things you wish you didn't know...

I came home last night after being out all day to get my life back in order before starting another week, putting things away, digging out some of the Christmas decorations, and doing the dishes that had sat in the sink a few days since I hadn't planned on being gone this weekend.

I get stressed out at the start of the Thanksgiving season, having the existential life crisis that comes with marking another year of being alive combined with having to hear "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" every ten minutes when I venture into any place of commerce, or finding myself veering near trouble at social gatherings when politics are discussed. I just got texting last year and I don't know what's in the theater or on tv or what the kids are listening to these days.

I straddle this gap of relative affluence (full time job, functioning car, and extra income due to a low standard of living) compared to many of my neighbors and peers, while those I grew up with are buying apps for their iPhones, eating out at places where I can swing food or a drink but not both, going on vacation, living in places that people aren't afraid to visit after dark.

And I'm content and honestly happy, but sometimes I feel embarrassed when some see where I live or it's awkward when I hear people stereotype neighborhoods or certain groups and those places and people are friends and places where I've hung out.

I'm wondering why I feel so okay with most of my life except when I'm faced with feeling out of place in places where others feel so comfortable and so at ease in places and with people that others avoid.

And then...
I wasn't expecting to see a cockroach last night, a pretty big one, and the only thing I had on hand was the bottle of Ajax dishwashing liquid and I drowned it the best I could before calling my landlord who's going to call an exterminator.

Of course, one roach always means there's more. The people who lived there before me weren't the cleanest and my landlord had told me that there had been problems in the past but we also found one the same week I moved out of the old apartment.

And just to be on the safe side, I'll be buying some plastic containers, boric acid, and all manner of other fun things tonight. I'm not really freaked out, I just want the damn things gone. When I was living in Kent, I was the go-to girl in dorm rooms and apartments to kill vermin because I'm good at it and don't get freaked out.

My mom says that out of the three of her kids, I could live in a third world country most easily. Sometimes when I drive through the surrounding neighborhoods where everything's falling apart and there's this sense of hopelessness and impending violence and look at the mansions just around the corner, I feel like I do.

best of the blotter 31

This is one of the best I've seen in awhile.

THEFT, LORAIN ROAD: A man claiming to be the drummer for the 1980s band Foreigner faces theft charges after police said he skipped out on a $32 bar tab at Buckeye Lanes. Workers at the bowling alley told officers the suspect had pulled the same stunt on several other occasions in the past three weeks. According to reports, the suspect ordered six shots of alcohol, two beers and a plate of fried mushrooms. He then refused to pay his tab when it came time to leave. Police found the man, who claimed to be homeless, walking along Great Northern Boulevard just after midnight.

SUSPICION, CHAGRIN BOULEVARD: On Nov. 9, a Cleveland man, 80, left Ruby Tuesdays without paying his bill and left his briefcase behind. When the staff checked the briefcase, they found a gun inside.

The man was later located and all of his belongings were returned. No arrests were made.

SUSPICIOUS, FAIRMOUNT ROAD: A man came home from work and found two dead turkeys under his tree Nov. 10. He wanted a report on file of the incident.

SPECIAL DETAIL; WALTERS ROAD: A large Christmas tree being moved from a Hickory Hill residence to the downtown Triangle resulted in at least eight mailboxes being knocked down Nov. 18 — two on Hickory Hill and six on Walters, as well as several downed power line.

LAUNDRY, N. COURT: A woman called police after her clothing became stuck in a washer at a N. Court Street location on Nov. 19. Police responded after 5 p.m., but the woman was able to release the clothing before an officer arrived.

being in and around...

It took the city extra time to wake up this morning. I drove down east 93rd and then through Shaker this morning and the sun was out but the world was still asleep and those who were awake were frantic in less economically depressed environs. I loved the way the November sun looks, the shadows, the signs of corner stores and storefront churches. I had my camera but I was alone in strange parts and there were enough stragglers that I didn't want to explain anything.

I took the sick kitty to the vet and it's been a long time since I've sat in an animal hospital waiting room. I wished I could take photos of the people and the pets without being creepy because it was just the best people-watching ever.

it really does seem to be true that the pet's looks reflect those of the owners... the crazy couple with the giant St Bernards on huge chains, yuppies with obscure purebreds, the hardcore punk looking guy across from me with the bulldog, high maintenance women with terriers, and elderly cat ladies with elderly cats. It was loud in there with the barking and meowing and I couldn't read the book I brought and don't know how the guy across from me was getting through "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" with all this noise.

I never go shopping on Black Friday but me & a friend of mine ended up at Pat Catan's in search of art supplies and I ended up getting some absurd and random Christmas gifts for my cousins, things that made us giggle like roaring dinosaur keychains, multicolored disco ball ornaments, and a giant inflatable Shamu. We drank coffee at Gypsy and pondered all the ideas and changes that have hit both me and her this year and then I met up with my sister, her mother-in-law and husband for dinner at a pub in Rocky River that was jammed with people who looked like they went to high school together.

They treated me for my birthday and we finished up at Half Price Books amused by puzzles with unicorns on them and I ended up scoring big in the dollar section of the CDs, came home with Astrud Gilberto, Quicksand's "Manic Compression," and Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "F#A#infinity" which is the perfect soundtrack for dark cold nights like these. The Youtube comments are ridiculous but I guess I have a thing sometimes for apocalyptic Canadian anarchists playing epic chamber rock, though seeing them live way back when was emotionally overwhelming to the point that I was dazed and thankful that my friend was able to drive me home.



I've been in a place where there's so much going on inside, it's really hard to explain, and that's when the music fills the gaps.

give me things that don't get lost...

My birthdays are never epic, but this one's been especially good for not having much going on... not stressing about dead ends, not euphoric with potential. Played a game of Risk with my sister & dad and lost, finding delicious irony in the fact that U2's "War" is playing in the background because that's the one album the three of us can agree on.

Got some voicemail serenades, some sweet text messages and phone calls, and a whole lot of facebook love for what it's worth. People ask me if I feel bad that the holiday overshadows my birthday but it's just so good to see everyone and then when the cousins and the rest of the family converge, it's just such a good time having everyone there.

27 years old now, housesitting on the east side watching an ailing kitty for some friends who are out of town, hoping that she's ok because while I enjoy animals, I don't know much about taking care of sick ones. I'm making sure she's eating and drinking and such, hoping that she'll be all right.

Ate too much homemade cranberry sauce tonight and drank too much coffee, had the usual wine and conversation involving the usual cocktail of politics and religion and evidently one of my distant cousins traced back my Anglo side to 1066 and was unhappy with the presence of French blood a thousand years ago, though I highly doubt anyone's pure anything, with all the invading and raping and pillaging that went on way back when between the Vikings and Genghis Khan and whoever.

Besides, everyone's probably related somehow if you go back far enough and never mind that got mixed with the Irish two generations ago and with the Polish in my parents' case and who knows what with the next group of kids.

If it wasn't raining so hard I'd go back over to the west side to hang out with some of my friends who have no family here and will be up late, but I'm just going to chill here, read, journal a bit, drink some tea, listen to Neil Young. I don't need much to get by and this is beautiful and good.

in which we become our parents someday...

When we were young, we knew we were born too late, grew our hair long because we didn't bother cutting it, borrowed our dads' flannel shirts, dyed our hair, grew up on the ever-present classic rock which gave us a love of total 70's unhipness.

We tried to find meaning in the last gasps of the alternative era, realizing that Bush and Creed and Staind really weren't all that good and worked our way backwards through labels like SST and Dischord and Sub Pop wishing we could have been around back in the day when you could see good bands cheap at the Euclid Tavern and we had to content ourselves with reunion shows with replacement singers and new bassists and watching clips on Youtube.

We mourned when Layne Staley died, got each other obscure 80's punk band shirts and Squirrel Bait records for Christmas, and when my friend touched Mark Arm's hand at a Mudhoney show it was like he touched the hand of God. We created our own scene, which was one elaborate inside joke that nobody else got involving jokes about Ross Perot and Stabbing Westward.

We'd argue over our favorite Led Zeppelin albums and whether or not Rush was awesome, and give each other a hard time for our guilty pleasures and were obsessed with the documentary Hype! whose soundtrack we rocked out to on the way to prom because nothing sounds more romantic than the Melvins or songs like Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick."



We wanted to be DIY and start our own record labels, wanted to do what we saw on the east and west coast here in our dying rust belt town as the towers fell on 9/11 but everything here had already tanked as it was. We were nostalgic for an era that had its own share of disposable pop music and generic rock bands, but we ignored them.

Our bands weren't anything special, our shows at school gyms didn't happen because the guy in charge of getting keys got busted for weed, and some of us went on to become scenesters and substance abusers, some of us moved away, some of us grew up and quit music, and others of us only sing at church or on karaoke night.

Now we're the same age as our fallen heroes. Those of my friends who joked about being dead by 27 are now heading towards 30. If we can't be Kurt Cobain, we can be Eddie Vedder. The thing that's hard about this age is that we've got enough life behind us that mistakes we made in our youth will follow us for the next four decades and yet we're still young and dumb in a lot of ways in a culture that makes it easy. We've branched out too, finding out that there are other amazing and undiscovered sounds that came out pre-1967 and weren't created by suburban white guys with guitars.

I get the feeling that Generation X is going to inflict our cultural consciousness with Tupac, Nirvana and "indie rock" the way that their parents beat us over the head with Woodstock and the Beatles, but it looks like my younger cousins don't know who these people are and think Green Day is this cool new band, and some of my little sister's friends have jumped into the straight-edge scene so it'll be interesting to see how all this plays out. The classic rock station is playing "Enter Sandman" now so I'm assuming Jane's Addiction won't be too far behind.

Dying young is far too boring these days...

it could always be worse...

Something about the impending winter, the holiday season, and having another birthday depresses the hell out of me every year. It's not because I stress about getting old the way others do but there's this sense of what have I done, what have I lost, I wish I could start over.

I've moved three times in the last year, struggled through the legal system, saw some relationships I valued deeply disintegrate, found out at the dentist that my mouth is all messed with a combination of genetics, not flossing the right way, and the stress... and I guess I'll get through like I always do, but I just get so tired and don't feel like I'm much good for anyone when I don't have it in me to pick up the phone and I come back and just end up sleeping because even though it's beautiful outside, I can't walk down there myself and I don't want to call anyone up because I'm just too out of it.

When I think about vacations and just getting away, it just seems like an illusion because you're still who you are anywhere, and you just have to come back eventually.

It's not surprising that the law of entropy makes a whole lot of sense. Sometimes it just feels like life is all about more or less falling apart but staying together enough to function on a basic level.

And my problems are nothing compared with those of others... I have to keep reminding myself of this because the people who want to compete in the Suffering Olympics are really no fun.

thursday night fill-in playlist

Most of this would have been a mixtape I would have made you my third year of college, but it works darn good on a Thursday night. It's weird being in the studio and being awake and actually getting phone calls, mostly from people ten years older than me who haven't heard Jawbox since back in the day who wonder if I'll be a regular fixture and if I'll play "Jesus is Way Cool." I like this time slot even though I'm wedged in between two metal shows and while it's not Air Supply, it's not nearly as heavy either.

sonic youth - dirty boots
jawbox - breathe
sleater-kinney - all hands on the bad one
fugazi - do you like me
throwing muses - pandora's box
swervedriver - a change is gonna come
mission of burma - trem two
the buzzcocks - harmony in my head
high back chairs - afterlife
REM - crush with eyeliner
love - 7 and 7 is
X - poor girl
the clash - city of the dead
elastica - in the city
the pixies - mr grieves
jesus and mary chain - far gone and out
blur - there's no other way
echo and the bunnymen - crocodiles
ride - drive blind
love battery - foot
the cure - cut
jane's addiction - summertime rolls
pavement - cream of gold
autolux - here comes everybody
the dirtbombs - brand new game
afghan whigs - cito soleil
morphine - buena
soul coughing - is chicago
queens of the stone age - white wedding
the verve - life's an ocean