I has a fiancée!!

Love is the sound of
Crying guitars, rainy nights...
lonely_doll's laughter.

A scratchy record,
A rediscovered passion,
Melody of life.

...but mostly I'm happy 'cuz I spent the whole weekend with my sweetie! Yesterday we went to the Egg and I for breakfast and then wandered over to Dreamhaven for their Big Sale. I found these two books on sale for cheap:

Revenge of the Latchkey Kids
Speed Racer: Born to Race

While digging through some bins of comics they were selling for a quarter, I found a couple issues of Jim Mahfood's "Grrl Scouts," which I've been meaning to check out for quite a while. I was gonna buy the single issues (they only had two of 'em) but decided to get a TPB instead. Later we stopped at Cheapo and lonely_doll bought Nirvana's second album, "Nevermind" -- the only copy I've ever had was on cassette, which I can probably discard now. I found an A Camp single with four songs on it, a Helloween album, and a copy of the first Nativity in Black CD, which I've also only previously owned on cassette. Some of the highlights are an amazing goth/horror version of "Black Sabbath" by Type O Negative, a slamming industrial-metal version of "Children of the Grave" by White Zombie, and a cover of "Supernaut" by Trent Reznor and Al Jourgensen.

We also hung out at Bryant Lake Bowl for a while, and then had dinner downtown at the King and I. Today, we headed over to Powderhorn Park for the MayDay festival, and ended up staying there pretty much all afternoon. It was so nice out! I think I'm a little groggy from being out in the sun all day, but it was sure fun!

I have more fun when I'm with lonely_doll than I ever woulda thought possible, guys. She's so awesome!

Edit: I just realized that I transposed lines from the first and second verses of "In Bloom" for the title to my entry. The first line of the song is "I'm so happy, 'cuz today I found my friends." And the first line of the second verse is "I'm so lonely, and that's okay; I shaved my head."

Guys! lonely_doll knitted me a scarf!!

It's black, white, and red, which are my favorite colors. It's pretty much the best scarf ever, guys.

I'm tired but happy!! I think it's time to go home and take a nap on my broken Klik-Klak sofa/bed.

I think I'm actually no longer even tempted by the junk food machine I decided to never use again as a retroactive resolution for 2008. I was just looking at it and nothing seemed remotely appetizing. Also, I had a bunch of dollar bills left over from the weekend so I put them all in the change machine and now I has laundry money. Clean laundry = win. Overly-priced empty calories = fail.

lonely_doll looked SO HOT Sunday night in her pink angora sweater and pink and black patterned tights. *SWOON*

Looks like it's time to go microwave my lunch!!

That is all.

So there's a theory out there called STRING THEORY, which purports that the fundamental building blocks of Reality are tiny vibrating loops of energy, rather than the point particles we associate with the Standard Model of particle physics. The theory is still very much a work in progress. Optimistic physicists like Brian Greene hope the theory ends up being correct; for one thing, it could prove to be the elusive TOE (Theory of Everything) that would ostensibly bridge the gap between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

I have my own reasons for celebrating the theory. Mainly, it seems kind of, I don't know, ROMANTIC in a way, don't you think? The universe ends up being something of a "cosmic symphony," with endless layers of "harmony."

Example: I decided while sitting around thinking about String Theory that I was like the open (played without fretting) low E string on a guitar. Simple yet effective, fairly straight-forward but with seemingly endless harmonic overtones (especially if you're running your guitar through a valve amp with lotsa gain). By itself, the low E sounds pretty neat, and it's definitely one of the building blocks of rock and roll.

But there's something missing, see.

I then decided that lonely_doll was like the B played on the second fret of the A string. If you play this note along with the low E string (I'm inadvertently handing out a pretty basic guitar lesson here) you get a root/fifth chord, or "power chord," which is in and of itself one of the most awesome things in the world. It can also be the initial building blocks to either E Minor or E Major, both of which are like the sound of life itself. Sometimes crap happens and it sounds sad, and sometimes everything's going great and it sounds happy. But it never ceases to sound beautiful, and I thank Whoever put all these theoretical strings into motion every day that I'm half of something that's so Amazing and Wonderful that there really aren't any words that could come CLOSE to describing it. (Music comes closer, IMHO...)

P.S. If there are any experts out there, please cut me some slack. I realize it's quite a stretch to start with theoretical particle physics, and end up with LUV by way of rock and roll. :-)

So today I changed the strings on my Les Paul and polished the thing up so it's just like new! It's SHINY. Coffee Hag owner/Sister Gin vocalist Jenn Melby says that people have requested Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and Concrete Blond's "Joey," so I made sure I remembered how to play 'em. It's funny the stuff you remember -- I hadn't played that little lead guitar bit at the beginning of "White Rabbit" in YEARS now, but as soon as I got going the whole thing came back to me. I'm a little out of practice, but I should be fine if I just play a little every day from now 'till the gig...

lonely_doll and I went to the Mall of America! Imagine THAT, right?? I got some sweet dealz:

Stomp! by Nicholas van Pelt for $0.49.
KISS: Behind the Mask by David Leaf and Ken Sharp for $5.98
A version of the old vertical scroller Xevious for GBA for $3.99.
"March of the Penguins" for GBA for $9.99. (I have a feeling this game is dumb, but it came with a stuffed penguin so I couldn't resist...)

There's an interview with Ellen Page in the latest Entertainment Weekly. This bit is pretty funny -- she's talking about seeing "The Breakfast Club" for the first time and being a bit let down:

"It's obviously not about my generation, but I was like, okay, they're all just talking and realizing they're human beings," says Page, who was born in 1987, two years after the movie was released. "But then it was all about Ally Sheedy changing to look like the pretty girl to get with Emilio Estevez, for chrissakes." She bangs her fist on the table. "I was so angry."

Ellen Page is awesome. You should all check out Hard Candy if you haven't seen it yet.

OMG Valentine's Day this week!! :-D

Well, one of my meetings has been rescheduled for the third time, probably in a vain attempt to get everyone "on the same page" before being in the same room. Whatever.

Anyway, I was studying the New York Dolls album cover this morning while the car was warming up, and I noticed there's a can of Schlitz with a STRAW sticking out of it sitting next to a hairy ankle stuffed into a jaw-droppingly fabulous shoe. Somehow, that really sums up the sound of the album in a way words alone could never hope to do. Actually, the Transformer album art does the same thing. I think if my initial goal of becoming a costumed adventurer doesn't work out, my contingency plan will be to become a glam rocker.

Oh my goodness, you guys! You should see the White Stripes scarf lonely_doll's making for me -- it's SO COOL! I'm going to wear it with my long black coat and one of those cute little old man caps, and the world shall smile upon me, like this: :-D