The list I keep talking about. A work in progress.

Yeah, you might not want to read this if we live in the same city. Heads up.
Also, this is a messy diatribe. Really, maybe it's best if we all ignore it. Except for those of you who only know me through the blog.

My ideal city contains:

• useful public transportation (as in, I can use it to get to work)
  
• an Indian buffet
  
• food trucks
  
• a bar with a decent jukebox, played at a volume so I can actually hang out with and talk to the people I'm there with
  
• a used book store
  
• a comic book store that won't habitually screw up my orders/fuck over my library (and their own customers) on Free Comic Book Day*
  
• a record store where I don't have to special order, during the week that their 3rd album comes out, the second album by a big buzzy band
  
• I'd also like it if, if I do have to special order from said record store, if they would actually call and tell me when my order comes in.
  
• Local bands that sound like what I'm listening to now, not what I was listening to several years ago.
  
• (not to say they suck, or that I don't enjoy select local bands, but sometimes you want to hear newer, you know?)
  
• a hole-in-the-wall with cheap falafel
  
• a Stitch'n'Bitch that people actually attend
  
• It would be nice if that bar I mentioned above had booths, too.
  
• pizza by the slice
  
• a familiarity with newcomers. I'm not expecting the Beat Happening song about the new girl in the town, but I definitely don't want the Echo and the Bunnymen song about people being strange.
  
• an understanding that a cute girl can have a good, completely platonic friendship with boys
  
• an alternative freenewsweekly that carries the Jonesin crossword
  
• a nonhippie, nonchain, nonstripmall-located coffee shop, with actual cups, that's open late and on Sundays
  
• Ex-locals that, when hearing you're moving to their town, hook you up with their friends info, so you'll know a few people when you get there.
  
• People who do creative work (artists, writers, musicians, what have you) actually doing that work in the city on a regular basis.
  
• a farmers market
  
• the ability to walk places
  
• people that walk places
  
• a bar with quizzo would be nice
  
• single-and-comfortable-with-it hipsters over 22
  
• people having parties
  
• The knowledge that 3-5 friends on a porch with beer isn't a bad way to spend a summer evening.
  
• Yeah, I'm sure that happens here, but no one ever a)tells me or b)comes when I try to invite them.
  
• When I move to this other town, if I don't know anyone there yet, I'd like for my "Hey I'm new" advances to be met like this:
  
• "Well, some friends and I are going to be at ___ and we'll welcome you into our crew, none of whom knew each other 10 years ago and none of whom are moving away in the next 2 months."
  
• NOT "Well, ___ is a good restaurant/my band is playing tonight, that's something you could do/you should leave."--all said with kind of an assumption that you already have a crew to do those things with.
  
• OR "I'm inviting you to hang out with my friends, but what I'm REALLY doing is showing off to all them this hot girl who made a sexy sexy advance on me."
  
• OR "You think we're hanging out in a group, but my friends think we're a couple."
  
• OR "You think my friends are kind of welcoming you, but really it's just in the ___'s lady friend capacity."
  
• More than one person I trust. (Hey, Melissa--you still there, or do you hate me now?)
  
• an H&M
  
• an art house theater
  
• rents low enough that I can have my own, not-too-shitty apartment
  
• non-chain, reasonably priced stores and restaurants
  
• graduate schools
  
• a hipster-dance-club-type night that's just as much about the hipster peacocking and the spazzing around as it is going home with someone and the slutty girl from your high school's drama
  
• single, childless people my age whose lives are not one big ball of drama
  
• a cheap movie theater
  
• a library who needs a YA-only librarian, and who wants me ('cause, otherwise, why would I leave my library?)

*Why LocalComicStore is dead to me Part B: Did you get a little Wolverine guy on Free Comic Book Day? Not if you lived around here; LocalComicStore saved them to use as a movie theater X3 promotion.

Crap-ticulous!

Like my new word?

Billboard June 10

• Starbucks puts too much cream in their drive-thru iced coffee.
  
• And the xtra caffiene hasn't kicked in yet.
  
• Don't worry, I won't begin accusing innocent drive-thru employees again just yet.
  
• I bought 2 necklaces and a locket yesterday, so I think the necklace thing now officially counts as my new obsession.
  
• You know, that and vampirates.
  
• Or, more accurately, vampirates and uni-pirates/pi-corns.
  
• Those names are (TM) Becca/Tiff.
  
• Oh, and I added a couple new things to my Etsy store.
  
• And will be adding more at some point.
  
• OK, so the cover story this time is about music and World Cup.
  
• I'm betting they just used the copy from the Olympics and replaced "Lou Reed" with "Shakira".
  
• (who my sister thinks should be dating Nick Lachey, incidentally)
  
• But the cover image is this somewhat terrifying pictrue of a soccer team (red and white uniforms--li'l help on id'ing?) but they've replaced their heads--
  
• ineptly, I might add
  
• --with musicians: Elvis, Wyclef, Elton John, the aforementioned Shakira, and...um, is that Toni Braxton?
  
• I don't know.
  
• I can't believe Nelly Furtado is back.
  
• Didn't she annoy me enough the first time around?
  
• I hate that fake deep girl singer crap.
  
• Hey, WalMart may lift the ban on parental advisory stuff.
  
• HA
  
• HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
  
• (I'm amusing myself by replacing "pirates" in all the online/music/whathaveyou piracy newsbits and articles with "vampirates".)
  
• So, Sweden is now shutting down vampirates.
  
• I hope they brought garlic Starburst.
  
• And mirrored ham.
  
• OK, my too much caffiene has officially kicked in.
  
• ahh, nonsensical Jessy
  
• Now with even more nonsense!
  
• Yes, that was Toni Braxton in the scary cover picture.
  
• I know it's very easy and tired to remark on the disturbing nature of children's programming, but take a look at this picture:
  
• 
  
• There's a slightly less freakish one in the magazine.
  
• Nelly Furtado, honey, you are not Shakira.
  
• Just stop.
  
• Remember when Jewel tried to be all urban "sexy" and dancey?
  
• Yeah, Furtado's trying the same thing.
  
• See, this is why I hate fakedeep girlsingers.
  
• They're always sucking up the airways in different ways.
  
• Remember when Liz Phair wasn't one of them?
  
• And now I think we've all pretty much washed our hands of Ms Phair, haven't we?
  
• What show was she on, Tiff?
  
• Pepper Dennis?
  
• That's just so fucking sad.
  
• Oh, dear Jebus (or Gesus, if you prefer)--there's a new Cracker album.
  
• Now that's crap-ticulous.
  
• Oh, no wait--that's not nearly as bad as the review below it, for the new Toto album.
  
• OK, I have to repeat that in all caps.
  
• THE NEW TOTO ALBUM
  
• !
  
• ahem
  
• Also, can we all officially declare Madonna out of touch?
  
• Please?
  
• I'll give you my sparkly jacket with the dollar bill pyramid on the back.
  
• It used to belong to Jimi Hendrix, you know.
  
• Someone just needed help finding Who Moved My Cheese.
  
• Is it just me, or should authors of hokey self-help-type books avoid using words like "cheese" in their titles?

I, on the other hand, love everyone.

While many of the shirts on this site make me really worry about how much hostility there is in this country, and how terrified some people are of anything that even remotely sounds like Socialism and/or Communism, this is just so damn funny.

Seriously fucking hilarious.
Almost as funny as vampirates.
*snurk*
Say it with me now: "VAAAAAM! PIRATES!"
I'm torn: part of me can't wait to get free vampirate booty (see, I can't even type that without cracking up) at ALA, and part of me hopes there's no vampirate presence, or I shall die laughing.
And no one wants a dead-from-mocking librarian.

OK, it's official: vampirates are my new Snakes on a Plane.
And now I think I need a shirt that says that.

Home of the brash, outrageous and free.

So, where were we?

I needed a haircut. Because of my general screw-up nature, I put these things off and when I need a haircut, I need a haircut.
The last haircut I got was from this place downtown, right after I ordered Belle and Sebastian tickets (it was a good weekend all around). I like this place a lot: my hairdresser was comfortable with curly hair and friendly and I got to drool over this lovely wooden clutch I want.
I'm not the only one who's a fan of this salon. When I called for an appointment, it was three weeks until an opening that I wouldn't have to take personal time to get to.*
There's an Aveda salon in the same strip mall as my usual grocery store. I like Aveda stuff**, and a former coworker with kinda curly hair had said good things about it. Plus, as it turned out, they're a bit cheaper.*** Luckily, they had a spot with the curly expert.
Here's the haircut I got, soon after (Figure A):

I like the haircut, but I don't think I'll be going back to this place.
First of all, I'm a bit worried about how it's going to grow out. The layers all seem a bit too close in length, and I worry that it won't grow down so much as out.
But mainly, I was underwhelmed with my hairdresser. It's not just that we didn't click. It's not just that the only small-talk/personal question she asked me was if I was married.
Here follows a list of somewhat ridiculous, somewhat justified things I didn't like about her.

• When she used a product, she didn't tell me what it was. Even when the product in question was something we had talked about earlier (their hairwax in the deodorant/pushup type container--I used to use this all the time). How am I supposed to even attempt to duplicate her styling if I don't know what she's using? Also, don't salons make a profit when they sell products? Isn't it in her best interest to push their stuff on me?
  
• Curly hair can't be cut on one part, and then styled on another. I told her I part pretty severely to the side. She didn't ask me to demonstrate until I interrupted to mention my habits. She let me show where I part, which I did half-assedly (expecting her to pretty it up), and then she began cutting from there.
  
• OK, most have you have never seem my natural part. It's just to the side of a middle part. Just enough to make it look like I tried to have a middle part, but couldn't hack it. It's not cute. This is what she assumed I was using when I said, "I part my hair pretty far over to the side."
  
• I tend to tuck the right side behind my ear. Shorter bits are okay, because otherwise one side of my head's a lot bigger than the other (this is typical of curly hair, even when it's straightened), but it still needs to reach behind my ear. Long enough to reach behind my ear while sleek and smooth and wet and untouched is nowhere near long enough to reach behind my ear producted-up, blown dry, straightened, and producted some more.
  
• If it's too short, it knocks into my glasses. I don't think this woman had ever cut the hair of someone with glasses before.
  
• She kept asking me if I liked how it looked at times when I couldn't throw the specs on.
  
• She claimed there was no difference between ceramic and regular straightening irons. That's the first time I've ever heard that, from anyone.
  
• It was the shortest, least informative new client hair consultation I've ever had.
  
• I don't think she'd ever had a customer request "piece-y" before. I love piece-y hair. I can't do it, but I try to.
  
• My hair looks great right after someone else has beaten it into submission. I need a cut that is also going to look great after I've beaten it into submission.

It's not that my hair looks bad a week later, per se (Figure B), but I can't help but think it would look better and be easier to dominate if I had gone to the other place.

So next time, I'm planning in advance, paying the extra $10, and going to the place I can walk to from my apartment.

Figure B:


*Yeah, I thought about doing that.
**While I think Aveda makes a good product, mostly what I like about their stuff is the smell. It reminds me of the Wicca store on Carson St.
***Haircuts are possibly the only thing that I'm willing to pay a bit more for, because I've had so many shitty ones.

His telephone is found.

I get my hair cut about once every 5-6 months. I don't do this on purpose; it just kind of happens that way. I good haircut grows with your hair and keeps looking good, until one day I look in the mirror and hate everything.
It's triangle-y and flyaway and overwhelms my tiny face and makes my glasses look even more nerdishly crooked.*
And that's when I get the majority of it chopped off. This is something I've been doing for about 8 years now, since the first all-chopped-off my junior year of college. Before that, there were years of trimming the nasty ends but keeping length, which started as an attempt to even out the horrible layers.
OK, perhaps we should have some timeline action. Also, keep in mind that I have the worst kind of jewfro: some tight curls, some looser ones, frizzies, etc. etc.

1979: Born. Completely bald until 2.

1983 (about): OK, I have a really vague memory of having cute pigtail braids at a family function. Long ones.

1984: It's all chopped off evenly around my head. In kindergarten, I get mistaken for a boy in the bathroom. Or, some older girl thinks it's funny to call me a boy. Yeah, I was that kid, the one everyone thought it was fun to mess with.
late 80s-mid 90s: The hair gets longer, but the top layers are still short. This haircut is why I hate my childhood pictures, and (if I could get real emo for a second) kinda the main reason behind every "I'm ugly" thought I've ever had.

1994 or so: Start growing the top layers out. Little boxy for a bit, but somehow works well with the stereotypically mid90s weird kid look I begin cultivating, after realizing how hardcore I suck at looking normal.**
This is also when I begin with the black hair dye, and when I realize that changing up the wash/dry/braid/whathaveyou cycle even a little causes my hair to look dramatically different.

1996 (at least, I think so; my mom doesn't remember this at all): Realizing that my hair won't take any fun colors without bleach, I come up with a plan to take the color out of a chunk of my hair, a la Caitlyn from Degrassi(see Fig A). Then, the plan went, I would dye it various colors. I enlisted Kerenq Gilboa and we commandeered some black hair dye (for the rest of my head), some facial bleach (I know!!), and a bathroom in her house. I don't think any pictures survive of this look, but I bet they'd be hilarious.

1998: Before my intro to mass comm recitation, I get all my hair chopped off at a trusted salon. It looks very cute.
This is when I switch over to red dye sometimes.


Fig A:





*'Nother xboy gem:
Jessy--Do you think my glasses are noticibly crooked to everyone, or is it me?
Andy--I love your crooked glasses and how nerdy they make you look.
Points for trying, right?

**Seriously--I'm terrible at looking like everyone else. Even as a Halloween costume. Cara's Certain Filmmaking X makes a better Republican than I do a sorority girl.

you'll read it in a book tonight

I read all the damn time, and I read fast. Sometimes, I review things. Other times, I say I'm going to review something and then never get around to it. Or, I have a great review written in my head, while I'm flossing or something (someday, the fact that I never listen to "Health in a Heartbeat" is going to kick my ass), and then forget all the best parts when I can actually write it down.
This is why I would make a terrible actual writer. When I come up with the best stuff is when I physically cannot get any of it down, or even say it outloud half the time.
So I'm trying a new experiment. I'm going to use LibraryThing. You'll notice, once you link on over, that my tags are actually tiny little opinions.
I'll still be reviewing things here on occasion, but this seems like a way of keeping track of what I read that I'll actually keep up with.

I'm also planning on linking to my LibraryThing from my work-related stuff, as sort of a "see what the librarian is reading" dealie. Has anyone else done this?

Germany will not tolerate hooliganism.

Billboard June 3

• "Hooliganism" is such a great word.
  
• Edie Brickell is apparently back in "the game".
  
• meh
  
• The guest opinion guy this time is connecting Pete Seeger and social networking sites...hmmm
  
• So, do you (non-librarian) guys know about DOPA?
  
• Yeah, pay attention to that part about it not only blocking MySpace in libraries, but also IM and Blogger.
  
• Have I mentioned that my library has 2 blogs on Blogger, IM reference, and a MySpace page?
  
• Ian Copeland died.
  
• There's a picture of Robbie Williams and iTunes decided to play "53rd & 3rd".
  
• I like that combination.
  
• I have no idea what that means.
  
• Cheap Trick and Radio Birdman both have new records coming out.
  
• I don't know what that means, either.
  
• Andy The X talked about getting a tattoo of the Radio Birdman logo.
  
• And he once traded a painting for some tattoo work that, as far as I know, he never got.
  
• He didn't want me to use any of it, because he didn't want that tattoo to remind me unfavorably of him.
  
• Yep, we actually had that conversation.
  
• blah blah, brands/companies teaming with musicians for ad use, etc.
  
• How is this news?
  
• This is a trend like plate tectonics is a trend.
  
• Although, if you believe made-for-TV movies about "the big one", plate tectonics and continental drift work at the speed of light!
  
• Well, maybe not that fast.
  
• Speed of sound?
  
• Why do I think that "speed of a broken heart" is a line from a bad power ballad?
  
• And, yes, I know there's no such thing as a bad power ballad.
  
• According to Blingo, however, no dice.
  
• You know, Billboard, if the tagline for an article includes the word "crafty" I expect to see some damn crafts.
  
• Like, Mariah Carey macrame-ing and shit.
  
• OK, who DOESN'T want to see Mariah Carey macrame-ing?
  
• Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
  
• Or selling something.
  
• So, I'm pretty sure this is the digital camera I'm getting.
  
• It comes in red.
  
• And has an optical zoom.
  
• I played with it in the store and liked it, and online-reviewer-type-people seem to like it too.
  
• I need to get it before the 22, so I can take non-sucky pictures at ALA.
  
• Last year, Marissa got her picture taken with the Baker and Taylor cats and I am very jealous.
  
• Of course, I have that ridiculous picture of my cheesy grin and Francesca Lia Block, so I guess I can't complain.
  
• But you know how I love mascot costumes...
  
• Does anyone know if the Erasure unplugged stuff is available to listen anywhere online?
  
• Preferably for free?
  
• I'm intrigued.
  
• bingo