Friday, October 24, 2008

There She Goes Again

Yay silly meme! I kind of like this one, actually.

1. Put your music library on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY?" YOU SAY?
What Made Milwaukee Famous (Flogging Molly)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Look For a Grandma (from the Safety Kids album)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Selfless, Cold and Composed (Ben Folds Five)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Cotton Fields (Harry Belafonte)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
I Ain't Got No Home (Bruce Springsteen cover of Woody Guthrie)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Be Still My Heart (The Postal Service)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Albuquerque (Weird Al Yankovic)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Daria (Cake)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Amity (Elliott Smith)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Lord Only Knows (Beck)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
I Fought Piranhas (The White Stripes)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Below the Gallows Tree (The Weavers)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
The Rebel Jesus (The Chieftans)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Believing is Art (Spoon)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
The Picnic (Much Ado About Nothing soundtrack)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
No Woman No Cry (Bob Marley and the Wailers)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Something (The Hippos)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Pirates Who Don't Do Anything (Not sure who this is)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
How Bizarre (OMC)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Out of Jail (They Might Be Giants)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
The Rest Will Follow (...And They Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Between the Bars (Elliott Smith)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
I Could Have Lied (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
What a Good Boy (Barenaked Ladies)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
The Things We Did and Didn't Do (The Magnetic Fields)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Mars, the Bringer of War (Holst)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Wild Honey Pie (The Beatles)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Secret of the Easy Yoke (Pedro the Lion)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Femme Fatale (The Velvet Underground)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
St James Infirmary Blues (The White Stripes)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
There She Goes Again (The Velvet Underground)

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Things I've Youtubed Recently

- Satellite of Love (Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain) (also Orange Blossom, Shaft, Fly me off the Handel, and pretty much anything else by them)

- Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)

- If You Want to Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life (Jimmy Soul)

- Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (Vampire Weekend)

- Weekend War (MGMT)

-How Six Umbrellas Took Off Their Hats to Show Respect (Carl Sandburg)

Friday, October 17, 2008

Another crazy random happenstance to tell you!

Man, if you want inner turmoil and general bad-feelingness, you need to come and spend a lunch with me. Like that time I created a bird revolution with my sandwich, or that other time I ran into a friend on campus, had a great conversation, and left feeling like I was the biggest jerk on earth, my lunches are fraught with tiny crises.

Today, for example.

I go to my favorite on-campus cheap-food place, the pasta-and-garlic-bread restaurant. At some point maybe a year or so ago, they started offering "Vegan Sauce" as one of their options, along with the regular Meat Sauce/Marinara/Alfredo triumvirate. Out of curiosity, I asked for it one day, and saw that all it consists of is marinara with some mystery... pebbles... mixed in. Like, you're standing there, and they get out this bowl and pour some marinara in and scoop in these whitish-yellowish breadcrumb-looking pebbles, mix it up with a whisk, and plop it on your penne. I must say, it's quite delicious. I don't know what the pebbles are, or how they enhance the marinara sauce, but they do. I like it, so I always get it now.

There was a server girl I'd never seen there before today, and when I asked for the vegan sauce she dutifully made it the way she should. Then she reached for the garlic bread, stopped herself, and presented the plate to me sans bread.

"No bread, right?"

I haven't really been on top of my game recently, I think I'm coming down with a cold, so I just kind of stood there, looking at her, saying, "uhhhhh...." In my head I was wondering if maybe they had some policy that the vegan sauce no longer comes with bread because it's already got those expensive extra pebbles in it, so maybe I shouldn't say anything. Finally I asked, meaning to be sheepish (but I think coming across as rude-ish), "the bread comes with the pasta, right?"

At this point I began to get an inkling of what was going on. "Well, it's just that usually when people want the vegan sauce, they... don't want... the bread."

Ah hah! Suddenly I'm being judged because I asked for this health nut protester lunch, with a side of unhealthy brick o'butter. I wasn't sure what to say except that did want the bread, and walk away quickly. By this point our conversation had slowed up the rest of the line and people were starting to pay attention to what was going on. I wondered what they thought of me- did they think I was a vegan and also stupid for not knowing that there is butter all over the garlic bread? Did they think I was a selfish jerk who wanted to get as much food as possible jammed into the low, low price of a plate of pasta? Did they think I was a total idiot who doesn't even know what vegan means?

All I wanted was lunch, but what I got was lunch with a side of guilt for ordering vegan food when I am so obviously not vegan.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

How to make my day

I'm standing around the deli counter waiting for the very slow deli man to give me fried chicken and coleslaw for dinner when a woman wearing a nametag (engraved, not like, "Hi! My name is Zoe") and pushing a young girl in a cart comes up to the counter.

"Excuse me, are you really familiar with the store?"

Deli man says no.

"Oh. Well, do you happen to know where the polenta is?"

Deli man says he knows what it is, so try looking in the baking or hispanic aisles (huh?).

The lady seems surprised as well, but starts off in that direction. I lean over and tell her she might try the spaghetti aisle (since that's where it is. I think about polenta a lot, although I've never used it, so I conciously look at it every time I'm in the spaghetti aisle).

She scoots off, obviously in a hurry (I wonder what she needed it for? If she was the type that made things with polenta, she would either a- know where it is already or b- not even be shopping at my grocery store. Maybe she was having a fancy dinner party and trying to impress her guests? Maybe her mother in law really likes it, and has descended on her home without warning?), and I continue standing around the deli counter waiting for the man to give me my chicken and coleslaw.

A minute or two later, another employee hurries into the counter to ask the deli man if he knows what polenta is. After a brief argument, employee #2 leaves and I am assured that the rushed lady is leaving the store polenta-less. Deli man finally gives me my bag o'chicken, and I head off toward the spaghetti aisle, just to make sure I was remembering right.

There it is, the polenta! I wonder briefly if she wanted the sun-dried tomato kind, or just regular. I pick up a tube of the regular kind, and head off in search of the lady. I hadn't gotten a good look at her to begin with, but I remember that she had a nametag and a blonde daughter, so that's something at least.

By the time I find her, she's in line at the checkout, unloading her groceries onto the belt, and talking to the lady behind her. I sneak up next to her and hold out the tube.

"Did you find the polenta?"

She immediately brightens, and asks in wonder where I had found it. She'd looked up and down the store for it and had given up hope. She gratefully takes the polenta and says to the cashier,

"See, she found it!"

I walk off to my regular cashier, pay for my chicken, and feel better than I have all day.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Let's All Celebrate!

Happy October 9th, everybody!

You're probably saying to yourself, "yeah, October 9th is alright, but what has it done for me lately?"

Really? Are you really thinking this? Because if you are, maybe you've forgotten some key events in the history of the WORLD. Events like...

-Leif Erikson landing in Canada, pretty much discovering the Americas, in 1003.


-Slavery being abolished in Costa Rica, in 1824. (woo!)


-A 13 kilogram (est.) fragment of the Peekskill Meteorite lands in the driveway of the Knapp residence in Peekskill, New York, destroying the family's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu (1992).

-The 1835 birthday of Camille Saint-Saens. How would you feel if the Carnival of the Animals had never been written?

-Or try the 1900 birthday of Alastair Sim.

-And last, but not least, on this day, 68 years ago, our own beloved John Lennon was born.

And what better way to celebrate such a momentous occasion than to attend the John Lennon Birthday Bash and Beatles Singalong!



It was pretty amazing, let me tell you. There were prizes for best costume (this one guy won all three prizes, because he was the only dressed up. But he clearly would have won anyway, because he was wearing one of those Sgt. Pepper costumes? The icky pink suit thing? Yeah, we think he might have been on drugs, or maybe he wasn't a native English speaker, because the questions he answered on stage were definitely not the questions being posed to him by the emcee. Hilarious!), and dancing on the stage while the videos played and the non-dancing audience sang their hearts out.

The only problem was that after an hour or so of singalong, they stopped the music and put on some documentary about John Lennon, which my friend and I were having none of. If there is no singing along, there is no reason to be there anymore, so instead we drove off in her sporty little car, and blasted some non-Beatles music to sing along with.

One funny thing, though: in the video of Instant Karma, (I'd never seen it before!) there's an incredibly uncomfortable-looking, be-suited man trying to play the tamborine but not really seeming to know what to do with it. Also: Yoko Ono is crocheting... blindfold? Once we'd gotten a chance to look closely and she really WAS doing what we thought she was doing, my friend shouts to me over the singing, excitedly:

"She's making a political statement!"


Monday, October 6, 2008

Missed Connections

We took the same Mexican Folk Music course, I always sat next to or behind you. You thought I looked like someone from your high school, I thought you looked cute. We talked to each other each class, but I never learned your name; your left hand is like a lobster claw and you always kept it in your pocket when walking around. We should have been friends.