Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

Seeing the Indian for three weekends in a row; Etta James live in concert; the OK Go treadmill dance; the OK Go Million Ways dance, getting most or all of my news from the show with zefrank; questions and answers on Consumating; watching Goodfellas on a loop; arguing the merits of the new My Chemical Romance record with Neil and CB; driving from point A to point B without my car breaking down (2 out of the last 6 trips. Could be worse).

To Justin Timberlake,
I like your music. I really do! It's is not life-changing or anything, but it makes me shake my booty, and sometimes, a person needs nothing more than to shake her booty. So what possessed you to put not one, but two seven and a half minute songs on your new record? Even worse, what convinced you to order the tracks so these two songs are back-to-back? Pop songs, with few exceptions, and not meant to run longer than 4 minutes, 5 at most. After that, they just wear out their welcome. I beg you, do not make this mistake again. Hours of reckless, fool-hardy dancing are at stake.

To the mostly naked girl sending me friend invites on MySpace,
First of all, I am not a lesbian. While I'm flattered, I'll have to ask you to take your bicurious fantasies elsewhere. In addition, all of your pictures are taken with a grainy webcam in what looks like an office supply closet, next to a copy machine. In your underwear. It seems a bit avant garde, but I don't think that was your desired effect. If you ever want to boost your self-esteem in a way that does not involve a series of "wow, your hawt" comments next to your racy, yet low-quality photos, I would suggest you get away from the file cabinets and fluorescent lights and, you know, go meet some people. Of course, if you've tried this and it didn't work, it may have been because your potential new friends had to listen to you talk.

To Cingular,
Dialing 411 costs $1.79 now? You better watch out; at some point it will be not just cheaper but also easier for me to use my cell phone's internet connection to connect to Google Local and get the number I need for free. Where will you be then?
I guess, serving all the people who still don't have data plans. Sometimes, my geekiness shines through more than I expect.

To Fate/Destiny/The Universe/et al,
Is it some kind of extremely cruel joke that I have been chasing like a madman after work for months, and I suddenly have far more to do than I can handle? Or is this just your way of smacking me upside the head while yelling, “Be careful what you wish for”?

To the young men in my life,
I realize I get a little handsy when I'm drunk. If you have a problem with that, we can not hang out when I'm drunk. That gives us almost no opportunity to hang out though, so choose carefully!

Now that I have my super cool new workstation set up, I was able to scan for everyone's pleasure the candybar Abie brought me from the weird country of Japan, where they have a vending machine for everything.

Is that not the best thing ever?

In other news, I'm still reeling from this whole “owning a car” business. It's really kind of amazing. Yesterday I drove myself and Melissa to Best Buy and definitely made her listen to a lot of Kanye West. I missed it but apparently some Fratty McFraterson was sitting in traffic next to us, tilting his head, probably amazed that a white girl in a busted old red Honda knew all the words to “Get Em' High”.

I'm using iTunes now, and it's easily the best music program/jukebox/whatever I have ever used, and I've been around for awhile, so that's saying something. I'm ripping my entire record collection onto my computer, and mixing it around! WOOT!

Which Office Moron Are You?
Rum and Monkey: jamming your photocopier one tray at a time.

Stop crying, little one. You're the disarmingly young temp.

You had to get some kind of job when you left school, and nobody's willing to pick up a fresh-faced graduate and give them an amazing job. Not unless they're some kind of genius, anyway, and even then it's unlikely because geniuses make people uneasy. Clever people do not fit in offices.

So you're a temp. Working from short contract to short contract, dodging your officemates' condascending glances, you hope one day to have a real job. Until then, the fact that you look about twelve makes you an easy target both for tea-making duties and the perverted old boss.

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

You are Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad or Charles the Well-Beloved!

A fine, amiable and dreamy young man, skilled in horsemanship and archery, you were also from a long line of dribbling madmen. King at 12 and quickly married to your sweetheart, Bavarian Princess Isabeau, you enjoyed many happy months together before either of you could speak anything of the other's language. However, after illness you became a tad unstable. When a raving lunatic ran up to your entourage spouting an incoherent prophecy of doom, you were unsettled enough to slaughter four of your best men when a page dropped a lance. Your hair and nails fell out. At a royal masquerade, you and your courtiers dressed as wild men, ending in tragedy when four of them accidentally caught fire and burned to death. You were saved by the timely intervention of the Duchess of Berry's underskirts.

This brought on another bout of sickness, which surgeons countered by drilling holes in your skull. The following months saw you suffer an exorcism, beg your friends to kill you, go into hyperactive fits of gaiety, run through your rooms to the point of exhaustion, hide from imaginary assassins, claim your name was Georges, deny that you were King and fail to recognise your family. You smashed furniture and wet yourself at regular intervals. Passing briefly into erratic genius, you believed yourself to be made of glass and demanded iron rods in your attire to prevent you breaking.

In 1405 you stopped bathing, shaving or changing your clothes. This went on until several men were hired to blacken their faces, hide, jump out and shout "boo!", upon which you resumed basic hygiene. Despite this, your wife continued sleeping with you until 1407, when she hired a young beauty, Odette de Champdivers, to take her place. Isabeau then consoled herself, as it were, with your brother. Her lovers followed thick and fast while you became a pawn of your court, until you had her latest beau strangled and drowned.

A severe fever was fended off with oranges and pomegranates in vast quantities, but you succumbed again in 1422 and died. Your disease was most likely hereditary. Unfortunately, you had anywhere up to eleven children, who variously went on to develop capriciousness, great cruelty, insecurity, paranoia, revulsion towards food and, in one case, a phobia of bridges.

---

Summer is going just dandy. I ♥ lack of real responsibility. I mean, I have no money and no car, but I also only work 19 hours a week and party all the time.

Well, maybe not so much “party” as “watch DVDs, drink beer and take lots of walks”. But still, good times.

I'm wishing I didn't have to go back to school because I'm seeing the need for it less and less. I was on the very dorky, only slightly informative “Major Decisions” website yesterday to see if there was something—anything—that could provide an alternative to art school. The sad answer is, there is not. Every other major looks mind-boogling in its boringness, needlessly complicated, or very, very silly. (I mean, Turfgrass Management? Are they serious?)

Plus, I know, in my heart, that nothing else but art school will make me happy. So I'm resolved to keep fighting, despite some nay-sayers.

In other news, I think I'd like to own a record store. That sounds like the perfect job for me. Open at 10 or 11, talk about music all day, get new releases at wholesale. I feel like it's what I need to be doing before I'm 30. I just have to figure out how to go about it.

So, I'm sick of surveys. I never thought I would say that but I am. They all seem to have the same questions after a while, and I am forced to give the same answers that at first seemed clever but now have formed into a trite mutation of themselves, as well as an excuse to not really write anymore. So until I see another original one, I think I am easing myself out of them.

It should be noted that what follows is not a survey.

I was inspired by this girl to dig up my 100_facts_about_me list from this place, revise it and publish it for you here. Enjoy, and if you feel so inclined, publish a similar list in your own journal.

It's much harder than you think. Read More »

I have to take the Regent's Test today. I am not in the mood.

I am in the mood to lay in bed staring at the ceiling listening to Vertigo through headphones, washed in grey rainy-day light.

But you can't always get what you want.

I gotta go.

So today we are discussing Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (from Blonde on Blonde), which, in case you don't know, goes something like "Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good, / They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would. / They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home. / Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone. / But I would not feel so all alone, / Everybody must get stoned."

Someone asks what the 12 and 35 mean, and our prof says something like Dylan has always been very ambiguous about the title and no one really knows. Then one of the TA's chimes in, "Well you know what 12 multiplied by 35 is don't you?

"420."

Some chuckles from the crowd, but then the prof goes, "What does that mean?"

"Nevermind we'll talk about it later."

"It's sexual isn't it. I'm just missing it."

Students answer in unison "No." and begin laughing. He walks over to the TA and leans down so he can whisper it.

He takes the mic off, but we still can all hear perfectly when he exclaims,

"What? But I smoke pot all the time."

HAHAHAHAHHaHaHaHahahahahahahahaha

"There are no hours in which to smoke pot. Is that like tea time?"

***

Later, I go to the library to do my listening assignment, and I'm approaching the counter, and the guy says, "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, I need to third CD for—"

"—History of Rock & Roll."

"Yeah...how did you know?"

"You just look like a Rock & Roller." he replied matter-of-factly.

Now, the real reason he guessed could be that I was probably the 10th kid to come in that day asking for that CD. But the sincerity and authority with which he made that statement actually made me think that maybe I do look like a Rock & Roller.

Rock.

I go to turn the CD back in, and he asks me, "Did you finish rocking out?"

"Yeah."

"Did you rock all the way out and come back?"

I smile. "Yeah, I think so."

"Excellent."

I wish everyone could be so positive.

I know I'm working on it.

This morning in the shower, I'm tuned into 90.5 WUOG on my shower radio, and what comes over the airwaves but the CD I screened last week, Ryan Adcock's From Silence and Joy. Not only that, but it's even one of the two tracks I recommended, Drive to Hallelujah.

Mind you, this is my first week at the station, and that was the first CD I screened. Ever. There is nothing that makes you feel more involved and powerful than hearing your influence go out over 26,000 watts. This is the first organization I've been in at UGA where I feel like my being there and doing work actually matters. I had a big stupid grin on my face all day.

Not only that, but I've had Veblen's Shaded Fire in my Aiwa CD player since I finally got one last week and I have discovered that it takes exactly one play through of Moonlit Rose to get from my building to my 11:15 in Physics. I love this CD. The production is top quality, and there are actually some interesting techniques that went into the production, including Scott playing two guitar parts on some songs, Conrad's voice {I think} being double tracked in a lot of places, and echoing whispers(!) behind the vocal on the intro to Loneliness.

As modest as Scott, Conrad, Jason and Brandon are about this CD, here's the truth, kiddos: This record is actually really good. These guys are not just one of the best live bands I have ever seen, but they are writing really good material, songs that can stand on thier own, without the sexy magnetic performers standing in front of you.

So find one of them, e-mail their manager, whatever you have to do, and get your hands on a copy of Shaded Fire, before they get big. You can say you knew them when.