Seven Second Delay -- 07.26.2005

Bad Religion - I Wanna Conquer the World
Sleater-Kinney - I Wanna Be Yr Joey Ramone
The Clash - Spanish Bombs

The Breeders - Invisible Man
Sonic Youth - Teenage Riot
Old 97s - Moonlight
A.C. Newman - Most of Us Prizefighters

The Wallflowers - Shy of the Moon
Counting Crows - Rain King
Weezer - Say It Ain't So (Request)

Low - Silver Rider
X - Hungry Wolf
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Ballad of the Sin Eater

Hellacopters - By the Grace of God (Giveaway)
The Notwist - Pilot (Concole Remix)
Lali Puna - Grin and Bear
Nobody - Wake Up and Smell the Millenium
Caribou - Hello Hammerheads

Beulah - My Side of the City
Wilco - War on War
The Ebb and Flow - See You Around the Fjords

Vast Aire - Viewtiful Flow
Blue Scholars - Freewheelin'
MIA - Bucky Done Gun

Royal City - Under a Hollow Tree
Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
Get Him Eat Him - Pardon My French

Built to Spill - Big Dipper
Rogue Wave - Endless Shovel
Pavement - Conduit for Sale!
Kinski - Semaphore

Paula Abdul - The Way That You Love Me (Giveaway)
Ben Kweller - Falling
The Mountain Goats - Palmcorder Yanja

Murder by Death - Killbot 2000
RATATAT - Seventeen Years
Tiger Bear Wolf - Input, Output

New Pornographers - The Bleeding Heart Show


Bailey, Rain King was for you, if you're still out there.

Set list for my first radio show, errata

The Doves -- Black and White Cities
Neutral Milk Hotel -- Song Against Sex
Devin Davis -- Cannons At The Courthouse

Rancid -- The Brothels
All -- Original Me
The Hives -- B is for Brutus

The New Pornographers -- All for Swinging You Around
Caribou -- Bees
Boom Bip -- The Do's and the Don'ts (Featuring Gruff Rhys)

Pavement -- Cut Your Hair!
Belle and Sebastian -- Don't Leave the Light On, Baby
The Decemberists -- Sporting Life (Request)
Madness -- Our House

Prince -- Raspberry Beret (contest prize, Prince Greatest Hits vol. 2)
Gang of Four -- Not Great Men
Love as Laughter -- Canal Street
The Rentals -- Waiting

The Unicorns -- Jellybones
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists -- Biomusicology
The Cripples -- Contraception
The Go! Team -- The Power is On (request)

Boom Bap Project -- Following Formulas
Bukue One -- Let Me In
Gorillaz -- November Has Come
13 and God -- Men of State

Iron and Wine -- Bird Stealing Bread
Rogue Wave -- Postage Stamp World
Sun Kil Moon -- Carry Me, Ohio

Mogwai -- You Don't Know Jesus
Viva Voce -- Alive with Pleasure
Menomena -- The Late Great Libido

Azure Ray -- Raining in Athens (Request)
Maria Taylor -- Birmingham 1982
Mommy and Daddy -- Confection
Death Cab for Cutie -- Title and Registration (Request)
Blonde Redhead -- Equus

See also: Kaz link at left. He's my co-host, for the non-Alaskans among ye.

Since returning to Anchorage, I've:

-started a boring job at a real estate appraisal firm.
-made more money at said job than any other job ever.
-hiked Arctic Valley with my family.
-biked a bit, but not as much as I'd like.
-gone to Lake Tahoe to visit Rothmans (Rothmen?) and hike, sunburn, feast, etc.
-gotten extremely excited about Austria and England next year.
-become frustrated at myself for not doing the artsy projects I told myself I'd finally start.
-written very little.
-taken few pictures.
-brewed a batch of amber ale with my folks.
-seen a few movies, read a few books.
-missed Portland. Eugene too, to a lesser degree.
-run into a ton of people I don't want to see, and a fair few I do.
-GOTTEN A RADIO SHOW!

and so on.

Right. The show is on 88.1 FM Anchorage. Tuesdays, 4-7 pm AKST. Out of staters can stream it at krua.uaa.alaska.edu. Alaska is but one wee hour earlier than Pacific time. Laura, Meg...you know what to do.

Also, if you want to record it, my baby brudder found a neat little program called wiretap pro that more or less allows you to record audio streams. I think. He's gone, so I'm just dinking around with it, hoping it's recording radio and not my obscenities in the trying-to-figure-out-the-gizmo process.

Folk + fest = urgh

I have to run a kiddie face painting booth at the Willamette Valley Folk Fest on account of this job of mine. It could be worse. Hours-wise, I'm getting off easy, which is nice considering I'm stipended and every hour they squeeze out of me lowers my hourly wage. Though the whole children aspect of it is unpleasant, it ought to go well. I can't really stand kids, by and large. The exceptions, my cousins and Julia most notably, are of course the most precocious and amazing kids ever, but the rest...meh. Thing is, kids really like me and I just don't get that. When I'm grumpy, they like me more. Quite the phenomenon.

Let's see. Over the past couple of weeks, I had a rap session with two of my GTFs, made minimal progress on Areli's birthday present (let alone the May birthdays), had a looong conversation with my beloved aunt, did masses of laundry, wished alternately that I were in Anchorage and that I never had to go back, found a job for the summer (in AK), and got a bunch of stuff done for the studying abroad business. Not to mention Mom's day. Not to mention endless boring classes that seem awfully pointless now. The weather here is manic and I'm starting to feel the same.

well then.

As if church and state weren't close enough already, now they're conjoined twins. A baptist church in North Carolina excommunicated the Democrats from its flock.

On the other hand, look up the Burka Band.

My beer turned out pretty well. Not earth-shattering, but a smooth, summery brew that goes nicely with all this damn rain.

Oregon rain

Cats and dogs? hell, this is rhinoceri and hippopotami. I don't care how disdainful my Texan roomie gets, these downpours are violent baptisms for the Willamette Valley. But it's inevitably as short-lived as it is ardent. It'll be over in an hour, if that. The rain is frenetic, but I can already hear it slacking off a little. There's got to be some kind of parable in here. Perhaps compared to the week-long Anchorage drizzle-fests. More on that as it develops.

PLC has a feral gerbil farm dwelling under the ivy. I saw about half a dozen rattish things munching and scuttling today on a Roma-run from the library.

I'm a ridiculous procrastinator. It's getting terminal. All of my study abroad paperwork remains neglected, my passport is still v1.0 (starring Erica, the 13 year old monstrosity!) and on and on. The temptation to list it is great, but I'd bore you and freak myself out.

Kyle and I are now addicted to The L-Word. No one saw it coming.

Raccoons, dairy artisans, a BK song, and GTF woes

But not in that order.

I am eating cheese that I purchased from the guy who made it. An honest-to-God cheese artisan. It's delicious, if expensive, and another peek for Erica into the world of agriculture. Cheese comes from jug-eared, lanky guys in rural Oregon, not the grocery store. It's chipotle cheddar. This guy has a blue cheese that's backordered until 2006 -- it won best blue in 2003 in the UK. My Wallace side came out in full force at this guy's booth.

Also: I could probably eat Dijon mustard with a spoon. Love it.

Studying at the library last night, a raccoon looked at me through the window (cutely) and disappeared. I was in the quiet room, so I couldn't squeal with delight. But I wiggled a bit in my chair and grinned like crazy.

My grandfather sent me a very heartfelt write-out of his family's history in Hungary/Transylvania. I shouldn't have read it at work. With his inimitable good humor and thoughtfulness, he outlined the family tree and how Rothmans, Mannheims, Bolgars, and others survived (or didn't) the Holocaust. We still email in German, at least partially. "Wir haben, "schrieb ich "eine mutige Familie." Suddenly, studying German has taken on a lot more significance.

Before I read that today, I visited my GTF for this survey course that I care about less and less every minute. She gave me a lame grade on a pretty good paper with some cryptic and pointless commentary on the sides and back about "political context" (not in the prompt) and arguing "more vigorously" to justify leaving out a particular line of this sonnet. It was an unsatisfying visit. She stood by her nonsense. To her credit, there are two points that I needed to draw out. I'm almost glad I went because of that. Now I know how nitpicky she'll be. But she seemed to think that it was the grade that bothered me. What bothered me (other than the fact that her point scale was ridiculous -- taking "a few off" of a 15 point paper and a 30 or 50 point paper makes a difference to the ratio, despite her allegations that I can make it up. If the whole class is 115 points, that's way slim) was that she didn't respond to her invalid criticisms. I think I may have frightened her, though; it was early, so I was in the "not talkative, somewhat somber, straight-faced" mode, and she got pretty uncomfortable toward the end of our little office hours session.

Bottling the Knockout Girly Beer tomorrow.

Another blues stringer back home

Looks like blogger added a "recover post" feature for all those works of genius that the internet eats when its feeling ornery. Just another reason I like it. Not that I've been showing my love for the blog lately.

To condense, I've been really homesick lately. Or peoplesick, I guess. I miss my Anchortown buddies to the point of tears and Eugene, while it's not Spokane, isn't exactly wildly entertaining.

On the less-whiny side, I'm going to see Sarah Vowell in Portland at Wordstock. The name is cheesy, but Miss Vowell's speaky is free.

And I'm listening to the Who, which tends make life easier overall.

Also: I just literally found an ant in my pants. Apparently, they're back with a vengeance, the little fuckers.

Just a couple quick things

I'm taking a silkscreening class at the craft center and brewing beer. The class is a bit dull, mostly on account of the teacher, but as soon as we're actually into the guts of it, I think I'll have a great time. It took me a hell of a long time to figure out why exactly one would want the emulsion to dry on the screen, but after an hour or so of unclear lecture and a less clumsy demonstration, I finally got the idea. And the beer! I'm making a raspberry honey ale that may well push 6.5 or 7% alcohol by volume. Hence the name: Knockout Girly Beer. Now you all know my thoughts on drinking and drunkness, so I say all this trusting you guys understand my joy at making stuff, not drinking it. hmm. rising incoherence. At any rate, it should be concurrently sweet and hoppy -- a really interesting, refreshing summer beer, methinks.

Meg is in my german conversation group, and that makes me endlessly happy. Less English, more German...hooray!

been sleeping poorly. missing people. Bailey, are you out there? I would really love to hear from you, my dear.

A bit of a saga, really.

Indeed they do, and they're far superior to anything that Greyhound has to offer. The past two weeks have been extremely eventful and extremely computer-less as Areli and Sam came to town, Kyle’s computer broke, and I left my little laptop alone in Eugene when I buzzed off to Portland last Sunday. So I’ll regale you with excerpts from the real journal, which is probably more accurate anyway, since it was along for the ride the whole time.

I want to be a line drawing. A simple, transparent line drawing. Actually, I'd like everyone to be line drawings. Maybe then I'd feel more sure of what few pen strokes I have.

Areli and Sam arrived in the thick of dead week -- really, the weekend before, but I had tons of work to do [I go on to list the papers and crap that I had to wade through the previous week, that week, and through finals. --e] We looked for salvia unsuccessfully; I'm not too keen on jumping through hoops to get the stuff, but I'm still curious. Their first full day involved University park (the one with the demon merry-go-round that always manages to fling me off and get sand in my underdrawers), Prince Puckler's ice cream and a tour of campus. They wandered Eugene. Fred Meyer! A movie or two. Dinners: flying dog, ziti bake, awesome quesadillas, pizza, and a cake. The cake didn't have long to live. We demolished it in the fullest sense of the word. Friday: I blew off all my classes (kyle handed in my paper) and went to PDX. We did some general wandering and hit a really great show: The Velvet Teen and Crosstide, with the New Truth (a lesser band, I thought.) The show was really good, but for some reason I hit a real energy lapse -- I was exhausted by nine. I stuck it out and got a second wind, but I considered (and I can't believe it in retrospect, and see it as a real moment of weakness) changing my bus ticket and going back to Eugene seriously. That was a wussy-ass low point, and I feel a bit guilty. We hit a Denny's after a 15-20 minute meander through a frontage road drug bust in industrial north portland. I saw some sketchy parts of stumptown that I wouldn't have otherwise seen, but we needed to ask a cop (who was blockading the road because of the aforementioned bust) for directions to I-5. Eventually, I got my milkshake and Areli and Sam got their fried stuff. Our main problem was a lack of a place to crash. At 1:00 or so at Denny's, our standing plan was to just stay up all night. Vetoed on the grounds of Areli and Sam having 4 more hours of driving. Roberta's [the woman I stay with in Portland -- a friend of my parents and a super cool gal] was ostensibly not an option; she was out of town, and, though she's told me to use the place and not stand on ceremony, I hadn't called her beforehand AND there was a not-Roberta's car in the driveway. Just moseying in would disturb any housesitter, though maybe not Bert. Later I found out that the omninous Trooper was a neighbor's. We had tried the hostel and a couple motels earlier to no avail, so we ended up shelling out for the Thrifylodge on E Burnside. Scuzzy, but acceptable. The room had a queen and a twin like the rooms my parents could sometimes finagle when we all road tripped together. Adam and I would alternate turns on the bed to prevent fighting. We were usually pretty good to each other on those trips, just cranky for autonomous reasons. anyway, the night was fairly uneventful, despite our proximity to bars, strip joints and the Doug Fir (a concert venue/lounge that gets good shows that I naturally can't see stupid 20...grr). The morning was smooth, if early. My bus left at 11:30 or so, and I had to be there an hour early. The Dynamic Duo dropped my off a couple of blocks from the bus station and right next to this little bakery I know -- we parted and I missed them almost immediately. It's nice to have old friends in a new environment. My posse was there -- they had my back. I got myself a muffin and a coffee and a coke for the road to settle my stomach in case of a motion sickness emergency --I was going dramamine commando. Seeing as my motion sickness can reach epic proportions, this was major. but somehow I managed not only to be a-okay the whole time, but I even read and wrote a little. As the Greyhound pulled onto Coburg, it occured to me that what took longer than a feature length movie (the bus ride) would stick in my memory as a montage, complete with iPod soundtrack, if at all. The contraction of life like that bothered me, but I supposed that if we carried every moment of our lives with us 24/7, no one would live to see 20. Destroying our recollection helps us collect more, snippets on snippets.

Okay, that should tide you all over until I get to finals week and spring break. Bear in mind I did omit some banal things without noting them.

I'm sorry

In your grief, please know that I am here for any support you want or need.

I'd like to think that it's super noble of me to be working on papers two weeks ahead of time, on account of Areli and Sam visiting. But it's not. It's shockingly responsible, but noble it ain't. To that end, el blogadero is not exactly going to be brimming with insight, photos or antics. Not until the 4th, anyway.

I'M SO EXCITED!

In retrospect, I should call it "playa theory." Elementary schools everywhere had a sort of anti-love Valentine's day, more or less favoring the kids who weren't exactly winning any beauty pageants. On some level, everyone knew that the "Valentines for everyone or Valentines for no one" mandate was a crock, a pity-play on the part of the teachers. That didn't stop me (and hopefully many others) to treasure the Bart Simpson or Kermit the Frog or Scrooge McDuck proclaiming Platonic love with some kind of pun. Occasionally, people would go all out and make 25 individual cards, attaching a hershey's kiss if they felt racy enough to kiss everyone in class. Therein lay the added benefit of circumventing the dictatorial love structure -- a savvy valentineer could make a little extra effort than the fold-and-cut heart for the Object of Affection. I did. I made a big, florid heart heart for Dylan Watts one year and agonized over what to write on there. My shyness won, of course, and a really ridiculous construction paper monstrosity dwarfed the inane happy-valentine's-day-you-are-really-nice (not those words, but equally lame.) In fact, I usually made my own valentines, either because my folks wouldn't buy the Muppet cards or because I had an ulterior motive.

The store-bought cards confused me after I made my first-ever round of 25 'tines. I had given time to every member of my class, and I got a forum letter back. The impersonality was one thing, but the mass distribution with nothing distinguishing me from the pretty girl, her from the weird boy mystified me. So here's where playa theory comes in. Mass valentines mean one of three things:

1) The sender doesn't care, but wants the candy. This didn't appeal to me, but was probably the most true. Also along these lines is the scattershot theory that sending out 25 valentines ought to yield SOMETHING.
2) The sender actually does love everyone in the class equally, making the same mass-manufactured Daffy Duck a pretty accurate measuring stick for his or her love.
3) The sender knows that there is something about this love thing that is desirable. My elementary school self wasn't so aware of the concept of sex drive, but I had figured out that people want lots of love from lots of people. I wasn't that dim. By way of flimsy, red cardstock, I realized that there is something Machiavellian in love. It's about gaining as much affection as possible at any cost.

In sixth grade, I didn't make valentines, but gave everyone a hershey's kiss instead. In part to satisfy the number ones, in part because of my disgust at the number threes.

I'm happy to say that we've all graduated from that. As well as from the incessant drama of junior high and high school. So let's take this V-day for what its worth and do something free of that sick control. Actually, it's not V-day anymore, which means in 18 hours or so, I should call my dad and wish him a happy birthday. but still. let go of that fucked obligation system.

Not taking pictures really fucks me up. Not writing is bad too, but the photos are an irreplaceable high. It's a reward, a miracle, a feat when something comes out better-than-expected, especially when your expectations are high as hell. So here's some stuff.


I thought of Sophie when I took this one. You know, because of her ferocity.


In which our heroine discovers the best light in her apartment -- it's the bathroom and it's reflecty walls.


Not doing the dishes sometimes results in good things. Really. I think I have about a dozen shots of these almost ethereal lines of starch clinging to my (christmas gift/totally sweet) saucepan. It reminds me of engraving.


Over winter break, my dad and I staked out the birdfeeders outside his bedroom window and had a couple long photo sessions. He has some BEAUTIFUL close-ups of nuthatches, black-capped chickadees and bohemian waxwings -- his little zappy camera has about twice the zoom as my clunker. But I love my clunker because I have more control than those zippity doo-dahs. So there. Anyway, this is a pair of feasting redpoles.


This fellow (Bohemian waxwing) knew I was taking his picture. I mean, look at him.


he's totally midcomplaint. Probably going off on the magpies.


Cropped severely, but otherwise undoctored. All of these were, for that matter.

Since I posted last, I've done some stuff. Such as turn in my financial aid and study abroad applications, make chicken stock again, turn in an agonizing paper for Comp Lit, agonize some more, read from Che Guevara's Guerilla Warfare (as well as some Shakespeare, Drayton, Marlowe, Lanyer, Donne, Nietzsche, Foucault, Rimbaud, blah, blah, blah von blah blah, and blah look at how intellectual I am!!! Reading brilliant minds makes me brilliant!!! ...fucking school... That's really more to illustrate how much crap I've had to do over the past two or three weeks rather than a display of my intellectual chops. I don't have to prove ANYTHING! [ha.]), noted the odd punctuation combination I just created, played Kingdom of Loathing a little too much, seen several movies, gotten an A on said paper, raged between hating school and loving it, and more fairly mundane crap.

I've also started scrawling things in other places, but it's not amounting to much. Nor do I expect it to because I'm finally realizing that that's not the point. Expect stuff later.

My grandma sent me a scarf and hat today. She knits like crazy and sells her wares at the Saturday Market in Anchorage, but winter (except for the holiday bazaars and the occasional substitute teaching job at East) is a dormant period for her. I'm her guinea pig for some new patterns, she said in her note on endearingly florid stationary. She sent me the hats saying she wasn't too fond of them, but I was welcome to keep or distribute them. It was a really sweet gesture; she's not too demonstrative (somewhat Victorian in a way), so it really throws me when she shows me the softer side of Granny. Two Christmases ago, she gave me a couple framed pictures of my mom and her siblings, circa '66 or so. For the longest time, I thought she was sort of ambivalent towards me because I wasn't going to be a party to her dressing me up in pinafores. Learning that's not true is quite the process. I'm wrong a lot.

After the sun goes nova, vaporizes the earth and sheds its envelopes of matter into the universe, it will dwindle into a little dwarf star and eventually die a quiet death. My recycled bones will, in billions of years, disintegrate along with the rest of the planet and the molecules will reduce to atoms and perhaps some sub-atomic bits. Our carbon will float among the rest of the stellar discharge, everything from my fingers to the entire body of literature. Will the next archeology be an alien race reconstructing our art microscopic fragment by microscopic fragment? Will they learn our languages and piece together adolescent diaries and masterful sonnets? Will they eventually be defunded when their civilization goes to war? Or will we make up their world until the universe freezes in total entropy?

This is my kitchen, as drawn by me. With my new favorite toy.

ETA: It looks lamer than it did before. Suddenly, perhaps because it's public, I'm as proud of it. This ultimately goes back to something Lynda Barry wrote about why kids stop drawing. They start asking whether it's good or not. To avoid those questions, she contends, is to create great stuff because it's not constrained. So to that end, I'm still keepin' it up.

Thanks for bearing with the previous angst-o-rama/stressoutapalooza. Things are much less melodramatic now. In fact, I saw a fellow ardently playing a didgeridoo while walking down the street today.

Everyday my walk to school takes me past the ambulance area of Sacred Heart hospital. This doesn't affect me -- hospitals are necessary, and I'm not at all the type to be unnerved by them. Today, though, the hoity-toity restaurant across 13th Ave. from the hospital had declared war. Excelsior (the restaurant) incensed the air with garlic and cloves, and Sacred Heart responded in kind with vomit. Then SH upped the ante with a siren. A wave of laughter swept through Excelsior. Sacred Heart won, with a clattering gurney and a moaning young man. But it felt to me that Excelsior pulled out because it lost interest; the wine arrived, perhaps, or the waiter told a charming joke. I entered Deutsch feeling more contemplative than usual.

BAH to paperwork. BAH to UO. BAH to bureaucracy and departments telling me what I can and cannot do.

No, fuck YOU. It doesn't matter how well anyone knows me -- my elastic frustration at myself often puts me in that long-suffering mood that most people tend to shed in junior high. I could hurl myself off of my balcony right now, but not before writing an angry diatribe, filled to the brim with self-righteous and self-hating rhetoric battling for supremacy. I'm just that pissed, and the reason pisses me off still more because it's really not a legitimate impetus for leaving an Erica-shaped dent in either the parking lot or that red Jetta.

So I missed an organizational meeting for one of my classes yesterday. The one I was most excited about, actually. I completely fucking blanked it, even though I had, not two hours prior to the meeting, lamented leaving Espresso Roma for my apartment because I'd only have to walk that way again in a scant hour and change. I also spaced out the Literary Society meeting. Everything is getting hazier in my mental appointment calendar, when I was once actually reliable. I had an organizer last year. I eventually stopped using it, as I always do. Last term, I forgot a meeting with an artist for work. I felt shitty for days. Work in general tends to slide out of my brain now. I'm behind on my meaningless paperwork, and even though I honestly don't give any form of a shit, I still feel guilty. And a little bit like I'm breaking, falling into obsolescence.

I got theory-whacked in my classes this term. My comp lit class on madness has been especially difficult so far, not having read much Nietzsche or dense theory in a while. I never taught myself to read this stuff. I can do it, it's another challenge, but the conceptual arena is not a place that I should get stuck. Maybe it has something to do with my cerebral reaction to the university or my own disconnection from everything that doesn't feel like home, but my head keeps rolling away.

So I get a "fuck you" email. I don't know how she means it, but I know nothing will end. We've been friends for way too long to just give the cowardly dramatic flourish of a two word e-missive as the sign. And I know that Joe passed away. And I know that I want to talk to Jordan. But what she knows (not Jordan, but the previous she) is that she's Jordan's protector and sister, and whatever she interprets my actions to mean. There's some gut reaction of hers that I'm not understanding, and fuck-all if I ever will entirely. But I am very transparent (she knows this) and I say what I mean about 95% of the time now.

Then I read the news, and I think the world isn't such a very bad place. It's just filled with assholes bent on ruining it. The scandal du jour and the rehash of the prior ones makes my stomach fucking turn.

In short, I want to cry. And I've wasted my day not doing it or anything else.

Doing some overhauls, now that I have time to do so. (Ahhh...free time.)

State of the Erica: BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! Thank you, and god bless America.

Work broad-sided me when I got back. I'm sort of treading water for now, and all of those good intentions I had for the term (not blowing off homework, for starters) got knee-capped right out of the gate.

I miss everyone. A metric fuckload.