Are you saying that everyone who owns a bike store is a lesbian?

'You should not rub yourself with radioactive material.'

-Mr. Z

In the spirit of the last post about hair (hell, I could have a whole blog about hair. Oh, man. Oh man oh man oh man. That would be the best blog ever. I would read it every day. I wonder if it exists), I feel I have to take this other picture I stole from the mother internet and offer it once again up into her loving arms.

What is this (thing called love)?

Found in the notebook. Haven't the foggiest. It's like brain leakage.

Imagine that you're sitting in a little room.
And imagine that you have the power to stop all these nightmares with the pull of a single lever...but you do not pull the lever.

I think what I was getting at, actually, was that sometimes a good story needs someone to make a surprising decision at the moment of climax (yes, that is the appropriate term. I'm trying to be serious here people), a strange decision -- perhaps the 'wrong' decision. Or it could have had something to do with the fact that I had been sitting in the airport in Munich for three hours, and it was something like five in the morning Turkish time. Whichever.

I was going to end that post there, but I think I really have to share with all my latest musical obsession. No, not Kraftwerk. I'm talking about one of the foremost rockers of the modern era, the heart and soul of the ridiculously popular band called Radiohead (which I've actually already mentioned like three times on this blog. Damn I'm a nerd): Johnny Greenwood's hair.

I want this. So badly. It's entirely Ariel's responsibility to make sure I never get my hair styled (styled?) this way. The world is safe only so long as she is the one person with short black hair in the group.

However, no one is preventing me from morphing into one of these guys:

And, I mean, it's not like they're the only 70s scandinavian band with supernatural hairstyles and outfits from outer space. (Although I admit a particular fondness for those pants.) No, what kills me about this is Erik the Red in the corner there. I've only seen that expression once before in my life, and it was on a muppet.

It's all the fault of the dream.

As I Came Through The Desert

Written by James Thomson
From The City of Dreadful Night

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: All was black,
In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
A brooding hush without a stir or note,
The air so thick it clotted in my throat;
And thus for hours; then some enormous things
Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire
Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;
The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath
Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;
Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold
Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,
That hillock burning with a brazen glare;
Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow
Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;
A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell
For Devil’s roll-call and some fête of Hell:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Meteors ran
And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;
The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,
The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth’s fixed frame;
The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged
And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Air once more,
And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;
Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,
The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;
White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;
The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:
And I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: On the left
The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;
There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,
A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;
Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,
And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:
Still I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: From the right
A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;
A woman with a red lamp in her hand,
Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;
O desolation moving with such grace!
O anguish with such beauty in thy face!
I fell as on my bier,
Hope travailed with such fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: I was twain,
Two selves distinct that cannot join again;
One stood apart and knew but could not stir,
And watched the other stark in swoon and her;
And she came on, and never turned aside,
Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:
And as she came more near
My soul grew mad with fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Hell is mild
And piteous matched with that accursèd wild;
A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,
A broad blackband ran down her snow-white shroud;
That lamp she held was her own burning heart,
Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart:
The mystery was clear;
Mad rage had swallowed fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: By the sea
She knelt and bent above that senseless me;
Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,
She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair;
She murmured words of pity, love, and woe,
She heeded not the level rushing flow:
And mad with rage and fear,
I stood stonebound so near.

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: When the tide
Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,
She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne
Away, and this vile me was left forlorn;
I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart,
Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:
They love; their doom is drear,
Yet they nor hope nor fear;
But I, what do I here?

I love this poem so much.

I promise this is for real.

We all love it when people's names match them far too well. Such as that guy there, David Bird, who used to do the ornithology column in the Gazette and maybe still does. But nothing comes close to my mother's picks, drawn from personal experience, of the worst possible names a doctor can have. The worst possible names to hear over the intercom. The worst possible names to read on the door before you walk in for your appointment.

Dr. Deth and Dr. Grief.

First driving lesson was yesterday. It would have been amusing to watch. And...Radiohead in three. (Which hasn't really sunk in yet, seeing as I'd sort of given up on it.)

You can never be the person you were before.