It's been nearly a year since I got my tattoo. I still like it, and I'm thinking about getting another. I've been wanting another anyway, but I haven't had any good ideas until semi-recently. However, this quotation was introduced to me several months ago, and I've been thinking about it since.

I'll present it without explanation or context, except that (of course) it's a song lyric--I want to garner first-impression reactions, the kind I'll get when people behind me read it and interpret it without so much as seeing my own face, let alone having any context at all. It's the same font and size as my first tattoo, and would be placed below it, with some breathing room, centered between my shoulderblades. The quotation marks are intentional and non-negotiable.



Poll #1483551 Tattoo reaction
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

What do you think?

I am, in particular, VERY interested if you see some problem with the line that has been in my blind spot--some way of misinterpreting or misreading it, or if you believe you're interpreting it correctly but hate the sentiment for some reason. Seriously. What do you think?

Oh right, yes. LiveJournal. I haven't read/written here in several months, and I kind of get the feeling that not a lot of the other people on my friends' list have either, save a tenacious handful. Oh, the internet.

It's been a busy summer. I took four music-related trips this summer: Chicago, St. Louis, Chicago again, and Seattle. The first was to see Robyn Hitchcock on a Friday and NPR's "This American Life" live on a Saturday; the second was for the So Many Dynamos' album release show; the last two were two of Harvey Danger's official breaking-up-the-band shows.

As an aside: In the last twelve months, three of my favorite bands have broken up and another two have lost band members. The rapid-fire onslaught forced me to realign how I feel about bands breaking up/changing line-ups in a way that is surely healthy in the long term. Which is to say: it is not the end of the world. Really. The world would have ended five times and life clearly marches on. My personal level of investment in music-as-a-concept is sometimes just as tied to the musicians I like as to their music, and watching them all dump each other recently is an aid in not romanticizing the whole affair. Still: there are people, and combinations of people, that I will miss watching on stage. But I digress.

The concerts were, all four, great highlights of great weekends. The first Chicago trip was with my mother, a great travel companion and my most recent Robyn Hitchcock convert. Being a Robyn Hitchcock fan is like being in a secret club; I've made several friends, both online and in real life, by virtue of a shared admiration for him. I've made many fellow-Harvey-Danger-fan friends too, but the difference is that I've never actively sought out the company/friendship of a Robyn Hitchcock fan community. People just find out that you like Robyn Hitchcock, and Now You're Friends. The phenomenon and the fans both skew towards awesome.

St. Louis was hot and friendly, both quietly friendly and very, very loudly friendly. I've spent close to three years watching the guys in So Many Dynamos survive a gauntlet of nasty van accidents, bad tour situations, having their gear stolen, and perpetually running out of money and raising funds any way they could to keep going, and in spite of it, remain tenacious as all hell, and gracious, super-nice guys on top of it. It was wonderfully satisfying to watch them have a really triumphant hometown-hero sort of show; I was proud of them and proud to be there for it.

Chicago, the first of two Harvey Danger weekends this summer, was one of the most surreal concerts of my life. For one: a bunch of online friends came to Chicago for the show, and there was a bit of a fan meet-up as a result, as well as a definite people-from-out-of-town section standing in front of the stage. And two: I knew the members of all three of the bands. Which sounds namedroppy but is truly just a reflection on the fact that, while I'm a loyal and generous fan, I'm also a little obnoxious/high-maintenance as fans go, and when I love a band, the band tends to know it. I don't think it's necessarily a character failing, but it's no claim to greatness either. Anyway. The end result was that I was in Chicago, a city where I've never lived, and I knew the people in every band on-stage and most of the people in the crowd around me.

There is this refrain from a Bound Stems song: "We'd been apart for a long time; now we've come back and we're ready. Everyone feels like a good friend. Everyone feels like a good friend!" It rattled around in the back of my head the whole night. First I watched the wonderful (in every sense) Evan and Paige as Sleepy Kitty, playing Chicago in their second public performance ever, and doing a bang-up job of it. Next was So Many Dynamos, in an absolutely explosive performance: they are nearly always high-energy but they were ignited that night; I would only find out after the fact that Ryan was leaving the band and it was, secretly, his last show. And then, finally, Harvey Danger, a band I'd fly to the moon to see, glorious and truly quitting while they're ahead, while they're still good, while they're still great. Standing in Schubas, gripping the stage monitors with my fingertips, watching all these musicians and thinking not only of their music but of the things they've told me about it, about themselves and each other and what made the music, the band, the night come together... everyone feels like a good friend. Everyone feels like a good friend!

And Seattle, which was themed by having private moments and personal thoughts in very public settings and situations, which is fine, which is the point (and, one could argue, sometimes the entire point) of live music. I love live music for the intensity of it, for its power of catharsis, and Seattle was intense in exactly the ways I needed it to be. Oh and the music was good too. The only downside: just a smidge of permanent tinnitus, from hanging my chin over Sean's monitor for close to fifty songs over the course of their two final shows. It is unlikely that I will have learned my lesson from this.
_____

My new year's resolution, which was to branch out and listen to lots of new music, and especially lots of new music created by people other than the personal friends of musicians I already like, has been actually going swimmingly! I've been consciously seeking out music through avenues that don't immediately breed back into themselves: I went through a period in 2007-08ish where I effectively only discovered the existence of a band if they played the same night as a band whose show I'd gone to see; since a lot of bands tour with their friends-who-also-have-bands, I completely missed out on entire cities/labels/echelons-of-popularity/et cetera. (For example: I listen to lots of Pacific Northwest music, and lots of Midwest music. I listen to very little Southeastern and New England music. I doubt I could name a half-dozen currently-touring Brooklyn bands. One would argue that it might be cheaper to fall in love with East-coast bands, but we know that's not the point.) And, since I fixate on small quantities of music instead of hoarding a diverse collection, I don't actually require a lot of different music to keep me happy.

But! 2009 has changed some of that! I've been stellar about following up on recommendations, both from fellow music fans and musicians; I've started retracing steps back to non-current music that I missed the first time around, particularly the stuff that has influenced what I love now. (Biggest example: early '90s lo-fi/college-radio. Who's got two thumbs and didn't know anything about Pavement a year ago but is super-pumped that they're doing a reunion tour now? This one! And I almost certainly would have loved them when I was thirteen, too, if somebody in semi-rural Kentucky would have played them for me.)

So I've listened to dozens of new-to-me bands this year, and I'm proud of myself for that. I know that at this point, a lot of music fans have listened to hundreds of new bands this year, but in 2008, I could have probably counted the number of different musicians/bands that made it into my CD collection on one hand, so I'll take it.
_____

I'm hitting three concerts in the next seven days: SMD tomorrow night and Wednesday night, and Blind Pilot (a new-to-me band this year, and absolutely one of my favorite discoveries of 2009) next week. Everything else in life is fine. I keep Twitter updated like mad; it is likely that I will eventually regret not keeping a regular blog this summer and fall. I keep restarting and self-consciously aborting a dedicated concert blog; perhaps keeping the concert blog should be my resolution for 2010. In the meantime, it is likely that this year's Music Year In Review, which I'll cobble together in two months, will be much more exciting and fulfilling than last year's.

Your 2009 finalists are:

19. Ramya Auroprem
65. Serena Laine-Lobsinger
88. Kyle Mou
89. Aishwarya Pastapur
103. Kennyi Aouad
110. Kavya Shivashankar
139. Sidharth Chand
158. Tussah Heera
170. Neetu Chandak
201. Anamika Veeramani
276. Tim Ruiter


Of my team, still-standing include Kavya, Kennyi, Serena, and Tim. I was sad but unsurprised to lose Veronica and Sriram--they'll both be back for several more years--and it was a bummer to lose adorable Paige, but losing Zachary Zagorski is the real tragedy for our team. Z's played a great game and he'll be missed. As a result of Z's departure, Kennyi has been promoted to deputy captain.

Startlingly, only three of my ten predicted top-finishers are still in. Kyle, Kavya, and Sidharth, I saw you guys coming, as did EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD, but the rest of the finalists contain some wonderful surprises.

Interestingly, the last three spellers--Neetu, Anamika, and Tim--are the three seventh-graders that made it. Everybody else is in the eighth grade and, win or lose, will not return. Keep these three on your radar for next year--unless, of course, one of them wins. :-)

If you're still looking for a kid to root for, I'm imploring you to adopt either Tussah Heera or Neetu Chandak. I wish now that I'd grabbed both of them after all. SO ADORABLE.

Tonight, 8:00: it all goes down!

The first broadcast round of the Bee this year was broadcast exclusively on ESPN360, ESPN's online channel that is only viewable to people with specific ISPs, none of which service either my work or home internet addresses. However, Georgia Tech gets ESPN360, and earlier tonight, I hauled down to the library to take notes on the performance of each speller that has become a semi-finalist.

The round broadcast was Round 3. In Round 3, every speller in the competition got a chance to spell one word, and a correct answer added points to your Rounds 1 and 2 totals. In other words, an incorrect answer in Round 3 was not an automatic disqualification. After Round 3 was over, all spellers were ranked, and the top 41 were taken as semi-finalists, to begin competition on ESPN tomorrow morning.

You can read all of the semi-finalist bios together on one page here. Below are the notes I took from their Round Three performances. This is, of course, to aid you in choosing your favorite kid. :-D

The Semi-Finalists

7. Esther Park, 7th grade - Her word was "ocarina" and she nearly laughed when she heard it. Girl definitely has some Legend of Zelda in her world.
11. Brandon Whitehead, 7th grade - he squeakily spelled "Parnassian" without hesitating. He knew it cold.
12. Paige Vasseur, 8th grade - spelled "tourlourou," a type of crab, correctly. She's tiny and if off-the-charts in terms of adorableness.
16. Josephine Kao, 8th grade - She has "Class President" written all over her, and as it's her fourth time here, she's good at this game. She nailed "mostaccioli."
18. Alex Wells, 8th grade - Oh my god, this "kid" is older than me. His profile says he's 13, but he's obviously taller than me and has a boomingly deep voice. He correctly spelled "amadelphous."
19. Ramya Auroprem, 8th grade - No humor, no hesitation. The girl exuded confidence on "phonasthenia."
36. Claudine Broussard, 7th grade - "Cuchifrito." Like Ramya, she knew it and she hit it and she didn't have a doubt in her mind about it.
37. Laura Newcombe, 6th grade - She was a little hesitant and obviously nervous about the crowd, the most actually-kidlike of the finalists so far. Admittedly, "alim" isn't the hardest word this round, but she can't help being pitched a softball, and she did get it correct.
40. Veronica Penny, 5th grade - She has a great poker face for an 11-year-old. She spelled "nyctipelagic," one of the hardest words this round, slowly and deliberately and correctly. I couldn't like her style more.
56. Vincent Medina, 8th grade - A little less visibly comfortable with the competition than some of the other competitors. It didn't keep him from correctly spelling "octogenary."
60. Miguel Gatmaytan, 8th grade - It's always a little strange to me when the boys' voices are already very deep. He had absolutely no trouble or hesitation on "nidificate."
65. Serena Laine-Lobsinger, 8th grade - Baby hipster alert! Baby hipster alert! The girl with the purple hoodie and the two-toned sidebangs had no problem with "typhlology."
70. Talmage Nakamoto, 8th grade - This cutie from Hawaii was totally nonplussed by "inexorable," which is only the second word after "ocarina" that this browser hasn't thought was misspelled. Love the bangs, Talmage.
88. Kyle Mou, 8th grade - Kyle's old hat at this, and had no problem with "coriaceous." He continues to be adorable and look younger than his 13 years.
89. Aishwarya Pastapur, 8th grade - Bless her for the moment of wind-in-the-vacuum when she asked for the etymology and the judge said, "The dictionary provides no etymology for 'bodegon.'" She got it anyway.
97. Vaibhav Vavilala, 8th grade - Another favorite to win, his poker face was perfect, as was his spelling of "attritus."
103. Kennyi Aouad, 8th grade - I can't decide if this kid is totally cool or a total dork. Either way, I like him. He grinned at the judges as he scored with "retrocedence."
108. Shari-Jo Miller, 7th grade - The one competitor from Jamaica was perfectly composed and perfectly mannered, and her spelling of "pilpul" matched.
110. Kavya Shivashankar, 8th grade - Her oversized teeshirt and ponytail make her look deceptively unassuming and unthreatening. You wouldn't have guessed that her measured-in-delivery spelling of "mesophilic" came from one of the three favorites to win.
139. Sidharth Chand, 8th grade - As it turns out, Kavya and Sidharth will be spelling back-to-back for the entire semi-final and final rounds. He grew out the mustache for the occasion. His German word "springerle" was difficult due to its pronunciation and roots, but he nailed it without any struggle all the same.
151. Brent Henderson, 8th grade - The blondest kid in the bunch paced out "oleiferous" with no fanfare and no missteps. His grin when he sat back down, though, was completely adorable.
158. Tussah Heera, 8th grade - She spelled "cecity" with her giant, doll-like eyes closed. If you like so-serious-it's-precious kids, she might be your champion.
159. Avvinash Radakrishnan, 8th grade - He and Talmage have the same barber, I think. He was all business with his correct spelling of "thremmatology."
163. Michael Sun, 8th grade - He's a hand-speller. You know what I mean: he covers his mouth, spells into his fist, and then repeats his answer into the microphone. This might be going out of style--he's the first finalist I've seen who's done it, and it used to be de riguer--but it secured him a correct spelling of "sauterelle."
168. Kevin Drew, 8th grade - Most of the kids who showily spelled their words without asking for information did not actually make the semis, even if they got their Round 3 word correct. I generally see it as a bad sign. He did make the semis, though, with his no-info-required spelling of "florulent."
169. Sriran Hathwar, 3rd grade - TINY AND ADORABLE I LOVE HIM FOREVER. This nine-year-old was the youngest to make it to the semis; there were two more that did not make the cut. Look for him to be a media darling tomorrow night. No trouble at all with "ommatophore."
170. Neetu Chandak, 7th grade - She cheerily stepped away from the microphone and spelled "picayune" to herself first before correctly repeating it to the judges. She doesn't actually have the manic grin that her profile picture implies. "Cutie-pie" applies.
181. Zachary Zagorski, 8th grade - Getting a correctly nuanced pronunciation on "urisk," a good-natured Scottish goblin, proved difficult. Even with little useful meta-info available to help him work it out, he spelled it correctly.
183. Siraj Sindhu, 8th grade - His word, "witloof," was pronounced "wit-loaf," and there was no way to get it correct unless he knew it cold. He did.
200. Tino Delamerced, 7th grade - He falls into the category of kids that is going to be hopelessly dorky until his junior year of college, at which point he will figure things out and become a total catch. He didn't struggle with "pogrom."
201. Anamika Veeramani, 7th grade - Even the pronouncer struggled with the different pronunciations of "alcazar," and she might have taken a bit of joy in listening to him trip over this Arabic-to-Spanish word in the three times he gave the five pronunciations. She got it right.
204. Nicholas Rushlow, 5th grade - This eleven-year-old recognized "cauterize" and spelled it with a seriousness and measure that speaks well to his future in this competition.
218. Connor Aberle, 7th grade - He's having a mustache contest with Sidharth, and he is Oh So Very Portland. After spelling "macroscian," he went to go form a dancey post-punk band with Serena Laine-Lobsinger.
231. Sukanya Roy, 6th grade - A death-grip on the microphone and some back-of-the-placard finger-spelling helped her secure "Bauhaus."
239. Keiko Bridwell, 8th grade - Another possible favorite to win, the word "mahout," a Sanskrit elephant-keeper, didn't even make her blink. She knew it cold. Watch her--this could be her year.
249. Akshay Raghuram, 6th grade - He listened to each piece of information from the judges adorably slack-jawed before correctly spelling "gouache," which apparently rhymes with "squash." He has high charm-the-media potential.
251. Mouctika Paluri, 8th grade - Another serious, down-to-business speller in cute glasses. She had no trouble with "oblocutor."
255. Aditya Chemudupaty, 7th grade - A cutie-pie in an oversized sweatshirt and round glasses, he handled "nenuphar" with no struggle.
270. Andrew Traylor, 8th grade - His bio says he wants to be a video game designer. He got "magus" and was visibly delighted. I can only imagine that tonight, he's high-fiving Esther Park, the girl who got "ocarina."
276. Tim Ruiter, 7th grade - I can't place who this kid reminds me of, but his mannerisms definitely remind me of somebody I know. Either way, he's a cool kid. "Echard" was no problem for him.
283. Eleanor Runde, 8th grade - She and her casually messy red-headed braids had no trouble with "tahini." She's from Seattle and tahini is delicious.

My Top-Ten Prediction

Ordered by competitor number, here are my predictions for the top ten finishers in this year's bee:
13. Josephine Kao
56. Vincent Medina
88. Kyle Mou
97. Vaibhav Vivilala
110. Kavya Shivashankar
139. Sidharth Chand
159. Avvinash Radakrishnan
181. Zachary Zagorski
239. Keiko Bridwell
251. Mouctika Paluri

My Team

This is my favorite part: Every year, I craft a team of my personal favorite kids. Not the ones with the best chances, necessarily, although I pick them out of the semi-finalists, so they all have a chance, but I do intentionally leave some of the best kids off my team to avoid stacking my own deck. (Case in point: Only two names on the "top ten predicted finishers" list are also on this list.) No, these are just the kids I like best. This year, I'm limiting myself to a team of nine, and I wanted to choose a dozen more. These are the kids for whom I'm cheering the loudest tomorrow night:

Paige Vasseur
Veronica Penny*
Serena Laine-Lobsinger
Kennyi Aouad*
Kavya Shivashankar*
Sriran Hathwar
Zachary Zagorski*
Akshay Raghuram
Tim Ruiter

Captain: Kavya Shivashankar
Deputy Captain: Zachary Zagorski

*Indicates returning member of 2008 team

________________________

Your turn. Who's on your team? Go.

The 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee starts today!

This year, the webmaster for www.spellingbee.com has been really, really on-the-ball. In previous years, we didn't get any information on the spellers until just days before the bee, but a full two weeks out, we got names, ages/grades, hometowns, pictures, and--new this year--mini-bios. Color me thrilled!

Sadly, they've removed all round results and word lists from prior years, making some of this analysis really difficult--I've had to go from incompletely-cached pages on Google (archive.org doesn't have last year's posted yet) and my own notes. I've sent a request for them, though, and if they respond I'll make it available.

As always, I'm providing now a pre-Bee analysis of the field. They start with 291 spellers this year, and 40-50 will advance to the semi-finals, from which 10-20 will advance to the finals.

Rules reminder before looking at the field: To compete in the Bee, you must be in the 8th grade or under, and under the age of 16 by three months. There is no minimum on age or grade; the youngest spellers are usually 9 or 10 and in elementary school. If you win the Bee, you cannot compete again, but any other finish, you can, provided you're still eligible from an age/grade perspective. You have to qualify every year by competing on community levels, and you're usually sponsored by a newspaper. Although it's called that "National" spelling bee, and the vast majority of competitors are American, students can be from other countries, and Canada always sends a strong team.

Here we go!

Last year, there were 12 finalists, and three of them were under the 8th grade, making them theoretically eligible again this year. All three of them made it. (Good job, guys!) They are:
88. Kyle Mou, 8th grade, from Illinois. This year will be Kyle's third time at the rodeo; he finished 10th last year. He's pretty effing adorable.
110. Kavya Shivashankar, 8th grade, from Kansas. She finished in fourth place last year. She's been in the top ten spellers three years in a row now, making her the obvious statistical favorite. That said, she'll need to remember Samir Patel, the 2007 runaway favorite who, after coming in 3rd in 2005 and 2nd in 2006, didn't even make semi-finals in 2007, his last year of eligibility. As long as Kavya keeps her head in the game and doesn't let the media attention get under her skin (and she will be the media favorite), she's got a fantastic shot.
139. Sidharth Chand, 8th grade, from Michigan. He was the mind-blowing dark horse last year: In his very first National Bee ever, as a seventh-grader, he came in second place. Was it a fluke, or is he a late-arrival 2009 contender? Keep an eye on him.

Kyle, Kavya, and Sidharth:


Of the 45 semi-finalists in 2008, 12 have returned. (There are 69 total returning spellers; the ones not listed here didn't make the 2008 semis.) Plus Kavya, Kyle, and Sidharth, they are:
5. So-Young Iris Chung
16. Jospehine Kao
43. Émilie Lafleur
40. Veronica Penny
56. Vincent Medina
97. Vaibhav Vavilala
181. Zachary Zagorski
239. Keiko Bridwell
251. Mouctika Paluri

It is very likely that one of those twelve will be the 2009 winner. Of course, it's possible that a first-timer or a low 2008 finisher will sneak in, as Sidharth did last year, especially because these are kids, pre-teens, and teenagers, who do a hell of a lot of changing year-to-year. Keep a special eye on Jospehine, Vaibhav, and Keiko, all of whom (like Kavya) are in their fourth year of national competition and all of whom placed in the teens last year, just barely missing a chance at becoming finalists. Last year, there were two fifth-year finalists (meaning that both first reached the national Bee in 4th grade!), but this year, with no fifth-years at all competing, the four fourth-years will be reckoning forces.

Josephine, Vaibhav, and Keiko:


Other kids to watch:

I'd think that sharing a sponsoring community with a recent winner would be a high-pressure slot. Here are the four kids whose sponsoring newspapers also sponsored a recent winner, and the year of that winner:

99. Michael Spors, 2008
23. Caroline Bell, 2007
162. Eesha Anagha Ramanujam, 2006
18. Alex Clifton Wells, 2005

All four of them are eighth-graders who have made it to the National Spelling Bee for the first time this year. Michael, of course, cannot be blamed for this: Sameer had him shut out until this year! If Michael makes it to the semi-finals, watch for the interviewers to grill him on his relationship to Sameer and whether he "feels pressure under the shadow of a champion" and other unintentionally cruel psych-out questions.

A couple more kids that might feel the pressure a little more keenly than the rest: 166. Hannah Evans and 48. Christian Smith. Hannah is the younger sister of Matt Evans, who had been a favorite the last couple years and is now too old to compete; Christian is the younger brother of Jake Smith, who was a semi-finalist last year. They've both got access to potentially the greatest coaches any speller could want, assuming the sibling dynamic is there, and as neither of them are 8th graders yet, I would mark them this year but watch them closely for 2010.

Hannah and Christian:


Those of us in Atlanta can keep an eye on sixth-grader 67 Julia Denniss, our hometown hero. As a sixth-grader and first-time national competitor, her chances are not historically soaring, but the experience is excellent and she'll definitely be worth watching in 2010 and 2011.

Julia:


Of course, there are nearly three hundred awesome kids competing this year, and you should absolutely pick your favorites to cheer for. I've got Kavya for the win, while lizzie9208 favors Sidharth, affejunge has picked Kyle, and former-tween-author watchmebe has chosen current-tween-author Christina. Who's your pick?

[10:51] Christin: Hey there, did [coworker] give you the script for [problem] before or after we did the build?
[10:54] Developer: i never got a script from [coworker].
[10:54] Christin: Even now you haven't?
[10:54] Developer: no
[10:54] Christin: I'm going to drown him in a bucket.
[10:54] Developer: ok

Flew into Chicago. Ate delicious sushi with mom. Slept in a stupidly nice hotel. Went to two different record stores for Record Store Day and found four albums I wanted. Ate lunch with a dear friend from the Harvey Danger message board. Saw an instore performance from The Lawrence Arms. Went to the Robyn Hitchcock show, saw Thax Douglas read a poem before the show (!), swooned over some of my favorite songs in the world, grabbed a setlist. Had pizza and beer delivered to the hotel room. Fell asleep in bathtub.

Today: bumming around rainy-ass Chicago until it's time to see Ira Glass, David Rakoff, Dan Savage, and company read prettily to us.

Have I mentioned that Chicago rocks? Chicago rocks.

Help me put together a playlist: I want songs about summer. No cheery summer songs, though: I want songs about summer being hot and tense and unpleasant and witness to bad times. Musical genre is pretty wide, but I want songs that are very specifically, explicitly about (or set during) summer: think Decemberists' "Summersong," Bangles' "Cruel Summer," or Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer." Songs about the beginning or ending of summer work too, as long as they're "geez summer is gonna be/was awful" sorts of songs.

(Contributions from the musical "Grease" need not apply.)

Post your suggestions (and, if you have them, download links would rock). I'll compile. Thanks!

I've got a playlist of similarly-moody songs from a variety of artists that I've got set on Shuffle. This was the pairing I just heard: The opening song from the first fawn-kneed album of a young band, followed by the last song of the most recent album of a singer in the golden years of his lifelong career in music. Wildly different songs, in sound and pace and (in every way) maturity, but somehow a beautiful pair together.

There is a lifetime of musicianship left in the members of the young band, whether together or separately, and it made me anticipate fondly the music of theirs I'll be enjoying in thirty years.

Words and phrases I'm currently abusing:

Enamored of
Pro-tip
Bring a ____ to a ____ fight
Coolio! (I blame too many Scrubs re-runs)
Spoiler alert

Sometimes I worry a little that me and people like me are training ourselves to communicate entirely in memes.

Okay, I know that a lot of times, nicknames morph to the point that their etymology is completely indiscernable.

I want to hear your most-morphed-to-the-point-of-no-recognition nickname, either your own or one you've applied to somebody/something else.

(Apropos of: Layla -> Layla-Lou -> Lou -> Louie -> Louie Andouille, which you must admit is ADORABLE. Louie Andouille!)

Yesterday, the cat jumped in my lap because he was freaked out. He was freaked out because the dog had just barfed all over him.

"Yo dawg, I heard you like watching theater while drunk, so we put some spirits in your spirit so you can play while they play."

So Ross and I went to the Shakespeare Tavern's production of the Canterbury Tales last Friday night, and it was DELIGHTFUL. Everybody remembers that The Canterbury Tales is a vulgar, hilarious series of lewd stories, right? The Shakespeare Tavern, being a tavern, sells draught beer, and Ross and I worked our way through two pitchers of Bass over the course of the show. The show was great, and afterwards, I tipsily wandered to the artistic director and forked over for season tickets.

So, now we have season tickets to the Shakespeare Tavern. \o/!

The season ticket price (they call them "club tickets") is essentially paying for 10 shows and getting ticket vouchers for 12, so it's buy-5-get-1 theater, which is a damn good deal. Plus, they've got other benefits, including $5 off any other tickets we care to purchase. So, if you're thinking of going to the Shakespeare Tavern, get cheaper tickets off us. :-D

We also saw the Georgia Tech Glee Club and the Agnes Scott Collegiate Chorale perform together on Sunday afternoon. Excellent show--I absolutely love it when music gives me literal shivers, and they did a couple songs that were so breathtakingly pretty that I indeed got chills. Those two groups are mega-talented; I hope they do more collaborations in the future. (It would seem likely, since it went as well as it did.)

And this morning, Ross and I renewed our WABE membership, and they're going to send us "Go Green!" grocery totes. I've resisted buying grocery totes until now, because I couldn't make a damn decision on them, but if I can get NPR-branded reusable grocery bags, I'm pretty sure I get +2 to Liberal Yuppie, and since I'm level-grinding that stat, I'll take it.

Would anybody like to join us for April's Hamlet production?

Dear Diary,

Today, my worth was validated by an indie rock star after I did some linguistics research on his behalf.

Love,
Christin

I'm sitting on the porch, serenely watching the animals play in the yard. Suddenly, Prodigy trots up to the porch, walks past me, and goes inside. After a moment, I get up to follow him, to see why he's inside. He's just finishing up in the litter box, and now he's hurrying back outside to play some more.

I tried telling him that coming inside to use the litter box is like getting out of the ocean to pee, but he didn't really follow.

Twitter is fantastic for microblogging about being sick. If you follow me there, you've heard about every icky turn. Now I've got a steroid shot chugging through my system, and I feel a dozen times better. Those steroid shots? Are amazing.

Question: Do you ever get tinnitus when you've got a headcold? I'm used to day-after tinnitus after I attend a particularly loud concert, but over the last few days, I've started experiencing tinnitus even though I haven't been to a concert recently. I'm hoping this is related to being stuffed up, and not a new onset of permanent tinnitus. I wasn't banking on that for another 15 years at least!

I missed what was surely a great show at the Drunken Unicorn on Friday night: The Airborne Toxic Event was playing, but the idea of taking a bad cold into a smoky, damp, crowded, unventilated basement room seemed like the best way to end the lives of both me and every underage hipster in Atlanta. And since those dear little over-eyelinered wacky-legginged kids are the reason the bands I like come to Atlanta, I wish them no ill and elected to keep from ruining their uninsured immune systems.

I've been feeling distinctly up-and-down about work over the last few months, but I had a really good chat with my manager this morning that left me feeling reassured and better than I've felt in a while about how I'm doing. I have a brain that is much more interested in the big picture than all the smaller ones, which means that I'll have really good testing moments like recognizing deficiencies in requirements coupled with really hare-brained ones wherein cosmetic screen problems don't even blip on my radar. I feared that this big-picture proclivity was going to be at odds with the little things I need to catch, but I'm learning the... the mental muscle-memory, if you will, of routinely checking the same things continuously, of knowing each screen's and each functionality's ways-this-can-be-wrong and making sure they're all good. I'm consciously and proactively getting better at my job, which is one of those universally Good things.

My newest discovered joy is watching Layla and Prodigy play around, in, and on top of the doghouse in the back yard. (They'll both jump on top of it. Only Prodigy will go inside.) Some afternoon soon, I'm going to videotape their antics so you can see the delight of the cat and the dog romping in the grass together.

March has gone much more quickly than January or February, and I don't think I'm going to have a musical find in March. That's okay. The weather right now is too nice to be spent hunkering over MySpace pages or huddling in dark venues. That time is better spent when it's too cold or too hot to be outside.

Spring weather is good for me. The sick-and-dizzy is passing, and I'm going to have a fine April.

( Speculation about Dollhouse. Contains one 'This actor will play this character' spoiler; no plot spoilers. )

Also: My friend Jess, who I met while studying in New Zealand, definitely just wrote the most Kiwi LJ entry in the history of blogging. I'm a little in love. <33333

It frustrates me a little when the songs that everybody remembers from a musical aren't the actual best songs in the musical.

Right now, I'm listening to The Music Man, which includes two songs about the virtues of women: "Shipoopi" and "The Sadder-but-Wiser Girl." Everybody knows "Shipoopi," but "Shipoopi" is an irritating song, an earworm that represents one of the low points of the soundtrack. Very few remember "The Sadder-but-Wiser Girl," and that song is fantastic--it's possibly the funniest, most clever song in a very clever show.

Or take Fiddler On the Roof. The instantly-recognizable "Sunrise, Sunset" is pretty, but ultimately a yawn. On the other hand, "Far From the Home I Love," Hodel's melancholy ballad near the end of the show, is breath-takingly (and heart-breakingly) gorgeous.

(As an aside, I do think that this song is nearly always performed poorly in recordings. Because it has some very high notes, and because the actress who plays Hodel has to have a very good voice for the rest of the show, this song is often performed much too operatically and pretty-voiced, which is totally inappropriate for the song. If Hodel doesn't sound on the verge of tears, she's doing it wrong.)

Footloose is a crazy-fun show, but two of the best-known songs from it, "Footloose" and "Let's Hear It For the Boy," can't hold a candle to the mischievous, gleeful fun of "Dancing Is Not a Crime."

Everybody can sing half a dozen different songs from Grease, from "Greased Lightning" to "Summer Nights" to "We Go Together," but if you always tune out when the sleepover girls start "Freddy My Love," you miss the most clever song in the entire show.

I could go on. But you know what I mean, right?

My picks are (in order) Nijah, Fo, Allison, and Teyona. Nijah is fucking gorgeous, Fo is completely adorable, Allison has THOSE OMG EYES, and Teyona has the best body, I think, of the entire group (her face stresses me out, but I'll bet she photographs gorgeous).

My pans: Tahlia's sweet, but she has no business being there, burns or no burns--she doesn't have a great face or body shape or walk. Kortnie is about the skinniest "plus-sized" model ever; if I was going to guess, I'd have guessed Tahlia was bigger than Kortnie, and neither of them are even a little heavy. Sandra and London are intolerable and I want them to die in a fire together.

My wildcard jury is out on Celia. I definitely have strong feelings about her; however, I am on the border between hating her and loving her more than life itself. Plus: she seems like an awesome person. Minus: she has crazy-eyes.

What about 'chu?

I don't think Twitter encourages a healthy attention span. It feeds the part of me that, by nature or by nasty habit, would like to only think about a given thing for fifteen seconds tops and then move on to something non-sequitur. There are times when this is okay, and times when this is not the least bit good.

At work, I like checking Twitter between micro-tasks (a large chunk of what I do is a series of dozens-to-hundreds of micro-tasks) because it's the right length for me to rinse my brain a little without getting completely off-task and derailed. As a result, Twitter is my micro-break of choice when I'm having a good, productive day that involves less big-picture thinking and more minutia work (like today).

So when Twitter's website goes down on a day like today, it makes me want to STAB.

Also, a poll:

Poll #1358245 Exporting Twitter
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Exporting Tweets to more than one other social networking sites (LJ, Facebook, etc) via LoudTwitter or something else, so that somebody who generally follows you on all sees you duplicate all over the damn place: