Baby Feminist.

We found out yesterday that Cara's new spawn is going to be a girl. I am actually really excited to have a niece. I am very vocal about not wanting kids of my own, so I am happy to get to be a part of a young woman's life. That sounds so gay, but it's true.

I wasn't there for my sis when she had her first (Gavin). I didn't approve of her having a child so young and I was in my rebellious phase and just wasn't very supportive, so this is my chance to make up for it.

I plan to instill upon this little chicky some serious feminist ideals. I want to make her mixes and have her contribute to my zine and buy her her first pair of combat boots.

I hope she's a little weirdo in her own way.

a few pet peeves...

I can't handle it when someone is a swarthy know-it-all when they don't have the grainy knowledge to back up their claims. Artificiality just bugs me. I'm not talkin' about artificial hair color or artificial boobs (which bug me aesthetically, but I believe a person has a right to alter themselves in whatever way they wish)--I'm talking about not having the salt to back up your swagger.

For example, today I went to Changing Hands (used bookstore on 6th & Virginia) and bought an old beat-up paperback copy of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat. This is a guilty pleasure book for me and I had the huge imposing hardback version of it checked out from the library and reading it was distracting me. Anne Rice writes some compelling vampire fiction, but it's fluff. I know it's fluff and I want the physical presence to be honest about its fluffiness. That five pound brick with the shiny gold lettering was too pretentious for the meat inside, so I had to buy the paperback. The cheesy '80s paperback with a generic picture of some gnarly tree branches with a house inexplicably in the background is infinitely more real because it represents what's inside. This is how I like my bad fiction--with a bad cover. Something wherein I can bend the spine backwards and spill coffee and shove hastily into my purse when someone I respect almost catches me reading it. Something that is cognizant of its own shamefulness and doesn't try to be big and important.

And I also hate it when pretty people who are not smart think they are. The pretty boy who thinks he's deep when he's daft and dull and self-involved. Ugh, that moment where you realize the package is not at all representative of the viscera within and it hits you like a slap in the face. Afterwards you no longer find them as pretty, and it's like a tiny death, because you always hope against all odds that the drop dead gorgeous ones have a brain...I hate that moment!

And I hate it when people proclaim things with factual certainty because they heard it from someone they know. Critical thinking, people!

I also can't stand it when people describe something that happened to them years ago with lurid detail, as if they really remember it that vividly.

And then there's pretentiousness. That's basically what that hardback Lestat book was trying to be, but also there's just plain human snobbery. Acceptance is way hotter than better-than-thouness, and please don't EVER talk in the third person. You are not that important. I could never be friends with a celebrity because how can you possibly stay "down-to-earth" when you're constantly having your ass kissed? I have a theory about famous people becoming evil that goes with this whole thing, but I'll save the blather for another blog or my zine or somethin'. A few of you have heard this rant already anyway...

Don't be a bad historian of your own life! Know what you know and what you don't know. Question everything! Be truthful. Ok, I'm sounding ridiculous and cliche-y now, so I'm going to stop.

Radio.

I just want to briefly express my deep appreciation for internet radio.

As a big fat hairy music nerd, my lifelong relationship with radio has been tense, to say the least. I listened to regular old-fashioned local radio nonstop in my preteen and elementary school years, settling for the R&B dance sounds of the early '90s. Actually, I quite liked it at the time, as I was young enough to appreciate SWV and En Vogue. Soon after, grunge hooked its tentacles into the radio waves and I liked Nirvana quite a bit, but I was ready for more eclectic sounds, so I stopped listening to the radio and started buying CDs based on the covers (This is how I discovered PJ Harvey and Ani DiFranco). This, as I'm sure you can imagine, was hit or miss. And I was lucky enough to have grandparents with enough money to buy me what I remember as being a CD a week, though it probably wasn't quite that much. Looking back on that, I was so spoiled, but I have cherished that music and without this tiny piece of their infinite generosity, I wouldn't have advanced in my music love at such a breakneck pace as was possible in the mid to late '90s, before...

internet radio!!

Though its only been in the last few years that I have discovered gems such as Pandora and last.fm, they have made listening to radio great again. I haven't listened to local radio in years, except for those rare occasions that I decide to check out radio for a week in the car and decide, again, that it sucks. I'm sure I'd feel different about it if I lived in a big city, but I don't wanna live in a big city, so there!

Furthermore, ever since I got a smartphone I've REALLY taken advantage of not only the customizable radio stations like the aforementioned Pandora and last.fm but also many other radio station apps like Digitally Imported (all electronic radio stations like "Future Synthpop" and "Tribal House" and "Space Music" etc--I listen to this ALL THE TIME!), Slacker, and NPR Music. I also love music subscription services such as MOG and Rhapsody, wherein you pay a monthly fee to listen to pretty much anything you want to. This means, if I had a subscription to MOG, I could listen to music that I can't fit onto my phone or new stuff I don't know if I want yet, etc.

These online radio sources are MAGIC! I will never again want for new music to experience. I can listen to specific genres from user-defined radio stations or just click on a channel from DI (Digitally Imported). If I want to hear the new Shakira before I decide to buy it, I go to MOG (or I will once I start subscribing--I REALLY think I NEED it, so I will probably just sign up for it, like as soon as I finish posting this blog)...

So, to sum up, here are a few suggestions for online radio from me to you:

*di.fm (for electronic music lovers--there are 37 channels on this site and it's available as an app for smartphones too. It's free! They have this new station called "Chip Tunes" that I've been listening to all day and it's all video game-sounding electronic music. I love it!!)
*MOG.com (subscription service that's $10/mo but you can do a 2week free trial, also available as an app and you can get 320kbps with this one. Yum!)
*pandora.com (if you've never tried Pandora, you HAVE to--it utilizes the Music Genome Project [meaning that it adjusts to what you like/dislike by using specific identifiers for each song, etc] and it is fabulousness--it's free!)

So, if you've been disillusioned with music since high school and have the perception that all music sucks these days, you are wrong and there are countless avenues to explore stuff out there that you like. Don't be scared. Get out there and find stuff you like! The internet is a beautiful thing, folks.

Girls, come on!

I was just looking through about 15 pages of Google images of Lady GaGa, nobigdeal, when I came across a picture of GaGa squatting down singing and there's a tiny indication of a tampon string emerging from her leotard thing and the writer of the blog where the picture was from was using words like "nasty" and saying sentences to the effect of "you should tuck those strings back before you show us your crotch, GaGa!" etc. I am outraged, and I'll tell you why:

1) when you're a performer of the magnitude of Lady GaGa, pictures are taken of you constantly. Girls, if you weren't paying attention in health class, spend 1/5 of our fucking LIVES bleeding out the crotch! There's gonna be a picture with a tampon string if you are a famous girl performer and you wear crotch-cutting leotards. Deal with it!

2) being a female and calling another female nasty for an accidental tamp-slip is terrible! You should be kicked out of the girlclub right now. How the hell can you fault someone for having a period and still daring to put on a kick-ass show?

How the hell can you point fingers at a woman who's doing what she wants and making a living being subversive and interesting? She is on her period and she's not compromising her regular crotch-baring-singing-crouch OR her outfit. She's, like women on the Tampax commercials, swimming and biking and wearing white pants. We should show this picture in our blogs with applause...not criticism! You go girl, having your period and still rawking the leotard and letting it all hang out.

I'm not gonna post it because GaGa is a very intentional performer, but this shot wasn't. Also, it could have been photoshopped, which is even worse that someone would fabricate this just to make fun of someone. That's gross. Way grosser than tampons!

Deodorant.

I have long been a user of Teen Spirit and other $2 antiperspirants and had no shame about it. I am okay with my pits smelling like chemically strawberry as long as sweat is not dripping down my arms skankin' up the place.

A few weeks ago I decided to try making my own deodorant. I found a recipe that is one part witch hazel, one part water, one part aloe vera gel and a 1/2 tsp of grapeseed oil with whatever essential oils you want for spicyness. I used it for about 2 and a half weeks. I had coworkers smell me and call me musky and earthy on a day when a) I had JUST started my period and my B.O. was KICKIN', b) I had just gone for a long walk before work and did NOT shower afterwards, c) it was day one of the new computer system at the 'brary and I was nervously sweating and d) I was wearing an airy shirt that was the perfect vehicle for wafting. This experiment isn't working all that well. I have been smelling myself and it has not smelled like teen spirit. At all. Especially during my period. That night I made a drastic decision to go ahead and BUY some hippy deodorant. The store-bought kind will work better than my own homemade, right? I chose one that had the scent of grapefruit and ginger. It's usually a good idea to go with citrus + earthy in these types of situations. I wore it all weekend, working both days and even going out to get sweaty karaoke drunk Saturday night. And apart from the ten minutes or so after applying the deo, I did NOT smell like ginger and grapefruit.

For the past two and a half weeks I've been spritzing my pits several times a day with my homemade deo, essential oils, perfume, whatever I could get my hands on that didn't reek of pits, but the sweat is abundant! I've had to wash sweaters after one use! I've been clamping my arms to my sides so as not to waft. I didn't even fist-pump during my rendition of "The Distance" last night!!

Well, big surprise, hippy deo does not work very well. That aluminum has done right by me for years, so tonight I officially resign my exclusive use of hippy deo. I have decided that during my period and during stressful times wherein I may sweat extra muchly, I'm wearin' that tried and true teen spirit with good old aluminum! On days off from work and days nowhere near my period, I'll go with the homemade or storebought hippy deo. I'm happy I did this experiment as I now know how bad going without deo can get (and it's not THAT bad, as on the worst possible day a lot of people smelled me and didn't seem terribly disgusted by me). And I now know how to make my own deo which actually smells nice and fares better than some $6 deo I got at Pricecutter (pictured in middle).

Man, I can't tell you how happy I was to come home from a stinky day of work to apply my trusty Just Dance deo. Gonna have to go with chemicals on this one, but at least I know I can cut back.

updating the bits.

I am re-ripping my entire cd collection in 320kbps. Most of it had been previously ripped at 128 back when I had the creative software. I had NO idea about bitrates until recently when:

*I recently checked the box in my iTunes to "convert higher bitrate songs to 128kbps" when transferring to my phone and it gave me 7GB more space and I was so excited. I researched online before I checked the box and a lot of audio snobs were whining about 128, but they admitted that most people can't tell the difference anyway, so I did it. I decided I was no audio snob. I can handle it. And it took nine hours to convert what little I did have in higher bitrates to 128 for my phone named Sister of Avalanche. But I immediately noticed a difference. Songs were muddled and hole-y. Note that this conversion to lower bitrates was done to transfer to my phone ONLY; it did not change the files in my music library! I'm not that daft!

*Then, I was listening to MOG (online music app) and put the audio quality at "high" and it sounded FABULOUS...and it was 320. And I compared a Them Crooked Vultures song in 320 from the app to the 128 version I had on my phone and there was a HUGE difference. How could anyone NOT tell? How did I live all these years with so much of my music in muddled low quality.

*On the way home from watching the Lady GaGa episode of Glee with my mom at her friend Paula and Gene's house (she was dawg sitting) I wanted to rawk out to "Bad Romance" on the way home and I just wasn't feelin' it. And I normally do. I felt disconnected from the sound. From the "ra ra ra-a-ahh", and that's just not right. Because GaGa isn't as big in 128. Also, I have to turn the volume way up in my car to feel encompassed by 128. That's not right.

So, I made two decisions right then and there:

1) That the 160GB iPod Classic I've had my eye on, that I look up online every couple of days just to stare at lovingly, was now a totally justifiable necessity, not just a fantasy that felt excessive. Ever since I gave up my Zendra (60GB Creative Zen mp3 player) I got back in my early 20s, I've wanted something that could fit all of my music. My Sister of Avalanche has been maxed out at 128kbps (she's 32GB and I have 45GB of music [BEFORE everything has been converted to 320, btw -- probably end up with 60 or 70ish GB at the end of it all] so she's just not gonna cut it), and she'll hold less than half as much music when I switch her to 320. I don't need to have all my music on me at all times, but I will acquire an iPod classic for road trips and parties and whenever I just want to grab my music and stomp out the door on a walk or something. I already know what I will name her and what engraving she will have on the back. She will be named Strict Machine (after a Goldfrapp song) and will have an adaptation of lyrics from the song engraved: "Wonderful electric, cover me in your white noise." Pretty good, right? I'm so excited. I'm waiting until I get some Xmas money and then I'll save up the rest from my cleaning job and hopefully have that baby by February.

2) That I'm re-ripping EVERYTHING to the highest capacity my iTunes converter can handle without going lossless. Lossless is way too big. And I have the CD hard copies for that.

So, I was going to wait until after xmas to do this enormous project (I have around 400 CDs still, I think -- and I've gotten rid of a lot!), but I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I started it Tuesday. I'm in the H's (ripping Billie Holiday at the moment) and I'm loving every minute of it. Hole, incidentally, doesn't sound much different in 320, but everything else sounds noticeably different. The highs and lows are more defined. I'm hearing nuance in music I've loved for years and never heard before. I'm discovering that a lot of the music I've loved intensely (such as Air's Talkie Walkie) happened to be at higher bitrates all along. So, I don't even know what I like anymore!! How much more music will I love at higher bitrates?

This is a wonderful wonderful thing. I'm rediscovering my music. I'm falling in love with The Cure again. I'm appreciating classical in a new way, as strings sound FAR FAR better in high bitrates, needless to say.

I'm in love with music again! I highly recommend, if you've never done so, checking the bitrates on your computer music collection. If they're low and you still have access to the hard copies, re-rip those babies!! It's totally worth it!!

I hate titling blogs.

The thing that's perplexing about blogs is that anyone would ever care about the internal thoughts of others. I'm sure at first it seemed kind of novel. Ooh, I'm reading someone's diary. How naughty! But now, anyone can set up a blog in four seconds and post pictures of their kids and complain about their boyfriends and there it is. Mundane thoughts for all to share! And that any of us are deluded enough to think someone reads them is another matter entirely. We all write because we secretly want someone to be hanging on to our every word. But who ever really is that interested in someone else's blog? We read the blogs of those really close to us, perhaps if they have pictures. We read the blogs of those we have crushes on, perhaps? But other than that, really who cares? Ok, there are those few people that write really really eloquently and have this snarky self-awareness and by some crazy fluke of nature throngs of people read their daily blogs, but what percentage of the population is that? .001? And yet we are all painfully aware of each and every individual we know that might read our words and we write them accordingly. It's crippling. This is the blog that I have that EVERYONE knows about and I've written in it maybe five times this year, because I want everything I write on this blog to be p.c. and witty and interesting and bla bla bla which is lame because I know only like mayyyybe 4 people will read it and probably three of those people will skim and the other one is my husband and he'll read the whole thing because he's really awesome like that...

Anyway, I have this other blog that no one knows about and I still write seldom in that blog but I write a lot more interesting personal stuff there because I have no censorship. I admire those that can write everything without limits. I've gotten in so much trouble for things I write in blogs over the years that I am now obsessively low-key....which means I never write because that's not how I write. Anyone that has read one of my zines knows this is not how I write. I write balls-to-the-wall, no holds barred, insert other cliche here. I like to think of myself as subversive, and I am, for my small town. I would never want to move to a really hip place because then I would be compared to other quirky weirdos like me and then I'd just be normal and how fun would that NOT be? At all.

Generally, people around here complain about the Bible Belt and dream of escaping the Midwest, but I'd just be so boring in a town where I didn't stand out. I think I'd lose my identity if I couldn't tell where I began in a sea of weirdos. In high school I got called a freak. Now people call me a hippy. Interesting transition. I still don't feel like a hippy. Is hippy just the nicer way adults call you a freak? Oh my God, I think that's exactly it! Now I get it.

There's that epiphany moment. That's why I write.

I was thinking earlier today about careers. When I'm just being myself, doing what I want, I'm writing. It's all freestyle and I don't write prose-y or poetic or have a huge vocabulary and really I just write about myself. I freestyle about my own psychology or the psychology of others...I read, and I make mixes. And I take care of my animals and hang out with my husband. I'm really a very boring person. I try to be healthy and I'm trying to teach myself to cook and I'm graduating in May and I'm halfheartedly thinking I should start studying for the GRE so I can be in grad school by next fall, but then what? Ok, so I had it pretty planned out (Master's, LPC, Couples and Family Counselor) but that all seems so grown up. Am I ever really going to be a career girl? Is that me? I can actually see myself achieving these things and it feels kind of like a letdown. I see myself being really nervous about being a counselor and then getting used to it and being really bored. If I work in a small practice, I could potentially only see a handful of people every day: my patients and the few people I work with. And then I'd go home and see my animals and Michael. I'd be even less social than I am now! But really, I don't think I much care what my job is. I have never really been a girl of ambition. I mean I know I don't want it to pay any less than my current job...but I do want to feel like I'm cutting my own path...but I also tend to get depressed when I'm left to my own devices.

Oh, yes, I'm such a complicated woman.

Neon Angel.

I don't think I can read it anymore, much as I wanted to live vicariously through a David-Bowie loving chick in a rock band in the '70s. Knowing how fallible memory is, there's NO WAY Cherie Currie remembers her life in the vivid detail of her autobiography. Even though the writing is compelling and descriptive, I am constantly thinking, "It so did not happen like this." I know it didn't. She writes as if her life is a movie. As if everything happened with the wind blowing in her hair. It paints a picture. It sells books. It's fun to read, but it's not nonfiction. It's loosely based on reality, which would be fine if I could just accept that, but I can't. If I could just say to myself, "This book is a loose representation of reality. These are exaggerated details of a girl's life." then I could just shut up and enjoy it but because she's willing to lie about the details as if she remembers them as well as playing back a VHS of her life, I have to question everything. If only there was a disclaimer at the beginning from the author stating that this is an account of inserted memories. Even with just THAT I could shut up and enjoy it, but alas, I cannot and this will make the fourth book in a row I have stopped reading before finishing.

Why is nothing satisfying me lately, literature-wise?

Help a book-deprived girl with suggestions. I want to read about music! I want Rob Sheffield types!

Eastery Goodness.

Here we have a dog called Xenon drinking from a clear(ish) stream in Walter Woods. All above pics are from Walter Woods, a little-known short trail of awesomeness in JOMO!

Ah, the classic flowery cross! Real flowers installed by my very own grandmother for First Baptist Church! Nice!

mmmmm, pollen-y!

a day of joy and mourning.

Joyous living-every-second-of-our-last-day-of-spring-break and mourning the soon-to-be-loss-of-same. Michael and I hung out with my gparents (that's her forsythia in shots 2 and 5), went to Wildcat (shots 1, 3 and 4), wandered around Target and other shopping establishments (not pictured), had pizza and beer (also not pictured), and watched the third Resident Evil movie (not as good the second time). I've done some tidying and a MASSIVE dishes EXCURSION and will probably veg out on some "Mighty Boosh" later. Terrific BBC tv show, btw. Check it out if you're into superweird British comedy. Back to the grind tomorrow.

Oh, and Michael and I totally decided that we're going to Arizona this summer. Eff the costs. We're doin' it!!!