Friends

triple j's hottest 100 has been a bit of hit and miss so far. some real classics have fallen far too low, and some songs that are completely unworthy have snuck in to the top 20. the top ten is about to air; for what it's worth, here are my top eleven. selected purely on the basis of songs i would want on a deserted island. or maybe not, some of these are a bit maudlin. anyway.

losing my religion - rem
karma police - radiohead
suspicious minds - elvis
one way or another - blondie
i know it's over - the smiths
throw your arms around me - hunters & collectors
desperado - the eagles
one crowded hour - augie march
be my baby - the ronettes
oliver's army - elvis costello
no one's gonna love you - band of horses

poor band of horses didn't get into my official vote, but that song is probably a lot higher on the list of favourites.

o1.
scene: baggers family estate, 10am.

moi, in bed: MUM! CAN YOU TURN THE HEATER ON?
la mother: NO. WE'RE STILL IN BED! WE'RE TURNING INTO OUR CHILDREN!

oh, family.

o2.
i sent off my application to law school yesterday. there are other schools to apply to, but this is the one i want, and this is the one i probably won't get. being lazy is really incompatible with aspirations of greatness.

o3.
spooks!

( 6 things i like about spooks; a pictorial essay. )

Another fantastic band have emerged from Brisbane...What is it about that city that creates music and musicians that penelly loves?

I bought Yves Klein Blue's debut album Ragged and Ecstatic this week and I love it already. :)

Yves Klein Blue gig review.

I wish I could have gone to see them. Great tunes and lyrics. Have a crush on the 22-y-o lead singer. Have done ever since I heard that there was a band called Yves Klein Blue. So art-nerdy. :)

I just updated pen_voyage with a taste of some deep scottish love. :)

hey there hi there ho there from sunny omaha
i am EXHAUSTED.
sarah is napping in bed and i am at ecremery in dundee because although i finally found a signal on her porch, my computer didn't have enough power and sarah doesnt have any grounded outlets to deliver the power to compy5000. bummer. so i'm sitting in the ice cream shop like a total nerd.

i am actually too exhausted to go into full detail about yesterday's drive and last night and today (so far) i do have pictures so maybe i will show you some of those?

tomorrow i am going back to minneapolis, hopefully arriving before dinner, and staying there until sunday or monday. i officially decided to drive through the u.p. on my way home and stay once up there and once with robyn in ann arbor, and then again with fernando's mom in buffalo. i am so excited to see new places and also not have to deal with chicago (hopefully ever again)

i will say briefly that yesterday was driving on i-35 south and then i-80 west and iowa wasn't as awful as i remembered it, but i wouldn't wish that drive upon anyone anyways. i am happy to rest in nebraska and think about how all these landlocked states butt up against each other like staggered bricks. iowa, nebraska, missouri, kansas. this country is a puzzle of greatness. let's all be america and hold hands forever. kiss kiss.

windmills and fields of opportunity (aka corn) in iowa.

this is obligatory. some exits had the kum&go listed as gas AND food. ONE STOP SHOP! loaf&jug is still the best one i've seen.

omaha. full of hills. believe it or not. sarah lives in a cute small neighborhood called dundee and she doesn't drive so she walks everywhere. its quite a strange place to choose to live when you have no car, but this is where she lives and this is where i visit her.

we saw jay farrar's band son volt last night at slowdown in downtown omaha. it was a great show and its a really great space to see a show.

lunch today at la buvette in the old market was delicious and it felt so nice to be outside in the shade. i ate the whole thing.

thrifting is happening. why am i buying? i can't stop! everyone has their thing. mine is piling up 300 pair of shoes and staring at the sheer mass of stuff i have plucked from the earth. rarrrrrrrr.

so i am ready to be done with this ice cream nonsense now. i may lay in sarah's bed and watch monterray pop and never even show my face to the bars of omaha. then again, i may pop into o'leavers for just a few hours to see if its as crazy as i remember and as people keep telling me it is.

omaha: who knows! when you cross the missouri from iowa into nebraska there is a sign on the bridge that says "nebraska: the good life!" i'll try to snap something on my way out tomorrow.

love y'all. check you next time!

o1. dearest livejournal, the healing of the gaping holes in my mouth continues apace. i stopped leaving the ice packs on pretty much 24-7 the other day, because the cold was making me light headed, and the result is two ridiculous bruises, like misplaced blush. i also upgraded drugs at one point, and so i spent a couple of days in a loopy fog. i miss food. missing food has undone the damage of exam time eating habits, so that is not the worst.

o2. i am without my phone, and it is somewhat distressing! because i still refuse to leave the house, primarily because i am still sort of faint all the time but also my face might lead people to think i have been beaten about the head, the mother has taken my phone to be stealth upgraded. i hope this works.

o3. instead of food, i have been ingesting massive amounts of spooks. i am midway through season 4, and still remain enthused. ruth evershed, you are kind of the best.

o4. i overhauled my profile page a little while ago, and now i have updated my actual journal layout. i love the former, but am ambivalent about the latter.

hello and hi from the land of 10,000 lakes.
i don't know if i have the energy for the kind of post i know the day after the fourth of july deserves, and i apologize for that in advance.

i have to drive to omaha today. i wish i could teleport there. i had a fight with a friend of a friend of a friend in this bar last night because i told him i didn't like iowa and it turns out not only is he from iowa, but he bears the brunt of my saying i dont particularly love iowa for the ENTIRE STATE. i tried to explain that if he insulted new york state as a whole i wouldn't be offended because i dont live in the entire state. he said "i am iowa" i said "i am america, and i say 'fuck iowa'" that basically ended it. he said that was the best thing i could have said and everything ended on good terms. naomi wasn't thrilled. can't please everyone!

J4 was really excellent from tip to tail and we started things right with a summer garden brunch complete with a bloody mary and mimosa bar at chiara's cousin's house.

good thing we brought our appetites!

we stayed there much of the afternoon, it rained during the middle of it, and we had to take shelter in one of the many sheds that had been built from old signs. yes, it was as magical as it sounds. then the sun came shining again and dappled on everyone and everything and the angels sang sweet songs and everyone held hands.

then we rode bikes to a beach called "hidden beach" (which, i believe, is on cedar lake) even though i guess its not hidden anymore. it had gotten too late to actually get wet so we just layed about in our suits and talked to some people about life.

emily was excellent to give us a ride to nicolet (sp?) island where we watched the fireworks display from adam's friend johan's backyard. apparently its very private and fancy so that was cool. emily had never even been there!
then we went to this thing called the 10 second film festival which was crazy packed full of people and pretty funny also.

finally we went to the best place: nye's
i can't explain how good this place is and i was slightly offended no one had ever taken me there before because it is the PERFECT PLACE. there was a polka room where three elderly people were playing instruments and people were dancing and there was also piano karaoke with only like 100 songs where you write your choice on a napkind and hand it to the piano lady and then she points to you and sometimes she helps you if you forget the words. gosh it was great. i sang 'knock three times' and 'margaritaville' life is great.

okay nebraska is calling. i gotta get a move on. i wish the future was real and i could just poof myself over there. ALAS!

love!

I'm at a loss, and I'm hoping my fellow travelers can enlighten me to this trend, or at least let me know I'm not alone. Why is it that when I go to a supermarket -- any supermarket, and not just the same one over and over again -- that everybody in the place, customers and staff alike, seem like they're mentally unstable or otherwise deranged? When do the "normal" people go to get their groceries, and can I go then too?

unexpected grades were unexpected: not supposed to be up until next week, passed everything, two HDs, and:

GPA OVER 5 NOW FUCK YES, CRAPPY SCIENE PULLING ME DOWN CAN EAT IT!

ps. smiling hurts.

christ almighty what a day.
i composed a giant journal post on paper while i was waiting for my dinner tonight and i will retype it here in some time. probably tomorrow morning.
for now you should know i am alive and my plans of sleeping on a couch or floor were dashed to dust and instead i'm sprawling in king size bed in another ramada, this time in downtown milwaukee.

how is this possible, you ask? not quite sure, because the people of milwaukee are certainly nice and certainly hospitable. i definitely don't have the money to afford much more of this, and i'm sure everyone was correct when they told me i should just fly.

know this much: tomorrow morning i get a free continental breakfast and i sure as hell am going to eat every free bit i can get my mits on after i take a dip in the heated outdoor swimming pool. got it?

until tomorrow....

Inspired by my recent visit to Dymocks, and subsequent discussion with Julia lunaminor about how their staff is ALWAYS friendly, and after commenting that people never praise great work enough, I penned this email (to be sent to the store, and to corporate):

Dear Dymocks Hunter Street,

I just wanted to commend your staff on your consistently excellent customer service. Although I only purchase books from your store occasionally, each time I do I am always met with exceptionally friendly and chatty people at the counter. Most staff at other Dymocks stores are very helpful and good, but at Hunter Street I feel like they make an extra effort. I don't think I have ever been served by anyone who hasn't been exceptionally lovely, or hasn't been extra nice(r) to their customers.

Thanks for making the pleasure of buying books even more of a pleasure!

Cheers,
Michelle

ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. :(

top five things meme (give me a topic, i will give you my top five). i love it. go. please. distract me omg.

oHIo from toldeo; an all-america city! (i kid you not, apparently this is not a title that is hard to garner)

today was a day that was all about lake erie. i woke up at denise's cute house

and had some coffee (decaf) and then said 'adios' and went to 2 salvation army stores in buffalo (wednesday is family day, which means every tag except one color is half off!)

i left buffalo around 2 and started west on i-90 (the longest highway in the united states, running 3,084 miles from seattle to boston). the rain came and went, just like yesterday. i found a few great classic rock stations (i think they were, GASP, canadian!) that entertained me until the pennsylvania border.

erie seemed quiet and the gas was only $2.45 there. pennsylvania was just a small blip in my days drive and in no time i was saying HI! to ohio. this is when the drive got interesting. i will say that today was miles better and more interesting, scenery wise, than yesterday. i love my state, but the middle is really boring! i-90 snakes through downtown cleveland and i got to see all the little houses with their colored roofs angled at what appeared to be 70 degrees or more. they looked fine all lined up like that. cleveland is a good looking working city. i think lake erie is blue collar. i decided this today.

at some point i got to leave 90 and take the much more scenic ohio 2. this bought me through the town of sandusky and directly across sandusky bay.

ohio seems to be in some kind of tug of war between the east and the middle of the country. this is the first time i've really driven past wheat fields (not sure how that is possible, but i promise it is true) the golden wheat and the grey skies and the red barns made a really nice composition but its only been captured on film (where it belongs) so you'll have to wait to see. i'll give you this instead:

i even got to drive past a nuclear power plant! i could only think of the simpsons.

i'll tell you what i think of toledo: its a nice manageable blue collar city with quite a bit of character and very few chain stores (from what i saw).

i like toledo! it helps that i've found SO MANY beautiful 70's wood soled platform shoes. plus all the ladies in the shops have been very sweet. one was so surprised i was from new york, i was like "its not that far!" she says "i know but we don't get a lot of them"

tonight i am sleeping like a queen in a king size bed. i hope i can crash on somebody's couch or floor tomorrow in MILWAUKEE where my main agenda go on the miller brewery tour. BREW CITY. i was all nervous because its a 5.5 hour drive so i was thinking i would have to leave at like 10am to get there before the last tour at 3:30 but then i realized its in the CENTRAL TIME ZONE so i get an hour! if that's not a gift from god, i don't know what is!

now i need to inventory all my treasures and do some girl stuff so i'll wake up all beautiful and shit.
much love from the buckeye state.

all four wisom teeth: gone!

i didn't even get to count backwards, i was out before they even asked. me + anesthesia = otp. that photos was just after i go home, so i was definitely still out of it, and the swelling is a lot worse today. it doesn't really hurt, it just feels all wrong and tight, but these drugs are awesome so who knows.

ice packs are cold, fyi.

excuse me while i lay here like a log and pretend to be able to follow what is happening on tv.

hello and hi from buffalo, ny: an all-america city!
(albany is this too and i'm not sure why it isn't all-american, but this is what the sign says and this is what i relay to you, my faithful readers)

i don't know how poetic i can be about driving on i-90 across the width of new york state. the first hour is really beautiful through the leatherstocking region, following the mohawk. then it gets kind of boring, but i promise it is nowhere near as boring as iowa and i am dreading iowa already. can it be evaporated???

today it was pouring and pouring and then streaming and then POURING, and i mostly entertained myself by singing really really loudly and making up stories about the drivers around me. at one point a pickup full of boys was in front of me and they opened their back window and one kid leaned out and mouthed something at me. i didn't catch his drift. it happened another time and i figured out he was saying "you are cool!" i laughed out loud so much and gave him the "a-ok" hand sign. he was pleased with that, and i was pleased with being cool. i looked like this:

i was also dancing in the car to some disco shit so i think that had a lot to do with it. and i think he really truly thought i was cool.

one lady LOVED dogs and had dog stickers all over her white van and even had a dog license plate! (kentucky). most of the plates i saw were new york, there were some new jersey, and some pennsylvania, massachusetts and connecticut as well. pretty typical. although i did see an oklahoma and a few texas and that one kentucky i mentioned with all the dogs.

the drive from syracuse west is farming, as you might expect, but not as many cows as i would have liked. corn mostly and some other things that grow low to the ground in tidy rows. the tidy rows are so nice when you drive by because they make geometric patterns and trick your eyes. it reminded me of driving past the vineyards in northern california. so tidy!

i arrived in a surprisingly chilly buffalo around 6:30 and i found a giant thrift store and bought some crap,

i really tried to edit my stuff but still managed to spend $45. not sure how that is possible. i did score what appears to be a complete mall madness! excellent! i've been trying to replace it ever since my dad threw my beloved set away years ago. why you would throw away a perfectly good talking game is beyond me!

this post is coming to you from a cozy bed at fernando's mom, denise's house, in amherst, just outside of buffalo. she fed me a lovely dinner and we talked about mexico and now i am feeling so tired and ready to sleep sleep sleep and dream about who knows what!

my drive tomorrow is just over five hours and since its wednesday i am looking hit up a few salvation army's here in buffalo and then a few in toledo as well. family day! half off the whole store! ohhhhh the possibilities!

i'll leave you with some standard road shots:

until tomorrow! xoxo!

not_eurotic mentioned earlier today that Cafe Montemarte was closing permanently, but now I just heard from an insider at the Cardinal *cough|Lore|cough* that the Bird has been officially closed down as well as of last night. Strange times... Add to the fact that a bunch of bars around campus have lost their liquor license for one reason or another (including Kollege Klub... "bummer") is making for some interesting times for downtown business.

Actual post coming tomorrow-ish. For now I go run before stormses hit.