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Although by the standards of its genre quite long in the tooth, I’ve been listening to The Decemberists’ lovely “The Legionnaire’s Lament” quite a lot lately. I have always loved The Decemberists’ style, vivid lyrics swaddled affectionately in the trappings of sea chanteys and concertina. But I digress. “The Legionnaire’s Lament”…

It speaks to former triumphs, past acclaim, and wistful remembrance thereof. Yet it manages to do this without being morose, and that is perhaps what makes it so charming.

Plus, it uses the word “fecundity”. How great is that?!

If only some rain would fall
On the houses and the boulevards,
And the sidewalk bagatelles. It’s like a dream,
With the roar of cars, and the lulling of the cafe bars,
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine.
Lord, I don’t know if I’ll ever be back again.

…

Medicating in the sun,
Pinched doses of laudanum,
Longing for the old fecundity of my homeland.
Curses to this mirage!
A bottle of ancient Shiraz…
A smattering of distant applause
Is ringing in my poor ears

I don’t know how interesting a post can be constructed out of it, but the evening mentioned in my previous post involved absinthe, musical saws, and “suicide” karaoke to Neil Diamond.

I’m not sure how anything combining those three things could be anything but great.

What a long, strange, fantastic evening I had last night.

When more of it starts to resolve, after some time and cogitation, I will almost certainly have much to say about it.

I was delighted to receive my friend bongi’s long-threatened mix yesterday. As I understand it, it was crafted just for me, so I’ll forgive some of the more…questionable* picks.

Take a gander. I might end up posting a link to the files at some point, so stay tuned!

Also…thanks, bongi! You’re my very favorite effete Englishman.

The Ting Tings - Great DJ
Britney Spears - Freakshow
PNAU - Embrace
Kylie Minogue - The One
Noisettes - Sister Rosetta (Capture The Sprint)
Girls Aloud - Biology
Interpol - The Heinrich Maneuver
Iggy & the Stooges - Penetration
Justice - Stress
Kavinsky - Testarossa Nightdrive
Sam Sparro - Sick
Creator vs Switch & Freq Nasty - Santogold
MIA - 20 Dollar
Kate Bush - Top of the City
Goldfrapp - It’s Not Over Yet
Radiohead - 4 Minute Warning
Akron/Family - Lumen
Radiohead - Videotape

* By “questionable”, I of course mean of dubious sexuality, not taste.

As some of you may recall, I enjoy seeing which Google searches most often lead people to lorem ipsum. There have been some interesting ones, and generally speaking, the most common search is a GIS for “banana”, which has always amused me. This morning, however, I got a pretty funny one, which I’d never seen before: a simple search for “flickr private parts”.

From Germany.

On my way to work this morning, I was very nearly shat on by a bird. As someone who grew up in a gull-infested town (and in fact was actually shat on just a couple months back), this is nothing terribly new to me. However, I was going through the A Softer World archive during my lunch, and I happened upon the gem below. From the actual event, to the finding of the comic, everything today has gone pretty much exactly as needed to pull me out of my introspective funk of last night.

Sometimes, it’s the near misses (or even the direct hits) that make us realize just how good we’ve got it.

Click image for larger version.

I’ve spent a few minutes this morning making yet another Pandora station, this time dedicated to the legendary, semi-crippled, gypsy jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt. If you have a few minutes, immerse yourself in some culture, and give it a listen. If you don’t feel cooler after listening (or at least 75% more like you’re sitting in a French bistro, smoking ostentatiously exotic cigarettes, while casting imperious glances at all those about you), I will totally refund your money.

Since it’s free, I feel this is a win-win.

“Djingle Djangle” (Pandora, US Only)
“Django Reinhardt Radio” (Last.fm, Should work everywhere)

Up until quite recently, things were going quite well for me. Then, things got either shitty, complicated, or ambiguous, on perhaps four vectors at once.

I am unquestionably in a better place than I’ve been in a while, but things are so damned opaque right now. I’m trying to see it all as an adventure, but mainly, things just seem unnecessarily hard over the past few days.

I’d like to think of a clever sign-off, but I’m confused, conflicted, and probably not in the best place to be making any public declarations about any of this. Still, I wish I could just have an easy button, you know?

…this sense of urgency, this need to talk, to communicate, to verbally exorcise whatever is making its meandering way through my crowded noggin, this is what gets me in trouble. Always. This is what I have learned, since the New Year. So I am shutting up now, uncharacteristically.

Maybe in so doing, I will avoid that trouble, likewise uncharacteristically.

Is it strange that this weekend, filled to bursting with plans, is exciting to me mainly because I might get to have a video chat with a four year old child I haven’t seen in over a month?

I know that she doesn’t enjoy Skyping very much, but I’m having trouble containing myself at the thought of just getting to hear her say “Ericky Bear”. It’s all pretty tentative, but I’m still anticipating it with no small measure of joy.

I realize how extraordinarily odd this all must sound, but…God, has it really been that long? Uggh.