Today is Wednesday, December 20

Not Wednesday, December 21. This is useful information when:

• You are generally trying to function in the United States or some other Gregorian-calendar-using place
• You are stressed out and not sleeping because you are trying to put together a job application due on December 21

At least I didn’t mix it up the other way around.

On a tangential note, this is my third “God Am I Lame” post in the last eight days. What’s happening to me? I used to be all rad, all the time, until I moved to San Francisco. Is there something in the water here that’s making me lame?

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I Am Too Old For Facebook

Apparently, I only know one person that uses Facebook. If you do, please add me as your friend so I no longer look like a loser.

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On the Go

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See the Light

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Girly Girl

There’s nothing like moving to convince you to give away your possessions.  However, I can’t seem to part with my shoes:

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Outer Space

The view from my new kitchen window:

My move to San Francisco got me thinking about Bay Area real estate, which can best be described as a parallel universe. For instance, in most parts of the country, $100,000 will get you pretty far in terms of buying a home. Out here, $100,000 might get you somewhere in the vicinity of a down payment, and prices keep rising. When I found out last year that I would need six figures in cash to call a tiny condo my own, I made a joke about someday having a place in Nevada.

Fast forward a bit. I’ve lived in three apartments since arriving in the Bay Area. After leaving the first, they raised the rent 14%. In apartment #2, I was paying about 10% more than the previous tenant. When I left four months later, they raised it another 10%. To get an idea of how these prices compare to my former locale, a small college town in Illinois, I checked the craigslist postings there. It turns out that for what I’m paying for my studio, I could get this in Champaign-Urbana:

Huge 3 bedroom in vintage brick building near campus. Hardwood floors, arched doorways, high ceilings. Dining room, sunroom, living room, eat-in kitchen, screened porch, 1 bath. Includes all utilities. Rent includes one parking space.

This is actually not a true comparison, as I could not find a house or apartment on the C-U Craigslist page equal to or higher than the cost of my 400 square foot place. However, this came within 3%, so we’ll call it even. Almost. That parking space would add at least 15% to the cost, and I’m paying for electricity. Ouch.

So why do people live here? Are we insane? I guess it’s a matter of priorities. Maybe someday space will be more important to me than the ability to step out of my building into a world-class shopping and entertainment district, or to drop by the beach on a random Thursday night. However, for now, I’d rather be out in the world than at home. As long as that’s true, I’m happy to live in a glorified shoebox.

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Songs That Are, In Fact, Rad, But Have Weird Lyrics

As a follow-up to Songs That Are Not, In Fact, Love Songs, it seems appropriate to address the phenomenon of songs that are truly awesome but have sketchy elements here and there. Both of the songs I’ve chosen for this exercise are, in fact, love songs of that delicious “you could rip my heart out and leave me an empty shell” variety. However, each has a line or two that leaves you wondering why the artist couldn’t just leave an incredible song alone.

First up: Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.” It has that beautiful Springsteen poetry, with a vulnerable edge that can’t not get into your soul just a little:

Sometimes its like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul

Only you can cool my desire
I’m on Fire

Very moving, right? However, what about this?

Hey little girl is your daddy home

Did he go away and leave you all alone

Tell me now baby is he good to you
Can he do to you the things that I do

Is the pedophile / incest theme really necessary? I still love this song, but this skeevy bit leaves me with a side of guilt when listening to it.

Tom Waits’s “Jersey Girl” is also quite poetic. Lines like these:

Down the shore everything’s all right, you with your baby on a Saturday night,
Don’t you know that all my dreams come true, when I’m walking down the street
With you

are very romantic. It’s clear that he’s pretty gone over this girl. So gone, in fact, that he has this to say:

Don’t want no whores on Eighth Avenue, cause tonight I’m gonna be
With you

I’m not sure that, if I were the Jersey girl, I would feel touched by this sentiment. It’s the sort of thing a more conventional guy would keep to himself.

I guess Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits can get away with this sort of thing. They both have that deep, mysterious, intense quality that excuses pedophilia, incest, and whoring around. At least until the song ends, the spell is broken, and we come to our senses and realize what exactly we’re singing in the shower. Whores on Eighth Avenue sound far less charming when sung off-key to the accompaniment of a steady stream of water.

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