permanence and certainty

adventures in fake teeth, vol. 1

i'm going to start a new column here called adventures in fake teeth. it's exactly like it sounds; i recount the adventures, musings, triumphs and misfortunes that accompany being a fine young lass of 23 with six fake teeth. not just molars, mind you, or some inconsequential back tooth--no sir. go ahead and put your finger on your upper row of teeth. those first six in the front? the very front and center ones, the ones next to those, and the canines? ALL FAKE. i used to have only two [poorly affixed] fake teeth [as i was born without the two on either side of my front teeth. never fear, i was oft likened to a rodent in my youth, you needn't mention it], but then apparently in order to replace them with "more permanent ones," sanding off my existing teeth in order to create a lovely row of fake teeth which fits into my mouth like a puzzle piece was necessary. it was startling; there was a good deal of miscommunication between my dentist and i and then, halfway into the appointment, my tongue detected the chupacabra madness that is now hidden behind my shiny fake veneers. there may have  been some psychological trauma and some tears, but i'm over it. just imagine--the excitement accompanying two fake teeth--flying out of my mouth while talking, falling out in the middle of the street, breaking when i bite into sandwiches--times three! this is a new era of my life indeed. and you thought that fake teeth were for kids who got hit in the face with baseballs and grandmas. no, they're for kids that got hit in the face with baseballs, grandmas, and ladies like me, in their prime of their lives.

so far my new "temporary more permanent" fake teeth have been nothing but a joy. for our first installment of adventures with fake teeth, here are a few things i have come across:

flossing: so easy. i only have like half a mouth to do!
whitening toothpaste: really, should i bother?
biting into cold things: why do i still experience sensitivity in teeth that are made of plastic? phantom tooth pain?

i leave you until next time, yours in toothsomeness.

music; food.

04 Bootprints

King Creosote

this song, it has really fun instrumentation. it's like he said "hey--let's find all the coolest instruments we can, and put them on this song. be sure to give them a sweet breakdown in the middle. also my accent is so scottish and awesome."

i'm at work and very hungry [i have a pasta salad i made this afternoon with whole black olives, artichoke hearts, and shitake mushrooms waiting for me at home and it's very seriously making me drool] and very bored and quite unable to concentrate on things i need to. i just drank a cherry chocolate dr. pepper [DEAR GOD WHAT WAS I THINKING WITH NAME LIKE THAT IT COULD ONLY BE TROUBLE] and it was so sickly sweet that it gave me a headache. why did i drink it all? well, i must hate myself. of course, if i watched tv, this all could have been avoided: after relaying my TERRIBLE FORAY INTO NEW BEVERAGES to my friend she told me that she had been wary of the same beverage because the commercials advertised that it tasted like candy. which is true, it was exactly like drinking a tootsie roll. a carbonated tootsie roll. maybe that's your thing, but it sure ain't mine. so, let this be a psa: cherry chocolate dr. pepper--only if you're fond of drinking candy; will give you a headache. thank you and goodnight.

books, thoughts, etc.

dear vox: i kind of hate your layout and none of my friends use you. oh, also, i have like 20 other blogs and two school-sanctioned "journals" i have to keep. feel honored that i'm posting in you.

today i've been contemplating condiments. i realized that it wasn't until age 18 that i discovered mayonnaise, and age 20 that i discovered sour cream. sour cream is probably my favorite thing ever. when i first discovered it, in the cafeteria at my old dorm at college, on big burrito day, i subsequently became obsessed. what's new, right? anyways, i have distinct memories of wandering around the cafeteria looking for foods i could put sour cream on. because i at least had the decorum not just spoon it into my mouth by the fistful. in public.

anyways, here are some outdated books that i found last week but have been very lazy about posting.

yoga: it's for americans too!

i think it's telling that this yoga book is in the philosophy section. yoga before the craze. also hilarious: gandhi in the nuclear age.

the cold war: alive and well.

this is pretty much the paranoias section.

hilariously outdated book of the week

yes, it's back! with a vengeance! this week: outdated vocabulary makes for discomfort-creating titles!

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your eyes do not deceive you.

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"retarded" children: different from those that are just stupid. don't worry!

also: noticing me working on the assignment the media librarian gave me, which is checking the hand-typed accession ledger against an accession rolodex, my boss mused that we had to move the record to a new medium [the excel spreadsheet i painstakingly created a couple months ago] because they stopped making the pages they used in the ledger.
...
and here i thought they were actually interested in modernization, better organization, greater accessibility, etc. silly me! no, they just stopped manufacturing ledger pages which are intended to be fed into a typewriter.

more about music--ukulele edition

07 punks not dead

Jacob Borshard

fans of lo-fi, the ukulele, and/or generally sweet and enjoyable pop songs would do well to check out jacob borshard. i saw him play last night and was pleasantly surprised, having come for one of the other bands on the bill, and not having had the greatest experiences with bands at the hole in the wall. last night the timbre of this voice reminded me heavily of one john darnielle of the mountain goats, but that doesn't translate as much in the recordings. just a little. sometimes.
and, if it's your thing, he won some songwriting contest put on by VH1 and judged by drew barrymore [??]. both of his albums are freely downloadable on his website.

on foreign pop music. warning: may hurt your teeth.

it's time for another edition of "music anne is obsessed with."  this week's edition is centered around foreign pop music. not because i'm any way knowledgeable about it, not because i'm a connoisseur, and not because i have a large collection to which i regularly listen. no, none of those things are true. it just so happens that two achingly poppy songs which i've been obsessed with of late both happen to be the fruits of foreign bands. so there.

i think i've blogged about this first one before, though probably not here. i discovered it last fall, and subsequently listened to it about eighty times in a row about eighty times a day for about a week. all attempts to download said song were unsuccessful, so i just kept streaming it--over and over and over again. well, i recently remembered that it existed, did a quick search for it, and found it! and downloaded it! successfully! so i can now listen to it whenever i want, and i couldn't be happier about it. the swedish gents who sing this song sing in adorably confused english, which i think only adds to its mega-sugary appeal. oh, and they've apparently broken up now. witness the legacy of out of clouds:

01 Like a Lily

Out of Clouds

the next one is simultaneously more and less foreign. less foreign because it's a canadian band, and half of the bands we all listen to are secretly canadian [not to be confused with the record label of the same name] anyways. but it's more foreign because it's in another language: french. i have no idea what they are saying. none. but that's ok, because the first 45 seconds of this song are perfect. the rest gets a little "eh" and never again has the same punch as the beginning, but it's still solidly absurdly poppy, just like i like.

02 montréal -40c

Malajube

hilariously bad music, volume 2

06 Better Than Me

Hinder

yes folks, our pals hinder are at it again with a slammin' new single for the holiday season: gargling knives, ashtrays and whiskey, and missing their exes. this song isn't quite as awesome as the legendary "lips of an angel," but does contain one line of true poetic genius which causes me to loudly guffaw: "i really miss your hair in my face."

really? because if this chick had the kind of hair that was always up in your business, face, etc., it kind of seems like, c'mon, good riddance. more likely, he meant to say something more romantic but somehow ended up with "in" instead of "on," and in the end it comes out all wrong.
also, he later refers to "one memory" he doesn't want to lose. you  know, that one special memory. which, in this case, apparently involves a mall and a dressing room. wow! a truly life-defining moment, i'm sure. the mall: where memories are made.

hilariously outdated book of the week

this one is a little newer than most featured here, but is probably more useless than any of them:

for seventies

unless you want to wait 70 years so it can be accurate again, if only in title.

also, here is a marquee at a local TV station:

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ah yes, peanut butter and toys, together at last.

oh, hi

professor calculus!, originally uploaded by asmysunrise.

here is a funny sign on the mailboxes thing at my apartment. i'm at work, and i should be either entering the typewritten microfilm accession record into excel, using a typewriter to create spine labels for DVDs, or working on my research paper. hoo boy!

this post is about music.

i have been doing a terrible job of keeping up with hilariously outdated book of the week, i apologize, i know it's my most popular column. you know, popular. with all those MANY MANY faithful readers i have...
anyways.
one of my favorite features of last.fm, which you should sign up for if you haven't already, is the "love" option [a button you press that has a heart on it, which saves them, but doesn't display them anywhere. it's actually kind of a confusing function]. i use it to mark songs that don't necessarily come to mind when i think of my favorite songs, yet i just, well, love when they come on. it's a way to bookmark them, since i am forever forgetting things i like. to further take advantage of this, i have created a playlist on my itunes called "last.fm loved tracks." it's exactly like it sounds, and i cannot stop listening to it, it's so perfect.
to celebrate i will share some selections from it with you.

08 I Can Not Have Seen The Light

Black angus

the first is a song from magnolia electric co., which i usually have to be in the right mood to listen to. i know i've heard this song many times before, but something caught me recently, and i can't stop listening to it. it's beautiful, has subtle movements, and i really appreciate the sentiment that "no one has to be alright all of the time." it's a truth you just don't often hear [i can think of "everybody hurts" off the top of my head, and that's it....].

the second one is wendy mcneill, who i heard on the radio here in austin, tx, during some befuddling funding drive for canadian radio? i'm pretty sure we don't get canadian radio down here. it's kind of funny--since i'm from metro detroit, which is literally minutes from canada, where we get plenty of canadian radio, it didn't even seem strange to me. and then i remembered that i was in texas. anyways, i was enchanted with her and immediately looked her up when i got home. folks, she plays the accordian, is witty and quirky. fans of curtis eller [um, so then laura, i guess] should enjoy her.

alright. time to blowdry my hair. goodnight.