Watch out....its some haikus

Its more bad poetry, everyone! I read my son a book with a brief haiku chapter and it inspired me to dabble at this elegant artform.  

Frost left the forest

The crack of frozen amber

Melts into a void

 

Beyond the back shed

Frayed plastic tarp wilts

Under ice sun hurt

 

Heat pours out flowing

Wound in the dirt cut sliced

Current grabs panic

Tamagotchi

 Its a tragedy when my daughter's Tamagotchi died. It does not prompt you to restart. No "Game Over" or "Continue" button. Instead there is a pastel LCD headstone with a cartoony ghost blurb hovering over it. It lingers on this indefinitely. A digital memento mori to scar you further. Let me take this "F" grade and just magnet it right onto the fridge, OK?

To clear this you need to manually reset the device to factory settings. Get a sharp skinny needle and depress a pin head button in the back. Doing this to your toys always feels both perverse and deftly maneuvered. First finding the appropriate sized tool by rooting through a junk drawer (I once supervised someone who called these "hell drawers" and if I am ever president I will advocate to change our language to include this) or idle toolbox. Or something sharp from a bathroom cabinet coffee mug jammed with razor handles, makeup handles, and eye lash curlers. "Make sure to save this," you tell yourself and put that along the little Philips head screwdriver and AAA batteries. 

You do the thing and get a brilliant beep and  start all over again. An elite move.

Women and Ghosts

 I'm that sucker the read EVERY book assigned for a class. To the point that it became a running gag throughout the first twenty something years of my life. 

My mother even said "Why bother reading all of the book? Everyone just reads the Cliffs Notes. Or watches the movies?!" And this, was and is still, quite true but I felt honor bound to always read these books. 

Only exceptions were The Count of Monte Cristo in the 10th grade. I took my mother's advice and read the Cliffs Note and then promptly bombed the test. A test the teacher delayed because everyone complained about needing more time to read it. Serves me right. I sat behind my long running crush Irma Arzola and spent too much time day dreaming. Whenever we had gym as our special (10th grade was the last year with pre-assigned specials. 11th and 12th were for AP classes) she wore her gym outfit all day and it was all short shorts and a t-shirt a bit too tight as to see the outline of her bra. 

The other exception was in college, junior year, when I took a classes called Revolutions, Rebellions and Revolts. Beyond the metal sounding name it was taught by a mustachioed Polish-American named Zenon Wasyliw that headed the history department.  Less real politik than history we just learned about the details behind Che Guevara, Mao, the overthrow of the Shah. And we learned about SOuth Africa and had to read Mandela's autobiography which was huge. Two telephone books huge. Guy had plenty to say even though he was in jail for so long! And I made it until maybe 3/4ths of it before I gave up. We had maybe a week of discussion about this. In May. For a twice a week Tuesday-Thursday class. Fuck it. Until Zenon called on me because "We know you read the book!" Luckily, I bull shitted my way through the answer, which, no one could call me out on because...only I read the book!

That all said...I can't remember much of these books. Blame age. Blame the authors. Blame video games, work, kids, tiki drinks, or my allergies, but instead it series of flashes. I read them and spent money on them, but few stick.

Those that did are predominatly short story collections. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders. This is how you lose her by Junot Diaz. How to Breather Underwater by Julie Orringer. 

And Women and Ghosts by Alison Lurie which I thought was out of print but I'm basing that on how big a pain it was to get 15 years ago. But there it was on bookshop.org with other listing for late 80s early 90s brat pack literati. Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis before they became dicks. That is my jam! 

These stories pop for their flow and lovely details without going overboard. All these stories center around people who are quite well off but are never un sympathetic even when receiving comeuppance. These are ghost stories after all. 

Like any anthology, the stories do vary in quality. "Counting Sheep" feels like one of the magical reasons type short stories I tried in the past. What sounds quite profound (he never wants to leave so he becomes a sheep!) is just goofy. This isn't a myth and its quite literal.

"The Highboy" is the story I remember and how it didn't become a goofy tv movie must be because Laurie had scruples. She only recently passed away in December 2020 so why not cash in for your kids or grandkids. Raul Julia in Street Fighter style! In it a malevolent piece of furniture looms literally in the living room and it makes you feel and think on how we anthromprmize things. Feel scorned and owned by what surrounds us.

"Ilse's House" and "Fat People" are also bangers. I know if I were a woman I would likely appreciate these better but if you want to read to learn about others then this is good one, my brothers.  Reading this gave me an early lesson that how I thought writing a female character worked was inherently wrong. Plenty of bad writing stopped right there. 

On The Road

Without planning it, the first two books I read in 2021 had to do with hobos.

You know, train hopping bindle and stick hobos. I guess somewhat appropriately both these books were reads of coincidence. 

Hobo by Eddie Joe Cotton and then Rock Candy Mountain Vol1 by Kyle Starks and Chris Schweizer.

Hobo is supposed to be creative non fiction albeit by the end some of the escapades seem too far fetched. Eddie Joe Cotton writes down all the scraps of paper and notesbooks he kept while traveling for a three week stretch in the 90s. The escapades do have a "one upper" feel to them especially once he reaches Las Vegas. These are books with very little women in them and in Hobo they are pure one dimensional piece of scenery. Shame as Eddie then does a great job describing all the filthy scabby people and situations he encounters. The railroad police (bulls) feel menacing and the term for a hobo camp stew "mulligan" is quite satisfying. Aside from Vegas no locale seems special and maybe that is the point. This books also has its one lexicon and an about 12 page glossary of tramp terms. A book without anything to say really but still an interesting if shallow look at this sub culture.

Rock Candy Mountain has a literal hallway prison fight. Like Daredevil. Thats's awesome!

Light and breezy with a cartoon pull style this is a fun comic series. 

Our hero is untouchable but a clever stipulation explains why (He made a deal with the devil, who is in the story, so that no ONE man can beat him) so it doesn't feel forced or dulling. It also has the FBI, a hobo mafia, and a bit of bare knuckle pop folklore. Has a boxer named Hundred Cat beacuse fighting him is like fighting a hundred cats This! That is awesome! This is a kinetic comic with lots of panels with little verbiage followed by then dense exposition. Perfect analogy for rumbling across the rails. 

After reading all this I do not want to abandon all material possessions and slither away. I do, however, now consider myself part of the elite that knows the difference between a hobo, tramp, and bum. Ill share it because if you are reading this then you must be extra wonderful!

A hobo travels and works. A migrant worker. 

A tramp travels and does not work. Wanderlust

A bum does not travel and does not work. Doldrums.

New Years Cabin 2021

Every quarter mile or so, up would come a trailer flanked by a sagging above ground pool and varying shacks and piles of toys. A power wheels jeep about to bound over a hill of mud. Dollar store bulldozers and monster trucks on their sides in rivulets cut by driveway runoff. This is back-of-beyond Ohio, just a few miles from I77. The part of the state lonely and hilly, emblematic of the bore the state lives up to. I only judge those houses flying Stars and Bars confederate flags since irs traitorous and defeated.  A purely incendiary symbol in a union state like Ohio. Fuck me so fuck you. Small towns like Duncan Falls or Cumberland boil up this settler feeling in me. Well, I could work at this little convenience store and eat at the Rusty Rooster. During the summers I would go every night to Zanesville or even Canton for a movie. A League basketball game. I would have a po box at the two room post office and would read and scribble by the Muskingum River. I can dig it. But the Stars and Bars? Paint that on the side of your truck and roll it right into the river. You are not a Duke boy.

This is all tucked in and around and the Jesse Owens State Park and the irony is indeed lost. The whole place has spindly trees and sense shrubs reclaimed from coal mining just 40 years ago. They made this place better. As recent as the 90s it was a bigger shit hole. 

When I live in Central New York they called this Hollow Country. Every road was soemthing Hollow...Possum Hollow. Quail Hollow. White Hollow, etc. And each was this butt puckering Mr Toad Wild ride down a hill and then back up it twice just to swoop into a zip zag curve lousy with hidden drives. Rusted mailboxes on beat pipe piles that indicated some lonely cabin 100 yards behind the honeysuckle and sycamore.

Save...those were paved. These in Blue Rock OH were not. 

Or not completely. They were a weapons grade half ass patch of pavement and gravel that disintegrated into gravel the further you got from the junction with the actual state roads.  Thanos snapped his fingers and all he got was Bethlehem Road in God, people live here, Ohio.

These are the places you come to for love. Or never leave. Or, like us, to recreate. 

The wife rented a posh cabin in the woods for New Years. Just one night but deep down a self made gully to a honey blonde wood cabin with a hunter green metal roof. A tall A frame with sleek stainless steel appliances. A hot tub and Private pond and hiking trails all out of an Ikea Christmas spread. Everyone loves it and the kids nest for beds. Should we sleep in the loft? Or in the basement bunk beds.

It is the only light for a three mile radius. And it is bright so you are very clear through the floor to ceiling glass window. I find myself constantly side eyeing the glass to see someone walk by. An errant local hired to be a cleaner or person trying to quickly ATV across the private property. Or someone stanf menacingly tapping on the glass. They should be in a mask because that is appropriate. Ghostface. Michael Meyers. Jason. The Strangers. But, why hide your face in rugged isolation? This guy would be brazen and flitting. 

It is difficult to enjoy one self perpetually looking to the dark edges of your AirBnB. I am already anxious and juggle a sense of self doubt with a desire to control. But the family had a good time.

Guys, I got HBO Max

The household has HBO Max for a month so my mission is to watch and assload of content in these 30 days. 

Kicked off with Action Park by watching it with the wife.

"Oh, there is like a whole reddit on this," she said.

"I first heard of it on a YouTube channel called Defunct Land that talks about the history of amusement parks and children's television," I replied.

I know...I'm super cool. Her blank stare tells me.

In brief, this movie is quite funny if anything with just how unhinged the park was. Imagine all those one up stories from teenage years except they are backed up but newspaper clippings. The producers drop these cartoons animations to visualize the narratives and the "Man in a Ball" one nails it. A real bottom of your balls sharp inhale of WTF feeling. And, I like water parks so an extra curl of the toes when you see the folks nearly tumbled over the sides. 

It starts to sort of veer into a Gen X Forrest Gump for NJ kids when folks wax philosophical of how much fun it was. This was being a part of NJ, man! If you didn't have friction burns from the Alpine Slide then don't call yourself a true NJ kid! Which is too bad considering people died including a harrowing one on one with the mother of the parks first fatality. She even says after 39 years I still feel that pain and it does, man. Pour right through the screen.

Worth a view save. Its that same Tiger King feeling without the guilt that you were suped into some false dichotomy. Look, I love me some "That bitch Carole Baskins" memes but she is not a villain. Watch it again! But only after Action Park. And wear a helmet 

Little Moments of Bravery

Little deep moments of bravery will, one day, get me killed. 

Its happened before. Anytime someone said, "Its not that deep!" or "Whats the worst the can happen?!" and then they get swallowed whole by some tiger, that was little deep moments getting someone killed. Evolutions itty bitty rolls of the dice.

Holy shit! It worked! 

Thats very different than...

HOLY SHIT!

Here are little moments of bravery and their internal risk assessments and fantasy day dreams. Stay frosty.

Lonely at 3am and scrolling endlessly on my phone. Doom scrolling. Anxiety farming. Then a picture of a coworker with their family for the holiday and damn they are stunning. Like not just horny on main but holy smokes a She's All That moment. And with all sincerity I want to say  "You look really nice" but we are separated by physical miles and digital barriers. MY family will see it. Other coworkers will see it. Say it when you next see her, right. Be brave and kind and sincere then! It will surely not be creepy.

Hot takes on Twitter. Turkey is great, actually! Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie! Eat a dick, Ted Cruz! Someone please @ me. I'm screaming into a void.

Fuck it, I WILL eat some more pie! I will buy the gem pack on Arena! I will have another drink. These will likely kill me in real life.

Hustling about laptops at work. This one is too big. I need all the cords before I take the new one. This is such a hassle to come in

Can someone say thank you?! Please? Before any goodwill becomes antipathy and a brewing glee to see your comeuppance?

Enjoy Your Own Thanksgiving

 Folks, I am excited for the cancelled holidays. We have such short memories but every year its the same recycled takes. 

"Who wants to travel for Thanksgiving?"

"I do not want to see my racist uncle. I don't want to have to explain why I am not yet married. Why I don't have kids. While I still rent. Etc, etc" 

"I do not have the time to clean and host 15 something people in my place!"

"I DO NOT want to talk politics with my family. Someone will turn on the news and then, shit, well there is my racist uncle"

 Lovely glossy magazines and well photographed listicles will tempt us every year with new dishes to try when we are supremely sit in the same plates each and every year. We will bemoan early sales that take away from the "spirit" of the holiday and justify why its OK those folks at WalMart are there at 5pm. "Hey, they give them dinner there! They got TWO Thanksgivings"

There will be stern twitter warning from folks more woke than us saying to consider not everyone has a loving family and to be sensitive of those people who cannot (or should not) see their families. "My family told me to never come back when I said I was trans. So, fuck them. I never did" 

However, in the inverted year of 2020 now everyone believes it is not just their right but THEIR DUTY to see everyone they can. Those cousins three times removed who live in Billing, MT? Oh, we NEED to be able to lick their damn eyeballs. It is my right!

No better way to entice someone then tell them they can't have it. Every parent knows this. Every school teacher. I once knew a teacher who would cover up a bookshelf in a blanket at the beginning of the year. And the kids would freak the fuck out. 

"Ms, Iorio! Ms. Iorio, WHAT IS UNDER THE BLANKET!?"

"You will have to wait and see!"

And those kids poked and scooted closer to it until it was revealed it was just books! Ready for one we mastered the earlier texts.

But when leadership doesn't back these appeals to common decency and the social contract with consequences then we get the eye ball licking. Folks sneering as they pour over a Norman Rockwell spread tinted by pandemic undertones. Let us the Instagram filter of Biohazard. Smile, everyone!

Blame capitalism. Blame the perversion of American conservatism from a sort of rugged individualism to a perpetual state of sorrow. Blame China. Blame the Karens and Chads. This is nuanced for sure and our hyper polarized world does not allow for that. So, pick your poison and hopefully stay home.

I will and relish a Thanksgiving spent with my nuclear family and no people I need to pretend to enjoy.

The True Self

I'm a neurotic sort. In my lifetime its become quite popular  to self diagnose as "My OCD!" or "all the anxiety" and I was not immune to this trend. Albeit, I dont feel I played it for anything of significant gain. Just how I have always been. 

My mother always had us three hours early to the airport. Just in case. This was before the security theater of post 9/11 when you could walk to the gates. Eat miniature hash browns at the cafe by the American Airlines terminal at SJU with all the time. That treat felt so decadent and foreign to my palate. Why only at the airport? I was only an adult when I realized it was to please tourists used to fast food style hash browns. Which are still quite delicious so I understand.

I once took a business trip to Atlanta. Didn't see much but I traveled with a colleague who also wanted to get to the airport early and I felt so relieved. Here is someone who understood me and to whom it could be myself even in the awkward personal/professional event horizon of a business trip.

Still on airports never did my stomach sink so low when my girlfriend said "I forgot my ID" while we were three people away from the check in at JFK. This after a 6 hour bus ride from upstate and a brief lunch with her aunt in Manhattan and then a subway ride to the train. This WAS post 9/11 and here was the entire trip about to be rendered asunder. I was my true self and freaked out. Snapped at her and kicked off one of those gritted teeth arguments in public where concerned strangers  get a "No, everything is ok. We swear! Oh, lovely shirt you got there by the way..."

She dug through her backpack fumbling for a driver's license she never planned on using while I raced through the dread of telling everyone we weren't coming. And finding a place while we planned on returning upstate.

She found it. Deep and buried below triple folder clothes and a box of dog treats. "What are those for?" I asked. 

"For your dog back home. To introduce myself" she said with deep gun metal blue dagger eyes.  We made the trip and about four months later broke up. We had dated for nine months but it felt like nine years when all was finalized. We both found people more tolerant of our true selves.

S in the ABC

 

Boy does this song have it all. Starts with the brassy hit like a high school marching band is about to come down field and play Stars and Stripes Forever. Then that funky snap like a cello bounding over Mt. Everest before segueing into the main song. There it has all this bumping and dueling staccato with the organize frenzy that partially peaks at "SMACK BY BITCH UP!" before then wilding out again. The only break is the female one note solo that then goes right back into madness.

I enjoyed this song a bit too much for someone who the hardest thing they ever took was quinine and black coffee while abroad in Nicaragua. Other The Prodigy songs I admire are Diesel Power and Climbatize and Spitfire. I am quite the "on paper" hard character you see. Or at least 20 something me did while wearing this out on the old Discman. 

 These are songs to do heroin to. I think the song is ABOUT heroin. Have you seen the video? It has a twist that is still a bit surprising albeit more in a "I need to check my preconceived notions" then blow my mind style. 

Meandering Check In

At some point life slows down to where the excitement of getting new tires matches the same deep welled glee of a birthday present. This is where I find myself, at a point when writing stories becomes alluringly navel gazing. Let me write about how no one understands me. About stumbling on an exe's or co worker's social media and having something new to fantasize to. This is where the "manic pixie girl" trope emerged. You have seen those movies.

Garden State. 500 Days of Summer. Elizabethtown

I often found value in work but that has become an iterative cycle of hurry up and wait. Race to the finish and then stop a your very tip toes so you bend at the waist and wobble over the line while you wait. For a final word. Chase the ghost of approval from a standstill. This works both professionally and personally. Where are you and where is it? Whatever the it is.

Have not put digital pen to this blog in a while. I remember in the heyday of blogging (the haughty aughts) and apologizing for those long delays. I don't know enough about streaming but do content creators do that?

"Hey, everyone, its your boi XGonnaGiveittoya here. Sorry for the delay. I was just feeling blue and also busy for two months straight"

Ill see what I can do. Get out the writing prompts and scribble. Just hope to avoid someone swinging from the air with blue hair. 

Rainy Day

 Its crum-dug-diggly-fugly weather today.

80 billion gallons fell over our 12 county area in 8 hours said the weekend weather man. The man who is not as handsome as the prime time man. Still somewhat stilted and fishing for a catch phrase that will take him to big weather cities. Miami. New York. Anywhere but here. 

Clapboard weather that pitter patters on the un-used exhaust vent in my apartment. Soaked drenched phone book weather. The amount of water that turns these relics into suburban super weapons to be tossed over highway pedestrian bridges. A tiny bit of free mayhem just needing a nudge. 

Tomorrow the already dense spindles of tomatoes will surge from their August peak into an Indian summer of green ticking against a clock and root bound to stop them from rending more fruit. The plants my neighbor left on her porch will soon need to be brought in. I anthropomorphize the plants and here is her scheflerra commenting on he difference in mineral from rain water to tap."This really tastes better, Janet. The rain water I mean. On my rhizomes"

Here are torrents that pour through the broken glass of old warehouses. Places you can ge for a deal. Call Lou Sala for a deal on this place where vines cover the area code. Moss grows over the drenched upholstery from the abandoned break room sofas.

Clammy basement weather. Trapped in a bar called the Barking Spider where they only have hot fries to eat and the TV got soaked through a hole in the siding. 

Z in The ABC

We got there!

Z for Zombie by The Cranberries

What millennial doesn't like this song? Its perfect for the car. It has some gravity (especially if you watch the video and even cursorily glance at the history it references) but is also just a great jam. My favorite part is the in the percussive wrap up at the end where the drums just flip back and forth. A great part to zen out to watching the concentric circles of the Windows Media Player animations. To imagine someone dancing and flipping their hair back to each beat. 

Thanks for reading! If you made it this long then I hope you collected copious data for your masters in Vladivostok. 

X in the ABC

 Sometimes I look at my children and see how they inherent all my flaws and little of whatever strength or knowledge I have. That said maybe my strengths are just neuroses that render some productivity. A deep desire of valuing work over everything else. Fussing over cleaning and paperwork and sorting until everything is just a damn fuck it. At least my son doesn't need to wear glasses. 

They have picked up on tics particularly around the insane things I say to preclude any event. Any attempt to work out (any physical exertion tbh) at all and you are going to get

Time to do some push ups....X GON' GIVE TO YA!

Want me to bring all the groceries in on trip? UP A FLIGHT OF STAIRS?! HIT ME WITH THAT JAM!

How I made his connection is lost to history. Victim of way to many songs where this is some intro for a big fight or car chase. Because I am horribly out of shape it usuall is something like X GON' GIVE TO YA. I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR NINETEEN YEARS AND.....wheeze....blerg....fuck that is enough of that. 

This will be jammed before taking the training wheels off the bike. Or jumping into the deep end of the pool. 

U in the ABC

Here is a secret, dear readers. I am not writing these in alphabetical order. Some of these come much sooner or much easier so they get drafted before say Q. I mention this in case I already mentioned Kate Bush but fuck it because she is amazing and deserves to be mentioned constantly.

Hounds of Love is a witchcraft collection of an album. Something that shouldn't exist because of its ability to summon the ethereal. I recently read the Harry Potter books and whenever veelas show up I imagine Kate Bush playing in the background.

But, the song for this is kind of a cheat. Brief and spooky, spartan with words but loaded with sonic asides. In Under Ice she sneaks in a sonar ping along with submarine chatter, screechy violin, and an overbearing sense of presence. A fog all around you or hoar frost locking up under the skin.  This song always make me imagine myself standing out on the ice and staring down into something brewing below it.

W in the ABC

After graduating college I I was fortunate enough to secure a job, albeit a part time one. Still this was a rarefied position in the mid 00s. The job was Community Development Coordinator for a small town in upstate New York. It was not a city planning position or anything so lofty but instead a part time liaison between a citizen group and the village government. On paper I was taking over from a single citizen who spent 15 years advocating and fundraising to redo the village's mainstreet to slow down traffic, increase pedestrian accessibility and beautify the area. This is where I first discovered Blogger since I launched a daily update project for the construction.

I was 22 at the time and had many "first job" foibles albeit looking back at it, I am proud of the overall work. Ever read Dr. Seuss's The Lorax? Made me feel like The Once-ler and everyone else was the Lorax. We killed a video store but I sincerely doubt the sustainability of a town of 1500 with TWO video stores in the year 2006. So...I made a few enemies but last time I visited the town still had the personalized bricks and rippled lamp posts and new trees. In the end it was worth it but I did give up on any pretense of living in said town. Maybe citizens feel differently?

However, at the time I got hired I committed to the gig and place. I asked my supervisor, the Village Clerk (What this person does I am not sure. She cut a lot of receipts), for a list of local landlords. Could I rent a place in town and avoid the 30 minute commute by rural bus?

One person who called back? He was a local slumlord who owned a Christmas tree farm and drove around in a vintage sports car the color of Kinko's canary copy paper. Not a mean guy but the place was a dump. An A Frame duplex house, already a Frankenstein beast, split into 5 apartments. Apartment 5 used to be his son's and the junior had left bric a brac and furniture that then became mine. The place had this videogame RPG vibe to it where you open a cupboard and there was an electric hand mixer. Then a plate. A shaving kit bag. Can I turn this junk into something useful?

Place had an emerald green settee style couch with the ornate wooden legs and loops that had to be a RMS Titanic relic. And heat came from a giant (Thing had to be 4 feet wide by 3 feet tall) gas heater in the middle of the living room. A cast iron pot belly heater/oven with none of the charm.

Place was five minutes from village hall so with no commute and the job plateauing to be an ersatz complaint department (Most days were spent waiting for the phone to ring or someone to email the help line) I sat around a fair amount listening to music on my Rhapsody account. And this is how I found Thursday, a screamo suburban band that seemed to acknowledge that with this jam.

Raw lyrics with the "ashes of American flags" and talking about the joined collective moment of 9/11. Another key Thursday song for me is Understanding in a Car Crash which has the ending of a low rumble repetition of "keep crashing this car, over and over. Keep crashing this car, over and over." I think about that a lot. At work. When voting. When responding to an ask from my wife.

T in the ABC

I thoroughly enjoyed Hot Hot Heat's Make Up the Breakdown a 2002 album lead by Bandages that I listened to way too often. Every song is a banger! Then the band sort of vanished. For me and also for the zeitgeist albeit they had more albums

Now Talk to Me, Dance to Me is a song about two people coming together. That sounds really wholesome but for me this song, with the cowbell kickoff, is my go to jam for everything

I find two sticks on the ground and want to act silly in front of my daughter. Well, slap those together and then go "You are my only girl, but you're not my owner girl" and repeat.

Are you banging on your steering wheel while waiting for a light? Well..."You are my only girl, but you're not my owner girl"

What is that weird staccato beat in the background? The shrill shriek of a cicada in the tree? Well..."You are my only girl, but you're not my owner girl"

Listen to it and try it! Perfect any song which maybe isn't a great thing? Since it could be filler. 

P in the ABC

 Considering her discography and influence you think I would pick something else but my Madonna album is Ray of Light. Which, considering my penchant for electronic music it makes sense. It also came out at the right time in the summer of 98 when I watched a ton of MTV so any song that came out between 97-99 is just carbon seared into my mind.

Note, I don't enjoy or remember much of Ray of Light except this song and hence the aforementioned and this post.

Power Of Goodbye has it all for me. The moodiness and ethereal sound that permeate your mood and give me these click clack steam punk vibes. This is a song that always felt to me quite wise and a sort of deep cut to love and emotion but instead its just a leftover song at the end of the album. 

A Play To Save

At work brainstorming ways to generate more revenue for our non-profit

Me: ***jokingly*** Well if all else fails we can start a company only fans account!

Coworker: Oh...I volunteer!

Me: ***flabbergasted and awkward and feeling dumb for that gag*** Oh...hahaha...I'm going to get fired now!

Coworker: We want to say we tried everything 

Me: ***insert take my money gif***

N in the ABC

 I lent a guy name Jnani (pronounced Yanni) my sole copy of The Postal Service's Give Up, an album I adore. An album only made better that they never made a follow up even though fans clamor for it. Songs alternate from moody indie jams to then electronic jams you can run on a treadmill. Then the song here the duet Nothing Better

Such poetry in the words as the two former lovers fight. I never went through such a hard breakup so I can't pine for any empathy but I can appreciate the lyrics and situation. Like forget about cellar doors and never more...give more more of "Don't you feed me lies about some idealistic future/Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures"