Status Update: COLLIDER ROCKS

The title "status update" should be read in a loud British accent. And you know, like "stay-tus", British-like.

Okay fine. Don't.

It's Thursday, not quite but it will be soon. All day I've been thinking it was Thursday. I've wanted it desperately to be Thursday. I really want time to pass. Weird, and not.

I was asked tonight "Are you okay?" Like, yeah dude, I'm okay. Life is rough and this is the inside of my head. I still am who I am on the outside, even when that's a little rough too. This is how I operate. You see me on the outside. You know me on the inside. It's not so incredibly incongruous.

Like my Vespa and my Rover. Yes. I can do both. I can do extremely fucked in the head and mostly put together in real life. I can do excessively weepy and then do my best bad ass. Survival.

Doesn't mean that my lows don't get low. I think it freaks people out a little. Until they get used to it. Maybe. Sometimes even I am not used to it.

******

So I'm up. Yea me! It's not hard when I have awesome friends. I do. You all rock. And there's stuff, there's life, things to do. People to see. There's tons of stuff I should do that I don't. (Hello homework!)

It's not hard when the music FUCKING ROCKS.

Okay, so here's the skinny on Collider and why I think they are so fabulous:
Rocking beat, hard core sound, with an edge of funkiness. Awesome lead voice. Incredible bass guitar artist with a five string bass (one string is lower than standard). And the songs are not predictable. Listening to and knowing the songs in their complexity makes the live shows incredibly seductive as you are pulled into the whipping crescendos and hairpin turns. It's beach music meets punk meets Led Zepplin. It's nutty and multilayered. It's FUN and COMPLICATED. Just like I like 'em.

******

So I had a blast tonight. Great music. Just enough beer. Danced 'til my kippah was sweaty under my hat. A rush, a soul song, a lift. Lovely. Thank you.

Horoscopes

I often tell people that the religion I was raised with was astrology. My mother was always one-foot-out-the-door of whatever religion she was trying on at the time, and facing the old stand-by of astrology. Church of Christ... Mercury in retrograde... Methodist... Venus trine Mars... Unitarian... double shot of Taurus with an Aries ascendent. Astrology was the only real consistency. That and her Edgar Cayce stuff.

So I know what my chart says, mostly. I get it re-plotted every so often and take a look at it, and try to pull real meaning out of a computer generated reading. I ran my numbers again yesterday and read my chart and the associated break down. And I realized, I'm older now than the last time I read this. I've tried to fix some stuff. And occassionally something surprizes me.

"You are a doer and thrive on freedom, challenge, and activity." I never FELT this so strongly before, probably because I was always working within the confines of a relationship. Yes, I must have my freedom. And if you don't give it to me, I will take it. I am a thief at heart, just trying to do right.

"You have three major faults: one is your bullheaded obstinacy. The second is your unwillingness to deviate from your safe, predictable routine. And the third is your tendency to always insist upon realism and undervalue the imaginative, speculative, and fanciful - in other words, you lack the ability to play with ideas and possibilities, to open your mind to the new." Okay, I can't really get rid of the first, just try to be aware. I actively battle against the 2nd. The third fault is susceptible to time and the swinging pendulum of my mind.

"The unusual and unorthodox appeal to you, and you do not allow tradition, convention, or other people's expectations to dictate how you are going to live your life." Amen.

"A great deal of physical affection, closeness, and touching is essential to your well-being, and you have a tendency to overindulge in sensual comforts and pleasures. At times you substitute food for emotional comfort and love." Mmmmhmmm. Pet me please. It will make me skinny.

The computerized astrologer is also often contradictory. It tells me that I'm at once gentle and aggressive, self-serving and extremely giving, and on and on. I consider these to be areas that I've worked on, or continue to work on. It also tells me that I tend to be a loner and yet "you tend to feel lonely, even when you are in the company of others." What to do with that?

"You like to be original and do not mind going it alone. You may feel that you do not fit into groups very well, and that you do not naturally blend in and cooperate with others very easily. You like to be either a leader or a loner."

Ah, lonely loner, where are you going?

Wake up and purge

I was sound asleep until my stomach started to gurgle. It was sour as hell and waking me up. I could feel little furry feet pressed against my back and I blinked my eyes open. "Ergh, " I actually said out loud. I had to get up.

I chomped down two Super Extra Tums and I knew even then that those suckers were gonna come right back up. I drank some cold, clear water and waited about sixty seconds. Yup -- find a recepticle now, cuz here comes dinner.

Some people are barf-phobic. Thank G-d I'm not, or my whole life would be hell. Both of my parents like to tell stories of me as a kid, embarassing them in a restaurant by managing to nail our table and the next two with my impressive gastronic purging. Ibarf when I'm too nervous to deal with stress. Sometimes it comes on immediately, like an innocent witness reacting to nasty crime scene photos, and sometimes my stomach churns for hours until it decides on the grand finale. And that's just the emotional ralphing. I can't decide which this is, physical or emotional.

I was incredibly upbeat all day today. Even through two meetings with incessant technological problems, I was chipper and patient. Incredible. So it can't be that.

The building I live in is referred to by the owners association as a townhouse. It's a square brick building with four floors, and eight apartments. There are real working fireplaces in each apartment and folks have been having fires all night tonight. I can smell them from my place. There is a rich woody scent, like someone paid extra for some kind of balsam wood or something. Not your average fire, something fancy. Figures.

When I woke with my super sour stomach, I noticed that my apartment had a faint smokeyness all around. I wasn't sure at first if it was me without my glasses thinking it was foggy or what. So I wonder if the saturation of fireplace scents and smoke isn't making me a little ill.

Or maybe it was the homemade pot pie I had for dinner.