I let it slide.

And Jenni’s #1 and #2 answers to the mixed tape trivia are right! Hooray!

Thank you and good night.

For the last several months I have been riding my stationary Schwinn. In order to keep myself entertained while pedaling I have been going through a large cardboard box full of cassette tapes and listening to each one once. This box has the surviving tapes I ordered from the Columbia Record House back in the 80’s. It has tapes I copied off my friends’ CDs in college. It has Mixed Tapes from friends, girlfriends, some of Lolly’s boyfriends, and ones we made ourselves. (Some of them do have very nice cover designs that I created myself from photos and letters that I cut out of magazines.)

I’m getting down to the end of the box now. Most of the good workout music I have already played and put into the “done” pile. The things that are left, easily yet another month’s worth of listening, include various womyn’s music, Andean flute bands, and Kate Bush. I seriously might pull a muscle if I have to workout to ‘Wuthering wuthering wuthering Heights’ because I can’t NOT try to sing along.

So this is one of the projects I have been working on instead of thinking about my BLOpos. I did, however, promise a trivia quiz before the end of the month so here it is. These are first lines of songs on a mixed tape that I made about 17 years ago, most of it in my friend’s apartment while her ferret named Gregory frolicked about. Guess name and who:

SIDE A
1. “So she says it’s time she goes but wanted to be sure I know she hopes we can be friends”
2. “A woman on the radio talks about revolution when it’s already passed her by”
3. “Waiting your time dreaming of a better life, waiting your time you’re more than just a wife”
4. “I am rich (he is on the T.V.)”
5. “You cannot go against nature because when you do go against nature it’s part of nature too”
6. “It glittered and it gleamed for the arriving beauty queen, a ring and a car, now you’re the prettiest by far”
7. “I get the feeling I’m not alone, I get the feeling it’s someone I don’t know”
8. “There’s a crack in the mirror and a bloodstain on the bed”

SIDE B
9. “I hate the rain and sunny weather and I hate the beach and mountains too”
10. “Load up on guns, bring your friends, it’s fun to lose and to pretend”
11. “Be careful you might hear something you don’t want to hear, be careful you might say something that you really mean”
12. “Give me a reason now that I can understand, pick up the pieces now and put ‘em in my hand”
13. “Tabloids scream Elvis seen at a shopping mall, that’s the kind of talk that makes my stomach crawl”
14. “With your feet in the air and your head on the ground try this trick and spin it”

Catch ya later.

Thing 1. I used to drag myself around the house when I was left home alone to see how I would manage if I couldn’t use my legs.

Thing 2. I tormented my other sister by meticulously cutting out pictures of bugs from a RAID ad in a magazine and taping them up all around her bedroom.

Thing 3. Although I have kept almost every diary, journal, and datebook that I ever had, and almost letter that I have ever received, I’m starting to believe that it is probably ok to start getting rid of that stuff because it is looking less and less likely that I will be so famous that people would want to archive it all after I’m dead.

Thing 4. I tell people things that I shouldn’t in order to make them laugh, mostly at work.

Thing 5. I know that I could drop dead at any moment and that I am ill-prepared to do so… and not just because my correspondence is not properly cataloged.

Thing 6. If I ever borrowed a book of yours and never gave it back, I am completely aware that I have done so, feel guilty about it frequently, and wonder when/how I will get it back to you.

Thing 7. I once passed out drunk in a church: it was cold out, the door was open, I went in to pee, and then I was suddenly so sleepy.

My teacher noted that I left out the word “..helped..” in my story. I think that was presumptuous; maybe I intended to write “..desired that they return from whence they came..”

Ugh. Girl, you are so right. Certain people are just so unreasonable. But lemme ask you… how can you scream and yell at people and brown nose them too? Maybe something like…”YOU ARE SUCH A TALENTED AND SMART GOD DAMN ASSHOLE! I WISH I WAS YOU!!!”

Now M. is really nice. Funny I never noticed – but then I didn’t know him did I? A cancer. I always fall for the cancers and the aries. One’s good, one’s bad. I wish I’d be around in a few years from now – I could really fall. But as it is, it is how it is.

I don’t know; did you know you didn’t know him? You are so deep and profound. Why haven’t you won a prize yet?

It snowed and snowed. I still got to go to P.’s though. Good. “Who’s not coming?” The one person I wanted to see wasn’t going to make it. A. went and got him. But why? What a waste of time. It didn’t matter though because I got so high on natural endomorphs or whatever that I just danced and goofed and had a good time despite the underlying panic and let down. I guess I went insane. After he left, I crashed. BIGTIME! I dropped like a rock.

Oh, if you only knew just how much of a waste of time it all was. That boy you liked? He turned Mormon and you turned out Lesbo, so that would have been quite a match. But thank god for those endomorphs, no? Especially the natural ones. They can really liven up a party. BIGTIME!

S. and I talked. We never really had. Even at Whitesnake, or Stacey’s, or Math. We had a nice “chat.” H. and I talked too. Something we never do after being so close. She’s a lot different – more preppier like A. and S. (YUCK!). But inside she must be basically the same.

Don’t beat yourself up about it. It was probably real hard for you to hear each other “chatting” at Whitesnake, and you weren’t supposed to be having special “chats” in math class. And, yes, you are still right – preppies are YUCKY!

It was a great party!

.

“dictated in bed by Lolly on iPhone”

“but it’s only eight thirty”

“…so?”

It’s not that I am some big camera geek or anything. I just have a little nostalgia about the instant Polaroids. When I was growing up it was a real novelty for me, made even more special by the fact that my parents thought they were frivolous. It was rare that I got to take any pictures with one.

Ever contrary, I bought a One Step after college and this clunky, noisy object was my primary camera, the only camera I owned, for several years. From this period, the photos I have of friends, coworkers, grad school trips, pets, and girlfriends are all blotchy, smudgy Polaroids.

I was going to miss pictures like this:

& this:

& this:

And that last one is NSFW, by the way, in case you couldn’t tell.

This weekend I was cleaning out the desk in the basement when I found the camera. I flipped it on and tried to take a picture but nothing happened; so imagine my horror when I opened it and found film! OH NO! I may have just inadvertantly exposed the LAST POLAROID FILM I WOULD EVER HAVE. When I shut it back in, the camera turned on, just slow to ‘boot up’ I guess. I was able to take a test photo of piles of crap in the cellar. Oh crap. Was THAT the LAST POLAROID PHOTO I WOULD EVER TAKE? I think maybe there are one or two more left.

The question weighing on my mind now is what should I use the last of my film on…?

That’s what I was thinking yesterday. Today, I thought I would finish up this post. It caused me to do a little internetting about this issue and ain’t I happy to learn that a group is going to bring back the instant film cameras. Also, I’ve learned that there is a site with some very cool photographs in this ‘genre.’

Maybe my days of taking shitty photographs aren’t over yet!