Thao With the Get Down Stay Down

Yeah, heard a lot about her via the Kill Rock Stars pipeline. People kept mentioning what an amazing guitar player she was, so I avoided listening to her because I pretty much hate good guitar players.

Well, I caught half a song on the radio last night and thought I was wrong. I liked it.

Then I visited The Hype Machine today. Two songs in, I was right at the start. It's not even the guitar playing that turned me off, she just sings like Cat Power and I hate Chan Marshall's voice too. Yawn. Do we need another Cat Power?

Maybe I got the wrong song when the DJ was backannouncing?

What is important here is my fancy new Droid phone and the ability to listen to WPRB Princeton in my car in Brooklyn. That is a dream come true and makes my life more awesome, even if WPRB plays some songs I don't love.

Car Feature

Cars need a "waiting in car" feature so the damn alarm doesn't go off everytime you leave grandma in the car for a minute.

My friend wanted to take a nap because we were up way too late last night, but I had to rescue him when the alarm went off when he woke up and tried to leave. I realize this is a security feature, but I'm talking about a button when you do leave someone in the car that is good for say, one hour of escape time without setting off the alarm. Okay?

I saw an ad for Grand Theft Auto The Lost and the Damned Today on the side of a bus in Brooklyn and the junkie girl had a green jacket with a K shield on it except it said L and i can't find her picture on the internets. Seriously, either they pulled the character or NO ONE has managed to put her picture on the internet yet. She's a junkie, I think her name is Brenda. I'm going to have to go home and get my camera with a flash and sit at the bus station tonight until I get a picture.

Got it:

Buying Organic "See which of the country's largest food producers are behind your favorite organic snacks."

Geez, would this send Olympia into a tizzy or what? I'm not even going to preach about buying local...first I want EVERYONE to go get allergy tested and then decided how and what you're going to eat.

On that note, I made wheat free pizza last night and it withstood the "still yummy cold for breakfast" test. I think I overheated the milk-water the yeast was in because I couldn't get it to rise. I used Barry Farm's wheat free baking mix which smelled a little more beany than it tasted. We'll see how my tummy feels today, I am always suspect of eating too many garbanzos.

Dahlias

100_1104, originally uploaded by Courtoly.

An impulse buy at Sister's Hardware in Brooklyn. Look how pretty. Gorgeous! PINK!

So it's true eMusic is retiring my wonderful 90 downloads every 30 days for $19.99 plan and I'm only going to get 50 downloads now. Truth is, I was really only listening to 1/2 of my downloads even if I got a bunch of random stuff at the end of the month, and that's my first principle of how people start to be sucky music consumers (downloading more than one can listen to).

BUT the good news is some albums that are longer than 12 tracks are going to just be a full album download for 12 credits. I honestly think that could up my downloads to 90 a month anyway because so many albums I get are 30 tracks long and sometimes I skip the short ones to save my downloads. So that's a nice concession, depending on what albums it's available for.

gardening is so fucking expensive. despite successful crops and an abundance of small creatures (actually, Sharpie size slugs, not small) my friends have me completely paranoid about pollution. so now I've got to spend at least $135 or more having the soil tested. Which sucks because I could just go on with life, eating my vegetables and being happy...or I can spend that money and find out I don't want to eat my vegetables and have been wasting all this time. I feel like crap. I put so much work into the garden and I feel like half the people I know are totally freaked out about the soil.

Here is the most popular article I found online. Families in toxic waste scare told not to eat garden vegetables. I'd like to point out that these levels were so high some plants were dying and lots of people were getting sick. I'm way more scared about the plastic we use (I rarely microwave plastic anymore, just the coverings on tv dinners and sometimes when making squash with saran wrap).

I'm in denial, but I think it's far more important to EAT YOUR VEGETABLES. Still, I'm probably going to get the soil tested.

So, anyone know someone who got sick from pollutants in their garden? It seems like e-coli and the like are much more dangerous.

Also, this area historically was residential and full of breweries. There may have been some industrial work going on here, and there is plenty in Brooklyn to have migrated via water and air to other areas...but it's not Greenpoint sitting on a giant oil slick or anything.

Sometimes I'm just asking to be humbled. Years of saying people shouldn't order books from Amazon and should support their local bookstores and what happens? I end up with a wheat allergy and find Amazon has the BEST selection of breads and other foods for my tummy. Some stuff I can find locally, but by locally I mean "in random natural food bodegas at 1AM when I've been drinking and don't notice I just paid $7 for a frozen dinner that should be $5 if I went through Fresh Direct". So I'm really excited to have my Annie's Rice Pasta and Cheese

Zee garden looks good. I put in corn and it popped right up. The lettuce and forget me nots I have no idea. I trust the dahlias and garlic are doing their thing underground.

And the damn SF Popfest MySpace page won't load but I'll be there.