So, I had meant to write about Mr Rogers yesterday, and got sidetracked into a mean-spirited rant about Dubya. Typical, huh? Since then, I've read plenty of tributes to the man and his show, and I don't know if I have anything any more eloquent than anyone else, but I do feel compelled to state what seems obvious to me: kids who grow up with Mr Rogers grow up lame and sad and unimaginative. What else can explain the kids today? The fact that they get no nourishing information frm TV. Yes, he continued producing the show into 2001, but I wonder if there are any stats about how many kids were actually still watching it?

Man, the world just gets less and less interesting. Mr. Rogers died today and after watching King George give yet another pompous speech about shit he not only doesn't believe, but based on his facial expressions (am I the only one who thinks his facial expressions are completely inappropriate to the words coming out of his mouth? He looks alternately smug, confused, and often smirking like he's talking about boobies or something. Like he's this little kid who has all the adult attention at dinner time. Agh, it pains me to even think about this).) but I seriously doubt he understands. Just an ejaculation of complete lies and bullshit. Honestly, who the hell is going to rescue the United States of America from our evil despot? If you accept the definition of dictator, then someone might like to point out the percentage of Americans living in poverty. Oh sure, they have cars (everyone loves the Ford Tempo) and they have TVs (keep them fat and stupid, like good cattle), but do we Americans have any sense of SELF? Any clue to our responsibility to the rest of the planet?
Agh. I can't do this again. I have reached burnout.

I was watching the seagulls this morning. They are plentiful here in the International (nee Chinatown) district where I work - only 4 blocks to the waterfront, and plenty of prime dumpsters to scavenge from. This morning though, as I crossed the old Uyajimaya parking lot, I noticed a couple dozen of them appeared to be playing as they flew around above the lot. There was plenty of squawking and they swooped around in big lazy circles, diving in front of each other (I watched several almost collide mid-flight, only to pull up just before impact, without any seeming panic or hostility. You ever see crows dive-bomb each other? Those are some mean, cranky birds, but these gulls were all very mellow), it was like they were a bunch of winged skaters just sessioning for the sheer joy of it. I immediately remembered reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull and how JLS was so into the joy of flight. It sure seemed like those gulls were digging on being gulls - sort of like when you watch sea otters (and i love to watch sea otters) they just look like they really LIKE being who they are. Yes, yes, I'm anthropormorphasizing animals again, so sue me. My head is in a wacky place at the moment. I feel like some major changes are gonna have to happen, and not all of them are going to be pleasant, so I'm daydreaming about seagulls. Riiight.
Meanwhile, it's Friday so here we go:
1. What is your most prized material possession?
I don't really prize possessions, but I guess my camera or Rickenbacker bass both qualify, as things I'm proud to use and own.

2. What item, that you currently own, have you had the longest?
The small stuffed koala that was my first ever retail purchase with my own money. I was 7. It has a safety pin in it's ear, 'cause y'know, punk rock and stuff.

3. Are you a packrat?
Not nearly to the extent that I was. SMRGE is though. A throw-it-in-a-box packrat no less. I've gotten progressively better over the years, lightening my load.

4. Do you prefer a spic-and-span clean house? Or is some clutter necessary to avoid the appearance of a museum?
I was raised in a tidy, but lived-in house, and that's what I prefer. I have a dog, so spic&span isn't even a reality. Clutter bugs me.

5. Do the rooms in your house have a theme? Or is it a mixture of knick-knacks here and there?
Hell no. The whole place is "decorated" with stuff from our lives. Art we made or people made for us mostly.

Here's the thing George, (can I call you George? I mean, sure, Mr President is the official title, but you have really sold america on the "i'm just one of the guys" thing, so I feel like y'know, if we were at a meeting ((you used to go to those, right George? Maybe you still do? Maybe you still should since it seems like you've forgotten about humility)) I'd call you George B, and you'd know me as Michelle O, so I figure it's okay to call you George, but maybe I should stick to Dubya, because back in the day, when I was addressing yer dad (and I did address your Dad a lot, because I really thought I was fighting evil and making a difference, but then you come along and prove that evil begets evil and that well, here we frigging go AGAIN) I called him King George, so it would just be too confusing for both of us if I did that, so...yeah, Georgie, maybe?) the thing is, you do have a responsibility to do what we the voters want. I'm pretty fucking sure that it's in your job description - something about the representational form of govornment. If a lot (in this case millions) of people display a preference (like, oh, not having a pointless war in the name of oil and your families' retarded need to dominate the planet) then you are supposed to make decisions based on that. We have freedom of speech not just to get shit off our chests, George, but in order to be able to directly influence political representatives. I'm pretty goddamn sure you don't read your email, much less the written stuff. Sure, that has more to do with your inability to read as opposed to what I firmly believe is an overall disrespect of the Amercian Public, but I digress. What I'm saying is that just because 40 percent of the American public is so stupid that they care about a lying construction worker/model looking for love from 20 money-grubbing golddiggers, doesn't mean that the hundreds of thousands all over this grand country aren't protesting the war just to piss you off. People are in the streets because they are pissed, Dubya. Even the little guys, the mechanics, the gas station attendants, the accounting drones are pissed. They are starting to think (!) that you are a power-hungry war-mongering functionary of the upper class. Yeah, George, sure you know that I, and all the other people with the CIA files filled to the brim with ties to freeing Nelson Mandela, and getting the US to divest from South Africa, and fighting bastard organizations like Operation Rescue and your Dad's little forays into Central America...sure, you know that we're all on to you, but the bad news (and you're making it worse) is that you are now tipping your hand to the Springer People. The TV folk, the people who swarm Wal-Mart when you tell them to buy duct tape ( hey George, did you ever see the British animated movie, "When The Wind Blows" about what happens after a nuclear war? You should check it out George, it's a cartoon, and it's educational, you might learn more from it than listening to Dick Cheney and his boys tell you how they did it back in '90) they're starting to wonder what in the hell is going on. They're not gonna like getting pulled over at the airport in the name of "homeland security" they aren't gonna like it when you start telling them when and where they can go, and what they can watch or read. Ask your Dad what happened when he started pulling this shit. Have you seen "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" George? Of course you have. Your dad is a punchline ("Voodoo economics" George. Don't do it. It's never ever worked. Everyone knows it. Bad call.), and you are on your way. I'm just afraid this time, we're a bit too close to the edge. You need to chill out. I'm sorry if Jeb picked on you a lot as a kid, or knocked your ice cream on the gorund, or whatever it is that makes you think you need to play the bully role, but you need to cut it out. You are the (unfairly) elected leader of the most powerful nation on the planet, and you are being an asshole. I don't appreciate it. I could go on and on about how I was in Europe when your dad lost the election in '92 and how amazingly happy everyone in all 12 countries that I travelled to were about it. They were stoked. Which means they were sick and tired of the oppressive nature to begin with. I haven't been back recently, but word on the street (and the internet, you do know about the internet, right?If not, ask Al, he'll explain it. Or ask yer daughters, they're very popular in cyberspace as well) is that no one likes you. At all. You make bad choices. It looks like you don't really have a plan at all, except to be a bully. That's lame George, and it's not very humble.
Please listen to the people of this country when they go out of their way to display their wishes. It's your job.

So this weekend I took another step back in the direction I was headed about 3 years ago, and then proceeded to let myself get derailed by love. This time though, I'm going to be both thinner, and married. I got the bike out of the storage area, and put it on the damn training rack, and got a new smooth tire, set it up in the bedroom (because we have no other space) and proceeded to ride it. Now, I only got through 3 Severna Park songs (I used to do the entire record, or the whole Sicko "You are not the boss of me" LP) before I thought my heart would explode, but I did it. and I have done it every night since. Already I feel 100 percent better, just sweating for 12 minutes. I'm anxious to get back to where I was - doing the 30 minutes and not thinking twice about it. Because THAT is what got me out of my rut before. No matter how little I eat, I only lose weight if I sweat. Walking 3 miles a day doesn't even cut it - my body is so used to that as a daily routine sort of thing that it doesn't even register as a workout anymore, it is just part of my day. Which blows. But anyway, I'm stoked that I might return to that mindset that I had a few years ago - I remember going with my mom to Vegas while she visited with friends, and I was so freaked out by not having a bike to ride, I just started walking around the frigging desert - walked from the MGM to the Hard Rock, and back around...almost in a fit about not burning calories. Sure that sounds nutty, but for me, it was a big improvement over simply not giving a damn.
The weird thing this time is now I share my life with someone, so I sort of feel obligated to behave in a somewhat normal manner (no dinners of air-popped popcorn for me) eating-wise, which with any luck will mean I will actually create habits that will stick, and I won't slide into a rut again.
It's strange though, sometimes I feel like SMRGE thinks the whole idea of sweating is silly. It's easy for him though - he has that massive cancer to feed, and it keeps him rail thin. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once again, a whole week slides by and brings us to the Friday Five
1. Explain why you started to journal/blog.
Because I had/have an overwhelming desire to write. The journal provided me with the one forum I always wanted, which is basically a daily personal forum to ruminate on all types of subjects, both personal and non.

2. Do people you interact with day to day or family members know about your journal/blog? Why or why not?
Well, this is actually my second blog. I started with a journal at another site, which was very honest and sometimes bordered on rabid. Some of the stuff I wrote about was pretty damn funny/insightful (or so they tell me; it's still out there - though the most recent entries are admittedly lame). I covered everything from daily walks with my dog to current world politics. I initially pointed a lot of friends who lived far away there so they could sort of keep up with me as if I was still physically writing letters all the time. Beyond that, I was unattached when I started journaling online (talk about adding fuel to the fire) and then started going out with the guy who I eventually married - in fact, when we first got together, I pointed him to it immediately, figuring it was the best way for him to get to know "me" fastest. But as we spent more time together, I felt more and more uncomfortable writing about us and as I grew more aware of how many people were reading, it seemed like I couldn't come up with the same quality of writing...so I blogged less and less, until finally, I'm pretty sure, no one checks it anymore. I moved here, in an effort to regain the anonymity of before, in the hope that it would move me to write more often, because ultimately, I miss writing everyday.
Oh, and only one brother knows about the journal, and I'm pretty sure he never bothered to check it out. The rest of my family is either not online, or haven't been told. I have had people find my journal via searches, and sometimes, since they haven't talked to me in years, have gotten all ganked up about things they've read. It has led me to edit a bit, and write less - but things have changed in my life a lot, i have less free time to just write in general - i used to do a lot of it at work, and that just isn't as doable as it was before.

3. Do you have a theme for your journal/blog?
Is honesty a theme? Ranting? Mindless drivel?


4. What direction would you like to have your journal/blog go in over the next year?
I'd like to regain the more immediate tone my previous effort had. I'd like it to be thought-provoking.

5. Pimp five of your favorite journals/blogs.
Okay, but my favorite blogs are oldschool, that is they were online journals before "blogging" was *cool*. Some don't update very often, but when they do, it's always worth it.
Heather
Lance
Mary
Gus
Ceej

In a desperate attempt to avoid the reality of having fucked up my marriage...how about 5 inane questions from Friday?

1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn't have breakfast, why not?
english muffin with cranberry jam i made at xmas, and a banana.

2. What's your favorite cereal?
Post cranberry nut crunch.

3. How often do you eat out? Do you want that to change?
not often enough. yeah, it'd be cool if we went out more to eat, though i do like to cook, so it's not too big a deal.

4. What do you plan on having for dinner tonight? Got a recipe for that?
Uh, gonna roast a chicken...yeah, i've got a recipe. Probably do brocolli and potatoes with.

5. What's your favorite restaurant? Why?
Golly, i don't go enough to have a favorite, but i really enjoyed bandaleone when we went there once, and i always enjoyed hana sushi, and the mashiko sushi place over in west seattle was nice as well.

So, yeah. He gazed across the table and broke the silence (not an uncomfortable silence, just a comfy hey-here-we-are-at-the-local-mexican-joint-for-grub silence) with "So, how about those Juno boys, eh?"
To which I replied the only way I know how "They are a most talented group of guys." To which I added, "And they rocked the fuckin' house Saturday, and the bass player, that Jason guy, owned those songs."
I said that, because the man did, and it was no small feat.

One of the first webjournals i ever came across (while surfing on Xerox/Microsoft's dime) was Musings of the Gus - which I found through some random search for punk rock sites back in the day (that'd be '95 or so, for those of you keeping track at home)). Anyway, I still read Gus fairly often, though I took a long break from his rambling stuff while he was in LA; as I found he had become boring, and the inclusion of adventures with his girl were not just boring, but poorly written. But he's back on the East Coast now, and with a new girl who obviously indulges his sardonic side, which is nice to see. Occsionally he writes something and I feel like he's beaten me to the punch. Tow wit:
"For those of you who are religious and wonder what message God was trying to send with today's disaster, hold on to your Bibles and fret no more, I think I have this one figured out! The problem seems to have been with the Columbia's left wing, which either broke off or otherwise malfunctioned while the shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere. I'm thinking that God was fed up with the continuing marginalization and oppression of the Left by the present American administration, and in His own inimitably mysterious way, decided to send our nation a message by smiting the left wing of its most famous and flamboyant of wing-ed craft, thereby demonstrating an important fact: you cannot fly without a left wing."
Nicely done, Gus.

Well. I had big plans to post over the weekend, what with all the action, but it (as usual) got pushed back. I wanted to wax rhapsodorically (you like that? yeah, me too.) about the wonder that is the local band Juno, as I don't think I've done that in this venue (and it'd be a nice break from the constant braying about my lost punk rock youth. Although it seems that that is what my internet presence has become, merely a sounding board for my inability to cope with not being part of the scene anymore). However, the space shuttle is on my mind, as it is many people's lately. Though I'll wager my thoughts aren't like theirs.
Here's why: I am one of those freaks who wasn't terribly upset by the explosion of the Challenger. I'm assuming here that there are some - though I have yet to come across anyone who doesn't go on and on about how it impacted them. I was in college, a freshman when it happened. I remember it quite clearly, because it was still so new that the launches were still regularly broadcast on TV. Being the speed demon that I was at the time, I was routinely up at 6am on weekday mornings, usually at Mike's apartment, watching TV before hitting class. Generally, I enjoyed indulging in Jim & Tammy Faye (it's a long story, though fairly humerous, it's too long to go into here, now, but rest assured I wasn't a member of the GodSquad) - but that morning, we were indeed watching the Today show (as I recall) and the liftoff. I do remember being amazed that I was actually seeing it happen. I remember thinking "Wow, it really did blow up. Live, in front of the world." Because at that point in our country's sordid little history, we didn't have a long list of public deaths to choose from: you had JFK, RFK, MLK, and uh, oh, yeah, Lee Harvey Oswald. Beyond that, not a lot going on in that area. It had been a long time since we'd seen heroes go down. Certainly it was my generation's first experience. But here's the weird part for me: I didn't dwell on the deaths as unfortunate lives lost. Naw. It hit me then, as it does now, that part of the risk in being an astronaut is the danger of what you are doing. Seriously. You are shooting a tube full of people into space. Not just the sky (I mean, if you concentrate on it, airplanes are just begging to be smacked down by Nature) but into space away from the earth. With big, explosive rockets. It's a dangerous gig my friends. Just because the Space Shuttle looks like a plane doesn't mean it is one. But I'm digressing (obviously). My point is that part of what (I think, though the the loved ones' of the dead seem to concur) attracts people to being an astronaut in the first place is the danger. The risk. Because the payoff (being in outer space) is awfully fucking cool. Have you seen the video from the mission? Do you see anyone bummed out? Sad? Bored? Hell no. Every person looks totally into what they are doing, and if there is one thing that I know, it's that when you are living in the moment, fully enjoying what you are and where you are, that is what makes life worth living. They train for the mission. They are aware of the risks, and they choose to do what they do because at some point your will to do it supercedes everything else. If they had second thoughts they would stay on the ground. I furmly believe that. Which is why I'm sickened by all the weepy bullshit around America. It's NOT some horrible loss - it is in fact a great example of the courage and daring that makes some people truly inspiring. I can't see it any other way. I can' t mourn for those people, because I don't believe they lost their lives in vain, or due to some sort of preventable issue. Yeah, I realize the explosion is most likely due to a malfunction, but those happen. Risks are there. Statistically, we're gonna lose some shuttles. We are going to crash cars, planes are going to crash, generally, bad things happen in life. But to get all weepy does no one any good. Plus, let's all pull back and quit teaching our kids to be so goddanm morose. Grief counselors are a growth industry. It's time we as a nation frigging bucked up. To wit, I offer Hunter S Thompson in today's salon:

So yeah, the Friday crutch returns with:
1. As a child, who was your favorite superhero/heroine? Why?
Really wasn't all that hip to superheroes - they all seemed like dorks to me. I just never bought it. However, I did watch Shazam! pretty regularly, so whoever that guy with the red+gold outfit and fist in the sky who travelled in an RV with his dad, or grandpa or whatever Uncle Curmudgeon character there was...that'd be it. Or maybe Underdog. Or Bullwinkle. Is Bullwinkle a superhero? Maybe only to me.

2. What was one thing you always wanted as a child but never got?
Ooooh! I had often hoped, early on, for one of the giant art kits...but never told my parents (I don't think, anyway) but really the only thing I ever really hoped I'd get was a new English saddle (yeah, we had horses) - the folks came close though. One christmas I did wake to find a brand spankin' new (and quite wonderful) western saddle waiting under the tree - but i have to admit to being disappointed. I wanted the English, and I wanted a red bow. Ah well. I gave up the dreams of jumping, and went ahead and started barrel racing. Which i ended up liking...go figure. And it was a really nice saddle.

3. What's the furthest from home you've been?
Ah, favorite question ever. I think, milage-wise, it's Serbia. I think the furthest east was Novi Sad. Or North to Os, Norway. Or south, Sicily. One of those though.

4. What's one thing you've always wanted to learn but haven't yet?
Well, obviously, what I'm supposed to do with my life. Oh, and French.

5. What are your plans for the weekend?
Juno, baby, Juno. Gonna go bask in the glow of Arlie & Co. Yay.

The little croat still hasn't written. whatever. you'd think i'd catch the clue, but no...whatever.
how strange that i'm listening to NPR this morning and they're running a story about the remaining Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, and interview people in Novi Sad, Serbia. How bizarre that I've been there. I played a show in Novi Sad. What the hell? HOw many people can say that? How many Americans? Like a dozen of us, tops, yeah? I've done some wacky wacky shit.
Speaking of wacky shit - I ran into a ghost from my past (though I'd been sliding past him for months now - I was just waiting for him to have the nerve to say something to me, and yesterday, he did). Shay. What a sad state of affairs. Sad but funny, and all too satisfying in most respects. Especially when he suggested going to get a drink and I said no. But not for the reason he expected. Heh. Hell yeah. The rest of you may remain in yer little pit of doom, but me, i'm moving on - sure, it may be a trench of doom, but nonetheless, it's a trench, not a hole.

i've dug him ever since we pulled up by the side of the road outside of Rome and picked him up to begin our first european tour. back then, he was just a cute, foreign punk rock boy who liked my band enough to book us shows. who knew within 10 days he would have proven himself such and arrogant bastard that i was deriving glee from hocking green loogies (loogies? is that a word? and if it is, did i really just use it? yikes.) at the back of his long, lanky pant leg as he strolled ahead of me down the streets of Postonja. Yeah. Although we parted not so happy that first tour, it wasn't so bad apparently - he booked us a 2nd tour 10 months later, and that's when it got worse.
Though it started off well - me making nice, being pleasant, thinking that this time, I was gonna make him realize how rad i was. Besides, I was so pissed off and tired after the month spent with the Norwegians that I was thrilled to be around someone I knew.
Wow - suddenly i remember Marc, and that first stay with him at Crazy Pierre's. Ah, crazy Pierre, who literally was "postal". Those were the days...
Anyway, I bring up the long-legged freak because his lack of email response has once again bummed me out.
I'm really, really not in a good place right now. I keep doing nice things for him, and he blows it off.
Am I that - what?
I thought we were friends, but obviously i think more of our friendship than he does....and it depresses me to no end. We built this friendship back up, and he used to confide in me and now it's totally bland, and it bums me out. The email thing always pisses me off. And i shouldn't let it, i know.

So yeah, it's friday, and i'm trying to keep in the writing habit, hoping that it will settle in again...anyway, here are five that are a little uncomfortable...
. What is one thing you don't like about your body?
Ah, see, it used to be my stomach, or even my lack of cleavage, but now, in my mid-thirties, it's my back. It bums me out in a myriad of ways...

2. What are two things you love about your body?
Right, well my big brown eyes, even with their big ol' circles under them...and my legs. Strong, and muscular, they aren't at their peak at the moment, but they're still worthy of admiration.

3. What are three things you want to change about your home?
I would like to be in our own house, bigger, with a basement to practice in.

4. What are four books you want to read this year?
Ack. I want to read Steve Martin's other book(s), I'd like to get ahold of The Making of a Chef, and finish the Cometbus Omnibus. If it wasn't so big, I'd bring it on the bus.

5. What are five promises you have kept to yourself?
Five? Crap. I haven't been very good at that lately - though one crucial promise i made involving tolerence i've been practicing pretty well. that's good.

ten years is such a long time; and yet, it's not. there are things from 15 years ago that i can remember perfectly, and then whole years seem to have vanished in the last decade. last two decades. hell, i've been back in seattle 10 years now. what the hell am i thinking? i'm way past my pull date...
now the time i spent in dc is more than ten years ago. no wonder i can't remember it. i might as well be trying to remember what happened in 7th grade. agh. it's not that i'm trying to remember, it's just that it seems like so little has happened in the last 10 years. even thought that's not really very true. it's just...not stuff i can talk about easily, because it seems like it's just been one big long 10-year slap upside the head. not that i didn't need a good solid downward spiral to get me wised-up and to figure crap out...but still.
man. 10 x 365. i should be skinnier by now. i was there for about a year. what happened to that? sad.

ok, so i haven't done this before, but this is keeps me making current entries at the very least:
(from the Friday Five)
1. Where do you currently work?
at a reprographics company.

2. How many other jobs have you had and where?
yikes. a dozen or more, probably. off the top of my head, jobs that provided paychecks started with Taco Time when i was in high school, then a photography company, the college library while i was in college, the Wiz records in dc, common concerns bookstore in dc, a buyer at Tower Records in scenic Rockville MD, uhm, shipping & reciveing at Olssons Books in dc, then the color graphic design extraveganza began on the graveyard shift at a Kinko's in Eugene. From there it was a Kinko's in Seattle, another indie repro house as a color specialist, then XBS, Microsoft, Eddie Bauer, and then bringing me current to yet another indie repro company where i make graphic designer's junk look good.

3. What do you like best about your job?
location, location, location. also the limited autonomy. and an office with a door to the outside and a door between me and the rest of the building. oh, and not wearing an apron. that rules.

4. What do you like least about your job?
Ironically, the repitition. I get tired of asking people for fonts and explaining proportion and percentages, links and cmyk.

5. What is your dream job?
ultimately, photographer for National Geographic magazine, though i'd settle for any magazine.
smaller scale: personal chef is looking really good right now.

What a weird week it's been. Infinitely tired every day. At the same time, it looks like i will be at least trying to start a band again. Or, better said, I will be part of starting a band again, as i'm really just the...what? The person who brought others together to do this. Which means I want to, right? The really, really weird thing that is keeping me a bit off balance is that literally, the day i bring people together to start a band they identify a killer in Mia's case. It's true that I'm not in the inner circle of that entire crowd - but I was sort of in the circle next to that circle (same roomates, played gigs with them, hung out and drank at all the same places, and even turned down romantic advances from a certain member (ahem), etc, etc) and it hit me harder than I ever expected it to, and I didn't partake in any of the coattail-grabbing because, well, I thought it was in poor taste. But now, after ignoring the one thing that has always brought meaning to my life (that being punk rock, and you may think that's weak and sad, but you don't know what you're talking about) largely because of all the bullshit that started happening when everyone either decided that they immediately had to own punk rock; or, more tragically, they abandoned it because suddenly our trustworthy, hardworking, insular little dreamworld ((imagine a dreamworld where you survive travelling in a van on $5 a day and loving it)) had been breached - I'm ready to go back to being in a band. It just seems so strange that the two things happen at the same time. If I believed in fate, I'd figure something is up. But I don't, really, especially in the case of a band, and this is clearly not gonna be a punk rock band, so it won't be all I want - but maybe it'll be close.

Some things you just don't expect to happen after a certain point: you don't expect the Berlin Wall to fall after 50 years, you don't expect Nelson Mandela to be released (much less become President of South Africa) after 25 years, and you (or I) don't expect Mia Zapata's murderer to be tracked down by DNA evidence 10 years after the fact.
Seriously. I can't approach the sort of emotion I'm sure some of my old housemates and *friends* in the punk rock scene are feeling at the moment, but I can tell you that it hit me like a ton of bricks, because, like most people, I had accepted that we just weren't ever going to know who did this spectacularily evil thing. Then you see the mug shot up on screen and in print and you go: holy shit, there is a guy who, yeah, could have taken one of the smartest, strongest women voices of our generation out. It's chilling. Last night I was hanging out with some women, formulating a plan for a band, and while two of us were of that generation and that era of knowing (or knowing of) the Gits, one wasn't. And it was hard...so hard to communicate the urgency that this was a big, big BIG deal. That Mia's murder was one of those things that makes me shake my head in disgust when people lament the loss of Kurt Cobain. Fuck that Cobain shit. We lost a shining, active, compassionate, powerful woman because some violent predator had an itch. Until the day I found out Mia died, I walked through my life on streets around the world without fear, confident I could take care of myself, that I was big, strong and tough. That I wasn't some cutesy little girl target. It couldn't happen to women like Mia or me. I was wrong. And seeing a picture of the guy who apparently did it...makes me realize how many guys are out there.
It's better knowing, but it doesn't change the reality of the world I live in. I don't get back that confidence I had. Neither does anyone else.
But they caught him, in what I would consider to be the only constructive use of that sort of information networking.

No good movies to speak of. We did rent the animated (as if there could be a live action version of) Plague Dogs - but it was an old tape, sound was bad, and the Yorkshire accents make you feel like you should have prepped by watching 8 hours of "All Creatures Great and Small" ), and worse, the story is severely trunecated from the book. Of course, thanks to Peter Jackson, we can all appreciate the hardship created by trying to cram a heavily detailed novel (which the Plague Dogs is - much of it consumed by descriptions of places - crags, bogs, streams, mist, all of it to enhance the leading character's perspectives: being dogs, they primarily depend on their keen sense of smell above all else, and that translates into the descriptive ambiance of the novel) into an hour and a half (or is this case, 88 minutes). My disappointment though was with the grim ending that was tacked on the end of the movie. At any rate, the book is a hard, long read, full not only of enviornmental detail, but tough dialect, but well worth the time. Easily one of the best, yet saddest books I've ever read. If you own a dog, you must read the book. Insights into animal experimentation, the role of the media in society, the mindset of "simple farm folk" and above all, the sentiment that the world is a bad place for dogs - will resonate for weeks.
Yeah. So in a complete 180 from that, I picked up and finished "Shopgirl" by Steve Matrin (yeah, the wild and crazy guy one) this weekend - what a great novella. Nicely crafted, wonderful pacing, and above all: the man knows how to write an interesting paragraph. I love that I had to pick up a dictionary no less than 5 times while reading a 180-page book: better yet I surmised the meaning of all but one of the words (and on that, I was close, just unsure of it's usage), which means Martin used them appropriately (at least in my mind). I'm such a vocab geek that I actually respect that if a writer can use a word in passing without it standing out (that is as a noun) and I don't recognize it I like it.Anyway, a fine, bittersweet read balanced by witty prose and cutting humor. Will read his other book as well.

this isn't the first time: i've had this dream before, only this time he was serious. No, really, how punk rock must I be if I've got Ian M coming to me in my dreams and discussing how I'm not being creative and wasting my talent? WTF??!!?? Holy shit. And it's bad enough that this happened, but this is the second time, and he seemed very serious. So, my subconcious apparently can only come up with a major punk rock icon who i have major historical misgivings about (not to mention limited personal interactions with) to drop the "get off yer ass" bomb? Jeez. It was like the dream I had with Brad years ago (the one that slapped me awake and made it clear that mooning over your highschool crush for 10 years is ridiculous and sad. Of course, meeting back up with him helped as well. Best Use Of A Reunion Meeting Ever). And then the one with MCWDITW, where he too laid it out (but see, we know that it's not them laying it out, it's me, laying it out for me. nice Smeagol...right) in clear terms that it just wasn't going to happen that he and i were ever going to be friends again. though admittedly i enjoyed the dream where he was giving facilities tours in a dress better, but what are ya gonna do?
meanwhile. listening to cassettes because the cd player has gone belly-up, so it's a punky-weird mix. Bob Mould, Black Sheets which is fab - and old old OLD googoodolls. which rules in a jawbreaker way. forgot about that. and soon up: black market clash. though i wish the cd did work, cause i'd rather hear the live album, but whatever. a little joe is better than no joe.