And break your heart, steal your crown

Kori is making Umbrella Corporation ID badges (video game thing) and I needed a good "working for an evil viral zombie creating corporation is serious business" ID photo, so I had Mara help me out. She even lent me her glasses for the occasion so it's extra intensely serious.

SCIENCE IS SERIOUS

Heeeeeeeey!

the kiss of death

What'd I tell you. Serious business.

Well some say life will beat you down

Today is my day off work! Woooo! So much I could do. For example, I could FINALLY watch Seven Samurai. Or For a Few Dollars More. Or I could watch one of the million other movies I have. Or maybe I could make brownies, or make something big to use for lunch for the rest of the week, or take a nap. I could even rearrange my mess of playlists on my ipod or do my taxes, what the heck!

What do I end up doing? Watching fan-made Final Fantasy music videos on Youtube. For like two hours.

"How was your day off?" "Oh, pretty good, I made linguine with clams for lunch and then acted like a nerdtard for the rest of the day."

So long, Toolmaster of Brainerd

Today I made my first improvised hot dish! Score ten points for slytherin. I guess it's not like there was a big chance of failure, considering my ingredients were chicken, bacon, potatos, and a can of cheese soup. But, y'know, still. I suspect my arteries think I'm kind of a jerk, but what do they know.

He rumbled north for a change of scenery

Man, I walked to Ichiban to meet some internet goons for dinner, and it is white out there. It's not especially cold, but geez, I felt like I was stuck in some kind of wacky shaved-ice machine with snow globe aspirations. I could see clearly for maybe ten feet before it just became a whirly white blur. By the time I got home, which was maybe a ten minute walk, I was coated in a thick layer of white. It was like that cambells soup commercial they drag out every once in a while, where this snowman wanders into a house and starts eating soup and melting and you're like "oh no snowman suicide" but it turns out it's really a kid (in his pajamas?) hiding inside an exoskeleton of snow. It was like that. An exoskeleton of snow. What was that kid doing outside in his pajamas so long he turned into a snowman anyway? Questions.

Speaking of questions, yesterday at work Mary kicked this guy out because he was badgering the other customers. He disliked this course of action quite vehemently, and just as he reached the door, he whirled around, pointed one pudgy finger at us, and growled, "You're just lucky I'm not Rosa Parks and this isn't a bus!" then stormed out the door. After about thirty seconds of confused silence, Christina said, hesitantly, "I think...I think he was makin' one of them...metaphors?" It was just so amazingly befuddling. What was that even supposed to mean?

And told him to kiss the twin towns goodbye

It was like yesterday was national "Crawlin' with Kids!" day or something, because everywhere I went things were, well, crawlin' with kids. Packs of them on the sidewalks, packs of them at work, and a swarm of toddlers jumped me on the back of the bus. I was just about to offer to move, but they were far too fast for me, and before I knew it I was surrounded. It was too late. I had to ride to work in a sea of silently staring, tiny children, one of whom inexplicably decided my lap would be a good alternative to a seat. Uh, hello small child, are you going to be here long? Because, you know, uh. Please go?

All his old girlfriends lined up in the sky

So. Dir en grey.

Diagnosis: amazing.

I'm always fascinated by how bands play themselves on stage. Joseph Arthur, scruffy and shirtless under a lime green suit, owned the stage the moment music started oozing out of the speakers. Blind Guardian played with the mellow power of twenty one years' experience packed under their metal studded leather belts. The French Kicks lead singer stood with his legs crossed and his eyes firmly closed during the entire set, while Quit Your Day Job's lead would frequently look up at the crowd and grin hugely as the keyboardist spat at things and kicked his leg out to the side. Fair to Midland's lead shambled about the stage in an awed stupor, sometimes Ok Go was something of a foil to The Decemberists; Ok Go was laid back and chatty, while The Decemberists gave an impression of benign indulgence, as though they were altruistically humoring the audience as they allowed them to observe, like an adult daintily sipping make believe earl grey at a child's tea party.

Dir en grey doesn't have Damian Kulash's charisma or Colin Meloy's class. It doesn't have Joseph Arthur's absolute command of the stage, or Hansi Kürsch's command of the crowd, or even some lunatic Swede taking off his pants for no good reason.

Dir en grey doesn't need them.

Dir en grey has Kyo.

Every other concert I've been to has felt, to some degree, like a concert. I pay my money, the band acknowledges that by putting on a show to watch, everybody goes home happy. But watching Kyo wail and shriek and howl, alternately sobbing and screaming and standing in eerily peaceful silence and then just as suddenly back to barking, it didn't feel like a show. I didn't feel like I was standing in an audience so much as a mob of voyeurs watching a one-man descent into madness, set to musical accompaniment.

Sometimes he would stand up on the box at the edge of the stage and stop, eyes closed as though in meditation, as the single spot lit his hair to gold and illuminated his composed features. Sometimes he would shake and scream, or cover his eyes with his hands and sob like a child, sometimes he would suddenly open his eyes and stare at the crowd in something akin to shock, as though he was seeing us for the first time. He stood on his box, tore the chain from his belt, twisted a link open with his teeth and slashed at the skin of his chest with it. And I swear, during one song Kyo looked straight into my eyes for two heartbeats before letting out a primal scream, holding my gaze all the while.

It was bone chilling.

We're gonna start up the old machinery, Mr. Master of Brainerd"

I'm going to see Dir En Grey tomorrow night, and I've spent the last few days searching, in an increasingly frantic manner, for my ticket. I had it on my desk at one point, I know I did, and now it is not on my desk. Nor is it under, about, or around my desk. It is not in the beams of my office. It is not on my dresser. Apparently it is nowhere. I'd pretty much resigned myself to dropping another $35 and buying a new one, and sat down to my computer to do so. Just as I brought up the ticketmaster website, I remembered that I had meant to make a cheesecake tonight and figured I'd just come back and buy the stupid ticket after that was in the oven. Last time I'd made the cheesecake I'd scrawled the recipe on the back of an envelope, which was still pinned to the fridge.

Inside the envelope was my ticket.

Thank you cheesecake!

It said, "Mr. Master of Brainerd

I spent six hours today setting up the silent auction. SIX HOURS. It usually takes me ONE. The problem is Ray cleaned up the jewelery room, which is good because it means there is minimal risk of death by avalanche in there, but is not good because it also means I don't know where anything is and what I did find was pretty feast-or-famine. Feast: Portfolio of eight large Grandma Moses prints, amazing book of photos from a 1930s luxury cruise ship, fancy little lipstick holding music box doodad (it's shaped like a cylindrical pink lamp thing, you press a button and it plays Lara's Theme as the panels along the side flip open to display your collection of lipsticks and then you gotta decide quick because it closes again, I don't even know), some intriguing little green art deco looking figurine thing. Famine: freaking Precious Moments figurines and some stupid paperweight. I mean what is that.

I mean, there is other stuff too, those are just the highlights. And unhighlights.

A letter came from the Buckeye Creamery

So yeah, you remember that picture I was talking about?

Never mind. A guy bought it. And, because this is the way these things always have to go, he checked out through my line. Just as I glumly rung up the total, my phone started vibrating in my pocket. It was Mara. Her car, Betty, died. She couldn't give me a ride home. And as I was heading out the door after we closed, I discovered I had one (1) glove in my purse and no hat. Apparently they fell out before I left for work this morning. I had to pop my collar and wrap my entire scarf around my head like a retarded man's turban and keep my ungloved hand in my pants pocket just to make it home without freezing. Also my ipod died on me so I had to wait a forty minutes, without any musical intervention, for the bus in a small bus stop with two screaming teenage girls.

ASK ME ABOUT MY DAY :)

Oh well. Mom and Ben's message on my phone cheered me a little, and I'm looking forward to playing final fantasy xii into the wee hours of the morning. My mood has recovered to "mostly not grumpy" and Mara and I ordered sandwiches from Caffrey's, which should be arriving any minute. But I'm going to be bummed about that picture for a long while.

Let it be

You know how in horror movies, nine times out of ten the problems are all linked directly back to some dork deciding to build the big creepy house on an ancient indian burial ground, annoying all the ancient buried indians so much they get all huffy and start haunting the crap out of it? I think that happened to Savers, except instead of an ancient indian burial ground it's more like an ancient indian fertility clinic burial ground, and all of the ancient fertile buried indians are making things wacky.

I mean really, out of all of the cashiers I have worked with, only a few of us have never been pregnant, are not currently pregnant, or have not directly contributed to a known pregnancy. Seriously, there's, like, Angela and Tiffany and Matthew and me. That's it. Right now, Ange is pregnant, as is Habiba, and Kayla too, though she just got fired last week. Maryan H. had her baby a few weeks ago and is still out on maternity leave. Camilla and Janice both got back from maternity leave around the start of the month. In production, I know Kaha, Shukri, and Cami are all pregnant as well.

I think what I personally find craziest about all of this is, nobody really finds it crazy. I mean, at the store in Rochester, when somebody got pregnant it was like, WHOA! And here it's just business as usual. "How was your weekend?" "Oh, you know, went grocery shopping, found out I've got a tiny person leasing my uterus for the next nine months or so, watched some tv. How was yours?" "Oh, you know..."