Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the definition of EPIC.

Marlon fucking Brando is in that! I say, GodDAMN!

Also, MJ, you were so pretty when you were young. I totally have a crush on your natural body.

I hate everything today. Including the book I've been reading, which concluded with this gem of a message: if you just keep fucking up, you will eventually find a boy that will fix you.

I want to fuck on the floor and break shit. This urge and my inability to have it fulfilled compounds my anger.

Nightmare about my teeth breaking, my roommate giving out seven house keys, a party with people smoking in my house, navigating a bus with no breaks rolling down a steep hill, my dog and a large amount of people I no longer no or currently barely know. I've been having a lot of these lately.

Well, not too much has been going on in my world lately.

I've discovered that I don't really like going to shows by myself anymore. I've never really -liked- it, but I used to have a good time anyway. I can't seem to get into them anymore without a little help. I get bored just standing there alone, and have seen enough shows that I have a sense of the band within a few tracks and don't really need to watch the whole set anymore. I've taken to skipping shows or leaving early.

I've also been feeling old lately, which I shouldn't because I'm only 23. But it seems like every time I go out, I feel like I'm the oldest person there and I feel so much older that I can't even converse with people there. Like we're entirely different generations.

What's really frustrating though, is that I've never felt like I was a proper participant in a crowd. Why can't I ever just fit?

Aside from that, my brain has been stuck in the same hamster wheel thoughts it has been stuck on for months and months now. I'm so tired of it but I haven't figured out how to make it stop. I keep trying to change things, but the results are always the same. Part of me really feels like I should just cut my losses, but part of me wants to keep working on it, keep trying to learn and gain what experience I can while I can.

And I'm quitting my job and am going to court Canada Post. I want to be a mailman. I think this would actually be a very satisfactory career for me, not just a job for now. I can see myself delivering mail for the next fifteen years, regardless of whether I go back to school and get a degree. I've always been very passionate about the post. Its kinda weird, I know, but its true.

Kishimoto, how do you live with yourself after publishing this horseshit? Just retire already.

Is it ok to leave a show out of loneliness? It feels like a waste but not engaging makes it a waste too. *tries harder*

( Wangst )

( Awesome )

Ahhh...I feel better now.

I am also really into postcards. You should send me some. I will totally trade you for smooches and love.

Hey Livejournal-land! Help me decide what to wear to a punk show tonight?

Option 1, minidress + docs + fishnets

Option 2, minidress + docs - fishnets

Thoughts?

An update in five minutes!

Gender conflict continues to plague me. This makes me very sad.

I love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and new friends and Red Cat Records!

My iphone has made my laptop kind of obsolete so I don't really follow lj anymore. But I am all about twitter! @thelocalstray

ZOMG COACHELLA STARTS IN FOUR DAYS! JUST THREE MORE SLEEPS BEFORE I FLY OUT! ZOOOOOOMMMMM~~

Also, I ♥ you guys and I'm sorry I'm such a flake lately.

The countdown to Coachella reads: 12 Days.

Today, I finally picked up my plane ticket down to LA which has solidified my times and allowed me to start taking a look at carpool options. So far, I've got one potential lead for the way TO the festival, which is really not solid enough for me.

So, I started looking at Greyhound and it looks like I can catch bus to Palm Springs from LA, no problem, for $30 round trip. According to the Coachella website, the Palm Springs airport is only 23 miles from the festival, so I can cab that without draining my bank account, or even hitch it, no problem.

I made sure that my flight in on Thursday is pretty early (I arrive at 10am) and my flight out is pretty late (I need to be back at the airport by 4pm) so I've got plenty of time to get my commute in order and still have all three festival days stress free.

The last piece is a tent. My grandma has one that she said she'd lend me but it is MASSIVE, so I'm thinking I'll just head by Canadian Tire or something and get a little two-man.

I am so excited!

I got an email yesterday that made me really sad. I had this friend, male, with whom I was really good pals a few years ago when we worked together. We just get along great and he's totally rad. We stayed in touch even after I moved, chatting and corresponding occasionally.

So, I come back to Vancouver and I emailed him that we should hang out and we make plans but we never finalize them and they never come together. Kinda sucked but I let it go.

Anyway, when my email got hacked, he's one of the people that got emailed with the "omg help I'm a huge idiot who managed to get stranded in London and now need your a financial bail out!" thing. He replied to it to tease me a bit a make sure everything was ok and so I emailed him back and included a 'I miss being pals with you, let's hang.'

He replied with:

"We will always be great pals, but one day soon(ish) Janna I'll be married and I could get in a lot of trouble for hanging around with another smoking hot chick!

You will get an invite to my birthday though :)"

Now, I understand where he's coming from but...it sucks. If I were a guy we could hang out all the time and it wouldn't matter at all, but because I'm a girl, we can't.

I've also been really confused by some of the other male acquaintances in my life. One of them, I can't tell if he's giving me the cold shoulder. It feels like he is, but most of the time we can actually talk, its while he's at work, so being busy is understandable. I send him a couple texts over the weekend though and one last night and he didn't reply to any of them. And I can come up with tons of reasons why he wouldn't have, I mean, its not like I answer all of my texts and he is always pretty stupidly busy, but...I don't know. He's normally pretty good at sending some kind of response eventually.

What's really frustrating about it though is that I don't know why he'd be ignoring me. He goes out of his way to encourage me into pestering him and to assure me that he really doesn't mind and he's usually really good natured when I tease him but...just nothing, pretty much since the last time I saw him a couple weeks ago. I guess I'll just ask if something's changed. It's ok if it has, it was bound to eventually, I just want to know one way or another so I can stop feeling shitty about it.

My other other guy has been kind of a trip too...Basically, we'd met socially a few times and then he was out of town and we hadn't exchanged contact info so we couldn't really harass each other, but I digress. Right before I left, I bugged him on facebook and he was online so me messaged back and forth a bit and the moved to msn and then exchanged phone numbers and...basically since last Thursday, I've been in near constant communication with him via text and msn. I'm talking like...530 in the morning until midnight all week. NOBODY likes to talk to me that much. It was really nice, though maybe a bit unusual.

Anyway, I basically want to be pals and for it to be super casual. He's been growing a habit of using endearments on me though, like sweetie and dear or whatever. Also, he has volunteered to come see Mirah with me. Now, this is a young, mohawked man who is so in-your-face punk that even -I- have to roll my eyes a bit. At a Mirah show. Because I have tickets. Even though I told him that I was actually just going to skip the show because I'd rather take the opportunity to hang with him, seeing as it'll be a few weeks before we get another chance to.

It is just...kinda moving past 'pals' borders.

Sigh. Why are boy/girl things so damn complicated?

Whatever. I'm going to pick up Hey Ocean!'s record after work and stop worrying about it. Or try to, anyway.

Hey kids! Just to let you know, my email account got hacked on the 1st, so, if you received a weird email from me telling you I'm stranded in London, it is a lie. I'm really sorry if you got spammed.

I think I need a new job. I don't like mine.

Crisis averted. THANK BOWIE. And once again, I feel my normal generally chipper and spaced out self. Bring on New Orleans!

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HATE EVERYTHING.

That is all.

Alright, kids! Time for a semi-real update of my recent adventures.

- I am going to New Orleans on Friday! Work is sending me down for a conference but I should be able to swing some free time on the first day (setup day, which I'm hoping to take care of from 8 until 9 am, leaving me with the rest of the day to wander), in the evenings, and in the morning of my last day since I don't have to be at the airport until noon or so. I'm getting postcards for like, a million people! If you want one too, email me your address to: banana.soap@gmail.com. My usual address notebook has wandered off, so assume that I don't have your address right now if you have sent it to me previously.

- I bought my ticket to Coachella! I am now financially strapped but it is so fucking worth it. I can't wait! It is going to be amazing and I am going to camp and sleep under the stars if it isn't raining. I am going to see X and Leonard Cohen and Public Enemy and Cage the Elephant and the Black Keys and Ghostland Observatory and Fucked Up and Henry and a million other bands of epic and awesome!

- I also bought an iphone! I will therefor be able to take photos of my NOLA and Coachella adventures! Also, I have an mp3 player for the plane! I could cry of relief over this aspect. It is a pretty fucking cool gadget, I'm not gonna lie. Totally worth every penny. Also, thanks to my good friend Nick, I now have a wallpaper displaying the words "DON'T PANIC" in large, friendly letters every time I unlock the keys to use it.

- I went record shopping today and picked up '200 Million Thousand' by the Black Lips and 'Jet Black' by Gentleman Reg.

I'm not overly impressed with the Black Lips. It sounds like every other one of their records and everything else Vice is likely to put out. So, grainy, trashy, coked-out and pretentious. Now, that doesn't make it a BAD record, but it is definitely predictable, so I'm mildly disappointed. Also, I think I somehow managed to get a censored version of it. Guess I'm heading back to Red Cat tomorrow to talk with them about it.

'Jet Black' on the other hand is a total audiogasm in my opinion. Every track is unique and compulsively listenable, while all the while remaining a cohesive whole. I'm very, very pleased with it and will post it at some point in the near future.

- My current personal soundtrack is including "Beast of Burden" by the Rolling Stones and "Just What I needed" by the Cars. I had a few other tracks settled on but they're in my notebook at work.

- Started reading 'Oblivion' by David Foster Wallace. The content is as good as I expected, but the author bio crushes me pretty fiercely. It is written in the present tense, "David lives in California".

The past week has been eventful and long, like it should span several. In the end though, not much has changed. I feel the same way I always do, which seems to be a state of permanent uncertainty on where I stand with everyone and everything I see in my day to day. But I guess this is why I like records so much, they give me something I can focus on and that I can react to with my full emotional spectrum without having to worry about how that spectrum is received.

My despair comes at midnight
and I look on as thought I were long dead
the black eyes and the brow tired of flowers,
the bitter honey of my grief
drips on this sick earth
that so often keeps me awake on red nights
to see autumn's restless dying.

My despair comes at midnight
out of confused dreams of sun and rain,
in the morning I admit that I praise everything,
that I am a stranger to my own door and fear,
many thousands of years slide down the cold walls
and carry me a bit more toward winter.

My despair comes at midnight,
the valley has changes, the moon floats on the meadow,
the angry evening rests its broken sickle
against the windowsill and regards me.
I am quite sure that I am as broken
as this sickle, no one is going to deceive me now,
not even the river still uttering its sentence
before morning comes.

(Thomas Bernhard)

Lately, I empathize more than I care to admit with this poem. I am glad that I ran into one of his other poems today and pulled 'Under the Iron of the Moon' off my book shelf.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is all.

Last night, I had a strange dream. I was in my apartment and it was particularly dark and cave like. There were large and terrifying spiders hanging from the ceiling. My mom and my little sister were there, in the dark recesses of the cave/apartment. My mom was calling for Aztek, my dog that passed away at the end of December. She and Dani, my sister, came into the living room, where I'd been sleeping on the couch, and saw me staring in terror at these giant spiders with a fly swatter, trying to work up the nerve to kill them. She told me to stop and swatted at the yellow and black striped spider with her own fly swatter that looked a bit like a plastic beaver tail. The spider dropped to the ground and scurried into the darkness. My mom chased after it. A few minutes later, the spider scurried back into the living room and dove beneath the couch.

Aside from that, all I can remember is how terrified I felt, both of the spiders and because Aztek wasn't coming when we called her.