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verushka70One local radio station, WXRT, has recently been playing Death Cab For Cutie's new single Crooked Teeth, which I just love. It has that mixture of melancholy, bittersweetly observational lyrics with cheery, upbeat pop hooks. From their upcoming album "Plans" in May; I found it on YouTube. Give it a listen. Or view. Or both.
I tend to be a music 'purist' now (though I got my own cable TV, paid for with my high school job at Pizza Hut, in 1983, specifically for MTV...). I want to hear music first and evaluate it on its musical basis before being persuaded by a cool video. So I'll open a tab in Firefox and surf to a songvid at Youtube, but then click back to other tabs so I'm not watching the vid, I'm hearing the song.
I used Audio Hijack to capture it into an MP3. Sorry, Audio Hijack is only for Macs!
So here's DCFC's Crooked Teeth:
Wednesday night about 10pm on my way to work, my car radio was tuned to 88.1 FM for my mp3 player/car adaptor. But I hadn't turned it on, so local low-wattage high school radio station WLTL came through. They played a funky, propulsive little song which turned out to be Brazilian Girls' 'Jique', which apparently came out in '06. (And I somehow missed at the time. Oh, I was in nursing school hell, that's right...)
Finally, yesterday AM I was driving home from work and for some strange reason turned on the local urban hip-hop/rap/reggaeton hits station, which I almost never do (not my favorite musical genre). They played Webbie's Independent. Nice to hear a rap about women with their shit together instead of bitches and "hos". The video's quite silly, but I only found it so I could hijack the song. Have a listen to Webbie's Independent.
I could live without the materialistic aspects of the lyrics, but I did find it ironic that they refer (at one point) to a flat screen. I've been shopping for one, and my ex-bf was really excited because they were out of his price league, let alone given all his debts (he owes me $$; I assume this means he owes others $$, too). He couldn't wait for me to get a big flat screen TV so he could enjoy it. (My current TV was my grandmother's before she died in 2000. It's so old, it can't do closed-captioning, which is very irksome.)
If u ain't on, siddown.
My sister is taking my nephew to see The Barber of Seville at Lyric Opera tonight. I'm so envious! I might have to cruise down there to see if anyone outside the opera house is selling a single extra ticket at the door. I think I've seen the Barber done 3 or 4 times at Lyric since I was a kid (and then there is always the Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny cartoon, Rabbit of Seville, which always has me ROTFLMAO!). But this one is getting rave reviews and I want to see the whimsical sets. All the other Barbers I've seen were staged pretty traditionally.
We got about four more inches of snow last night, making this the fourth snowiest February on record for Chicago. From Tom Skilling's weather blog at WGN TV's web pages, at (http://blogs.trb.com/news/weather/weblog/wgnweather/2008/02/snow_covered_the_ground_in_feb.html
Skilling also had a cool feature on the lunar eclipse and 2008 full moons in the Feb. 2/17 Sunday Chicago Tribune. I love the names of some of them: Hunger Moon, Green Corn Moon, Long Night Moon. I found it on the weather blog, too -- it has nice graphics you can print. See it at http://blogs.trb.com/news/weather/weblog/wgnweather/2008/02/a_timetable_of_chicagos_upcomi_1.html
--but keep in mind, the times listed for when the moon officially becomes full are Central/Chicago time.
Last night's snow started while my mother and I were watching Dr. Zhivago on Turner Classic Movies. I have to say, it's moving, but -- damn, I fell asleep during several parts of it. It is sooooooo looooooong. Then again, I hadn't slept after I got off work in the AM, so that was understandable. Also, having not seen it for a while, and so viewing it with fresh eyes and fresh ears -- I felt that Lara's theme was way too overused throughout the film. After a while I was like, "OKAY, OKAY, we GET IT already -- he longs for Lara! We know!" But, like all those doomed love affairs, it has its own sad attraction. And Alec Guiness was his usual stalwart self.
* * *
So I get in my car the other day and discover two new bootlegs: Sweeney Todd and The Bucket List. I'd requested these from my bf before he became my ex-bf; he's got a connection. (I sound like he's my dealer and the bootlegs are my "fix"es. Hmmmm. Not totally inaccurate.) I forgot he has keys to my car, still. So I felt I should call him. But I called him at work -- a strategy he has used before to drop little bombs (like the "I'm staying with you... for the time being" from a couple weeks ago), and then to skip away from any real discussion of them by saying "This isn't a conversation I can have now -- I am at work."
So I decided to use the same strategy against him. Called him at work. He's like, "Hi!" I'm like, "Yeah. I got the bootlegs. Thanks." He's like, "Yeah, I left 'em in your car for you and your mom." [The Bucket List was for my mom.)
I said,"Nice try. It isn't going to work."
There was a very long pause, and then he said, "So this is it?" with a tone of disbelief that I found hard to believe, but was actually there.
I said, "C'mon, M-----, we've been over for a long time and we both know it. When you amputate someone's limb, you don't cut a little one day and then wait and do a little more the next day and then a bit more the next day and then some more next week. That's just cruel."
He goes,"Yeah. I guess we have beat this dead horse long enough."
I'm like, "Yeah. Let's just put it to rest."
Then he asks, "But can we still be friends?"
I said, "Why? We drive each other nuts, you don't like so many things I like -- where is the common ground?"
He's like, "We love a lot of the same things. We love a lot of the same movies and music."
I'm like, "So what?"
He goes [just can't let it go, right?], "Can't I even call you?"
I'm like, "Um, you can call, but I'll screen my calls. I don't feel a need to talk to you now. I don't know when or if I will again."
He's like, "But, I mean, if we're not friends--I mean, don't you want me to pay back the money I owe you?"
That really irked me.
"I would HOPE," I told him, "That you are an honorable enough man to pay back your debts regardless of whether or not you are friends with the person. You're not friends with TripleA. You're not friends with your mortgage company. Yet you pay them the money you owe them."
He's like, "Of course--I just meant--So this is IT?"
I should have stopped at that point and said, Yes, this is it. But I was feeling mean, so I actually said what I thought and blogged the other day -- that not talking to him had given me this overwhelming sense of enormous relief and a sense of a huge burden being lifted, the way you feel after an early first trimester abortion.
He didn't take that too well. Actually what he said was, "Thanks a LOT."
I said, "What can I say? Not talking to you and not having to consider YOUR feelings the last 5 days has made me much happier than I have been in a long time."
He couldn't get off the phone fast enough after that.
I am SO GLAD that many years ago a male friend of mine told me that 9 times out of 10, a man only wants to stay friends with a girlfriend after a breakup if he feels like he was an asshole -- because if she'll stay friends with him, that must mean (in his mind) he wasn't that much of an asshole. (Because if he truly had been, she wouldn't be able to stay friends with him.)
When you lay that card on the table, they usually fold and flee. I mentioned it once before to M----- a couple years ago. I wonder if he remembers. I hope he doesn't give me occasion to remind him. But I will if I have to.
A tiny part of me feels sorry for him. Just as a tiny part of me feels guilty about saying what I said. But it is thunderously outweighed by the parts of me that have absolutely no sympathy for him, since I consider that he wasted my time and strung me along -- and also that he made his own bed and now he should lie in it.
ETA: Of course, I'm complicit in this. Shoulda ended things long before now. I'm at least half to blame for having wasted nearly five years of my life in this pointless relationship. But, in my defense, every time I did try to end it, he kept convincing me to get back together. This is actually the 3rd or 4th time we've broken up. It's the only one that feels truly final, though. Mainly because instead of being sad and sorry that it's over, I feel relieved and free. Like I can breathe easier now.
I tend to be a music 'purist' now (though I got my own cable TV, paid for with my high school job at Pizza Hut, in 1983, specifically for MTV...). I want to hear music first and evaluate it on its musical basis before being persuaded by a cool video. So I'll open a tab in Firefox and surf to a songvid at Youtube, but then click back to other tabs so I'm not watching the vid, I'm hearing the song.
I used Audio Hijack to capture it into an MP3. Sorry, Audio Hijack is only for Macs!
So here's DCFC's Crooked Teeth:
Wednesday night about 10pm on my way to work, my car radio was tuned to 88.1 FM for my mp3 player/car adaptor. But I hadn't turned it on, so local low-wattage high school radio station WLTL came through. They played a funky, propulsive little song which turned out to be Brazilian Girls' 'Jique', which apparently came out in '06. (And I somehow missed at the time. Oh, I was in nursing school hell, that's right...)
Finally, yesterday AM I was driving home from work and for some strange reason turned on the local urban hip-hop/rap/reggaeton hits station, which I almost never do (not my favorite musical genre). They played Webbie's Independent. Nice to hear a rap about women with their shit together instead of bitches and "hos". The video's quite silly, but I only found it so I could hijack the song. Have a listen to Webbie's Independent.
I could live without the materialistic aspects of the lyrics, but I did find it ironic that they refer (at one point) to a flat screen. I've been shopping for one, and my ex-bf was really excited because they were out of his price league, let alone given all his debts (he owes me $$; I assume this means he owes others $$, too). He couldn't wait for me to get a big flat screen TV so he could enjoy it. (My current TV was my grandmother's before she died in 2000. It's so old, it can't do closed-captioning, which is very irksome.)
If u ain't on, siddown.
My sister is taking my nephew to see The Barber of Seville at Lyric Opera tonight. I'm so envious! I might have to cruise down there to see if anyone outside the opera house is selling a single extra ticket at the door. I think I've seen the Barber done 3 or 4 times at Lyric since I was a kid (and then there is always the Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny cartoon, Rabbit of Seville, which always has me ROTFLMAO!). But this one is getting rave reviews and I want to see the whimsical sets. All the other Barbers I've seen were staged pretty traditionally.
We got about four more inches of snow last night, making this the fourth snowiest February on record for Chicago. From Tom Skilling's weather blog at WGN TV's web pages, at (http://blogs.trb.com/news/weather/weblog/wgnweather/2008/02/snow_covered_the_ground_in_feb.html
Skilling also had a cool feature on the lunar eclipse and 2008 full moons in the Feb. 2/17 Sunday Chicago Tribune. I love the names of some of them: Hunger Moon, Green Corn Moon, Long Night Moon. I found it on the weather blog, too -- it has nice graphics you can print. See it at http://blogs.trb.com/news/weather/weblog/wgnweather/2008/02/a_timetable_of_chicagos_upcomi_1.html
--but keep in mind, the times listed for when the moon officially becomes full are Central/Chicago time.
Last night's snow started while my mother and I were watching Dr. Zhivago on Turner Classic Movies. I have to say, it's moving, but -- damn, I fell asleep during several parts of it. It is sooooooo looooooong. Then again, I hadn't slept after I got off work in the AM, so that was understandable. Also, having not seen it for a while, and so viewing it with fresh eyes and fresh ears -- I felt that Lara's theme was way too overused throughout the film. After a while I was like, "OKAY, OKAY, we GET IT already -- he longs for Lara! We know!" But, like all those doomed love affairs, it has its own sad attraction. And Alec Guiness was his usual stalwart self.
* * *
So I get in my car the other day and discover two new bootlegs: Sweeney Todd and The Bucket List. I'd requested these from my bf before he became my ex-bf; he's got a connection. (I sound like he's my dealer and the bootlegs are my "fix"es. Hmmmm. Not totally inaccurate.) I forgot he has keys to my car, still. So I felt I should call him. But I called him at work -- a strategy he has used before to drop little bombs (like the "I'm staying with you... for the time being" from a couple weeks ago), and then to skip away from any real discussion of them by saying "This isn't a conversation I can have now -- I am at work."
So I decided to use the same strategy against him. Called him at work. He's like, "Hi!" I'm like, "Yeah. I got the bootlegs. Thanks." He's like, "Yeah, I left 'em in your car for you and your mom." [The Bucket List was for my mom.)
I said,"Nice try. It isn't going to work."
There was a very long pause, and then he said, "So this is it?" with a tone of disbelief that I found hard to believe, but was actually there.
I said, "C'mon, M-----, we've been over for a long time and we both know it. When you amputate someone's limb, you don't cut a little one day and then wait and do a little more the next day and then a bit more the next day and then some more next week. That's just cruel."
He goes,"Yeah. I guess we have beat this dead horse long enough."
I'm like, "Yeah. Let's just put it to rest."
Then he asks, "But can we still be friends?"
I said, "Why? We drive each other nuts, you don't like so many things I like -- where is the common ground?"
He's like, "We love a lot of the same things. We love a lot of the same movies and music."
I'm like, "So what?"
He goes [just can't let it go, right?], "Can't I even call you?"
I'm like, "Um, you can call, but I'll screen my calls. I don't feel a need to talk to you now. I don't know when or if I will again."
He's like, "But, I mean, if we're not friends--I mean, don't you want me to pay back the money I owe you?"
That really irked me.
"I would HOPE," I told him, "That you are an honorable enough man to pay back your debts regardless of whether or not you are friends with the person. You're not friends with TripleA. You're not friends with your mortgage company. Yet you pay them the money you owe them."
He's like, "Of course--I just meant--So this is IT?"
I should have stopped at that point and said, Yes, this is it. But I was feeling mean, so I actually said what I thought and blogged the other day -- that not talking to him had given me this overwhelming sense of enormous relief and a sense of a huge burden being lifted, the way you feel after an early first trimester abortion.
He didn't take that too well. Actually what he said was, "Thanks a LOT."
I said, "What can I say? Not talking to you and not having to consider YOUR feelings the last 5 days has made me much happier than I have been in a long time."
He couldn't get off the phone fast enough after that.
I am SO GLAD that many years ago a male friend of mine told me that 9 times out of 10, a man only wants to stay friends with a girlfriend after a breakup if he feels like he was an asshole -- because if she'll stay friends with him, that must mean (in his mind) he wasn't that much of an asshole. (Because if he truly had been, she wouldn't be able to stay friends with him.)
When you lay that card on the table, they usually fold and flee. I mentioned it once before to M----- a couple years ago. I wonder if he remembers. I hope he doesn't give me occasion to remind him. But I will if I have to.
A tiny part of me feels sorry for him. Just as a tiny part of me feels guilty about saying what I said. But it is thunderously outweighed by the parts of me that have absolutely no sympathy for him, since I consider that he wasted my time and strung me along -- and also that he made his own bed and now he should lie in it.
ETA: Of course, I'm complicit in this. Shoulda ended things long before now. I'm at least half to blame for having wasted nearly five years of my life in this pointless relationship. But, in my defense, every time I did try to end it, he kept convincing me to get back together. This is actually the 3rd or 4th time we've broken up. It's the only one that feels truly final, though. Mainly because instead of being sad and sorry that it's over, I feel relieved and free. Like I can breathe easier now.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-01 05:35 pm (UTC)Yet, you should be proud to put this relationship behind you. The two of you don't seem to have much in common and he's - shudder - apparently incapable of "getting" you. And since you're nothing if not a person who expresses what there is about her to *get* I begin to fear for his mind.... Obvious cluelessness is only cute in fanfic, imho.
Love you, max
P.S. - More obligatory "hang in there" exhortations!