in the 'spring'time...

yeah...um...

yeah, I'm on 90's nostalgia-high; I bought a "90's Radio" compilation from TARGET (0) (??...cruppy imitation, I know, go home...).  Price wasn't all that snazz, but IT'S A GREAT compilation.  I remember paying A LOT more for this mish mash of 90's gems that was like...idk; they just weren't sequenced right.  It was an OK compilation if you wanna use the helk out of your '<>' button and listen to one or two or so songs at a time instead of just sit down and go through a 'playlist' of songs, like you would with the radio; I know there's no official scientific order to the songs that are played on radio, but there IS order.  It takes a skilled ear to figure out what to play after Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (1998) w/o playing THE SAME SONG each time, but such ears do exist.  
If you see eye to eye w/ me on this concept, here's the CD you might wanna stay away from - it's called FOREVER 90'S.  It sux.  I know about these things...

This one is called "90's Radio".  It's a good CD.  It looks really cheap and campy, and the description about "sipping lattes" and whatever is totally not in sync with the town I grew up in when those songs were discovered by me and my peers.  There may have been a Starbucks in town, but I sure as heck didn't know where it was...now we in Cape Girardeau are graced with three of them, if you count the "Barnes & Noble Cafe'", which technically ISN'T a Starbucks, but "proudly brews" Starbucks coffee...

But yeah...AND THE WEATHER!  It's like something out of a filmmaker's vision of Heaven, complete with requisite Enya songs etc...PURE MOODS prolly doesn't sound like a clear comparison weatherwise when you consider the music on the "90's Radio" CD that I just spent several minutes typin' aboot, but then again it's not like I listen to New Age all that much.  Heck, I've gotten sick and tired of the 1st PURE MOODS CD.  The follow ups were kinda bland, although the third one had its moments, namely "Porcelain" by Moby...

With the weather and this awesome 17-song CD, all is well in my world.  For now at least...

"maybe I'm dumb"

TWO CDs!  That's ALL I can think of that doesn't have traces of ingenuity or dullness.

They are:

American Football - self titled (1999, Polyvinyl)
Hidden In Plain View - Resolution (2007, Drive-Thru)

As for movies, I so wish I had my own theater - then I could watch A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE the way it ought to be seen - that film has such an expansive sense of imagery, it's visuals are BREATH-TAKING(!!!).  I've only seen it once (in theaters) and was blown away.  I don't get anywhere near as much out of a 2nd+ viewing of most movies, A.I. included.  No offense, Mr. Speilberg - well, not that he'd care since he didn't get all the money one could dream of from that film...what the heck was he expecting anyway?  The general public doesn't want art!  Didn't we learn anything from FANTASIA (1942)??!!  If Walt Disney hadn't become such a powerhouse name in the minds of the '70's beatnick generation, that film would still be stuck in the vault ... and yes, I know it's currently OOP, but it would NEVER have been unleashed on DVD OR VHS if it weren't for that chaotic period in time - 1963-1975.  

the depths of my soul, for all to see...

Today I thought I'd share with you my primary concern as of the last few days and probably the next...

MONEY

First, I should say: I'm paying A LOT more in rent/utilities than I would given I ONLY MAKE:::$637/mo! Yes, I'm poor, and proud of it! well, not really, but as I was saying; after rent and bills etc. are paid I only have $71 to spend on junk like a Wi-Fi Internet Radio or a Blu-Ray player. The upside of this is the landlord I rent from, my sister as it is - she bought the house and had to move to Georgia, and couldn't afford to live in both places & she didn't wanna sell her house in this day in time... - , will grant me free rent as soon as the mortgage is paid down. Me, I'm taking care of her AC/heating loan, with help from the other tenant, my mother, as part of the deal...
And in April, I will need to repay my bank $33. And I owe my mother at least $15, but will probably just pay her $18, and the remainder will have to go to me in cash since my debit card has been jammed...that leaves me with $20

SO THIS IS HOW IT'S GONNA BE:

APRIL
$06.35 Aerosmith-CLASSICS LIVE! II & Toto-IV (new&sealed) (Hastings)
$03.85 GENESIS - LIVE/THE WAY WE WALK VOLUME ONE: THE SHORTS (used) (Hastings)
$04.10 lattes from Schncuks - 2 ea week for 2 weeks + 1 latte on week 3 & none on wk4
$05.60 gift for Apr15 in celebration of my sister's birth
----
$19.90 total out of $20 = $0.10 left

I might get a dollar or two more from my local CD store in exchange for this 5-movie DVD set, but that'll probably be spent on more lattes...and if you're wondering who the heck Hasting is, look up: gohastings.com. If you shop for music and/or movies on Amazon, you've probably seem an item or two of theirs listed on the Amazon Marketplace...they're a nationwide chain, but they don't pull into every town like WalMart and other dept stores do...

two videocassettes, one fate...

This tale beings about 2 or 3 years ago after I sold a once beloved copy of GHOSTBUSTERS & GHOSTBUSTERS II COLLECTOR'S EDITION on VHS that I had bought on eBay STILL IN THE SHRINK WRAP (!!!!) when the buyer contacted my sister (the official seller of the product as I did not have a bank account in my name, which was a necessity for selling products on Amazon - and still is, FYI) claiming the tapes were defective. There were many levels of grief over this, the main one being "what the hell kind of joke is this? HE OPENED THE PACKAGE????", completely destroying the value they had when I shipped them. He could have very well bought a used set of tapes and they would have served him just as well. But nooooooo...and then he selects "expedited" shipping and I end up choosing FedEx for some reason that I don't clearly remember, and they charge me somewhere at about 9/10 of what Amazon quoted was to be in my sister's bank account. I fail to come to terms with the reasoning I had behind NOT walking out of there and saying "YOU CHARGE TOO F*****ING MUCH FOR SHIPPING A SMALL PACKAGE!!!!!!!!". I mean, it wasn't tiny, but it wasn't like BIG or anywhere near either...



If it were not for my own similiar experience with a BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED copy of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 masterpiece A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (VHS), which I could tell was broken in some way or another before I even took the cellophane off (I heard something rattling around inside the box, but I didn't know if it would effect playback...).

To make a longer story shorter, I will simply give you a paraphrase of my advice - don't think NEW = MINT. Shrinkwrap does NOT equal a perfect item. Aside from the "unimportant" attributes, such as scars, stains, and other things that could arise from abuse and/or neglect, accumulating on the outer box of anything that HAS an outer box, the tape itself can wear down just from small holes in the shrinkwrap that let dust settle overabundantly over a series of years, 10, 20 or whatever. I don't think that's what caused the GB bust though; I think, for some reason that I can't quite pin down scientifically, that VHS tapes fare better used. Perhaps it's the old mentality of "use it or lose it" that predates viagra and the God of Film making (aka Satan?) wanted the world to know: USE IT - OR - LOSE - IT ! (!!!)!. Superstitious and rediculous I know, but that's the only guess I can come up with...

Will provide any updates on this theory as I obtain them, unless some paranoid schizo in the peanut gallery (you mean me?) wants to post a comment with some scientific explanation to end all scientific explanations...hehe
~Jo!

How?...Or: Do you know why you don't care?

You expect me to be happy without anything
Without food, without medicine, without chemicals incoming
You expect me to stop my arm from grabbing for the gun
Without any motive to stop me, without any force to restrain me

You don't know why, you don't know how
You are what you are, the way you are
You don't care to find out
So leave me alone and quit asking questions with your angry fists

You expect me to prove you right
When your ideology is a fantasy, an assumption you made and didn't care to validate
You expect me to act just so
As if I should care what you think

When you don't know why, you don't know how
You and I are what we are, and the way we are
You don't care either, you just complain
So please somebody, won't you lock this guy up in a rubber cell
All alone with the exception of whatever other delusions he may have

"have lunch w/ my machine"

I'm supposed to call my bank back in about 5 or 10 minutes to see what, if anything, they can/will do to salvage what little funds I will have for the rest of this month. I ordered three CDs from Amazon late Feb and got a overdraft fee b/c of it, and the crazy thing is I decided they weren't worth keeping...so I returned those a few days ago, and am awaiting a refund...'sok 'cause I was expecting that. What I was NOT expecting was to have to set aside $30+ for a Disney DVD club introductory order that I placed and did not receive any email order confirmation suggesting that the order was successful and/or that they were going to charge my debit card. So after just about all of my money is spent on this and that THEN they charge my card, which should not even be possible b/c I don't have overdraft "protection"...so anyway...
My sister wired some money to me to cover it, but A) it was presented as a check and B) the check has yet to post and the aljljljs charge HAS posted! I should be able to pay the OD charge thingy(s) w/ my Amazon refund but I don't know how I'm going to pay back the wire transfer fee that my sister paid to the Western Union people. Guess that'll have to wait 'til April...
On the upside, I got my first poster since I moved here after months of deciding on one to get, and it's A) VERY cheap and B) FRAMEABLE!!!! I bought this THE DARK KNIGHT poster from Hastings (gohastings on the web) and it was in some crazy size that was hard if not impossible to find a frame for. This one is unlike that. I'll probably keep the poster sealed until I can afford to buy a frame for it. Also, my Mom loaned me $3.30 to buy David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY from Big Lots. I couldn't believe it was even THERE and it was THREE FORKIN' DOLLARS!!!!?? It's a MINIMUM of three times that much for a used copy on Amazon.

WHEN I'M HISTORY

Things of times not so long ago
I'll inherit
People after me will look back
And say that it was so
But I'll be dwindling off
To another world
Sucking my thumb while my skin peels back
Quickly, my body dissolves
And so I'll wish I can turn back time
And I might resist, unwilling to believe
That my time is almost passed me by

O UKickStop have mercy!

I'm not exactly down to my last dollar, but this late in the month it's rather rare that I'm able to say that. I did however have only $1.15 in cash on me and the same unabashedly frugal sensibilities I normally carry with me, and I asked the cashier how much the cappuccinos are w/ tax. He said about $1.39. I said "I have $1.15 on me, is that OK?". He said "it's fine". So I got myself one and when I walked to the cash register, he said "don't worry about it". I wasn't sure if he meant the $0.25 I didn't have or the whole thing, so I got ready to give it to me, tentatively, and he said "don't worry about it".
And to boot, the cappo was the best out of Kidd's, Jaspers, Rhodes and Schnucks. I'll be comin' back ya hea!!

romancing the 90's

It's amazing how things look when you see them through the window of the past. When I look back on how I felt overall during the '90's, I don't think I knew I was having "the time of my life"

Yet the music of that time makes me feel like...well, nostalgic...I guess it's kind of like antiques, 'cause I wasn't really "aware" during the '90's. Until about 1993, I had very little experience with the radio, and even then it was mostly soft rock. My Mom didn't listen to the radio, and didn't try to get me hooked on the grunge stuff that was happening. And i had no reason to want to be hooked on that, since I was only about eight years old at the time.
"Teen spirit" wasn't something I could identify with at that age. And even now I can say it's a fairly safe bet to say I never really liked Nirvana OR Pearl Jam. I probably like Pearl Jam more than Nirvana though, since they at least have some songs that could be considered "timeless" in the pop sense of the word. Nirvana would be nothing but noise mixed in with small hints of melody if Butch Vigg and Scott Litt weren't there for them. Call me stupid, but I don't think learning how to smash a guitar against a chalk board is anything to be admiring of. But anyway...
What's interesting about the '90's though is how many "one hit wonders" were there. MTV did a half hour documentary thingy about that around 1999, but I think it's worth mentioning. Of course, anyone who ever bought a CD and LISTENED to it, instead of just "having" the hits, can probably attest to the fact that a lot of those one hit wonders had other great songs that just didn't fit in with the rest of the radio roster of the time. I mean, just like an album, the radio has to have a flow to it, it can't just play a bunch of 3-5 minute songs as if the song before and after it/them doesn't exist...an album that comes to mind is Deep Blue Something's HOME (1995). In 1998 Semisonic, known for their now-classic song "Closing Time", made a fairly admirable album titled FEELING STRANGELY FINE (containing that now-classic song).
The stuff that brings me back to the 90's (figuratively speaking) is usually the folk-pop/rock stuff. Del Amitri (sp?) "Roll To Me", which I don't think I heard until I moved to Missouri after 1997, even though it had been around for at least a couple years since...and of course Hootie&The Blowfish CRACKED REAR VIEW is full of goodens, a few of which are/were smash hits...I didn't care for their two upbeat songs from that album, and I still don't think they're the highlights, but I remember hearing H&BF on the radio not knowing a dang thing about who they were...I knew the name and I heard the music, but never put them together...the radio station(s) in California, or at least that part of it, always played like 3-5 songs in a row and then after they did, they'd list 3-5 song titles/artists in a row and expect us to know which song has that artist name & song title...dang morons... but anyway; of course, the main station I'd listen to on the school bus (to & fro) played the same song at least 10 times a day, at least 2 of which could be heard on the bus (to & fro), and after 5 days and then another 5 days, and so on and so forth, pretty much everything they played got to be an annoying pop song. Except, of course, the songs that "weren't good enough" to become "hits"...I listened to classic rock radio when I wasn't at school, and when classic rock become too repetitive, I'd have CDs to back me up.
So! I guess it wasn't the time of my life, for the most part, but I'm 26 now, nothing going on in my life except discovering websites and shopping etc.; and being young back then I guess that was the decade where I was learning and growing...life itself was new, and disappointing more or less, and those songs, so many of them, became a part of my history. To quote a once-semi-famous song by The Ataris, "being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up".

HOW LOW CAN WE GO?

Bizzes and stock brokers are RUINING this country's economy!! Just because things started looking down a tad bit, they shed a little, and because they shed a little, more people couldn't spend money, so they cut a little more, and then a little more people couldn't spend money, so they cut more and more until 10%+ of the country is unemployed and everyone's waiting for tragedy to strike.

IDEA 1) Invest in a stock that would grow when/if the economy picks up. No stock is going to make you rich if you don't have it. If you don't have any stocks, nobody's going to benefit from it.

IDEA 2) Employ people so the general economy can have money.

IDEA 3) This may sound shocking, but unless you own a company that makes less than $1M/yr, YOUR BOTTOM LINE DOES NOT MATTER. This country's prosperity does. If you think this country needs a little pain to make the good times sweeter, fine. We've had 2+ years of cold rain and snow. GIVE US A FREAKIN' BREAK!!!