i may have spent my evening helping my two favorite bands (panic! and at the disco) find some new members to fill out their line-up. ch-ch-check it out!

(yes, this icon IS the most amazing icon in the history of iconing. THANKS FOR ASKING!)

people who are doing "101 in 1001" lists have inspired me! except mine is going to be more "random amount of things to do before i flee the southeast" i think. do you guys have any suggestions for things to do, places to eat, events to attend, or whatever in the southeast? preferably cfl-centric, but i'm probably headed to the midwest next, so i might as well get my southern jollies in while i can. (things that y'all used to do on class trips would be AWESOME, cos i obviously never did any of it.)

you guys, THIS BOOK. a book has not filled me with this much glee and rage since the lioness quartet. (or maybe tigana. the last line of that fills me with an awful lot of rage.)

the world lynch creates is gorgeously rich and complex, with such a thought-out and well-used history that i am shocked this is his first novel. his characters are all stunningly real, and the writing is superb.

it is set in camorr, a city made up of interconnected islands. in camorr, orphans have two possible fates: slaves, or thieves. this is a story about the latter, although they are not just any thieves. they are the ocean's 11 to the rest of the city's petty thieves. they are the gentlemen bastards.

Bug stepped forward and cleared his throat.

"I'm only doing this, he said, "because I really love hiding in haunted Eldren buildings on dark and creepy nights."

"You're a liar," said Jean, slowly. "I'm only doing this because I've always wanted to see Bug get eaten by an Eldren ghost."

"Liar," said Calo. "I'm only doing this because I fucking love hauling half a ton of bloody coins up out of a vault and packing them away on a cart."

"Liar!" Galdo chuckled. "I'm only doing this because while you're all busy elsewhere, I'm going to go pawn all the furniture in the burrow at No-Hope Harza's."

"You're all liars," said Locke as their eyes turned expectantly to him. "We're only doing this because nobody else in Camorr is good enough to pull this off, and nobody else is dumb enough to get stuck doing it in the first place."

"Bastard!" They shouted in unison, forgetting their surroundings for a bare moment.

-The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

with that said, there were some problems. ( spoilers. )

otherwise though, this was a really enjoyable read and i will not be surprised at all if it stays lodged in my brain for a good long while.

i think i'm going to phase out my icons until all i have left are 100x100 boxes of river dancing and frank iero giving you the finger. and i'll keep the cow. i feel this will give a more accurate portrayal of who i am. (and also it will make me giggle every day.)

so yesterday i headed downtown with jess to go to the audobon park community market. it was less than i was expecting, but still pretty cool. (i don't hang out down there enough.) there were about ten local vendors, with jewelry and juice and jam and honey and other good stuff, and everyone was really friendly. plus our trip happened to coincide with an animal collective signing at park ave, so there were some epic hipster douchebag sightings. my favorite was the girl with the enormous glasses (without lenses), although the boy with the b&w striped turtleneck was a close runner-up. then we drove by firestone (where the show was) and cackled. good times!

at the end of every month they sponsor a big-ish event with food and drinks and stuff for $10. it sadly coincides with the wrock show this month, but i really want to go next time. i've got two more years in this town, and i WILL find more inexpensive shit to do!

also have a plan for the tattoo. my manager told me i should definitely wait til i'm ready to go on vacation before i get it, so i can't freak my mom out next month. but i can play with fonts and change my mind every other week til september! woo!

otherwise: life is good, even if work is making me crazy & cranky. i have awesome friends, i read some good books this month, i went to an awesome fucking show last week, two singers i love are (a) fangirling each other on twitter and (b) fucking PLAYING TOGETHER at the end of the month, julia nunes covered a song that brings back incredibly vivid & awesome memories, and i haven't seen any alligators in my moat yet. win!

i feel like i've forgotten a book that i read this week. i don't really see how that could have happened, but URGH nonetheless. (speaking of forgetting books...i nearly flipped my shit yesterday when i looked at my pike bookshelf and saw a book was missing. could not remember what was missing or where it could possibly have run off to, and was v. v. unhappy. realized a few minutes later that i loaned falling to a coworker a few weeks ago and stopped freaking out. PHEW.)

(in my defense, i've been working on those shelves since i was 12 and most of those books cannot be replaced. and also i am insane.)

(oh wait, just remembered that i read 4 pages of this stupid book about these virgins boning for the first time before i tried to stab my eyes out on sunday. hopefully that's what i was thinking of.)

anyway, i finished suite scarlett today. it was really good! it sounded so much more like maureen johnson than her other two books, and i actually liked a lot of the characters. almost all of the characters, really. (eric can suck my dick.) v. excited for scarlett fever now. (& fyi, the paperback editions are horribly bound. if you care about that sort of thing and you are buying this, go for the hardcover.)

apparently next week i am out of the office for at least a little while every day, which is awesome except for the part where i only have 1.5 library books out, and one of them may not get read. might reread a bunch of pike books. like, the ones i've read less than five times. or maybe just the star group. i am craving it for some reason.

UNRELATEDLY, here are my GOALS FOR THIS WEEKEND:
-get caught up on tumblr / idolator / whatever other blogs i usually read
-redo my jenny wallpaper ONE LAST TIME because the text is looking weird. maybe upload it to loveforthejoy. or maybe just stare at it for a couple more hours, as one does
-make some fucking icons, geez
-get drunk & mock edward cullen

until i get my blog blog up and running again, i guess i should post my book reviews here:

our band could be your life: scenes from the american indie underground 1981-1991 by michael azerrad: THIS WAS SO GOOD. some of the chapters were a little boring (ian mckaye was such a tool when he was in minor threat, but he became pretty awesome by the time fugazi happened) and some chapters were not about what they were supposed to be about (the mudhoney chapter was actually all about subpop, which is fine because subpop is way more important/interesting than mudhoney, but it was not marked that way) and some bands are so ridiculous it is unreal (oh the replacements ♥), but all in all this was so good. well-researched and well-written and so informative without making me feel dumb. also, k records is apparently basically everything i have ever wanted in a label/scene/indie movement, so i need to find more on them.

carpe corpus by rachel caine: urgh. i felt like i skipped a book in this series. it wasn't bad, but it was really not nearly as good as the rest of her work, i think. ( spoilers. )

bermudez triangle by maureen johnson: this book made me feel incredibly lonely. like, it is unsettling how lonely this book made me feel. semi-unrelatedly, i think i need to add maureen to the list of authors i love as authors (and human beings) but who i do not love as writers. i bought suite scarlett when i bought this, so i'll try that one too before i make up my mind, but...yeah. at least she's in excellent company? (so far it's just neil gaiman in that club. YES I AM A HEATHEN WHATEVER.)

ps: saw up. yes, i cried. I AM AN EXCELLENT YET RUSTY AI MACHINE ONLY HUMAN. for what it's worth, it wasn't the opening montage (although that did make me pray for the first time in years), it was the scrapbook at the end. fucking scrapbooks.

Poll #1410143 this is easier than writing an actual entry.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

how many more times can i nudge getaway_machine before she snaps, drives to my apartment, and stabs me?