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Sunday, August 21, 2011

Some of them try to rhyme but they can't rhyme like this.

Have you ever wondered what I do on my days off?



Here I am singing "Jump" by Kriss Kross with Toffee, one of my guinea pigs. Notice that my dog gets up and leaves at 1:20. I guess she doesn't like my flow.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Emotional Muppets

Floyd of "Muppet" fame sings "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." To quote one of the youtube comments, "I can't believe I'm saying this... but this muppet performance is actually touching."

Thursday, June 30, 2011

In which all I do is talk about Death Cab for Cutie

I don't think it's any secret that I really like the band Death Cab for Cutie, a four-member band from Washington state whose new album, "Codes and Keys," came out in May. I saw them on Palladia's Storytellers last night and the lead singer reminds me of one of my ex-boyfriends, the one who could have been tolerable if he wasn't still living with his parents at the age of thirty-five. Anyhow, ignore that, let's talk about some of these videos. Instead of saying things like, "Here is a video that was well-done" I'm going to say what I personally feel about all three of them.

This first clip is their video from the new album, "Codes and Keys," called "You Are A Tourist." The guitar is pretty catchy, but my primary observation can only be understood once you listen to the chorus.



I also really like the confetti because my Mom used to send me these greeting cards and you'd open them up and a bunch of "funfetti" would fall out of the card and get all over the floor and on your clothes and I'd be like, "WTF MOM." She was getting me back because at one of my birthday parties one year when I was a kid we got a magician with a name like Franny or Frodo or something and he had a giant balloon and said rhetorically to my mother, "I hope you have a good vacuum cleaner" and then popped it and all of this crap fell everywhere. I was still finding pieces of confetti when I was home for the weekend after I left for college. She was pretty livid, but looking back on it I think Mom must have done something to piss him off. At least it wasn't the clown who arrived at my 5th birthday party drunk and spent the whole time on our house phone cursing out his wife.

Now let's observe another song, this from their 2005 album "Plans." According to lead singer Ben Gibbard, this song is about a couple who move to South Florida and really hate it. Those of you who know me understand how relevant this is, and the song is just really catchy to boot. If you put The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on mute and play this song it's pretty much the most hilarious thing you'll see this summer other than The Green Lantern. "There were churches, theme parks and malls, but there was nothing there all along."



Lastly, this is from the same album as above and is called "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." There are two versions of the same video, but this animated version with the rabbits is pretty hard to track down. As an animal lover, I fall to pieces when I see this video, and there's something about prey animals that have really healed me - I have a hamster and 2 guinea pigs that helped comfort me after Mom's death in December, and I also love rabbits - in fact, the first book I read after Mom died was David Lindsay-Abaire's play "Rabbit Hole." Prey animals are always on the lookout, always anxious, like me. But to win their trust is monumental.

I am getting my first and last tattoo this September, on my hip. It is going to be the drawing you see at 3:02 seconds into this video. I feel lonely a lot. When I'm lonely I can always look at it and remember that there is someone, whether it's in heaven or here on earth, looking out for me and protecting me, and that we will meet again.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

It's Doomsday, Doomsday, gotta get down on Doomsday. Everybody's looking forward to the Rapture.

When people ask me when I'm gonna start having kids, I point out that I don't want to start raising children in a world where people like Rebecca Black are running around loose and getting down without any supervision.

My husband and I went to church today for the first time in years, and it was the first Protestant Christian service I've ever attended (I was raised Catholic). I had this strange feeling that we were going to walk in and our skin would start to simmer and we'd be smited, even though I'm not exactly sure what "smited" means. I am a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots, the Catholic cousin of Elizabeth who failed to restore Catholicism to the United Kingdom and may or may not have killed some people. And my husband was born in Ireland where they're so Catholic that it's improper to slap a baby on its ass if it's born without crying, so instead they just tap you on the shoulder repeatedly until you start to show signs of being vaguely annoyed.

In any case, the service was interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. I was both relieved and disappointed that the pastor didn't prepare a sermon on that 5/21/11 End of the World thing, and wondered how many pastors DID. Now, I kind of want to get one of those "May 21, 2011: Judgement Day" shirts because now they're collector's items, like the Super Bowl memorabilia they make with the losing team's name on it. I guess everyone stockpiling groceries has amassed another twenty years of toilet paper and Chicken of the Sea. It's always touching when I see perishable people eating nonperishable meals. And thanks to you all, the canning industry has seen no plummet in its rates of unemployment during the recession.

The end of the world doesn't bother me because there isn't necessarily anything we can do about it. I would also be thinking selfishly for saying it would be any worse than what the earthquake victims in Japan experienced, or the farmers in the American South and Midwest whose homes are floating on the Mississippi or blowing in the wind. After all, some of them must feel like it's the end of the world, especially if their family and friends have lost something, too. In the same way, the end of times will only be the end of the world as we understand our relationships within a materialistic dimension. It would be on a bigger scale, but I didn't see any ad campaigns in Vicksburg, Louisiana. Nobody in Reading, Kansas was on the news talking about May 21, they were talking about losing all of their belongings on May 22nd. The world's not over, and we can smile. We act as if something other than tragedy can make us just as grateful to be alive.

Not everyone was laughing.