Oh snap, I just remembered that when I was a kid I was on an episode of "What Would You Do?"
(the short-lived post-Double Dare Marc Summers vehicle. it had a lot to do with pies.)
I don't have the episode on tape, which is probably a good thing considering I'm pretty sure I was wearing really bad glasses at the time. Oh and for some reason my dad wore his sunglasses (he was in the audience) the entire time.
And he's not even a secret agent or Corey Hart or anything.

"I have been sober for four days."
"Oh my god!...I mean, congratulations."
"Yeah yeah. Good thing I decided to go sober on freak night. What the hell is going down on the dance floor?"
"I think this is the way people dance when you are sober."
"When they're sober?"
"Nope. When you are."
"I'm just glad they stopped the choreographed bits."
"Huh?"
"I said, I'm going home. I'm tired."
"I don't blame you."

This blog needs more pics! So here are some that I took last Wednesday night.









Ok, I don't know how that last one got in there...

I do not like the fact that goldfish snack crackers have faces. It is vaguely disturbing.
But I do like ping-pong.

Try not to get bogged down in "facts." Just remember: the future is inevitable.

Upon accidently leaving my television set on overnight, I wake up to a giant chemical fire ablazin about an hour east of where I live. It was sort of like waking up in the middle of your fire nightmare...except not really. Anyways it made my morning kind of wierd, news-wise. I don't think any of my co-workers knew anything about it except for one guy who described it as "awesome." "Did you see the plume? It's awesome!"

I am now listening to Nirvana's "Lithium."
I just wanted to share this moment with everyone, as I am actually quite busy with work today and have no time to write anything lengthy and thought-provoking.

Sobriety is making me do wierd things...for instance, I just signed up for ballet lessons. Which could be tough considering that I feel as though several steamrollers have been sharpening their parallel parking skills on my brain. I have exactly t-minus two weeks to get in some sort of shape.
Oh, did I mention I was going all sober and shite? Yeah, yeah we'll see (considering its only been two days). In a row!

Says nemesis Marty McFly:
"If that punk Alan Thicke makes one wrong move I will cut him. What would you do, Alan, without both arms?" (regarding fake threats we sign Thicke's name to)

-from "Behind the Music: Alan Thicke"

I think someone's cutting in on Stress's domain name. Except the numbers, but who looks at numbers? I sure don't.

YADA, YADA, YADDA: Jerry Seinfeld costarring with Superman in a second online short film available on the American Express Website. The flick, Hindsight is 20/20, debuted Thursday afternoon.

I wonder if the same cheerleaders who stood on the sidelines while shouting "Be Aggressive!" to their football player boyfriends, fifteen years later shout that very same cheer from the lobby of their husband's used car dealership during the really tough sales.
And I wonder if they wish they had, while in high school, yelled something more along the lines of "Be thinking bigger than community college!" or "B comes after A in the alphabet! Reading! Learn it!"
Probably would have made the choreography difficult...I suppose urging the defense to defend its patch of astroturf lends itself to synchronized ass shaking more so than a thorough- albeit loud-summary on basic photosynthetic processes.


I might go to Berlin for a week in August.
You can measure my increasing excitement in the number of excessive umlauts.

"I think he oversimplified the foundation of humanity by separating the facts of life into the "good" and the "bad," then stating that life is nothing more than a mix thereof. It's more complicated than that, which he himself would have realized had he witnessed Tootie's subtle yet complex range of emotions when she was turned down at the college of her choice. Instead he chose to spend months and months obsessing over the bridge in "The Valerie Harper Show" theme, only to have his work altered when valerie "rhoda" harper left the show and was replaced by the spritely yet oddly panlike Sandy Duncan."

-from "Behind The Music: Alan Thicke"

great, now my own page "is not found."
I have lost my webpage! Come back little webpage! Come baaaaaack!

I'm getting a lot of "website not found" on my links- stress and rippy among others.
What up with that?

Thanks to the beauty of i-tunes, I make way too many mix cds at work. This one, however, is particularly inspired:
Music from and inspired by the motion picture "Roboclash: The Reckoning"
When metal meets metal and makes loud clanging noises!
in-theaters early 200never.
The Voice of Energy- Kraftwerk
Dirty Robot- Arling & Cameron
Alpha Beta Gaga- AIR
I Saw The Future Going Downtown- I Almost Saw God In The Metro
James Bond Theme- The Ventures
Space Oddity- David Bowie
Electric Renaissance- Belle & Sebastian
Plug it in- Basement Jaxx
Jellyfish Blues- Buffalo Daughter
Modern Love Waltz- Philip Glass
Digital- Joy Division
Idioteque- Radiohead
Lo Batt- Man Or Astro-man?
Scientist- The Dandy Warhols
Robot Love- Victor Lams
Electric Avenue- Eddie Grant
Intergalactic- The Beastie Boys
One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21- The Flaming Lips
Brand New Colony- The Postal Service
Disposable Parts- Enon
20th Century- Combustible Edison
Mr. & Mrs. Nuclear- They Might Be Giants
Transistor- Kraftwerk
(I really wanted to put "The Final Countdown" on there but all I had was the crappy dance version.)

"It doesn't matter how good you are at it, every time I hear someone playing the bagpipes it sounds like an animal is getting stepped on."
"Or a cop just died."

Oh, those crazy kids running our country are at it again.

I only eat things named after musicians who died before their time.

Justify this!
And then make your ice cream sandwich sing "Chantilly Lace." C'mon. It will be fun I promise.

How to get yourself a nice keyboard-shaped mark on your face:
Rainy monday +
Sigur Ros

voila.

New York was fun...I did a lot of sleeping and eating.

I didn't have time to do a whole whole lot, due to this intense "sleeping and eating schedule."

It's always nice when Stipe shows up at the reception.

New York!



This weekend I am one spoiled child, what with the free Kiehls and all.

"Strange. Zombie-like. I hated him. But I had this strange fascination. Kind of love and sexual addiction for him. I'm not sure what attracted me to him unless it was some kind of abberration brought about by drugs which I was so heavily innundated by. Speed is the ultimate all-time high. That first rush. Wow. Just that burning serum soaring senses. Perfection. Like a 24-hour climax which can go on for days. There's no way to explain it unless you've been through it. There's no way to tell anyone who hasn't tasted it...keep that superlative high just on the cusp of each day, so that I can radiate sunshine. He just seemed like some strange vision...alienated from the human race."
-Edie Sedgwick in Ciao, Manhattan!

My friend said the new music she is creating sounds like a mesh of Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden and New Order.

Hell fuck yes.

Scenes from television shows I had completely forgotten about until recently.
This is from the seminal teen drama "Fifteen," an episode called "The Kiss."
I actually remember not only this show, but this episode...still I have no idea what year(s) it aired or what channel it was on.


Jake: It's going to be O.K.

Courtney: I don't know Jake. Sometimes... it almost feels like I'm not worth anything.

Jake: Don't ever say that. Don't even think it.
Lots of people think you're great Courtney.

Courtney: Like who?

Jake: Like me.

(Jake attempts to kiss Courtney and gets shafted big time.)

Jake: I'm sorry... I... I didn't mean...

Courtney: Why did you have to do that?!? I thought we were friends!

Jake: Well... we are but...

Courtney: Why did you have to do that?

Courtney had the worst fashion sense ever.

And thus "marooky" sprung forth from the ashes. And thus spaketh.

I know. You're wondering where all my blogging-prolific tendiencies went off to. Well, I'l tell ya. They went to Wisconsin headlines, to Memorial Day sale headlines, to general sale headlines, to revising body copy, and to a bit of the ol rebranding effort. So what I'm saying is that I am busy like a worker bee picking up slack.
I am also busy trying to avoid any accidental viewing of the beheading video as I am trying to preserve what is left of my sensitivity to violence. I'm sure I'll see it eventually...one of my dumbass friends will download it and be all:
"Hey, come watch this!"
"It's not the beheading is it?"
"No...it's um, cute puppies frolicking in a field of sweet flowers."
"Oh ok that sounds enchanting- OH MY GOD IT'S TOTALLY THE BEHEADING!"
"Haha, fooled you."
"MY EYES! MY EYES!"

Or something like that.
Earlier I told my cowworker the new Magnetic Fields album was both "morose" and "kooky," as most MF albums tend to be.
"So it's marooky?"

Yep. Marooky.
This day, I have a feeling, is about to get hard-core marooky.

The grindstone calls my nose.

I have been writing headlines about Wisconsin all damn day.


Wisconsin.


I am going home to watch "A Wrinkle in Time" and then crash in the grandest of fashions.

Keep on tranglin'.

I think I am going to focus all my addictions on the Star Crunch.


My hand is still asleep. I should probably stop sitting on it.

Bowie was amazing.

Once we ditched our crap view and made our way to these hidden gems of seats, that is.

More to follow...


god. given. ass.

Happy Mother's Day to all who said greeting applies!


(my mom back in the day.)

More fun with photoshop.

I am having so much fun this morning like you wouldn't believe..
The kind of fun that can only come with being hung over as all hell and having a one-day turnaround on an assignment.
The kind that comes with realizing that you drank too much because you were trying to forget that someone was going out of their way to not talk to you.
The kind that comes with pretending not to care by washing away the sinking feeling in your stomach.
It's that great turning-the-knife kind of fun.


Ass.

This is funny as all get out.
(it has a long loading time...it's not just you.)

I have a sneak preview from the final episode of Friends tonight...I haven't watched it recently but from the looks of things this show is starting to rock!

Hard Truths (from a story by Mark O' Donnell in McSweeneys.)

There will be scattered showers throughout the remainder of your life.
You, and everyone you know, will eventually die.
You wouldn't worry what other people think about you if you knew how seldom they do think of you.
You are not going to get your wishes.
There is no Loch Ness Monster.
There is no Sasquatch.
There is no Abominable Snowman.
There are no UFOs.
There are no angels.
There is no God.
$9.95 means ten dollars.
You only live once.
They blame the post office but they never actually sent any thank-you note.
The post-office service is pretty good.
There are no top-secret government conferences with super-intelligent bees.
Try all you like to "fix" it, but little boys want to play with guns and little girls want to play with dolls.
You cannot "get used" to poison.
You do not want to know what's in hot dogs.
Hot tea does not cool you off.
Scarlett O'Hara does not get Rhett Butler back.
"I Love Lucy" is not funny.
Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK.
Not even a Hindu swami can hold his breath for more than three minutes.
There is no justice.
The egg came first, a mutated offspring of a near-chicken bird-lizard that wasn't genetically exactly a chicken.
What we call a soul is just a conspiracy of replicating chemical chains.
Actually, fish do feel pain when hooked, but...who cares?

I like the new Iron and Wine cd a lot. That is to say I like it very much so.

4 Days Until Bowie and, apparently, a giant bunny.

Rock legend David Bowie apparently has an unusual fan following him on his latest tour – an enormous pink rabbit.
The singer explained that he'd spotted the giant bunny at a series of his live shows during his latest tour. He apparently was so taken with the mystery follower, a person dressed head-to-toe in the outfit, that he even dedicated a tune to him during a concert.
Things got a little strange, however, when David was taking off from the Big Apple one day. "I thought, 'Hey, it's rock 'n' roll. It's just a 5ft 3in bunny'," says David. "Then we got on the plane out of New York and the bunny was on board. The guy was still in the costume." (from Hello Magazine)

They ride for us all.

"For the break of your life! Push it to pop it! Rock it to lock it! Break it to make it!"

Our agency just added this to our summer reading list:













I love it when my coworkers send pictures like that to the entire department. It provokes such disturbing comments- stuff that would get you fired anywhere else, even in any other department here.
So yeah, I guess I'll have to put a hold on "Ulysees" until I finish "Blow Job Teacher."

Anyone else read that? Is it any good?

"I was depressed at that time. I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian, and, if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss."-Woody Allen

Last night I watched Annie Hall for the first time, having bought it on blind faith that it was going to be good. And it was very very good. I should spend more nights simply watching movies and going to sleep.
...after pillaging the craft department at your local suburban Wal-Mart. I bought these labels that say "Sewn With Love By Grandma" and I plan to plaster a shirt with them.

I should probably lay off the whole mjq thing for awhile. I've been humming the "hang the dj" portion of that Smiths song a bit too much lately.

Jen (M) told me that they played the "Dancing In Heaven" song from Girls Just Wanna Have Fun during 80's Night at the Masquerade...which means I must attend the next outing- both to make fun of the gaggle of Club Europe rejects and as a small "blow me" to mjq. Because I'm sure it will hurt them so very very much.

Does anyone have the movie "Two For The Road?" It's not available on DVD yet and I'd sooner not order it if someone has a copy I can borrow.



Oh, and if you haven't seen this movie before I definitely recommend it for anyone who loves either Audrey Hepburn or mod style...personally I am a big fan of both.

I am now going to Sundown to eat my weight in chowder. Ciao! Der!

Five days and counting...

"By living in one room you eliminate a lot of worries. But the basic worries, unfortuately, remain:
Are the lights on or off?
Is the water off?
Are the cigarettes out?
Is the back door closed?
Is the elevator working?
Is there anyone in the lobby?
Who's that sitting in my lap?"

-Andy Warhol

(AP) - President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney spent more than three hours behind closed doors Thursday with the Sept. 11 commission charged with finding ways to prevent a repeat of the worst terrorist attack in American history. "I answered every question they asked," Bush said. Bush declined to disclose details of the Oval Office discussion, instead, the president mesmerized the press corps by performing the 1980s dance commonly referred to as "The Robot," slowly shuffling his way back into the White House before anyone realized what was happening.

(thanks to this here page.)

New Out-of-office autoreply from the ever-prolific Billows

I'm spending a long weekend with my girlfriend Lydia.

Lydia, whom I probably haven't mentioned before, is German and by all accounts genetically superior to any woman I have ever met. I have even gone so far to apply phrenology to her head and discovered that her skull dimensions are indicative of a remarkably high intellect and that the distance between her nose and chin reflects superior leadership qualities. Her only imperfection, if you’d call it that, is her unrelenting desire to take over the world under a brutal totalitarian regime. She has her hobbies I have mine. I for instance enjoy tennis. The key is that we support each other.

Right now many of you are asking how Lydia and I met? Well, our love affair started rather suddenly. We were both coincidentally running through a field of wheat in the early afternoon sun when we both unexpectedly tripped and fell on top of one another and proceeded to make love. At least that's how I remember it. The police report has it as a foot chase, a tackle, and a sexual assault. However, I couldn't press charges against her once I saw her face in court. Her bewildering eyes staring at me, much the same way they were in the field when she was choking me for no good reason. To say I dropped the charges out of intimidation is hardly a substantial claim. I dropped the charges out of love. And it is this love that compelled me to change my story.

It was perhaps my reversal on the assault charges that redirected Lydia’s homicidal feelings towards me into somewhat less homicidal feelings. Her new outlook on me promptly started a whirlwind love affair, complete with full access to my credit cards, the use of my apartment, car, and pretty much everything else I own.

About now you're probably wondering about how good our sex life must be. Well as I said before, Lydia is German, and like most Germans she likes sex to be as well planned as possible. The standard German rule of thumb is to produce the greatest possible orgasm with the least amount of energy. Foreplay consists mainly of drawing up schematics of each sexual position and then determining the proper movement, thrust, and weight distribution of each maneuver verse the amount of calories needed to perform it. And once we’re done with a fully clothed rehearsal, we commence in an act of sex that has the precision of a laser beam and the efficiency of a Japanese auto factory.

Unfortunately, sex hasn't solidified our relationship as it has for so many other couples. From my understanding, sex usually leads to unintentional declarations of love just before lift off, but in our case I've been the only one screaming "I love you" while she lays totally silent engrossed in some kind of repetitive breathing pattern. Undeterred, I began saying "Ich liebe dich," which means I love you in German, but that must of tried her patience because she reprimanded me for improvising during a our well choreographed sex itinerary. I, perhaps the more emotional of our dyad, asked why she never says the words "I love you" back to me. Furious, she explained that the 1.2 seconds it takes to say such words would totally throw her off her very well laid out schedule. She further explained that if she were to say those words once a day it would add up to her being off by 8.4 seconds a week and more than a minute after a year. I certainly couldn’t argue with how terribly inefficient my request was, but nonetheless it made me angry to hear it. So there I stood, conflicted between whether to walk out of the room in a huff or to see if she was still amorous enough to finish the last three sexual maneuvers; #4A, #15, and #31, in that specific order. I choose the later and found to my chagrin that the mood was indeed broken. As Lydia reattached her bra she yelled at me once again, this time informing me that the time involved in this totally unnecessary conversation would be coming straight out of our sex life.

So that's where our relationship left off as of last week. Since then we have hardly talked. And during these last seven days of silence I have learned that I can't live with out her. So I have come to the conclusion that I must ask Lydia to marry me. The problem with this realization is Lydia's tight and uncompromising schedule. In light of her pet peeve with inefficiency I have worked on getting the proposal down as much as I can. I figure it'll take 3.4 seconds to pop the question, and then when you factor in her dramatic pause, answer, and the time it takes to put the ring on her finger, I'll be approaching a total time of 12 seconds. From looking at her yearly planner she doesn't have an opening for an unscheduled 12 second marriage proposal until July 2008; which happens to be around the time she expects Western Europe to fall to her brutal air campaign, but just before she launches her blitzkrieg on China. I personally don't want to ask for her hand in marriage when most of the Far East is still resisting her quest for global supremacy. And even if I did, what time does a dictator have for a guy like me? All the killing, persecution, and oppression will demand almost all of her attention, leaving me what, a wedding ring and my own private Gestapo death squad to order around willy-nilly? That's only half a marriage. I want the other half. The half filled with snuggling, cutting out coupons, and inviting other ruthless despots over for drinks and maybe a game of pictionary. How can I have that half? I don't know, maybe I'm silly for thinking this can work, but isn't that what love is about, making things work? I mean if Lydia can cause the whole of Europe to fall in 7 months as planned she could certainly make our marriage work, right? Anyway, I'm taking a personal day to get my head together on this.

"Yeah, I can't really go anywhere. (...) is my ride and he's not moving."
"You mean he doesn't want to go anywhere or he literally isn't moving?"
"He's not moving. As in not moving."
"Um...you might wanna check for a pulse."
"Probably. God his mind's so blown by drugs by now I don't see any point."
"(sigh)"

It's just been such an overwhelming sadness.
The sky is getting heavier.

We were doing relationship compatability tests based on date and time of birth, and my friend asked if we could see if he was compatable with a can of Budweiser, as they do have the born-on date proudly displayed on the can.
I laughed, before refusing to contribute to that sort of tomfoolery.

I mean time is a wasting as it is.

I can control your thoughts.

For instance-

You now have the Eagles hit "Take it Easy" running through your head.

I seem to have been forced into accidental coupledom (i.e. people assuming we are together) with someone who I'm pretty sure I'm not dating. People are referring to us as a unit, like you and so-and-so should come out to the show. It's vaguely amusing, especially considering that we are both somewhat known for being noncommittal. I guess the world is attempting to pair everyone off in case there's a flood and all the other malnourished pale insomniacs get washed away...hmmm seem to be off track here. Oh right, pairdom. I think it's fascinating that the smallest particles discovered by man come in threes, as though the foundation of everything is not two but three. Don't get too excited my fundamentalist catholic trinity-chasing readers...keep in mind that other things also come in threes.
House-dwelling bears.
House-building pigs.
Apocalyptic horsemen (if one were dead).
Isoceles.
Like the trinity, these can also be found in most dutch fairy tales. Which makes me wonder if hans christian anderson knew something we didn't.
Such as the effect of three-day drug binges on children's stories.

Maybe I should start doing couple things. Like ignoring my single friends, purchasing furniture and having babies. And, you know. Actually HAVING a BOYFRIEND.
Great. Now I'm feeling neglected by my rumor. One second, I'm going to go all Valley of the Dolls now...

Ah. Much better. Tonight at The Black Lips show Cole vomited on stage without missing a beat, all the while wearing a sequined blue women's blouse and playing the punk. Good luck touring Europe kids. Don't let them mistake you for a Carbona!

Alright, I'm going to go get some his and hers modest mouse bootlegs monogrammed. By Tiffany's, where I am going to inquire on sterling silver telephone dialers.

Goodday darlings,
Jill aka the Holly Golightly of the surrounding square footage.

*This post has been approved by the sub-committee investigating incidents surrounding 9/14/99, the sub-committee for general perusal, and the sub-committee for creating useless sub-committees.