but also ice ages and blackouts of rain

Billboard January 28, 2006.

• Great. Now I've got "Snowfall" stuck in my head on a sunny, unseasonably warm day.
  
• Could be worse.
  
• Could still be the storytime song.
  
• "Are you owed royalties? We are looking for you."
  
• Universal Music Group wants your address. So they can send you a big, fat check, presumably.
  
• Why does this remind me of the Simpsons where Wiggum tells people they've won a boat in order to get criminals to turn themselves in?
  
• Goodbye, student loan payments.
  
• This is a really boring issue.
  
• So I've been entertaining myself with the PotterPuffs.
  
• And moving things around the library, of course.
  
• Yay for new reference desks!
  
• I always forget that, technically, P.O.D. are Christian.
  
• I suppose I should order their new album for the library.
  
• New Bob Pollard, too.
  
• Though that one doesn't fall under my work-ordering jurisdiction so much.
  
• Ugh, that cabinet in the new desk stinks.
  
• Live are back?
  
• Why?
  
• oooo! Review of K-Fed's single! heh
  
• It's called "PopoZao".
  
• And there's a ~ thing over the a.
  
• I love when Billboard gets bitchy: "Britney's private dancer"
  
• "I wanna see ya kitty and a little bit of titty"
  
• That's a quote from the song, everybody.
  
• It's also a pickup line that will ABSOLUTELY work on me, 100% of the time.
  
• And maybe my new MySpace headline.
  
• OK, so normally all the pictures on the "Backbeat" page are of execs, people holding those gold record plaques, and random Billboard writers like that crosseyed lady I haven't been mean about in a long time.
  
• And then here's this TOTAL press picture of Jennifer Lopez (who I still not-so-secretly love--She paid her dues! "Waiting for Tonight"! Selena!!) and Marc Anthony looking ROUGH.
  
• Like, Mick Jagger lines around the mouth rough.
  
• jeez.

Oh, and I wanted to say something about my wrong Printz prediction. I was doing the Oscar cynical prediction thing, so I'm glad I got it wrong. (Stay tuned for my cynical 2006 predictions. I like to hear as much of the buzz as possible before I decide.) Plus, I really and truly loved Looking for Alaska, so I'm happy. Not as happy, however, as the author, as depicted in these highly entertaining (at least to me) photographs.

Why are there ants in the tub?

I took the yarn from that sweater I took apart and dyed it with Kool-Aid, generic Kool-Aid, and egg dye from an Easter egg kit I randomly had in my kitchen cabinet. I vaguely remember wanting to dye Easter eggs at some point, but don't remember what state I was living in at the time, so I've potentially moved a Paas kit 2-3 times, which is a scary thought.
I kept forgetting to buy batteries for my camera, so I don't have any procedural photos. I did have a great phone conversation with Tiff, though, during, which consisted mostly of me narrating squishing yarn, describing the awful smell of wet sheep + wet bunny + wet acrylic + vinegar, and the like.
Here are some pictures of yarn drying on my shower curtain rod:


Here's a picture with horribly off colors that I couldn't fix in my crappy photo-fixing program, but that show the curtain/yarn set-up well:

Also, who doesn't love my shower curtain? I love my shower curtain, and my hot pink bathroom!
I also love Melissa's hot pink bathroom. Hers is a bit more coral than mine, but kickass nonetheless.
Soundtrack for this project: Tinyfolk and a mix remarkably similar to this one.
***
Tiff finally got her holiday package, so I can show off this picture of knitted Calvin Johnson, hanging out with Humor in his Jayne Cobb hat.

Here's the front of his shirt.

feel sick and dirty / more dead than alive

If you thought the casting of Mrs. Jude Law was the worst thing about the forthcoming Factory Girl, you've got another think coming.

in your dad’s suits you hide

Billboard January 21, 2006

• I’m really hungry. After getting a message referencing Los Bravos, you kind of don’t want your lame granola bar anymore.
  
• Some rapper—ah, DMX—is on the cover with his dog. How is rappers with pitbulls any different from rich girls with purse dogs?
  
• I accidentally typed “god” there. Heh.
  
• Apparently, according to Billboard, it’s the “Year of the Dog” whatever that means.
  
• ”…RAMMSTEIN, Germany’s current most successful live music export.”
  
• That was all for you, Cara.
  
• So, this JT Leroy guy is a phony?
  
• All I know about him is that he edited this year’s DeCapo best music writing.
  
• Which was a disappointment. Except Greil Marcus’ Buddy Holly piece.
  
• And I was left wondering, Have I lost my taste for pretentious rock crit?
  
• But I guess I can just blame it on this Leroy mook, right?
  
• I mean, one of the things he chose was that piece Eggers had in Spin about Big Country.
  
• Which I liked, at least more than I usually like Dave Eggers (which basically means I didn’t want to punch him in the face halfway through reading it), but it was still a bit too precious and precocious for me.
  
• Like, “look! Even before I was supersmart verbose writer guy, my musical taste was SO innovative, SO amazing, that I loved this band no one else knew much of anything about! And I grasped what they were doing musically, when I was 13, and I’m going to make all these grandiose, rewriting-history type claims about both the band and myself.”
  
• But, you know, I wasn’t this irritated after reading it in the magazine originally, so I can blame all this ire on that Leroy mook, right?
  
• DMX’s real name is Earl.
  
• Stuart Copeland’s about to release a documentary that’s mostly old super8 Police footage. I’m not the world’s biggest Police fan, but I am ALL about super8.
  

what I want my poetry to mean

Freakishly warm days in the middle of January always make me think of this song. Makes me miss Pittsburgh in May, once everyone has left town and you don't have to wait as long for Dave & Andy's.
I think I want ice cream tonight.
I'm reading Better than Running at Night by Hilary Frank. Ira Glass gave it a back-cover blurb.
Some other teen library program got on This American Life before me, so there's another plan down the drain.
Recent events have led me to wonder if the universe is finally getting back at me for that summer I spent sending people letters saying they weren't crazy enough for the people I was temping for to pay for their care.
I can't keep a red pen in my office TO SAVE MY LIFE. They always migrate to the reference desk.
Pop Rocks are really fucking expensive. I thought they'd make a great summer reading program sign-up prize, but it's like $15 for 36 packets, and I had 200 kids sign up last year.
My deer/unicorn thing arrived in the mail the other day. I had it sent to me at work, and it was fun seeing my officemates' reactions. Then I took her home to meet Tree and figure out a name.
Has anyone read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell? I tried, in only the most cursory way, and I think I might need to pick it up again. Oh, and I still haven't read the non-Thursday Next Jasper Fforde book.
Booklist is one of the worst things to read for YA book selection. They always try to help out in their adult review section with pointers like this: "For teens contemplating a zoo career." Yeah, I've got ever so many of them.
4 days 'til they announce the Printz, and I'm starting to (maybe) second guess my Ball Don't Lie prediction. Maybe Elsewhere? Would kinda fit with the (in my opinion) total RANdomness of Kira Kira getting the Newbery last year. I also just read part of Claiming Georgia Tate, and that kinda seems like award-bait, too. Like, what's up with that book taking place in the 1970s? Now, that's a setting that has nothing to do with and brings nothing to the story. It actually took me out of it. Everytime Georgia talked about the bicentennial or Jimmy Carter or whatever, I got really jarred. But that's the book all those stupid journalists were mentioning as trash alongside Gossip Girls and Rainbow Party this summer, and that might push it ahead a bit.
I need better speakers for this computer.

so you say you like my shirt

This might be my new favorite YA book quote:

My heart was doing a happy leap, prancing around in a meadow of flowers, tra la la, without my permission. His dog's name was Rocket. I liked astronomy. It was that thing you do when you first fall in love. Where you think you must be soul mates because you each get hungry at lunch time and both blink when a large object is thrown your way.

It's from Wild Roses by Deb Caletti.

When I first read the book, I meant to mark that quote, but of course I didn't. I always wind up searching through books, desperate to find a quote, a fact, a line. I used to do this all the damn time in school. Writing a paper, there was always The Perfect Line/Point/Fact. I used to call up Meleah, or Tiff at the radio station (I seemed to pull a lot of all-nighters when she was doing her late-night show) with questions like, "What's the name of the Russian guy who made the movie where he showed film of a guy with the exact same expression on his face, but with different things after the cut, like he was reacting to them, in order to talk about the language of editing?"

While I was looking for the above crush-quote, I found this great moment, too. Seasonally, I'm a bit late on this one, but maybe we'll all remember to use it come next December.

...and our old Nativity scene. Mom and I still liked to have fun with it by moving the figures around in what you could politely call "nontraditional positions." Mom's not very religious in any regular way. She called the Nativity "Christmas Town," as in What's happening in Christmas Town today? I'd wake up to find the camel in the manger, say, with Joseph chipping in with parenting duties out front, and then I'd move them around to surprise her the next day with everyone standing in a circle around the donkey. Several years ago, the scene acquired a large plastic dinosaur, and later, a miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty that Mom got when she played a festival in New York. The poor folks of Christmas Town ran from Godzilla one day, and the Statue of Liberty got to be a fourth wise man.

So, yeah, Wild Roses is a good, if wordy for YA, book. So is Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, another of Caletti's novels. Here's what the cover looks like:

clangbangCRASH

Billboard January 14, 2006.

• It’s really been 10 whole years of Destiny’s Child? I guess that’s why they get to be all nekkid on the fake cover advertisement thing.
  
• blah blah piracy blah
  
• If only it were the fun kind of piracy, with ham and lime Starburst.
  
• ”Madonna has entered a licensing del with West Coast-based Celebrity Cellars to create and distribute a commemorative, limited-edition collection of wines.”
  
• Booze is the new picture book?
  
• This is the all-Destiny’s Child issue. Not that they don’t have their moments, but I just kinda don’t care.
  
• Although, this article here says one of their original names was “Cliché”. Heh.
  
• This bullet point is me laughing about that some more.
  
• There are a lot of these weird, digitally colored looking photographs (it’s almost like a topographical map-looking effect, and I don’t know what it’s called) that the girls all look awful in.
  
• And it seems like, if someone wanted all of Destiny’s Child to look bad, that’s the sort of thing they’d have to put a lot of work into.
  
• Couldn’t that work have been better done somewhere else?
  
• The library handyman is putting up the teenhole’s new tall shelving (yay) and I keep hearing all these bangs and clangs.
  
• Normal for putting up metal shelving, I know, but it’s distracting.
  
• It’s all warm today, and the itchy bugs have hatched and started biting me. I hate itchy bugs.
  
• I still can’t decide if I like Keane or not.
  
• ”Latin Notas” column this issue titled, “Hot, and Not”.
  
• Here’s a sample of NOT: “Raggaeton songs that depend on dated computer programming and even more dated references to booty, dancing and prowess in bed. These are valid topics…”
  
• There goes my hit single about…crap, I can’t think of any nerdy old programming jokes. Little help?
  
• Goddam! My shoulder’s itchy. Stupid bugs.
  
• Mr. and Mrs. Barry Gibb bought Johnny and June Carter Cash’s house.
  
• They “intend to use it as an inspirational place to write songs.”
  
• …
  

the one with the waggedy tail

UPDATE! I just bought the deer/unicorn stuffie. I couldn't help myself.
I really need to stop looking at things on Etsy, especially in a week that began with the first winter utilities bill and ends with a haircut, Belle & Sebastian tickets, and a possible drive to Dayton.
Because I keep finding stuff like these things, all of which I want:

by PerfectChildren


by knittydirtygirl (I've been stalking the Craftster spinning board lately, wanting to try to make my own yarn with weird stuff in it.)

Someone already bought this, but I still feel like I should pimp this guy's stuff, because I really like it:

by WalrusRider

Man, I keep looking at that deer/unicorn thing. I do get paid this week, and it's not like I've added to my weird stuffie collection lately...

until I’m ready to use it

“Hold My Life” is playing right now. Billboard January 7, 2006.

• There’s a pretty boy on the red cover wearing a shirt saying “Underage Thinking”, which may be the cheesiest thing I’ve seen so far this year.
  
• Wait, sorry, I forgot about the previews for that Sam Jackson/Eugene Levy thing they played twice before 40yrold Virgin.
  
• But does that count, since I saw it last year as well?
  
• ”The Who” will be touring again this summer. Sorry, Pete, but it’s not really The Who anymore.
  
• So, here’s an ad for Hard Rock Hotel San Diego condos, which, yuck, but it’s a topless vaguely ethnic woman, all sweaty, from the back. We’re invited to check out their website for “more eye candy and important ownership information”.
  
• I’m amused at how old the picture of Michael Jackson they chose to illustrate this story with is. I miss less-obviously crazy Michael, don’t you?
  
• I think Arctic Monkeys might be my new favorite horrible band name.
  
• Any idea what they sound like?
  
• OK, they “serve up hard rock with a Southern flavor,” but isn’t DecembeRadio the crappy emo-est band name you’ve heard in awhile?
  
• Oh, they’re a Christian band. I wonder if that can account for the name…
  
• ”Underage Thinking” is the name of that guy’s album.
  
• He kind of looks like Rory Gilmore would, if she were a boy.
  
• If I cared at all about the Grammies, I would read about their secrets, but—
  
• --O! I feel a Simpsons reference coming on!
  
• Where did George Harrison get that brownie from?
  
• I know Mariah Carey’s all about this butterfly thing and all, but her giant butterfly ring looks like something I got out of a gumball machine in 1987.
  
• Oh man, Gwen Stefani’s got these flowers coming out of her head. Like, it looks like her hair turned into giant fake blossoms and she doesn’t know what to do.
  
• Speaking of Mrs. Rossdale, did everyone read Meg Cabot’s blog (link if you scroll down a hell of a lot) the other day when she was talking about celebrities’ years-in-review? The fake Gwen one was very funny.
  
• I like plurals of words with hyphens like that. Mothers-in-law and such. I was listening to the radio the other day, and they referred to more than one person going past as “passerbies” (I can only assume that’s the correct spelling).
  
• That’s not cool. “Passers-by” is one of my favorite words, and not one I get to use very often.
  
• More about the new Strokes album.
  
• We should order Mary J Blige’s new album for the library.
  
• Man, it’s raining hard right now.

I'm really charmed by this.
Also, I like how, sometimes, if I'm loud enough when I tell kids to straighten up and fly right, their parents happen to hear and come discipline their kids.
Plus the fun hypocrisy of saying, "You can't be loud in the library," loudly. Being a grownup has its petty, childish perks.

hold this thread as I walk away

This weekend was all about nothing. Did I go visit friends? No, I punked out (sorry, guys). Did I take down Christmas decorations or buy groceries? Of course not.
I did, however, do some spectacularly bad dart-throwing, checked out the DeCapo 2005 Best Music Writing anthology, and went to my new favorite thrift store. I got all kinds of great stuff that I might even take pictures of to show off here.
***
This is what I spent the biggest part of the last couple days messing about with:

A Cheap Source of Yarn!

I like things that don't cost much, and I like to take things apart. I was that 9yrold girl who knew what the inside of her taperecorder looked like, and kind of the mechanics of how it worked. And if it didn't work quite so well after I found out, well...I had still learned something, right?
So thrifting a sweater to unravel for yarn to make other things with seems like a tailor-made-for-Jessy activity, no?
Unraveling a sweater is also, really, the next step for someone recently obsessed with knitting. Once you learn how, you can't stop noticing how things are put together. This is why I kept staring at Theresa's scarf the other night at Lanhucks and why 70% of my Narnia movie conversation with Tiff concerned the Pevensies' sweaters. Once I start noticing how things are put together, it's only a matter of time until I want to take them apart.
I used a fabulous and fun-to-read (even if you don't want to take apart a sweater) tutorial by a woman named Ashley Martineau who spins and does all kinds of cool stuff.

Here are some pictures!

The sweater. It's a light blue color, in a 70% lambswool 20% angora 10% nylon blend. I bought a Large; it was $4.


Man, it was pretty outside Sunday. I did some unraveling on my porch/balcony thing. I accidentally dropped my yarn ball and about had a heart attack as it rolled perilously close to the edge.
Also, you'll notice that the yarn is everywhere 'cause it was windy Sunday, too.


The cats investigate my 4 balls of yarn (1 from each sleeve, 1 from the back, and 1 from the front).


I wound it into crappy-looking skeins (Ashley comes through again) so I could measure the yardage. Almost 600 yards of yarn for $4! DAMN.


(just tilt your head to the side, okay?)
I used the pegs on the back of my full length mirror to measure. I put them a little over a yard apart (because I figured it was better to under-measure and have extra then over-measure and be screwed when I run out of yarn mid-project) and wrapped until I counted to 100. Peter Sagal kept me company, since that fake British lady on my local NPR affiliate apparently hates Ira Glass.

Next, I'm going to try dyeing the yarn with KoolAid. Since it's a blend of sheep, bunny, and plastic, I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen, but I bet it'll be exciting. I'm planning on trying with Pink Lemonade and/or Lime, so I'm sure I'll wind up with something cool. How hard can it be?

and we'll take a cup o kindness yet

Do people make New Year's resolutions because they want to become better people, or because they think resolutions make them seem like they are becoming better people?
I got a call from my xboyfriend last night. This guy. Who I haven't spoken to, incidentally, since that conversation. He called because, in his words, his New Year's resolution was to "have a better relationship with [me]."
!!!
Have all the girls he's dated got (gotten?) these calls? Is this some sort of "What does it all mean?" thing? ()I kind of hope it wasn't just me; seems less weird that way.
Ever notice how, sometimes, Mr SensitivePonytailMan-ness and plain good sense are at opposite ends of the room? Or, as the case may be, the phone?

A Coincidence?
So today, while I was making a big gluey mess (my favorite kind) and getting all giddy about March 9, I decided to read Pitchfork. Because "paying more attention to music" is my New Year's resolution. (Shut up, you: it's the non-secret one.)
There's a review of the new Strokes album.
--Of course, if you're anything like me, your reaction to this was, "The Strokes have a new album? Why?"--
Now, I just think the timing of this is funny, if it is in fact a coincidence, because, while Andy and I rarely fought, argued, or debated (there are several reasons for this, some less functional than others), we used to bicker about The Strokes all the damn time.
Boring, overrated, and way too clean, I'd say.
Not so! Seen them live, he'd counter.
Am I allowed to read his calling me as the ultimate acknowledgement that, deep down, he's always known how right I was about Casablancas & Co.?

the second drummer’s drowned

I need a new haircut. What does eveyone think of these? Obviously, some involve more beating-into-submission than others, and keep in mind my tiny round face and steretypically hipster glasses.
(Also, did everyone catch the "pottymouth" comment on the last post? Hee.)

and I left a bunch of fencing stuff on the subway.

It's only January 3 and I already kinda hate 2006. Although I suspect at least some of that might be girl-parts-related.

First of all: boyness. There's a hell of a lot I could say, but won't because, deep down, I know how ridiculous it all is. Suffice to say, everytime I have a crush, I start assuming it's going to go this way: thinking things are fine, nothing more-than-friends happening, falling off the face of the earth. Running into him several weeks later with an ugly coat and/or a normal girl. Or rumors that he's gay. Or both.
Why do I think this? How many past examples are you looking for?
And then there's the other one. Who randomly showed up at my house last Thursday after no contact for about a month and a half. Who called last night while I was on the phone with my mom and didn't leave a message.
Leading to this sentence, "Well, that's really all I wanted from him, too, back when there was less random contact. I was just trying to put it more delicately."
Why I had chosen that moment to be delicate (not one of my strong points) to my mom (normally not necessary), I'm not exactly sure.
There's more I could say about that mess, too, but I'm feeling less mean right now, so I'll avoid the overtly bitchy for once.

Bitch the Second: I fucking hate the work-side catalog here. Search results are displayed IN THE ORDER WE BOUGHT THE ITEM. Not alphabetically; not in the order they were published; not in the order we originally got the item in cases of replacement copies. So a series, in our catalog, could potentially show up like this:
6, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1pbk, 26, 6replacement, 25, 24...
This is also assuming that all of the items in a series are in fact linked under that series title.
I also hate copy cataloging, or at least a ridiculous amount of reliance on it. Half of our Spiderwick Chronicles are shelved under Black. The rest are under DiTerlizzi.
We also still have an Alternative section of cds. Some REM is there and some is in Rock. Rock is the only large section of cds without any kind of alphabetizing, even the most basic.
And don't even get me started on 741.5, which is, as we all know, the devil.
--aw, reader's advisory always makes me feel better. And over IM, so all cutting edge and shit, too.--

Bitch the third: I fucking hate the Olympics. I hate the winter Olympics more than the summer Olympics, and this is one of those years. I'm sure I will bitch in a more timely manner about this when they actually start.

Look, even the internet thinks I need to shut the fuck up:

You woke up this morning with the Monday morning blues -- and it's not even Monday. Doesn't matter, either; it definitely won't last. In fact, if you can get yourself up and around, you'll be surprised to find that you'll actually enjoy your day -- a whole lot. Remember, you're in charge of your day -- and, more importantly your evening. And don't you have some plans to look forward to? Now pick up your bottom lip before you trip over it.