Stop Selling Me Breast Cancer!

I've got three things for y'all today.

1. I agreed (possibly when drunk) to read Walt Whitman at the gallery hop next Friday. Now they're wanting me to do stuff, like write a bio and actually read the bastard.

My first attempt:

Virginia Paine is a Louisville writer whose poems, musings and comics can be found at www.milkyboots.blogspot.com. She is also a bicycling advocate and a part-time seamstress for the local clothing company LauraFauna.

I showed it to Damien, and then started bitching about how I hate labeling myself. So I wrote this one as well and sent them both.

Virginia Paine is a lazy, pretentious, indie rock hipster who wastes all her time drinking and reading webcomics. She hates work of any kind, which is why she doesn't own a car and can barely scrape together rent money month after month. She tends to avoid talking about her feelings at all costs and is scared of almost everyone. Her inarticulate ramblings and mildly funny comics can be found online at www.milkyboots.blogspot.com.

We'll see which one they pick. I feel like people often think I'm some kind of a saint for riding a bike. I do enjoy it, but more than that, I don't want to pay for a car and I'm frightened of loud, fast things.
And I still haven't gotten over The Baby Jesus Dread Pirate Roberts, which was my first and only car.

2. 10 For 25

-Cut Copy "In Ghost Colors"
-Marley in town!
-Paprika (movie)
-butternut squash and black bean chili (with barley!)
-finally getting sick of cabbage
-Rainer Maria "There Will Be No Night"
-The Millionare
-puking in the AM (fucking tequila)
-JWoolard texting me: "You should write that Fart Party girl again and tell her if she comes you'll take her to the Maker's Mark Distillery"
-Fuzion last Friday. Shit was hype!

3.

Atlantic

Still no comic, sorry. I haven't been feeling very funny/have been drinking too much to remember what happened to me.

I've been listening to a bunch of music that I listened to back in '99-'01. It keeps popping up on my favorite music archive and I can't seem to help myself. For the last three days, it's been the Rainer Maria EP Atlantic. This album was written on the eve of the band's move from my hometown to NYC.
I love the three songs on the record, especially "There Will Be No Night," which has a rhythmic, driving movement that makes me sway everytime I hear it. It sounds like waves; actually the whole EP is water-themed.
However ... as much as I love the album, I've always sort of resented it as a symbol of the band's abandonment of Madison. They began to tell people in interviews that they were FROM New York, which upset me, a fan since their first shows and awkward, clashing early records, before Caitlin learned to sing and play well. Madison supported them for five years or more and they were too concerned with seeming cool to acknowledge it. In fact, I never listened to any of their releases written after their move.
But listening to the record now, I've realized that they didn't hate Madison, I'd just never really listened to the lyrics of "Soul Singer." I knew the song was about the city: "I'm leaving the lakes behind/where the sweetest soul singer came to die." Otis Redding's plane crashed into one of Madison's five lakes, killing him, in 1967.
And now, eight or nine years later, I finally heard this line: "In place of/This place I love/To pieces."

I'm not really in any place to judge their decisions to move; I've spent a fair amount of the last several years bitching about Madison, the cloyingly liberal college town capital of Wisconsin. I've hated Madison from afar, and I've been mad at Kyle and Caitlin and Bill the whole time since they moved. Me and my double standards.
Anyway, the point is, I think I'm finally getting over these grudges, against my hometown and Rainer Maria. I'm mellowing out, finally.

Apologizing!

I've been having a weird couple weeks/months/year.

My Life

Head Explodes.

10 for 13 (plus +6!)

-sitting at home, drinking bourbon in my running clothes
-cried while checking email
-finished 'Western Star' rewrite (let me know if you want to read it)
-stared at phone, waiting for people to call
-forgot to tell JWoolard about idea for art show
-racked up karmic debt (gifts of shoes, tire tubes and vegan chocolate pie)
-Gretchen and I drinking bourbon and reading to each other from our journals
-chastized by Cousin Laura for smoking near a kid
-talked to Megan's mom on the phone
-tried to download the Photographic's new album. password failed due to GUILT
-called Nick Campbell back
-text from Kayti: "NW Portland is Madarye" (reply: you just made my year)
-downloaded Alkaline Trio reissue, which helped start the crying
-made up a new phrase: "Gotta maintain my asstits"
-house internets not working
-head exploded