the expression and the cure.

Goth is a look that simultaneously expresses and cures its own sense of alienation.

In honor of my birthday yesterday, nytimes.com published this great article addressing the longevity and influence of goth fashion.  It’s true that this alleged “trend” now has its place among the most established of tried-and-true styles.  It’s something you can borrow from, add to, and comment on in every single outfit you wear.  But I’ve been saying this for years.  The fact that several people forwarded this article to me today means that at least some of you have been paying attention.  This combined with hard evidence I’ve mentioned before that goth kids are more likely to be good students and pursue very solid careers pretty much solidifies both sides of the goth coin.  Huzzah!

Speaking of my birthday, it was a lovely day indeed.  After work I dined on shrimp and cheesecake at my parents’ house and collected money and gifts.  My sister gave me a really neat craft book and Dan gave me some perfume and makeup and a book illustrated by Edward Gorey.  I also got this fantastic gift from Brandi, who is truly the fairest of them all.  I lucked out!  Although I enjoyed the 17th, the real party is my macabre dress-up picnic on Saturday.  I can’t wait to see everyone and catch up and laze around on our blankets, enjoying conversations and scenery.

To top everything off, as I was riding my bike home today and I heard someone go “Tesla!”  And I turned around and it was Matt freaking Beck leaning out of the window of a beat-up looking old van.  If you know this guy, you know why this — and pretty much everything else he does — is hilarious.  Later he called me and told me all sorts of insane stuff, including the fact that we should add another day to the week so that it’s an 8-day week, and that the extra day will be another weekend day, and that it’ll be called Tessday.  I like it.  Hopefully he’ll come back next week and throw a hotel party, as promised.

Besides all that, much has been going on this week.  Synergeo had our monthly community dinner on Monday night, during which Mad Dog actually came into the building.  Synergeo = 1, Forces of evil = 0.  Tuesday night we had our first Franklin St. small group meeting at my house, in which we established a general consensus of what we’d all like to get out of the group and what we’ll be studying first, and also in which everyone ate delicious cookies from my mom’s tried-and-true recipe.  Last night I already talked about, and tonight I’ve got a Synergeo board meeting to go to and much crafting to accomplish.  Tomorrow night: Busch Gardens (Howl-O-Scream, heck yes!) and a certain amazing person’s birthday bash.

Without further ado, links:

• RVANews.com’s best and worst list is here!
• Do not visit this jewelry site unless you want to get sucked in.
• Surreal: the possibility of zombie-like infections.
• For good little lolcats.
• Tetris tiles.  Now we’re all in big, big trouble.
• Neat: Greener Oil in Scott’s Addition.

hello wknd.

I feel like I’m echoing the usual nervous office chatter when I emphatically say, “I am so ready for the weekend to begin.”

‘Twas a lovely walk to work today though; I love walking in the fog.  One million times more pleasant than walking in the sun.  And infinitely more goth.

Busy weekend ahead of us!  Sparkly shopping, side jobbing, bbq hanging, brunching, churching, and dinner-guests-having.  Hopefully we’ll have time for relaxing as well, although that always gets pushed to the last priority.

Things are beautiful.

hand-power and awkwardness

Attn: old-school Richmonders. Here goes your adolescence. The place where I got my first hair dyes and pyramid-spiked belts gets bulldozed.  I suppose cities have to grow and change, but I don’t like to dwell on it.  I also don’t much like change.

Before I get any farther into this blog and you get any farther into your day, check out Mandy’s flickr.  She’s been posting some amazing photos lately, some of which are super old.  Especially check out the 1999-2001 set, which I’ve titled “when she was goth.”  Also don’t miss out on the update to that set, which I like to call “that one time when Joey bought a hearse.”  I love Mandy.

I’ve been so tired all week that even going to bed at a decent hour last night didn’t help much. After that crazy weekend, I still continued it on Monday night (quite against better judgment). We had Daron over for a dinner of barbecued chicken, creamed corn salad with chevre, and roasted string beans. The power went out on our block, and after sweltering for a while on the back porch, we decided to head to the bowling alley. I’ve only bowled like four times in my life, so I’m awful, and you can imagine how my talents intensify on a diet of bowling alley beer. It was a sordid affair on all accounts, I think, but some of the most fun I’ve ever had as well. Our raucous blend of dancing, singing, high-fiving, clapping, gutterballing fun made us fit right in with the frat boys that frequent the bowling alley on a Monday night. When I got home the power was back on so I was able to get to sleep in relative comfort, but my stomach was killing me again from laughing so hard.

Last night I was determined to have an infinitely more chill evening, and was finally successful. Cleaned up our dinner mess from Monday, did some sewing (finished a dress!) while watching Interview With the Vampire amidst the usual inadvertent exclamations of “hot damn!” due to pale guys wearing satin, and headed to Prabir’s with Talia for a little bit. There we had good conversation and some chips and salsa, and all was right with the world. To bed well before midnight, and at least a tiny bit repaired today.

But now on to more important things…the links that have been piling up.

• Tetris, but IRL! The apocalypse is nigh! Talk about the perfect birthday gift.
• Finally, the Celluloid Pantry recognizes one of my favorite scenes of all time.
• Nicole has been blogging! In particular, I’m excited that she went on one of my favorite trips, the Savannah – Charleston route. I love seeing people get as into Savannah as I am. Sadly, they didn’t like Charleston, which I also love (the cemeteries there are better), but there is definitely a difference. Also, the photos of the place she’ll be at in Japan are beautiful.
• Looks like Maddie needs to save up $328.
• Tatooine vacation?!!! Don’t tease me.
• Almitra finally did some photoblogging. Excellent (and very telling, no doubt) photos of the girl who’s always the life of the party.
• Bubble wrap simulator = need or want? NEED, definitely.
• I have this cookbook, of course. “You can always tell a lady by the way she eats in front of people – like a bird.” As outdated as the statement is, guess what? It’s still true. Nobody but Ashley Wilkes likes to see a girl with a healthy appetite, and let’s face it. He’s not the right guy for you anyway.
• I’ve been digging the zombie-themed stuff at Folded Pigs Porcelain.
• Also, just my steez: beautiful but too-expensive stuff at Louise Black Designs.
• Another reason for not understanding why everyone else isn’t obsessed with exploring abandoned buildings. The romance. In fact, check out the whole set.
• Liza Kate’s photos and determination to have this summer “rule her life” have been inspiring me lately.
• Kind of the best rug I’ve ever seen. This needs to replace the red shag rug upstairs.
• The perfect table umbrella. Except for the fact that it lets light through. That is bad.
• Eek! A new magazine dedicated to what I’d rather do than almost anything else: Organize. Psst, David: we are so organizing stuff when you get here. I’ve been saving some disorderly cabinets. Check it out; you can even thumb through the first issue online or download a PDF.
• Old barns! Another favorite thing about driving around in the country.
• Next audio book to tackle: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
• And speaking of that guy…
• NYC introducing free wifi in parks! Good news. Promising news.
• To David again: holy air guitar, Batman!
• Most of the time I just post this stuff from Appalachian History over on the Midnight Society page, but this was too quotable to be left out of my regular blog.

pet peeves, pickle juice, and unbeige

Last night my bass lesson went swimmingly, and afterwards Marshall and I dined at Ipanema. So I’ve yet another blackened tofu salad under my belt, and all’s right with the world.

I came home to a lovely scene: Maddie embroidering and watching Fiddler on the Roof. I joined her, and then sang my way to bed after the Fruma Sarah scene.

Lately I’ve had the good fortune to find three different online items that echo my thoughts exactly about certain pet peeves:

1. Pet peeve: people who don’t know how to merge
   Blog entry that hits the nail on the head
2. Pet peeve: people who equate “love” with “butterflies”
   Blog entry that hits the nail on the head
3. Pet peeve: people who use Caps Lock
   Organization that hits the nail on the head

And as far as the usual ol’ links go…

• Still more t-shirt surgery tutorials.
• Spell anything with zombies.
• I love Viewmasters and I love this idea.
• There’s a Museum of Useful Things.
• Oooh. A recipe matcher. Maybe now we can get rid of some of the ingredients we have doing nothing in the refrigerator.
• The making of the new Depeche Mode video for “Suffer Well.”
• Yet another amazing zombiewalk.
• Bruce has some new paintings.
• I like Aaron Dyer’s art because (1) it’s clean and (2) it’s reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland.
• How did I miss goth day at Disneyland? Talk about right down my alley.
• Maddie will appreciate pickle juice, I’m just sure of it.
• I’m so glad there’s a blog called “Unbeige.” My thoughts exactly.

In other news, I’m liking it here at the new blog. I spent part of yesterday bulking up all the links on the right-hand side of the page, as well as adding descriptions to them. So when you roll the mouse over the links, little tooltips come up to tell you what each one is. Some are too long, but I’ll get to that later.

I can also moderate comments really easily with WordPress, and I have it set to where you have to have one approved comment before it’ll just let you comment immediately.

But the blog stats are the most interesting thing to me. Xanga had some really basic, rudimentary thing where you could see what state / search engine / time / etc. people were accessing your blog from, but WordPress has fancy charts and graphs and such. Very nice. Much to my surprise, way more people look at my blog every day than I thought. And many more people subscribe to my RSS feed than I thought.

So thanks for reading, everyone!