Love Me, Love My Music.

Each time I'd open the file so aptly named "2007Tunes.txt" and add another title and artist to it, I feared this year might not turn out such a mind-blowingly long list, but look...over 50 songs full of, "Yes, I heard that in 2007, and it got me through."

The links lead to videos on YouTube or official sites where the songs can be heard/read/looked at/listened to/telepathically inserted into your brain. I apologize for none of them, I love them all, and if you haven't heard them, and you have a lot of time to spend waiting out winter, I think you should give them a listen. Rawk on in '08, kids.

The first song I heard this year that I had never heard before was Dunder Mifflin Overdrive by Charles V. This was a mashup requested by R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties, and it is technically the first new and amusing song I heard this year. A new version of Across the Universe by The Beatles from the LOVE album was playing in the background on WFUV at the same time, so it could be a tie. Hmm.

Someday by John Mellencamp was the first new song I heard the whole way through in 2007, though.

You Got Me Up by Jamie Lidell (in the video, he sings this to his cat. I know the feeling, man.)

Sly by Cat Empire

Once Upon A Time by Air

Read My Mind by The Killers

Chips Ahoy by The Hold Steady

Over It by Katherine McPhee

Don't Let Him Waste Your Time by Jarvis (I was directed to the fabulous video for this one by dooce. Thank you, dooce, for everything.)

All My Life by Billy Joel

Shine On by Jet

Smiley Faces by Gnarls Barkley

She's My Man by Scissor Sisters

Falling Up by Rickie Lee Jones

Flathead by The Fratellis

#9 Dream by R.E.M.

Save Room by John Legend

Rehab by Amy Winehouse

My Humps by Alanis Morissette

Going To A Town by Rufus Wainwright

In The Sun by Donna De Lory

Kiss You Off by Scissor Sisters

Born To Please by Sound Team

Icky Thump by White Stripes

My Moon, My Man by Feist

For All My Days by Alexa Ray Joel

Working Class Hero by Green Day

Makes Me Wonder by Maroon 5

Capital G by Nine Inch Nails

Don't Stop Now by Crowded House

What's a Girl To Do by Bat For Lashes

U+Ur Hand by Pink

Paralyzer by Finger Eleven

Revelation by Prince

Stiff Kittens by Blaqk Audio

Everybody Loves by Constantine Maroulis

Leave by Motus

The Way I Are by Timbaland featuring Keri Hilson & D.O.E

Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday

Whine Up by Kat DeLuna with Elephant Man

You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do What You're Told) by White Stripes

Kingdom by Dave Gahan

If by Joni Mitchell

Dreamcatcher by Andy McKee

My Dear Country by Norah Jones

Livin' In The Future by Bruce Springsteen

Comfortably Numb by David Gilmour with David Bowie

Let Go by Discrete Encounter

Into The Sea by Sivert Høyem

Rubber & Soul by Ane Brun

The Pretender by Foo Fighters

Under The Black Light by Rilo Kiley

Fuck Was I by Jenny Owen Youngs

Going Out by Mr. Uncertain

If I Don't by Amp Fiddler featuring Corrine Bailey Rae

Down In A Hole by Ryan Adams

The Temptation of Adam by Josh Ritter (which was playing as I won NaNoWriMo '07, you know.)

Anything from Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy!, Rufus Wainwright's amazing re-creation of Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall concert.

Not Now But Soon by Imogen Heap, which you can only hear bits of in her vBlog right now.

Honorable mentions must go to Don't Stop Believin' by Journey, which came back to me in a most unusual way this summer, as well as Pink Floyd, Madrugada, and Warren Zevon, who I listened to quite a bit this year, hearing some songs I'd never heard before. As always, this list is tragically missing most of the favorites I hear on Echoes, mainly because I can't choose between them, but Anoushka Shankar and Japancakes were there in my head this year too.

Love Me, Love My Music.

This Would Be Day Five.

All that marketing crap and radio bombardment about Christmas through Hanukkah and Solstice once again ended Christmas at around 5 A.M. on Boxing Day.

Screw that, here's a 12 Days of Christmas that goes totally frikkin' insane and ends up being one of my favorite songs ever.

This Would Be Day Five.

Factory-Sealed Is Code For "You Want This."

Ripping off Taking a page from Dawn Meehan, I went nuts and wrote up an eBay listing for my aunt's factory-sealed 2-tape set of Titanic. I'm not going to explain why, that's what the listing is for.

Ooh, suspense.

Factory-Sealed Is Code For "You Want This."

Happy whatever you celebrate.

What're you reading a crotchety ol' blog for? Go be merry and enjoy whatever it is you do today.

That's what I intend to go do, now, even if it causes my head to crack open.

Happy whatever you celebrate.

Traffic Was Stalled For At Least Half A Block.

I saw this truck on the same day I chopped my car out of a glacier.



I did not take this picture, this guy did.

Traffic Was Stalled For At Least Half A Block.

Laugh, And Your Ass Will Be Kicked.

I probably already told the story about how the local A&P, when they were closing, set up a display of dozens of ice scrapers. Being the store was closing in the middle of August, it was hilarious to see a sale on ice scrapers. I didn't buy one, but I took a picture.

During the recent ice storm, I noticed the ice scraper had gone missing from the trunk of my car. That picture sure doesn't make a good icebreaker.

I am selling a print of my photo of the ice scrapers, so you can hang it on your wall, look at it and laugh. You can laugh at a grocery store for overstocking ice scrapers in the middle of summer, or you can laugh at the idiot who laughed at the grocery store for overstocking ice scrapers and took a picture, only to be left chipping away uselessly at her car a year-and-a-half later.

Summer Special, original photo by Lynda Naclerio, © 2005

Laugh, And Your Ass Will Be Kicked.

If I Had Room For This Behind My Piano....

It would be hanging right between Obi-Wan and Cornholio.

If I Had Room For This Behind My Piano....

Daryl Hall Says It's The Right Time, I Do Not Argue.

The media and stores have been insisting it's Christmas since October. The neighbors have had decorations and lights up since before Thanksgiving. This past week we got a ton of snow--and meterologists may frown upon my ballpark weight of the snow, but they didn't have to shovel it out of my walkway. Ton.

But it really isn't Christmas yet, it isn't even winter for another four days, even though Paul Winter's had his concert down in St. John The Divine already.

Today, however, I finally heard Jingle Bell Rock by Hall & Oates with Daryl Hall singing. There are two different versions, you know, and for some reason the station that went all-Christmas music before Hanukkah seems to only play the John Oates version. I don't have anything against Oates, you can't have Hall & Oates without him, but in 1983, the first year I decorated the tree mostly by myself, it was the Daryl Hall vocal I had burned in my head as my Princess Leia doll handed me red glitter balls and wondered if Han would make it for Christmas.

...I did say I decorated the tree mostly by myself. Tony the cat also helped.

But I digress, Daryl Hall has sung his song, and that was enough of a signal to get the stuff on the tree and start decorating.

Behold, videos for both versions of the song!

Hall:



Oates:

Daryl Hall Says It's The Right Time, I Do Not Argue.

The Best Ones Are The Ones You Won't Hear On The Radio

Nine Inch Noëls. I can't really add anything to that. Nine Inch Noëls. Wow.

The Best Ones Are The Ones You Won't Hear On The Radio

Careful what you dig up.

Last year, the gang at Battered Hat Productions made this downright scary film called The Christmas Fairy. It's still freaking me out, man.

Careful what you dig up.

Happy Birthday, The Puppy.

Keep making me laugh, thanks for not eating me this year, and thanks for rescuing your brothers' furry butts with your pouncy skills.

Happy Birthday, The Puppy.

Dear Drug Companies,

You suck. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful you pulled my mother back from the brink of gangrene, but you know, charging a woman who only has 52 days to go until her Medicare Part D kicks in $125 for ten days worth of generic antibiotics is rather cruel. But hey, it's not like she had to eat for the rest of the month or anything, and gauze, that's free, right? Sure, reusing the outer wrappings before had nothing to do with the infection she picked up.

Merry Christmas!

Dear Drug Companies,

I Can't Wait To See The Golden Compass.

I read the books when they first came out, right before I read The Hobbit and all that came after. His Dark Materials is not Lord of the Rings. It is not The Chronicles of Narnia. It is not Harry Potter. It is what it is, and I love it, and if one more movie trailer starts with, "In the tradition of" any other series, I am going to have to write my own damn series that has like, people in it, and pass it off as the next series of people going from place to place--possibly by broom--doing stuff that doesn't involve fart jokes.

Yes, coming soon to a theater near you, a band of orphaned curlers discover a tiny magical person prophesized to alter the fat content of donuts forever living in the ancient Scottish quarry of the sparkly granites and must go to space to rescue the chalice of chelation before the the queen (played by Dame Edna) eats the last donut made by the baker with the flaming hands, who is kept in a vegetative state in a burn unit until the skip returns.

Think I could get Annie Lennox to do the theme song?

I Can't Wait To See The Golden Compass.

Deep Thoughts.

The answer is no, the tree does not make any sound when it falls. The trees around it, getting smacked by the branches rustle and crack a bit, but the ground, the ground is the biggest whiner ever.

Deep Thoughts.

Sunday still sucks.

I can't actually recall last Sunday now, but I'm pretty sure the general idea of me being of little to no use to anyone is alive and well. For instance, it is well-known that our dog is a lunatic. Her reaction to me being asleep involves knocking over my grandmother. On cement.

For roughly three days I have awoken to my grandmother crying, and still I fall for the idea that perhaps my mother's leg fell off during the night. But no, it is always The Puppy. Who, while covered in hair, has Nan convinced that she will freeze to death if left out in the 40° yard, where she stands like a deer in the headlights, refusing to move...until someone goes out there.

Our Woman, Holly, bless her, she didn't mess with Nan. No, Nan was her friend, Nan didn't leave her places to have parts removed, so Nan was safe with Holly. This one? All are alike to her, she will knock you over and eat you if she detects that you plan to feed her, walk her, play with her, give her a vitamin, bring her indoors, let her outside, give her a drink of water or otherwise prevent her from dying.

She fits in perfectly with this family, of course.

Sunday still sucks.

My Eyelashes Are Curling Just Thinking About It.

The official Speed Racer movie website hasn't updated in a long time, so imagine my surprise when I found stories about it elsewhere. Yeah, why bother keeping the offical site up to date, guys. I mean, hell.

Empire Online is great, I find out about a load of movies that are years away there. A few weeks ago, they ran a story where Emile "I am going to have such a dirty old lady crush on you" Hirsch said that the sets will all be green screen, which most likely sent the purists who love the old days when people "drove" their cars in front of film of a winding road into a frothing crazy fit. Me, I'm optimistic because the movies I've seen filmed on green screen don't shake around like, say, The Bourne Ultimatum. What the hell was that movie about, anyway? I couldn't tell with all the jiggling.

USA Today has photos of the movie that make me wonder if I am going to need to take some drugs before watching it, but aside from a marked lack of pretty eyelashes, I'm digging it.

ComingSoon is pretty good too, they say there will be a video game based on the Speed Racer movie. The makers say you can engage in car-fu! I don't know if I can contain my excitement at the idea of car-fu. I think I may even be able to play it on my PS2. This makes me happy because I have that other Speed Racer game, but Racer X keeps telling me he never wants to see me behind the wheel ever again. Racer X doesn't want me to engage in car-fu because he's jealous.

Speaking of Racer X, Entertainment Tonight is doing a week of Speed Racer stuff that I have missed most of. They had Matthew Fox on as Racer X, but ET shouldn't be going around blowing Racer X's secret identity, do they want him to get into trouble? In the video clip they show his outfit, but more than that, they show the back of Speed. Hee! Yesterday I caught a glimpse of Christina Ricci as Trixie, and she's looking to tie Keira Knightley as record holder for people she's acted with that I have major dirty old woman crushes on.

But enough about unofficial previews, here's the trailer, which I saw thanks to Mr. "I'm going to enjoy this movie, and you can go to hell" himself. The quote may have been about that Star Wars thing, but sentiment works for me on this movie as well.

My Eyelashes Are Curling Just Thinking About It.

Some Call It Insanity.

This was written a few days ago for AC, but we both knew it wasn't exclusive going into it. My mum's leg--if anyone other than the people who love her care--is doing better.

The idea that anyone learns from experience what not to do is a common mistake among people who are too busy with their own lives to notice what is going on around them.

For instance, as a child I was always walking into doorknobs. My mother was concerned that perhaps I might be damaging the fragile egg that is my brain and mentioned it to my doctor. My doctor, who was maybe more than a little responsible for my habit of bluntly saying how I see things, told her that I would stop walking into doorknobs when I found out it hurt. This anecdote is pulled out by my family at random times, and only as I lay on the kitchen floor last week, after recovering the consciousness lost when I smashed my left temple into the metal doorknob that leads to the happiness and freedom known as my backyard, did I realize what utter twaddle he was talking.

I'm descended from people who continue to lift things like books, vacuums, dogs, and appliances despite having numerous hernias--the most recent of which is really, really making a lot of problems. I have a few ways I keep my hernias from acting up, and one involves taking a trip to the bathroom before I lift something. There, I said it. It's okay, just keep reading. Of course in the time it takes me to do this (98 seconds), one of the psychos I live with have gone and lifted The Thing I Knew Was Heavy because I took too long (90 seconds, on a good day). Later, they will comment on some odd ache in their body, which I know well because I get it too if I go lifting things like I'm in an Ironman competition. I will mention they lifted The Heavy Thing. No, I'm told, that's crap. These people, they are older than me. These are people who are not dumb by any means. These are people who know better than to bend over when a doorknob is in the path of their head.

People have the idea that some kids learn better the hard way, by falling off stuff, by getting hungry if they don't eat, or by getting arrested if they keep playing with the damn matches, but no, sometimes it doesn't work that way. Sometimes, even if they have a hen nested in their hair, pecking incessantly at them to not do things they know they shouldn't do, they will continue to go ahead and do it, for decades, even if that means somewhere down the line they will influence, piss off, or otherwise affect a future generation.

I stopped walking into doorknobs as a child because I got taller than the doorknobs. I always knew it hurt. And man, does it still hurt.

Some Call It Insanity.

Christmas Came Early And We Can Start Being Thankful.

My mum's in the hospital. She's finally getting antibiotics for her leg, which is infected and going by the shooting pains she was getting probably would not have waited another 59 days plus however long the medicare supplement HMO-chosen doctor would take to set up an appointment. We can worry about losing the house later, but for now, yay modern medicine.

Christmas Came Early And We Can Start Being Thankful.

Waking Up With The Ill-Informed.

Any day I wake up and the first voice I hear is a crazy man on television ranting about Psychology 101 is destined to be...well...just a little more stupid. But this is what happens when I surface long enough to see early morning television programming. My mind is in an easily distracted state, and the sight of the people so full of energy that early fascinates me. The strange, and slighty alarming, news conference was followed by a hoarse Rachael Ray and then The View, which usually ends up on because Mum watches the ABC news, but I always seem to be the only person who listens to what they say on that show, because yesterday when I started screaming, "Did you hear that?" I got dead air...at first.

If you're at all familiar with The View, you have an idea of who said this, and if you don't know the hosts of The View, it won't matter who said it, but what's important is that there are people, out in the world, who work in television, who make enough money to be able to live in Manhattan, and who are sure Jesus came before "The Greeks."

A discussion about the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who lived from 341 B.C. to 270 B.C. and was there at the beginning of science as explaining things without reasons like, "Zeus is pissed off at you today," coincidentally turned into Sherri Shepherd's astonishment that anyone could be happy without faith in their life. She wasn't going by Dante or Constantine or Lactantius, no, she was going by, "Greeks threw Christians to the lions."

I'll let that sink in for a second.

While that's sinking in, remember I spent every summer from the age of 5 watching Clash of The Titans almost like I lived during those times in a past life. (Yes, of course I mean the 1980s, what did you think I meant?) I saw Xanadu before Life of Brian, I used to read the comic strip B.C., and I still celebrate the Chinese New Year and Jewish New Year because, damn, that's a lot of numbers. I'm not over-reacting when I say it is not impossible to notice that some people were around before Jesus. I think, like, he saved a few and stuff, and lots of people turned away from other beliefs to follow his teachings. You know, after Cetus ran out of pirates to eat! John the Baptist was a ninja, you know. Yes. From space. The Vikings were laying low with the Incas in Australia around then, weren't they?

Waking Up With The Ill-Informed.

My Theory on Seasonal Affective Disorder

It is difficult to write out holiday cards that should have wishes of joy and cheery declarations of love when all I want to do is put a hammer through my head.

The weather has turned frigid and I haven't seen the sun in two days. There is sad-sounding Celtic music wafting in from another room, and as a result I've turned my headphone radio up so loud I can heard Bruce Springsteen breathing down my neck. I like Celtic music, I really do, but outside of I Am Stretched On Your Grave, I don't dig the ones involving death and separation very much, because they get it more accurately than I care to notice when I see that I only have a handful of family cards to send out--which, btw, I'd love to do the card exchange thing, but believe me, you're better getting the thing I will post here...whatever that will be--and I can't keep anyone's name straight, especially my own, because honestly, I wrote it once, why do I have to keep writing it down? My mind does not know. Much like when I took piano lessons. You play one G major chord, you don't need to play it again in the same song, right?

I hope my meltdown is being entertaining, kids. I try. I really try.

My Theory on Seasonal Affective Disorder

I See What I Did There.

The other day, I was gushing about how great it was that I was getting a pack of six replacement springs for my Swiss Army Knife. Today, I got a spring. One spring, and was like, "Where are the other five?"

I say I was "like" that because the actual sound I made was not that coherent due to my sore tongue and not something I want to reprint in case children are reading.

The error was mine, however. I had been comparing springs on two sites, and the one I didn't go with had a pack of six springs for the price of the one spring I just got, but they charged more for shipping.

Have I ever mentioned I don't see very well? Yeah.

Ain't no replacement brains to be found on the Internet.

But I've got my red knife back, anyway, and the cancelled Yoda stamp on the envelope wasn't too shabby, either. When this spring goes five years from now, if they still sell replacements, I guess I'll get that six-pack.

I See What I Did There.

Sundays suck.

There, I've said it. I hate Sunday. This Sunday has done nothing to change my opinion of its predecessors, as LiveJournal is down, and that is a wrench in the cogs of my life so large that any venting I might have done elsewhere, in a moderate false sense of privacy, cannot happen now.

It snowed today. It wasn't a lot of snow, it was pretty, and were I younger and healthier, the sight of the first snowflakes would have carried me through a dozen Sundays on a sparkly patch of icy glee. But no. Now I’m old, and the only place I’m allowed to enjoy the snow is in my backyard. We live on a street many people walk down, and so being a vampire with a hernia tends to clash with the idea of not causing people to slip. The neighbor next door, bless him, shovels the street in front of his house and our house. But he's got tendonitis and pins in his leg. Is it fair for him to have to shovel the street in front of our house? Of course not. But he does it, without asking or expecting anything in return, and that is why he rocks.

My tongue is sore and my head hurts. The psuedoephedrine-based allergy medication I took last week in order to understand the English language is leaving me unwilling to do much, and were breathing not an automated process I probably would not have bothered to be here to force this post onto my unsuspecting readers. I’m sorry I’m not funny today, I’m not funny a lot of the time, and if I plan to write something every single day on here, my charade is going to become more apparent than I’d like.

The usual reasoning behind posting emo vents like this is to let other people who feel the same know they aren’t alone. But we are, aren’t we? A dozen people avoiding human contact, unwilling to damage the smooth surface of the new fallen snow on a cold, dreary Sunday, are all, in their own square-footage, alone. We like it that way, too, don't we? No one would appreciate the snowballs I throw anyway, they end up looking like Italian ices from my bloody cracked hands.

I think Morrissey wrote a song about this. Far more entertaining, too.

Sundays suck.

How to tell what day it is.

Tate is on vacation, so one of the few things I looked forward to in December is...well, done in one frame.

Not to fear, there is a less-cute, but just as handy tool for people who just aren't sure if it's Christmas yet: IsItChristmas.com. It even has an RSS feed.

As for me, I shall try to write something here every day, because I have been neglecting my blog duties almost as much as my own sanity. However, I think you'll agree that it's much better I spend my hour freezing in my yard not writing posts. The double letters are a bbi to backspace over.

How to tell what day it is.