay
She says that a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront
As she reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance
Her heart, heart’s like crazy paving
Upside down and back to front
She says ooh, it’s so hard to love
When love was your great disappointment
Count those rattlesnakes
She says a girl needs a gun these days
On account of all the rattlesnakes
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
—Lloyd Cole / Rattlesnakes
She says a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront
She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance
She’s less than sure if her heart has come to stay in San Jose
And her neverborn child still haunts her now
As she speeds down the freeway
As she tries her luck with the traffic police
Out of boredom more than spite
She never finds no trouble, she tries too hard
She’s obvious despite herself
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront
She says all she needs is therapy
All you need is love is all you need
Jodie never sleeps ‘cause there are always needles in the hay
She says that a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On the Waterfront
As she reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance
Her heart, heart’s like crazy paving
Upside down and back to front
She says ooh, it’s so hard to love
When love was your great disappointment
Count those rattlesnakes
She says a girl needs a gun these days
On account of all the rattlesnakes
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes
—Lloyd Cole / Rattlesnakes
one two one two one two . . .
OK, so, Healthy Mug 2008 hasn't gotten off to the winning start I hoped it would. Yet, I shall persevere . . . despite the scone (the size of my head) I just stuffed down my gullet. I've brought my gym bag to work and I will see if I can remember the way there tonight.
H.M.2008 Rule #1:
Wake up earlier, in order to enjoy a healthy breakfast before leaving for work.
I hope to avoid eating cake for breakfast in the future.
H.M.2008 Rule #1:
Wake up earlier, in order to enjoy a healthy breakfast before leaving for work.
I hope to avoid eating cake for breakfast in the future.
March 17, 2008
March 14, 2008
Shadow dancing in the pouring rain
Mmmmmm mmmmmm
Ohhhh ooohhh yea
Sitting here thinking
Damn I'm getting a little older
Trying to find some piece of mind
Take the weight of the world off my shoulders
mmmm got me driving down the highway
Trying to make it through each and every day
Fade to black 'n all poverty
Take a truck and move my people down south with me
Take my ball and chain and for a ticket
On a one way trip into Georgia
Big smiles, apple pies, my people, and blue skies
Tomatoes grow where I can pick em'
On an open highway through Georgia
Green grass, tear stains, shadow dancing in the pouring rain
Sitting here looking in the mirror
Damn it's getting a little clearer
If I could paint a perfect picture
Would u dare take it wit ya, take it wit ya, take it wit ya
Picture us whistling while fishing
Picture us dancing while romancing
To a tune that belongs to me and you
My ball and chain we will all be free yea
Take my ball and chain and for a ticket
On a one way trip into Georgia
Big smiles, apple pies, my people, and blue skies
Tomatoes grow where I can pick em'
On an open highway through Georgia
Green grass, tear stains, shadow dancing in the pouring rain
We can be dancing, steady romancing
Whisteling, while we steady fishing
Yea, yeah, oooh, oooooooh
Oooooooh, yeah
Take my ball and chain and for a ticket
On a one way trip into Georgia
Big smiles, apple pies, my people, and blue skies
Tomatoes grow where I can pick em'
On an open highway through Georgia
Green grass, tear stains, shadow dancing in the pouring rain
—Anthony Hamilton, Ball And Chain
Ohhhh ooohhh yea
Sitting here thinking
Damn I'm getting a little older
Trying to find some piece of mind
Take the weight of the world off my shoulders
mmmm got me driving down the highway
Trying to make it through each and every day
Fade to black 'n all poverty
Take a truck and move my people down south with me
Take my ball and chain and for a ticket
On a one way trip into Georgia
Big smiles, apple pies, my people, and blue skies
Tomatoes grow where I can pick em'
On an open highway through Georgia
Green grass, tear stains, shadow dancing in the pouring rain
Sitting here looking in the mirror
Damn it's getting a little clearer
If I could paint a perfect picture
Would u dare take it wit ya, take it wit ya, take it wit ya
Picture us whistling while fishing
Picture us dancing while romancing
To a tune that belongs to me and you
My ball and chain we will all be free yea
Take my ball and chain and for a ticket
On a one way trip into Georgia
Big smiles, apple pies, my people, and blue skies
Tomatoes grow where I can pick em'
On an open highway through Georgia
Green grass, tear stains, shadow dancing in the pouring rain
We can be dancing, steady romancing
Whisteling, while we steady fishing
Yea, yeah, oooh, oooooooh
Oooooooh, yeah
Take my ball and chain and for a ticket
On a one way trip into Georgia
Big smiles, apple pies, my people, and blue skies
Tomatoes grow where I can pick em'
On an open highway through Georgia
Green grass, tear stains, shadow dancing in the pouring rain
—Anthony Hamilton, Ball And Chain
Dreaming.
As soon as my eyes shut the slide show begins
Yesterday is gone now and panic sets in
With a weight upon my chest
and a ghost upon my back
And the numbing sensation of everything
I lack that leaves me
Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming,
Your real world away
Only beautiful, beautiful bright eyes, lie
Only beautiful, beautiful bright eyes cry
Late morning lullaby
The first sign of morning is gray and alarming
It's so disappointing the day has come so soon
While the rest of the world greets the day and feels new
I will push it away just like I always do, I will be
Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming,
Your real world away
Only beautiful, beautiful bright eyes, lie
Only beautiful, beautiful bright eyes cry
Late morning lullaby
Late morning lullaby
I would darken my window so I can fall asleep
While the critics frown down on the hours
I keep that leave me
Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming,
Your real world away
—Brandi Carlile, Late Morning Lullaby
March 13, 2008
And complacency's a curse
I'm going to dress up tonight
And I'll look real pretty for I don't know who
I'll find my own way around this great big city
And I'm gonna sit at a bar and I'll have a drink
I'll leave you to revel in your youthful yearnings
I know you like to visit them from time to time
And like a thief I steal the words you write to her
I take them to my heart and I wish them to be mine
But this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
Well this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
You long for sweetness
Does mine make you sickly
Or maybe I no longer have the sweetness you require
There's nothing sweet about a heart so embittered
It's ugly and it's cold and tonight it's out for hire
But it ain't nothing new
But this ain't nothing
Well this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
We live through this day after day
And complacency's a curse
But you just can't escape it
And I've arrived at that place where my tolerance gave way
And I struggle to hold my head up high
But it ain't nothing new
Well this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
—The Waifs, Nothing New
And I'll look real pretty for I don't know who
I'll find my own way around this great big city
And I'm gonna sit at a bar and I'll have a drink
I'll leave you to revel in your youthful yearnings
I know you like to visit them from time to time
And like a thief I steal the words you write to her
I take them to my heart and I wish them to be mine
But this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
Well this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
You long for sweetness
Does mine make you sickly
Or maybe I no longer have the sweetness you require
There's nothing sweet about a heart so embittered
It's ugly and it's cold and tonight it's out for hire
But it ain't nothing new
But this ain't nothing
Well this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
We live through this day after day
And complacency's a curse
But you just can't escape it
And I've arrived at that place where my tolerance gave way
And I struggle to hold my head up high
But it ain't nothing new
Well this is nothing new
But it ain't nothing
—The Waifs, Nothing New
I believe in the kingdom come - Then all the colors will bleed into one
I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I'm still running
You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for...
—U2 / I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I'm still running
You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for...
—U2 / I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Good morning.
My Mum sent me this article this morning, over email. Thought I might be interested.
What the hell?
Boyfriend: Woman Lived in Bathroom
Intriguing, no?
What the hell?
Boyfriend: Woman Lived in Bathroom
Intriguing, no?
March 12, 2008
Do these people really exist?
First off . . .
Says Glamour:
Glamour Fires Male Blogger After Readers ‘Pulverize’ Him
Says Douchebag:
Fired Glamour Blogger: "I've Never Claimed to be a Saint"
Douchebag's doomed blog post
Says Chick In Need of Bigger Jacktard Detector:
"What a Fucking Idiot"
Between reading all of THAT this morning and watching the first episodes of "The Real Housewives of New York" last night, I'm certain of the following:
People are fucking nuts.
Says Glamour:
Glamour Fires Male Blogger After Readers ‘Pulverize’ Him
Says Douchebag:
Fired Glamour Blogger: "I've Never Claimed to be a Saint"
Douchebag's doomed blog post
Says Chick In Need of Bigger Jacktard Detector:
"What a Fucking Idiot"
Between reading all of THAT this morning and watching the first episodes of "The Real Housewives of New York" last night, I'm certain of the following:
People are fucking nuts.
March 11, 2008
I'll switch albums soon. Don't worry.
I want to wake up and know where I'm going
Say I'm ready
Say I'm ready
I want to go where the rivers are overflowing and
I'll be ready
I'll be ready
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
If it's love flowin' freely
I'm ready
I'm ready
If the waters can redeem me
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I want to wake up
I want to know where I'm going
I want to go where the rivers are over-flowing
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready
I'm ready . . .
—Tracy Chapman, I'm Ready
Say I'm ready
Say I'm ready
I want to go where the rivers are overflowing and
I'll be ready
I'll be ready
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
If it's love flowin' freely
I'm ready
I'm ready
If the waters can redeem me
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I want to wake up
I want to know where I'm going
I want to go where the rivers are over-flowing
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready to let the rivers wash over me
I'm ready
I'm ready . . .
—Tracy Chapman, I'm Ready
March 10, 2008
It was just a smoldering fire I mistook for a blaze
I'd heard rumors and I'd heard talk
About the trail you'd left of broken hearts
About the sea of tears too wide to cross
But a little bad press has never scared me off
So I burned a path to figure out
How to get me some of what you got
I've got a red hot heart
If the talk is true your's is the same
And we should be together
And let our passions fan love's flame
When I looked for you I almost passed you by
You were so cool and calm
I thought my friends had lied
But I thought so much reserve must make you wild inside
It was there and then that I knew
I had to get some of what you got
I've got a red hot heart
If the talk is true your's is the same
And we should be together
And let our passions fan love's flame
I thought I'd won your heart when I held you hand in mine
I thought it was true love the way we complemented each other
But my right is your wrong
And when you're right then I'm left with nothing
Your light and your heat have all been spent
Leaving only smoke and ashes
Only smoke and ashes baby
I've got a red hot heart
And your heart's as blue as the blood in your veins
I say there's fire down below
You say it's only smoke and ashes baby
I'm crying all the time
Salty stinging tears
And mourning for the past carbon-dated years
But knowing now for certain that you were always right
Because if a breeze could blow you out of my life
It's only smoke and ashes baby
Only smoke and ashes baby
I've got a red hot heart
And your heart's as blue as the blood in your veins
I say there's fire down below
You say it's only smoke and ashes baby
I was blinded by devotion
My unwavering love for you
So blinded that I thought all your lies were true
But now I know for certain since you've gone away
It was just a smoldering fire I mistook for a blaze
Only smoke and ashes baby
I've got a red hot heart
And your heart's as blue as the blood in your veins
I say there's fire down below
You say it's only smoke and ashes baby
Only smoke and ashes baby, baby ...
—Tracy Chapman,Smoke And Ashes
About the trail you'd left of broken hearts
About the sea of tears too wide to cross
But a little bad press has never scared me off
So I burned a path to figure out
How to get me some of what you got
I've got a red hot heart
If the talk is true your's is the same
And we should be together
And let our passions fan love's flame
When I looked for you I almost passed you by
You were so cool and calm
I thought my friends had lied
But I thought so much reserve must make you wild inside
It was there and then that I knew
I had to get some of what you got
I've got a red hot heart
If the talk is true your's is the same
And we should be together
And let our passions fan love's flame
I thought I'd won your heart when I held you hand in mine
I thought it was true love the way we complemented each other
But my right is your wrong
And when you're right then I'm left with nothing
Your light and your heat have all been spent
Leaving only smoke and ashes
Only smoke and ashes baby
I've got a red hot heart
And your heart's as blue as the blood in your veins
I say there's fire down below
You say it's only smoke and ashes baby
I'm crying all the time
Salty stinging tears
And mourning for the past carbon-dated years
But knowing now for certain that you were always right
Because if a breeze could blow you out of my life
It's only smoke and ashes baby
Only smoke and ashes baby
I've got a red hot heart
And your heart's as blue as the blood in your veins
I say there's fire down below
You say it's only smoke and ashes baby
I was blinded by devotion
My unwavering love for you
So blinded that I thought all your lies were true
But now I know for certain since you've gone away
It was just a smoldering fire I mistook for a blaze
Only smoke and ashes baby
I've got a red hot heart
And your heart's as blue as the blood in your veins
I say there's fire down below
You say it's only smoke and ashes baby
Only smoke and ashes baby, baby ...
—Tracy Chapman,Smoke And Ashes
Bee-u-t-ful
I'm having a Tracy Chapman moment of late. Have always loved this song.
(Wish I could have found her playing it live instead of this lame-ass picture crap that everyone seems to be posting nowadays. Ah well. You gets the points.)
(Wish I could have found her playing it live instead of this lame-ass picture crap that everyone seems to be posting nowadays. Ah well. You gets the points.)
March 6, 2008
pretty.
I miss you so much, I can't stand it
Seems like my heart, is breaking in two
My head says no but my soul demands it
Everything I do, reminds me of you
I miss you so much, in this house full of shadows
While the rain keeps pouring down, my window too
When will the pain, recede to the darkness
From whence it has come, and I'm feeling so blue
Ain't goin' down, no more to the well
Sometimes it feels like, I'm going to hell
Sometimes I'm knocking, on your front door
But I don't have nothing, to sell no more
Seems like the spirit, is pushing me onwards
I'm able to see, where I tripped and went wrong
I'll just have to guess, where my soul will find comfort
And I miss you so much, when I'm singing my song
Ain't goin down, no more to the well
And sometimes it seems, I'm going to hell
You'll find me knocking, on your front door
But I don't have nothing, to sell no more
Seems like my spirit, is pushing me onwards
til I'm able to see where, I tripped when I went wrong
I'll just have to guess, where my soul will get comfort
I miss you so much, when I'm singing my song
I miss you so much, I can't stand it
Seems like my heart is breaking in two
My head says no, but my soul demands it
And everything I do, reminds me of you
Everything I do, reminds me of you
Everything I do, reminds me of you
— Van Morrison / Reminds Me of You
Seems like my heart, is breaking in two
My head says no but my soul demands it
Everything I do, reminds me of you
I miss you so much, in this house full of shadows
While the rain keeps pouring down, my window too
When will the pain, recede to the darkness
From whence it has come, and I'm feeling so blue
Ain't goin' down, no more to the well
Sometimes it feels like, I'm going to hell
Sometimes I'm knocking, on your front door
But I don't have nothing, to sell no more
Seems like the spirit, is pushing me onwards
I'm able to see, where I tripped and went wrong
I'll just have to guess, where my soul will find comfort
And I miss you so much, when I'm singing my song
Ain't goin down, no more to the well
And sometimes it seems, I'm going to hell
You'll find me knocking, on your front door
But I don't have nothing, to sell no more
Seems like my spirit, is pushing me onwards
til I'm able to see where, I tripped when I went wrong
I'll just have to guess, where my soul will get comfort
I miss you so much, when I'm singing my song
I miss you so much, I can't stand it
Seems like my heart is breaking in two
My head says no, but my soul demands it
And everything I do, reminds me of you
Everything I do, reminds me of you
Everything I do, reminds me of you
— Van Morrison / Reminds Me of You
March 5, 2008
Obsessed. With. Song.
Well I never won you over,
I just caught you on a good day...
We were laughing in the back
of an old city taxi,
with no mention of my borrowed time,
just the glow of the whiskey
and the holiday lights.
Well there's no need to name this,
because we're just going to call it a day...
so you can run out in the front yard
and wave goodbye to the plane...
But I remember the corner,
the bar and the moment
that I came un-tethered and fell,
into that scene from my favorite movie,
yeah you know the one...
Well, I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away.
yeah I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away,
yeah I'm already gone out the door
and I stole this moment for me,
this moment for me....
Well you're no kind of contrast
to all my somber ways,
we may as well have a picnic darlin'
out in the driving, pouring rain,
but I'll just carry on,
pretend that's just how I'm inclined.
So you better grab a hold of something,
steady, steady, 'cause I'm cutting the line...
But I remember your shoulder,
your breath and the moment,
that I came un-tethered and danced,
into that dream, the one where you kiss me
and then the camera flashed...
Well, I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away.
Yeah I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away,
yeah I'm already gone out the door
and I stole this moment for me,
this moment for me, this moment for me,
indelible and bright....
—Chris Pureka / Momentary Thief
I just caught you on a good day...
We were laughing in the back
of an old city taxi,
with no mention of my borrowed time,
just the glow of the whiskey
and the holiday lights.
Well there's no need to name this,
because we're just going to call it a day...
so you can run out in the front yard
and wave goodbye to the plane...
But I remember the corner,
the bar and the moment
that I came un-tethered and fell,
into that scene from my favorite movie,
yeah you know the one...
Well, I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away.
yeah I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away,
yeah I'm already gone out the door
and I stole this moment for me,
this moment for me....
Well you're no kind of contrast
to all my somber ways,
we may as well have a picnic darlin'
out in the driving, pouring rain,
but I'll just carry on,
pretend that's just how I'm inclined.
So you better grab a hold of something,
steady, steady, 'cause I'm cutting the line...
But I remember your shoulder,
your breath and the moment,
that I came un-tethered and danced,
into that dream, the one where you kiss me
and then the camera flashed...
Well, I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away.
Yeah I'll tell you what,
I'll save you the trouble of running away,
yeah I'm already gone out the door
and I stole this moment for me,
this moment for me, this moment for me,
indelible and bright....
—Chris Pureka / Momentary Thief
Love. This. Song.
I heard you sing a rebel song,
sung it loud and all alone.
We can't afford the things you save,
we can't afford the warranty.
I see you walking in the glare
down the county road we share.
Our southern blood, my heresy,
damn that ol' confederacy.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
I'm sorry for what you have learned,
when you feel the tables turn.
To run so hard in your race,
now you find who set the pace.
The landed aristocracy
exploiting all your enmity.
All your daddies fought in vain,
leave you with the mark of Cain.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to
become you, become you.
The center holds, so they say.
It never held too well for me.
I won't stop short for common ground
that vilifies the trodden down.
The center held the bonded slave
for the sake of industry.
The center held the bloody hand
of the executioner man.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to
become you, become you.
—Indigo Girls / Become You
March 4, 2008
Words dry up and fly away with the passing of the days
Run away to the seashore it doesn't matter anymore
Doesn't matter anymore
Words dry up and fly away with the passing of the days
Eventually you just let the stone fall
I dreamed that I saw you you were down at the corner store
You were looking through magazines and you flew out the door
I was trying to wave to you but you wouldn't wave back
Now you know I understand you're with me only in the past
Only in the past
My palms are not open they're closed they're closed
My palms are not open they're closed they're closed
I dreamed that I saw you you were down at the corner store
You were looking through magazines and you flew out the door
I was trying to wave to you but you wouldn't wave back
Now you know I understand you're with me only in the past
Only in the past
Colors streak the sky we laugh and we cry
And we dance in the cool grass with the fireflies
And we dance in the cool grass sunset birds
Sweet sweet music swallow our words
You set sail and you left this town
Run away, run away, you're so far from me now
So far from me now
I dreamed that I saw you you were down at the corner store
You were looking through magazines and you flew out the door
I was trying to wave to you but you wouldn't wave back
Now you know I understand you're with me only in the past
Only in the past
—The Be Good Tanyas / Only in the Past
Will these peeps never learn?
I suppose it's time to scrap my memoir about growing up in a wholesome, suburban neighborhood with my two sisters and loving parents . . . or . . . wait . . .
Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction
Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction
March 3, 2008
The next one.
The latest CD ordered: Alabama Chicken / Sean Hayes. I've been meaning to get this one for quite some time. (Sarah: check out the help on harmonies and violin.)
Considering the amount of jigging around that I do when ALABAMA CHICKEN comes on Pandora, I'm guessing I'll be happy with the album. He's been around for quite the while but I'm a new fan. Test out his stuff, you won't be disappointed: SeanHayesMusic.com. (Check out the "listen" section.)
Considering the amount of jigging around that I do when ALABAMA CHICKEN comes on Pandora, I'm guessing I'll be happy with the album. He's been around for quite the while but I'm a new fan. Test out his stuff, you won't be disappointed: SeanHayesMusic.com. (Check out the "listen" section.)
March 1, 2008
February 27, 2008
February 20, 2008
It's been a good day.
My Dove chocolate wrapper's bit of wisdom is to "Go to your special place."
My bit of wisdom?
Blow me.
My bit of wisdom?
Blow me.
February 14, 2008
Maybe not in the V Day spirit?
PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE NOTES
You know what I hate the most about passive aggressive emails at work? The ellipsis at the end of statements. As in: "Sorry to hear that . . ."
Oh, you're sorry, are you? Well, I'm sorry too. Sorry you're an asshole.
See? You don't have to be passive about it.
You know what I hate the most about passive aggressive emails at work? The ellipsis at the end of statements. As in: "Sorry to hear that . . ."
Oh, you're sorry, are you? Well, I'm sorry too. Sorry you're an asshole.
See? You don't have to be passive about it.
February 13, 2008
Breaking it down:
1. Mindy Smith Radio. Excellent working music. Now that I’m home, I want to go play my old Tracy Chapman CDs. (Note to self: remember to purchase old Cranberries albums – you have no idea where your cassette tapes went.)
2. I desperately need to de-clutter my life, namely my apartment (Oprah says it works wonders.) Books, clothes, etc to Housing Works, STAT -- with the exception of the “good books” (no, not bibles) that I shall try my best to sell on eBay. I’m also thinking of holding an “email” giveaway. Friends like books, no?
3. Turtlenecks = I will never purchase again. I own ONE and that’s one too many. And it’s a sweater type, lovely piece of clothing. But for the love of everything good and pure, I wanted to rip it off my neck all day. Sweet Jesus . . . Talk. About. Uncomfortable.
4. I can’t friggin’ wait to go out to my sister’s house this weekend. I miss her. I miss her child. I miss her hubby (and I’m DEFinitely sure he misses me A LOT, too). OH, and I miss Sober. My niece is talking so much now and I feel a deep need to conversate with her. Things seem to be hopping for that 3-year-old . . . as they should be. She barely has time to spit out all of her goings on before hanging up on me half the time.
5. I ALSO can’t wait to go home to Virginia NEXT weekend to see Faye, George (her new wee tot), Farrah (home from the land of the Brits), me Mam, and me Big Guy. I can’t wait to smell home.
6. Nessi: I’m going to need to squeeze your child soon.
7. Needs to go eats my Tasti now . . . it’s not going to eat itself.
2. I desperately need to de-clutter my life, namely my apartment (Oprah says it works wonders.) Books, clothes, etc to Housing Works, STAT -- with the exception of the “good books” (no, not bibles) that I shall try my best to sell on eBay. I’m also thinking of holding an “email” giveaway. Friends like books, no?
3. Turtlenecks = I will never purchase again. I own ONE and that’s one too many. And it’s a sweater type, lovely piece of clothing. But for the love of everything good and pure, I wanted to rip it off my neck all day. Sweet Jesus . . . Talk. About. Uncomfortable.
4. I can’t friggin’ wait to go out to my sister’s house this weekend. I miss her. I miss her child. I miss her hubby (and I’m DEFinitely sure he misses me A LOT, too). OH, and I miss Sober. My niece is talking so much now and I feel a deep need to conversate with her. Things seem to be hopping for that 3-year-old . . . as they should be. She barely has time to spit out all of her goings on before hanging up on me half the time.
5. I ALSO can’t wait to go home to Virginia NEXT weekend to see Faye, George (her new wee tot), Farrah (home from the land of the Brits), me Mam, and me Big Guy. I can’t wait to smell home.
6. Nessi: I’m going to need to squeeze your child soon.
7. Needs to go eats my Tasti now . . . it’s not going to eat itself.
February 6, 2008
Someday.
I think I may need to reexamine my motivations. And those hopes and dreams people are always talking about.
Oh, and I need to clean my apartment. Totally need to do that.
Oh, and I need to clean my apartment. Totally need to do that.
have you ever been bent or pulled, have you ever been played like strings?
i will lean into you
and you can be the wind
i will open up my mouth
and you can come rushing in
you can rush in so hard
and make it so i can't breathe
i breathe too much anyway
i can do that anyday
i just wish i knew who you were
i wish you'd make yourself known
probably you don't know i'm her
the woman you want to call home
i'll keep my ear to the wall
i'll keep my eye on the door
'cause i've heard all my own jokes
and they're just not funny anymore
i laugh too much anyway
i can do that anyday
have you ever been bent or pulled
have you ever been played like strings
if i could see you i could strum you
i could break you
make you sing
but i guess you can't really see the wind
it just comes in and fills the space
and everytime something moves
you think that you have seen its face
and i've always got my guitar to play
but i can do that anyday
—ani difranco / anyday
and you can be the wind
i will open up my mouth
and you can come rushing in
you can rush in so hard
and make it so i can't breathe
i breathe too much anyway
i can do that anyday
i just wish i knew who you were
i wish you'd make yourself known
probably you don't know i'm her
the woman you want to call home
i'll keep my ear to the wall
i'll keep my eye on the door
'cause i've heard all my own jokes
and they're just not funny anymore
i laugh too much anyway
i can do that anyday
have you ever been bent or pulled
have you ever been played like strings
if i could see you i could strum you
i could break you
make you sing
but i guess you can't really see the wind
it just comes in and fills the space
and everytime something moves
you think that you have seen its face
and i've always got my guitar to play
but i can do that anyday
—ani difranco / anyday
February 4, 2008
if i'm gonna go down, i'm gonna do it with style
life used to be life-like
now it's more like show biz
i wake up in the night
and i don't know where the bathroom is
and i don't know what town i'm in
or what sky i am under
and i wake up in the darkness and i
don't have the will anymore to wonder
everyone has a skeleton
and a closet to keep it in
and you're mine
every song has a you
a you that the singer sings to
and you're it this time
baby, you're it this time
when i need to wipe my face
i use the back of my hand
and i like to take up space
just because i can
and i use my dress
to wipe up my drink
i care less and less
what people think
and you are so lame
you always disappoint me
it's kinda like our running joke
but it's really not funny
i just want you to live up to
the image of you i create
i see you and i'm so unsatisfied
i see you and i dilate
so i'll walk the plank and i'll jump with a smile
if i'm gonna go down
i'm gonna do it with style
and you won't see me surrender
you won't hear me confess
'cuz you've left me with nothing
but i've worked with less
and i learn every room long enough
to make it to the door
and then i hear it click shut behind me
and every key works differently
i forget every time
and the forgetting defines me
that's what defines me
when i say you sucked my brain out
the english translation
is i am in love with you
and it is no fun
but i don't use words like love
'cuz words like that don't matter
but don't look so offended
you know, you should be flattered
i wake up in the night
in some big hotel bed
my hands grope for the light
my hands grope for my head
the world is my oyster
the road is my home
and i know that i'm better
off alone
—ani difranco / dilate
Is it weird that I prefer the ladies' renditions on "An Acoustic Tribute to Dave Matthews" than the original versions? I heart you, Pandora.
now it's more like show biz
i wake up in the night
and i don't know where the bathroom is
and i don't know what town i'm in
or what sky i am under
and i wake up in the darkness and i
don't have the will anymore to wonder
everyone has a skeleton
and a closet to keep it in
and you're mine
every song has a you
a you that the singer sings to
and you're it this time
baby, you're it this time
when i need to wipe my face
i use the back of my hand
and i like to take up space
just because i can
and i use my dress
to wipe up my drink
i care less and less
what people think
and you are so lame
you always disappoint me
it's kinda like our running joke
but it's really not funny
i just want you to live up to
the image of you i create
i see you and i'm so unsatisfied
i see you and i dilate
so i'll walk the plank and i'll jump with a smile
if i'm gonna go down
i'm gonna do it with style
and you won't see me surrender
you won't hear me confess
'cuz you've left me with nothing
but i've worked with less
and i learn every room long enough
to make it to the door
and then i hear it click shut behind me
and every key works differently
i forget every time
and the forgetting defines me
that's what defines me
when i say you sucked my brain out
the english translation
is i am in love with you
and it is no fun
but i don't use words like love
'cuz words like that don't matter
but don't look so offended
you know, you should be flattered
i wake up in the night
in some big hotel bed
my hands grope for the light
my hands grope for my head
the world is my oyster
the road is my home
and i know that i'm better
off alone
—ani difranco / dilate
Is it weird that I prefer the ladies' renditions on "An Acoustic Tribute to Dave Matthews" than the original versions? I heart you, Pandora.
February 1, 2008
Stuck in a system that seeks to suck your blood
Yeah…Yeah…Yeah…Yeah…
You see the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Can't you tell the way they have to mention
How they helped you out, you're such a hopeless victim
Please don't do me any favors, Mr. Intentional.
All their talk is seasoned to perfection
The road they walk commanding your affection
They need to be needed, deceived by motivation, an opportunity to further situation
Why they're so important is without explanation
Please don't patronize me, Mr. Intentional…Oh…
We give rise to ego, by being insecure
The advice that we go desperately searching for
the subconscious effort to support our paramour
Too engaged in denial, to admit we're immature
Validating lies, Mr. Intentional…Oh…
Open up your eyes, Mr. Intentional…
Stuck in a system that seeks to suck your blood
Held emotionally hostage by what everybody does
Counting all the money that you give them just because
Exploiting ignorance in the name of love
Stop before you drop because that's just the way it was
Please don't justify me, Mr. Intentional
So one-dimensional, Mr. Intentional
Don't you do me any favors
Wake up you've been sleeping, take up your bed and walk
Stop blaming other people, it's nobody else's fault
Accept the truth about you
You know that life goes on without you and Your expensive misinventions, disguising your intentions
Don't worship my hurt feelings, Mr. Intentional
See I know you can't help me, Mr. Intentional
The only help I need to live is unprofessional
The only wealth I have to give is not material
And if you need much more than that - I'm not available
Please don't entertain me, Mr. Intentional
I don't need your sympathy, Mr. Intentional
Stay away from me, Mr. Intentional
So one-dimensional, Mr. Promotional, Mr. Emotional, Mr. Intentional…
Lauryn Hill / Mr. Intentional
You see the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Can't you tell the way they have to mention
How they helped you out, you're such a hopeless victim
Please don't do me any favors, Mr. Intentional.
All their talk is seasoned to perfection
The road they walk commanding your affection
They need to be needed, deceived by motivation, an opportunity to further situation
Why they're so important is without explanation
Please don't patronize me, Mr. Intentional…Oh…
We give rise to ego, by being insecure
The advice that we go desperately searching for
the subconscious effort to support our paramour
Too engaged in denial, to admit we're immature
Validating lies, Mr. Intentional…Oh…
Open up your eyes, Mr. Intentional…
Stuck in a system that seeks to suck your blood
Held emotionally hostage by what everybody does
Counting all the money that you give them just because
Exploiting ignorance in the name of love
Stop before you drop because that's just the way it was
Please don't justify me, Mr. Intentional
So one-dimensional, Mr. Intentional
Don't you do me any favors
Wake up you've been sleeping, take up your bed and walk
Stop blaming other people, it's nobody else's fault
Accept the truth about you
You know that life goes on without you and Your expensive misinventions, disguising your intentions
Don't worship my hurt feelings, Mr. Intentional
See I know you can't help me, Mr. Intentional
The only help I need to live is unprofessional
The only wealth I have to give is not material
And if you need much more than that - I'm not available
Please don't entertain me, Mr. Intentional
I don't need your sympathy, Mr. Intentional
Stay away from me, Mr. Intentional
So one-dimensional, Mr. Promotional, Mr. Emotional, Mr. Intentional…
Lauryn Hill / Mr. Intentional
Pinch punch, first day of the month! White rabbits!
How do you win against a woman who wakes up at the butt crack of dawn to beat you to the punch? . . . The punch! Ha! Get it?? Because "Pinch punch . . ." . . . "PUNCH" . . . hello?
I need to figure out how to transport a pinch and punch through the mail. My mother will be getting hers . . .
I need to figure out how to transport a pinch and punch through the mail. My mother will be getting hers . . .
January 28, 2008
Poopy Poop. I forgot the Poopy Poop.
Ten Things Bugging The Piss Out Of Me:
1. I've broken two drinking glasses in under one week. And one of them was my favorite "Ithaca" one from my sister and bro-in-law.
2. Stepping on a tiny shard of glass from second said drinking glass.
3. Jack's Complete Lack Of Exercise.
4. Being behind. At my job, with freelance, with work for friends. I'm an asshole.
5. An always untidy apartment. Balls.
6. An always full laundry basket. Eff.
7. An always full sink of dirty dishes. Poop.
8. My inability to be on time. Ever.
9. My lack of willpower around anything labeled "ice cream."
10. My horrible excuse for keeping in touch with people.
And that's just ten . . . I totally could have gone on. Now, THAT would make for a hearty and interesting blog, eh? Feel free to play the tiny violins now.
I was supposed to go to bed at 11.
1. I've broken two drinking glasses in under one week. And one of them was my favorite "Ithaca" one from my sister and bro-in-law.
2. Stepping on a tiny shard of glass from second said drinking glass.
3. Jack's Complete Lack Of Exercise.
4. Being behind. At my job, with freelance, with work for friends. I'm an asshole.
5. An always untidy apartment. Balls.
6. An always full laundry basket. Eff.
7. An always full sink of dirty dishes. Poop.
8. My inability to be on time. Ever.
9. My lack of willpower around anything labeled "ice cream."
10. My horrible excuse for keeping in touch with people.
And that's just ten . . . I totally could have gone on. Now, THAT would make for a hearty and interesting blog, eh? Feel free to play the tiny violins now.
I was supposed to go to bed at 11.
January 25, 2008
January 24, 2008
Tori Amos and Wayne Brady
One of my favorites . . .
Interesting version . . .
AND, whilst looking for a clip of this song, I saw that Tori also performed on the Wayne Brady show. I didn't choose the clip BUT just his name makes me think of this:
. . . which is just effing great.
Interesting version . . .
AND, whilst looking for a clip of this song, I saw that Tori also performed on the Wayne Brady show. I didn't choose the clip BUT just his name makes me think of this:
. . . which is just effing great.
January 20, 2008
the answer came like a shot in the back
the answer came
like a shot in the back
while you were running from your lesson
which might explain
why years later all you could remember
was the terror of the question
plus, you weren't listening
you were stockpiling canned goods
making a bomb shelter of our basement
and i can't believe you let the moral go by
while you were soaking in the product placement
where was your conscience?
where was your consciousness?
and where did you put all those letters
that you wrote to yourself
but could not address?
i'm a good kisser
and you're a fast learner
and that kinda thing could float us
for a pretty long time
then one day you'd realize
you've memorized my phone number
and you'll call it and find
it's a disconnected line
cuz i got tossed out the window of love's el camino
and i shattered into a shower of sparks on the curb
you were smoking me
weren't you?
between your yellow fingers
you just inhaled and exhaled without saying a word
where was your conscience?
where was your consciousness?
and where did you put all those letters
that you wrote to yourself
but could not address?
there's a smorgasbord of unspoken poisons
a whole childhood of potions
that are all bottled up
and so one by one i am dusting off labels
i am uncorking bottles and filling up cups
so go ahead and have a taste of your own medicine
and i'll have a taste of mine
but first let's toast to the lists
that we hold in our fists
of the things that we promise to do
differently next time
cuz the answer came like a shot in the back
while you were running from your lesson
which might explain
why years later all you could remember
was the terror of the question
plus i'm not listening to you anymore
my head is too sore and my heart's perforated
and i'm mired in the marrow of my (well... ain't that) funny bone
learning how to be alone and devastated
where was my conscience?
where was my consciousness?
and what do i do with all these letters
that i wrote to myself
but cannot address?
—ani difranco / marrow
like a shot in the back
while you were running from your lesson
which might explain
why years later all you could remember
was the terror of the question
plus, you weren't listening
you were stockpiling canned goods
making a bomb shelter of our basement
and i can't believe you let the moral go by
while you were soaking in the product placement
where was your conscience?
where was your consciousness?
and where did you put all those letters
that you wrote to yourself
but could not address?
i'm a good kisser
and you're a fast learner
and that kinda thing could float us
for a pretty long time
then one day you'd realize
you've memorized my phone number
and you'll call it and find
it's a disconnected line
cuz i got tossed out the window of love's el camino
and i shattered into a shower of sparks on the curb
you were smoking me
weren't you?
between your yellow fingers
you just inhaled and exhaled without saying a word
where was your conscience?
where was your consciousness?
and where did you put all those letters
that you wrote to yourself
but could not address?
there's a smorgasbord of unspoken poisons
a whole childhood of potions
that are all bottled up
and so one by one i am dusting off labels
i am uncorking bottles and filling up cups
so go ahead and have a taste of your own medicine
and i'll have a taste of mine
but first let's toast to the lists
that we hold in our fists
of the things that we promise to do
differently next time
cuz the answer came like a shot in the back
while you were running from your lesson
which might explain
why years later all you could remember
was the terror of the question
plus i'm not listening to you anymore
my head is too sore and my heart's perforated
and i'm mired in the marrow of my (well... ain't that) funny bone
learning how to be alone and devastated
where was my conscience?
where was my consciousness?
and what do i do with all these letters
that i wrote to myself
but cannot address?
—ani difranco / marrow
January 18, 2008
Well, I say . . .
The "eliminating complications" I can handle . . . the warm water massage I'll take a pass on.
SCORPIO [Oct. 23–Nov. 21]
Internet pundit Ariana Huffington realized that she was working too hard when she got so exhausted that she passed out and broke her cheekbone on her desk. Resolving to give herself more slack, she decided to carry just two BlackBerries with her at all times instead of the three that had been her constant companions. I request that you perform at least two similar acts of self-care in the coming week, Scorpio. They could come in the form of either eliminating complications, as Huffington did, or else adding luxurious treats. For example, you might want to arrange to be massaged in warm water by a team of charismatic healers singing you love songs and lullabies. —Rob Brezsny, Village Voice
I saw a man wearing Uggs this morning. Something about New York just got shittier. (Just kidding! I heart you applehead!)
SCORPIO [Oct. 23–Nov. 21]
Internet pundit Ariana Huffington realized that she was working too hard when she got so exhausted that she passed out and broke her cheekbone on her desk. Resolving to give herself more slack, she decided to carry just two BlackBerries with her at all times instead of the three that had been her constant companions. I request that you perform at least two similar acts of self-care in the coming week, Scorpio. They could come in the form of either eliminating complications, as Huffington did, or else adding luxurious treats. For example, you might want to arrange to be massaged in warm water by a team of charismatic healers singing you love songs and lullabies. —Rob Brezsny, Village Voice
I saw a man wearing Uggs this morning. Something about New York just got shittier. (Just kidding! I heart you applehead!)
January 17, 2008
Must go see her live soon.
I'm like the rain in a downpour
I wash away what you long for
And I wave goodbye with the sun in my eyes
I wish I could be there tonight
I'm like the wind in the canyon
I'm there, then I'm gone in a second
You're growing older in peace where you're at
I wish I could be there for that
But I've moved on
Like a rolling stone
In a crowded room
I'm alone
I'm like the rain in a downpour
I wash away what you long for
And I wave goodbye with the sun in my eyes
I wish I could be there tonight
Oh, oh, yeah
You're like the tide in the deep blue
Cause you're always there when I need you
And when you need someone to carry you through
I'm gonna be there for you
I'm gonna be there for you
—Brandi Carlile / Downpour
January 16, 2008
working music
i heard the sound of your bike
as your wheels hit the gravel
then your engine in the driveway, cutting off
i pushed through the screen door
and i stood out on the porch
thinking fight fight fight at all costs
but instead i let you in
just like i've always done
i sat you down and offered you a beer
and across the kitchen table
i fired several rounds
but you were still sitting there when the smoke cleared
you came crawling back to say
that you want to make good in the end
oh, let me count the ways that i abhor you
you were never a good lay
and you were never a good friend
but oh, what can i say, i adore you
all i need is my leather
one t-shirt and two socks
i'll keep my hands warm in your pockets
and you can use the engine block
we'll ride out to california
with my arms around your chest
and i'll pretend that this is real
'cuz this is what i like best
you've been juggling two women
like a stupid circus clown
telling us both we are the one
and maybe you can keep me
from ever being happy
but you're not going to stop me
from having fun
so let's go, before i change my mind
i'll leave the luggage of all your lies behind
'cuz i am bigger than everything that came before
you were never very kind
and you let me way down every time
but oh, what can i say, i adore you
i heard the sound of your bike
as your wheels hit the gravel
then your engine in the driveway, cutting off
—ani difranco / gravel
as your wheels hit the gravel
then your engine in the driveway, cutting off
i pushed through the screen door
and i stood out on the porch
thinking fight fight fight at all costs
but instead i let you in
just like i've always done
i sat you down and offered you a beer
and across the kitchen table
i fired several rounds
but you were still sitting there when the smoke cleared
you came crawling back to say
that you want to make good in the end
oh, let me count the ways that i abhor you
you were never a good lay
and you were never a good friend
but oh, what can i say, i adore you
all i need is my leather
one t-shirt and two socks
i'll keep my hands warm in your pockets
and you can use the engine block
we'll ride out to california
with my arms around your chest
and i'll pretend that this is real
'cuz this is what i like best
you've been juggling two women
like a stupid circus clown
telling us both we are the one
and maybe you can keep me
from ever being happy
but you're not going to stop me
from having fun
so let's go, before i change my mind
i'll leave the luggage of all your lies behind
'cuz i am bigger than everything that came before
you were never very kind
and you let me way down every time
but oh, what can i say, i adore you
i heard the sound of your bike
as your wheels hit the gravel
then your engine in the driveway, cutting off
—ani difranco / gravel
January 14, 2008
So, what're you gonna do about it?
So, the last few lyrics posted have been Ani's.
So, suck it.
Today's a good day, me thinks.
So, suck it.
Today's a good day, me thinks.
they are six strings that sing, and wood that hums against my hipbone
i am looking for the holes
the holes in your jeans
because i want to know
are they worn out in the seat
or are they worn out in the knees
there are so many ways to wear
what we have before it's gone
to make use of what is there
you know i don't wear anything i can't wipe my hands on
oh, do your politics fit between the headlines
are they written in newsprint, are they distant
mine are crossing an empty parking lot
they are a woman walking home
at night
alone
they are six strings that sing
and wood that hums against my hipbone
we can't afford to do anyone harm
because we owe them our lives
each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs
our enemies are the very air in disguise
you can talk a great philosophy
but if you can't be kind to people
every day
it doesn't mean that much to me
it's the little things you do
the little things you say
it's the love you give along the way
when we patch things up
they say a job well done
but when we ask the question why
where did the rips come from?
they say we are subversive
and extreme, of course
we are just trying to track a problem to its source
we are looking for the holes
the holes
we are looking for the holes
the holes
because we know we can't sit back
and let people come to harm
we owe them our lives
each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs
our enemies are the very air
our enemies are the air
i am looking for the holes
the holes in your jeans
because i want to know
are they worn out in the seat
or are they worn out in the knees
—ani difranco / looking for the holes
the holes in your jeans
because i want to know
are they worn out in the seat
or are they worn out in the knees
there are so many ways to wear
what we have before it's gone
to make use of what is there
you know i don't wear anything i can't wipe my hands on
oh, do your politics fit between the headlines
are they written in newsprint, are they distant
mine are crossing an empty parking lot
they are a woman walking home
at night
alone
they are six strings that sing
and wood that hums against my hipbone
we can't afford to do anyone harm
because we owe them our lives
each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs
our enemies are the very air in disguise
you can talk a great philosophy
but if you can't be kind to people
every day
it doesn't mean that much to me
it's the little things you do
the little things you say
it's the love you give along the way
when we patch things up
they say a job well done
but when we ask the question why
where did the rips come from?
they say we are subversive
and extreme, of course
we are just trying to track a problem to its source
we are looking for the holes
the holes
we are looking for the holes
the holes
because we know we can't sit back
and let people come to harm
we owe them our lives
each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs
our enemies are the very air
our enemies are the air
i am looking for the holes
the holes in your jeans
because i want to know
are they worn out in the seat
or are they worn out in the knees
—ani difranco / looking for the holes
phew.
SCORPIO [Oct. 23–Nov. 21]
Why does human anatomy include the organ known as the appendix? For centuries, doctors have been unable to determine its purpose. Most have decided it's unnecessary, a vestigial structure left over from an earlier stage of evolution. But recent research suggests the conventional wisdom has to be revised. In fact, the appendix seems to protect and regenerate the good bacteria that live in the intestines. I predict that you're on the verge of a metaphorically comparable discovery, Scorpio: Something you have always considered to be useless or irrelevant will reveal its true value. —Rob Brezsny, Village Voice
I KNEW that third nipple was there for something.
Why does human anatomy include the organ known as the appendix? For centuries, doctors have been unable to determine its purpose. Most have decided it's unnecessary, a vestigial structure left over from an earlier stage of evolution. But recent research suggests the conventional wisdom has to be revised. In fact, the appendix seems to protect and regenerate the good bacteria that live in the intestines. I predict that you're on the verge of a metaphorically comparable discovery, Scorpio: Something you have always considered to be useless or irrelevant will reveal its true value. —Rob Brezsny, Village Voice
I KNEW that third nipple was there for something.
January 11, 2008
I'd like to drink the fuel straight from your lighter.
I have daydreams involving his songs.
Mike Doughty / Rising Sign
Your back curves like a creeping vine
with the answers in the fluid in the stem of the spine
In the black-coffee bowl of your eye
why do you overestimate the size of the lie?
I've seen
the dangers of
your rising sign
but I swear
I'd like
to drink the fuel straight from your lighter
it's all inside the wrist, it's
all inside the way you time it
I resent the way you make me like myself
My nerves jump
like a boiling pan
like a skillet full of oil spits,
rattling on the burner
when I stumble onto the thought
of the match you lit and dropped and set the
dial to slow yearn
I've seen
the dangers of
your rising sign
but I swear
I'd like
to drink the fuel straight from your lighter
It's all inside the wrist, It's
all inside the way you time it
I resent the way you make me like myself
can I spell it out?
should I spell it out?
I've seen
the dangers of
your rising sign
but I swear
I'd like
to drink the fuel straight from your lighter
it's all inside the wrist, it's
all inside the way you time it
I resent the way you make me like myself
Mike Doughty / The Only Answer
Upon the rails,
Among the weeds,
I had a moment of, serenity.
I saw you stand,
In all the green,
Upon the rusting rail,
Balancing.
You were the only answer,
My plans spun all around you,
Five years in the wrong I am assured,
My name to you is just another word,
In your bed.
In Morristown,
You had magazines, thrown around.
From under them,
The phone it rang,
And in the margin there,
You wrote the number down.
You were the only answer,
My plans spun all around you,
Five years in the wrong I am assured,
My name to you is just another word,
Another word,
Another word,
The only answer,
Another word,
The only answer,
The only answer,
The only answer
Mike Doughty / Rising Sign
Your back curves like a creeping vine
with the answers in the fluid in the stem of the spine
In the black-coffee bowl of your eye
why do you overestimate the size of the lie?
I've seen
the dangers of
your rising sign
but I swear
I'd like
to drink the fuel straight from your lighter
it's all inside the wrist, it's
all inside the way you time it
I resent the way you make me like myself
My nerves jump
like a boiling pan
like a skillet full of oil spits,
rattling on the burner
when I stumble onto the thought
of the match you lit and dropped and set the
dial to slow yearn
I've seen
the dangers of
your rising sign
but I swear
I'd like
to drink the fuel straight from your lighter
It's all inside the wrist, It's
all inside the way you time it
I resent the way you make me like myself
can I spell it out?
should I spell it out?
I've seen
the dangers of
your rising sign
but I swear
I'd like
to drink the fuel straight from your lighter
it's all inside the wrist, it's
all inside the way you time it
I resent the way you make me like myself
Mike Doughty / The Only Answer
Upon the rails,
Among the weeds,
I had a moment of, serenity.
I saw you stand,
In all the green,
Upon the rusting rail,
Balancing.
You were the only answer,
My plans spun all around you,
Five years in the wrong I am assured,
My name to you is just another word,
In your bed.
In Morristown,
You had magazines, thrown around.
From under them,
The phone it rang,
And in the margin there,
You wrote the number down.
You were the only answer,
My plans spun all around you,
Five years in the wrong I am assured,
My name to you is just another word,
Another word,
Another word,
The only answer,
Another word,
The only answer,
The only answer,
The only answer
um . . .
I'm still really friggin' hungry, if anyone cares. And, no, even though everyone keeps telling me to eat, I'm not going to! Now it's ON. Now I have to do this. Eff. This is cleansing, people! CLEANSING!
I need a drink of the non-water persuasion. And a sammich . . . with cheese . . . ooh, and chips . . . and maybe some ice cream . . .
EFF EFF EFF
I'm going to feel better tomorrow, I'm going to feel better tomorrow, I'm going to feel better tomorrow . . .
I need a drink of the non-water persuasion. And a sammich . . . with cheese . . . ooh, and chips . . . and maybe some ice cream . . .
EFF EFF EFF
I'm going to feel better tomorrow, I'm going to feel better tomorrow, I'm going to feel better tomorrow . . .
January 10, 2008
it's that kind of day . . .
coming of age during the plague
of reagan and bush
watching capitalism gun down democracy
it had this funny effect on me
i guess
i am cancer
i am HIV
and i'm down at the blue jesus
blue cross hospital
just lookin' up from my pillow
feeling blessed
and the mighty multinationals
have monopolized the oxygen
so it's as easy as breathing
for us all to participate
yes they're buying and selling
off shares of air
and you know it's all around you
but it's hard to point and say "there"
so you just sit on your hands
and quietly contemplate
your next bold move
the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself
what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable
and sell them to seagulls flying in circles
around one big right wing
yes, the left wing was broken long ago
by the slingshot of cointelpro
and now it's so hard to have faith in
anything
especially your next bold move
or the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself
you want to track each trickle
back to its source
and then scream up the faucet
'til your face is hoarse
cuz you're surrounded by a world's worth
of things you just can't excuse
but you've got the hard cough of a chain smoker
and you're at the arctic circle playing strip poker
and it's getting colder and colder
everytime you lose
so go ahead
make your next bold move
tell us
what's the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself
— ani (as always) / your next bold move
of reagan and bush
watching capitalism gun down democracy
it had this funny effect on me
i guess
i am cancer
i am HIV
and i'm down at the blue jesus
blue cross hospital
just lookin' up from my pillow
feeling blessed
and the mighty multinationals
have monopolized the oxygen
so it's as easy as breathing
for us all to participate
yes they're buying and selling
off shares of air
and you know it's all around you
but it's hard to point and say "there"
so you just sit on your hands
and quietly contemplate
your next bold move
the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself
what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable
and sell them to seagulls flying in circles
around one big right wing
yes, the left wing was broken long ago
by the slingshot of cointelpro
and now it's so hard to have faith in
anything
especially your next bold move
or the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself
you want to track each trickle
back to its source
and then scream up the faucet
'til your face is hoarse
cuz you're surrounded by a world's worth
of things you just can't excuse
but you've got the hard cough of a chain smoker
and you're at the arctic circle playing strip poker
and it's getting colder and colder
everytime you lose
so go ahead
make your next bold move
tell us
what's the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself
— ani (as always) / your next bold move
Anew.
Alright, alright, alright. Tomorrow = Fast #2. It’s time. Time to start the new year. Time to clean this shit out.
Speaking of the new year, I’m having a hard time remembering to write 2008. Every effing time . . .
Right, so, the fast . . . I’ve been the picture of disastrous health lately and I need to get a hold of myself. Therefore: all day, no food. Just water. This is going to rock even harder than the first time. I am so fucking cool.
Jesus Christ, I swear a lot. That should have been my resolution. To get a goddamn hold of my language. But really, why bother? I like my vocal cords with a little flavor.
I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Gotta go.
Speaking of the new year, I’m having a hard time remembering to write 2008. Every effing time . . .
Right, so, the fast . . . I’ve been the picture of disastrous health lately and I need to get a hold of myself. Therefore: all day, no food. Just water. This is going to rock even harder than the first time. I am so fucking cool.
Jesus Christ, I swear a lot. That should have been my resolution. To get a goddamn hold of my language. But really, why bother? I like my vocal cords with a little flavor.
I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Gotta go.
buildings and bridges
buildings and bridges
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that's what it takes
all that steel and stone
are no match for the air, my friend
what doesn't bend breaks
what doesn't bend breaks
we are made to bleed
and scab and heal and bleed again
and turn every scar into a joke
we are made to fight
and fuck and talk and fight again
and sit around and laugh until we choke
sit around and laugh until we choke
i don't know who you were expecting
probably some bitch who does not budge
with eyes the size of snow
i may get pissed off sometimes
but you seem like the type to hold a grudge
and in the end, i just let go...
buildings and bridges
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that's what it takes
all that steel and stone
is no match for the air, my friend
what doesn't bend breaks
what doesn't bend breaks
—ani fucking difranco
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that's what it takes
all that steel and stone
are no match for the air, my friend
what doesn't bend breaks
what doesn't bend breaks
we are made to bleed
and scab and heal and bleed again
and turn every scar into a joke
we are made to fight
and fuck and talk and fight again
and sit around and laugh until we choke
sit around and laugh until we choke
i don't know who you were expecting
probably some bitch who does not budge
with eyes the size of snow
i may get pissed off sometimes
but you seem like the type to hold a grudge
and in the end, i just let go...
buildings and bridges
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that's what it takes
all that steel and stone
is no match for the air, my friend
what doesn't bend breaks
what doesn't bend breaks
—ani fucking difranco
January 9, 2008
Eat this.
I’ve been wanting to blog for awhile. I've had a lot on my mind. I’ve been tossing back and forth the resolutions everyone is so fond of making around this time. I’ll lose weight, I’ll eat better, I’ll keep in better touch, I’ll work on the debt, I’ll try not to end up drunk and topless, etc.
I've concluded that what I really want this year is less stress. I don’t want so much panic in 2008. I don’t want the worry and the ache and the upset. I need some peace.
Sure, I’d love to drop a couple sizes . . . but the peace, that’s first and foremost. I’m going to work on reworking my life. I need some reconfiguration. I need to clean up and sort through the mess.
I’m expecting that when Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat, Pray, Love, she meant to do just that. And she did, I’m assuming . . .
It’s not the right time in my life to be reading this book. I’m halfway through it and, while well-written, it’s doing more to piss me off than anything else. Honestly, I’d just like to sucker punch Miss. (Ms.?) Gilbert . . . or at least look her straight in the face and give her a good, loud “Wah.”
It’s just way too hard for me right now to feel for someone who can afford to drop everything (job, belongings, responsibilities) and get paid (in advance) for a book she’s going to write about the year-long trip she’s ABOUT to take to Italy and India and wherever. Seriously. Seriously? Fuck. That.
But perhaps I’m being too harsh. Maybe I should understand how upsetting it is that she can’t meditate as well as everyone else at some Ashram in India. Maybe I should understand that the only way she will get over her depression, lack-of-self, and loneliness is to drop out of her life and spend loads of money on a trip around the world. MAYBE someone ought to tell Miss. Fancypants about sucking it up. Some of us have other things to worry about, like, say, oh, trying to keep a roof over one’s head, whilst having no money in their bank account. And although, I'd love to learn how to do this while pulling a fancy yoga pose, comefuckingon.
See? WRONG time to be reading this book. And THAT is why I’ve put it down. One must know when to walk away.
I’m going to try picking it up again when I feel less rage (read: sometime in 2008 . . . one can only hope).
I've concluded that what I really want this year is less stress. I don’t want so much panic in 2008. I don’t want the worry and the ache and the upset. I need some peace.
Sure, I’d love to drop a couple sizes . . . but the peace, that’s first and foremost. I’m going to work on reworking my life. I need some reconfiguration. I need to clean up and sort through the mess.
I’m expecting that when Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat, Pray, Love, she meant to do just that. And she did, I’m assuming . . .
It’s not the right time in my life to be reading this book. I’m halfway through it and, while well-written, it’s doing more to piss me off than anything else. Honestly, I’d just like to sucker punch Miss. (Ms.?) Gilbert . . . or at least look her straight in the face and give her a good, loud “Wah.”
It’s just way too hard for me right now to feel for someone who can afford to drop everything (job, belongings, responsibilities) and get paid (in advance) for a book she’s going to write about the year-long trip she’s ABOUT to take to Italy and India and wherever. Seriously. Seriously? Fuck. That.
But perhaps I’m being too harsh. Maybe I should understand how upsetting it is that she can’t meditate as well as everyone else at some Ashram in India. Maybe I should understand that the only way she will get over her depression, lack-of-self, and loneliness is to drop out of her life and spend loads of money on a trip around the world. MAYBE someone ought to tell Miss. Fancypants about sucking it up. Some of us have other things to worry about, like, say, oh, trying to keep a roof over one’s head, whilst having no money in their bank account. And although, I'd love to learn how to do this while pulling a fancy yoga pose, comefuckingon.
See? WRONG time to be reading this book. And THAT is why I’ve put it down. One must know when to walk away.
I’m going to try picking it up again when I feel less rage (read: sometime in 2008 . . . one can only hope).
NO! No!
It can't be true! How could it be??!! But, it makes no sense!
Thank GOODness we now know about this.
School Popularity Affects Girls’ Weights
Harvard University: I applaud you. Bravo.
Thank GOODness we now know about this.
School Popularity Affects Girls’ Weights
Harvard University: I applaud you. Bravo.
January 1, 2008
Happy New Year.
You know I love music
And every time I hear something hot
It makes me wanna move
It makes me wanna have fun
But it’s something about this joint right here
This joint right here
Its makes me wanna . . . Woooh
Let it go . . .
Can’t let this thing called love get away from you
Feel free right now, go do what you want to do
Can’t let nobody take it away, from you, from me, from we
No time for moping around, are you kidding?
And no time for negative vibes, cause I’m winning
It’s been a long week, I put in my hardest
Gonna live my life, feels so good to get it right
So I like what I see when I’m looking at me
When I’m walking past the mirror
Don't stress through the night, at a time in my life
Ain’t worried about if you feel it
Got my head on straight, I got my vibe right
I aint gonna let you kill it
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just . . .
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just fine
Feels so good, when you’re doing all the things that you want to do
Get the best out of life, treat yourself to something new
Keep your head up high
In yourself, believe in you, believe in me
Having a really good time, I’m not complaining
And I’m a still wear a smile if it's raining
I got to enjoy myself regardless
I appreciate life, I’m so glad that it's fine
So I like what I see when I’m looking at me
When I’m walking past the mirror
Ain't worried about you and what you gonna do
I’m a lady so I must stay classy
Got to keep it hot, keep it together
If I want to get better
See I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just . . .
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
See I won’t change my life, my life’s just fine
I ain't gon’ let nothing get in my way
(I ain't gone let nobody bring me down, no, no, no)
No matter what nobody has to say
(No way, no way, no way)
I ain’t gon’ let nothing get in my way
No matter what nobody has to say
Feels so good, when you’re doing all the things that you want to do
Get the best out of life, treat yourself to something new
It’s a really good thing to say
That I won’t change my life, my life’s just fine
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
See I won’t change my life, my life’s just fine
So I like what I see when I’m looking at me
When I’m walking past the mirror
Don't stress through the night, at a time in my life
Ain’t worried about if you feel it
Got my head on straight, I got my vibe right
I ain’t gonna let you kill it
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just . . .
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just fine
MARY J BLIGE / JUST FINE
And every time I hear something hot
It makes me wanna move
It makes me wanna have fun
But it’s something about this joint right here
This joint right here
Its makes me wanna . . . Woooh
Let it go . . .
Can’t let this thing called love get away from you
Feel free right now, go do what you want to do
Can’t let nobody take it away, from you, from me, from we
No time for moping around, are you kidding?
And no time for negative vibes, cause I’m winning
It’s been a long week, I put in my hardest
Gonna live my life, feels so good to get it right
So I like what I see when I’m looking at me
When I’m walking past the mirror
Don't stress through the night, at a time in my life
Ain’t worried about if you feel it
Got my head on straight, I got my vibe right
I aint gonna let you kill it
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just . . .
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just fine
Feels so good, when you’re doing all the things that you want to do
Get the best out of life, treat yourself to something new
Keep your head up high
In yourself, believe in you, believe in me
Having a really good time, I’m not complaining
And I’m a still wear a smile if it's raining
I got to enjoy myself regardless
I appreciate life, I’m so glad that it's fine
So I like what I see when I’m looking at me
When I’m walking past the mirror
Ain't worried about you and what you gonna do
I’m a lady so I must stay classy
Got to keep it hot, keep it together
If I want to get better
See I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just . . .
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
See I won’t change my life, my life’s just fine
I ain't gon’ let nothing get in my way
(I ain't gone let nobody bring me down, no, no, no)
No matter what nobody has to say
(No way, no way, no way)
I ain’t gon’ let nothing get in my way
No matter what nobody has to say
Feels so good, when you’re doing all the things that you want to do
Get the best out of life, treat yourself to something new
It’s a really good thing to say
That I won’t change my life, my life’s just fine
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
See I won’t change my life, my life’s just fine
So I like what I see when I’m looking at me
When I’m walking past the mirror
Don't stress through the night, at a time in my life
Ain’t worried about if you feel it
Got my head on straight, I got my vibe right
I ain’t gonna let you kill it
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just . . .
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
Just fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, ooooh
You see I wouldn’t change my life, my life’s just fine
MARY J BLIGE / JUST FINE
December 20, 2007
Enough Cryin'
It's amazing just how much Mary J. Blige one can listen to without getting sick of her.
Seriously.
I asked Santa for her new album for Christmas. Santa better friggin' pay up.
Seriously.
I asked Santa for her new album for Christmas. Santa better friggin' pay up.
December 19, 2007
manhole
i'm holding here a book
notable, but not the greatest
stolen for me by the latest
in a long line of thieves
and i'm just about to drop it
down that manhole of memories
when i realize it doesn't bother me
like love's mementos usually do
and i look up to see who's different here
the latest me or the latest you
course, you're the kind of guy who doesn't lie
he just doctors everything
chooses some unassuming finger
and quietly moves his wedding ring
who rewrites his autobiography
for any pretty girl who'll sing
but you can't fool the queen, baby
cuz i married the king
and maybe it was i who betrayed his majesty
with no opposite reality
like a puddle with no reflection
of the sky or the trees
but after my dreaded beheading
i tied that sucker back on with a string
and i guess i'm pretty different now
considering
i kissed you on the street that night
on the far side of four
but i didn't like the taste
in my mouth or yours
and ignoring the persona you wore for my benefit
for once i had the balls to call it
just call it
but a lesson must be lived
in order to be learned
and the clarity to see and stop this now
that is what i've earned
and maybe it was i who betrayed his majesty
with no opposite reality
like a puddle with no reflection
of the sky or the trees
but after my dreaded beheading
i tied that sucker back on with a string
and i guess i'm pretty different now
considering
i'm holding here a book
notable, but not the greatest
stolen for me by the latest
in a long line of thieves
and i'm just about to drop it
down that manhole of memories
when i realize it doesn't bother me
and heartache not so dire
cuz i looked up to see integrity
finally won over desire
—ANI DIFRANCO
notable, but not the greatest
stolen for me by the latest
in a long line of thieves
and i'm just about to drop it
down that manhole of memories
when i realize it doesn't bother me
like love's mementos usually do
and i look up to see who's different here
the latest me or the latest you
course, you're the kind of guy who doesn't lie
he just doctors everything
chooses some unassuming finger
and quietly moves his wedding ring
who rewrites his autobiography
for any pretty girl who'll sing
but you can't fool the queen, baby
cuz i married the king
and maybe it was i who betrayed his majesty
with no opposite reality
like a puddle with no reflection
of the sky or the trees
but after my dreaded beheading
i tied that sucker back on with a string
and i guess i'm pretty different now
considering
i kissed you on the street that night
on the far side of four
but i didn't like the taste
in my mouth or yours
and ignoring the persona you wore for my benefit
for once i had the balls to call it
just call it
but a lesson must be lived
in order to be learned
and the clarity to see and stop this now
that is what i've earned
and maybe it was i who betrayed his majesty
with no opposite reality
like a puddle with no reflection
of the sky or the trees
but after my dreaded beheading
i tied that sucker back on with a string
and i guess i'm pretty different now
considering
i'm holding here a book
notable, but not the greatest
stolen for me by the latest
in a long line of thieves
and i'm just about to drop it
down that manhole of memories
when i realize it doesn't bother me
and heartache not so dire
cuz i looked up to see integrity
finally won over desire
—ANI DIFRANCO
December 14, 2007
uh huh
SCORPIO [Oct. 23–Nov. 21]
For reasons too silly to go into here (involving romance, of course), I once spent six months making thrice-weekly three-and-a-half-hour round trips from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Columbia, South Carolina. The back roads I drove on were sparsely traveled and my ancient pickup truck didn't have a radio, so I passed the time by reading. I became quite skilled at continually darting my eyes back and forth between the road and the open book resting on my steering wheel; in this way I got through James Joyce's Ulysses, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. I don't advise you to try something so dangerous, Scorpio, but I do believe it's a perfect astrological moment for you to master the art of slipping back and forth between two starkly different realities.
—Rob Brezsny, Village Voice
Like, say, living within my means vs. living way effing beyond my means? Check.
For reasons too silly to go into here (involving romance, of course), I once spent six months making thrice-weekly three-and-a-half-hour round trips from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Columbia, South Carolina. The back roads I drove on were sparsely traveled and my ancient pickup truck didn't have a radio, so I passed the time by reading. I became quite skilled at continually darting my eyes back and forth between the road and the open book resting on my steering wheel; in this way I got through James Joyce's Ulysses, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. I don't advise you to try something so dangerous, Scorpio, but I do believe it's a perfect astrological moment for you to master the art of slipping back and forth between two starkly different realities.
—Rob Brezsny, Village Voice
Like, say, living within my means vs. living way effing beyond my means? Check.
December 13, 2007
rolling home to you
Old man, look at my life, I'm a lot like you
Old man, take a look at my life
Twenty-four and I'm so much more
Live alone in a paradise, makes me think of two
Love lost at such a cost
Give me things that don't get lost
Like a coin that won't get tossed, rolling home to you
Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Oh, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true
Lullabies, look in your eyes
Run around the same old town
Doesn't mean that much to me, mean that much to you
I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
But I'm all alone at last, rolling home to you
Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Oh, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true
Old man, look at my life, I'm a lot like you
—Old Man / The Wailin' Jennys
Word, no?
Old man, take a look at my life
Twenty-four and I'm so much more
Live alone in a paradise, makes me think of two
Love lost at such a cost
Give me things that don't get lost
Like a coin that won't get tossed, rolling home to you
Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Oh, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true
Lullabies, look in your eyes
Run around the same old town
Doesn't mean that much to me, mean that much to you
I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
But I'm all alone at last, rolling home to you
Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Oh, one look in my eyes and you can tell that's true
Old man, look at my life, I'm a lot like you
—Old Man / The Wailin' Jennys
Word, no?
December 11, 2007
December 10, 2007
There’s grown-up on my pillow.
(Hope you’re feeling better Lisbeth. And it’s throw-up.)
I don’t understand them, the people who show up for jury duty without a book, magazine, crossword puzzle, pen and paper, anything. I watched these people do nothing all day today. How can you do nothing for eight hours? They just sat. And stared. At nothing. I don’t understand them.
That being said, I got through two magazines, a third of Eat, Pray, Love and had quite the day of relaxation and quiet. I love jury duty. To sit in a quiet room for eight hours and read? Now, I know this isn’t the typical civic duty service for most, but to be one of the lucky ones as I was today? . . . to not have your name called? . . . while at first it felt like I was the last pick in the school yard, I soon got over it.
Back to work tomorrow. I might just have to go back to being a legal eagle (I'm so cool) later in the week though. Don’t ask . . . I have no idea how this crap works either. I’m just doing what they tell me.
It’s past my bedtime and I have a big tension headache from the enormous breakdown I just had on the phone with my sister. Dude, Sarah, you’re one patient lady. I’m terribly sorry you always seem to get the explosions. (I know it’s particularly fun to hear me fight to catch breath, being so friggin’ blocked up and all.)
Ugh . . .
One last fit for 2007, I suppose (let’s hope that’s the last one). I think 2008 is going to be all about learning how to live in a capable, non-retarded fashion. Or perhaps I won’t have to worry and soon I’ll just start pooping money.
I’m going to go to bed now and hope that I wake up making more sense.
I don’t understand them, the people who show up for jury duty without a book, magazine, crossword puzzle, pen and paper, anything. I watched these people do nothing all day today. How can you do nothing for eight hours? They just sat. And stared. At nothing. I don’t understand them.
That being said, I got through two magazines, a third of Eat, Pray, Love and had quite the day of relaxation and quiet. I love jury duty. To sit in a quiet room for eight hours and read? Now, I know this isn’t the typical civic duty service for most, but to be one of the lucky ones as I was today? . . . to not have your name called? . . . while at first it felt like I was the last pick in the school yard, I soon got over it.
Back to work tomorrow. I might just have to go back to being a legal eagle (I'm so cool) later in the week though. Don’t ask . . . I have no idea how this crap works either. I’m just doing what they tell me.
It’s past my bedtime and I have a big tension headache from the enormous breakdown I just had on the phone with my sister. Dude, Sarah, you’re one patient lady. I’m terribly sorry you always seem to get the explosions. (I know it’s particularly fun to hear me fight to catch breath, being so friggin’ blocked up and all.)
Ugh . . .
One last fit for 2007, I suppose (let’s hope that’s the last one). I think 2008 is going to be all about learning how to live in a capable, non-retarded fashion. Or perhaps I won’t have to worry and soon I’ll just start pooping money.
I’m going to go to bed now and hope that I wake up making more sense.
From Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert:
"I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return."
"You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."
December 6, 2007
"Brad's bum in particular was in a bad way."
Thank you for this, Betsy.
Fans get too close to Brad Pitt and George Clooney waxworks
Holy crap, that's some funny shit.
Fans get too close to Brad Pitt and George Clooney waxworks
Holy crap, that's some funny shit.
December 3, 2007
High C.
I’m retuning today: Retune the Body with a Partial Fast
I’ve never realized just how much of my life revolves around food . . . how much I think about it, love it, plan ahead for it. And, I have to say . . . I just don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I’m hungry as hell. Yet . . . proud. Just think, I’m waking up tomorrow retuned! How’re YOU waking up tomorrow?
7.5 hours to go . . .
I'm a friggin' hero.
I’ve never realized just how much of my life revolves around food . . . how much I think about it, love it, plan ahead for it. And, I have to say . . . I just don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I’m hungry as hell. Yet . . . proud. Just think, I’m waking up tomorrow retuned! How’re YOU waking up tomorrow?
7.5 hours to go . . .
I'm a friggin' hero.
December 2, 2007
Good. And good.
I just read about this web site in Self magazine. I already love it.
lifehacker
(Congrats, pumpkinhead. I'm proud of you. I still think you're crazy, but I'm proud of you.)
lifehacker
(Congrats, pumpkinhead. I'm proud of you. I still think you're crazy, but I'm proud of you.)
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