1. Anal sex

2. Someone who's willing to have sex with you, most likely an affair, and "Slip on out the backdoor!"

3. Someone who has anal sex with you and slips out the backdoor.

Ray's a proponent of number 2, while I stick to my belief that number 1 is the correct answer. Number 3, a combination of the two, might be a good compromise.

Actually, all of the reviews except the Archers of Loaf review contain numerous exciting violations of the Laws of Punctuation, so if you're entertained by those things, check them out.

(About me and school: I'm currently in two master's degree prorgrams, one in secondary education, the other in English. I'm one thesis away from finishing the secondary ed program and a year and a half away from finishing the English program. After I'm finished, I'm going back to school full-time, either in a doctoral program in language and literacy or a master's of library science program. I haven't made up my mind yet, and I probably won't until the very last minute.)

So...yeah. About this thesis. I'm studying the way young women make the transition from high school to college. This is a very broad topic, so I've narrowed it down to this: I'm studying the way young women write about the transition from high school to college in online journals. I've got a few people lined up (actually, I asked them several months ago, so I need to make sure it's still okay) but I need a few more. If you read or know of any online journals by women making the transition from high school to college, please email me and let me know. That way I can contact them and see if they're interested in participating in my study. (Please, please put "thesis" in the subject line so I know what it's about.)

This thesis MUST be finished by December. I don't want to drag it out any longer than that. It's really an interesting subject (well, to me it is) and I'm looking forward to writing it...it's just that it always seems that there's so many other things that I could be doing.

When the song was over, I said to Matt "what do you think 'backdoor man' means in the context of this song?"

Matt replied, "Uh, well, um, you know..." and he squirmed a little and looked kind of embarassed.

"Well, I just want to know your opinion, because Ray and I had a difference of opinion about it. I think it means anal sex. He thinks it means something else."

"What else could it be?"

"I don't know what else it could be. To me, it's obvious. We all know what the 'back door' is. I don't think he's talking about the door on the back of the house."

Yeah, I'd probably watch it. But I'd be willing to bet that television will be oversaturated with reality programs by Fall of 2001 (the show's proposed air date) and people won't be quite as interested.

1. Preach on, Adam. Nobody cares, and frankly, nobody should care.

2. People think that I'm a huge Pitchfork hater because I've made fun of them a few times. I'm not. Actually, I've started reading Pitchfork on a regular basis recently, and I've noticed something: I only really like their negative reviews. Their positive reviews (like any other positive reviews) tend to be too gushy and glowy for my tastes. This, of course, says more about me than it does about Pitchfork, but it should quiet some of the people who accuse me of hatin'.

3. Uh, I guess there were only two things. Sorry.

Believe me, you're not missing anything by not seeing them. There's nothing interesting about them. You can't see anything exciting because they're all really dark. I'm not going to change my mind about this, either. You'll just have to be satisfied with the photo in the sidebar for now. Sorry.

I had to call my mom at work for some reason, so I asked her whose flowers were on the kitchen table.

"What flowers?" she replied.

"Well, I'll open the card, then." And I did. And they were for me, from Ray. It was a combination of two things I like: flowers and surprises. I probably smiled like a total goof all night, and I still smile when I think of it.

It's one of those arrangements that has live flowers and plants. So once the flowers die, I'll still have some houseplants. Of course, I tend to kill houseplants, but I'll take special care of these.

And this morning, I have surprisingly little to say. I actually slept last night. I went to bed early. I needed the sleep--by the time I got home yesterday I was in an awful mood. My throat hurt, I had a headache, my temper was extremely short, and I was exhausted. I almost tore Ray's head off for absolutely no reason.

I did answer a bunch of email, though. Tonight I'm going to tackle the email that came in over the weekend, and then the inbox will be back to empty. I'll get good at this emailing thing someday, I tell you!

A story from last weekend:

Colin, John, and I were at the Decatur Celebration at the WAND-TV news booth. They had a television there with the Doppler radar and we were looking at it. The weather guy came around and someone (I don't remember which one of us) asked if it was going to rain again.

The weather guy starts explaining the weather in the simplest of terms. I was insulted! I watch enough Weather Channel to know what happens when the air is humid and then the sun comes up and starts heating the air!

He ended his elementary-school level description with "We might have some tornadic activity in the area if the sun comes out," to which I responded "Yeah!"

He looked at me sternly and said, "Now, you don't want to be anywhere near a tornado. They're dangerous. Especially when a cow hits you."

When a cow hits you? Now what is that all about? I was half expecting the guy to lift up his shirt and show us a scar. "Yeah, this is where the cow hit me during that big tornado in '92...the scar will never go away."

Ryan Schreiber!

Either he stuffed the ballot box, or the Ryan Schreiber International Fan Club came in and voted en masse, because he was in dead last when I checked on Sunday. Michael Sandlin (who got my vote) came in second, James Wisdom came in third, and poor Mark Richard-San came in last.

As with any election, if you didn't vote, don't complain. I voted, therefore I have the right to complain. The results were unfair. Ryan should not have won. His smile is sinister and he reminds me of a cartoon.

Metallica and Napster. Uh, I think Metallica has enough money, I doubt that Napster is going to force them into bankruptcy. Besides, it's Metallica. Are their views supposed to have some value?

Survivor. I don't watch it. This is not some elitism on my part. I missed the first few episodes, I watched it once somewhere in the middle of the season, and I was lost. It amazes me how insane people are over this show. It's become some sort of national obsession. That said, I definitely prefer Survivor over the awful Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. My mom wants me to go on that show. I refuse, knowing that I would murder Regis, thus earning the ire of millions of television-addicted Americans.

Reality TV in general. You think it's dumb? Don't watch it.

George W. Bush. I don't like him either, but somehow I doubt that anyone who reads this really cares about my personal politics.

Teen pop/dissing teen pop. It's all going to fade away eventually. No sense in getting worked up about it. Wait a year or two and another dumb trend will come along that you can rant about.

Eminem. Someone will kill him soon enough, though that's probably the worst thing that could happen. A dead Eminem would live forever, while a living Eminem will just fade away quietly within a couple of years.

Excepted from this is steal this blog, and anyone else who is able to make *intelligent* comments on these subjects. And please do not assume that I hate you and your weblog because I posted this, because I don't.

But before I go: Ewan from Indieshite will be pleased to know that I am joining the staff of Line Noise and that my photo will be added to their staff page as soon as I get around to sending it in to Jacqueline.

Speaking of Power Bloggers, I was checking it out today, and I noticed a page called hifidelity.org. Thinking that it might be another indie rock weblog, I went there. The header graphic says that it's "an archive of underground dance culture lore," whatever that's supposed to mean. Apparently, it means "some blabber by ravers who can neither spell nor string more than three words together in a meaningful sentence." I found their disregard for such conventions as capitalization and punctuation amusing, and I got a kick out of the fact that their header graphic obscures several of the pull-down menus that are supposed to be used to navigate the site. I will rate hifidelity.org "EB," for "entertainingly bad."

Damn, I'm snarky today. I think it's a combination of exhaustion and this cold that I think I'm getting.

One of my favorite features in Splendid has got to be That Damn List Thing. Lists, of course, are common filler in zines. They're usually dull crap like "Fifteen albums the editor of our zine would listen to if he got stuck on a desert island with a girl who wouldn't give him the time of day in real life and he wanted to romance her." I've never read a boring or unamusing list in Splendid, and this week's is no exception. I can't find an archive of the old lists, but if I do, I'll let you know. I can imagine that they'd be a good way to waste some time at work, and when it comes down to it, this is all just about wasting time at work.

A few years later, I was recovering from a crappy breakup by spending some time in Chicago with Matt and Colin. I was just waking up when I noticed Colin looking at something on his computer: Aaron Lowe's personal site, which featured (at that time) a webcam, some writing, and an online journal.

"An online journal!" I thought. "What an exciting and original idea! I like writing about myself, I could have one of those!"

And a couple of weeks later, I did.

So this weekend, I told Aaron that his journal (which I think is gone now) inspired me to start my journal. Saturday night was such a blur that I don't know when I said it, but I know at some point I just blurted out with "You used to have an online journal, didn't you? Because yours was the first one I saw and it made me start mine."

As an added bonus, one of the boys mentioned in this old journal entry is in the opening band. I haven't seen this person since 1994, and though I find him repellent, I find him amusing at the same time. His band will probably suck. He was in some awful bands when I knew him in college, and his taste in music really blows, so I expect some bad covers and crappy bar band-type originals. It should be an...interesting experience, though.

It was a great weekend until I lost my keys. Fortunately, I didn't realize that I had lost my keys until Sunday morning, so it didn't ruin that much of the weekend. After re-tracing my steps about ten times, I figured that they had to be somewhere in Colin's house. We tore the place up and I couldn't find them.

I had to disarm my car's alarm system in order to get home. Now that was fun. But now I'm back to daily life.

One of my Decatur friends recently got a hot tub in his backyard. We experienced the ultimate in Central Illinoisan decadance: hot tubbing at 3 AM. Yes, there are photos. As a matter of fact, Aaron has a picture of me in the hot tub. I just might let you see it if I can get a hold of him and get a copy. Not that you'll see anything that exciting: yeah, my t-shirt is indeed wet in the photo, but it's a black t-shirt. So don't go getting any ideas.

So it was a weekend of revelry, hot tubbing, and mass drunkenness. And the loss of a set of keys. I think I'm getting a cold, too.