via Nathan Shumate.
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(1)
09:29:47 PM,Tuesday 12 November 2002
Aw, damnit. Just when I'd kicked my Musicmatch habit for good and had started loving plucky little Winamps 2 and 3 (mostly 3, though 2 will always have a home on my drive) with all my heart, they decided to make Windows Media Player stop sucking so much. {sorely tempted} Argh... what do I do? I'm already using his operating system... what harm can there be? But... but... aieee! Get thee behind me!
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(28)
06:41:03 AM,Tuesday 12 November 2002
Cornetto babes are kewl.
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05:59:42 AM,Tuesday 12 November 2002
It's not that I feel stupid. I feel just fine. I like my brain; I'm not asking for another one. It's just that I used to feel smart, and now I don't anymore. But I think I like it better this way.
Actually, in grade school, I used to alternate: one year I'd be the weird kid, the next year the smart kid, the next year the weird kid again. Supply and demand, I guess. I tried to wear 'em both with a (carefully cultivated) modest nonchalance. They were thrown up against me by my parents, my friends, and most other people at short and long notice -- and I thought they suited me pretty well, so I kept them among the list of adjectives I reserved for myself. Then I looked around a bit and saw many who were weirder and many who were smarter and I stopped, somehow, being either one at all.
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(28)
04:31:35 AM,Tuesday 12 November 2002
Oooooh... T.I.A.I.L.W.: Peggy Shaw. Yowza. (from some random Texan chick who answered my answer to her personal ad. Whouda thunk?)
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(1)
02:57:53 AM,Tuesday 12 November 2002
Someone really ought to tell her...
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02:46:35 AM,Tuesday 12 November 2002
I think I would like to link to this article for three reasons. First, last night I performed a search on "female transvestites" and didn't come up with hardly anything useful at all. Scads of Ed Wood-style MTF transvestite sites, and plenty of FTM transexual sites, and even plenty of drag king sites, but barely a dribble of sites catering to girls who wear boys' clothes neither because they consider themselves to be men or because they're putting on a wild musical extravaganza, but because, well... they think they look sharp. They like putting people on in an innocent and harmless way. They think neckties are charming and boxers are infinitely comfortable. They're kinky little buggers who watched too many old movies. Plenty of reasons. So now there will be at least one hit, and it'll refer to a nice informational article on the subject. Second, the article in question is translated from the Russian deliciously. Third, well... the phenomenon can't be as rare as all that, can it? It's a long-standing tradition, from Popes to Pirate Ships to George Sand -- just because women are now allowed to take on whatever positions they like in society is no reason to abandon the stately art of cross-dressing. I mean, it can't always have been either purely a matter of circumstance or of gender dysphoria, can it? Can't it be an amusing aesthetic pursuit? The crisp plait of the trousers, the neatly trimmed nape, the prudently polished shoes... formal masculine European dress is a marvelous thing, and since it's fast being abandoned by all but a few of its intended plenipotentiaries, why can't we dames take up our share of the legacy? So. If you, like me, happened some late and bleary night to google "female to male transvestite", "ftm transvestite", "f2m transvestite", "lady transvestite" "female cross-dresser", "female crossdresser", or any possible permutation up with which my mind cannot at the moment come, email me, (Mirabai Knight), at teticscetic@altavista.net . I don't yet know how to tie a bow tie from scratch, and it's killing me. Help?
Edit, Sept. 1, 2003: thought of another one -- "male impersonator". And that email address is defunct; now it's thomasaquinas@catholic.org .
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(8)
08:10:42 AM,Monday 11 November 2002
Wow.
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07:10:01 AM,Monday 11 November 2002
I think this is the strangest slash archive I've ever come across. Rule Britannia!
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03:08:13 AM,Monday 11 November 2002
Cock-a-Leekie soup.
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08:08:09 AM,Sunday 10 November 2002
THIS IS A GROUP FOR THOSE WHO LOVE TO SEE WOMEN WEARING HEADSCARVES. THIS GROUP IS ABOUT FASHION,ELEGANCE AND CLASS-NO NUDITY OR KINK-AND REAL WOMEN ONLY-NO TRANSVESTITES OR CROSSDRESSERS.ALL WHO WISH TO JOIN MUST HAVE THEIR GENDER,AND EITHER A VALID E-MAIL ADDRESS(SUBJECT TO VERIFICATION)OR MESSENGER DISPLAYED ON THEIR PROFILE,AND ALL PROFILES MUST BE COMPLETELY IN ENGLISH.IN ADDITION,BECAUSE OF THEIR HISTORY OF KINK,NO GERMANS WILL BE ACCEPTED AS MEMBERS.
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(1)
03:55:45 AM,Sunday 10 November 2002
I'm listening to "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee", and it rules. It also makes me think I should go to 7-11 and buy a gallon of milk and an enormous plastic slurpee cup with a cover because my enormous plastic oreo cookie cup with a cover has become mysteriously fetid, and it breaks my heart. That thing was the best cheap-o free college student exploitation present I ever got. It had a bendy straw and you can take lung-shudderingly deep gulps of ovaltine from it without it gurgling. So take it from me, kids: don't fill your plastic cup with chicken soup, drink it, rinse it out, fill it with skim milk, drink it, rinse it out, fill it with water and frozen grapes, drink it, let it sit for three days in your room, rinse it out, and expect it not to stink like an unholy bog-beast. {sigh} But I'm a little worried, because the last time I left my room I wound up at a diner counter next to an opera fag eating stuffed grape leaves and lemon meringue pie with the meringue piled up eight inches high and then sitting on the grass shivering in a two-tone hoodie trying to type up the two pages of tepid NaNovel I scribbled in the diner but getting hypnotised by the cars shooshing past on the motorway with their lights drilling and flickering instead. Which wasn't what I planned when I set up my weekend to be replete with isolation, contemplation, and mad word cramming. Not that the six hours in which I have been awake today have been particularly productive. But they've been filled with beautiful music, at least. I can't say that I'm not happy, 'cause I am. Life is luverly. I'd just be a bit happier if I didn't feel like Charles Atlas's knuckles in a dynamic tension cartoon.
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11:37:35 PM,Saturday 9 November 2002
"Because the rock is alive, and resides here. Here, in Towson."
WOOOO! The Dane was holding out on me, but she finally made good and delivered unto me my precious new CDs, in total: four!!
Martin's!
Anne's!
Deborah's!
And Johnnie R&B!
WHEEEE!
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(10)
06:48:42 PM,Saturday 9 November 2002
Last night I dreamed that I fractured my zink again. Or rather, that I fractured the zink I currently own, after having (in real life) fractured the school's zink. It sucked. I also dreamed that my mom went to the shrink that I used to go to and he liked her a lot -- thought she was a saint, in fact -- but thought I was a blood-sucking sociopath. Shrinks and zinks. Zinks and shrinks. These are the the foci of my novel. I can dream about 'em, apparently; I just can't write about 'em. Curses.
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10:12:15 PM,Friday 8 November 2002
Blogmass CD commentary: M.K.K. -- Subject to Fits of Pique
As I mentioned before, it's funny that I picked this particular theme for my second blogmass CD, because it apparently resulted in me making up a batch of defective CDs which got handed out to all the Naploids some weeks back. Grrumph. I'm still not exactly sure why I picked the theme at all; a while ago I tried to make a traditional cathartic Pissed at the World mix and realized that I simply don't have very many loud angry songs in my collection, which is sort of disappointing. I discovered that I have plenty of petulant foot-stampy ones, though, and they all went on this mix, to prove that... um. I may not have teeth, but at least I have Temperament? Don't know if that's a good thing, exactly, but that's all I got. So.
1. Anna Russell -- Dripping With Gore
I adore Anna Russell. She got hit in the sinus with a hockey puck when she was a girl, and it changed her voice in some strange way, destroying what might have been a legendary opera career. Not one to mope, she spent the next forty years or so writing kickass classically-underpinned parody songs and screeching like a society matron on angel dust. The two songs I've divvied out to the blogmass are somewhat atypical of her oeuvre, because a lot of it is, in truth, a little hard to listen to (though anyone who hasn't heard her dissertation on the Ring Cycle just hasn't lived, baby), especially when you're not already as fond of the dramatic soprano voice as I am. But when she sings all low and throaty her brilliance comes out just as well. My favorite part is "So I pulled out my gun, and I shot him (*bang* *bang* *bang*), and he fell with a cuh-rash on the floooor..."
2. Leonard Cohen -- Never Any Good
This song is the perfect cocktail of the bitchy, the bitter, the sweet, the sad, and the sneering. I sang it a lot when I got dumped, and though it didn't make me feel like any less of a loser, at least I felt like a loser in good company.
3. Eartha Kitt -- I Want To Be Evil
Speaking of the one who dumped me, heh... she had a thing for Eartha Kitt (which she subesquently passed on to me, though who can help it, eh?), and bought a CD of her old goodies, of which this track was my immediate and abiding favorite. It's the quintessence of what she and Mae West and the rest of those wicked little vamps do to me -- "When I'm good, I'm very very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better." Oh yes indeed.
4. Fats Waller -- Your Feets Too Big
When I was a kid, my favorite record was "Satch Plays Fats". I couldn't find Louis's version, though, and Fats's is the original true classic anyhow. It's brilliance. Sort of the spiritual predecessor to Randy Newman's "Short People". Your pedal extremities really are obnoxious.
5. Hildegard von Bingen -- O Frondens Virga
The album this is from, Garmarna's "Hildegard von Bingen", is bizarrely beautiful and infuriating by turns. They take Hildegard's old chants and set them to techno beats with electric violin solos. Sometimes it's just bad, but sometimes it makes them even more intense and eerie than they already are. This one qualifies for piquishness by virtue of the mad bit in the middle with the strings that sound like they're about to devour you.
6. Stephen Sondheim -- A Little Priest
I happen to think that these are some of the funniest seven minutes of genius in the English language. Mabel really should have a Song and Human Flesh night -- Sweeney Todd, Cannibal! The Musical, and Little Shop of Horrors.
7. Blues Brothers -- Rubber Biscuit
Tania wanted me to put this song on my first blogswap CD, but there wasn't room. It fits better on this one anyway, 'cause of its smartass tone and bubbly nonsense. "I had a coool water sandwich and a Sunday-Go-To-Meetin' bun. Bow bow bow." Maybe I should have called this CD "Novelty Whore" instead. Ah well.
8. Hedningarna -- Foxwoman
The verses are in Swedish and the choruses are in Finnish, in case you're wondering. Why I like this song: IT EXISTS AS A MIXTURE OF SEXINESS AND DANGER.
THAT IS ALL.
9. Danny Kaye -- Anatole of Paris
My dad likes to say "Et, voila! A chapeau, at sixty bucks a throw!" completely randomly, like, when he's given a jam sandwich, or finishes shining his shoes, or pulls up in the driveway (though he usually prefers "Lafayette, we are here." for that one, come to think of it.) I had no idea what he was talking about, as usual, until I got a record of Danny Kaye songs when I was about eleven. Screaming. Queen.
10. Naughty Nymphs -- Fairy Story
Me and my nephew sang this song at dinner after I graduated from college. It went some small measure toward cheering me up. You'll notice that I tried to arrange the songs in vague conceptual pairs: jilted love, misdemeanor cruelty, religion, odd-sounding phrases, fags, SJC, teutonic tangos (that one's a triplet), bratnikovs (so's that one), misunderstood Englishmen, random cornetto interlude (singlet), opera dorks... huh. I guess it sorta breaks down after that. But anyway.
11. Oscar Brand -- The Girls from Campus Hall
Oscar Brand is, I think, the single best new musician I discovered on Audiogalaxy (R.I.P.) -- I was searching for Moss's version of "Whiskey for the Johnny" and found Oscar's. Then I downloaded every single bawdy song of his I could find. He's a folk-singin' hero from way back, and while I don't ordinarily dig that scene, it becomes ever
so much more fascinating once you inject a little smut into it.
12. The Tiger Lillies -- Johnny Head-In-Air
You remember that bit from freshman seminar about the philosopher, Thales, who's looking up at the sky trying to discern the motions of the heavens, when he falls in a ditch and drowns? Well.
13. Marlene Dietrich -- Johnny, Wenn Du Geburtstag Hast
Mmmm... Lili Marlene and that low voice and a tango and... mmm. What more could you possibly want? She qualifies for the pique list, by the way, because of that shameless interlude -- and its aftershocks -- with Greta Garbo.
14. Richard Wagner -- Fafner and Fasolt's March
I was bravely trying to endure Wagner, exerting all my strength to get myself to like it, and finally, *finally*, somewhere in the first hour of Das Rheingold, I heard this little motive and whooped, "That rules!" I posted on my bloglet that I wanted it to be my theme song and, from then on, began to comment under the name of Fafner. But the best part is, you really can tango to it. Even if you're a lumbering fratricidal shapeshifting giant. Which is grand.
15. Peter Schikele -- Last Tango in Bayreuth
It's Wagner, it's silly, it's a bassoon quartet. It goes out to all you kids who actually showed up to your Tristan und Isolde seminar.
16. Maurice Sendak -- Pierre
When I was a kid, I listened to the Really Rosie soundtrack over and over and over. Still haven't ever seen the cartoon, though I desperately want to. I memorized this song and sung it on every long car trip we ever went on. Anti-apathy songs involving man-eating lions are the best kind there is.
17
. John Lithgow -- Triplets
I have Mandy Patinkin's version, Danny Kaye's version, and John Lithgow's version. They're all squalling nutbombs. This isn't one of my favorite songs, exactly, but it fit in with the theme so well, and after living with a doppelganger for two years, I can appreciate the sentiment.
18. McVaffe -- Tetris Ultimix
Tetris, I think everyone would agree, holds the title for Most Infuriatingly Evil video game. You just need *one* long red brick, and all your troubles are over, but nooo, it gives you six L-shaped ones in a row. Arrgh! Oh, plus I really like the piano break in the middle. I've got an embarrassing number of remixed video game theme songs, but this is about the classiest among 'em.
19. Gwydion Penderwen -- The Ballad of Richard III
I just really like the idea of vindicating one of the most reviled and loathesome kings anyone's ever heard of. And, hell, maybe it's all true. What do I know? The pique comes in with the "bonny FRENCH head" part.
20. I Have a Gentil Cock
More smut. No pique, really, unless you count the inevitable arguments spawned on the "It's just about a rooster! It's perfectly innocent! You're all just a bunch of filthy-minded sickos!" front. I mean. Come on. "He doth me risen early" = morning wood, of course. "His comb is of red coral" "His legs be of azure", "His eyes are of crystal, locked all in amber"... well, I can find convincingly explicit explanations for all of them, no fear, though I imagine you don't want to hear them. And, honestly, "Every night he percheth him in my lady's chamber"? Please. But once you accept the fact of its perversity, you realize what a sweet and perfect dirty poem it is. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
21. Giovanni Battista Riccio -- Sonata a Due Cornetti in Echo
Hello, I'm a cornetto. Hello, I'm a cornetto. Cut it out, I got here first. Cut it out, I got here first. Stop copying me! Stop copying me! Quit it! Quit it! I'm telling! I'm telling!
22. Cake -- Opera Singer
I was tempted to put this on my Heart of the Blogmass CD, but then I realized that everyone probably knew it backwards and forwards already. And it is a very silly song. But it's so glorious, damnit. Glitz, stupidity, supreme undying arrogance -- it's everything that opera's all about.
23. Garrison Keillor -- I am a Tenor
This song is just silly. But as the unholy spawn of a Norwegian and an Italian, it was my duty to subject you to it.
24. Mozart -- O Isis Und Osiris
I'm still not quite sure why I put this song on here. It's solemn and rich and not piquey at all. Maybe as a balm for all the petty nippings in the rest of the album. It's a hymn to the sun. I really really like it.
25. Tapani Varis -- Fanitullen
One last thumb to the nose.
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(8)
06:53:56 AM,Friday 8 November 2002
My ramen recommends cooking it according to the following directions:
1. Boil two cups of water in a saucepan. Add noodles and cook three minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Turn off heat. Add contents of seasoning package. Stir.
3. Serve immediately for best results.
Now, the way I've always made ramen is like this:
1. Fill small pot half-full of cold water, add noodles and contents of seasoning package, turn range on "high", let pot sit on range until noodles look vaguely soft, turn off heat, and serve immediately, i. e., directly out of pot with a fork.
Is there any reason for all the other steps? With the boiling first and adding the seasoning after and all the stirring in between? My ramen always tastes just dandy.
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(18)
03:33:18 PM,Thursday 7 November 2002
I want to join the Peace Corps.
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(12)
11:40:58 AM,Thursday 7 November 2002
Whoah. Last night in the bathtub I was wishing I had a recording of Death and the Maiden, and then just now it comes on my playlist. I had it all along. I feel like a dork.
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(1)
10:30:53 PM,Tuesday 5 November 2002
