said the rat-boy to the rat-girl

My little brother makes fashion predictions: "I think that thumbtacks are going to be the next big thing among punks. Think about it! They're colorful, and they're sharp!"
He's also trying to teach me how to play bass guitar. It's not going so well. Although I have a keen appreciation for music, I have next to no musical talent. What little ability I do have lies more in the rhythm section (also known as Banging On Shit). If I had more energy, and a drum set, I could be a drummer. But I have neither of those things, and so I shall continue to torture the bass until I get tired of it.

I've given up on reading the paper lately, because it just pisses me the fuck off. The Detroit News is badly-thought-out right-wing bullshit and feel-good religious crap. You'd think the Free Press would be slightly better, but no...they're all about the sports, human-interest stories, and self-righteous, inane columnists who think they're literary. At least they have better comic strips.
But occasionally you find something interesting. Art gallery economic Event Horizon. I actually cut this one out and hung it on my wall. I've been to towns where this is pretty much in danger of happening, particularly Saugatuck (little artist's colony on Lake Michigan, lovely place).

This is pretty much the best thing ever: Maoists review movies. Best one I've found: Prisoner of Azkaban, mostly because of the line "We would only add that in real life Dementos would have unions..." (They mean Dementors, I'm sure...but wouldn't "Dementos" be a great candy?)

( Cut for the squeamish or easily offended )

Have just finished "Youth in Revolt" by C.D. Payne. The book concerns a group of precocious, intellectual, sneaky, libidinous teens whose crafty schemes get seriously out of hand, landing the adults in their lives in extremely expensive trouble. The little brats get away scot-free at the end. (This isn't a spoiler, because the ending isn't the point.) In the wrong hands, it would have been a WB-worthy teenydrama YA novel, but as it is, there's a literate, smart-ass tone to the book that makes its plot twists amusing rather than ludicrous.
Prompted partially by the book (which is told in the form of a diary), I've started actually keeping a notebook. Because there are things that I can't write on Livejournal, strange as that may seem. It's surprisingly therapeutic, pouring out one's words onto a page where nobody will ever read them or comment on them. It's odd, too, that it helps one to distance oneself from one's own inner feelings, as though one was writing a fiction story instead of a heartfelt confession. I always thought it was the opposite, that writing down something as opposed to keeping it in your head reified it...but not so. Then again, my reification theory is carried out mostly on Livejournal, where it becomes part of other peoples' images of you. (Artistic self-exhibitionism? It's almost tantamount to flashing.) Maybe it's that on paper, words stagnate and solidify, rather than being fluid in your mind. My feelings today are not what I wrote down yesterday.
It's so hard to tell what one should put in public, sometimes. Maybe I can exorcise some of my more annoying emotions this way. Or maybe it'll just exacerbate it and I'll end up transcribing the whole thing onto LJ and making people uncomfortable, but I don't think I'm that socially self-destructive. You can't tell how people are going to respond, after all, and it's impossible to know what's reasonable to be feeling and what's not. On the other hand, oughtn't one ought to inform someone of such feelings, so as not to let them build up? When does unrequited anything become a serious problem? (If I tell you the truth, will you promise not to take it personally? It's all my fault, after all.)
One thing I'm afraid of is romanticizing people, idealising them, creating a version of them in my head that's not analogous to their real-world selves at all. Apparently, artistic types and writer types tend to do that. I don't think I ever have, but how could I tell? It's not like I can walk up to somebody (or IM them) and say, "I think you're the greatest, nicest, most intelligent person on Earth and that your writing should win a Hugo--am I right, or are you really a jerk?" Because who's going to give an honest answer? More to the point, who's going to be able to give an honest answer?

Hoping to go to the comic store today. Mom is being grumpy, so it may not happen. Printed out some of ghostgecko's comic recs, but small die for gaming are first on my list. Hopefully Comic City has some in stock.