Funny yes? Funny no? All I know is that the Indie Rock Copyediting Squad (which, right now, consists of ME) is about ready to descend on them for misspelling Galaxie 500. It's G-A-L-A-X-I-E, not G-A-L-A-X-Y. If you're gonna teach 'em to talk the talk, you can teach 'em how to spell the band's name right.

try cock, concrete vibrator, nipple (in electrical books), screw, nut, gases of combustion, vibratory rammer, stud finder.

You can't tell me that technical information isn't funny.

"Did you talk to him?" I asked, hoping that Record Store Crush Boy had recognized him and decided to strike up a conversation, you know, something like, "Hey, you and your adorable friend with the amazing musical taste haven't been around lately. Could you please tell her that I miss her like crazy and that I would like to escort her to the next indie rock hipster social function?"

But no, Matt didn't talk to him, so we may never know if he really misses me. Or if he even notices that I'm alive.

I knew I should have gone to that show last night. I had completely forgotten that it was even happening.

I did not interpret KY as "Kentucky," I interpreted it as the jelly.

Oof. Ouch!

I was so thrown off that I managed to miss the change toss and drop my fifteen cents on the ground. The cars behind me honked and honked while I dug around for fifteen cents so I could pay the toll and get to work.

Such is my life.

I've just written two two-page papers about Greene and Catholicism. Papers that are due in...er...less than one hour. That's how I operate. Procrastination rules my world.

And now I've got "Catholic Block" by Sonic Youth stuck in my head. I'd go into the memories that the Sonic Youth album Sister evokes, but I've really got to get my ass to school now. It will just have to wait until later, I guess.

[Ray, as it happens, is the classic rock boy I'm talking about here. And he does look mighty cute in indie-boy drag.]

Yeah, yeah...emo is awesome. Matt has said it many times, but this confirms it: T-shirt irony is dead.

I preferred the sticker that said "cheer up emo kid." I would link to it, but the Unamerican catalog is down.

Some dopey emo chick who is a friend of Ray's called me a raver because I like Sebadoh, the Magnetic Fields, Yo La Tengo, Elliott Smith, and GBV. Uh, since when does that make one "a raver"? Did I miss the special K-Tel release of Mope Rock's Greatest Hits Remixed? But then again, she listed Sunny Day Real Estate and Jimmy Eat World on her list of the 10 Greatest Indie Bands Ever, so obviously her opinion does not count.

A technical writer from Texas, a joyful humanitarian, a jazz musician, a sexy French chick with beautiful rock hair, a harpsichord recitalist, a real estate agent, an actress whose "entry into the entertainment field was through a beer commercial where she played a 'nerdette' transformed into a sexy woman," a fashion designer, an executive vice president, and--yes!--a piano bar entertainer.

Lots of artsy/musician types. And several real estate agents. Nanettes are talented people who are good at selling houses!

I'm excited because she's awesome, she makes me laugh, and she's one heck of a designer. Though I don't know whether those bears in her new design are scary or funny. First I thought they were kind of funny, then I looked again and found them slightly scary.

But that's just me. I'm weird.

If you're along the Great Roadtrip Path (East Lansing, Michigan to Boston, MA) and you're available on the first weekend in July, let me know...because I would like to meet you!

Oh, wait...I have homework to do. I was all about getting stuff done ahead of time, and here it is, the day of my class, and I have three two-to-three page papers to write. Oh well. Updates may be scarce today, but tomorrow is Friday, which means I won't feel like doing anything at work. We'll see what happens...

And they like moist places, which explains why hosing the mailbox down did not help.

Fortunately, I will not be home to get the mail tomorrow, so someone else can say hello to my friends the earwigs. Ew. I tried to photograph them but they ran away. Apparently, earwigs are publicity-shy.

Today, however...

I came home and went out and got the mail as usual. I opened the mailbox door and...bugs. A bunch of them. I don't know what kind, but they were damn nasty. Little black bugs, about 1/3 of an inch long, with what looks like pincers on their heads. I'm going to go out with the camera and take a picture of them so maybe someone can identify them for me. I'd like to know what is colonizing in the mailbox.

Anyhow, I decided to reach in through the other door (the mailbox has two doors, one on the curb side and one opposite) and grab the mail. I thought that would be pretty sneaky, because it seemed the the bugs had congregated on the curb side of the mailbox.

Well, we had one of those little ad newspapers in the mail, and several of the bugs had decided to affix themselves to the ad newspaper, so I grabbed the (supposedly bug-free) mail, then noticed some scurrying action, so I set the bulk of the mail down and took the ad newspaper and shook it until the bugs were all gone.

I'm sure the neighbor kids found this very entertaining. At least they had the decency to not laugh at me while I was out there.

Now I get to be all paranoid about bugs. Every time my leg itches, I wonder if it's a bug. Every time I feel something on my neck, I swat at it. Every time I see a black piece of lint on the floor, it becomes a bug.

I do not need this.

Awww yeah. Now you too can see the video for "Sugarcube" by Yo La Tengo, among other videos.

If you haven't seen the "Sugarcube" video, you're missing the best music video ever made. Really. And the video explains where Ira Kaplan learned all the rock moves he uses in YLT's live show.

"I am going to freak you something wild in Utica."

So watch out, Utica, because here we come. And if we don't make it to Utica that night, I suspect he will freak me something wild in Syracuse. Heh.

"Uh, there's post-it notes in the refrigerator," I said to nobody in particular.

"Really?" said one co-worker. "That sounds like something I would do," said another.

"Yeah, it sounds like something I would do as well," I replied.

I brought the post-it notes back into my office. I wonder if I was the person who did it. It wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Is it the fact that he's a grad student in computer science at University of Illinois? Is it the fact that he's another one of those indie rock guys? Is it his hair? His use of terms like "cultural signifiers"? The world may never know. But if I were you, I'd put my money on spelling bee champion.

I'll tell you this, there's nothing like an indierockcomputergeekcuteboy with kickass spelling skills.

[Insert author visit, with customary schmoozing. Accept compliments re: copyediting skills, DTP skills graciously, return with compliment re: how I liked working on that book. Which is true, actually. It was a good book to work on.]

Heh.

Author is gone, time to get back to the ol' weblog. Except I'm finding that I don't have much to say. I wasted all my steam on the manic updates of the past two days. I feel like reading instead of writing. But I don't feel like reading the chapter of Low Pressure Boilers that I'm supposed to be copyediting.

Bad things about this: I have to deal with Indiana drivers, who are among the worst drivers known to humankind. They have no understanding of what merging is, and they drive so slow they might as well be parked.

Good things about this: Indiana has just dropped the sales tax on gas, so I can drive three miles and buy gas for thirty to forty cents less than I would pay in Illinois.

I've been trying to use less gas, to do less gratuitous driving around, but I have to fill my gas tank at least once a week just to get to work and school. I know the gas prices are higher because we're buying reformulated gas here, gas that is supposed to be less toxic and polluting, and I don't mind paying a little bit more because of that. But gas prices are just out of hand around here. I've been paying $2.04 per gallon, which is just crazy.

So, after work, I'm headed to Indiana, where the gas prices are probably somewhere around $1.70, and the lines at the gas stations will be ridiculous.

Especially one with a shared fondness for the finer things in life...like Stewart's sodas, falafel sandwiches, and good ol' indie rock.

The only result that really bothered me is that "New Dawn Fades" by Joy Division is supposed to represent how I feel about my life. I didn't know my outlook was that dour. That song always reminds me of a fight that Greg and I had in the car one night that ended in him pulling the car over and getting out and me just standing around screaming and shouting.

Actually, this thing exists online here if the idea of using a pencil and paper makes you flinch.

Not that Chicago was the first city to have a cow parade, but still...it's nice that we were the first in the U.S. I miss the cows, but I don't miss the bunches of tourists who would bottleneck the sidewalks taking photographs of them.

And hey, I'm relieved that Chicago isn't the only city that riots when its basketball team wins the NBA Finals.

Anyhow, Zorak goes back to the Ghost Planet and Moltar accuses him of lying...Moltar says "I had the beautiful rock hair."

Moltar even has a web page dedicated to the glory of the beautiful rock hair. Just seeing a picture of the band Cinderella makes me laugh.

You know, some of the clothes I used to wear actually look like that. Yes, I was a punk rock girl back in the day...now I'm just a mild-mannered copyeditor/indie rock girl. I traded my ripped fishnets for comfy cardigans. I still have my boots, though. And my blue wig.

Nanette: It sure seems that way...

I think the catalyst that put my interest in Radiohead in motion might have been "Rabbit in Your Headlights," the song on the UNKLE CD that Thom Yorke does vocals on. It's just so damn creepy and so damn beautiful. The video freaked me out. But in a good way.

Anyhow, there's new Radiohead songs at that site. Give 'em a listen and tell me how they are.

So it seems that I might be spared the pain of driving through Ohio again. Which is good. I was scared there for a minute.

This means I have to face Ohio again. Last time I faced Ohio, it was just awful. Ohio is seriously out to get me, and that's not just me being paranoid again. Ohio hates Nanette.

This also means no trip to Toronto, which means no big box of bath stuff from Lush. And I was looking forward to that, too.

(And it's funny, too.)

I woke up pissed off this morning. A bunch of crap fell off my nightstand last night in the middle of the night. It woke me up. I realized this morning that it was my ugly goat that I got for Christmas (thanks, Amanda!) and my heart sculpture with all the nails in it. Fortunately, they didn't break.

It was humid all night and I had weird dreams of an unspecified nature.

I look tired today. Not just sort of tired, really tired.

My orange juice didn't taste right. And I had the usual frustrating drive to work in the rain. You'd think we live in the Sahara Desert, the way people get freaked out about rain here.

Now I have to do my least favorite thing in the whole world--call people. I've been put in charge of getting one of our books translated into Spanish. I have to contact the translation companies. Bleargh. I hate the phone.

At least I retired a multimillionaire. Har.

[aside] Shut up, Ray. I can hear you getting ready to start with me. Go study your math or something.

http://nanette.isfuckingbrilliant.com is a lot more memorable than http://spoonbender.org/amplified.

Link from Meghan, who got it from Derek, who probably got it from someone else because that's how weblogs work, y'know.

(The answers, by the way, are here. Now don't cheat...)

This band played at the Metro

About 1100 people were at the show

The rock show was awesome!

The band played it on

The crowd roared like a lion

The rock and roll was whooping on a koala bear's ass with a belt

Rock over London, rock on Chicago.

(thanks to Matt for suggesting a koala bear.)

I expected the show to be full of the usual cute, hip boys who show up at any indie rock show. And standing around outside while trying to sell Ray's ticket, it seemed that this would be the case. As a matter of fact, a cute boy acted as "ticket broker," helping me sell my extra ticket. Of course, as soon as he walked away to get his friend who needed the extra ticket, I said to Matt "at least I'm selling the ticket to a cute boy," and the girl standing about six feet away heard it and smiled, and then later I realized that she was probably his girlfriend and I had just made a complete and utter ass of myself as usual. Har.

Anyhow, we got into the show, which was sold out and fairly crowded, and staked a spot that seemed pretty decent. And it was, except for the 6'-7" tall man with the bushy 70s "bad cop on CHiPS" moustache standing right in front of me like a human bridge support. His shoulders were so broad that they blocked the entire stage. I tried to make myself feel better by saying "it's not *seeing* the band that counts, it's *hearing* them" but that didn't work and I just got more and more frustrated.

Sue Garner and Rick Brown opened. As they were playing their quiet, melodic, and very pretty set, the girl standing behind Matt started yakking loudly about some Indigo Girls show she had gone to. Then her companion started smoking a cigar. I thought cigar smoking had gone out of style...I mean, that's so 1997, isn't it? I wouldn't know, I don't keep up on those kind of trends. Between the sound of the annoying girl's voice and the stale-ass smelling cigar and the obstructed view, I was getting a little annoyed.

Matt on the cigar-smoking guy: "What is he doing here? I mean, did they advertise this show in Pretentious Asshole magazine?

Tall Guy was with a woman who looked like she had been time-warped from 1983. She had a stunning example of the Fe-Mullet--bleached blonde and with those curled-and-combed-back bangs that my best friend from high school used to wear. And she was drunk, and she was dancing. I developed this irrational fear of the long permed hair streaming down the back of her head...if it touched me, would it be contagious? Would I be compelled to put on too-tight jeans and grow my hair long in the back?

And after all the cute indie rock boys who were outside the show, I got in and there were none to be found. Were they all sequestered somewhere? Or were they just avoiding me? What's up with THAT?

Oh, you wanted a show review, did you? I don't do show reviews, I merely comment on the audience. Sorry. You'll have to look elsewhere for the set list and such. Someone's bound to post one.

Then I got into work (only 4 minutes late this morning!) and saw the little screen set up and remembered that we're having a presentation today about our newest book. (I work in editorial for a small vocational textbook publisher.) I was not at all excited about this, it seemed like an awful waste of time, sitting around watching a lame PowerPoint presentation about a book that I've already spent six months working on.

So I walked into the break room, muttering to myself, "What next, a Building Trades Estimating cake?"

And as I opened the refrigerator...well, you figure it out.

It was so totally Life Imitates Sitcom, Part Two.