physically revolting

Currently, I have a lump or two on my neck, a swollenness in my throat, and what seems to be a bump on the back of my skull(?) (don’t know where that one came from) and I’m working on applying for a job I’m 95% sure I won’t get. But I guess it’s worth a try? (I know, I know, I just GOT a job, this one is way cool, and like I said, I’m not going to get it anyway.)And if I wasn’t working on this, I’d probably be working on nothing.

Today I busted out the Lovers album and my scarf, which means the weather is getting chilly and wonderful. I wish my body would cooperate with me in enjoying all this.

quick, mom! hide the porn

Two particular comics today made me chortle and snort:

1.

Dennis. Tell your mom she can find that stuff on the internet these days.

2.

Alternate caption: “Thanks, Grandma, but we don’t eat our own kind!”

(I guess both of these were addressed in different spots on Comics Curmudgeon, but that’s what I get for not looking at the comics till the evening. Scooped!)

witnesseth!

I stumbled across this today, and perhaps it’s old news to you if you’re into media literacy, but it’s new news to me, and it’s exciting as most anything:

The Media Literacy Clearinghouse

This guy has TONS of articles, workshop ideas, etc. etc. if you’re interested in media education. Eat it up.

where there’s a quill

First things first: Bellafea are the best and if they’re coming your way, do go see their show (and their incredible tourmate Bibis, who is like a little songbird until she starts BELLOWING and turns into Mahalia Jackson, then back into a little bird again). They bear offerings of rock, give them your hospitality in return, and all will be well. Not too many people showed for their/our show Sunday night, but it WAS Sunday night, and people were show-ed out. Next time, the kids will see how it goes.

In other news, I dreamt recently that I fought a drunk person on the porch of the house where I grew up, and on another occasion that I lost my bookbag on the bus and freaked, and on yet a separate occasion that I was walking, with some others, down a trail and under a tree, and the tree had 6 or 7 porcupines in it, and as we went under, I squealed, “OH! LOOK AT THE PORCUPINES!” and then one threw his quills at me (I know this doesn’t really happen, but it was a dream, cut me a break).

Also, today is election day. Vote out everyone in power.

this is my weekend.

I write to you from the deepest bowels of Andyfest. We are 2/3 of the way through the shebang, and thus far things have gone quite swimmingly.

A good number of kids showed for facedowninshit, which is awesome, as I wasn’t sure if they still had a “crowd” of sorts. They do, it’s just not all the same “crowd” they had a few years ago. In fact, it included a lot of kids I had never seen before, and a lot of kids I barely know — and who are (gasp!) YOUNGER THAN ME.

I felt like I had graduated or something; now I’m the dude who works full time and books some good shows and is in a band, and my old position of going to school, going to shows but not booking them, and not being in a band, has been taken over by someone else. Such is the progression of things, I suppose, but it feels, er, “hella weird,” if you will.

Elsewise I still feel weird about “the scene” and the direction in which it’s heading; there are definitely some awesome folks doing some awesome things, but it still doesn’t feel quite so familial and forward-moving as it did a few years ago. But that could just be me engaging in backinmydayism because I can now, and feeling uncomfortable about things just because I’ve been feeling particularly conspiciuous and awkward and gawky just lately for no apparent reason.

Last night’s zine release was sweet, and I’ve been very much pleasantly surprised by what of the zine I’ve read so far. I got to catch Dr. Zack Furness and an in-rare-form html, who did the coffin pines song and made my heart warm.

The Close really are some of the sweetest people I’ve ever encountered, and I was glad a decent number of people showed to see them at Gooski’s. Highly reccommended. All three bands played well, and the three meshed well together.

As I write, the wind is threatening to topple trees, Bellafea is headed into town, the Steelers are ahead, and The King is goin’ all out.

Cheers!

all pist in the supermarket

I return just now from the Shur-Save, née Foodland, where the man in line behind me, I believe, peed his pants.

I was in the one line of the two that were open that did NOT have several seemingly abandoned carts in it, holding down a spot in line for a master who was running to snatch some cottage cheese, behind a disturbingly well-dressed TV-detective-looking man who I took to be a head honcho police officer of some sort based on his conversation with the Foodland Cop. Up from behind me walked an ancient man, small and frail, who said to me: “I asked the woman where the men’s room was, and she said in the back, and I went back and I got lost.” He was kind of laughing. He then predicted, “Pretty soon I’m gonnna be out there pissin’ in the corner!”

I played along, not knowing where there was a bathroom in the joint. “Yeah, all that’s in the back that I know of is the meat cooler, and I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for . . .”

As you might imagine, this was rather uncomfortable. I turned back toward the cashier, no words were said for a short period, then he piped up: “IIIIIIIIII might have to go back there again . . .”

I smiled, he started back a few steps and stopped. The smell of urine was present in the air. He stepped back in line, shifting a bit. This was even MORE uncomfortable. I was mostly done with my purchase (pierogies and apple cider that is not good) and I wanted to get the hell out, so that HE could get the hell out, and let loose in the parking lot.

I have no idea if he was drunk or just old, as he was a bit slurred and apparently had little control over his stream, and those could both be symptomatic of either condition. I felt bad for him, I identified with him to some extent (see past tales of peeing one’s pants, which I may or may not have related in these archives), I couldn’t help but be a little bit amused. He was taking it pretty well in stride there in the supermarket, but at the same time he just HAD to share his situation with someone, and that someone was me. I would have been okay with it had he just kept it under wraps — in fact, the urine smell would probably not have surprised me one bit, and I would have attributed it to the produce (or the cider in my hand).

I guess sometimes you just gotta tell somebody.

hold the frickin chicken

Today I went to the food truck I often go to (I’ve chased it all about Oakland, actually) and ordered the dish I often order (small, half pineapple tofu-half tofu basil leaves). And I got a Thai iced tea, and engaged in pleasant small talk with the men working there and went on my merry way to the wall, where I plopped down and popped that styrofoam lid that won’t biodegrade until well after the day when the trumpets sound and we all rise from our graves, and there I saw a whole bunch of chicken.

At first maybe I thought it was some fancy new tofu shaped like chunks of chicken, so I bit a tiny bit, and it was really chicken. It wasn’t like the guy understood me wrong and gave me half pineappled tofu and half chicken with basil leaves; there was some of each tofu dish. It was like somewhere in the middle of our discussion of yesterday’s weather, he just dipped right down into the wrong dish and scooped out a lot of bird flesh. I began to feel like perhaps the small talk was even a ruse to distract me from what his hands were doing, like as if I was having my pockets picked.

Now, I’m not squeamish about meat. It’s only relatively recently that I don’t really eat it at all — I had for a long time had a vegetarian diet but an open-door policy to meat that was, say, going to be thrown out if I didn’t eat it. But I haven’t eaten meat in quite a while now, and even when I was an unabashed carny, chicken from the food trucks was not on the list of Good Things to Eat. I was already several blocks from the truck so I didn’t feel like walking all the way back just to feel the pressure involved in complaining about my food. So I ended up picking it out and, lacking any flesh-eating friends at the wall at 12:45, ended up tossing it, which was a bummer. I was hoping for someone meat-hungry to walk by, but to no avail.

I’m pretty sure it was just an honest mistake, and I’m sure I’ll go back to that truck, probably soon. What I’m not sure of is how I’ll order. Perhaps something along the lines of, “Hi, can I have a small, half pineapple tofu, half tofu basil leaves, um, and can you hold the chicken on that, please?”