HOLY FLURKING SNIT!
Adam, Megan, and I are going to see the Rolling Stones tomorrow!

ALSO
Congrats on getting published in Falderol, Dave! Racking up the publications is hard, but oh so necessary.

I HOPE YOU DIE. I HOPE WE BOTH DIE.
Somebody from Seventeen magazine ordered all of the zines by teenagers carried from Pander distro, which, as some of you know, includes my zine the Patron Saint of Small Things. They sent an e-mail to one of the zinesters with a questionarre and she started a thread about it on Pander's message board; this is how we know. I feel partially relieved that I haven't received the same e-mail, and partially rejected (because a rejection from Seventeen is a rejection is a rejection is a rejection), and partially freaked out about the potential for a huge audience to read some of the unflattering things I wrote about, say, working in Bill DeWeese's district office. I play the "get out your zine and think about what different people would think of it" game all the time, but never have I played on quite this scale before. It's all about deferral and language, baby.

Other than that, I've been listening to the Mountaingoats a bit, especially "No Children," a really droll and bitter song. ("In my life I hope I lie/and tell everyone you were a good wife and I hope you die/I hope we both die/I hope I cut myself shaving/I hope that it bleeds all day long/Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises/we're pretty sure they're all wrong.") I'm sure that sounds more bitter than droll, but it's a really sing-songy melody, and all together I like it a lot. Other than that, it's all about the records.

USEFULNESS MECHANISM(S)
I feel like a fish back in water in the office. It's been three weeks since I had takeout from Sree's (which, as you would know if you ate sublime Indian takeout as much as I, is far too long) and I'm finding that whenever I'm here in Pittsburgh my thoughts are entirely different. The whole inside of my head is different, albeit in a way that is now familiar to me. It's gruelling to go from home to school too often. The moody, snowy atmosphere on campus, which kind of brought me down yesterday, is just pretty and comforting today, I don't know why. It makes even a privileged, over-expensive campus like this seem like a haven, especially with so much undisturbed snow on the ground. You feel as if you could send secret messages to people and they would only be read by their intended recipients, no interruption between the page you touch and the page they read.

GIVE ME THINGS THAT DON'T GET LOST
Today I got all nerded up in my winter gear and walked all around Oakland and Squirrel Hill. I even packed a lunch so I could spend the whole day out in the world. This works out pretty well, I think, because by the time it's dark I'm ready to be inside for a while and sit still.

I love the Carnegie Library. This is what I checked out today: Soundtrack, Jessica Abel; The Greatest of Marlys!, Lynda Barry; Caricature, Daniel Clowes; West Wind, Mary Oliver; Atlantis, Mark Doty; Roman Fever, Marcus Cafagna; Nine Horses, Billy Collins; Scarlet's Walk, Tori Amos; 69 Love Songs Vol. III, the Magnetic Fields; Lust For Life, Iggy Pop; Standards, Tortoise; Song For My Father, Horace Silver; Songs For Torching, Billie Holiday. In the afternoon I went to Jerry's Fine Used Records and picked up some Tom Waits, Pretenders, and Kinks. I wrote letters in the 61c for a while, but I had to get home because it was getting dark. Not a bad day. I even saw two people I know.