identify 100 things that make me happy.

Albuquerque, one of the best songs ever.

Though I’m not sure this is a happy thing; it’s kind of sad and stupid, really.

I find myself up really late a lot of the time, and I end up watching MASH frequently, way deep in the middle of the night on some local UHF channel. I never really watched it much before, or if I did I was too young to get it, but now, I’m flabbergasted by how anti-war it is. Really intellegently done, really bitterly critical of war and its stupidity (I’m sure it was in reaction to Vietnam). And I know, I’m really late to the party on this one. I can’t help but thinking that a show like that with that kind of theme would never even get off the ground nowadays, no way in Hel. It’s all boo-rah go USA the military is the best most bravest most patriotic thing there is and if you even think about criticising it you’re sympathizing with the terrorists, blah blah, while the sane voices are drowned out by what, the drums of war?

Anyway, the irony in this, which just convinces me the military really IS that stupid, is that during MASH, this obviously overtly anti-war show, the most common commercials are for the Air Force and Marines. They’re just not effing getting it.

P.S. would’ve liked to put the proper asterisks in between the anagram MASH letters, but the computer thought I was telling it to bold some letters. Oy.

And I’m talking REALLY not expecting it.

I went out yesterday and got myself a couple of new CD’s, and was just blown away by two of the songs (not that I didn’t like the others, it’s just that these two were special). The first is this a capella one with gorgeous melodies and harmonies; the second is more rock ‘n’ roll, but man does that song move. Just gorgeous songs, musically very wonderful. I ended up listening to the two of them on infinite repeat, and I was just amazed.

The songs/album/artist? “Since You’ve Been Gone” and “The Night Santa Went Crazy”, off of Bad Hair Day by Weird Al Yankovic.

I just sat there thinking, he could totally write serious stuff if he wanted to. I was really tempted to learn to sing and play guitar so I could form a band and then rewrite serious lyrics to “The Night Santa Went Crazy”, sort of as a parody of Weird Al. How awesome would that be? Do you think he’d get it?

I was sitting at the drawing table late Christmas Eve night painting something, when Maude quietly comes in. She is carrying something in her mouth, which is not unusual as the catnip toys get moved around a lot-what is unusual is that she is not making any noise at all (usually she mreooowwwws and mreoooowwws when she has “caught” a toy), and that she hasn’t dropped it. So I look closer and yikes! it’s a genuine mouse! She finally does drop it, and the poor thing is wounded pretty badly, though not dead, so I wrap him up in a paper towel and put him in the trash (thinking that if he recovers he could easily find his way out of the trash, and if not, well…)

I don’t think I have ever seen her with a real mouse, and at any rate she has never before brought one to me.

And then I realize it is after midnight, and that, in the only way she knew how, she has given me a Christmas present.

Well, duh!

(har har)

Or, more specifically, the watercolor “pencils” I got for Christmas, Creatacolor or something? They’re from Austria and are pretty serious things. They’re actually all color (no wood) so I don’t think they qualify as pencils. Anyway, there are 72 colors!

This isn’t anything profound, so don’t get your hopes up, but this morning I dreamt I was in high school. Usually my high school dreams are the rotten anxiety kind where I don’t know what class I’m supposed to be in, I haven’t studied for the test, or I’m missing the school bus or somesuch. I hadn’t had one of those in a while though (I think I figured out the root of them and straightened things out psychologically), but this one was actually kind of fun. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, except that at the end of it I was with someone and we were being silly, singing “Istanbul, Not Constantinople” (the They Might Be Giants version of course) with grand silly gestures, especially for the last line, “Is-tan-buuuuuul”! But then the alarm went off.

It’s tuned to a college radio station, and though it took me a while to recognize the voice (which I can only attribute to being mostly asleep), they were playing a They Might Be Giants (or at least a John Linnell) song; it sounded like a demo, just him and a guitar, singing a happy little song about committing suicide by jumping in the East River and becoming one with the scum floating on the water, and then thinking that maybe someday a woman would do the same, and she’d become one with the scum, and then the two dead scum-people could live happily ever after.

It was really weird.

Told ya it wasn’t profound!

Which is made to look like a Roman temple, to, who else, but the Muses. It’s really just a carport with some extra do-dads and a painted canvas skin. I am quite pleased with it, even if I do only use it once a year.

Well, this hasn’t happened yet, but just thinking it possibly could is making me happy:

Apollo 18, They Might Be Giants, on shuffle (as it was meant to be), and one of the zillion Fingertips bits plays:

please pass the milk please
please pass the milk please
please pass the milk please

immediately followed by the song “Mammal” whose first stanza is:

Glass of milk
standing in between extinction in the cold
and explosive radiating growth

It’s never yet happened to me, and it’s kinda the holy grail of the shuffle mode, but I know someday it will.

I mean, just look at this picture!

‘Nuff said.