My IQ

I just found out Ani DiFranco has a new album coming out in 26 days.
Not that I am now counting or anything.
I love Ani.
I do.
Sorry if that bothers you, but chances are, if that bothers you, you probably can't name me two Ani original songs. Try it. Don't look it up, just try it. Can you? The woman has like 17 albums out. In 15 years. 17 albums. 15 years. Talk about efficiency.
Sorry again, when I listen to lot of Ani I get confrontational. She's like "Jock Jams" for the quasi-hippie types, we just get ready for some football, or making hummus or protests or whatever we are planning to do. I just love that she gets me so motivated, to stand up for whatever, in whatever. Whether it's "Face Up and Sing", "My IQ", "Shy", "Shameless", or even "Self-Evident"--wow. Riles me up, makes me want to curse loudly. I love music with a purpose. It's the same reason I love Dar Williams' "I Had No Right", John Prine's "Sam Stone", Indigo Girls' "Philosophy of Love", Sublime's "April 26, 1992"--most about deep issues (and one about looting, but eh). I didn't know about the plight of the Berrigan Brothers until I heard Dar's song and I love to be educated on social issues and activists like that...I mean if two priests top the FBI most wanted list for protesting Vietnam, that is noteworthy.
But Ani? Oh man. God love her. She has such power in her words, can make blood boil and voices shout. And she lives it, that's what I really love. Man. So pumped. Ok I'll shut up now. I'll leave with an Ani quote, it is, after all, my blog.
" 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
And yer done
Yer done for
Yer done for good
But tell me did you?
Did you do all?
Did you do all you could?" -Tamburita Lingua

Liz and Carey, two of DaSpoons trio. That's Liz in the 40ft of bubblewrap Carey got for her birthday. We wrapped Liz in it and rolled her down a hill to see if they'd pop. They didn't.

Roaring Twenties/(Christ)mas/Speed of the Sound...

There are times when I have nothing to say, then I am blinded by everything to say. My life is a fit of feasts and famines. I know its going to be a day of thought when I wake up with a Patty Griffin song in my head. The weekend and holiday we wonderful and difficult simultaneously--I opened the package from my family last night and cried multiple times. The things that hit me today are really three separate ideas and inclinations and thus will be treated as such. I'll split it up into little juicy nuggets for us ADD kids.

(Christ)mas:
I was convicted this morning when I got to work especially early. If I'm opening I can't go in until the second person arrives so I had an extra 15 minutes or so to sit in my car. I keep my tiny bible in there for situations like this. I opened up the beginning of Matthew and read the account of Christ's birth, and I realized I went through the entire Christmas holiday without even really considering what it was all actually about. I got thinking about family, and booyah bowling, and friends, and logistics, and a myriad of other totally inconsequential things. I got distracted. And the greatest trick the devil owns is distraction, no?

Roaring Twenties:
I am still obsessing over my writing samples, as much for myself as for my actual applications. I wonder about telling personal stories, because I sincerely believe that the lives of twentysomethings are glamorous and exciting only to other twentysomethings. To everyone else they are boringly similar to every other fashionably unique twentysomething out there (notice I said 'fashionably unique'--it's impossible to be, but since it is currently fashionable to be unique, I can make statements like that. booyah) and simply a stage that every other person passes through--it's like telling everyone's stories about puberty. Funny but overwhelmingly similar. I'm wondering if all I have to say is like that. How terrifying for a storyteller.

"Speed of the Sound of Loneliness":
If you knew that was a John Prine song, then you are way too cool to be reading this. Regardless, recently I've been rereading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, which has rapidly become one of my favorite books and I'm in love with the author and want to marry him today, but I digress. I know I've been talking about loneliness in this journal a lot and for good reason; I'm lonely. Then I read this today and it convicted me.
"Loneliness is something that happens to us, but I think it is something we can move ourselves out of. I think a person who is lonely should dig into a community, give himself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other, love each other. Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall. If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we would like to live."
Ouch.

It's beginning to look at lot

One really shouldn't work retail too long because they end up with this intense disdain and/or hatred for the holidays. It's your fault consumers, your fault. Christmas this year will be very different than normal--it's my first away from my family and so my traditions and customs are out the window. It's hard because I really don't have the money to buy anyone anything anyway, and I wish I could. It's humbling to try to recieve gifts without being able to give one in return. I guess it's more of this 'understanding where my worth lies' lessons.
After work tonight I"m meeting up with Dylan and Liz in Syracuse for some QT time in ol' Westcott Nation and possibly a stop at Taps! WOOHOO! Then the night of the 23rd bring booyah bowling in Oneida, then Christmas with the Watkins family (shout out Watkins family), then a dinner with my dear Peter in Syracuse on the 26th. I'll try to post when I can. I'm looking forward to basically everything except the actual holiday itself. Maybe I can just sleep through it...

Potsmoking Hippie Alcoholics

The other day I got to talk to my friend Hatcher on my drive to work, all 50 minutes of it.
This was so vital and so so so wonderful. She's my friend, and she rules.
Toward the end of the conversation, I told her that I was going out with my coworkers after work. I laughingly mentioned how my coworkers are potsmoking alcoholics. Hatcher made the observation that no matter where I go, I end up with potsmoking alcoholics somewhere in my life.
This is, indeed, very true.
Except for Hatcher, who is neither a potsmoker nor an alcoholic.
But it's true--I do end up with a disproportionate amount of these people in my life, probably because it feels like a big ol' family reunion, as that is most of my family anyway. Hatcher said, "I don't know too many people like that, probably because I couldn't relate to them--they would distrust me and I wouldn't know what to say to them." or something along those lines. But me (as clearly we all know, this blog is all about me)? Why in a room of my friends, family and coworkers I couldn't throw a stick without hitting one. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing--they are my friends/family/coworkers, so I love them dearly. But this does seem to be the kind of people I know and am comfortable with. Very strange. It's hard to balance who I am now with the stories of who I was--how does one relate without reliving?
I believe it is so so so important to know what you are saved from. To stand on that line and look in the eye of the could have been and realize just how held onto you are; how the life you live is one of a rescued mess. And to look at others and simply love them where they are and not how you'd want them to be.
I dunno.