'i know it killed you, but nobody died...'

on saturday afternoon, i spent a pretty significant number of hours composing a post for this blog that i had been meaning to write for a few days. i really put a lot into this particular piece, and after a good amount of tweaking, was rather delighted with it. then i went to publish, and blogger crapped out and deleted 90% of it.

i was crushed. that is a really terrible feeling, knowing that you just churned out all these specifically worded sentances and were satisfied with them, and will certainly never remember them exactly enough to re-create what was lost. yeah, there are endlessly worse case scenarios, but it still sucks. i won't disclose the subject of the lost post, because i'm hoping that someday i will have another go at it, once i've stopped pouting and wallowing in misery of knowing that the second time around won't be as good.

my brother had this to say:
boomer5spd: u should always right click, select all, ctrl+c, before submitting anything to the internet like a post or entry in a journal reason being while ur typing the session times out usually after about 15 minutes...so the box ur typing in (a cgi, php, asp script wont work when u try to submit it
lolan27: yes...*sniff*. i see that now.

in an attempt to distract myself, i took the N.W.A. quiz over at www.thephatphree.com, but ultimately Ice Cube busted a cap in my ass one too many times, and i lost like the punk-ass bitch that i am. oh well.

the songs i recognize are sick obsessions...

i know i'm late to this party, but i can't get that kelly clarkson song out of my head. you know what i'm talking about. i don't have to say it. somebody did their job and then some on that little slice of sweet pop perfection. i don't think i've been this enraptured by a creation of this sort since beyonce's 'crazy in love' held me hostage for the entire summer of 2003. that song sent me into a clinical bliss for three minutes every single fucking time i heard it, and when the jay-z part came around, i damn near had an aneurism.

to this day, my booty starts involuntarily shaking when i hear that amped up riff and the jingly-jangly percussive thing happening behind the verse. i was just sitting here trying to figure out what is even making those sounds...is it a guitar? a synth? a sample? some crazy space instrument that her producers brought back from the omega quadrant? i have no idea. it just make my booty wanna shake. MORE COWBELL.

there's this other song on the hip-hop radio these days that has been having a similar effect on me, but i don't know the name of it or who does it. i just hear it in the shower sometimes. i'll have to find out, so that i can become properly immersed in its aurally addictive wonder.

**update...the song is called '1 thing' and it is by amerie. maddeningly enough, it is also off the soundtrack to that atrocious will smith vehicle hitch(i happened to be at more than one movie where they ran the trailer for it, and it made me squirm in my seat each and every time). but good lord, '1 thing' is catchy as all hell; i think there actually is cowbell in it, for christsake. see involuntary booty shaking description above**

ted leo covers the kelly clarkson number...his is pretty great itself; ted's got one of the best falsettos this side of bronski beat. yeah, that's right. i said it.

in related 80's pop band news, this morning i read on yahoo! that psychologists are studying 'the look of love'. i'm wondering if they are planning to focus on what ABC were thinking when they wrote that song, or perhaps they've seen that vh-1 band reunion show and realized that the ABC guys are chock full of psychological issues to mine for ridiculous studies using superfluous grant money. either way, i'm sure i speak for everyone when i say that we anxiously await the results.

in unrelated to anything in this post news, aol sent me yet another cd with 1175 hours of their "blackvoices" edition...i am getting closer and closer to achieving my goal of creating an aol fish for my living room wall. i am so close, in fact, that i think i have the body covered, i just need enough for the fins and tail and stuff. feel free to donate to the cause. i know everyone has access to these; they come in the mail just about every other day. live the dream with me, people. you have the power.

stop that train, i wanna get off...

i was on my way home on the bus today, and suddenly the driver pulled the bus over to the curb, turned it off and got out. i was perplexed; was it a mechanical issue? had he run some poor college freshman over at the vcu crosswalk? nope. better. as i watched him cross the street, i realized that he was headed for 7-11. um... not for nothing, i know it's pretty hot and all, but i pretty much know for a fact that the grtc busdrivers are not going 8 hours with no bathroom breaks or anything. in fact, i'm fairly certain that they get plenty of time to make a little 7-e run that doesn't require that they leave a bus full of passengers sweltering at the side of the road, wondering what the hell is going on. i'm not the type to go ratting people out for stuff like this, it really wasn't that big of a deal for me to sit there for a few minutes, and i guess i have a certain respect for anyone with such a flagrant disregard for their job responsibilites(non-life threatening of course). it was just rather bizarre. a lady sitting near the front sighed loudly and rolled her eyes. i think that was enough derision for all of us.

in a related note: when i took the dreaded fung wa bu(extra smelly edition) to new york last time, that bus driver pulled up from the ny-richmond run at like 12:30am, cleaned the bus for a bit, maybe used the bathroom if he was quick, and then got back on and drove another seven hours back to new york without stopping. scary, yes. there's got to be some sort of happy medium here.

so, one afternoon i was in the local gas emporium waiting to buy some cigarettes or something and i saw the weekly world news or one of those crazy tabloid papers sitting there, and there was a story inside that declared that scientists had discovered that the core of the earth was actually made of candy. yeah, i'm serious. there was also an article dealing with the problem of transmitting homosexuality through touch(all it takes is a handshake apparently, and you're gay for life). on the fox news webpage, there is this story. they're definitely taking full advantage of the weekly world news school of ludicrous story inventing. even the writing style is similar. i think john gibson may have a moonlighting gig. dude, check out j. gibson's teeth. if you have a strong stomach, you can click on his picture for the full visual assault. somebody introduce this man to a dentist, for the love of god. he's on television. fox news: consistent cesspool of misinformation and bad dental hygiene.

i was recently apprised of the fact that the new pope-ster bears a striking resemblance to the emperor from star wars. the dark side, indeed. i think he eats babies, but that's just my opinion.

no, i'm still here.

lot's of stuff has been happening, it seems. there's all this pope stuff, which I must say interests me from a sociological standpoint. last weekend when i was in new york, my mom pulled out a copy of newsday(the long island newspaper. no, it actually says that.) and they had a two page color photo zoom in on the pope's deceased head, taken at his funeral. i mean, like they got right up on the pope's head. it was just a tiny bit of neck and then just his lifeless head. it was bizarre. my mom and i just kinda stood around staring at it, muttering things like "ew..." and "why would they do that?" honestly, why?

this is awesome: pornographic celebration of death

anyhoo, there's that. then there's the sheffield/fan incident at fenway, which is naturally getting blown way the hell out of proportion, cause that's become the function of our media. it's no longer the fourth estate, it's just a bunch of blowhard hacks that find the one largely unimportant "issue" that everyone else is climbing all over and they get on the pile. but that's another paragraph, for another time. sheff is the man, and he handled himself freakin' beautifully. the sports guy has a funny bit on the whole scene over at sports guys world, and the sg proves that he hasn't gone off the red sox deep end by siding with reason on this one. that's why i love him.

however, he does seem perplexed by what he deems as the yankees rolling over and taking all sorts of abuse from boston without retaliation... you know what? i know what we can do to retaliate. WIN THE WORLD SERIES, BITCHES. yeah, and it's usually easier to do that when you're not wasting your time smacking the shit out of fat drunken losers from dorchester mass, or sitting around thinking of ways to dis jason varitek in the press.

there's much more to talk about, but i have run short of time, so we'll have to do this later.

report from the field

while i am on assignment in new york, field reports will be filed by chocolate, my colleague and traveling companion. chocolate also happens to be a six-inch stuffed moose belonging to my sister, and was recently displaced from his home on the dashboard of her truck by an unfortuante accident. yeah, i know all this sounds pretty strange, and it is, but chocolate is used to being in the field, and is quite adept at being a special correspondent, so let's just put aside our skepticism and let him do what he does best, shall we?

report from the field, filed 4/9/05 at 8:04 am est by chocolate

we have arrived in new york, and are now riding the long island rail road, which is an exponential improvement over the fung wa bu, which smelled exactly like crotch-rot. seriously, if someone actually had the desire and managed to figure out a way to bottle that foul odor, it would smell just like the fung wa bu. eau de crotch-rot. a female passenger sitting in the bus' mid-section put it rather perfectly when she announced: "SMELLS like SOMEBODY ain't be washing THEY ASS." indeed.

it was also torturously cold on the bus, which was a condition that my traveling companion neglected to remember from her previous trip on the apex bus line. she spent the majority of the ride shivering relentlessly under her denim jacket, while trying to find a postition that wouldn't make her ass fall asleep in less than five minutes. she never discovered said position, and is fairly certain after seven hours of research that it does not exist. i was neither particularly cold or physically uncomfortable, due to my moose-fur and diminutive size, but i don't sleep well on vehicles driven at high speed by people who seem less than trustworthy. i won't go in to my criteria for "less than trustworthy".

now it is off to strong isle for some actual sleep(the sort which won't be overrun with dreams of penguins or internment in a p.o.w. camp) as we are so exhausted that we have actually started to hallucinate. don't want to be hallucinating in the presence of m. warner.

stop looking at me swan!

----------------------end transmission---------------------------

so much to say...but not right now

i am off to ny tonight, via the fung wa bu(a.k.a. the chinatown express, richmond to ny for 60 bucks round trip), and if i don't die or get sold into white slavery or run afoul of the asian drug mafia(which i can only assume exists. i could be wrong.) then i will be interviewing virginia governor mark warner on saturday at lincoln center. insert deep breath, for that was a long sentance. perhaps a run-on, but i'm too tired to figure that out.

i'm rambling. this is obvious. in the recent past, my life has entered the spin cycle, and it's wearing my ass out. however, it is a really good kind of spin cycle, of a sort which i'm uncertain i've ever experienced before. and i feel pretty good. pretty good indeed.

because i'm tired and all i can hope to achieve in this entry is a rambling mess of something that might later be considered nonsense, i will stick to one of the more standout moments of the past few days/weeks/however long it's been.

i walked home through the fan the other night, at dusk actually, ( just quickly, the fan is what my neighborhood in richmond is called, for those in the back of the room, or in another state) and it was just an undeniably pleasant experience. in fact, i can honestly say i loved it. was in love with it. am still in love with it. and i realized that for the first time in what seems like possibly forever, i am "happy". i don't know what that means, and i know it's ridiculous to say things like one is "happy", but let's just use that as a catch-all for a general sense of ease and peace and even a tiny smidge of joy, cause i'm tired and my brain is on standby and i have to get on a fung wa bu in under an hour. i'm asking for some slack to be cut and handed over to yours truly. i need it right now. allright, enough. i'm happy dammit, and it's a thing to behold.

i am really looking forward to being in new york. i hope it goes well, but i think even going through with it is worth it's weight in gold to moi. and you can't deny springtime in new york, yo.

i'll see ya'll on tuesday.

transmission from the chaos

it's been far too long since i updated this blog, which is the direct result of the mayhem that has defined my life recently. and while it's the mayhem that keeps things interesting, it pisses me off that i can't get it together long enough to sit down and get something out onto the page. lately it's been all talking and little writing, which is not the way i'd prefer it. i need to get better at reversing the two. or at least equalizing them.

so here's the part where i say i don't have time right now to compose something that will adequately disclose what's on my mind. and it's true, i don't. there is a shower to take and a kitchen to scour for something edible and a bus to catch, and then there is a day to spend behind a bar, serving people food and drinks while my brain goes wild with all the things i need and want to do, but which must wait until five-thirty or so. how i will manage to cram all of that into the few evening hours that will follow is to be the topic of discussion in my brain today, along with what questions i will ask the governor of VA when i interview him on saturday. see? i told you i have stuff to talk about! there will be a real entry later this evening. i am determined.