Duh!

Yes, I shall accept your invite to the gay pirate party. = World's Most Obvious Statement.

Musical Diversity and Desperation

I created this playlist in late 2007 but I added to it through mid 2008, when I reached the maximum songs playlist.com allows in one playlist.

I inadvertently added songs to the end of the playlist when the mood struck, making the order of this playlist chronological. As I look over its songs, now more than two years later, I can tell what each song means and why I added it.

This is literally the soundtrack of my life at the time, as I'd wallow through different sadness, join roller derby, try to overcome adversity, attempt to escape into some happiness, and watch Shin Chan.

I added songs to this playlist after careful consideration, and yet also quite spontaneously. It is probably the most organic thing I've done, and looking back at it can still see the deep intimate reasons why I added each song.

At the time this playlist was posted on my myspace home page, and then myspace wised up and disallowed the html code of playlis.comt in lieu of its own myspace music player. And suddenly my quiet communication via song had no soapbox to stand and proclaim its message.

So I thought to post it here, on my newer blog. You probably have no idea what these songs are doing here. However, you hopefully will enjoy them.

For me it is bittersweet, and almost heartbreaking, to see this list of songs. But it is just so very honest, so true, so true, so true.

Everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long stem rose

Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

The best roller derby joke I've heard in awhile

Skater 1, to group: Don't forget we have beer for after the bout. Yeaaaaaah!

Skater 2: Yeah but there's not too much time to get some, they rush us out of there.

Skater 1: Haha, yeah, it takes so much time to sign autographs and take pictures for all your fans! How are you ever going to get a beer?

Skater 2: Ha! Yeah... just leave a six-pack for me in the penalty box where I'll have plenty of time to drink it.

Dear Campers of scenic Bass River State Park last weekend,

Dear fellow campers,

I encountered you this weekend and didn’t say a word to you. Maybe you will read this and know the contents of my mind. But that is highly unlikely. Probably because you are in the forest somewhere.

Dear spooky guy,

You were all alone. You sat in your stadium chair and looked out onto the road that adjoined all our campsites. How lonely it must be to pick people-watching as a viable activity while in the woods, surrounded by so few people. How lonely indeed. I thought of you and your solitude. I wondered, was it peaceful? Was it self-imposed: were you a loner, a rebel, retreating from society, living the simple life, just you and your beard? Or did you have to live that way, because you were estranged from your wife and hiding from the alimony payments? Or maybe you are trying to shirk the rigid civilian prison that is Megan’s Law, hoping to stay under the radar as a registered sex offender? Who knows. But you have a picnic table full of Gatorade bottles and a tarp over your tent, and it all seems so hardcore. You play no music, your face bears no smile, no warmth of friendliness. You appear to be a cranky old man camping in the woods. And yet, as I walked to my car from the evening’s bluegrass concert, there you were in the back of the crowd, listening intently but stoically, save for what I believe was the reserved tapping of one sandaled foot in time to a Merle Haggard tune the band was playing. Where will you be next on your singular journey? Is that sadness in your eyes, or is it a bit of crazy? I cannot tell, it was so dark at the time.

Dear Hispanic teenagers in the bathroom,

So desperate was I to pee. So determined you both were, to straighten your hair. As I unloaded my bladder, you both stayed the course to applying makeup and hair products as though a night at an exclusive discotheque with finely dressed men was certainly on the itinerary. You seemed completely oblivious to the fact that you are in the middle of the woods, the one place where it is socially acceptable to smell like armpits and to have flyaways or frizziness. There were two of you, and your towels, make-up bag, hair dryer, hair irons and iphone charger took up all four sinks. I just wanted to wash my hands after peeing. You looked at me as though I was being unreasonable. Getting dolled up was going to take some time, and I was adding to it, apparently. I stared at you long and hard, as though you were symbols of vanity and stupidity beyond any I had ever encountered, and wondered, what to say to creatures such as yourselves. I could think of nothing that the steady whirr of your hair dryer hadn’t said already, and left knowing that no matter what body spray you were wearing, it’s all made a moot point by the scent of OFF!, anyway. Content that I had walked into a modern and ironic Jack London tale, I left you to spend your evening in front of the unflattering mirrors of a common-use bathroom’s fluorescent lights before vanishing your overdone selves into the darkness that is midnight in a state forest.

Dear Boy Scouts,

Why do we separate ourselves by gender, and then give these genders the exact same experience of camping in the woods? I don’t understand. I am sure there is some academic research suggesting such an arrangement, but it never made much sense to me. If I’m going to learn how to cook a hotdog over open flame it never mattered much that I had to be surrounded by girls for the reason that I myself was one (a girl). It seemed to me that the boys could have joined us. So I look with sadness upon your group of boys only, fatherly figures standing close by. Where my bitches at? Can’t we all go screaming through the woods, together?

Dear young children dancing at the bluegrass concert,

I remember being young, getting up and dancing. Running around like a maniac. Turning a pole into home base, so you could be safe as you raced toward it. You were the happiest children on the planet, and your mom yelled at you to stop disrupting the concert. But I am not so sure if you were. If you would have let me, I think I would have danced with you. It made me wish Robbie knew how to dance a two-step. Instead, because I am good at remembering choruses, I joyfully sang choruses to these newly learned songs. And though the lyrics have since faded from my memory, your dancing silhouettes and the shadows they cast upon the stage will not.

Dear young teen helping to administer the canoe and kayak rental,

You have the best job in the world. Please, I beg of you, do not go to college, find a steady job, retire late in life. Instead, forever be the person who helps folks paddling on a lake to get out of and into their rented boats. I am telling you: you have the right idea.

Time Enough At Last

I get so much out of the intimate moment spent alone in a sunny spot with a book in my hands.

If only I had the time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last

Wake up and smell something

You: "I'm changing. I woke up. I woke up and smelled -- I don't like the taste of coffee --- I woke up and smelled the hot chocolate."

More friends every Wednesday

Wednesdays are new girl night, and I help out at practice. The new skaters say I am very encouraging, inspiring, that I am helpful and put them at ease and give them confidence.

Really, I have no idea what they are talking about. But whoever they are describing, that person sounds pretty nice.

I enjoy working hard with these ladies, and everytime we start a new round of recruits coming to practice, it's like a chance to make new friends and help them on their derby journey. I am not some benchmark on how to be the best derby player, as I am very, very far from being mediocre, in my own humble opinion, but I do have a stockpile of determination and sticktoitiveness to share. Often the mental acrobatics we put ourselves through hamper us from achieving amazing physical acrobatics, so perhaps that is how I serve them best, by negating the mental obstacles that slow us in our goals.

Or, at the least, I am there to be a friendly face.

So, here's to more friends every Wednesday.

My Google Calendar

I will probably regret saying this, but at least right this moment, I am in love with Google Calendar. I started to input a variety of events in there across my many activities (roller derby, work, chores, bill payments, social activities) and then discovered some amazing shit.
For one, you can change the settings on the calendar to send you reminder when a calendar event is coming up. You can have these reminders pop up on your google homepage, sent to your email inbox, or sent as an SMS message.
These means, when I program in gym time, my phone gets a reminder an hour before -- my Git Yo Ass To Tha GYM reminder.
I don't know about you, but this is a personal revolution for me.
What's more, I discovered there is a type of file called an .ical, and you can upload an .ical file to your Google Calendar. So I went to my local library's web site, found all the events I wanted to go to, and shared the .ical file with my Google Calendar.

As you can imagine, I went a little crazy searching online for .ical files (http://icalshare.com/) and added all sorts of layers to my calendar.

My Google Calendar tells me what week and day of the year we are in, the phases of the moon calendar, what happened this day in history, and when the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has a new report scheduled for issue (such as when the latest unemployment figures are released.)

So, to recap, my Google Calendar tells me the last full moon was two days ago, yesterday was the anniversary of New York's ratification as a state, sunrise was 5:53 a.m. today, the Blue Claws have a home game on Friday, and my next roller derby bout is a month away.

Yes, I am a bit over-excited about my Google Calendar. But what do you expect from someone who gets excited to read stuff such as: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.nr0.htm


http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.nr0.htm

My high school poetry

I wrote this and it was published in Reflections, my high school "literary magazine." Prolly circa 1996-1997. I am trying to remember what sort of pain I was in that caused me to write this poem back then, and can't quite remember. I do recall being told I had a slight curvature in my spine. Maybe this was my reaction to that.

Chiropractor Conspiracy?
By Catherine Elizabeth Galioto

When I wake up in the morning
There's an ache I can't explain
I can't find reason or warning
Why I suffer from back pain.

Insomnia? It cannot be;
I'm dreaming well past five.
Though I get to bed quite early,
When I wake I writhe and writhe.

Is there something I don't know 'bout?
Ain't I just sleeping in my bed?
This is a mattress, have no doubt.
This a pillow 'neath my head!

Am I a sleep-walker of some sort?
Or a sleep-weightlifter, too?
Do I have sleep miles to report?
Is this what makes my back askew?

While I have my peaceful sleeping
And the earth is draped in black
Is there someone out there creeping
Doing evil to my back?

Though I've come to no conclusion
I am tired, and it's late.
It's not sleep that is my prison:
It's the waking up I hate.