Cranky gets an education, a list
Things I learned from watching most of the 832-part History of Rock and Roll on VH1 Classics:
1. The song “Carrie Ann” was written about Marianne Faithful.
2. “Do You Believe in Magic” came out in like 1965 and not in about 1985 like I had always assumed, also the band who sings it, The Lovin’ Spoonful toured with The Supremes.
3. Though written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Marianne Faithful originally sang “As Tears Go By”, and it still sounds like a Stones song.
4. David Crosby was in The Byrds
6. “At that point we weren’t writing sons, and if it weren’t for The Beatles we probably wouldn’t have,” Keith Richards.
7. I love Pete Townshend. This is news to me. I love him because when talking about the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass, and Janis Joplin he sort of flipped his wig, got all teary eyed and said, “They might be your fucking icons, but they’re my fucking friends and they’re dead.”
8. “Don’t be nice, it’s the kiss of death,” Johnny Rotten
(I mostly stopped paying attention when they got to Woodstock and all that blah blah because really it was like 983 parts and my attention span is not that long)
The Vonnegut of my dreams
There was a great flood. I think that maybe the Minnesota River had overflown its banks and flooded most of Shakopee. I had to jump from a plane with a parachute to get anywhere. When I got home, Kurt Vonnegut was sitting at the dining room table in Supergenius HQ. He was using my old typewriter (the one you can often see at the top of this page) and handed me a stack of papers asking me to read.
The story was about me parachuting with my niece Jaycie so she could get to Valleyfair. There was other stuff too, a dogfight (you know with bi-planes like in WWI). When I finished I went back to him, still sitting at the table. I told him it was fucking awesome and couldn’t wait to go to the store and buy it. Then John Irving came out the kitchen with a cup of coffee and said, “I told him the same thing.”
Then I woke up.
Wind out of my sails
I can’t write. I have a lot to say but the words come out wooden and forced. They scratch my skin and make me feel uncomfortable. Nothing seems to flow or to fit together the right way. Forcing it doesn’t seem to be working in the least.
I am pouty and angry and a little bit sad. I’m trying to blame this current emotional state on everything — an e-mail from Vodo about my bad writing habits, loneliness, boredom, fear, writer’s block, rebellion — but what it is, a monthly-induced hormonal imbalance. It sucks, because unlike all the things I want to blame, I cannot do anything about this. It’s hard to rail against biology, which makes it all the more frustrating.
Here is how it is
One day you’re leaping from bed at 11:37 on a Thursday barely-morning because you’re supposed to meet someone for lunch at noon and the next thing you know it’s Friday. And it’s May.
In between there was lunch, a call from your former boss that made you laugh so hard your throat hurt, talking about writing, drinks at Grumpy’s, stories about Moist Frank, cute boys who wave, and learning that eating bacon on veggie burgers is wrong. Oh, and writing in the annoying second person.
This means today has to be extra productive. My biggest goal is to figure out how to invoice a freelance client. My second biggest goal is to not to take nap. Third? Tell you about the best book ever. Also, I decided that I was going to keep track for one day (today) all the random songs I sing in my head. Are you so excited you can hardly keep your pants on? I am.
Things that are making me a little sad tonight, a follow up list to the last one
- That there doesn’t seem to be any sort of ready-made, easy to eat chocolate in this entire house
- This weird lip zit I can’t seem to stop touching
- That I have no idea what in the hell Tubular Bells are, nor have I ever seen “The Exorcist”
- That I am so tired that I cannot fire back an ass-kicking e-mail that needs to be fired back
- That I am using the word that so often in this list
- That Sister #2 is kicking my ass at Scrabulous*
- That I only got four hours of sleep and thus will be entirely too tired to finish reading The Monsters of Templeton which is currently my favorite thing on the planet (because there is no chocolate in the house
*random aside:
When I signed up for Facebook a few months ago I used a fake name. Basically I was doing some research for work and you have to be a member of Facebook to read anything on Facebook. So I signed up and planned to never deal with it again after I got the info I needed. But then I learned about Scrabulous and started my quest to get a #1 rank on iRead or whatever the hell it’s called. However, it bugged the shit out of me that my profile was under a fake name. So after a month of trying and being rejected a few times, I had to lie to the Facebook people (I told them that Willdare was my married name and I got divorced) to get my profile under my real name. Yes, I thought you needed to know all that.
Grandma’s minion
Nolan was sitting on my lap, facing me. I was singing “Six Little Ducks” and had just gotten to the “quack quack quaaaaaccckkk” part which is my favorite.
“Why don’t you got any kids?” he asked.
“What?” I said.
“You should have some kids,” he said.
“Did Grandma tell you to ask me that?” My parents’ babysit the tiniest Tibbles on Tuesdays.
“No,” he said. “I just think you should have some kids.”
“Why?”
“Because you need some.”
“How come?”
“You need a girl and you can call her Carmen.”
“Why Carmen?”
“Because it’s a cute name.”
“I will have kids someday,” I said.
“How about in three years?” He asked, holding up three fingers.
“That sounds great!”
Today on Aunt Jodi’s Dance Party
Liam, Nolan, and I are upstairs in the Fortress of Solitude. I’m finishing up a freelance project that’s due today and they’re using The Joy of Cooking as a motorcycle ramp (right now the alien and the ninja are riding the motorcycle). We’re listening to some music and things are going swell, they’re preoccupied and I can proof this tutorial. Smashing!
Then, Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil” comes over the speakers. Both Liam and Nolan freeze.
“Oh!” Nolan starts to jump up and down. “I love this song!”
Liam spreads his legs, bends at the waist, and adopts the traditional headbanger stance. “Shout, shout, shout,” he chants.
I show them how to do heavy metal fingers and wish that my camera’s battery wasn’t charging. We finish headbanging as the song ends, it is immediately followed by Shake Your Sillies Out by Raffi.
Now, Liam sits on the floor at my feet continuously emptying and filling the Superman penny bank with quarters, and Nolan plays Connect Four by himself.
It seemed like a perfectly normal decision to me
She cocks her head to the side and looks up. “Is that. . . Blue Oyster Cult?”
I jump from my chair and lunge for my bag. “Yeah. I changed my ring.”
“To Blue Oyster Cult?”
“Mmmhmm.” I shake my head yes and press the ignore button to make my phone shut up. “It was either that or ‘Get Off My Cloud.’”
“You have no idea how weird you are, do you?”
“It seemed like a perfectly normal decision to me.”
Typing at the Coffee Shop part II
I got here a little bit earlier than the rest of the posse so I could spend a little bit of time Writing with a capital W. However, I cannot write because I am too busy listening to the people behind me talking about investors and real estate. Right now the dude of the duo is going on and on about his site being hacked and how Google was telling everyone that his site was malicious. Also, he said he makes something like $50 million a year. He is wearing a baseball cap. She is wearing a brown jean jacket with sparkly bits bedazzled onto it. He is showing her some sort of HTML code that had to be replaced so that his site would no long be malicious.
How can one possibly write when this is going on next to them?
I wish I could hear the two women sitting in the leather chairs behind me. I am betting their conversation is way more interesting and personal than the Investors. But the baseball-capped investor’s voice drowns out the softer tones of the women. Occasionally I hear the word Walmart coming from the leather enclave.
Oh, now the Investors are talking about writing stuff and “understanding the mentality of these guys.” He’s talking about writing little articles to get these guys excited. I can’t figure out who these guys are. Apparently they are guys who need to take steps to successful. Oh they are talking about educational and informational blogs and linking to other blogs.
He advises that she should update her blog once a week. He advises that of all his writers.
Sadly, my posse has begun to arrive and the time to gossip and talk about how I’m still not looking for a job has come.
An honest day’s work or Ferris Bueller’s fatal flaw
I have to work today. Like do actual work in exchange for actual money. Weird, eh? Of course I haven’t started yet, and I can’t decide if I should put on actual clothes to do actual work in exchange for actual money. My biggest problem though is that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is on and I can’t stop watching it. I tell myself after the Danke Schoen scene I am done. For real. Then I will work. For real.
Here’s the fatal flaw in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, wouldn’t Mr. Bueller recognize his son’s girlfriend even if she were wearing sunglasses? Come on! Ferris said he’s gonna marry this girl, surely his parents have met her a few times.
Recently Dared