sweetney.com

I live in a zoo, I look like a monkey and I smell like one too. HAPPY?

2008-05-12T09:55:40-04:00

It's mah birfday, betches! Today I'm 38 -- which is what, 480 in dog years or something? I am very nearly antique, a period piece from a time before cell phones and plasma TVs. Somebody get me some Doans pills and a Reader's digest, STAT.

Saturday night I celebrated my birthday out with some fine-ass local ladies. We had dinner at Golden West (hipster hangout in Baltimore lauded by Rolling Stone as a notable site in the Bmore music scene, which of course means I was the oldest person in the whole place), and then retired to my friend's candy store for further libations and playing of the Rock Band, finishing off with a screening of Mariah Carey's horrendous filmic travesty Glitter, served MST3K-style.

Being the classic front woman of rock that I am, I of course hogged the microphone -- mah presssshusss... -- during most of the evening. A few crucial Rock Band learnin's gleaned:

I cannot sing Kurt Cobain's vocal range. Like, at all. It just sounds like I'm trying (and failing) to hock up a loogie, and nobody really wants to hear that.

Despite never having intentionally listened or exposed myself to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive", I know every single goddamn word of that thing. I suspect Mtv is somehow to blame for this, like most unfortunate music-related things of the past 20 years.

The Beastie Boys "Sabotage" is freaking impossible to sing without calling to mind Conan O'Brien's version and thus becoming incapacitated by laughter.

I fucking ROCK at Radiohead's "Creep". 94% with a bullet, baby! Of course, after seeing that, my friend Debbie turned to me and said "Uhh, dude, I was sitting right in front of you. That was no 94%". Then my friend Caroline added "Yeah. That was, like, 92% at best." Naysaying haters. And with that I took away all of their microwaved movie butter flavored popcorn. Because, you know, fuck em'. Orville Redenbacher would agree.

By the by, I most certainly could NOT rock any Mariah Carey. I do not communicate with the dolphins.

Mother's Day brought the release of my 5 things list for the Baltimore Sun. I actually got one of those things, too -- A MACBOOK PRO, PEOPLE. It's so pretty, I'm trying real hard not to lick it. I'm sure forwarding my list to Jamie before publication helped usher that purchase into being. Shameless Gift Pandering? I HAS IT.

I plan to spend most of today nuzzling and caressing my new laptop, whispering terms of endearment in soft, low tones into its built-in microphone, batting my eyelashes and pursing my lips at its built-in camera-eye. If only it had a Jon Stewart VR simulation program... YOU HEAR THAT, JAMIE? CHRISTMAS ISN'T THAT FAR AWAY, DUDE.

Because I'm still marinating in emo juice, making my own doomtastic gravy

2008-05-09T10:48:27-04:00

Please accept this COMPLETELY RAD video in lieu of more pointless whining on my part (you see how much I love you? I think of you and only you first!). It's an art piece, a comedy routine, a deft deconstruction of racism, class, sexism, and homophobia (among other things), and (last but not least) a high school valedictorian nominee speech, all delivered by a kid sporting what can only be described as THE MOST AWESOME HAIR EVER. Basically, it is my dearest hope that my own daughter will grow up to be this smart and fearless and funny:

Read about the ensuing controversy (because, as we are both painfully aware, people are TEH DUMBZ) here.

I can't even believe this kid wasn't made valedictorian. I for one would've paid good money to see him deliver that address.

The darling buds of May

2008-05-07T10:36:13-04:00

Around the house and garden this morning:

Unrelatedly, today marks 6 months since I quit smoking. To celebrate, I shall stop and inhale the scent of flowers deeply today, my nasal passages untainted by nicotine residue for perhaps the first time in my entire adult life. Yowza.

Explanatory notes on my supreme nonfiction*

2008-05-06T07:46:25-04:00

I know, I know, I've been being kind of cryptic around these here parts of late. And not having comments open probably hasn't helped. I apologize, most sincerely I do.

But you see, a couple of times a year -- like grim clockwork, and usually around the time of a change of seasons -- things in my brain take a sharp turn for the worse. The best possible description I've been able to come up with is that it's like the world is set on a dimmer switch, and during these episodes the brightness level of everything around me slowly dials down to black. It's a process: I don't just wake up one day wholly mired in a La Brea Tar Pit of depression and crazy. It kind of creeps up on me. And the whole "creeping" part of it is mighty disturbing, might I add. At times it feels something like what I imagine watching yourself drown or be buried alive would be like, being fully conscious yet unable to stop or escape the dark thing swallowing you up.

Oh the depressive melodrama. I'm sorry. You deserve better. Perhaps a little ditty by Poe instead, hmm? gurgle.

Long time readers have been here and back with me before. In the case of those of you with a particularly strong masochistic streak, here and back several times over. And I thank you for putting up with my mercurial bullshit, dear gentle, tolerant readers. Soon I'll be right as rain and posting delightfully lighthearted dog photos again, I promise! Your dancing monkey will return with new dances! PREPARE TO BE DAZZLED... AT SOME INDEFINITE POINT IN THE NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE... OR SOMETHING.

For the time being though, I don't have much to offer that isn't painted black, beyond that I was asked by the Baltimore Sun to submit a list for the Mother's Day edition of the paper of 5 tangible things I'd like to have (calls for "World Peace" and "more time" need not apply -- we're talking concrete consumer goods and services, people). Absent my own responses, which I have to withhold for use by the good people at the Sun, I ask all ye mamas: What 5 tangible things would YOU like for Mother's Day? (were money and the bounds of bland reality no object.)

C'mon, humor me why doncha. Lord knows I could use humoring right about now.

. . . . .

*Nods to Wallace Stevens

Thank you, Tom Waits

2008-05-05T19:37:25-04:00

Though it may be a dark night of my soul, I'm blinded by his brillance:

Thank god the good old man is back.