I vote obama, after all

back in february, I wrote about my thoughts on john edwards as he stepped away from his run for the presidency.

I can't even begin to tell you what the latest news has meant to me. it feels like such a personal betrayal, a breakdown of everything I wanted to believe in.

so instead, I'm going to let youtube say it for me:



thanks, bean, for the tip

rinse, repeat

they were airing this back in the 70s, when we were burning up fossil fuels for fun, just because we could!

ladies & children hair dressing

nothing, just that I love this building.

jackpot

it started off with a craving for mcvitie's tea biscuits and some cadbury milk bars. and a rumor that somewhere in the barren northwest of the city, there was a shop that sold them. and more.

so with just that information, and nothing more, we set off in neil's car. headed west, then north, zigging through the streets, pausing at potentials.

nearly an hour later, we were running out of steam, and so was the car. it was dark outside, and so we pulled into a sunoco gas station to regroup. and! just as we got out of the car, neil let out a yelp and motioned over. a mcvitie's sighting!

and lo, we walked into the sunoco convenience store, and feasted our eyes (and later our mouths) upon rows and rows of aero bars:


turkish delights and galaxy bars:

cadbury and bottles of lucozade:

and bags and bags of walker's salt & vinegar crisps!

and, o, the mcvitie's:
all in all, a worthwhile adventure.

a day in the life

I first picked up a day in the life of ivan denisovich in the 7th grade. there was something about it, that read so foreign and greyish-green compared with the smooth yellows and blues of early-century american literature, that it felt like everyone had been lying to me all those years. why weren't we reading this in english?

the cancer ward was next, and I reread that book until I could quote at length from it, making up reasons to if they didn't come naturally.

his books were the first that reached into some place in me I didn't have a name for, the place that drives me to look around at my world and work to leave an indelible mark in it, no matter how small.

and so, to a man who did leave his mark in it, smaller in some circles than in others. but indelible, definitely.

I love this photograph of him during his exile in vermont, he just looks like a communist:

alexander solzhenitsyn, 1975

ps: deacs, he died, in case you're wondering what this post is about.

the jam--in the city

in the city there's a thousand things I want to say to you:




I came about the jam totally backwards, starting first with paul weller, diving head first into the style council, and then somewhere around college, year 3, came up with This Is The Modern World in the Used bin at Amoeba.

put a thin, pale, shag-haired boy with thin wrists in a peg-legged suit and you'll always get 3 1/2 minutes of my attention.

Expectations

It humiliates me to admit this, but almost everything I know about love and relationships, I’ve gleaned off of 80s hair metal videos. Falling in love during long nights stretched out on fur in front of a marble-fronted fireplace. Passionate moments framed through blurry, mist-blotted windows. A painful breakup silhouetted in the headlights of a car parked in the rain. Making up over long, steamy kisses with the fog (machine) swirling around you.

In the end, does it mean anything at all if he’s not chasing after you, falling to his knees screaming your name while he rips off his shirt in the rain? And how will he know what love is if you’re not dancing for him on the hoods of your two jaguars parked in the driveway outside your English country home, which by the by, is being renovated on during the day by a troop of solidly built, long-haired and desperately woman-hungry musicians?

I never doubted for a moment that by this age, everything I knew would come into play and that I would be in love someone who looked startlingly like David Coverdale. A man who can bend that far back whilst yowling and wearing skintight leather pants BUT still laugh about it is surely the man of my dreams. All that hair and teeth and loudly declared adoration.

So why is it then, that nothing has lived up to the smoke and glitter of those early images? Instead of arguments that can be instantaneously resolved by my provocatively dancing around the room in stilettos and hot makeout sessions atop british luxury automobiles, I’m forced into endless conversations about trust and future and crap.

Someone hand me some scarves and an Aerosmith album, please. Seriously, I want my MTV.

summer list

5 things I swore I would do this summer, and still haven't:

1. go to the beach. or the shore. or wherever it is that I can set my blanket on the ground and lie down, listening to the ocean lapping at the edge of the earth.

2. get rid of the 15% extraneous crap in my life. that means you, pal.

3. learn to play "I Will" on the guitar.

4. go visit friends in california, like I say I'll do every year.

5. stop bleaching my hair blonde.

subway!