Why, my "significant other" (as you might say it) is one of my friends.

Yesterday I went to my bass lesson. Now, let me tell you about a kid I know who takes lessons at my Dad's studio. I don't know what his name is, but for convenience let's call him "the Metallica kid". I give him that name because he is always putting down the Beatles in favor of Metallica. The reason he is always putting down the Beatles is because he hates them. I found this out when one day, I dared to wear a Beatles T-shirt to the lesson. He pointed to it and said, "The Beatles SUCK!!!" So then I told him that I happen to like them. We got in a little argument, and he revealed that he believes all their songs to be written while on drugs. Grinning (I do like to bother people), I said, "No, just about 75 percent." "But that's still a lot!" he protested. (I didn't tell him that just about all of Syd Barrett's songs have something to do with drugs, and that I like those songs even better. Actually - maybe it's a good thing I didn't. I'm not sure I want to know what he'd have said. Probably "You like drug music or something?" To which the answer is - sadly yes.)

Now, yesterday, I was bothering him (he's fun to bother, and Mum said he seems to like bothering me too; but it's all in fun). Now, I remember that I was saying something about my psychologist (to get a reaction of course) and he was all, "You have a psychologist?" like only loonies have 'em or something. "Yes," I said. "I knew it! I knew it!" he said. "I've got two psychologists, one who figures out what my issues are, and she tells the other one what they are so she can medicate me," I went on. "I saw her this morning; she's putting me on a stronger dose of what I've already got." I then revealed that I only said the psychologist stuff to get a reaction, but I really did have two. "I knew it," he said.

He also said that I'm always hyper and talkative. "There's a reason," I explained. "I think it's got something to do with the fact that I rarely see other people, especially kids close to my age, and whenever I'm around them I get all hyper because I never see them otherwise." "Well I understand why!" he decided. He also said that I never seem to get angry. Which sort of mystifies him. "Oh, I do experience feelings of anger and agression," I assured him. "I just don't act upon or physically manifest them." "In English, please!" he said. "I get mad, I just don't act that way," I explained. "I doubt they'd let me at home."

So anyway...that's the Metallica kid.

I am at Aunt Dee-Dee's house today. About an hour after the bass lesson she came to my house to pick me up and take me to dinner and then her house. So that's what we did. I spent the night here, and now I'm here typing all about the events of yesterday.

I told Dee-Dee about the weekend. And I breached the topic of "The Seatbelt Theory". I explained that I told my mum what the Seatbelt Theory was, and I wanted to tell her. (Kolya, I know you're probably in a state of shock.) The Seatbelt Theory, quite frankly, is the theory that states, "PUT ON YOUR SEATBELT!!!!" (I can feel your relief from where I am.) And then I started giggling stupidly as she said, "And that's the Seatbelt Theory." Because she said Seatbelt Theory. That's why. Oh man. I felt like a hypocrite; I always tell Kolya that there's nothing funny about the Seatbelt Theory. No, there's nothing funny about the actual theory. But using the term around people who have no blooming clue what you're talking about is hilarious.

I also told her about The Bonzo Poems. I didn't get around to actually explaining why I wrote it. I explained that it's part of a bet/dare that Kolya and I made, in which she had to write a story which featured her and Jim Morrison and I had to write something about me and Syd Barrett. Now, Dee-Dee had these dark sunglasses on when I told her so I couldn't quite see what her eyes looked like, making it hard to tell her facial expression, but I think she looked rather concerned, like "WHAT?". She said, "Wait, who's Syd Barrett?" "You know, the guy from Pink Floyd. Remember that one time you saw something all about him on the telly?" "Wait, you hate Syd Barrett?" (I think that's what was bothering her.) "No!" "But your friend hates Jim Morrison?" "Well - uh, it's just got something to do with the bet." Kolya, I did not explain what exactly your dream about Jim Morrison was.

Which reminds me. Kolya and I came up with an interesting theory. Which does not involve Seatbelts. Neither of us really believe in reincarnation, but we decided that if we did, we may very easily be the reincarnations of Nico and Jim Morrison (with her being Nico and I being Jim Morrison). She had a dream about being in love with Jim Morrison, and that set her off on the idea that she could have been Pamela Courson in a past life. Then I said, "What about Nico?" Which was an amazing idea suddenly, because I had a dream about being in love with Nico! And then we realized that there's something rather likely about that. And also, she lives very close to two different places where Jim Morrison and Nico went to do drugs together. (I just want to say it - although we decided that I was Jim Morrison and she was Nico, if I were Nico that'd explain why my voice sounds so much like hers, and why I was somehow compelled to learn German.)

There was one more thing I wanted to say. I can't recall it, though. No wait yes I can. Last night I wrote a scene from The Bonzo Poems. It's the part where Avery (the Syd character) tells Lou, Bonzo's father (based somewhat on my dad) that he looks like Lou Reed.

Avery: You look like Lou Reed.
Lou: (really surprised) Who?
Avery: (casually) You know, Lou Reed. From the Velvet Underground.
Lou: (upset) I'm sorry, you've done absolutely nothing to specify what you're talking about.
Avery: He's - ah, look, it's - never mind. You look like a famous singer, that's all, okay?
Lou: You're trying to tell me I look like some person I've never met?
Maureen: Lou, maybe he meant it as, well, a compliment or -
Avery: (interrupts her) Wait, your name is Lou?
Lou: Yes, it is. (accusatorily) You want to make a statement about it or something?
Avery: No, no, I don't. It's just that - never mind.
Lou: Oh I'm - I'm out of here.

Also, today, I discovered a thing called "psych folk". Using the great powers of Wikipedia. Oh yay. Apparently it's psychedelic folk music. And according to their list, Current 93, Neutral Milk Hotel, Donovan, the Incredible String Band, the Legendary Pink Dots, Fleet Foxes, the original T. Rex, and Syd Barrett are all psych folk musicians. Plant on Premises actually sounds like some of these people to some extent. Maybe we're psych folk.

So...yesterday, last day of animation class, I showed Ed (the teacher; he lets us call him by his first name) stuff I'd drawn out for an animated project I want to do. See, I've got it into my head to make an animated film of Neutral Milk Hotel's album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I told my mum and my grandma about the idea, and they said I should tell Ed about it. So I did.

I expressed it as "a rather random idea" that was influenced equally by the films "Yellow Submarine" and "The Wall". (Ed was surprised to think I'd seen "The Wall", so I had to clarify that I'd only heard about it from Caryn and two of my friends in that class.) I then explained my idea, and showed him some of the stuff I'd drawn for it. He asked me whether or not I had the whole story its telling down, and I said no, I hadn't. I wasn't even quite sure what the album was about, only that it'd be very good to turn into a film. So he saw something I drew for it, he said my drawing's getting better...then I went back and sat at my table. I drew some more for it, and I ended up writing the story down. (My version of it is pretty sad, though...one of the characters ends up killing herself.)

So anyway. I just wanted to share that so far my Aeroplane project has gotten the approval of my animation teacher. He also gave me his e-mail in case I wanted to tell him about other projects or ask for some help with stuff or anything. He even said that during the summer I could come into his classroom after school and just draw if I liked.

Uh, anyway...just wanted to share that.

*sigh* Last weekend was the best weekend ever. I am not exaggerating. Well, maybe it wasn't the best weekend anyone ever had (although it may be in the top 1,000, and that's a lot considering that a lot of people have had a lot of weekends), but it was certainly the best weekend I've ever had, and I mean it.

For me it officially began sometime on Friday when I was finished with schoolwork and I could do basically whatever I liked. Now, as I've been ranting about for a while, Kolya was supposed to come over to spend the weekend with me, and she did. And we went absolutely nuts together, in a good way. She brought a few CD's she likes with her, and we listened to them. I now officially like Alice Cooper's "Love It To Death". I also gave her a copy of Out And About (my new album, which you can now find in its entirety on YouTube), as well as a copy of Current 93's "Black Ships Ate the Sky" for her. I'm curious if she'll like it. We didn't listen to it at my house.

Well, we did our own thing and had a great time on Friday night, and Saturday morning we went off for my play. Faces in a Crowd. Kolya liked it, even though there was a horrible blunder and we accidentally omitted the second scene I appear in (where I say my most important line and undergo some character development). I feel the play was something of a failure, although Kolya doesn't. (That's because she's never seen us rehearse the thing before.)

We loitered that afternoon. Basically we did our own thing. We recorded a song she's written called The Rise and Fall of the Band Run By Loonies (which is about Pink Floyd, and curiously not us). I don't think it'll be included on the album we're doing, though, as it just doesn't seem as good as Oedipus Rex. We've lost the magic somehow. Tragic. I think it was because at the end of the 14-minute thing I said "Good morning".

That night we went to go see a play. Bye Bye Birdie. Yes, the one that is a parody of Elvis. I loved it in the sense that I thought it was a brilliant work of...uh...kind of lunacy-ish-ness, if that even makes sense. We liked the fact that it was basically just sort of a parody of itself, if you know what I mean. Kolya’s stepmum said something like “It’s the ultimate high school play, because no matter how corny or terrible the teenagers’ acting makes it, it’s supposed to be corny and terrible.” Yes, I agree. We developed a theory that Jim Morrison wrote it, actually. Jim Morrison’s not much of a great writer (as far as we’re concerned), and he’s also rather overrated. So we decided that he developed the character of Conrad Birdie to make himself feel better (after all, Conrad is more overrated and a worse lyricist than Mr. Morrison!). That’s what we say.

Hey, speaking of musicals and Jim Morrison, Kolya and I made sort of a bet over the weekend. Well, it’s not a proper bet…it’s more of a dare. Well…no, I’m sorry, I don’t think dare is quite the correct word for it either. I guess it’s sort of a cross between a bet and a dare. Well here it is. I’ll explain.

We were talking about dreams, and she said that she had a dream where Jim Morrison was driving a car and they were drinking coffee with each other. (Drinking coffee, mind you, is a slang term we came up with that refers to flirting or physically manifesting fangirlish tendencies; it also is used to refer to a love relationship between two different people.) Now, in dream interpretation, cars represent where you’re going in life, and whoever/whatever is driving your car means that it’s driving your life. And if it’s a person of the opposite gender, that means that he/she is your animus/anima. (Your anima or your animus, by the way, is basically the masculine part or feminine part of your personality. Okay, so I’m a girl, and you’d expect most of my personality to be feminine, but the animus represents the masculine part of my mostly female personality. It doesn’t work as well for me, though; I have a very gender-neutral personality. My animus is a feminine guy, and my anima’s a masculine girl. So there.)

But Kolya got really worried about this dream. She hates Jim Morrison (well, she doesn’t hate him entirely, as she likes his music, but she thinks he was an idiot), and she’d never want to drink coffee with him. And it horrifies her that he was driving a car (ruling her life). And since he’s a man, and she’s a girl, she thinks it means that he’s her animus. Which is a horrifying idea. I’d hate it if my animus was Jim Morrison. My animus, at various times during my life (and even now) has been similar to Freddie Mercury, John Lennon and Syd Barrett (with the latter being true right now), and really, I’d hate a Jim Morrison animus.

Okay…so…anyway…here’s what precipitated the bet. (I’m just going to call it a bet, okay?) Here’s my half of it. We were talking about stuff on Friday night, and I think we were talking about Syd Barrett (who we like to talk about all the time; he’s such an interesting topic, man!) and Kolya said that, if Syd somehow time-travelled into the present (which would be the future for all those folks in the 60’s), before he went insane, and he met me, we probably would have fallen in love with each other. Now, I started to refute this idea (I get a little embarrassed whenever she talks about the idea of me in love with Syd, which is probably evidence for her theory).

But then I realized she’s probably right. I mean, pre-insanity Syd Barrett probably would have been very similar to me, in the sense that we’d both be really weird, artistic, musical people living in different worlds all the time. (This sort of reminds me of the theory we came up with; basically the idea of what if Syd fell in love with Nico, and we determined that they both lived in different worlds a lot.) The only problem with this theory is the fact that it’s arguable whether or not I’m even capable of falling in love with boys (I seem to prefer girls, really). But it made for a nice concept.

And then I think that somewhere along the line, Kolya said something like – “If you immortalize you drinking coffee with Syd Barrett in some piece of art, I’ll immortalize me drinking coffee with Jim Morrison.”

So we agreed. She’s writing her piece in the form of a story, and I originally wanted to write a song. It turned into a concept album…which, inspired by seeing Bye Bye Birdie, turned into a musical.

Yes! So now I am writing my musical! Yay! It’s called “The Bonzo Poems” (which was inspired by a mishearing of the phrase “Bonzo pwns”, referring to John Bonham). The characters are Bonzo (based on me), Niko (based on Kolya; notice I spelled it funny) and Avery (based on Syd). Kolya, I hope you don’t mind if I call the Syd character Avery. I know you came up with that name for another character based on Syd, but it was the first name that popped to mind when writing about the story, and I didn’t realize you had used it previously until after I’d used it myself.

So anyway – it’s about Avery, who pops up in Bonzo’s sock drawer one day. (He is either a time traveler or a figment of her imagination; I’m going to have a song where he explains his origin as “a different time like ’69/or maybe from your head”.) So anyhow, Bonzo and her friend Niko (who lives with her) become friends with Avery, and they grow to like him. Bonzo really likes him, and then realizes that she’s in love with him. Avery decides the same thing too, and the two decide they’re in love. Now, Niko thinks that Avery’s mostly alright, but she sort of thinks he’s weird (mostly it’s because he’s almost exactly like a male version of Bonzo). And when Avery begins getting stranger (and not in a good way; he’s going nuts), she’s very worried about their relationship. She warns Bonzo to look out for Avery, just in case he does anything…well…dangerous. So Bonzo says of course she will but doesn’t really pay too close attention.

It’s called “The Bonzo Poems” because, partway through the story, Avery starts writing a book called “The Bonzo Poems”, a collection of 68 love songs (as opposed to Stephen Merritt’s 69) for Bonzo. He sort of hides it from her, though, deciding he doesn’t want her to see it until he’s finished with them.

But then Avery really is beginning to lose his mind, so Bonzo takes him to see a psychologist. Specifically, Dr. Mangum the psychologist. Dr. Mangum…please don’t get me started on this lady. I really don’t like her. She’s pure evil, man! She’s got problems of her own. You know the phrase “madness only breeds madness”? Well, I don’t know if it’s a popular phrase or anything, but I think I’ve heard it or something similar. But basically it means a lot of people who go see her end up worse than they were before. Please don’t get me started on her. I could rant on about how much I hate her. Severin, my favorite character that I ever made up, went insane because she deliberately incorrectly medicated him. She did that because she wanted his problems to continue so she could keep getting money from his visits with her. Plus she just likes watching people suffer. I think it’s because, since she’s so crazy and has her own set of problems, it makes her happy to know that she’s giving other people those problems. Plus I think she’s a sadist. (Question: why are both the women in Severin’s life who make him go insane sadists?)

Anyway. Dr. Mangum starts trying to help Avery. Not really help, mind you. She just gives him the wrong medication to tear up his mind even further. And then, for whatever reason, it occurred to me to have one part where she starts lusting after Avery and decides to try to seduce him during one of their meetings. Yes, this is a horrible idea. It’s probably one of the nastiest ones I’ve ever come up with so far, but it just struck me as somehow appropriate for the play. Now, Avery is totally opposed to the idea, but Dr. Mangum’s still, well, you know, trying to get him to make love with her. And then, Bonzo comes in and finds them. And she is extremely upset at them. (Of course she would be. I would be.) So she takes Avery and leaves Dr. Mangum, never to return.

Now as they’re going back home, Avery’s upset that Bonzo thinks it was his idea, and he keeps trying to apologize. However, Bonzo correctly believed that it was all Dr. Mangum’s idea. She never believed once that Avery would be voluntarily tempted to do anything like that.

I’m going to have a part somewhere after this where Bonzo’s family comes to visit her. They’ve heard about Avery, and they’re curious about him. Avery gets along really well with Sammie (Bonzo’s younger sister; there’s a scene where Sammie says “I’m a lunatic! Come on, say it with me!” and they get all goofy. Sammie is basically my little sister). Bonzo’s mother, Maureen, thinks he’s interesting but weird. She’s slightly disturbed by him, and she thinks he’s definitely got some mental problems. And Lou, Bonzo’s father, thinks he’s kind of a nice guy but a real nut case. So I’ll have a part where Maureen and Lou tell Bonzo what they think of her new boyfriend. They think he’s nice, but they’re sort of afraid of his mental state, and they don’t want Bonzo to marry him at all. Bonzo’s going to be really shocked, but she won’t argue with them. I’ve decided Sammie’s going to come out right after that and say, “Wait, Avery’s your boyfriend?” (which is probably what Becky would say). Then I’ll have a part where Avery approaches Lou afterward and says something like “I was going to ask you something, but now I won’t. I already know the answer is no.” (In reference to if he can marry Bonzo.)

So later, they take him to a new psychologist, Dr. Frankie (based on my own psychologist, Dr. Franke – the names are pronounced the same way). Now Dr. Frankie’s a good psychologist, and she really means well, she really does. But she finds out about Avery’s origins, and she thinks he’s a nut case. So she prescribes some medication to help him. Avery is not a nut case, though, so it just makes him worse. He goes absolutely nuts. The chemicals begin to ravage his brain, and all coherent thought is thrown out the window. He begins a state of real madness, in which he is completely unrecognizable as the same person he was before. He spends much of his time hiding in a closet now, not coming out.

The climax happens when Bonzo is just playing mandolin and Avery suddenly leaps out of the closet and begins attacking Bonzo with the mandolin. He then locks her in the closet. Niko comes and rescues Bonzo. She completely blows up at Avery, deciding that he’s no good for Bonzo at all and she basically wishes he would die. Avery becomes coherent long enough to understand what he’s done. He wants to apologize to Bonzo, but Niko drags her away before he can. Avery realizes that if he stays any longer in Bonzo and Niko’s lives he’s going to mess everything up. He likes Bonzo too much to tear her world apart. So he decides to return from whence he came (depicted as going back into the closet), right the wrongs he has done and leave them. In an ending slightly reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera, I’m going to have Niko return to try to say something to him, but then discover no one in the closet. She then finds the book “The Bonzo Poems” and takes it, presumably to show Bonzo. That’s basically the end.

Wow…I have spent an incredible amount of words describing that story. Well – now I suppose you know now, and I guess I’m going to end up making a musical of that someday. This is going to be fun.

Today, by the way, is the last day of my animation class. I think. I’m going to show Ed (our teacher) a project I’ve got drawn out that is basically an animated adaptation of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

I FINALLY figured out what Neutral Milk Hotel means!

Okay, so I was writing this one story, and there's a part where this dude tells someone (he's talking to someone throughout the whole thing) and anyway, he's telling him that he never wants to see him at his own house again. Not that he doesn't like him anymore, it's because he doesn't want his friend to ever go to his house again. Then he asks whether or not they could arrange a meeting a neutral place. Like the hardware store. Then he says something like "How about we meet at the neutral hardware store next Tuesday?"

And then I said to myself, "That sounds like Neutral Milk Hotel."

And that's what it is! I think the Milk part references something deep, secure, safe, sort of a primal, secure feeling. So they're meeting at the neutral place (a hotel) and it happens to be a safe place to be. And! I figured out why it's a hotel! You can live at a hotel, can't you? People are always coming and going, but I suppose you could take up a permenant residence in one! (That's what Syd Barrett did until he ran out of money and went to live in his mum's basement.) So the hotel represents a place where you can live and there's a bunch of other people there and you feel safe and it's a neutral place to be!

Why, I could be anyone at a Neutral Milk Hotel! Why, if I were in a Neutral Milk Hotel - oh my gosh, not only could I be anyone there, I could actually be myself! Would that not be awesome? At a Neutral Milk Hotel I could be myself and that'd be okay! No one would get after me for it, I could be who I felt like, I could be what I felt like, and that'd be okay! No one would get after me, they'd be fine! And if someone didn't like it, they can't hang me for it. They just go somewhere else. I used to have a place like that. I called it Brixton, though not out loud, and it was a meeting every third Monday of the month where kids with Aspergers got to meet with each other. And just be themselves. But we ended up leaving just because my mum didn't like it. I call it Brixton now. Kolya calls it Aspie Day, which sounds like an Aspie version of Green Day (that Joe Strummer's in, 'cos he's from Brixton!)

I LOVE the idea of a Neutral Milk Hotel!

Do you understand my thought process?
Well, if you do, there's nothing wrong with you. I'm one of 'em too. Don't worry, there's support groups for that kind of person out there...probably...I should probably be going to one. But if you can't find a support group, then that's okay, because you can always be what you are at the Neutral Milk Hotel.

....

*breathe breathe breathe breathe*

Kolya's coming this evening. I am very happy. It makes me almost high, in a way. It's a high called 12-dimensional-ness. We get each other there. We get each other high.

Sigh.

*SCRAMBLEDEGGS EXPLICABLE CHUTNEY QUEEN OF CARROT FLOWERS DIE DIE I DIE SO I JUMPED AROUND AND SHOT MYSELF WITH THE NEAREST AVAILABLE PIANO HA HA HA HA HA ANDYWARHOLSPARKYSCREEN!!!!!!!*

Ah.

I'm alright now. I'm alright.

Well, yesterday was my birthday. And let me tell you, what a birthday it was!

It sort of started off in the morning. My mum informed me that we were going to a pancake restaurant for breakfast (which is actually rather a big thing for us; we’re on a gluten-free diet, which means we can’t eat pancakes, but we did for my birthday). So we did, and they gave me a few presents there. Becky gave me a plastic squirrel (I like little toy animals), which I promptly named Mr. Nibbles. During breakfast I frequently said, “Mr. Nibbles is pleased” or “Mr. Nibbles does not approve”. Mum and Dad gave me a new bag to put all my stuff in when I carry it around everywhere, as well as a gift card for Borders. (25 dollars is going to go a long way in terms of expanding my record collection.)

Then I went home and I sort of recovered from it; we were there for a long time and it was rather an exciting thing, if you know what I mean. Every time I go somewhere out of the house I’ve got to go hide in my room for a while and recover. But anyway, for some reason Mum revealed that someone would be coming and taking me away at 11:30, so I was all waiting for that to happen. (Last year my aunt, uncle and one of my cousins who is not their child “kidnapped” me for my birthday and they took me to a lot of cool places.) It happened, and Mum put a blindfold on me and sent me away in my grandparents’ car. (My grandpa drove it, which I knew because I heard his voice.) So I was going to who knows where, and when the car stopped, I took off the blindfold and got out. We were in the parking lot of a particular restaurant we like to go do (or did before we went gluten-free), and in the back seat was Becky and my 3-year old cousin Matthew. I had not heard them at all, they did a very good job of being quiet. When we went in I found Gramie, Aunt Steph (Matthew’s mother) and her two daughters Katie (who is about 1 and a half years old) and Grace (who’s only a couple months old). So we had lunch there, and we basically had a good time together. They gave me a few more presents (mostly money, and Aunt Steph said that she would have given me a gift card but she was unable to acquire it so she’ll give it to me somewhat later). Then we went home.

Soon afterward I went to my animation class. Not much happened there, actually. Although I did have some free time, and I started working on an idea for an animated project I have. It was sort of inspired by the film adaptation of The Wall (which, incidentally, two of my friends in the class had a DVD of and were somehow able to watch on one of the computers in the room without getting caught). I was thinking one day, and I thought, wouldn’t In the Aeroplane Over the Sea be such a great album to make an animated film of? It’s so surreal and visual, it’d certainly be fascinating in terms of surrealist/abstract/avant-garde animation. So I started drawing up ideas for it. I’ve got these designs for these really strange characters who will represent people in the album. (They basically look like one of my drawings but instead of actual eyes I’ve just drawn inked-in ovals.) And I somehow thought it would be a good idea to give each character a color. Instead of coloring them realistically, I’m just going to ink in each characters’ lines with the same color Sharpie. So far I’ve got three characters drawn up; Jeff (named for Jeff Mangum – his color is dark green), who is the story’s protagonist and narrator, Anne (named for Anne Frank – currently her color is purple but I may change that), who is the “girl with roses in her eyes” who Jeff really loves but cannot have because she is dead, and Naomi (named after a Neutral Milk Hotel song – her color is magenta) who is basically the girl that Jeff can have, and in fact did at one point (I’ve decided to portray “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1” as being about her), but he loves Anne better, and they eventually just sort of drift apart. I always got the feeling that the narrator of Aeroplane loves two people during the course of the story, and that “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1” and “Holland 1945” are not about the same person. I don’t know. I may change this stuff later. It’s very hard to write a script for an animated film based on a concept album with two seemingly different stories that I don’t quite understand.

This is sort of off-topic, but I’ve found a line from a song that very much describes how I feel about some things: “If I make no sense to you, I make no sense to me!” (From Current 93’s “Black Ships Were Sinking”.)

Current 93. Yes, I have gotten into Current 93 now. After almost a year of knowing about them but being too afraid of them to listen to them, I have. I’ve gotten their album “Black Ships Ate the Sky”, which actually isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. Of course, that’s probably because I don’t fully understand the thing. It’s a concept album about black ships eating the sky and I think that in the album that represents the end of the world. That’s all I understand, though. I think I’m going to sort of research what fans think it’s about, and whether or not it’s telling a story or just a basic thought of a story. And I’ve got to listen to it more. It’s not good so much because of the songs that are on it (they all sort of go into each other), but mostly I like it because of how all the songs are interconnected.

In the album there’s this song called Idumea (which I guess is an old hymn or something), and they have a lot of different people sing it and they put it at different parts of the song. I love the version that is credited to someone/some band called “Pantaleimon”. It’s wonderfully beautiful…when I heard it I felt as though I had fallen in love with the singer through her voice. The title track may very well be one of the most disturbing and frightening songs I have ever heard, though. It’s a very good representation of what insanity might be like. Insanity combined with existentialism and religious preoccupations. (I sort of have religious preoccupations of my own, and that’s not just another way to say I believe in a religion.) I mean, the chorus of that song is “Who will deliver me from myself?”, and David Tibet (their singer) just screams it like a horrifying maniac at the end. Actually – it’s a very good song to describe the mental breakdown of the protagonist of “Whistling in the Dark” (a story I was writing about a man who basically goes insane at the end and believes he has murdered his best friend, his girlfriend, and someone he knows and hates).

I think I might be inspired to resume work on that book somehow.

But anyway…after animation it was fantastic. (I’m still talking about yesterday.) Torch came over, that’s one of the bands I’m in, and its three other members came to my house and we all had a band practice. We’re working on some new songs, and David introduced us to a song he wants us to learn; Don’t Stop Believing, originally by Journey. So we’re working on that. The nice thing about being a bassist is that you usually don’t have to learn to do anything too complicated. We also did a recording of one of our songs.

That’s basically yesterday.

And today I had to do my scenes for theatre. So we did our scenes…it actually was pretty good, even though we accidentally skipped a good deal of our lines, and accidentally cut out a good deal of what I say in that scene. There goes weeks of memorization…I had to wear a dress on the stage (our scene is from The Crucible, which takes place in 1692). Needless to say I felt like a cross-dresser again. My favorite scene that anyone did was the one from The Prisoner of Second Avenue, which is about a man having a nervous breakdown and his brother and sisters trying to deal with it. It’s actually funny. It makes me want to see the full play now.

But wait, today’s not over yet! Tonight I’m going to go to Aunt Dee-Dee’s open house, which is where the parents of her kindergarten students get to come and see the classroom and see some of the stuff that they’ve been doing and see what a good teacher she is, basically all that stuff. So that’s our plans for tonight. I’m basically expecting it to be rather boring. Fortunately, if it gets too bad, I have my drawings. I’m working on a drawing of a family I made up for one of my stories – today I realized that they’re sort of like the family from The Prisoner of Second Avenue. (They have the analytical businessman – or in my case businesswoman, but she’s actually not a nice person at all – and there’s the really emotional one who, if she found out that someone in the family were having a nervous breakdown, she’d probably have a little breakdown of her own. And of course there’s the nut case. We always need to have our nut case.)

Oh, I’m mostly looking forward to tomorrow. That’s when I’m going to have the time of my life. Kolya’s going to be coming to my house and she’s going to spend the night with us. And on Saturday she’s going to see the play I’m in and we’re going to see another play, and she’s not leaving until Sunday. I know you’ve heard all this already. But I don’t care. I’m too excited about Kolya.

Tomorrow is Friday. This is an incredibly exciting thing. I am awaiting the best experiences in lunacy. I meant that in a good way.

I was doing a bit of research about different music genres, and guess what? I believe I may have found one that fits Plant on Premises relatively well.

Freak folk.

Yes, freak folk. I know it sounds weird, but please don't be afraid of it. I was looking it up once, because I knew it had something to do with Current 93, but I was not quite sure what it was. And apparently, it sort of fits the bill of what the Plant is. We're sort of like folk music...I mean, we're mostly acoustic, and we're not anything in particular. (Ever notice that a lot of "folk" music is "not anything in particular", like Simon and Garfunkel or Bob Dylan?) But we're weird, and mildly psychedelic, which is an important part of freak folk. (Please don't ask me how it got that name, now. I couldn't tell you.) Our psychedelic-ness is sort of odd...it's not that we write psychedelic lyrics or sound like a drug trip or anything. (We're not on drugs, mind you. We're sort of like Salvador Dali, who pretended he was insane while creating his art. We're sort of like that. Or at least I am.) But let's just say, we sound like two people who were on drugs when they recorded their music. You know, we're both pretty good musicians on our own, but we just fall apart when we're with each other. It's fun for us but it impairs the quality of our art. (Sort of like drugs, then?) We're each other's drugs. Oh my gosh, I hope that didn't sound too awful.

Anyway - I was looking at bands that are also freak folk. There's Current 93, as I said, and also Animal Collective, which I've heard about. It's indie. It also apparently existed in the 60's (that's when everyone was doing the drugs) in the forms of the Incredible String Band and Tyrannosaurus Rex, which later became glam-rock band T. Rex. They were Tyrannosaurus Rex when they were led by a nutty person who named himself after Pippin from Lord of the Rings - wait a moment, I'm a nutty person who named herself after Pippin...and I lead a freak folk duo...oh my...oh my. (And Steve Peregrine Took was friends with Syd Barrett, wasn't he? I never knew the dude but I do have an unusual fascination with him.)

Alright...I will stop - comparing - myself - to Steve - Peregrine - Took.

Alright then.

Alternatively, Plant on Premises could be considered anti-folk. Mind you, I just discovered the idea of it today. But we might fit the bill...Wikipedia says it's raw and experimental, which the Plant is to an extreme level. Also, Plant on Premises sort of has its own humorous side where it makes fun of popular music sometimes (mostly progressive rock but sometimes psychedelic rock too; Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Jim Morrison are very popular choices for lampooning), which is another thing anti-folk does. Sometimes it even makes fun of itself. And trust me, people, if Plant on Premises didn't make at least a little bit of fun of itself sometimes and didn't take itself a little unseriously, the band wouldn't work at all!

Decide for yourself.

Tomorrow will be my birthday! YEAH YEAH YEAH! Last night, my dad gave me an iPod card for my birthday. I don't know what music to get with it. I think I will purchase a Current 93 album and learn more about freak folk.

Dudes - in three days, Kolya's going to come here and spend three days with me. YES!!!!!!! And we're going to record some songs for Plant on Premises, no doubt. We've got an album we're working on currently called The Seatbelt Theory. And - even better - Kolya's got this idea for an epic concept album called The Madcap Vomits. The title is a parody of Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs (see, we poke fun at other people, and Mr. Barrett just seems to be a very common recipient of this). Hey, I just thought, wouldn't the Laughing Madcaps be a great name for a band, if we could get past all the legal implications (I mean, could we legally call it that?) not to mention the potential for angry Syd fans. But when she's here I'm sure that we're going to work on that album together. We're going to start writing songs for it, maybe even record a few of the songs. This band stuff is really working out alright for us.

Alright!!!

Tomorrow is a special day. Guess what it is! Anybody want to take a guess as to what tomorrow is? Huh? Huh?

That's right. Tomorrow isn't my birthday. It's Stevie Nicks' birthday! Yeah!!!

Okay, I'll admit. I was just sort of trying to trick everybody into thinking I was going to say my birthday when in actuality that's two days from now. Plus I just wanted to point out the rather cool fact that my birthday is the day after Stevie Nicks' birthday. (If you don't know who she is, then she's the female lead singer of Fleetwood Mac and best known for the song Rhiannon.) I'd also like to say that I have the same birthday as Siouxie Sioux. (Another female rock star, sort of gothic/punk/psychedelic/pop rock, that sort of thing. People are probably going to give me money for my birthday, and I'll use some of that money to get one of her albums. Sort of as a way of recognizing that fact to myself.) Isn't it interesting that the day before my birthday is the same as a female rock star, and another female rock star has my birthday?

Siouxie's going to be turning 52, I think. That's about how old my mother is.

Has anyone else noticed how hard it is to find the lyrics to Psychic Ills songs online? I mean, I was googling them a few minutes ago, and I couldn't find the lyrics to any of their songs. It's my belief that the reason is because their lyrics are so hard to hear. I mean, you can barely tell what their singer is saying. Speaking of their singer (whose name I do not know), I noticed the other day that, although I'm pretty sure he's male, you could make the case that he sounds sort of like a girl. I don't know.

Happy early birthday Stevie Nicks and Siouxie Sioux. My birthday's in two days.

I have the interesting hobby of listening to my music backwards. Not just the music I listen to, mind you, but the music I write and record. It's got something to do with the fact that, if it's fun finding secret messages backwards in other people's music, why not try to find it in your own? Because I know I was never trying to do secret messages, so it's interesting to find what's in there backwards.

So I was listening to some songs I've been working on. One of them (entitled Opalescent) had, towards the beginning, something that I believe sounded somewhat like "Kolya is dead, passing love" or something strange like that. It disturbed me an awful lot when I heard it first. It still bothers me that I wrote a song where backwards you hear Kolya, love and death mentioned in the same sentence. That's just freaky. (There's also a part where I heard something like "cellophane people...I sleep with cellophane people"; knowing me, that is just messed up.)

Then I listened to one song, Never Mind, in which the final line of the song (which I heard first in the reversed version) sounds something like "I was thinking if your God is real, man" (I heard it over and over again, from the repeated final line "And we are stark raving insane"). That shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. I also heard at another part "I'm seeing if you're real to me" or something like that. It sort of goes along with the previous line. For some reason I heard several things that could be slightly spiritual/religious in that song but I forgot most of them.

The line "I might do something I'll regret" (from White Lion) originally sounded sort of like "I'll decide if I'll give mercies of them" (which bothered me a considerable amount, given that I came from the cellophane people of Opalescent to the religious overtones of Never Mind to this). Now it sounds like "Careful, I get angry if discovered" (which sounds like it refers to me; I have secret things I'd get angry if they were discovered of me). I also heard "perhaps in there we'll find a solution" (where it is is anyone's guess). It was hard deciphering anything else from White Lion, as the lyrics in that song are mumbled and incoherent. But that could lead people to believe that I intentionally hid secret messages and slurred the words to make it easier to hear in reverse. I hope not. I probably would not do that.

Then I heard a song of mine called Parlyaree in reverse. The final section (which is the chorus of the song sung a capella and with me recording myself singing it, like, 15 times to make it sound like a lot of people) horrified me for some reason. And I noticed that in reverse, a cry of "YEEEAH!!!!" sounded like someone being tortured. "This is horrible, this is mine" could be heard. (If you want to say they all have a theme, it could be the cellophane-person related sins that the narrator is being given no mercy for). Later in the song, it sounds like "this is horrible, this is fun".

It just disturbed me somehow. I'm not really one to truly believe in weird signs like that, especially if they come from four unconnected songs I wrote, and if the four songs were heard backwards. But it bugged me. A lot. I mean, cellophane people, sleeping with them, then Kolya dying because of passing love, beginning to think if someone's God is real (mind you, this may not be the God worshipped in my religion of Christianity), someone gets angry because of something that's discovered, then hearing someone try to decide if they'll give mercies to a group of people, horrible yet fun pleasures (it sort of goes along with the theme of the song forwards, mind you) and screaming...it's enough to make me go nuts. (It doesn't help that insanity and earthly pleasures are themes in the real lyrics of some of those songs.)

I don't think I'm going to listen to my music in reverse for a long time.

This morning in the shower I fully realized the fact that I am an indie person. I don't know how I quite figured that out, because I've really known it for a long time. But it really hit me this morning. I think it was because I was thinking about me being a "punk", and how I'm a punk in spirit but I'm not as into the music as I could be. But I realized - to some extent, indie people are basically like punks only with different music. And since I'm into indie music, and they're into the whole do-it-yourself thing (like the punks are!) I suppose that officially means I'm an indie person. Alright!...now I just have to find out what else indie people do...

I'm still pondering over what I should call the new album I'm recording. It's almost finished, and it doesn't have a name. I'm thinking either, "A Day About Town", "Cellophane and Other Crimes", "Cellophane" or "Shiny". (I think Shiny's probably the best name to use.)

Yesterday I learned an important lesson: don't stick a spork into your bass teacher's hair. I did that yesterday after the lesson. I will not do that again.

Today is Saturday, and here's the plans I've got for the day. We're going to go to my drama class, and we're going to practice doing the play. (Oh for Kolya to be there next week when we perform it for everyone else...) I've got to wear my costume when we practice today, as it's a dress rehearsal. Yesterday my aunt came and brought the costume. Since my character's a middle-aged woman (who follows her older friend around; the friend's a grandma), we decided she'd dress more conservatively. So my aunt brought the costume, and it's a dress. Oh boy...That was sarcasm. People who know me know I hate wearing dresses. It just feels weird to me. I put on the costume yesterday just to see how it'd feel, and quite frankly, I felt like a transvestite. That'd make sense if I were a boy. However, I am not. I am a girl. A transgendered one, too. (Which isn't the same thing as a girl who wants to become a boy, mind you...) It just felt wrong. I'm going to have a heck of a time a week from now when I have to appear in that getup on a stage in front of a bunch of people. Crikey.

But anyhow...after the play practice today, we're going to do something really fun. My parents are going to let me change into my normal clothes (so I don't feel like a bloody crossdresser!) and we're going to go to the SCOTTISH FESTIVAL!!!! Yeah!!! If you don't know what the Scottish Festival is (which you probably don't) it's a festival which is basically a celebration of everything Scottish. I'm hoping to hear some bagpipe playing there...that'd be awesome!

I was looking at old things I found on my computer, and I found this "proposed tune list" for my dad's next gig. (My dad's in a band called Me and Them; my dad is the singer and guitarist, Mark is in it as the bass player, there's a guitarist, drummer and harmonica player too, and they're sort of country/bluesgrass/a bit of old rock and roll.) Here are songs I wanted them to do, with a few updates...

The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1
I am the Walrus
Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida
Comfortably Numb
Purple Haze
Paranoid
Bohemian Rhapsody (one-man banjo solo)
Whoo-Hooh (The Stupid Song)
Stairway to Heaven
Piggies
The Pink Panther Theme
Over the Hills and Far Away
Crazy Train
Crazy Bus
Money
Hey Jude
The Rake’s Song
The Hamster Dance!
The Wreck of the Edmund-Fitzgerald
Muskrat Love
[insert random Green Day song here]
Pinball Wizard
Achilles’ Last Stand
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Baba O’Riley
Another Brick in the Wall
The Animaniacs Theme Song
Seven Seas of Rhye
Kashmir
Immigrant Song
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (all 30 minutes)
Fish Heads
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha
Hotel California
Wish You Were Here
Horse With No Name
Inject the Venom
Layla
Iron Man
The Chipmunk Song (group singalong)
The Song that Never Ends

None of which I think they'd actually do.

Once, at a group I used to go to with Alexandra, I got into a conversation with a girl I didn't know, and for whatever reason I said something that apparently had implications other than what I meant (I can't recall what) and for whatever reason it caused her ask if I was bisexual (in an accusatory manner, so that answering "yes" probably wouldn't have been a good thing). At the time, I loudly said, "No!!!!" (like anyone would after being accused, even though I wasn't quite sure if that was the answer at the time).

Now I realize that the thing to say would have been, "Well, what's it to you if I am?"

Last night I went to see a play with Mum, Becky and Gramie. It was for a school assignment; for my theatre class we have to see a play and write a review of it. So we went to see a production of The King and I which was playing nearby. (I didn’t know this beforehand, but it was actually done in the same building that my middle school graduation ceremonies took place at.) Now, I’ve seen the film of The King and I, so I know what the story was and some of the songs and everything. But there’s something quite special about just seeing it there on the stage, done in real life before your eyes…It was a really good performance, let me tell you that. For my review I’ve got to talk about things about the play and acting that could have been improved on, but the only thing I can think to say is that once, the boy playing Louis made a little mistake on one of his lines (he had a small bit of trouble getting the word “allow” out, but that was so minor I would never have remembered it had I not had to mention it in my review).

I really like the songs in The King and I. When I saw the film, my favorite songs were “A Puzzlement” (the song the King sings when he’s confused about whether or not people can be sure of what they absolutely know), “Getting to Know You” (I think that’s the song from The King and I that almost everyone seems to like) and “Shall We Dance?” (the song that the King and Anna sing when they dance). Now, when I saw it this time around, I liked all those ones too, but I also liked “Hello, Young Lovers” a whole lot. A whole lot…it made me really happy, of course, because this time I understood everything that Anna was talking about in that song. I really like the line “I know what it feels to have wings on my heels” or something like that…she’s talking about this sort of rosy, almost love-high feeling you get when you’re in love and you’re thinking about the person you love…I’ve experienced it a lot myself. And I felt it again during that song. It was kind of silly of me, but when she was singing to the young lovers, I almost felt like she was singing directly to me…I think that every time someone plays Anna in a production of The King and I and she sings “Hello, Young Lovers”, she should always keep in mind that somewhere in the audience, there almost certainly will be a young lover listening to her words and agreeing with everything she’s singing.

I also really liked the song that Princess Tuptin and her lover sing when they meet (I can’t remember what it’s called…) I actually identified with it an awful lot. I remember agreeing with everything they said and feeling along with them. I feel like them and I wish I could be open about my love too. That is all.

My mum has come up with a wonderful idea. Today she sent an e-mail to Kolya and her stepmother proposing the idea to them. Yes, it’s one of those ideas that involves Kolya, and you know that to me, any idea that involves Kolya is a marvelous one! But, the idea was that, sometime on May 29th (which is in exactly one week and is two days after my birthday), we meet with Kolya and take her home with us, where she will spend the night with us. So we’ll do, well, our fantastically stupid and fun little 12-dimensional things together on Friday (and I think I’ll make her read what I’ve got written of Close to the Edge), and on Saturday, which is the day I do Faces in a Crowd, she’ll go see the play. (And, because my grandparents and a few other relatives are going to the play, I may actually have the opportunity to introduce them to Kolya after the play. I’ve told Gramie specifically a lot about her, and I also told her what it would mean if she and Kolya went to the play. She thought it was fantastic that she might actually meet “Various Parties.) But we’ll goof off in our own little way for the rest of the Saturday until evening, when we’ll go see the play that a different theatre class for my school is doing. They’re going to be doing a production of Bye Bye Birdy, which my mum wants to take Kolya and me to go see. So I suppose we will. Now, knowing us, we’re going to see the play, and we’re going to be all 12-dimensional, and she’s going to ask me which character I think David Bowie would be the happiest playing, and I’ll say “Probably [insert female character’s name here]” and I’d say something like “What if Syd Barrett and Jeff Mangum wrote all these songs together?” and that’ll set us off laughing and Mum is going to have to tell us to be quiet, like, 50 times. And also knowing us it’ll leave us with a bunch of inside jokes. But then after that we come home and Kolya spends the night again. (We get to spend the entirety of one day together! ALRIGHT!!!!!!!!!!) And then she goes to church with us on Sunday, and we loiter the rest of the day, and we do something (I don’t know what) and it could either end there, or, if we really want to stretch it, she could stay with us on Sunday too and we’d go to the park on Monday and that’s when she’d leave. Sorry I didn’t tell you about this before, Kolya, because we’ve actually had those plans in our head for a while, but I didn’t have all the details until today.

I hope the previous paragraph is what happens. I have been looking forward to it for a long time. A real long time. Every day I keep counting down the days in my head and today I’ve been saying to myself, “Seven more days! Seven more days!” If it doesn’t happen then that will seriously put a dampener on my week.

Five more days until my birthday, everybody!

Yes.

Well, guess what? Today I've got theatre class (not the one where I'm doing the play Faces in a Crowd, one that actually goes along with school and that I try to differentiate by calling it theatre instead of drama) and we're going to be working on scenes we'll be performing in a week. Oh boy...that was sarcasm by the way, I didn't really mean it. I get to be in a scene from The Crucible. That's actually kind of interesting. I'm just really glad that I don't have very many lines in it...I'm the character of Ann Putnam. Putnam is a funny last name, and that was what I told my mother when I found out I was Mrs. Putnam. I'm a small bit stressed over the theatre thing, though, simply because I haven't got all my lines memorized. I mean, I've got some of them down, but we're expected to be almost totally memorized now.

I've actually been stressed lately...somewhat by drama, somewhat by other things that are going on in my life. I said the latter part simply because I didn't actually know what it is that's stressing me so. Maybe it's secrecy...I feel there's rather a deal of secrecy going on in my life, secrets I've been keeping from people...secrets I don't intend to tell anybody...I am unduly paranoid that people are going to find out my secrets. I have no idea why, as there's almost no way that some of them (one in particular) could get out to my family. I trust all the people I know with it (all three of them), but...I have no idea...

I told Dr. Franke on Tuesday that I just wasn't feeling as happy as I think normal people ought to be. I probably should have told her that it was due to secrets that I'm keeping, but - well, I couldn't tell her that sort of thing, I just couldn't, even though it might do me a load of good. She then told me that it was my choice to be so unhappy all the time. I agreed with her, even though she was upsetting me considerably. Crikey, I wonder how many people perceive themselves as choosing depression. But she said I was choosing to be sad all the time by not choosing to be happy all the time. She wants me to sort of alter my own moods, which is remarkably hard for me. I've been trying, though, and it sort of works. Of course, I'm in a totally different frame of mind all the time...

Cor blimey, I'm sorry if any of this comes off as ranting to you. It's just that I've been going through things in my life like that and so far the only place I've been able to talk about it at all is in my journal (which hypothetically ought to do me some good but doesn't because I don't get the satisfaction of actual people reading it).

Yesterday in animation class, I told my friend Priscilla about my birthday. She was happy for me, and when I told her that I thought it was important that 15 is half of 30, she also pointed out that 15 years is a decade and a half. I never thought of it that way before, but I guess she's right...a decade and a half...that sort of puts it into a new sort of perspective for me.

Guess what? In exactly one week (7 days, people!) it will be my birthday. And I will be 15 years old. (I now have the morbid desire to point out the fact that if I died at the age of 30 - which very well may happen - I would have lived about half my life now. But I won't, I won't.)

I also decided that, if Sigmund Freud is to be believed (which probably he isn't), then the little thing that wakes me up at night to go write songs is my superego. I say this because the part of your mind called the superego is often characterized as being like your mother or someone talking to you in your head, and whenever I tell my grandmother of something even mildly interesting (even if it's only a singular line I want to use in a song), she always says, "Oh, Bonnie, go write that right away!" (Sometimes I have to tell her "But Gramie, I don't know what's going to happen in that story, I've only got one of the characters made up!" or "Gramie, that's only one line from a song, I don't even have a tune made up yet!")

My mother is talking on the phone right now in the other room. I heard her say something like "she's very interesting" and "she's very depressed". Both of these descriptions apply to me, if you think about it. I wonder if she's talking about me. I wonder who she's talking to. (Maybe another psychologist.) This kind of reminds me of the time I saw an e-mail my mother was writing to one of my former teachers telling me about the woman who became my 7th grade teacher, and mum was worried because she knew she was going to teach me for 7th grade, and I also had some classes with her in 6th grade so we knew each other, and apparently she would always call me a maniac behind my back. At the time I didn't actually care. (In fact, I was almost glad to hear it, because I didn't much like her anyway and I've always aimed for lunacy to some degree.) But now I realize that someone actually thought I was nuts. Which is a little frightening, seeing as I was much further than from being nuts than I am now.

And I just heard my mum say "Dr. Franke" to whoever is on the phone. Dr. Franke's my psychologist, so hmm...I wonder what's going on.

Hey, I had a really interesting dream last night. I dreamt that I was going to be in a band that covered songs by the Doors (a Doors tribute band or something, but we always made the songs sound real different from the originals - not like the Who Show, where, good though it was, I might as well have been listening to the originals). And apparently it had come together without my knowledge, and I became aware about two hours before we did a concert. And I was to be in the concert. I had no practice whatsoever, and I didn't even know what I was going to play. I remember I was loaded up in a car with three other members and driven to the place we'd have the show. No one was there, and there were all the instruments for us to play, so they started teaching us the songs. So Mark was going to be the bass player, my dad's friend Doug (the guitarist from the band he's in and one of the teachers at his studio) was the guitarist, I was the keyboard player, and I can't remember who the singer was. (Maybe it was my dad.) And so they decided the first song we'd do would be Roadhouse Blues, and I was all, "Oh my gosh, I don't know that one!" and all panicked-like. And Mark was telling me "Don't panic!" (which is what is on the cover of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as well as my music book; it's also a Coldplay song, but I don't know if he knows that). So I tried to figure the song out, and I got something that, well, was the right notes but didn't sound as though they were played the right way. I don't know why I was stressing out so much, as I'm pretty proficient with the piano. But I started worrying over whether it should be an E minor or E major chord, and I was worrying about if the original song even had piano in it. (When I woke up this morning, I tried playing it in my head several times before getting out of bed. There is.) Then I said, "Guys, I just realized we don't have a drummer." And Doug said, "We do, she's just not here yet." And then, almost like it was on cue, the drummer came in. And, strangely enough, she was someone I recognized but did not know. The drummer for our Doors cover band was a lady I've frequently seen at working at the library but who I've only spoke to all of twice. (Maybe only once; it depends on if you count me checking out CD's at the library and her saying, "Kraftwerk is very good".)

That's where my dream ended.

Last night I met with my math tutor Caryn. It was very fun. She taught me about parabolas and we listened to my new King Crimson record.

Last night I asked my mum what we will do today. She didn't know. Today's still sort of up in the air for her. I believe I will be left home alone with my sister for about an hour today. If we're lucky we can get some recording in. That would be nice. Now if only I can get her to work with me for more than two minutes at a time!

And it is a very short time until summer begins. I am anxiously looking forward to it. Anxiously! It's like looking up at the clock and you know the bell will ring and you're just WAITING FOR IT! AAAAGH!!!!!!

I am looking forward to summer.

Today I went to my dad's music studio and played drums. You see, my dad owns a music studio (called Adam's Music Studio; he's Adam of course) and he gives lessons to people on how to play instruments. (He also sells instruments there too; this is how I got my guitar and bass.) He's got a special room for the drum teacher, and a little bit after lunch, in the afternoon, he took me to the studio and let me play drums there. It was awesome.

I brought along some CD's to listen to while playing drums. You know how some people teach themselves how to play instruments by playing along with recordings? That's what I was doing. Except I didn't really play exactly what the person on the recording was doing. I just went along with the beat and rhythm of the song. I took along Magical Mystery Tour (by the Beatles), London Calling (by the Clash) and Disraeli Gears (by Cream). After deciding that I wasn't going to learn much from Magical Mystery Tour (it just wasn't very useful), I put on London Calling, which was much better. I played along with most of the songs on that CD, and I like to think I was pretty good at it too. Then I put on Disraeli Gears, and then my dad came in and wanted to hear me play (which he couldn't before). So I put on the song I was previously playing (Sunshine Of Your Love), and I played along with it for Dad. He was impressed. He was also impressed with the fact that I was trying to do drum fills, which he said is hard to do unless you've got the timing down perfectly. (Just to give you perspective, I've only played drums I think twice before. Maybe not even that.

We went back home after that. My arms and foot were getting tired. (Yes, I mean foot, not feet. If you've played drums you'll know that your foot is about the first thing to get tired from operating that bass drum!) So I got my stuff together and, just before going home, we stopped at Office Depot to get some CD's and CD's cases. Dad got me some blank CD's and cases of my own, which I will use to burn my new albums. I am what you might call stoked right now.

Drumming is fun. That's what I've decided. I want to join a band as a drummer now. I wonder if I'll find any opportunities for that. Probably not yet; Mum doesn't want me to officially take drum lessons now because she thinks I ought to get better at bass (which I only picked up because the band I'm in needed a bassist). And I'll probably need a drum set of my own, which I don't have and can't see myself getting in the near future. But I am really enthused about drumming right now. Oh yeah, man. Real into it. Oh yeah.

Oh, I'm very much an attention seeker. I think I have some sort of pathological (or whatever) desire to be noticed, seen and/or acknowledged in some form, so I do weird things to get attention (even negative attention, sometimes). I have finally diagnosed my attention-seeking ways as the reason I pretend to act insane. I'll appear very nuts when I'm around people, to the point where sometimes I may seem rather on the way to going crazy. I used to be able to control this habit to only around other people, and only to get attention. Now I do it even when I'm behind a locked door with myself.

This goes to show something, but I'm not exactly sure what...

Hi. It is 8:34 PM and I'm at Grandma's house because I am spending the night there. And I am procrastinating. I really ought to be writing Close to the Edge (working title of the sequel to Fragile; you Yes fans will all know what I mean). And I'm listening to Weird Al Yankovic's song "Albuquerque". Aren't we all happy?

I had drama class today. There are two more weeks until our play performance. I have all my lines memorized!...mostly because my lines are all something to the effect of "*agreement to what Mrs. Finster just said*". And during dinner I told my grandma all about the play. She's all excited to see it. And then I told her that would be great because Kolya's going to be there too, and she can meet her after the play. I told her all about Kolya during our holiday. Well, I didn't tell her all about Kolya. There's a couple things that she doesn't know about her. She knows her mostly as Various Parties, because that's what Becky and me kept calling her on the vacation.

A long time ago Mark the bass teacher told me that he bought a Ministry album at the same time as a Simon and Garfunkel album, which is just about the weirdest music combination you can get at the same time. So I keep trying to outdo him. A few days ago I got King Crimson's "In the Court of the Crimson King" and Weird Al Yankovic's "Running With Scissors" (which Kolya claims to have listened to almost religiously when she was younger). And I think that is a winning combination. 21st Century Schizoid Man is, like, the best song ever.

I have also discovered the terrific feeling of knowing what my favorite song is. Just about ever since the Summer of Love (that is, last summer, not 1967) ended, I haven't known what my favorite song really is. But now - I know what it is! It is "Albequerque", by Weird Al Yankovic. That song is a work of genius! I'm listening to it right now. It's rather like an electric version of Plant on Premises. (Kolya, did I ever tell you that?)

Hey, that reminds me of another amusing little anecdote...

Nevermind.

Hey, ever notice how Albaquerque, at the very end of the song, just sort of seems to sum up the idea of existentialism just perfectly? Sort of? And the idea of having a "happy place"? I don't know. It's late at night and I'm crazy.

*sigh* Yesterday I got a haircut. I got my very long hair cut very short. There's, like, barely an inch of it left. We donated it to cancer victims. I wanted to do it myself, but mum said no. It's like she deliberately wants to get rid of my punk-like "do-it-yourself" attitude. That's why I want to do it myself. I bet punks cut their own hair. That's why they've all got horrible hairdos! (That was sort of a joke, sort of.)

Say, that reminds me of today. I was at my old church, because my sister did this choir concert thing there, and I met one of the choir kid's dad. And I met him because his wife heard me talking about punk rock, and it turns out he's a big punk fan too. That was kind of cool. It was kind of cool finding someone else I could talk to about the Clash and stuff like that. And I also told him why I identify as a punk - it's not that I do the music, although sometimes I do. It's because I identify as a punk in spirit. I identify with their agenda! I feel their desire to do everything themselves, the way they want to do it! Plant on Premises is a punk band in the best sense of the word, really! We just have the good sense not to blow people's ears out with electric instruments. And I also agree that music doesn't have to be particularly complicated to be good! If you want to write a three-chord song, then go ahead and write the thing! YEAH!!!! Punks forever!

(Unless they're the horrible garage band that lives near our house that we must put up with every afternoon of course.)

I'm tired. And I'm procrastinating. I should get back to writing my book. Maybe in the morning.

It's kind of a roundabout way of saying it, but I guess this is just a long way to say - I - HATE - SAURKRAUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello everybody. Hello to the people who are. I am relatively bored right now and I have very little to do. So I'm going to ramble on about the past week. Doesn't that sound fun?

Today I went to my drama class. We're working on a play we're going to perform on May 29, which is two days after my birthday. (Hey, did you know that Stevie Nicks' birthday is the day before mine, and Siouxie Sioux and I have the same birthday?) The play is called Faces in a Crowd, and someone the drama teacher knows wrote it. It's basically about how people treat each other in public (as strangers who have nothing to do with them, which is kinda how it is, but the play's mostly talking about not even being considerate of our fellow humans). I'm the character of Mrs. Carslile. She basically follows her friend Mrs. Finster around and agrees to everything she says. In the play, Mrs. Finster's trying to get a designer to help her decorate her house. And she's not being very nice at all. I've got two scenes in the play, and I've memorized all my lines for my first scene! Most people aren't memorized yet. I feel proud.

Also, on Monday, I finished writing Fragile! (That's the novel I was writing, the one based on Syd Barrett and Roger Waters.) It's 148 pages long, and now I'm attempting to write a sequel to it. Right now its working title is - Close to the Edge! (If you are a Yes fan, you will probably know what I am talking about and find that title rather funny. And to aforementioned Yes fans - maybe I'll write a second sequel and call it Tales From Topographic Oceans! Now isn't that just funny?)

Last night Becky and I painted our nails. That's a really rare thing for me. I haven't painted my nails for years. But I did something unusual. I painted the nails of my left hand red and my right hand purple. That's because I think red and purple are the "colors of love" (don't ask why). They're like the two colors that ought to get married or something! I told Becky that I want to paint just my left nails black someday. Then I explained that it was because Freddie Mercury did the same thing. She thought that was kind of cool.

Last night I also got a new album. "Desolation Boulevard", by Sweet! And all I have to say of it is - sweet! Earlier this morning I was chatting online with Kolya who informed me that it's basically the epitome of glam rock. This is kind of important to me because I'm going to be in a glam rock band with Kolya someday in the future. It's important that I like it, because, well, who wants to be in a band if they're not playing the music they like? So I'm really glad that I really like the epitome of glam rock. Now I know I'll like playing it full time! This morning I wrote, like, two glam rock songs, and I might possibly write some more today. Alright!

My favorite albums right now are Desolation Boulevard, Distorion (by the Magnetic Fields), On Avery Island (by Neutral Milk Hotel), London Calling (by the Clash), Sheer Heart Attack (by Queen), Lust For Life (by Iggy Pop), Baby Darling Dollface Honey (by Band of Skulls; never mind the name, it's actually pretty good), and what I'm listening to now, Who Will Cut Our Hair For Us When We're Gone? (by the Unicorns). That's, like, half and half for current music and old music. I remember a year ago when I wouldn't even touch current music and dismissed it as all tuneless carp. Now I like indie as much as classic rock. Maybe even more.

Also, yesterday, while I was taking out the garbage, I realized that there's kind of a reason why I like indie rock more than classic rock. (I actually typed glam rock without thinking, then corrected it. I wonder, is that some form of Freudian slip or something?) But anyway...the reason I like indie better is because, while the music of classic rock is fantastic, it's in the past. It's from the 1960's and 70's...I wasn't around during the 60's and 70's. But indie rock is taking place now. It originated in the late 80's, and while I wasn't around in the 80's, I was around in the 90's when the classic albums came out. (Okay, so I wasn't listening to them! So what? I was alive then, wasn't I? I was born in 1994! That's, like, two years before Neutral Milk Hotel's first album!) And anyway, there's still a lot of indie that's still out now, and I can go listen to it. Some of it isn't very good, but I can listen to the good stuff like Psychic Ills and the Decemberists and all that good stuff. And I can create indie music. I can create indie and no one will tell me otherwise! It may not be out on CD's (yet!) but I can still make it! I can't make classic rock. No one can make classic rock anymore. 'Course not. I don't even think that Paul McCartney and Queen and all the other rockers from back then who are making new albums can do that...classic rock era is over. But indie isn't! And as long as indie music will be alive in ten years (when I'll be old enough to go official, if you get what I'm saying), I can become an indie rocker and possibly even an influential one! I may even make up a new genre or something! Probably not, but at least it's possible!

So...that's basically my week. There was more to it, of course. But that's basically just what's in my head.

Hello. I am not writing this from home. Or my aunt's house. Or even my grandma's house. I am many miles away from home right now. You see, I am writing this from a hotel in Bakersfield and I am using the hotel's computer (which they so graciously let the guests use).

The reason I am in a hotel in Bakersfield is because I am on holiday right now. Yes, Spring Break was last week (and oh it was so good not to have any school or work or obligations to bother me!) but I am now on a vacation with Gramie, Pa and Becky.

This is a first for me and Becky. I've gone on road trips with my grandparents before, but Becky hasn't, and this is her first. This is also my first road trip with Gramie and Pa with someone else coming with me. It's actually pretty cool having my little sister come along with me. We got rowdy in the back seat, and we started singing 100 Bottles of Beer On the Wall (which bothered Gramie and made Pa laugh; it's rather easy to do that, really). Then Becky wanted to listen to my iPod, because she wanted to listen to - gasp! - Pink Floyd! Yes. I have corrupted my little sister with Pink Floyd. (Which mum told her she isn't old enough to listen to, shame on me!) But, she isn't listening to The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon or anything. In fact, her favorite Pink Floyd song is Bike. "I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like..." She likes to sing the first part of that song in a crazy British accent now, and I sing with her. In the back seat, when I wouldn't let her listen to my iPod, she started chanting "Bike! Bike! Bike! Bike!" and wouldn't stop. I even tried putting Emerson the stuffed lemur in her face and mouth and it didn't work. When she was done, she looked at me and said, "I did that for Nikki." (Now come on, isn't that cute of her?)

This was probably a very bad move on my part, but...I've begun teaching her the euphemisms that Kolya and I came up with. She now knows who Roger Tull, Marketing, Pillowcase, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, the Walrus, the Cornflake, Let's Talk About Chickens, I Like Cheese, BOINGOBOINGOBOINGOBOINGO!!!!, and *aaeeechhkk* Toothpaste! are. She also knows about whistling in the dark and watching television. (Kolya - know that she has no idea what drinking coffee means, and I am not going to tell her until she is at least thirteen years old! And I don't think I'm going to tell her the full meaning of "Roger Tull drinking coffee with Pink" or "Shiny drinking coffee with Sav-Ons and Albertsons Gift Card" until a while after that!)

But it was kind of cute; in the hotel at night Becky and I couldn't sleep, and we were talking about stuff and Becky said, "Let's feed Roger Tull canned rabies and push him off a cliff! And then let's feed him more canned rabies and push him off a cliff again! And then let's feed BOINGOBOINGOBOINGOBOINGO!!!! canned rabies and push him off a cliff!" Then I think we said "Whistling in the dark with Pillowcase, Roger Tull and BOINGOBOINGOBOINGOBOINGO!!!!!". And now Kolya's got a euphemism attached to her; she's "Various Parties". (Because I always talk about these things with "various parties".)

I also drew Becky a picture of Syd Barrett showing off his bike to her and saying he'd give it to her if he could but he borrowed it. She thinks it's funny. Also, I told Becky that my stuffed lemur Emerson is partially based on Syd (I give all my puppets personalities) and she grabbed the lemur and hugged him and said "THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!" and I was all, "What did he do that you liked?" She just said "He's got a great personality." "How do you know that?" I said. "Maybe Syd Barrett was a really boring person. Or even worse, maybe he was an antisocial psycho who hit people on the head with mandolins and locked his friends in closets!" (That's kind of a joke. She didn't get it. I'm kind of glad.)

There's one other thing I'd like to share: whenever my grandparents are on holiday with me, Gramie always finds something in a gift shop that she wants, and Pa doesn't want her to buy it because it has no practical use and it'll just take up space. Now, Kolya and I once came up with a scenario in which Gramie somehow wanted to take Pillowcase (read: Freddie Mercury) and take him home with us. Here's how it would go:

Gramie: "Oh Brian, look at that!"
Pa: "Carolyn, what is it?"
Gramie: "Look!" (indicates Pillowcase) "Let's get that!"
Pa: "Now Carolyn, what would we do with that?"
Gramie: "We could take it home..."
Pa: "Where are we going to put that?"
Gramie: "Well, wouldn't it look lovely in the living room?"
Pa: (exasperated) "Carolyn, I don't want that. Now where are we going to put it for the rest of the trip?"
Gramie: "We could just put it in the trunk."
Pa: "Is that even legal?"
Gramie: "Okay, it could go in the back with Bonnie. Bonnie, you wouldn't mind that, would you?"
Me: (excited) "No, I wouldn't!"
Gramie: "See, Bonnie doesn't mind."
Pa: "Come on Bonnie, let's go do something else."
Me: "No, I want to take that home with us!"

Needless to say, Becky cracked up at this story. And best of all, I could tell it while Gramie and Pa were in the front of the car and they didn't even know what we were talking about!

I also told Becky about *lick lick* "Nummy nummy!" And now she thinks it's hilarious. She said, "One day when Nikki's over I'm going to say, 'Well, I'm going to go lick my guitar just like Shiny!'" Just think - after a couple years, Becky will be as corrupted as Kolya and me!... That's rather a scary thought, actually...