hey. I'm back. hoo-ray.

I've got all sorts of other things I want to talk about, including: a bit I wrote in my boring airport, maybe something about the whole millenials things, obviously a hell of a lot about ALA & New Orleans, the last boy I made out with (I've been sitting on that story for a couple weeks), and how those of us who work with teens avoid being Mr. Rosso (see Fig A), if in fact we do.
But I'm not up to all that yet, and I came back to 2 whole Billboard magazines.
June 17, June 24

• Cheyenn Kimball is going to have a reality show.
  
• It'll be on MTV, so I can get the full scoop from Lara, who has a sad, sad addiction to MTV reality programming.
  
• No exaggeration, no paraphrasing: we ACTUALLY had the following conversation.
  
• Jessy: You'll watch anything MTV puts on, won't you?
  
• Lara: Yes.
  
• Her (Cheyenne, not my sister) hair is doing that flyaway thing that some stylist really thinks makes thin-haired girls look like they've got a ton of hair.
  
• When really it just looks like they need some hard-core conditioning.
  
• And trust me. I know frizzies; I spent the last week in New Orleans, remember?
  
• I have to say I prefer the reality show vehicle of a newcomer to the old model of crap sitcom where, like, the main character's mom owned a club or something.
  
• Or those terrible Fresh Prince episodes where someone owned a record store so that they could have a Tatiana Ali Sings! plotline.
  
• WHO do you think should own the trademark for the phrase "bat out of hell," Meatloaf or Jim Steinman?
  
• This may just be my new favorite stupid argument.
  
• Aw, no one wants to read Street Angel (it's just sitting on our shelves, for months). That's a shame. It's a really great book.
  
• With ninjas! And pirates! And an Irish astronaut! And a mad scientist!
  
• You should read it.
  
• So, I'm having a galley of Vampirates shipped to me.
  
• I'm pretty dang excited.
  
• Q&A with Ringo Starr.
  
• So, we're all in agreement that he's going to be the last living Beatle, right?
  
• Actually, think about it. That's the better scenario.
  
• Because if he kicks first, Paul's just going to get more and more revisionist.
  
• Plus, you know I can't stand Paul McCartney.
  
• Ringo was at least on Shining Time Station.
  
• What's Paul ever done for us, aside from helping Lisa to become more accepting of nonvegetarians?
  
• hmmm, according to Li'l Steven, there may be a Kinks reunion.
  
• I'm not holding my breath.
  
• You know what would be awesome?
  
• The Kinks and Oasis touring together.
  
• Would the Gallaghers team up against the Davies, or would it be older brothers vs younger ones?
  
• I would totally go to that show.
  
• OK, partial lineup for Ringo's All-Star band, 2006 incarnation:
  
• Sheila E
  
• Billy Squier
  
• Richard fucking Marx!
  
• Shit!
  
• (for those of you who aren't Tiff, Brian, Richard, Cindy, Cara, Alison Farinacci, or me, the concept of an inner Richard Marx--much like an inner child--was a running joke of ours circa 2000. I came up with it, of course, because I am a genius. And/or a moron. Brian made a website.)
  
• So now I have to read this stupid interview for pertinent Richard Marx bits.
  
• And there weren't any.
  
• Billy Corgan is wearing a stupid hat.
  
• heh
  
• It looks a lot like the hat that guy wore in the "Get What You Give" video.
  
• Was that what that song was called?
  
• Late 90s "we're more real" rockstar backlash?
  
• Took place in a mall?
  
• Does anyone know what the hell I'm talking about?
  
• We're switching to the 24 now.
  
• Beyonce's on the cover.
  
• The tagline is "Making a 'Bee' Line for Beyonce".
  
• And I am totally not making that up.
  
• Radiohead are going to be forcing their boring crap on us again soon.
  
• So I was in this little punk apparel store in the French Quarter last week, and there were all these great shirts and hoodies with the Ramones, Bowie, Iggy, etc on 'em and the requisite few metal bands some punks decided it was ok to like, and the usual leather cuffs and things.
  
• And they also had all these Radiohead shirts in the window.
  
• It seemed a bit of a disparity.
  
• Store had a really hot guy behind the counter, too.
  
• Who would scratch their heads at Madonna partnering with H&M? Who?
  
• Seems like a perfect combo to me, especially with the cheap disposable trendy stuff she's been pumping out for the last 6 years or so.
  
• Beyonce's shoes look ill-fitting in this photograph.
  
• Oh, I guess Beyonce's decided that a bee is her animal, like how Mariah Carey went all butterfly and shit awhile back.
  
• Oh, add me bitching about Feed to that list of future topics.
  
• I hate the font Nelly Furtado uses for her logo.
  
• And anyway, if she's all thoughtful girl singer, what's she got a damn logo for, anyway?
  
• anyway

Fig A

quick list (ongoing) of sites our new filter filters

Runescape
Viz
Gurl
DeviantArt
Go Fug Yourself
Yahoo Messenger
AOL Messenger
MSN Messenger (these 3 are linked from our website, incidentally, b/c we have IM reference)
Cheatcodes
Pamie
GamePro
Rave Clothing Store
Hot Topic

Just for fun, I copied this from the filtering company:

Access to web sites that have been identified as providing inappropriate content will be blocked. This determination is based upon various content categories by the Indiana Public Libraries. If you have a question regarding the filtering policy, please see your local technology contact.


Blocked Categories
Adults Only: Material labeled by its author or publisher as being strictly for adults. (Examples: "Adults only", "You must be 18 to visit this site", "Registration is allowed only for people 18 or older", "You must be of legal drinking age to visit this site").
Alcohol: Advocating or promoting the recreational use of alcoholic beverages.
Chat: Online chat rooms, a service that allow short messages to be sent to others immediately in real time, and the download of chat software that enables the online posting and receiving of real-time messages.
Hate/Discrimination: Advocating discrimination against others based on race, religion, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation.
Drugs: Advocating or promoting recreational use of any controlled substance. (Also see Illegal)
Web Page Hosting: Sites where home page space is offered for free. These sites historically have done nothing to prevent capricious abuse of their services by users who post offensive content under multiple pseudonyms, making them difficult to track. Individual pages that have been reviewed by N2H2 on such sites are removed from this category, but filed under other categories as necessary.
Gambling: Gambling services, or information relevant primarily to gambling.
Tasteless/Gross: Bodily functions. Tasteless humor. Graphic medical photos. Some extreme forms of body modification (cutting, branding, genital piercing).
Illegal: Advocating, promoting, or giving advice on carrying out acts widely considered illegal. This includes lock-picking, bomb-making, fraud, breaching computer security ("hacking"), phone service theft ("phreaking"), pirated software archives, or evading law enforcement.
P2P/Loophole: A loophole that can be exploited to access pages which would otherwise be filtered out from your service.
Lingerie: Models in lingerie (except those that qualify for Nudity).
Profanity: Crude, vulgar, or obscene language or gestures.
Nudity: Bare or visible genitalia, pubic hair, buttocks, female breasts, etc. (See also Lingerie and Sex)
Personals: Personal advertisements, including information about mail-order brides, dating services, escort services, or pen pals.
Pornography: Material intended to be sexually arousing or erotic. (See also Sex and Nudity)
School Cheating Information: Any site that promotes plagiarism or similar cheating among students (such as by offering term papers, exam keys, etc.)
Murder/Suicide: Information on committing murder or suicide.
Sex: Images or descriptions of sexual activity. Any sexual merchandise. Sexual fetishism. (See also Nudity)
Tobacco: Advocating or promoting the recreational use of tobacco.
Violence: Graphic images or written descriptions of wanton violence or grave injury (mutilation, maiming, dismemberment, etc.) Includes graphically violent games.
Visual Search Engine: Block search engine results based on key words.
Weapons: Information about buying, making, modifying, or using weapons such as guns, knives, swords, or ammunitions.


Exception Categories
Education: Material under another category (such as Sex, Nudity, Violence) that has educational value (such as classic literature, sex education, etc.)
For Kids: Sites that are designed specifically for kids.
History: Material that falls under another category (such as Sex or Violence) that is non-fictional and historically significant.
Medical: Material under another category (such as Nudity or Tasteless/Gross) that relates to the study or practice of medicine.
Moderated: A "Message/Bulletin Board" or "Chat" site that prevents offensive material from being posted.
Text Only: Material under another category that is strictly verbal (i.e. text or spoken word). This can be used, for example, to distinguish written erotica from graphical "Porn" sites.

Little help, guys?

This is all made of duct tape. Duck brand duct tape has a scholarship contest for promgoers every year, and it's voting time.
(I work with this girl's big sister. I actually did her makeup in Becca's wedding, which is funny considering I met her immediately before sitting her down and trying not to poke her in the eye with a mascara wand.)

So anyway, go here, choose the "most likely to be a history major" category, and scroll down the page to vote for our couple.

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.