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So, I thought i would have health insurance by now… it turns out that I have to turn in some form after 60 days. Did I know about this? No. I may or may not have filled it out already.

However, my current prescription runs out in T-minus one day and counting. So… do I try to stretch out the prescription in hopes that I’ll get insurance speedily and deal with some withdrawal and shit until next week? Or do I break down and cough up another $249 for another month’s worth of drugs?

I’ll probably just cough up the kizzash; fuck my vacation account again. It will take me so long to save up the last $249 I took out for drugs that it’s hardly even worth it to have anything at this point. Knowing my life, the insurance won’t happen for another 800 years, based on the number of bureaucratic complications everything on earth manages to throw in my way when it comes to health care and reality.

On the plus side of being abandoned– Saki said I could have free reign of his CDs since he has them all burned onto his iPod and doesn’t want to store them all! I scored a ton of awesome shit!!! I now have a ton of CDs that I used to play all the time at work when I worked at the record store because we had promos, but never bothered to buy: Blackalicious. Dan the Automator, Gnarls Barkley, Handsome Boy Modeling School, and… THE POWERSTATION, bitchez!!! Hellz yeah I’m not sweating when the heat is on! I have this on vinyl, but there’s something to be said for having it on CD so you can blast it in the car at any time.

Also: Bell Biv Devoe, Digital Underground, Gorillaz, and the only Beck CD I don’t own (The Information) are now in my collection. I haven’t even finished going through his collection (he has zillions)– that was just the cursory glance!

I just got tickets to see !!! at the Middle East! I AM SO PSYCHED! I’m going to ride my bike, too, so they don’t tow my car this time. The forces of nature don’t want me to see this band… I will defeat them!

A: We are Devo (and the Tom Tom Club)

Tomorrow Devo is playing with the Tom Tom Club at the harborlightsfleetbankofamericaArcherDanielsMidlandProctorGambleMicrosoft Pavilion tomorrow night. I’ve been wanting to go ever since I heard about it, but I’ve been lacking in the funds lately. Also, there’s a $10 convenience fee + a $5 handing charge (even for will call tickets) which annoys me. The last time I was going to see Devo, I had 2 tickets to a totally sold out show in Central Park where they were playing with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and stellastarr*… and it took 9 hours for the Fung Wah to get to NYC (It usually is 3-4), so I missed it. Will I make up for it tomorrow?

The Whatever It Is This Week Pavilion is a glorified tent outside, and tomorrow it’s supposed to be thunderstormy, blustery, and hail at times, as well as being in the 90s and humid. I don’t feel that bad missing the show under those conditions! Thank you Mother Nature, for helping me with my crippling indecision! Now, let’s hope that the meteorologists are correct and I don’t end up kicking myself for missing another Devo show…

Philippa is my bike, in case you forgot. It’s the 4th anniversary of me adopting her! She has new handlebar streamers as well as some new stars for her spokes.

I just rode her to go see Jamie Lidell at the Paradise, and the show was AWESOME! I was a little dubious when I heard he was going on the road with a backing band, but it all ruled. I knew I should never have doubted Jamie Lidell, the man is a god among scrawny British freaks! He did a bit in the middle where he beat-boxed and scatted into the sequencer and made his own backing music to sing to. I love when he does the whole experimental bit, and this time around it was as brilliant as ever. As for the backing band, they were really great! The drummer’s dad even came out and played a number on the bagpipes. I can’t remember what he played, but I think I played that tune back before my pipes were destroyed in that flood (I’m still annoyed that my SECOND FLOOR bedroom flooded in a rainstorm, but what can you do?). Anyway, it was a nice touch!

My current mini-obsession is the mouse lemur:

They are nocturnal arboreal primates found in Madagascar with really huge eyes that make them look like those creepy computer-enhanced pictures of animals. They’re PRIMATES! They’re related to us! Some varieties find grubs under tree bark by echo-location, which is pretty cool- no other primates do that. Anyway, read up on the mouse lemur if you’re into small mammals.

Oh yeah, it’s also Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran’s birthday– maybe I should embrace all the useless knowledge my 0-12 year old self amassed and celebrate it somehow. I am always lamenting on how I can remember, for example, the names of Nellie Olsen’s husband and children on Little House on the Prairie, having seen the episode where she has twins ONCE, yet I can’t remember my phone number or my cousin’s kids’ names.

The genealogy saga continues– one industrious person traced a line of people back 17 generations. That’s back to the 1300s– there’s probably more, I just haven’t had the patience to keep tracking. I’m glad distant relatives have done all the research for me, because I really don’t need another thing to be obsessed with to take up all my time. As it is I’ve been staying up until 2:00 a.m. every night looking up stuff on ancestry.com because my free trial subscription runs out in like 12 days.

I’ve been into dub lately (you know, a type of reggae), and if you ever want to think “HOLY CRAP, MY LIFE IS FUCKING AWESOME!!” then just read some bios of reggae stars.

Here are some excerpts (all from allmusic.com)

YABBY YOU:

Yabby You was born Vivian Jackson in a Kingston ghetto. By the time he was 17, Jackson was so malnourished that he had to be hospitalized. He eventually left with severe arthritis and crippled legs. While he could not work, he had musical talent and taking his cues from divine inspiration that he feels comes from the sounds of nature around him, and the help of friends founded a harmony trio, the Prophets, in 1972.

I-ROY:

By the ’90s, the DJ was afflicted with a variety of health problems and his financial situation was so precarious that for stretches of time he found himself homeless. By the end of his life, I-Roy had become financially reliant on his mentally retarded son. A second son was in prison and was killed there in October 1999. This terrible tragedy was perhaps the final blow for the weakened legend, and on November 27, 1999, the DJ died in a Spanish Town hospital from heart problems.

PRINCE FAR-I:

On September 15, 1983, Prince Far I’s proselytizing came to an abrupt end when he was killed during a robbery at his home.

PETER TOSH:
Let me paraphrase: he gave a speech at a concert criticizing the Jamaican government, and when he returned to Jamaica, he was arrested for drug possession and beaten so badly by the police that he needed 30 stitches in his head and his skull was cracked. A few years later:

Staying at Tosh’s home during this time was an old friend of the Wailers, Dennis Lobban. However, he left in a fury after an argument with Tosh’s girlfriend, Marlene Brown, returning a few days later on September 11, with a gang of friends. Lobban later claimed he had merely intended to threaten the artist, and perhaps rob him, but panicked. The end result was that Tosh and all six of his friends who were hanging out in the room were shot in the head.

BOB MARLEY:

Robert Nesta Marley was born February 6, 1945, in rural St. Ann’s Parish, Jamaica; the son of a middle-aged white father and teenaged black mother, he left home at 14 to pursue a music career … As great as Marley’s fame had grown outside of Jamaica, at home he was viewed as a figure of almost mystical proportions, a poet and prophet whose every word had the nation’s collective ear. His power was perceived as a threat in some quarters, and on December 3, 1976, he was wounded in an assassination attempt… While jogging in New York’s Central Park he collapsed, and it was discovered he suffered from cancer that had spread to his brain, lungs, and liver… he died May 11, 1981, at age 36.

KING TUBBY:

on February 6, 1989, his career came to a sudden end when he was shot and killed outside his home in Waterhouse. His murder remains unsolved, his death believed to have been the result of a street robbery.

DESMOND DEKKER was orphaned in his early teens and out on the street then. He lived to be 64. He was lucky!

Basically, I’m really glad I wasn’t born in Jamaica, especially in the 40s-50s.

I’m having a bad week. I’m in a cranky mood. Allow me to indulge in some more whining…

1. I worked 10 hours straight today with no breaks or food. The plants on my accounts are suddenly all getting bugs of various sorts. Plus, all the lawyers at the law firms I had to service were mean today and didn’t want me touching their plants because they were busy. The lawyers that is, the plants weren’t busy. Plus, I cut myself 3 different times today on various plants and bled all over my clipboard.

2. I went to the Cambridge Hospital to see about my ear on the suggestion from someone at the Somerville Referral Line. Unfortunately, the free care clinic is only open from 8:30 to 4:00, and I have to work usually from 8:00 - 4:00. Maybe I can try to work something out tomorrow.

3. My shrink is on vacation for another week, so even if I could find some way to pay for drugs without insurance, he isn’t around to prescribe them. So, I have a splitting headache and am prone to bursting into tears at inopportune times. Oh yeah, the constipation isn’t terribly fun either.

4. Lard Ass peed on my brown pants, but I didn’t realize it until I got to work and smelled myself. I smelled lovely today.

ON THE OTHER HAND…

-Lard Ass hasn’t been peeing on forbidden things since I set up another cat box. Now he has one all to himself.

-I’m even more addicted to MI-5 and I discovered that season 2 is also available for “instant watching” on Netflix.

-It’s the perfect temperature for hot cocoa, and I actually have some.

-All Lard Ass and Jarvis do is sleep together and fight. They’ll fight, and then the next moment they will be curled up together snoring. They’re kind of like most of the couples I know!

-The new Indiana Jones movie comes out this week.

-I have a ticket to see Jamie Lidell next month

- Athena and I went for ice cream sundaes yesterday and mine was exceptionally tasty. Ice cream (at least temporarily) solves all my problems!

- I bought a new battery for my camera so now it works again.

- I just watched the movie Gone Baby Gone and it was actually pretty good.

-My bike will be fixed by tomorrow! I got new purple handlebar streamers just for the occasion!

Today went on and on FOREVER. First we had to install a bunch of plants, then we had to go and water all the regular ones… oy, 9.5 hours of hauling and pruning is enough plants for one day! I came home and crashed and am lame.

I wanted to go see the Foals tonight at the Middle East… I’m really seriously digging them. But, I’m lame. Next week is Cut Copy and the Mobius Band at the Paradise, and I will not lame out on that one!!! The following day British Sea Power is at the Paradise, but I’m getting old. I think my days of being a slave to mopey Brit rock are coming to an end. I’m more of just an indentured servant at this point. Oh, except CC are Australian and the MB are from Western Mass… close enough.

My newish job is awesome, but man is it making me tired! Today I went up and down like a million flights of stairs 21st floor to the 25th and back down again and back up again and then down and up some more, sometimes carrying a big tree that we couldn’t figure out what to do with because we had ended up with it by accident. I get home from work and sleep and read a book or play Boggle with the innernets or something… basically, all these entries are totally boring and my life is headed in that direction as well.

Let’s see… something interesting…

I caught a snippet of conversation on the bus today: this woman in maybe her early 20s was talking about some ailment she had. “so I went to the doctor and he said I was 6 months pregnant!” Like… 6 months? How could you not know you were pregnant for that long?

Another snippet I overheard was when I was near this lawn full of pre-school kids. One teacher was talking to a little boy:

Olivia really likes you, doesn’t she? She’s your friend, right? And why does she like you? Is it because you’re Japanese? … or is it because you’re really cool?

I’m sure Olivia was really just using that kid for his Japanese-ness.

So, I typed “something interesting” into Google image search and here are some of the “interesting” pictures I came up with:

OK, I’ll admit that llama butts are pretty interesting.

Wow. Fascinating.

So far, I’m not terribly riveted.

Maybe it’s the gratuitous use of sitars, perhaps it’s seeing Serge Gainsbourg fondling a fake flower… I can’t stop watching this

This is the musical composition I wish I’d written. It’s the Most Unwanted Song in the World, based on polls of adults taken to see what people find most irritating in music. The result is … well… just listen to it. IT’S FREAKING AMAZING!!!! Seeing as I really dig the tuba, accordion and bagpipes, I guess I’m one of the 200 people in the world who statistically won’t hate this piece.

On the contrary, these same people, based on the same research, created the Most Wanted Song in the world, which I just find supremely irritating. But then, I hate the saxophone and guitar solos, so maybe I’m just not fit to be a human in western society…

Andrew Bird.

I was ringing up customers at work today and I got a credit card from a dude who bought 3 esoteric CDs, that said “Andrew Bird.” I thought to myself, “hey, that’s pretty cool, his name is Andrew Bird. Like Andrew Bird.” Later on I was putting a CD away in the B section and saw a picture of Andrew Bird the Music Guy and lo and behold, it was the same one!

I don’t think I’ve ever even listened to Mr. Bird’s music before, but reading about it now he sounds pretty cool. I can totally get behind a dude who plays the violin and the glockenspiel.