C-130

I've bled entirely too frequently over the past five days. Monday night at V's birthday dinner, I slashed my thumb open with a pair of rusted-shut scissors. There was a veritable fountain of blood when I tensed the digit to see if I'd cut anything essential to oppostitional grip (which, all things considered, was kind of neat).

Tuesday, trying to open our back door with the uninjured hand, I ended up snagging the webbing between my first two fingers on a piece of protruding weather stripping, leaving behind a pretty small cut that bled so much that I left maroon fingerprints on the inside of the door that I didn't notice until this afternoon.

Then Wednesday night, helping a friend tear apart his old deck, I stepped down on a plank with three exposed nails. Those bitches went through every layer of shoe and a solid half inch of heel flesh--it hurt so much that it didn't even hurt, the pain was translated into a brilliant white flash and an instant full-body coating of sweat. I never thought I'd say "I'd rather step on nails barefoot than in shoes" until this happened. When your knee-jerk reaction to sling whatever just bit your foot kicks in I'd imagine that, if one were barefoot, the offending object would probably be flung away as intended. With rubber-soled shoes, however, that bitch of a plank holds fast, forcing you to calm down enough to sit down (without wiggling the plank), unlace the shoe, pull up the tongue and then lift your angry foot off of the impaling nails. I now have an intriguingly symmetric pattern of rust particles reminding me exactly how much of an ass I was to not wear boots made of solid steel for a nighttime construction job involving sharp metal.

When I went to give blood today, I told my nurse about all of this, apologizing for any gravel or metal shards that might end up in the IV bag. She laughed, took a pint anyway, and then branded me a faggot with this awesomely pink bandage.

Please, no more bleeding for a little while.

[P.S.--There's a pretty massive shortage of blood in the DC metropolitan area, so please go donate at the 20th and E American Red Cross office if you can over the next couple of weeks. It's a pretty rad set-up, and their nurses are so well practiced that you won't feel a thing. They even hook you up with Famous Amos cookies instead of the standard week-old ginger snaps that most blood drives try to feed you. Aw, hell yeah!]

Chan Marshall may have her detractors, but I spent my last dollar on The Greatest after I heard "Living Proof." It reminds me of the very best of the girly radio crooners that my mom used to listen to on our gigantic console stereo. I suppose that's where the interest lies: the theme that Marshall's playing with Cat Power this time only feels like a gimmick to people who didn't grow up under the boozey shroud of comfortable worry rasped out by Sammi Smith with the help of a distant lap steel and a Hammond with an imitation leslie effect. I hear it so clearly when I listen, or at least I think I do. I'm seven years old, lying on the living room couch with my head propped up on my mom's lap. The stereo is up loud so that we can here it over the box fan that's propped against the screen in the window, loud enough that the tricky speaker doesn't cut out anymore. She's humming out of time with the music with her eyes closed and I'm wondering what she's thinking about, what she hears in these songs that don't make any sense.

No one has a right to say that they feel some crumb of pop music more closely than anyone else but, goddamnit, sometimes it seems that that's just the case. To each his own; I'm going to bed with Cat tonight.

There is so much fun music (and dance) coming up at the Black Cat that my thesis doesn't even register on the radar.

Saturday, January 28: Will Eastman's Bliss (duh), $6
Tuesday, January 31: Benjy Ferree (my new favorite sing-along bartender), $5
Wednesday, February 8: Feist, $13
Thursday, February 23: My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult, $20
Tuesday, March 21: Animal Collective, $10
Thursday, March 23: Gossip, $10
Wednesday, March 29: Magnolia Electric Co., $12

So, where the fuck is Bluestate?

Well, that was fun. Happy birthday, V!


More photos are on their way.

Edit: It's about eleven o'clock and I can't look at this fucking stylesheet for the N*t**n*l *rthr*t*s F**nd*t**n anyomre today. Coming down from alomst two months of questionless nights that end at dawn and days that begin with the hair of the dog isn't easy, either, so tonight is going to end weirdly in bed before midnight. My poor neglected bed; we've been apart for so long that I'm uncomfortable around it. Oh, sorta-regular sleep schedule, come quickly.