Pottery Barn Genius

On the Rocks. A Pottery Barn mix CD. Probably the most genius mix cd ever made. By someone at Pottery Barn?

A) Who has that job? Is that his or her whole job, or were the Pottery Barn VIPs like, "Hey, Coral who writes the copy for the Holiday Line catalog - is she the one who was DJ'ing at the suprise going-away party for Tom from the Sofa Dept last May? Because she could probably make us a rad mix CD to sell in our home decor store, like in case people enjoy our new vases so much that they are inspired to buy music that we think would go well with those vases. We do have new vases, don't we?"

B) Whoever made this CD has impeccable taste, and a surprisingly deep knowledge of 50s/60s lounge music for someone who is probably in his or her late 20s or early 30s, because let's be honest, Pottery Barn probably outsourced to a company whose main job is making these CD's. That and Now! 58. And the people who work there are probably young, because young is cool, and cool sells, and the Now! mix cd line and Pottery Barn probably stand at opposite ends of the spectrum which contains all thing that wish to be "Cool," as they imagine it to be.

C) Which is what's so crazy about this mix cd. Because it's all vintage tunes, and vintage is cool. And it's probably made by someone young with a deep knowledge of things old, and those people are cool. And the progression and balance of unexpected/familiar is subtle, dynamic, and overall just fantastic. And that, of course, is cool. But the only people who would ever buy it are people who shop at Pottery Barn. And they may or may not be cool themselves, and Pottery Barn has some stupid stuff and some nice stuff like any store of medium high cost (i.e., aspiring yuppie to lower-middle-upper-middle-class price range) and medium franchise-location-dispersal-rate. But anyone whose job it is to make mix CD's for corporate franchise home decor stores must secretly loathe and look down upon the those tasteless plebian shoppers buying their CD, right, because if they've got that good taste in and knowledge of music they probably at least a little bit secretly wish they were doing something more musical than making corporate mix cd's, and express that toward resentment of the very people to whose (perhaps as yet undiscovered until hearing this mix cd) taste they are catering...and despite this inner resentment, they still give us perhaps the best mix CD ever made.

D) I just want to meet these sexy, cool, bitter, and ultimately golden-hearted master mix makers I'm imagining. I bet they brush their teeth with diamonds.

Bike Rage

Things That Piss Off Bikers:

People who open their car doors without looking
People who stand in the bike lane trying to hail cabs, talking, flirting, hooking, etc.
People who don't use their turn signals
Fuckin potholes
Those metal grates on bridges over the river
A strong wind
People pulling out of parking spots, alleys, etc without looking
Cabs pulling out/over without looking/caring
Cabs sitting in the bike lane
Cabs
Anyone else who follows the rules of the road as little as bikers

Firsts

Things I've done for the first time in the last month:

played the drums (practiced the drums)
given a tattoo
made pretzels
received free spinach from a farmer
vacuumed a wood floor
tasted mead
saw (worked) a Sammy Hagar show
did stand-up
got up at 5:15 AM for work on a Saturday morning with no problem and liked it

Gross! Cool...

I realized I mentioned my new/first/home-style tattoo and the fuzzy buzzed hair around it, but didn't show you. That's actually a disgusting picture. I might have puked a little bit in my mouth. But I also totally love it. We'll probably have to go over it again. Can't wait! That shit hurts.

Tapeworms: Nature's Natural Diet Aid

Actually, when I went to move this shit from a word document to an actual blog page on the actual internet (actually, for real), I found my old blog (that is, the most recent of the 4 – I don’t know where “On the Advice of Señor Tecate" got to, but it didn’t show up with the others) – anyway, so I considered just putting this up on the most recent blog (I’m addicted to starting things and not finishing, thoughts and sentences included?), but decided that the list of things I want (a fast horse that corners well, to cradle Frankenstein in my arms, etc) that is the sole post on that last blog is both A) too much like a list of things I like, and B) containing a couple line items that are rather incriminating, but that it would be dishonest to delete from that list, since it was done in a spirit of forthright disclosure to myself and the no one on the internet who would read my blog because I kept it hidden? What a weirdo. But then, some people might consider posting pictures of your own poop (I’ll admit it, it was mine) incriminating, too.

Oh man, you know what I really like? Lists. I’ll tell you what I like. I like lists.

Sooo, here’s another one:

Things That Don’t Get Enough Credit:

• Milk and orange juice mixed together. If you drink it before it curdles, it’s orangey and creamy – what’s not to like? People eat dreamsicles, don’t they?
• Laying in bed for those 8 minutes more you get when you hit snooze
• The crazy-ass dreams that come in those mini-naps
• Brushing your teeth. Like, not having a clean mouth, but the actual experience of brushing your teeth (and having your teeth brushed)
• Actions you perform on yourself such that you are both subject and object
• The utility of proper English and reference to its structure for precision and ease of understanding
• Pithiness (ok, that gets lots of credit)
• Redheaded boys (but redheaded girls get all the attention, oh man)
• Bubble machines (fog machines get all the attention, oh man)
• Lollipops
• Bluegrass! That shit gets rowdy!
• Etching. Like, making art by burning metal with acid based on a drawing. It not only looks cool, it sounds cool. How did that ever go out of style?
• The US Postal Service. You can mail anything (size/weight-contingent) anywhere in this country for 42 cents, and it will get there within a few days, most likely. For less than a tenth of what the federal government proclaims anyone must be paid at the very least for an hour’s work, it will help you materialize tangible evidence of love hundreds or thousands of miles away within a few short days. That is just really nice.

Whee!

OK, here’s the thing:
I’ve always been told I talked too much, or actually a lot less in recent years now that I think about it, but I’ve certainly always been chatty, because I just get so darned excited about things (like punctuation and using italics and whatnot, and the phrase “and whatnot,”), so maybe a blog is the place to be excited (actually, this is about my fifth blog, because I’ve been starting them for years but never get past like the third post – and yes, maybe someday I’ll link you to my other blogs which are far less exciting because they’re almost kind of about something, and heaven knows we have enough Things in our Worlds, and what we really need is more Nothing – so that’s what this is about. Yes, it’s just like that Seinfeld. I’m pretty okay with that. No one’s blog is really about Anything Anyway, except themselves, unless they have An Issue or Something, but we all have issues, right, so - ) Point being: I wrote my first post about ten minutes ago, and then took a break to poop, and I just was so excited I wanted to share more (talking is sharing, and sharing really isn’t always caring, let’s be honest), so I came back to share more already!

On that note, here are some pictures I took in the interim between posts, as well as some old ones, that share with you some things I love, and some things you may or may not:

This Hat

This camping wallpaper:

See how there's a bear with his butt sticking out of the tent? He steal your food!


Longest turd everrr:
See the piece of corn in the middle?


Pictures of me that make my eyes look greener than they maybe are:

This [really] stupid painting we have up in our hallway:

My roommate, Mikey:


The Police:
NOTTT...

I Don't Like You But I Love You

Most blogs that aren’t about An Issue or Something (i.e., music, or updates on the PTA) are about self-promotion, right? Like maybe they’re supposedly about random stuff going on, but it’s really about how the writer feels about random stuff going on, and how you should find it interesting and worth your time, the writer’s feelings about random stuff going on, thus either making the writer interesting and worth your time or validating his/her long-held opinion that he/she is interesting and worth your time or proving that in fact he/she is interesting and worth your time. If I just said interesting four times and worth your time four times and now the word “time/s” seven times (make that 8), can we agree that I clearly possess enough self-loathing to purposely be a disgusting human being, thus validating my long-held opinion that I/me/it am in denial about also being self-promoting? If I enjoy showering because it’s hot and warm and you get to make sexy talk to your beautiful body all by yourself, but don’t enjoy showering because it means you stop reeking for approximately twenty minutes, is that a love-hate relationship with hygiene, or just myself? Or is it all just self-love, including love of self-smell? Oh shit I’m just another would-be writer without An Issue or Something, and I wanted Something, but just somewhere I lost track of what I wanted, because my old roommate was a hardcore Buddhist and told me to stop wanting, and I figured he was self-righteous but I loved him so what if really he was just righteous and I should listen to him? But he showered more than I did and I feel like I’d rather follow in the footsteps of someone who doesn’t shower, which is funny because I actually often dislike strong body odor, especially including my own, in terms of a physical sensation (smell), but The Idea is really nice, and I’m all about The Idea. Man.

The funny thing is though is that I can pretend to pretend that I’m pretending when I pretend that it’s just pretend that I’m full of self-loathing in more of an Absurdist way than a Kurt Cobain way, but while I’m just another blogger who’s kind of making fun of everything but not and it’s clearly borne of a cultural/social/whatever self-loathing that is also all tied up in narcissism, etc, I really do love everything in a way that is fundamentally Uncool but has always made me fundamentally Borderline Cool As Novelties Often Are, like kind of invited to parties and hung out with but also like on the edge of the circle awkwardly trying to figure out who I need to talk to to just be able to chill out and enjoy myself, and it’s probably just myself/God, but anyway –

Oh shit, here’s a list of some stuff that I’ve really been loving on recently:

• Red hair
• Freckles
• Sourdough bread
• Catchy and vaguely/not so vaguely creepy pop songs
• The fuzzy hair at the nape of my neck/back of my skull where we shaved my hair so I could get a stick-and-poke tat from my new boyfriend whom I may or may not now be calling my boyfriend because the conversations were confusing?
• The ridiculousness of that whole question
• Tensing and then releasing all of the muscles in my body in what is some sort of stretch I’ve perfected that is probably very sexual sounding, actually
• Hot Water running down my smooth and girl-muscular shoulders
• NOT the feeling of having a sewing needle poked through the thick skin on the back of your neck/skull, but also kind of a little bit yeah
• Young children, oh man I have been seeing them everywhere and they are so cute! It’s like everyone busts them out in the spring like a new sundress.
• Our cats. They eat our food all the time but they’re soft.
• Having hairy calves that are also coming along quite well in the muscle department
• Knowing that I have nice calves but they’re covered in so much hair most people kind of look away uncomfortably because they think I’m embarrassed of my leg hair because they don’t find it attractive? Why would I not shave then?
• Being lazy (see above question)
• Day dreaming a lot
• Being productive
• Hammering, painting, sanding, being manly, etc
• Pining for a mustache but knowing that’s easy to do since I can’t grow one, because I might not like it if I actually could, because I’m not so counter-the-culture-in-which-I-was-raised that I would feel comfortable sporting a girl-stache, but maybe it would be so cool I would, so it’s easy to pine, you know?
• Asparagus
• The wind
• Pooping

Above list ended because I realized I have to go poop. Coming soon: more things to love, stories of shit that happens during the day that may be funny but probably not, and…naked pictures of your neighbors across the street!