New mix time. And so I present:

Emergency Canticle

1. "I'll Waste Away" - Faux Jean
2. "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" - Muse
3. "Let Me Know" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4. "I Miss You (Remix)" - Björk
5. "Rain Ammunition" - Pavement
6. "Be My Pigeon" - Coach Said Not To
7. "Captain Captain" - Haley Bonar
8. "Wolf Like Me" - TV On The Radio
9. "Star Witness" - Neko Case
10. "How Far North?" - Fitzgerald
11. "Rapture Riders" - Blondie vs The Doors
12. "Drowned" - Halloween, Alaska
13. "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise" - The White Stripes
14. "A Girl Named Hope" - Atmosphere
15. "Dead Disco" - Metric
16. "Song #4" - Landing Gear
17. "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" - The Smiths
18. "Traffic" - A Whisper in the Noise
19. "Here Comes the Sun" - The Beatles

This mix says a lot about where I am right now. More than I'm entirely comfortable with sharing, but then that theory assuming anyone could decipher the equation anyway. Artistic relativity, etc, etc. To summarize: I read to much. And I'm getting lonely. But it's spring.

Spring makes everything better.
Being so afflicted, perhaps I should move further south. But I don't think it would be quite the same.
Something about the way my brain works. Everything just seems to be glowing right now.
And why can't I ever fall in love in the spring? Always in the fall. It seems symptomatic of something.

Right now all my problems (an exaggeration, but still) are caused by other people. This does not, surprisingly, make me feel any better about them. So while we're at it: Fuck Wells Fargo credit card services. Your computer systems fucked up, not me. Fuck my professor, for being careless and breaking my glasses. And fuck my neighbors, mostly the one that threw the parties that I got the blame for, but also the one that blamed me.
All these situations are being delt with, but none of them should exist. In summation: people suck.

I still need to see V for Vendetta.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were bloody amazing. A few more shows like that and I can feel good about dying. Crossing my fingers for a Pavement reunion (everybody else is doing it, so why can't they?).
Haley Bonar CD release this weekend. I need to keep this concert-going thing up. It's a fucking blast.

Lately I'm in the sort of mood that can only end in something drastic. Murder. Suicide. Selling all my belonging and moving to Seattle. Unfortunately, none of these things really seem like options. What can you do that's drastic, but won't ruin your life (further)? Perhaps I need to start harvesting the organs of local drunks. I don't know. This is why I can't write fiction. If I can't even have an epiphany in the real world, how the fuck am I going to write characters with balls, let alone denouements.

And yes, I'm terribly unavailable. I'm a freak. Most people, normal people, need other people. They hate to be alone, especially for long periods of time. I realize this, I see it all the time, and yeah, I kind of look down on people for it. See it as a weakness. But we're supposed to be social creatures, and there's something very, very damaged about me that I need a certain amount of time per week to be spent in complete solitude. This is probably unfortunate, but I've accepted it. I've had to, because I know I can't change it. I've had three failed relationships because of it. And I'd probably never date again if not for my goddamn sex drive.

Christ, most of why I listen to music so often is so I don't have to think. See what happens when I do?

I only question my motives so you won't have to.

It occurs to me that I haven't respected my peers since elementary school, possibly 7-8 grade (although that was more a matter of hating/pitying/fearing my peers). In a perverse way, I kinda miss that.

March is going out like a fucking chameleon. It's not bad weather, just bland. Bland is not what I need right now, that's way too much like my life.

Which reminds me of a conversation Dave and I had this weekend. My sort of social claustrophobia. It's one part my general inability to go out (mostly money), one part pseudo-cabin fever (spending every weekend night at my place or Molly's), one part the large influx of people I don't really know or like into my formerly tightly knit friend group, and one part that even I do manage to get out, it's alone. In the next few weeks I've got 3-4 concerts I'm planning to go to, and I'll almost certainly be going alone, something that's becoming a phobia of mine. I need new blood, perhaps even to try dating again.

Books are starting to bore me again. I've been reading, it seems, too much. It feels like every novel is about one particular human tragedy, so that all the world is made up of strings of related and unrelated hells. Almost makes me wish my own personal hell were at least more interesting.

It would all be so much easier if I were a little more insane. I could use a nervous breakdown right now. It'd be like a vacation.

Who needs a drink?

I know it's old hat to complain about the weather in Minnesota, but goddamn. You can't turn your back on that bastard for ten minutes, I tell ya. I wouldn't even care that much, but I had these plans. Sitting on the patio at the Local on St. Patty's, so we could smoke. Spending spring break wandering Uptown, browsing used book stores. Now I'll just end up curled in bed with books and tea.

I got money today, which means I'm very shorty off to buy Yeah Yeah Yeahs tickets--hopefully. According to Ticketmaster the show's not yet sold out, but I'm suspicious of that particular beast.

Almost three years in the Iraq War started. I only bring this up because it seems unduely bizarre to me that it's been that long. That, and apparently today we're bombing the fuck out of the place with the largest airstrikes since the invasion. Not that anyone fucking cares, probably including me.

Meh. What else do you want?

Update, 1ish: Yeah Yeah Yeahs ticket achieved. I'm looking at it right now, and it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Now if only I can find someone to go with me. Anyone? 4/16, First Ave, Karen O & Nick Zinner and that other guy, the really good drummer, rockin' our asses?

Finally, updation.
Making up words is funtastic, even if it causes me some chagrin...English major syndrome, you know. Ooo baby, make it hurt so good.

Spring has sprang, and goddamns is it good. Windows open, fans whirring, the lingering smells of winter nasty and too many cigarettes getting washed away. On the horizon: reading in the sun, drinking on the bluffs over the river, long walks to nowhere, etc. My seasonal affective disorder seems to vanish in a flash on one random spring day. It's not even that warm out, but it's warming my soul.

Also, Mike, Dave and I got interviewed this afternoon by the Star Tribune's religion reports on St. Thomas's whole gay discrimination fuck-up. That was cool. Apparently we'll be in tomorrow's paper. I haven't been interviewed by a major media interest since the night the Iraq War started (still don't know if they aired that footage), but it gives me a tingle. Kinda makes me wish I were famous. It's good to be opinionated.

That's about it, really. My personal life has pretty much been reduced to the stack of books I'm burning through and the handful of concerts I'm trying desperately to get to (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Apr. 16th, please, Fate, let me get a ticket before it sells out). Money is the root of all disappointment.

Updating for the sake of updating.

Just been very bored lately. Winter.
Reading a lot, since I can't seem to write.
McCullers, O'Brien, Ellis, a number of randoms.
All good, nothing earth-moving.

Waiting on a number of albums.
Trying not to crush on a certain girl.
Nothing changes.

Incidentally, I don't believe in Beatles, either.

I hate February.

This is why I shouldn't read contemporary authors.

Kerouac wrote his masterpieces in about a day. I hate him for that.
Well over a year since I've written anything but the occassional long, drunken rant about my life (and that can only be considered 'art' in the sense that street theatre is 'art,' which is to say it's not, but reflects some characteristics of the real thing).
This is starting to get to me.
Bret Easton Ellis wrote his first major novel for a class. Undergraduate creative writing.
Carson McCullers was my age when she wrote her classic, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
You see where I'm going with this.

I have this itching need to lock myself in my apartment for a week with a carton of cigarettes and a few bottles of Jameson, and just fucking write.
These things still happen. If I have anywhere near the talent people have tried to impress upon me as being mine, I could be a well-to-do author within a year. Lobster dinners in fancy New York restaurants. Drinking imported beers with members of Interpol. The American Dream, right?

Fuck me.

I don't miss where I come from, but each night I dream about being back home.