Unsolicited Advice

Occasionally, the generation gap is a good thing. I follow (read: saw live once, and now vaguely keep tabs on) a band called Tokio Hotel. Have done for years. Why am I listening to German electronic-emo-pop-punk, you ask? Because when Moggie tripped over them, we were both in German classes. The internet had not yet uploaded all thirty years of Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst!  to YouTube, and Michael Ende only wrote so many books. I had to practice on something. [Michael Ende, for those who don't know, is the original author of Die unendliche geschichte , known in English as The Neverending Story . I have an early edition hardcover, the most expensive book I have ever bought without being ordered to by the university. It's beautiful. All of Atreyu's book-story is printed in green; Bastian's real-world parts are in black, until he crosses over into the book, and the  he's in green as well. Each chapter starts with a full page illuminated majuscule, in alphabetical o...

I've been trying to practice more with the hoops as late, and I've become rather fond of this song: Placebo's "Purify", off of Loud Like Love . I find myself in the interesting position of being unsure whether I need to mark this NSFW. The official video almost certainly is, being sprinkled liberally with nuns in lingerie, but the song itself involves no profanity, and doesn't even mention any anatomy you couldn't bring up at holiday dinners with Grandma. Structurally, it's a pretty standard "omg you are incredibly hot, hooking up with you is awesome" pop song, but it's couched in the jargon of Evangelical Christianity. It is nevertheless unrepentantly filthy. This ensures that anyone who would be inclined to pop a sprocket over it will hate it without even bothering to listen to it, which sounds like a great way to filter out anyone who shouldn't be buying Placebo albums to begin with. You wouldn't think of the back of someo...

Day Two of Open Cage: No one has fallen out. Success so far! I still close it when I sleep and when I'm not home, just in case, but I can probably quit doing that soon. Xyzzy is coming out very rex-y. The thing about rex rats is, their coats wax and wane. Their fur comes in straight-ish, then they basically molt, then their fur comes in curlier, then they molt again, etc. It makes them tricky to show, because they spend about 75% of their lives looking like a toddler who's given himself a haircut with safety scissors. Xyz currently has a big thinning patch on his haunches, and a bald spot right on his nose. Jazmin has already started referring to him as a "scruffy little nerf-herder". It's Xyzzy [ zɪ. zi ː ] and Plugh [ pluːx ], by the by. There's no official pronunciation for either, so far as I know -- they come from a text adventure -- but Plugh doesn't exactly rhyme with Grue [ gɹuː ]. Flathead, I should hope, is self-explanatory.

I'm doing a couple of things right now that involve the terrible sacrifice of going back through YouTube and watching several decades of past performances from bands I'm kind of fond of. Terrible task, I know. There's quite a lot to go through. Bowie was actively performing for thirty-some years before health problems forced him to stop. Joan Jett started with The Runaways in the late '70s and is still active. L'Arc~en~Ciel had their 25th anniversary concert a couple years ago, Placebo is just past twenty years, and even Tokio Hotel has been together for fifteen. Never read YouTube comments if you want to retain your faith in humanity. If you do anyway, it's shocking how many of them are 'they changed, they suck now'. It's especially prominent on acts that started out young and grew up in front of the cameras. Some part of their audience is very upset that the members of the band no longer sound like angry, lonely teenagers. I always wonder, why ...

I steal a lot of my makeup from men, I've noticed. I've been helping a friend of mine with what was once a homework assignment, but which has now taken on a life of its own. She had to do some documentary photography, so she asked around to see if anyone would let her photograph their jobs/hobbies; I told her she could watch me paint faces, people immediately volunteered to have their faces painted, I rummaged through the internet for interesting face-painting ideas, and somehow this resulted in an afternoon that at one point involved two models -- one in gold leggings and kabuki face, one in a suit with her cheekbone contouring in mica glitter -- in a bathtub, with a single lowball glass of scotch. This happens a fair amount in my life. I don't know any normal people anymore. As it turns out, I have a lot of friends who respond to a polite Facebook inquiry about turning them into an outrageous rock star for the camera with a shower of exclamation point and emoticons....

All of the wee little miscreants have names now. The dumbo is Duke Dimwit of Flathead -- His Grace, for short -- the one who spends most of his time hiding in dark boxes is Grue, and the goons with the dark ear tips are Xyzzy and Plugh. If you had anything constructive to do with your adolescence -- or are just younger than I am -- the Zork Wikia will tell you everything you need to know. tl;dr: The Flatheads are the disastrously foolish royal dynasty, grues are creatures who lurk in the dark and will eat you in a few turns if you don't scare them off with a lamp, and "xyzzy" and "plugh" are magic words, although what exactly they do depends on which game you're playing. His Grace is of the opinion that he is personally the exact center of the universe, around which all other things revolve. This is not unusual for a rodent. All of them agree that I should really only be paying attention to one rat; they just disagree on which rat that is. Rats do displa...

On my usual trundles through the internet, I ran across a brief tribute penned by Placebo's frontman upon hearing of Bowie's death. There's a photo heading the article, of a 40-something Bowie -- tousled hair, a hint of eyeliner, scattered blond stubble -- with his arm hooked around a very, very young Brian Molko. Molko, in full glamorous face, looks back at the camera, wide-eyed with the exact mixture of excitement, bewilderment, and terror one would expect from someone who'd just learned that his lifelong idol not only knew he existed, but thought he was kind of a neat kid, and wanted to be friends. And had him in a sort of an affectionate headlock. On camera. I don't think I've ever worn that expression. There are a lot of people I respect. There are a fair few of them whose skills I think are admirable. But there's no one whose praise means the world to me, and never has been. Back when I was the age where you're allowed to put people up on pede...