I got my Purple Passion Post-it Notes!! And my new trash can. What I really ought to order are some of these:

lol @ "Bring functional humor to the workplace"

Holy crap is this day ever dragging along...

Happy birthday, mcsassypants and _katiekaboom_!!

The other day I bought the 20th (!!) anniversary edition of Nirvana's debut album Bleach. Man, does THIS ever bring me back! The remastered album sounds really good, and it includes a Bleach era live show and tons of new pictures. I seem to remember going through a phase where I'd listen to nothing but this and Sailing the Seas of Cheese. I'm listening to my Bleach cassette right now for old time's sake, and because I left my new one in the car.

I also went through a phase where my two favorite albums were The End of Silence and Pretty Hate Machine. Emo jwright_71673 is emo. :-[

For the most part, I've been discarding cassettes as I replace them with CDs, but I think I'll hang onto my old copy of Bleach. It just doesn't seem right to throw it away.

I have a super short week, ftw; I'm only working Monday and Tuesday. Then it's off to Vegas with my sweetie!! I wonder what kind of trouble lonely_doll & jwright_71673 can get into in Vegas...

It was so delightfully gloomy outside I decided to walk around the lake after work; I listened to the doom/goth metal band Virgin Black to complete the mood. It was really pretty! Like, super still and kinda foggy. Embarrassingly, I kept finding myself reminded of the overall aesthetic of the first Twilight movie.

Wow, Guitar World's been around 30 years; I just got the anniversary issue in the mail. Also, anyone want a free subscription? They're offering me a free gift subscription if I renew (which I always do).

I'm nearly about to actually profit from using a credit card; I have 2,309 points on my Amazon VISA and I need 2,500 to get a $25 voucher for use at Amazon.com. I've been using the card for just about everything for the past few months and then paying the balance in full to avoid finance charges. It's still kind of absurd how much you have to charge (like, in the thousands) before they throw you $25, but still.

I have a US Bank VISA and car loan that won't be paid off for a while, sadly, but the interest is low on both. Since the site adds up what I owe them, I think I'll just start keeping track of how much the total goes down from month to month and go from there. Someday I'll be back to not owing anybody anything, which is a pretty amazing feeling...

We're gonna have a TV party tonight; alright!!
We're gonna have a TV party alright; tonight!!

--Black Flag

I don't suppose Henry Rollins is a big fan of the CW's Melrose Place, but whatever; tonight is the night that HEATHER LOCKLEAR returns to the show. I would even venture to call this a TV event, but I expect I'm in the minority.

Also, the Visitors are not our friends. They are not who they appear to be. :-[

Other than drinking too much on Friday (when will I ever learn??) it was a pretty good weekend; next Friday I think I'll make sure that all I have in the fridge is a 4-pack of Surly or whatever and then when it's gone it's gone.

Jenn and I played @ The Coffee Hag Saturday night; pretty decent show, considering we hardly ever see each other anymore. Mom showed up, which was cool; she hasn't seen us in years! Also, I finally got a copy of this show from a few months ago that a friend of ours recorded for us; I think I'll make a single disc of the highlights from both sets and give 'em to whoever wants one.

There's this hilarious cover of "Sweet Child O' Mine" in the second set; we used to play this pretty regularly when we had a full band and played bars. It'd been a LONG time since we attempted it but decided to go for it anyway (I think there was a kid in the crowd that was a huge GNR fan or something). Anyway, it sounds pretty good up 'till the solo, at which point Jenn and I simultaneously break into what sounds like two totally different songs. What's sad is the solo has been hard-wired into my head since I was a teenager; I just had a total meltdown and couldn't remember a single thing.

Yesterday we watched the Big Game at the Green Mill and had cheap drinks and apps. That place rules!

Per the usual, I didn't sleep at all last night; I just lay there feeling nervous. Also, I keep getting paranoid that I'm getting sick; I've been getting these waves of dizziness/mild nausea/confusion but then it goes away. And it's always hard to tell if the paranoia is making me feel sick or the other way around. Anyway, I seem to be doing okay for the moment...

My favorite thing about payday is paying all my bills; I get to work, get myself a cup of coffee, and get right to it. This morning, however, I kept getting distracted by, um, work, and now I can't remember if I paid my Amazon card or not. Like, I was logged in and kind of remember paying it but then this guy came in and we worked on something for like 20 minutes and then when I went back to the computer it was logged out. But I don't remember logging out so maybe it logged itself out due to inactivity? And now I can't remember if I paid it or not, so I'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

Like, sometimes I feel like I'm going a little nuts but whenever my routine is interrupted it totally knocks me out of commission. Also, I forget things like minutes after they happen.

I shouldn't even post this because it's ridiculous but wth.

I reread Bram Stoker's Dracula last month, finishing right around Halloween. This is possibly the most chilling paragraph in the book (in my opinion), especially considering the monstrous aspects of Stoker's vampires, as well as the very real idea of damnation in the book:

from Jonathan Harker's journal, 3 October:

"To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks."

Also, Van Helsing is very DRAMATIC. It'd been quite a while since I last read this book; I'd kind of forgotten.

Anyway, Susan demands my attention; also, she says Dracula scares her so I should quit talking about it. In order to make her feel better I'll use my Chococat icon, which she secretly adores but would never admit to.

Happy birthday, bertine! Have an awesome day!!

I put $10 worth of gas in my car Tuesday morning and it only lasted 'till today.

BACK IN MY DAY U COULD FILL UR TANK FOR TEN BUCKS OMG. :-[

Anyway, I just filled the damn tank this morning for close to $40. Sigh.

I just listened to the new Alice In Chains album here, and was pretty blown away; it's at least as good as the last one they did with Layne and possibly better. There's some really sick and twisted riffs on there, as well as some awesome acoustic stuff. The new singer's voice blends with Jerry's in a similar way to Layne's, but he's definitely not trying to just copy Layne. Very cool.

The new Slayer album is really good too; it's a little more varied than their last one. They do the metal/hardcore hybrid better than anybody, but you also wanna hear slower, spookier stuff, and they deliver a good dose of both on the new CD.

Also, I just think it's cool that bands I listened to in 1990 on my Walkman while walking to high school are still relevant.

I hate when I'm just about to tell the Internet something and then forget what I was going to say.

Uptown Monster Ballad

*sniff* :-(

lonely_doll and I have a framed poster of the CBGB's toilet in our bathroom; it's situated in such a way that you can't help but stare at it while sitting on the actual toilet. Is this meta?

Up 'till fairly recently, the toilet in the Uptown Bar's men's room didn't really work, and I think the stall was missing the door part. It's a shame they're tearing the place down after they finally got the bathroom all fixed up.

One time at Liquor Lyle's, the stall in the men's room was torn down in what was presumably a drunken rage, so that you'd walk in there and there'd just be a toilet sitting there in the corner of the room. Would you ever use this toilet? I mean, think how weird it'd be to walk in the bathroom and some dude's just sitting there taking a dump and reading the City Pages...

For the most part, dudes in bars just use urinals so none of this matters all that much. After 11 p.m. or so on a Saturday night, however, the urinal becomes more of a "suggested target."

Good times, man...good times.

When I was a kid I had a cat named "Topsy." After I was like 13 or so I decided that "Topsy" was a dumb name so I just started called him "Kitty" or "Cat" or "Hey You There" or whatever. Anyway, he was my best friend in the world; every night, he'd crawl under my covers and then crawl back out so only his cute little black and white (and pink nose!) head was sticking out, and he'd lay his head on my shoulder and fall asleep.

Lately, Susan has been super affectionate with me; I don't know why. Just now, she was like, OH HEY THERE with her little paws and all and so I picked her up and put her on my lap. That's where she is now, and that's where she'll likely be 'till she decides she wants to be elsewhere. She also likes laying on my pillow right above where my head goes and tickling me with her whiskers.

The end.

I was going to listen to Mötley Crüe this morning, but figured why waste a perfectly good gloomy morning and listened to Switchblade Symphony again instead. Anyway, I kind of have mixed feelings about the Crüe; like, if I'm going that route I'd almost rather listen to Twisted Sister. If I'd have been thinking maybe I'd have grabbed a Type O Negative CD on the way out. (yeah you wanna go out 'cuz it's raining and blowing, etc...)

My Bally membership dropped to $12.87 a month! I used the extra cash I wasn't counting on having to buy a six-pack of PBR tall boys. :-P

Fire drill at 2:15 p.m. Exciting times, guys.

I must be productive today...

Yay, I fixed the Internet! I was planning on calling tech support after work last night but it looked like it was working, but REALLY slow (like, dial-up slow). I managed to open an e-mail I got from Qwest yesterday morning, which linked me to a site where there was a "reboot modem" button, which totally worked! (don't laugh if this is all really obvious; I was using an AOL dial-up connection on a 1998 PC 'till 2007...)

This morning I slept 'till my alarm went off at 6 a.m. Yay! I arrived at work only to find that we've somehow lost access to all the really important network folders and apparently they don't know what happened.

I listened to the first Switchblade Symphony CD on the way to work, which I got at Hot Topic around 1995 or so. Hot Topic used to be a lot cooler; like, back then I don't know how else I'd have found stuff like this. Lately I've been listening to a lot of darkwave/goth/ambient/whatever via last.fm, which is cool; I've always liked that whole aesthetic.