'cause it takes me so long just to figure out what I'm gonna wear

Which is, by the way:

• black linen flats
• black wide-legged trousers (I'm still astounded that I could find a pair that don't make me look like an 8 year old in her mom's pjs, and for $40, no less)
• thin red long-sleeved t
• white short-sleeved button-down shirt

I was in a layer-y mood this morning.
Lara called me yesterday to tell me that there really are ligers. And tigons. And then she said, "I'm sure your library has books on ligers." To the internet!
It feels like there's been a lot going on lately in Jessy-land. First of all, they finally got to processing the new YA books, so I've been sitting at the desk reading great new things. Like Ranma 1/2, which I was always curious about, but hadn't gotten around to reading until last night, when the Oscars just got too damn boring and my eyes started going too wonky for my teeny stitching.
We had an Oscars party here at the library, which no one attended but the 2 hosting librarians and our Queen o' Community Relations. Probably more fun that way, since I don't think I want our patrons knowing yet how judgmental I can be, particularly about people I never ever have to worry about it getting back to. Speaking of, Hilary Swank? That lipgloss was a mistake, sweetie, much like most of your career choices. And, unless you were refering to the trailer that was your dressing room on the set of 90210, please shut up. You are not a Hollywood newcomer.
Marissa and I also got dressed up, which was so very fun.
In, general, this was the way-too-library-involved weekend. There was trivia Saturday night (we kicked ass, of course--who's more full of random useless info than librarians, except maybe my family?), Oscars pretty much all day Sunday, and Friday afternoon/early evening was the librarian shopping spree.
Some highlights of the librarian shopping spree:

1. I heart party supply stores. PaperMart, how I miss thee.
2. Donuts (the car kind) in the movie theater parking lot.
3. The competence of the kid at the Wal-Mart checkout. Totally made up for the killjoy cutting fabric.
4. Our camo cart, full to the brim with randomness and topped with leafy plastic greenness.
5. Buying almost every basket in the dollar store. Twice.
6. Answering the phone with, "Hi, I'm at Wal-Mart buying fabric for work."
7. When my phone rang and I was asked by my coworker, "Is that your boyfriend?"
8. Although I should have answered with, No, it's yours.
9. And then it was the boy, who, although not technically the boyfriend, is certainly the closest thing I've got right now.
10. This is a test, to see if he's reading this stupid thing.
11. Maturity! If I had more, would stupid shit be as fun?

In general, isn't that whole thing weird? When does someone become the boy- or girlfriend? It's so strangely nebulous, and full of weird euphemisms, all of which seem to be this tiny little step on some sort of relationship ladder. I know it's not just me that's this confused by boy-girl things, but I still can't help but wish I had more of a backlog of experience to draw from.

so insanely useless and fun

I adopted a cute lil' Scotty fetus
from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!

we like dancing and we look divine

So I did give up on A Great and Terrible Beauty: I found the 3rd Artemis Fowl book on cd at the library on Saturday. I love the guy who narrates those, so much that I’m actually kind of disappointed I read The Wish List, instead of listening to it. I also got Firefly (so I can finally watch the end of it—Katie and I didn’t last that long at our great Fireflyathon last year), Waiting for Guffman, which I probably won’t get a chance to watch before it’s due, Puff by Bob Flaherty, Lads by David Itzkoff, and a book of 3 novellas that I can’t remember the title of right now. Puff is good so far, both in a general way and in an every so often I laugh out loud kind of way.
I had my 3 day weekend and feel like it was jam-packed, which was nice for a change. Friday I painted my bathroom bright pink, which my landlords will discover tomorrow when they have to do a walkthrough for some reason. I told my building manager about the dripping in my bathroom, but I don’t know if that was necessarily the right thing to do. Because I know they won’t fix the roof, the source of the problem. If anything is done, it’ll be done to my newly-painted bathroom, where a mess will be made for me to clean up, once the maintenance people finally get the hell out of there. It’s at times like these that I really wish I had a house, so that all this kind of junk was my responsibility. Slumlordship is only fun in Monopoly. Friday night I watched To Wong Foo with Melissa and a bunch of her friends. Fun, but the movie just made me want to watch Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which is the far superior drag queen flick, for my money.
My Saturday night plans were switched to Sunday, so I got to go to 80s night. It was so much fun to just dance like an idiot and drink cheap gin again. I did feel pretty stupid, though, when I realized that I was the only dancer playing air keyboard during “Take On Me” or pumping my fist at the end of “Dancing with Myself”. It’s a good thing he didn’t play “Like a Prayer”, because I would’ve had to break out the dance Tiff, Cindy, and I made up, and no one wants to see that. Also, it was strange not instinctively knowing what the next song would be. Ah, Lou: you play the same damn set every week. Pittsburgh hipsters are creatures of habit, I know, but c’mon.
And then Sunday I saw Ray. Why, o why, was this the script they used for Ray Charles’ life? It read like one of those made-for-VH-1 movies, leading to a whole discussion comparing those movies. Verdict? The Meatloaf one is the best, and the Lennon-McCartney one is the worst. So many other things about it were good, which only makes the script thing worse. You can be the best actor in the world, but when you get saddled with lines about being blind and afraid of the dark, or have to work through a withdrawl scene so unoriginal I fully expected a dead baby to start crawling across the ceiling, as opposed to just in pools of hallucinated water, talent just doesn’t go as far. No, Jamie Foxx, you’re not, but you see my point. And sorry, buddy, but the Academy isn’t giving you shit this year. Take it up with Clint. Wait…is Foxx nominated for supporting Tom Cruise? Maybe he’ll get that. And the “Hit the Road Jack” scene? I was wincing. In a dark theater.
Luckily, the costume and set design were flawless, so I spent most of my time admiring the ladies’ clothes and coveting the mural behind whats-his-face’s desk at the big record company. Anyone wanna paint that in my hallway? And trying to ID the producer guy at Atlantic, who I finally realized was Endless Mike. I love that guy.
Normally, I guess I’m just not that much of a fan of the musician biopic. They have to have something extra to hold my interest: an almost cloyingly postmodern story structure, like 24 Hour Party People or De-Lovely, or homoeroticism, like Velvet Goldmine. Or Robbie Williams, like, um, De-Lovely.

'cause secretly I'm timid

Tiff posted her top love songs list.
I'm wearing a skirt today.
It's so nice out today. How am I really supposed to fear the greenhouse effect when it's so nice to have sunny warm days? I know it's unnatural, but still, I like the pretty.
I got an email yesterday from someone I never thought I'd hear from again.
For those who like closure: my stalkee seemed to actually be doing the dumb boy not calling thing. And we all know I don't make out with stupid boys. This "news" is actually a couple weeks old, but I figured my enormous readership was interested.
There's an EXTREMELY LOUD child in J-Fiction. Not upset or anything, just LOUD.
So many popular kids and YA books, especially fantasy, become series these days that it seems like my kids think everything has a sequel. I mean, I'd like to read Saint of Dragons 2, but I know it'll be a long time coming.
Speaking of, I really wish my favorite authors would all come together and spread new books out. In the next 6 months or so, I'm looking forward to these:

1. Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson (I hated Catalyst, but Speak is amazing)
2. new Holly Black
3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
4. new one by that guy who wrote Everything Is Illuminated
5. Shrimp by Rachel Cohn (sequel to Gingerbread--see what I mean about those sequels?)
6. Blue Monday: Painted Moon being finished and put in trade paperback form. Do I buy for myself or the teenhole? Tough call: I've got In Between Days, and it seems to circ respectably, mostly because I push it on people a lot.

Plus, I just finished Doug Coupland's latest and the 3rd Traveling Pants book. Right now, I'm kind of in between books, because I'm waiting for all the new YA stuff to be processed. I've been trying to listen to A Great and Terrible Beauty, because the stuff that was said about it on YALSA-BK made it seem good, but it's actually kind of boring. I can't tell if it's the story that isn't holding my interest, or the reading of it. It's one of those tales of teenaged surliness where the narrator makes snarky comments to herself a lot, but sometimes she says bitchy things out loud, and it's hard to tell which is which without italics-y help. And I found a review somewhere that called it a well-told story that would be more interesting with more plot. I fear I might be agreeing with this person.

Do you sell walnuts?

Well, here I am on another dead Saturday. I was supposed to go out last night, but I've got this thing against paying a cover for bands downstairs when I know I'll be upstairs the whole night. Turns out I should've probably paid the extra money and deadened my senses with a little gin. Instead, I read for a bit (the first book of Lynne Ewing's new series*) and went to sleep, only to be woken up a couple hours later. Conceivably, this is when I would have been getting home anyway, except drunk enough to not notice that, due to my apartment's flimsy construction and wooden floors, it sounded like my downstairs neighbors were having a party in my closet. A party with a stereo nazi, because it's not bad enough that the Pixies, while awesome, don't exactly lull me to sleep, I also have to only hear the first third of every song. And I think someone downstairs was yelling about an ugly girl, and I was so mostly asleep and neurotic that my first thought was, oh no! they think I'm ugly!
I've actually been waiting for this to happen for some time, ever since I found out I was living above 2 guys still in college. This isn't a "oh you kids" thing, but it's true: when you're in school, you can pretty much do anything any time of day. Responsibility is different. You can even start hammering things at midnight, as my neighbors did last week.
Mostly, I'm not sure what to do. Not only do I want to be Mrs. Mean Old Lady Neighbor, I also understand that sound travels really fucking well in my building. Which is why I've been wondering what exactly they've heard from me. Embarrassing best friend phone conversations? Breakdownish Mom phone conversations? The stupid shit I say to my cats? None of this is what I want virtual strangers to hear. Maybe that's why people become more distant as they become more urbanized: no one wants to run into the neighbor they heard screaming at his kid the night before.

***
Random pop junk:

• What the hell is up with Point Pleasant? Who said, Let's combine Twin Peaks with the awkward Christianity of Joan of Arcadia and throw in the "satire" of Desperate Housewives and cast it with a bunch of "teenaged" boys, doe-eyed girls, and Housewives rejects, all of whom only serve to make Grant Show's acting abilities seem stellar? And what purpose did it serve to give Show's character a vaguely vintage suit and some broken dreams in the latest episode? Why don't they just let Warren be the evil guy, instead of what seems to be an ineffectual minion? Pure evil has to get out from behind the sign-up booth to turn the thermostat up to cause mayhem? Come on. I'm so perplexed; I must keep watching.
• Last night, between Pixies' songs and some unrecognizable dance-y stuff I heard the unmistakable sounds of "1979". First, let's take a moment to acknowledge that, despite not having heard this song in at least 6-7 years, I still immediately recognized it. Because, even though "1979" was never a particular favorite (I usually don't like the smash single off '90s albums--if I were rating Weezer, "Buddy Holly" would be at the bottom of the list) the Smashing Pumpkins SPOKE TO ME in high school. But you know what? Not so much after I turned 20 or so. Somehow, "I'm all by myself/as I've always felt" just isn't an amazing lyric to me anymore. It constantly surprises me that there are actually a lot of people my age who non-nostalgically like the Pumpkins, while it never surprises me that they still have 14 year old fans. In the words of Tiffany (the friend, not the mall pop princess), they're so high school deep, that I don't understand anyone over 21 taking Billy Corgan seriously. It's weird.
• Also along Tiffany-the-friend lines, she's working on a list of her favorite love songs, as an acknowledgement that it's not just another manic Monday coming up.** When you're talking about something like this, it's physically impossible to not start creating your own list. But you know, I'm not so well-versed on the love songs. I'm more a fan of the crush songs. Here's a list of some of my favorites:

1. "You and Me and the Moon"--Magnetic Fields ("I'm a little bit shy/you're easy on the eye")
2. "Minneapolis"--that dog.
3. "Long Island"--that dog.
4. "1-2 Crush on You"--The Clash
5. "Customer"--The Replacements
   

*Looks trashy and fun; mostly just boring. And I want to throttle Tolkein for making runes such a part of hackneyed fantasy. I tried to read Daughters of the Moon (or some such title), Ewing's other series, a couple years ago, when I was trying to quit Fearless' repetition cold turkey, and now I remember what drove me back to Francine Pascal's arms.
**I'm sorry, I really couldn't help that. It just typed itself, I swear.

You can also see which character you are. I got Jane, surprise, surprise. Although there were moments when I was purposefully trying to answer like Trent.

Hipsters poised to take over Earth using girl cyborgs!

Apparently, this is actually a book about a guy who doesn't care about anything but his band, until he meets the perfect girl. The perfect girl, who, unfortunately, is actually a junkie with a pimp named Iggy.
I mean, who in the hell designed this? Is it a joke? She looks evil, and what's with the red eyes and the "she-robot in repose" facial expression? He's in her mind, controlling her every move with the sweet sweet sounds of Room on Fire.
I'll stop now.
Today I also: made some ambivalent Valentines, tried to determine if I was actually getting sick or not, had the presence of mind to shut Legs (aka Dinner and a Half) in my room while I made my lunch this morning, and cleaned both my desk and my work email account. And yet it still feels like the day is dragging. That's the problem with Fridays: I have to be at work 2 hours earlier than usual, so 5:00 takes forever to show up and I'm pretty much dead, especially if it's at all busy, which it completely isn't right now. The only patrons are homeschoolers and internet kids.
Is it somehow a side effect of being homeschooled that you don't ask any adults other than your parents for help? Seriously, getting homeschoolers to ask a librarian for help is like pulling teeth, even when you ask if you can help while they're in the middle of a loud conversation about not being able to find something.

March 11, 2005 update!
Check out the UK cover of Candy: . So unfair: why can't I be British!?

As I stepped out of the movie theater, I had 2 things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.

I've finally finished with the neverending booklist. It's of books with great first lines or paragraphs, especially if said book has a sucky cover. It always takes me awhile to do stuff like this, mostly because I'm so easily distracted by books. It's just too damned inviting to, after checking a favorite to see if its first sentence is worthy, go on and read more. Or the ones I haven't read in a long time. Which is how I found this little gem:

"One time in biology I had to dissect a worm, and the razor wouldn't cut, so I used my switchblade. The minute I flicked it out--I forgot what I was doing or I would never have done it--this girl right beside me kind of gasped, and said, 'They are right. You are a hood.' That didn't make me feel so hot."

God bless you, S.E. Hinton, and all of your 16-yr-old hood friends. That's why she wrote The Outsiders, you know. She wished there were more books about kids like all her hoodrat friends. She also (in the interview I read the other day--and you know, I'm honestly not sure why I read it, aside from a pleasant distraction from the booklist) mentioned that she was a tomboy, so I'm now picturing Ms. Hinton as that kid in West Side Story. So, you think her friends were as attractive as she made all those greasers out to be?
Oh, I went through such a Hinton phase around 6th grade! And yet I've never seen any of the movies.
In the Things Coming Back to Bite me in the Ass Department, I think I'm getting sick. This is 2 days after I called in sick--well, I was sick, but it was my own damn fault, gin not germs, that sort of thing, so it feels less kosher to use a sick day, somehow. Where are those stupid Halls Defender things when I need them?
There are three high school freshmen working on a project that somehow combines Dante's Inferno and needing synonyms for "blackmail" "gold diggers" and "corrupted leaders". Kid told me they have to create their own levels of hell, and now I'm really wanting to know what the others are, especially since gold diggers are getting their very own level. I know that they're freshmen because the one asked me if I was that person who came and spoke that one time.