ketchup

buzz buzz busy bee lately. lots of apartment rearranging going on and pictures at some point? everything has been planted in it's place since i moved in over 1.5 years ago and i needed some renewal (it's spring?!) and the space wasn't making alot of sense, flow-wise. living room is mostly taken care of. i'm in serious need of a new shelving system for my overflowing records. realizing this also made me realize that my next move is going to suck it. time to call some movers. need a shelving unit for my kitchen that i can paint some kind of not puke-like olive green and then i'm going to move some stuff around in there and i can finally take my poor aprons out of the box and give them a proper display. trying to rearrange my bedroom too but this is hard because 1) my sewing stuff is in there and i have A LOT of fabric and scraps and odd n' ends 2) my bedroom in sloughing off of my building in some kind of slow melt. you can see cracks where the walls are detaching and the slope of my floor gets more impressive as the days go by. my lamps are cocked at a 10 degree angle, proportionate to the junk flooring. i'm hesitant to get too involved in this because i'm looking to move come september 1st. mindy and i have been tossing around the idea of living together and i'm considering moving back down to the hipster playground.

but no one cares, or should care, about any of this. i'm just hyper-fixated on creating my world within that world and i get excited about it.

i've taken in some EXCELLENT shows recently. Sweet Cobra back again with healing mat!!!

Disfear headlined.At the Gates veteran. hair like Black Beauty. Crucifix represent. (this guy might need a haiku) truthfully, i think this band misses the expected mark. two years ago they played some strange, non-conducive club way out on Milwaukee ave. Phobia played in all their grind infatuated glory and 9 Shocks Terror played before Disfear. i think if you looked up "upstaged" on wikpedia, you'd find a picture of a flailing, mic sucking Steve and in the corner you'd find the guys in Disfear with pouty faces, cocked heads and tightly crossed arms with an expression of "how are we gonna top that" (not literally, but something close to that). i thrashed with a man in a wheelchair for fuck's sake!


EARTH. goddamn EARTH. played nothing but the newest record to my delight, matt's delight, our gonad's delight and the dismay of old fans i'm sure.
a friend said to me, "i heard they went western." i said to him it's not so much western as much as darkly western and cinematic (dead horse adjective right there). like if david lynch did a film set in oklahoma during the depression, this would be the soundtrack.

miss xiola blue is doing swell. throwing a wrench in my sleeping pattern but she's too cute to care. she might have a cold because she's sneezing a little more than normal but the vet said she's in tip top shape otherwise. i think she has a three foot vertical. are there cat basketball leagues?


in tribute to gnarly john, my first bus driver. p.s. don't park your bus on a city street or it'll get make out all over it.

my cat will go down as the John Peel of housepets.

immersed in sound

killing two cravings with one ethnically fused stone.

request:
1. deep fried
2. spicy

product:
samosa eggrolls with spicy mango sauce

for the sauce:

peel and dice one ripe mango into small chunks. dice one jalapeno. do not discard seeds. put mango chunks, jalapeno and seeds into small sauce pan and add 3 tablespoons of sugar, 3tablespoons of rice vinegar, one clove of chopped garlic and one tablespoon (more or less if you'd like) of sambal oelek /chili paste. simmer on low to medium heat for 10-15 minutes, sauce should be kind of thick and the mango should cook down and mush. let the sauce cool and pulse through a food processor until smooth.

for the filing:

peel and dice two (2) large baking potatoes into small chunks. finely dice one half (1/2) of a white onion. finely dice three medium carrots into 1/4" pieces.

add one tablespoon of oil to a 12"ish skillet. let oil heat on medium for a minute or two. add onion and two cloves of chopped garlic. cook and stir until onions start to turn clear. add the potatoes and mix well with onion and garlic. cover the mixture with just enough vegetable stock that the mix is just peeking out. cover mixture and simmer for 15 minutes, occasionally stirring. once potatoes feel fairly soft and mush-able, add carrots and a heaping tablespoon of curry powder, a teaspoon of garam masala, a teaspoon of cumin and a 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder....black mustard seeds would be great too but yeah i don't have those....mix together thoroughly. add a cup of frozen peas that are pretty much thawed. cook the mixture for another 3 minutes and remove from heat.

place a heaping spoonful of the mixture in the center of an eggroll wrapper.

fold the wrapper however you're little origamically challenged ass wants to.

heat some vegetable oil in a pan. probably 1/2" deep will do. i don't know what the temp is because i'm without oil thermometer, but i had the heat turned between low and medium. just test the oil with a small piece of wrapper and see how it's cooking. fry until golden and flip for other side to fry the same. remove from the oil and place on a paper towel, patting off excess grease.

and then there's this:

(and by "this" i mean soap spots on my black dishes)

friday: earth shake, tectonic and otherwise

southern illinois in the early 90's was a hotbed of earthly shenanigans. the flood of '93: destroyed homes and left, i'm sure, quite a few eager and loose young ladies with the seed of national guardsmen who packed sandbags during the day and indulged locally at night. it was a fucked up time to say the least. childhood friends told stories of returning to a sick idea of a "home" once the flood waters receded to find cattle carcasses in their swimming pools and uprooted trees driven through their living room walls. and the smell...whole counties blanketed with the stench of death. you couldn't wash the shit off. and p.s. a whole town was declared "no more" and reestablished up the hill, where no flood would reach them again. but a few years before this reality, a somewhat self-proclaimed geological Nostradamus named Iben Browning single-handily threw everyone in southern illinois into a panic by predicting a significant quake along the New Madrid fault line that would occur sometime in late 1990. Mr. Browning was a seasoned, respected biologist but an armchair tectonics authority so there was really nothing backing his prediction. but No Fear t-shirts or not, folks were spinning in their bar stools and talking about packing a cooler and heading the fuck out of the area for the last days of the year. schools and businesses were threatening to close, mobile media units were camping out in New Madrid, IL (the source and namesake of the fault line) with broadcast monkeys holding out for "the moment" and we saw '90 high five '91 and NOTHING, not even a sniffle from mother earth. sensationalism at it's finest and most hilarious.

hometown darlings Uncle Tupelo even wrote a song about it called "New Madrid". I loved them, saw their last show, once looked up Jeff Tweedy in the phonebook and it's kind of painful to listen to ocliw when UT was so great.

This is Mr. Browning; bad at predictions, good at inspiring country punks to write memorable songs.

went to work on friday and everyone is talking "earthquake" and i'm like "whaaaa?". mr. browning must be smiling in his grave because the new madrid fault line made some noise around 4:30am, waking up my parents downstate and scaring the shit out of their cat. 500 miles away, i slept like the dead through the whole shake up. had some hilarious internet "conversations" about it:

anton:It woke me up. My bed was shaking, and I was trying to figure out who was having sex with me. Ends up it was Ma Nature... Hot.

matt in response to anton:Its all them lonely vibrators you have stashed up, you gotta take em out of the box once in a while.

sears: ILLINOIS IS GOING TO BREAK OFF INTO THE OCEAN!

rick: 2nd Earthquake this year, Im basically an earthquake chaser.

me: was told that my sister's co-worker mistakenly thought her husband was violently jerking off and got all huffy like, "are you seriously doing this at 4am?" slept through it. made a cup of tea filled to the top last night and forgot it on the kitchen counter. woke this morning to see the cup standing but tea spilled all over the counter. blamed the cat.

exit work week! went to an art show opening (version dark matter) with matt after work and i didn't upload the photos so i'll post them in another blog. since we were on 31st, we decided to head west and go eat at el faro, the mexican vegetarian restaurant that i've been attempting to hit up for years. http://www.elfarorestaurant.com/ mexican tofu scramble, black beans, rice and a big ole stack of tortillas for $3.50. yum. (much) later that night we met up with john duggen at loyola to co-host his friday night radio show on 88.7 wluw, Underground Communique. john and i had (drunkenly) been talking about doing this for the past year or so and it finally took off. i was honestly nervous and i hate the way i sound when i talk but everything turned out fantastic. matt played his share first and i took over for the last half, with duggen throwing in some of his plays here and there.

early on/matt's turn:

matt and john midway:
my turn:
so sleepy (and a little buzzed from a faygo ginger ale bottle laced with Jameson) at almost 2am:

normally john catalogs and blogs what is played but i don't know if he did last night. matt went with lots of japanese and uk stuff since i (jerkass) stole all the mostly american hardcore that i love so much.

my playlist, maybe in proper chronological order?:

poison idea-hangover heart attack

direct control- ronnie's dead

spermbirds- you're not a punk (skipped like a mofo, sorry if you heard it)

sado nation- mom and pop democracy

heart attack- shotgun

a.o.d.-yuppies

life crisis- forced out (and silent acceptance by accident)

coc- prayer

double negative- i think i played rehuminization?

scared straight- school

knife fight- united we stand

ameria's hardcore- a.h.c.

antidote- foreign job lot (meant to play nazi youth)

rest in pieces- keep your distance

token entry- windows

punch in the face- at war with everybody

violent arrest- fit for abuse (and time to conform by accident)

voorhees- who asked you

under pressure- come clean

gordon solie motherfuckers- ghost cry of betray

raw power- state oppression

impulse manslaughter- we're all bored here

septic death- burial

devoid of faith- pupose:lost

rorschach- clenching

?united mutation- final solution?

the accused- slow death

big black- fish fry

articles of faith- give thanks

naked raygun- roller queen

career suicide- bored bored bored

the freeze- trouble if you hide

zero boys- new generation

gorilla angreb- jeg gar ikke i sort

DA- stranger

the bodines- therese

the primitives- stop killing me

i has a bebe.

i visit anit-cruelty almost weekly on my lunch break walks. i'm always looking for a dog. don't know why seeing that my apartment is a matchbox and they aren't allowed anyway but i cross my fingers that some day i'll go in and see my dream weimaraner pup and we'll walk out of there together. on the last visit i stumbled upon the cat version of a weimaraner and her name is Blue and she's my roomate now. it was quite the production to take here home because she was sent to a petsmart way west so i frantically called them and they, surprisingly, put her on hold until i could make it over and pick her up. she's a fucking doll. perfect proportion of playfulness to chill and mindfulness to bat-shit crazy. Miss Xiola Blue in action/non-action:

more pictures to come!

4/1/08

no fooling. my ideal weather pattern. 62 degrees. approx. 12 mi/hr breeze. cotton clouds. damp sidewalks. raindrops sneaking in here and there.

walking weather. life weather.

the eagle on clark. drawing a big heart around the hyper-sexed. (maybe it's not that you're hyper, just honest.)

graceland cemetary over the walls, hence the barbed wire. taylor the goth teen used to hang hear while skipping class. i want to sleep here as an adult.

coloring books: educational and blasphemous

in 1982, a coloring book celebrating the culture, history and people of Norway was published. in 2008, i bought if for 40 cents from a thrift store.

inside, you'll find beautiful, ready-to-color drawings that illustrate the contrasts of Norwegian living from the days of old to modern times.

with my newly polished knowledge of Norway, i collaged my ass off and created a birthday card/flyer in honor:


that says, "Happy Birthday, Matt" as it would in Norway, as it would be said by a mythical troll and Thor.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATT!

the kids may actually care

so this weekend marked the extinction of chicago's precious, though rarely spotted bird known as the REPOS. with over two decades of punk artifact to reflect upon, it's all too easy to draw comparisons to the past with what we hear and see in the now. it's kind of lazy to do it if you ask me, but somehow it feels okay to say they were like Jerry's Kids getting hand jobs from Youth of Today because they were their own distinct and evolved animal anyway. i think it's craig's wardrobe that mostly sets them apart. but this weekend was also one of the last shots at seeing Punch in the Face before they hang up their boots and yes i'm recoiling for saying that because they sound so damn much like my beloved Slapshot but screw it, i said it. friday night both bands and fans destroyed (literally) at People Projects. added bonus was O.G. drummer Jeff Rice on the drums for PITF since Mark got a bottle of hop juice lodged in his ass and got drunk backwards.

straight nate is stoked, even in the haze of vaporized ball sweat.

ebro squished into the corner with the fake television boxes that were knocked down further into the night.

kids are climbing on the fucking pipes.


bryan robert carson, esq. showing his much missed face.

then the repos bang out a set that makes me realize there's still a reason i'm a grown ass woman approaching 30 who somehow finds in dire to get smashed around by a sea of young kids instead of getting my nails done.

guy in the Ill Repute shirt is my friend M.C. of nearly 10 years who drove all the way from Colorado for this show. it was his bachelor party.

those faces: possibly the biggest daisy chain in history.

1. aaron's neck is more hardcore than the entire victory records catalog. 2. bernie is two steps shy of being a creep in sweatpants surfing porn at the library.

kids in the pipes again. in the end, one pipe was broken, thankfully not one that had shit running through it.

yes. the strand of pearls is IN the jaws of the wolf.

next day was off to madison to see both bands again. sadly, missed PITF. happily, picked up matt from the airport and hit the road.

from the streets of madison: this should go under the next "hot finds" but i'll leave it here. when matt asked this guy if he could take a picture of his chops, the guy circled around matt like he was a ball on a tether and matt was the pole.

also should go under "hot finds". lil wayne spreads peace in the streets of madison.

REPOS round 2.

dives galore. this made me smile like an asshole.

tyler wins for my favorite.

g'bye REPOS.

this show was part of a festival that was paid for by UW and was housed in the student union on campus. we found out there was a hotel on the upper level and a fucking bar in the basement (what's with these colleges and on campus bars? college would've been so much better had i had that luxury). so we spent the rest of the night loitering and drinking around the common area of the student union or milling around the bar getting tossed (some of us tossed OUT!!) and crawled upstairs to bed after finally getting told to just get the hell out. there was definitely a sweet 16 party going on in one of the conference rooms but no photos b/c jail sucks. here's bry, ryan, craig, brandon no way, marissa and some Life Trap kids catching up on water polo leagues on the campus events bulletin board.

and under "missed hot finds" would be a photo of the teenagers matt saw getting stoned in a patch of trees off highway 90 on the ride home but i couldn't get to my camera in time.