Remember back when Zofia gave me advice but I wouldn't share it until it became relevant? The advice was this: Ask Emma to be my girlfriend.
It didn't happen that way exactly. What happened is Emma introduced me to Alex, her boyfriend (and the drummer in Atlas Lab) and I'm just taken by surprise because they've been together for a month and she couldn't be fucked to change her facebook status (although the people who work for Facebook have the annoying habit of changing things around when they need something to do, and I seriously wouldn't know how to change my relationship status even if I wanted to and I don't know what it looks like to people who aren't my friend and I can't be fucked to create a sockpuppet account to check) and she's made no indication of it on twitter (no excuse). I'm like "boyfriend? Did I mishear?" and "you're lying to me, aren't you?" and I'm like "damn, I should have let you know how I feel earlier" and I'm thinking "people who are in relationships tend to make a big fucking deal about it. Like 'look at me! look at me! hey hey hey, I'm in a relationship'" and I'm thinking "ah, fuck." I tried to sketch a few people, told them I wasn't feeling it tonight, Atlas Lab played first…
Let me tell you about that.
They played a "new" song. Well, I don't know if it was new. It's unfamiliar to me and it's not on their youtube. It's called Wake Up Slow and it's awesome. Remember how I said Castellana is the best thing Atlas Lab did? I retract that statement. Even the Merzbow-ish noise at the end was beautful. I hope the EP keeps the Merzbow-ish noise. Find a video of Iron, Glass, Blocks and white lights, and skip ahead to about 15:30 or so.
Then they played Trust Fall. You know where you can find Trust Fall. Just play some Merzbow on maximum volume for that "small rock club experience." I wasn't super into it this time. I could barely summon up the energy to dance to it.
So I'm pretty sure I heard Shadow Song at their first concert.
You have the video of Emma covering her own song. Just play frozen guitars and sunloop/7e 802 over it at maximum volume. And there's some stuff at the end.
They played Castellana. Emma called it music for a lovely spring day with snow on the ground.
I thought about leaving right then since I was such a fucking wreck.
Had I walked out on the rest of them, got dinner, and went home, it would probably be a total emotional breakdown and we'd probably never talk again and I'd be apologizing to Jean and Jack and Brody about they're not going to get their mural. I stayed instead. Look, I paid ten dollars to get in and I even had to confirm my adultivity. I even used the word "adultivity" when showing the attendant (who had bright red hair) my ID, and they gave me a neat spiderweb stamp which turned into a blurry mess.
I'm pretty sure I was underage the last time this place updated their website. Just saying.
Drunk Bart was scrawled on the bathroom wall. Later that night, an Atlas Lab sticker ended up on the toilet.
Emma saw me being mopey and told me she still wants to be friends with me. I told her that she may not be my girlfriend but she'll always be a wonderful friend.
I spent the rest of the night chatting with Emma, Sam, and a bunch of Emma's friends. Mostly Emily and Hilary. Just not Alex. I told someone to never mind about something and then told Alex "never mind, and also shut up," even though he didn't say anything. It's not that I don't like him. Au contraire, in fact. I just didn't want to talk to him because he doesn't need all that super-awkwardness.
I'm glad she couldn't hear me, because I said something incredibly stupid. It's not the stupidest thing I've ever heard but that's because Spacebunny has a twitter account in which she scours twitter for things that offend her and responds with profoundly stupid. What she lacks in intelligence, she more than makes up for it in single-mindedness. If you're wondering what I said, I said "so maybe if things don't work out with Alex, would you consider dating me?", and I'm pretty sure Emma didn't hear me because she was still going on about online dating and meeting people with common interests.
See, stupid. It's even worse because a few years ago, I brought up Pitchshifter and it reminded me of my friend and how he once suggested waiting for someone I liked to break up with her boyfriend and I called it the dumbest advice anyone's ever given me and here I am saying it to Emma. I'm only posting it because it's stupid and because I actually wonder what her answer is. I then apologized for saying something that stupid to her and I'm pretty sure she didn't hear what that stupid thing was because she told me not to worry about it; everyone says stupid things from time to time.
Great guy, really. Just about the worst person to ask for any advice involving relationships. And he had a tendency to lie about trifling things. That's cool. I lie too. I've lied by omission and I've lied to myself. If I remembered his name, I'd look him up right now. Probably for the best. He's probably married and that would make me facepalm so hard I'd shit teeth.
Seriously, though, breaking couples up is a good way to get them to never talk to you again. And, well, there's really no way to predict which relationships will fail and when they fail.
We met a guy who was going to Zombie Valentines afterwards.
I wasn't worried about the not very bloody bandages on his head or the torn shirt because I thought he was in a band or something.
Someone said he was going to see Casey Desmond, which is awesome because I actually know her.
It's weird to look outside, see the sun still out at 6:30, when it still feels like January out there.
I told her not to worry about being in Cyprus and Ankara and Greece from mid-April until early May (I told her to avoid the Arab world unless she wants to return home in a coffin unless she knows what she's doing) and that we wouldn't be able to talk in private for a long time, it was her idealism and her talent that made me fall in love with her in the first place. She thanked me for that.
She's been to Malawi, she's been to Mexico and Saint Something and the US Virgin Islands. I told her I wanted to go to Socotra somehow, even if it is the worst of all possible places. I guess that's why it's so pristine. You can get there from the Yemeni mainland or you can get there from Somalia, and there aren't any tourists to cover the place with their beer cans. Everybody knows about Somalia already so I won't bother. The thing about Yemen is that Al Qaeda comes off as the good guy there. If you're wondering how the other guys accomplished that, well, their flag has "kill the Jews" on it.
I still want to talk to her in private, mostly about the things I want to say to Alex and Gabriella, whenever possible, probably the MFA on Memorial Day, although I'm hoping I run into Gabriella there, if not at Mahler's 6th next week or at Don Giovanni in early May. We're still going to do the mural at the wildlife center together. We're still going to go to summer concerts together. I'm still going to share her taste in music with my readers. I'm not going to worry about taking her to see Chameleon play but maybe next season, I'll go with Gabriella. In fact, if things work out with her, maybe we can see la Boheme together. And I'll probably drag Alex to see The Pearl Fishers. Everything's going to be ok.
She told me to not rush things with Gabriella, to tell her that I really like her a lot and that I really enjoy spending time with her. I'm just hoping everything works out. She says it's hard, she said that she didn't know how I felt about her and I thought she liked me back. I told her that I see signals that aren't really there. I didn't lie about already pretty much being in a relationship with her, we merely saw the same thing different ways. Fear of rejection is a part of it, but at least my fear of destroying a wonderful friendship over different desires turned out to be unfounded.
I told her I didn't want to say anything because she's amazing and Gabriella's amazing too and I was really hoping one of them would make the first move. At least I don't have to deal with the agony of choice.
Since I asked and I'm most likely not going to see Gabriella until summer, and normally I like most of spring but I'm not in the fucking mood right now, spring is 92 days and 19 hours too long and I just wish it was mid July right now, and anywhere from one third to one half of those 92 days and 20 hours are completely shitty. Maybe even three quarters in a bad year, like 2009.
Spoiler alert for anyone who might be contemplating sabotaging my relationship with Gabriella, I just want you to know that I haven't told you anything, so you can't. You don't have her contact information. You don't know anything about her. So good fucking luck with that, ok.
We all did Zoidberg impressions because there are space lobsters in galaga. Horray for Zoidberg! With an emotional breakdown dry mouth, that didn't sound very Zoidbergy. One guy got to stage 5 in one life but the commenter's curse got him. He got a game over when one of the space lobsters managed to avoid every one of his shots.
I told Emma to check out my livejournal and sent her a link via Twitter so there will be no plans for throwing acid in their kissy faces and no elaborate plans to kidnap their baby and sending her to live in a monastery in Bhutan and no human bait cars. The solution to every problem isn't throwing frigging acid on it, unless your problem is a solution with an overly alkaline pH balance. If you want to do that shit for your own reasons, go plan it out somewhere else; you aren't welcome here. However, sabotaging the EP by turning into intense Japanoise layered over dreamy trip hop has my blessing. Everyone wins with that plan. I don't think that's ever been done. You're probably asking how that would hurt their relationship, and I'm going to answer with "hurt the what now?"
Sam isn't Japanese, though. I don't know what he is. Emma doesn't know what he is. Nobody knows what he is. Not even Sam knows what he is. I assumed something like Zuleekistan or Bizaqh or even the Emirate of Mekzaes. Maybe Immeen, but he doesn't hate women and if he was Immeenish or Immeeni (I checked The Wolf of Winter and The Grand Ellipse and they seem to be interchangeable, or maybe one's a demonym and one's a language), he would not only go along with Cheryl's plan but have a jar of acid on him at all times for situations like that. I do know that Emma is Swedish, Irish, Scottish, and English, and Alex is Russian (damn it, I had something for this!). The Volskyland equivalent of Russia is Rhazaulle, if you're wondering. I'd say you probably aren't interested but if you're here, you probably are interested.
I'm pretty sure that Immeen is a fictionalized Iran.
Speaking of places that aren't real, someone signed up for the mailing list with the name "penis" and location of "up your ass."
Emma found their table on the side of the road. I thought it was just an ordinary table with a lamp clamped on, but nope. The lamp was an integral part of the table. On the table were demo CDs which disappeared quickly, stickers, and really awesome drawings in pencil and gel pen. I'm getting one in exchange for a Klimt-style painting of Emma. I feel like somewhere right now, there's some guy in a shopping cart wrapped up in Atlas Lab stickers.
I told Emma I could barely tolerate the smell of alcohol, and that's why I don't drink. I'm not a follower of the Gifted Iyecktor or anything. It reminds me of that one time we had a fly problem at the wildlife center and we were laying out vinegar traps to catch them.
The other bands were
Jet Black Sunrise
Parasoma
Happy Time Harry
King Pleaxure
The guy from Parasoma thought I looked familiar and that I saw him last week there but I've never been to TT's before. Parasoma describes themselves as desert rock, like Soundgarden or Kyuss. I think of desert rock as The Moon Seven Times.
I really did enjoy them, especially Jet Black Sunrise and Parasoma.
I was totally gobsmacked because hey, a show where a band is scheduled to play at 5 PM and they play at 5 PM. I guess it's because everyone used Jet Black Sunrise's drum set. You'd be gobsmacked too if the last time you saw them play, they were scheduled for 10 PM and played their first song at 10:45.
When I told her about Airiel, I sent her the song that was written about Jeremy's worst breakup but makes me think of the love I'll never have from her. I didn't tell her what the song was about, I just gave her the link. She'll know when she reads this.
I got some Indian food because all I had for the entire day was a bottle of Coke, ate the crispy bread with spicy stuff and green stuff and very viscous brown stuff and about three bites of curry before I realized "ehh, I'm still not in the mood" and took it home.
I got no sleep. I tried to watch some Raocow videos at 2 AM. It sucks because it's still Smarch, so it's too fucking cold for an all-nighter of Raocow videos and Airiel, or really, to do anything but toss and turn in bed.
Last time this happened, it took me about two weeks to restore my emotional equilibrium.
Maybe I'll see the woman with green hair again. We bonded briefly over classical music. She seemed kinda embarrassed about listening to it when I asked but I told her I had Carmina Burana on my iPod and I saw King Roger two weeks ago and I'm seeing Mahler in a week and boom, common interests. Emma would be impressed. Unfortunately, she had to get off (phrasing, boom. Inappropriate) before she got a quality portrait, or how I want to drag Alex kicking and screaming to see The Pearl Fishers and I really shouldn't have to explain why.
Maybe I'll see her again. Maybe I'll run into Sarah.
And, hey, a lot of things can change in four months, for good or for ill. Just ask Sarah.
hey, the title's a Harrison reference. I haven't read Signs of Life and can't even find samples of it, and the chapter title from Empty Space fit my situation more. If you can tell me what I'm trying to evoke with my writing style, I'll paint something for you.
Three people I encountered had green hair. One had green and black in a ponytail and between her outfit of a leather jacket, skirt, stockings, and combat boots, and her friend who had naturally red hair, they reminded me of Ghost World, one had green tips on reddish-blonde, one had a green fuzzy mohawk thing. There was a woman with pink hair too. Pink tips.
To Emma, I'm sorry for making everything super-awkward, even though I know you said I don't need to keep apologizing. Thank you for your support and friendship and thanks for staying with me and thanks for making me feel better and I really did enjoy last night despite everything. Wish me luck, okay?
To Alex, you mustn't squander something so wonderful.
Everyone deserves a happy ending.
burning question: I hoped I'd be able to keep this together, but life doesn't always work out the way you want it to. Have you noticed that? It really doesn't.
It didn't happen that way exactly. What happened is Emma introduced me to Alex, her boyfriend (and the drummer in Atlas Lab) and I'm just taken by surprise because they've been together for a month and she couldn't be fucked to change her facebook status (although the people who work for Facebook have the annoying habit of changing things around when they need something to do, and I seriously wouldn't know how to change my relationship status even if I wanted to and I don't know what it looks like to people who aren't my friend and I can't be fucked to create a sockpuppet account to check) and she's made no indication of it on twitter (no excuse). I'm like "boyfriend? Did I mishear?" and "you're lying to me, aren't you?" and I'm like "damn, I should have let you know how I feel earlier" and I'm thinking "people who are in relationships tend to make a big fucking deal about it. Like 'look at me! look at me! hey hey hey, I'm in a relationship'" and I'm thinking "ah, fuck." I tried to sketch a few people, told them I wasn't feeling it tonight, Atlas Lab played first…
Let me tell you about that.
They played a "new" song. Well, I don't know if it was new. It's unfamiliar to me and it's not on their youtube. It's called Wake Up Slow and it's awesome. Remember how I said Castellana is the best thing Atlas Lab did? I retract that statement. Even the Merzbow-ish noise at the end was beautful. I hope the EP keeps the Merzbow-ish noise. Find a video of Iron, Glass, Blocks and white lights, and skip ahead to about 15:30 or so.
Then they played Trust Fall. You know where you can find Trust Fall. Just play some Merzbow on maximum volume for that "small rock club experience." I wasn't super into it this time. I could barely summon up the energy to dance to it.
So I'm pretty sure I heard Shadow Song at their first concert.
You have the video of Emma covering her own song. Just play frozen guitars and sunloop/7e 802 over it at maximum volume. And there's some stuff at the end.
They played Castellana. Emma called it music for a lovely spring day with snow on the ground.
I thought about leaving right then since I was such a fucking wreck.
Had I walked out on the rest of them, got dinner, and went home, it would probably be a total emotional breakdown and we'd probably never talk again and I'd be apologizing to Jean and Jack and Brody about they're not going to get their mural. I stayed instead. Look, I paid ten dollars to get in and I even had to confirm my adultivity. I even used the word "adultivity" when showing the attendant (who had bright red hair) my ID, and they gave me a neat spiderweb stamp which turned into a blurry mess.
I'm pretty sure I was underage the last time this place updated their website. Just saying.
Drunk Bart was scrawled on the bathroom wall. Later that night, an Atlas Lab sticker ended up on the toilet.
Emma saw me being mopey and told me she still wants to be friends with me. I told her that she may not be my girlfriend but she'll always be a wonderful friend.
I spent the rest of the night chatting with Emma, Sam, and a bunch of Emma's friends. Mostly Emily and Hilary. Just not Alex. I told someone to never mind about something and then told Alex "never mind, and also shut up," even though he didn't say anything. It's not that I don't like him. Au contraire, in fact. I just didn't want to talk to him because he doesn't need all that super-awkwardness.
I'm glad she couldn't hear me, because I said something incredibly stupid. It's not the stupidest thing I've ever heard but that's because Spacebunny has a twitter account in which she scours twitter for things that offend her and responds with profoundly stupid. What she lacks in intelligence, she more than makes up for it in single-mindedness. If you're wondering what I said, I said "so maybe if things don't work out with Alex, would you consider dating me?", and I'm pretty sure Emma didn't hear me because she was still going on about online dating and meeting people with common interests.
See, stupid. It's even worse because a few years ago, I brought up Pitchshifter and it reminded me of my friend and how he once suggested waiting for someone I liked to break up with her boyfriend and I called it the dumbest advice anyone's ever given me and here I am saying it to Emma. I'm only posting it because it's stupid and because I actually wonder what her answer is. I then apologized for saying something that stupid to her and I'm pretty sure she didn't hear what that stupid thing was because she told me not to worry about it; everyone says stupid things from time to time.
Great guy, really. Just about the worst person to ask for any advice involving relationships. And he had a tendency to lie about trifling things. That's cool. I lie too. I've lied by omission and I've lied to myself. If I remembered his name, I'd look him up right now. Probably for the best. He's probably married and that would make me facepalm so hard I'd shit teeth.
Seriously, though, breaking couples up is a good way to get them to never talk to you again. And, well, there's really no way to predict which relationships will fail and when they fail.
We met a guy who was going to Zombie Valentines afterwards.
I wasn't worried about the not very bloody bandages on his head or the torn shirt because I thought he was in a band or something.
Someone said he was going to see Casey Desmond, which is awesome because I actually know her.
It's weird to look outside, see the sun still out at 6:30, when it still feels like January out there.
I told her not to worry about being in Cyprus and Ankara and Greece from mid-April until early May (I told her to avoid the Arab world unless she wants to return home in a coffin unless she knows what she's doing) and that we wouldn't be able to talk in private for a long time, it was her idealism and her talent that made me fall in love with her in the first place. She thanked me for that.
She's been to Malawi, she's been to Mexico and Saint Something and the US Virgin Islands. I told her I wanted to go to Socotra somehow, even if it is the worst of all possible places. I guess that's why it's so pristine. You can get there from the Yemeni mainland or you can get there from Somalia, and there aren't any tourists to cover the place with their beer cans. Everybody knows about Somalia already so I won't bother. The thing about Yemen is that Al Qaeda comes off as the good guy there. If you're wondering how the other guys accomplished that, well, their flag has "kill the Jews" on it.
I still want to talk to her in private, mostly about the things I want to say to Alex and Gabriella, whenever possible, probably the MFA on Memorial Day, although I'm hoping I run into Gabriella there, if not at Mahler's 6th next week or at Don Giovanni in early May. We're still going to do the mural at the wildlife center together. We're still going to go to summer concerts together. I'm still going to share her taste in music with my readers. I'm not going to worry about taking her to see Chameleon play but maybe next season, I'll go with Gabriella. In fact, if things work out with her, maybe we can see la Boheme together. And I'll probably drag Alex to see The Pearl Fishers. Everything's going to be ok.
She told me to not rush things with Gabriella, to tell her that I really like her a lot and that I really enjoy spending time with her. I'm just hoping everything works out. She says it's hard, she said that she didn't know how I felt about her and I thought she liked me back. I told her that I see signals that aren't really there. I didn't lie about already pretty much being in a relationship with her, we merely saw the same thing different ways. Fear of rejection is a part of it, but at least my fear of destroying a wonderful friendship over different desires turned out to be unfounded.
I told her I didn't want to say anything because she's amazing and Gabriella's amazing too and I was really hoping one of them would make the first move. At least I don't have to deal with the agony of choice.
Since I asked and I'm most likely not going to see Gabriella until summer, and normally I like most of spring but I'm not in the fucking mood right now, spring is 92 days and 19 hours too long and I just wish it was mid July right now, and anywhere from one third to one half of those 92 days and 20 hours are completely shitty. Maybe even three quarters in a bad year, like 2009.
Spoiler alert for anyone who might be contemplating sabotaging my relationship with Gabriella, I just want you to know that I haven't told you anything, so you can't. You don't have her contact information. You don't know anything about her. So good fucking luck with that, ok.
We all did Zoidberg impressions because there are space lobsters in galaga. Horray for Zoidberg! With an emotional breakdown dry mouth, that didn't sound very Zoidbergy. One guy got to stage 5 in one life but the commenter's curse got him. He got a game over when one of the space lobsters managed to avoid every one of his shots.
I told Emma to check out my livejournal and sent her a link via Twitter so there will be no plans for throwing acid in their kissy faces and no elaborate plans to kidnap their baby and sending her to live in a monastery in Bhutan and no human bait cars. The solution to every problem isn't throwing frigging acid on it, unless your problem is a solution with an overly alkaline pH balance. If you want to do that shit for your own reasons, go plan it out somewhere else; you aren't welcome here. However, sabotaging the EP by turning into intense Japanoise layered over dreamy trip hop has my blessing. Everyone wins with that plan. I don't think that's ever been done. You're probably asking how that would hurt their relationship, and I'm going to answer with "hurt the what now?"
Sam isn't Japanese, though. I don't know what he is. Emma doesn't know what he is. Nobody knows what he is. Not even Sam knows what he is. I assumed something like Zuleekistan or Bizaqh or even the Emirate of Mekzaes. Maybe Immeen, but he doesn't hate women and if he was Immeenish or Immeeni (I checked The Wolf of Winter and The Grand Ellipse and they seem to be interchangeable, or maybe one's a demonym and one's a language), he would not only go along with Cheryl's plan but have a jar of acid on him at all times for situations like that. I do know that Emma is Swedish, Irish, Scottish, and English, and Alex is Russian (damn it, I had something for this!). The Volskyland equivalent of Russia is Rhazaulle, if you're wondering. I'd say you probably aren't interested but if you're here, you probably are interested.
I'm pretty sure that Immeen is a fictionalized Iran.
Speaking of places that aren't real, someone signed up for the mailing list with the name "penis" and location of "up your ass."
Emma found their table on the side of the road. I thought it was just an ordinary table with a lamp clamped on, but nope. The lamp was an integral part of the table. On the table were demo CDs which disappeared quickly, stickers, and really awesome drawings in pencil and gel pen. I'm getting one in exchange for a Klimt-style painting of Emma. I feel like somewhere right now, there's some guy in a shopping cart wrapped up in Atlas Lab stickers.
I told Emma I could barely tolerate the smell of alcohol, and that's why I don't drink. I'm not a follower of the Gifted Iyecktor or anything. It reminds me of that one time we had a fly problem at the wildlife center and we were laying out vinegar traps to catch them.
The other bands were
Jet Black Sunrise
Parasoma
Happy Time Harry
King Pleaxure
The guy from Parasoma thought I looked familiar and that I saw him last week there but I've never been to TT's before. Parasoma describes themselves as desert rock, like Soundgarden or Kyuss. I think of desert rock as The Moon Seven Times.
I really did enjoy them, especially Jet Black Sunrise and Parasoma.
I was totally gobsmacked because hey, a show where a band is scheduled to play at 5 PM and they play at 5 PM. I guess it's because everyone used Jet Black Sunrise's drum set. You'd be gobsmacked too if the last time you saw them play, they were scheduled for 10 PM and played their first song at 10:45.
When I told her about Airiel, I sent her the song that was written about Jeremy's worst breakup but makes me think of the love I'll never have from her. I didn't tell her what the song was about, I just gave her the link. She'll know when she reads this.
I got some Indian food because all I had for the entire day was a bottle of Coke, ate the crispy bread with spicy stuff and green stuff and very viscous brown stuff and about three bites of curry before I realized "ehh, I'm still not in the mood" and took it home.
I got no sleep. I tried to watch some Raocow videos at 2 AM. It sucks because it's still Smarch, so it's too fucking cold for an all-nighter of Raocow videos and Airiel, or really, to do anything but toss and turn in bed.
Last time this happened, it took me about two weeks to restore my emotional equilibrium.
Maybe I'll see the woman with green hair again. We bonded briefly over classical music. She seemed kinda embarrassed about listening to it when I asked but I told her I had Carmina Burana on my iPod and I saw King Roger two weeks ago and I'm seeing Mahler in a week and boom, common interests. Emma would be impressed. Unfortunately, she had to get off (phrasing, boom. Inappropriate) before she got a quality portrait, or how I want to drag Alex kicking and screaming to see The Pearl Fishers and I really shouldn't have to explain why.
Maybe I'll see her again. Maybe I'll run into Sarah.
And, hey, a lot of things can change in four months, for good or for ill. Just ask Sarah.
hey, the title's a Harrison reference. I haven't read Signs of Life and can't even find samples of it, and the chapter title from Empty Space fit my situation more. If you can tell me what I'm trying to evoke with my writing style, I'll paint something for you.
Three people I encountered had green hair. One had green and black in a ponytail and between her outfit of a leather jacket, skirt, stockings, and combat boots, and her friend who had naturally red hair, they reminded me of Ghost World, one had green tips on reddish-blonde, one had a green fuzzy mohawk thing. There was a woman with pink hair too. Pink tips.
To Emma, I'm sorry for making everything super-awkward, even though I know you said I don't need to keep apologizing. Thank you for your support and friendship and thanks for staying with me and thanks for making me feel better and I really did enjoy last night despite everything. Wish me luck, okay?
To Alex, you mustn't squander something so wonderful.
Everyone deserves a happy ending.
burning question: I hoped I'd be able to keep this together, but life doesn't always work out the way you want it to. Have you noticed that? It really doesn't.