Friday funny!

Also, here's how my Fourth of July went:
Free New Pornographers show, rain, Mexican food, Killer Flaming Dr. Peppers, blueberry vodka made up holiday drinks, pushing strangers, karaoke, Snape IS the half blood prince (right!), and then being too intoxicated to remember any of it.

Words + visual aids.

% Bjork's new album, Volta

% Home made iced coffee + water with lemon and cucumbers + popcicles

% Photos from France

% Summer, summer, I am here to win you over.

% Paying someone else to do my laundry

% GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY IS PLAYING A FREE SHOW AT MCCARREN POOL THIS SUMMER.

% Watching reruns of old Scripps National Spelling Bees on ESPN2 (Samir! You're my boy!)

% International dance parties (alternately: How I became the United Nations of International Dance Party Friends)

% Smoosh opening for The Pipettes on June 5th!

% Dresses and dressing up

% Not traveling for three weeks (alternately: staying in New York for three weeks in a row!)

And when I see you, I really see you upside down.

After constant motion for the past several weeks, I'm taking this moment in my life to reflect before this brief pause resumes at a whirring by me speed.

My heart has been pulled in several directions lately- family so far away, friends so spread out. My week in Illinois was brilliant and insanely busy- seeing so many people I love and admire all in the span of such a short time. When I left, I felt good about the time I spent with my friends, but still left feeling like I didn't soak it all in enough.

And so I keep moving. Motion. In the past year, I've lived in three states. Three states, a thousand states of mind, a significant year of change. I don't think of this as a quarterlife crisis any more. Because its so much better than that, my life is not in crisis mode.

I'm leaving for Paris in two days. My life perspective slightly altered from my last visit, and I am so excited to travel. After that, I look forward to falling in love with my own city for awhile.

Friends, I leave you with this little excerpt from Henry Rollins:
"Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind. Someone is thinking of the way your breath escapes your lips when you are touched. How your eyes close and your jaw tightens with concentration as you give pleasure a home. These thoughts are saving a life somewhere right now. In some airless apartment on a dark, urine stained, whore lined street, someone is calling out to you silently and you are answering without even being there. So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have."
-Solipsist, Henry Rollins

Destine to die alone in a room heavy with the tang of cat wee.

This year I handed out Hello Kitty! Valentines, but nothing really beats last year...

Its snowing something fierce outside so I'm curled up at home tonight, which is fine by me, even though I had really looked forward to my purple Valentine's martini tonight. Instead I'm sporting the heart PJs my mama sent me, eating the chocolate covered strawberries (bouquet style) she had delivered to my work and I'm watching the least romantic movies I could find: The Departed (gangsters!), Half Nelson (drugs! Canadians!), The US vs. John Lennon (hmmm...), and Running With Scissors (a movie I have attempted to watch three times now and can't really get into).

So when I was a kid, there was an Italian joint in town my family would always eat at on Valentine's Day. We ate there other days of the year, but on Valentine's Day, they made heart shaped pizzas. When I suggested we order pizza shaped like a heart at work today, everyone scoffed at the idea that a place would make heart shaped pizza. Ive been intensely craving heart shaped pizza ALL DAY LONG, people.

East Coast friends, sadly I will not be visiting your region in a few weeks- I am sorry I couldn't keep plans...its a work thing, you understand. But don't worry, I will be back in full effect so very soon.


Dear Lily Allen,

Will you be my Valentine? We dress alike and think we could find a lot of trouble together.

xoxo,
Jen