Right now, I’m listening to a lot of NPR, because it’s early winter. I think I do that a lot in early winter. NPR fits or perhaps rages against the pace of November. It’s as reliable as clockwork. I spent October listening to Coldplay and Death Cab and Stars (oh, how I love me some Stars’ I actually gloated when I walked into Torrid and they were playing “Endless Beauty” on the sound system. As though I discovered them or something when in actuality, I found out about them last year and then a week later, they had a song on The OC and then a month after that, the Lolla line up was announced and they were on it. During the afternoon, but still. It’s not like I’m bleeding edge or something. More like a serrated butter knife. Although, those can be quite sharp, especially in finer restaurants.
Sometime after I got the iFetus, I started making playlists labeled by the season, since it could only hold 4 gigs (Only, she says, as though her first PC didn’t come with a whopping 40 megabyte hard disk and she couldn’t imagine what she’d do with all that storage) and I had to be picky about what I ported over to it. So I did songs of the moment, Spring 2005, Chicago Trip, that kind of thing. Now, my Bean laughs at this conservation of space, since I can put the entire world in it (what will I ever do with all that storage?) and still have room to swing my arms and dance wildly. But I’ve stuck with this method of cataloging. It’s handy. The playlist of the moment are “Better Now?” and “Fall 2006”, the former containing songs that were supposed to buoy my head through the angst of the last few weeks, and the latter for those shiny little pearls that are catching my interest right now.
The great thing about this habit is that I can go back and listen to whatever it was I was listening to Summer of Love And Candy 2005 or Jan/Feb 2004 and be instantly transported to whatever mindset I was in during that time. There are little moments that have disappeared, even though it was only a year ago, and those are some nice moments. But when I listen to Fall 2005? Apparently I am a creature of habit. It’s entirely listenable right now, even the James Blunt. Go figure.
Fall 2006 has only got six songs on it, mostly because I was still listening to the “Summer 2006” and “JournalNon” playlists up until the end of October. I should really abandon poor Fall 2006, as it’s not got enough songs in it to really establish itself as a little time time capsule. And also, there probably aren’t any moments worth remembering attached to ‘Sexy Back’.
So they were interviewing Tom Waits on NPR and I kept wondering why I don’t listen to more Tom Waits. I always like his music and find what he does with his voice to be very interesting. I should stretch my tastes more. While my musical taste is certainly eclectic and what Esteban calls “undeniable Weetabixness”, I don’t really push myself very much. And then they played some Tom Waits and I realized what it was about him in particular: Tom Waits music is sort of scary. It scares me. Particularly, his take on Seven Dwarves “Heigh Ho Heigh Ho” song… he was sued by Disney because they claimed that he had changed the lyrics, except that he didn’t. He just added that undeniable Tom Waitsness that makes the music sort of unnerving. And that’s why I’ve fully intended to put a Tom Waits song on my Holiday Mix CD every year, but then it’s the first thing to go when I am trimming the song list to fit onto a CD. Because like Debussy, there is something inherently freaky about the music. So there.
About a month ago, Esteban lost his phone. He thought it was maybe at one of his Dorkathalons and I thought that it was in his office, which is already getting out of control after his late summer office purge. Honestly, the man is constantly losing things. We probably walk around the house once a week looking for where he left either his car keys or the remote control for the television (which has been found in his office, the bathroom, the kitchen and once, next to a package of cookies in the pantry). I’ve taken to claiming the good phone and taking it into my office, because otherwise he loses it and then we have to answer the phone via the speaker on the base, which always feels to me like a tangible sign that my life is out of control. I watch for portents everywhere. I know, I have issues.
His little Motorola was exactly like my previous phone. It’s not a bad phone, honestly. Other than its connectivity tantrums when I’d go to Chicago, I had been happy with it until I happened to fixate on the pink Razr the week that Esteban asked me what I wanted for an anniversary present. He complained about it, though, as is his way, until he lost the thing and had to go back to his Nokia, which then earned the endearing nickname ‘This Piece of Shit Nokia.’
He has been whining about his phone, how much he hates it, how much he wished that he could find the Motorola. My answer was always the same ‘Check by your pc’ because I had heard its telltale sad little booboops that signaled a dying battery shortly before he announced that it had been missing for a week. He would wave his arms around and say ‘It’s not in my office! I looked!’ Which is just ridiculous because seriously, the man cannot look. He lacks the finding gene. One would think that someone who loses things amidst clutter would keep a Spartan workspace, but one would be wrong.
Finally, after a month of complaining about his crappy phone, I told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t go out and buy a Razr for himself that I would just buy it for him so that I didn’t have to hear him pine away madly for a better phone. We went to the store and he wanted a black one, which they didn’t have, and refused to pay an extra $60 to get the pretty red one (why are we married again? Seriously? We are so entirely opposite at times) so he’s got the brushed stainless version and it makes him happy. I suspect that it’s the Razr’s eerie resemblance to a Star Trek tricorder. He set it up with a Doctor Who ring tone and a picture of the Tardis (again, seriously?) and then was happy again.
And then found the Motorola two days later. It was in his laptop bag. (Where? Next to his computer? Oh, does that sound familiar?) I can’t even raise an eyebrow about this or use it to drive home an important Leave It To Beaver lesson about organization, because he’s honestly feeling guilty about spending the money on a new phone. Thank god he didn’t go for the red version. Seriously, if you could somehow harness the level of free floating guilt generated by the residents of Casa Bix, you could use it as a weapon of mass destruction. Entire cities would walk around with perpetually furrowed brows and vaguely upset tummies. They would be apologetic for no reason and wonder if everything wasn’t really maybe just a little bit their fault. Then they would seek comfort in carbohydrates and there would be no more militant factions attacking convoys with rocket launchers because they’d be too busy obsessing about the perfect shape of their eyebrows.
