michael stipe and his fine band were on sesame street last week, bringing a little tear to my emotional eye. the song was "shiny happy monsters" alternated with "sad and sobbing monsters" to showcase to kids the wide range of emotions, and the fact that they can so rapidly flip, i suppose. it was amusing also cause this bunch of serious nerd-rockers sort of had to *force* looking like they were having fun, especially m.s. sheesh. you're playing your guitar with honkers. lighten up, buddies.

anyway rem is great, and always goes with fall for me for some reason, and i don't really know where that came from...... i am trying to interest myself in music made more recently, i am sick of just about every cd we have and would like to branch out a bit. then, it requires some degree of motivation and hobby-like time commitment, which turns me off these days. mostly i sit around and wait to hatch.

it is odd, when you go to move, and take everything down, and realize just how much *stuff* you have here and there, useful or not, and how that stuff defines you in a way. so far there are 7 full boxes of books and more to come. so that suggests that that is the most important aspect of our lives. i will most definitely not have that many boxes of clothes, or sex toys. so. it's just odd, looking around at this gorgeous apartment, and how it will once again be a blank slate for the next folks, and i'll have a blank slate in the new house, which will be my slate and no one else's, and no stomps from my ceiling or ll's telling me not to pull out the jimny weeds that are so precious somehow. that part will be awesome. but moving is sort of intense, especially right now... but then, so is everything, right now.

but you have to know how (so states the Cat, somewhat ominously--he IS quite the trickster). i USED to know how, or so i thought, and then for a while i learned how in a totally different way, now i am not sure i know how at all, or even if i really knew how then either. here is a seussian verse about it:

it was fun long ago but rather confusing
to think of amusements as so very amusing
now there is too much and too little to do
minding thing 1 and brewing thing 2

hahahaha.......terrible.

naturally i wait and wait for a computer, which finally arrives and is glorious, and all i can think to do with it is fiddle around on the internet. i feel so full of lazy interest in so many things, it is a shame that i choose to passively write about them rather than go do research as my pricy liberal education taught. wellllll. sort of.

so since i am so very fond of making lists lately, i shall make one that i can constantly flagellate myself with should more fiddlings lead me here. by this time next year i will be:

1. a beekeeper
2. also a grocer
3. perhaps with a few fingers in catering as well
4. deimpregnated, nursing (most likely), mom of *2*!
5. a better knitter
6. gaining knowledge of essential home improvement techniques, like perhaps tiling, drywall arts, and hole digging

it is a lot for a year. get going, self. the time for lethargy is drawing to a close. either enjoy it while it lasts, or cut it loose and.......well, read about it while you're waiting. tee hee.

cry

-stories on npr, like the teacher in afghanistan, who, despite death threats to her sons by the taliban, refuses to stop teaching because her students are "all our children, our people."

-snow in april

-everything left unsaid with rachel

-songs with too many memories attached, remnants of past lives

laugh

-wikipedia's entry on "Mr. Roboto"

-bugley

-alex trebek and paul together in the same room

-obvious overstated factoids, such as "Humans are the only species to develop bunions, as no other species wears shoes." uh, what about horses? har har

well, not *guzzling* per se.....but certainly cushy in my american clothes, coat, vehicle, headed to a cozy home without 28 inhabitants to share the 7 rooms and with drinking water that isn't sewage.

so went the story the other day of an iraqi family, who can't afford propane to boil the impurities out of the water, since no one can work, since they are basically in hiding and/or their workplaces have been bombed the living shit out of. so they just let the water sit for a day, and the big stuff settles but the water still tastes like shit.

only read this if you want to become angry, depressed, and/or hopeless about not only US involvement in this 'war', but the state of the world and the fucked up nature of war in the first placenpr

lives are lives and not numbers, but 3,166 american lives vs. a possible 650,000 iraqi? and WTF with the bush administration's "guesstimate" of 30,000. i'm not surprised, but i'm goddamned pissed, and i don't know what to do about it.

i read a political comic the other day satirizing the complete blithe unwillingness of americans to let the war affect their daily lives in any way. i will admit, ok, yes, i am part of that problem. but other than an occasional bawl in the car, other than a many-times removed committal to keep myself informed, and other than flare ups of righteous indignation, is there anything that really *CAN* be done. i can't leave my job or family to hold a sign in NY or DC. or at least i'm not willing to. i admire the women in black organization, but feel slightly hypocritical about doing that, since i'm not willing to give up a lot of my time or energy, since honestly, i'm not ALL that into it.

i don't know. why did i even bother writing this on a public forum, if i really believe there is nothing to be done?