Less than two hours…

On the insistence of a friend, I did this a few days ago —

Directions:
If your life was a movie, what would the soundtrack be?

1. Open your mp3 library
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press Play.
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the Next button.
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool.
7. Don’t skip songs.

My Movie:

1. Opening credits: God’s Gonna Cut You Down – Johnny Cash
2. Waking up: Make It Funky Pt 1 – James Brown
3. First day of school: Chinese Rocks – Johnny Thunders
4. Fight song: Tell Me Something Good – Chaka Khan & Rufus
5. Breaking up: Into My Arms – Nick Cave
6. Happiness: Ace of Spades — Motorhead
7. Life’s okay: Virginia Plain – Roxy Music
8. Mental breakdown: Transylvanian Concubine — Rasputina
9. Driving: Hurricane Fighter Plane – Alien Sex Fiend
10. Flashback: Baby I Love You – Aretha Franklin
11. Getting back together: Joey – Concrete Blonde
12. Wedding song: Lady Midnight – Leonard Cohen
13. Birth of first child: Middle of the Road – the Pretenders
14. Final battle scene: Trash – New York Dolls
15. Death scene: Hair of the Dog — Nazareth
16. Funeral song: Kick Out the Jams – MC5
17. End credits: Little Willy – Sweet

Wow. That was wildly inappropriate. Hers was more serendipitous than mine.

I won’t be posting much over the next few days, for somewhat obvious reasons. XD It’s a little crazy here, so I’m behind on LJ replies still and 99% of my pm and email correspondence. I’m really, really sorry. =/

Rambling thoughts from a cold-addled person with smoke in her lungs:

One of my earliest childhood memories of Halloween was 3rd grade. I was trick or treating in my neighborhood, and the skies behind the mountains that flanked our house were orange with fire. I remember the stark black of the mountains against the orange so clearly. We were on evacuation alert, but hadn’t been moved yet, and I was too young and too Pisces to be frightened.

It was the early 80’s. I don’t think we were as diligent about things like this as we are now. Heh.

My father’s house burned up in the early 90’s. It wasn’t part of a wildfire; it was an electrical fire that blew up the garage. What the fire didn’t destroy, the smoke did. I remember going into the house after the firemen put out the flames (I was reckless, even then), and seeing the skeletal remains of the house I grew up in. The best work I can think of to describe it really is surreal. Parts of the house were literally blackened skeletons. I remember the smell of smoke and wet wood, and the moment I realized that all the artwork and all the photographs in the house were gone. I remember my father wrestling with the insurance company, and the crap deal he got in the end.

I miss those photographs. I have, maybe, three of my family now, and the one I really loved of my father was taken from me when I was mugged in San Francisco in 2000. Bastard.

My heart really does go out to everyone that is affected by the hellstorm that is blowing through Southern California.

Press Pass: Not Necessarily Reporting the News
It isn’t just Fox—even the liberal media is in the fake news business.
By Ted Genoways

near the end of beowulf, there is a scene that may be the earliest description of war reporting in the English language. The eponymous hero lies dead on the battlefield with only faithful Wiglaf remaining at his side. This is bad news for the Geats: It spells the end of Beowulf’s era of protection and means years of affliction at the hands of their enemies. Nevertheless, Wiglaf summons a rider and orders, in Seamus Heaney’s brilliant translation, “the outcome of the fight to be reported” from a high cliff so all can hear. The messenger accepts the onerous task and earns the poet’s praise, because “he told the truth / and did not balk, the rider who bore / news to the cliff-top. He addressed them all.”

A terminal at New York’s Kennedy Airport may seem like an odd place to be contemplating Beowulf, but as I sat watching the images flit across the frenzied television screen, high above my head, I couldn’t help thinking of Wiglaf’s weighty charge. It was June 2, 2007—a day long since forgotten in the churn of the never-ending news cycle, but at that moment the airwaves bristled with reports of the “jfk bombers,” who had been caught red-handed while hatching their plan for a terrorist attack “worse than 9/11.” The television showed long security lines snaking through the outer terminal, armed guards in riot gear manning the screening stations, and handlers with bomb-sniffing dogs probing every corner and alcove.

The problem was that none of what the TV showed was actually happening. The terminal was quiet, calm, overtaken by the usual lassitude of travel, but nothing more. In fact, it took longer to get a stromboli in the food court than it did to have my bags checked by tsa. Still, I pulled up the cnn website and found more of the same: a long line of passengers looking harried and worry worn. Below this picture, however, was a tiny credit line that read “File photo.” These images of airport chaos were leftovers from some previous crisis—maybe from August 11, 2006, when a foiled bomb plot in the United Kingdom really did cause trouble at jfk, or just as likely from this past March, when the terminal was packed with passengers held hostage by nothing more sinister than an unexpected spring snowstorm.

Read on.