I think I come back here regularly to remind myself why I don't like it here. It's like a reality TV show gone horribly awry.

Example: Tonight, at a local dive bar called the Winery (affectionately called the Swinery or the Swino): there is a punk kid sitting at the table with my friends and I. I don't know this kid, he's just some little 21-year old rural punk kid with Bad Religion patches safety-pinned to his hoodie sweatshirt. He's not so bright, but he has this goofy childlike earnestness to him. He's got a mohawk that has fallen as the night progresses. When I first saw him around 1 AM, it was still standing fairly high. People keep walking past him and touching his hair, and every time someone touches it, it falls just a little bit more.

It's last call, 2 AM, and an older man, probably in his late 40s or early 50s, walks up to our table. "I'm a Vietnam vet," he begins, and I become instantly wary. Not because I have a disrespect for veterans, but because I am automatically wary of anyone who needs to preface their remarks with "I'm a Vietnam vet."

"I'm a Vietnam vet, and I want to know what the fuck is up with your hair? Now that's just stupid. Why would you want to do that to your hair? You look stupid."

And I sit there and wonder how this little drama is going to play itself out. Matt's selections are playing on the jukebox and the woman sitting on the other side of Matt is chain-smoking, lighting one cigarette off the smoldering butt of the last. The Vietnam vet looks to me for support, apparently wanting me to say "yeah, your hair looks fucking stupid," but I just look at him blankly, dumbly. I don't like to play dumb but sometimes it's more appropriate than acting on my thoughts. I don't want to get my ass kicked, and I don't want this dopey earnest little punk kid to get his ass kicked.

It's a tense five minutes. And I watch the scene play out. I watch the kid try to explain that he likes his hair teased up in a mohawk, that it's a matter of self-expression. And finally, the only explanation that the older man finds acceptable: the punk kid's parents are both musicians.

"That explains it," he says. "Musicians are fucked-up people."

I exhaled. I went back to my vodka and cranberry. It was well after last call and it was about time to leave.

Ewan must be fairly potted to have made such a mistake.

On the jukebox: this weird Mexican ska song. It started off sounding like "I wanna freak you wild" R&B, then gradually evolved into ska with a female singer. It reminded me of a Madness song sung in Spanish by a female singer.

Co-worker Gianna commenting on Ainsley Harriott: "He has a big head. And he's not from England. As my mom would say 'His ass is from Brooklyn!'"

There was also some discussion of Lionel Ritchie's moustache, the Jenny Jones show, other co-workers, and salsa.

This is Friday, here at my workplace. We should have our own reality TV show.

I didn't go to bed until almost 1 AM last night. Between the longer-than-expected phone call to Ray and the time spent running around doing things to prepare for my trip to Decatur, the evening just flew by. I'm still not packed and I still haven't cleaned out the car, but I've got two kinds of beer, hard lemonade, and a fully-charged digital camera battery. Since I'm leaving so late tonight, I'll have plenty of time to pack my stuff and clean out the car.

I've got a feeling that this is going to be a good weekend. I really do. Hopefully I won't be disappointed.

I was reading my Digital Chicago magazine when something small and brown appeared in front of my face. It was a little brown spider trying to drop down from the ceiling! I went through an elaborate series of moves to try to get the spider to safety (i.e., not in front of my face or on the floor under the wheels of my desk chair) but it was extremely resistant. I finally got it to the floor away from the desk chair, so I sat back down and rolled the chair forward again. The second I started rolling the chair, the spider started running extremely fast across the floor towards the chair. Stupid spider.

I don't kill spiders because they eat flies. We have a warehouse in our building, and flies stay in there all winter. A couple times a month, one of them will make it into the main building, where it will inevitably spend all day buzzing around up near the lights in my office. I hate flies, and I hate chasing flies with rolled up instructor's guides, so I let the spiders live. Everyone else around here smashes them.

I responded to every single piece of personal email in my inbox last night. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new era: Nanette gets good at answering email. I've always been an awful correspondent. I was bad at having pen pals via snail mail, and I'm even worse at responding to email. I think that part of it is that I want the email I send to be interesting. I don't want to just respond with "Thanks for the email," I always want to tell a story, to give a little something back. But that takes time, and I always approach the task with dread: "oh, there's twenty emails in my inbox that I need to respond to, they've been sitting there for three weeks now." So the plan is this: I respond to email as quickly as possible to keep the number of messages in my inbox low. This way, the task is less daunting. I really enjoy receiving and responding to email, but like everything else I tend to procrastinate.

Now that my email skills are improving, hopefully my AIM skills will improve too. I have a very hard time talking to people I don't know on AIM. All sorts of cool people message me, and I feel like I have very little to say. The conversations always sputter and die.

However, I am getting a little more motivated to write my thesis. This is good, because I've spent the past eight months not being motivated to write my thesis, and I need to get my shit together and get it done before December.

The content still is definitely in need of an editor. I looked at one review (the review of the new Future Bible Heroes EP) and found it impossible to read. All those parenthetical statements--five in the first sentence alone!--that add very little to the review. Editing is important, people! Really! Cut out the fluff!

I like the design and I like the tour and new release info, but the news page was a little sparse. If Pitchfork can come up with a few new stories a day, why can't a monthly come up with more than a few stories per issue?

There is promise here, and, if nothing else, it's a nice-looking webzine. It's only their second issue, so I'll cut them a little slack. I think a lot of the problems will be resolved in time.

Take a look at this weblog and tell me exactly how hard I've been working over the past two days. If I can screw around that much and still be "working hard," can you imagine how productive I could be if I actually applied myself? I could solve the world's problems *and* copyedit and lay out an entire book, all in one eight-hour day!

There's a thread for discussion of Blog Brother in the forum. I want to know who you'd like to see participate in Blog Brother. Just out of curiosity. And because, once again, nobody really seems to be updating this morning.

Tom from Blue Lines had the following interesting idea: Blog Brother. I would be willing to do this, I think it would be a lot of fun. Definitely more fun than the TV show, which gets more annoying every episode. I cannot believe how unlikable those people are. If I had been stuck with them, I assure you I would have walked out that door by now. Fifty thousand dollars is just not enough for dealing with Karen, Jamie, and Brittany.

It's really good to see Ray writing again. I've always liked his journal, and not just because I want to get freaky with him. He's got a really great way of capturing everyday life in his entries. I can only write about lofty shit, he can dissect his daily life and make it interesting and funny.

Apparently, the porn people are getting wise to the fact that most people will just click "no" if they see a screen name that is blatantly sexual in nature. Today I got a porn message from "Espressomike," who very well could be someone who reads this weblog. I mean, it's a normal (if a bit dorky) screen name. That said, if you IM me and I ignore you, don't take it personally. Just send me an email and I'll add you to the list so I don't ignore you next time.

Well, the September issue features a lengthy article about Chicago. Apparently, Chicago is Indie City, U.S.A. Chicago is also "a salt-of-the-earth midwestern town" with "the most multifaceted underground in the United States." Ha ha to those of you who live in other places, for my city reigns supreme! Not that I believe the article, which mentions the usual suspects: Steve Albini, the Fireside Bowl, the sadly-defunct Lounge Ax, the horrible Empty Bottle (which reeks of hipster posturing and attitude), Liz Phair, Thrill Jockey Records, blah blah blah. Nothing new--all people, places, and things that have been around for at least few years now. I don't understand why Spin is suddenly turning its attention to Chicago. I don't think I like that very much.

Note to all non-Chicagoans: more Sleater-Kinney tour dates can be found at the Kill Rock Stars tour date page. They've got quite a few shows planned, go see them if you get the chance.

To this I reply: No way! He's way too prog rock for me! He'd probably put on Rush while we were getting busy, and I just cannot handle that. Prog rock is the soundtrack to my worst nightmares. I don't do the nasty with prog rock boys!

I'm actually being productive this afternoon. Go right ahead and be shocked, it's good for you. I can't let stuff pile up for too long around here, otherwise I'll have to cancel my weekend plans so I can come in to work. And believe me, I don't want to do that.

I chose not to take any markup on these items, so I'm not making any money off of this. Just so you know I'm not trying to gouge you or anything...I'll be coming up with a design for mousepads later on today, so feel free to hold out for a mousepad if you so desire. If you have any problems/suggestions/requests/etc., email me and let me know.

Speaking of t-shirts...soon you will be able to wear official Amplified to Rock t-shirts. I just have to create the graphics that will appear on the front. Imagine how your cred will skyrocket when you show up at the next big Indie Rock Event sportin' an Amplified to Rock t-shirt.

Disappointingly, the chorus is left out of these lyrics. Which is a shame.

"Your love...

Makes me say OWWWWW!"

The video is classic.

Today we are having some sort of company luncheon. I got the email around 2 PM yesterday. It's a pizza and salad luncheon, which should be decent, and it means there will be a lot of leftover cans of Coke for me to drink this week. I have no idea what the occasion is. I have no idea if there even is an occasion, of if this is just another one of those touchy-feely "let's all be pals" management things that goes on around here sometimes. It reminds me of grade school and the old "the principal is your pal" thing.

Check me out, I'm so bored I'm bitching about free food...

I always buy my books early so I get the nicest ones. Since my workplace pays for my books, I usually buy new ones, but if only used books are available (this has happened in the past) I always want the nicest ones available. I hate it when people highlight a lot in their books and then sell them back to the bookstore. People who do stuff like that tend to be the types of people who highlight entire pages worth of useless information.

I'm either going to be in an advanced rhetoric and composition seminar (which is my first choice, because the professor I despise is not teaching it this semester) or a Major English Authors seminar on W.B. Yeats. I toyed with the idea of taking both, but I also have a thesis to write next semester, and I don't want to kill myself. What sucks about the advanced rhetoric and composition seminar is that it's all stuff I've read a million times (The Scarlet Letter, Hamlet, Wuthering Heights, and four or five others). I'd really love to take a class there where I'm reading books that I've never read. This semester came close, but it was Graham Greene and Hermann Hesse, which meant that I was reading stuff that I had never read but would never really want to read.

"How would you like to have a last name like THIS?" he says, pointing to the label, which reads "J. Fuckut."

Ray emails me telling me that he plans to work until the ungodly hour of 9:25 PM so he can make up all his hours today instead of having to make them up all week long. I can't email him back because he's at work and I'm not supposed to email him at work. So I can't tell him how awful that sounds to me, being at work for more than twelve hours. I can barely make it for eight hours without wanting to tear my hair out.

The rain slaps against the window. Actually, I could barely call it rain, it's more like heavy drizzle, but it's making sort of a pleasing sound. I'm still tired of being here. I'm still not in the mood to work.

Other things I did yesterday: I read two of the Lemony Snicket children's books. (Sophie at kerplink.pitas.com recommended them, and they're lots of fun), I watched Alice in Wonderland (the old Disney version) and American Movie, and I started doing some reading for my research paper. So yeah, it was a fairly productive day, I guess.