workbook, bob mould’s first solo album

bob mould…bitter, bitter bob.  you are the music of my people.

i remember so clearly when this came out.  i’d been a husker du fan, but this!  this was exactly what i wanted.  the writing and guitar were so good and it was as dark as my soul.  i’m still so fucking adolescent sometimes, with hurt feelings and lack of appreciation…but sometimes hurt feelings are really hurt.  sometimes people suck.  bob knows.

oh, man, and the transitions on bob’s albums are always good, but song three, “heartbreak a stranger” just kills me, and then you get “see a little light” next. 

it’s like backing up “too far down” with “hardly getting over it”.  it keeps things from going over to the maudlin, keeps the edge sharp, but with cynical optimism.  man, i miss records and cassettes, the whole having two sides, to first and last songs.  sigh.  but i digress…

workbook is a great album.  if you haven’t listened to it lately, you should.  and if you wonder what my state of mind is lately?  well, those two songs are summing it up

sweet tooth

just finished the final volume of “sweet tooth”, by jeff lemire. amazing.  i am still crying buckets of therapeutic tears as i type this.  well, maybe not buckets, but i still have at least a thimble full in me, i’m sure.

i got my assistant hooked on this title almost from the beginning, though i don’t have it in the library.  i brought in the last two episodes last week, but, honestly, after the time i’ve been having lately, i just didn’t have it in me to read them.  i love sweet tooth from the beginning, but it is a tough row to hoe.  so dark, so much death, oppressive hopelessness other than poor gus…anyway, the long and short of it is that my lta read it before i did and has now been waiting a week and a half for me to get to it.

i finished volume five at my volleyball supervision and started on volume six, but i realized there was no fucking way i could read that book in public.  i barely made it as far as i did keeping my shit together.  also, i got hit by a ball because i wasn’t paying attention, but so it goes.

what an ending.

wow.

it’s the mother-fucking old man and the sea kind of a slog to get there, and you feel like you’re left with a freakin’ skeleton of your heart, which, you know, doesn’t have any bones, and sweet tooth has absolutely nothing to do with the old man and the sea and it all just goes back to wow.  i don’t know what to say other than that you should really read all six volumes of sweet tooth as soon as possible and revel in the emotional devastation–it’s one of the best graphic novels i’ve read in years.

 

ouch.

man, so hard to concentrate on anything else when my neck hurts…though, i have to say, i think my neck starts to hurt more when i concentrate too much on other things, so, you know…

ouch.  either way. 

ouch.

fast times

just read this interesting essay on _fast times at ridgemont high_ that articulates many of my thoughts about the movie.  it was never one of my particular favorites, but i certainly remember watching it, too young to have anything but the most theoretical ideas about most of what was going, probably with my sister, though i can’t remember for sure.  i remember going to a lot of teen sex comedies back then, and they were all…just, you know, SEX.  adult/teen relationships? teacher/student?  hooker/teenager?  suggestive teenage noise-making during tennis?  oh, yeah, all that, and much, much more.

i also read a few strange pornographic novels when i was young, but that was actual pornography–here i’m just talking teen comedies.

anyway, i was just completely bombarded–and totally sought out, when i thought i could get away with it–all these representations of sex all over the place, but i wasn’t really *doing* very much.  occasional heavy petting, or whatever.  third base?  i’ve never understood the base system.  doesn’t matter.  i’m not saying no one was gettin’ it on at an early age, but the statistics back up my memory that it certainly wasn’t everyone and not even most of us until you got to the upper classes. 

these days, teen comedies are so saccharine–geeze, is that another reference like sniffing dittos?  do people still know what saccharine is?–that no one has sex without consequences, we’re shocked if we see skin, it’s all less explicit than the last dance i had to chaperone…and that’s it.  most of those kids, even the sophomores!  god, the awkward, awkward sophomores!, are pretty much rounding third base on a pretty regular basis, at least given the opportunity.  crazy.

it’s not like i think that one thing caused the other or anything like that.  we’re all rounding third more often, these days, given the opportunity, because it’s a changing social standard.  i just think it’s funny how prudish the movies have become. these days rules about smoking in movies are so strict, it’s ridiculous.  we are getting so far from reality in our policy making and i’m getting so far from my point…it’s all just making me tired.

mostly, just wanted to mention that essay and remember to think about it later.

depression

i’ve had problems with depression as long as i can remember.  i remember once when i was pretty young–maybe 12–my mom yelling at me that being depressed just because you felt like it wasn’t the same as being depressed for a reason, because there are actual things the matter.  i felt like that was unfair at the time and i know that’s wrong now.

it doesn’t matter why you feel that way, if you feel that way.

the feeling is the same. 

it hurts just as much if it’s “valid” as if it isn’t.  sometimes it’s worse when there isn’t really a reason for it because i can’t even respect my own feelings, so how do i expect someone else to respect them?   but i know that’s not fair, to me or to anyone else.

sometimes that’s really hard for me to remember, no matter what side of the equation i’m on, but i’m trying.  everyone has their own thing going on.

leave no man behind

i’ve lost so many people in my life, in so many ways.  death, disagreement, bad luck, no reason at all.  few people have ever lost me, though they occasionally forget where i am.

i leave no man behind.

i am always fucking there for you, even when i think it probably isn’t good for me and i said i wouldn’t do it anymore because that’s what i do.  i never really break up with anyone, no matter how shabbily they might treat me.  if they need me i will always be there, even if they only need me to help them move or something.

i really can’t tell if this is a flaw in my character or something that i should be proud of, loyalty or low self-esteem, forgiveness or loneliness. 

i hope it’s kindness.

how do you make yourself deal with stuff?

i hate it when i feel something i don’t want to feel and logic just doesn’t make it go away.  i feel like someone gutted me with a melon baller and there really isn’t anything wrong…is it just my bad brain acting up?  or the hormones?  or am i anticipating rightly that something awful is going to happen and i’m just preparing myself?

well, who the fuck cares, because it hurts, it’s making me sick and i don’t want to feel like this anymore.