Sweetney

beck+jackwhite+dustbrothers = R A D.

For his eighth studio album, Mr Beck Hansen has confirmed he’s been hard at work in the studio with the cream of Detroit and one half of the White Stripes, Jack White. The diminutive hiphoprockaltcountryfunkster has confirmed that he’s already recorded one track with White, although currently it’s untitled and still requires a little more work. However, Beck plans to finish it in time for the October release of the record.

Beck’s publicist has confirmed that, in addition to finishing the Jack White track, Beck intends to put the finishing touches to the LP with help from producers the Dust Brothers over the coming weeks.

[from xfm UK]

and the award for bad mother of the year goes to....

after my daughter's midday nap today, i decided to let her walk with me down our stairs to the first floor while holding my hand. at the top the the stairs she slipped -- or something; it all happened so fast i really have no clear sense of what precisely went wrong -- and fell, head over heels, down about 8 wooden stairs to a landing about halfway down the staircase. i don't think i can adequately articulate my absolute feeling of crushing terror at that moment. i was screaming, yet completely paralyzed, and before she hit the landing i'd already envisioned her neck having snapped, thrown myself into the incomplete reality that she was dead or paralyzed. seeing her body loosely folding over itself again and again before she came to rest, hearing the wooden thunk thunk thunk that each impact between her body and the stairs made seemed utterly unreal. this cannot be happening.

when i reached her seconds later she was crying -- more scared than hurt -- and i clutched at her with my shaking hands, nestled her into my body, squeezed her limbs to make sure nothing had broken, kissed her head again and again. she cried for only a few minutes, and then eased back into her normal self rapidly, asking for crackers and showing me her little people. i, on the other hand, did not recover. i spent the remainder of the afternoon -- a good 3 hours -- trying to ride out a panic attack, alternately hyperventilating/sobbing at our dining room table with my head resting on it, and laying flat on my back on the couch with a pillow covering my eyes. this while M_ watched every goddamn show on noggin this afternoon. i could not pull myself out of it. intellectually i understand the reality that, well, these things happen. more things like this will happen in the future. and i know that she's okay, no harm done, and that to fixate on such a thing is pointless self-torture. but i was stuck somehow back in that moment of the fall -- a tape loop playing and replaying in my mind's eye -- and i couldn't make it stop, despite all my attempts at rationalizing.

so i ate a pop tart, a bowl of cereal, some spaghetti, and a handy-sized package of peanut butter crackers. carbs=comfort.

why does the world have to be so hard and angular?

anyway, here she is, soapy and adorable and remarkably alive, despite my best efforts.

[click to enlarge]

could i love will ferrell more?

the answer, my friends, is a resounding YES.

the dems noM_ted the wrong dude.

does barack obama have a fan club?

what do you think his favorite color is?

do you think, ya know, he'd like me and stuff?

sigh.

the state of my sense of humor: set to low-brow.

oh how i laff and laff and laff....

a post about nothing [note: not as funny as a seinfeld episode. okay, *maybe* its as funny as the series finale, but that's not saying much, and anyway i make no promises.]

i've been kind of depressed lately -- that sort of inexplicable, without cause or reason type of malaise that's really boring to talk about, as there's nothing to really talk about about it. i'm bummed. finis.

what *is* interesting, however, is how the mind cleverly interprets the rest of the world as existing in a similar state of abjection when one is depressed. or maybe i'm just hyper-egocentric in a way no one else is. but for the past several days it has appeared to me that everyone else is down in the doldrums with me, aimlessly punching the clock of life, sensing the futility of every lame gesture toward meaning, significance, accomplishment. the world becomes my mirror. that, or i actually have the ability to change the emotional weather of the entire populace with my superhuman extrasensory x-powers. and how cool would THAT be?

and now for something completely different: i'm watching the democratic national convention on CNN and two questions immediately come to mind:
1. when is larry king going to die?
and 2. can jimmy carter* run for president again? [alternately, i'd take bill clinton again in a heartbeat. thanks.]

i'll end with a plea to all who read this: i've been listening to the shins "chutes too narrow" for, like, the past 10 months non-stop. and, while i [obvs] love it, i have absorbed every nuance of every song on that album to the point where i can play it at will *in my mind.* thus i am in need of a new musical obsession. suggestions? i have the new wilco, that modest mouse thingy -- even the new morrissey, fer crissakes. yet the vortex-like pull of CTN is irresistable. is anything out there that comes even close?

*NOBEL FUCKING PEACE PRIZE WINNER jimmy carter, dogg!

what you've missed.

since our last episode:

1. in my ever expanding effort to become more and more grandma-like (and no, that's not ageist! shut up!), i have just discovered that i am, in fact, lactose intolerant. or dairy is me intolerant. in any case, this realization explains the *searing, gut-wrenching, gassy (sorry, tmi) digestive pain* i've been having daily for, oh, the past 6 months.

oh, have i mentioned i have a wee fear of those in the medical profession?

2. my daughter's illness lasted a friggin eternity. she's fine now, but i'm still in recovery from it. btw, her new favorite words include: "cool", "quack", "go", "pool", "yay" and/or "yeah" and "more" -- which really about covers all you need to communicate in life, no? additionally, she loves the shins song "gone for good" and rocks out to it regularly, because she's my daughter, natch.

3. i don't care what anyone says -- this past sunday's Six Feet Under was brilliantly cringe-producing.

4. lots of boring domestic stuff going on here per usual, like: oooh! new porch and entry light fixtures! oooh!

5. someone somewhere out there must keep me away from ebay. before its too late.

5. M. Night Shaymalyn's The Village is already scaring the crap out of me, and it hasn't even been released yet (i *dare* you to watch the trailer, tough guy).

6. the husband guy has been working. a lot.

and so forth. lather, rinse, repeat.

follow-up to my last post:

Leaves of Grass sold like gothcakes.

somebody get this kid a pulitzer.

sadly, this reminds me of some of my college students...

el nino is spanish....like all things spanish, it is dangerous.

The Shining in 30 seconds, reenacted by bunnies.

redrum! redrum!

when baby's not happy, nobody's happy.

so my daughter has been sick since last thursday (which explains thursday's post regarding her seemingly irrational behavior -- a foreshadowing of my present doom), and i'm really really burnt on being the nursemaid to a feverish, incredibly crabby and irrational toddler. this is something no parent fully divulges to you nonparents out there: how indescribably fucked-up and static your world becomes when your child gets sick. how everything gets put on hold, how you will get no rest because he/she cannot rest, how your child's upset bodily state spreads its pestilent tentacles out into every waking moment (and many sleeping ones as well). and no matter how much you love your kid, you are so tied to them -- physically and emotionally -- that the experience becomes both oppressively claustrophobic and, inevitably, boring as shit.

the upshot is that i've basically been trapped in our house for the past 5 days, discounting two trips to the pediatrician. i've had to cancel a playgroup, been unable to run errands, or do much of anything, really. admittedly, i *could* take her out at this point, since she couldn't possibly be infectious anymore, but if you could SEE her, you'd understand why i hesitate. part of the special joy of having the particular virus she has is that it produces a flaming red rash visually akin to some combination of heat rash and chicken pox (apparently this is a common dermatological reaction in toddlers to certain viruses). she is, well, spotty. i can just imagine the piercing, shaming looks i'd receive at the market, the mothers and children scurrying to escape the plague my daughter embodies....and who could blame them, since she looks like the zombiefied poster child for some obscure, unpronounceable pox. but she's still cute, goddammit!

so i'm biding my time, reading perfect sound forever: the story of pavement, learning more about the band than a healthy mind needs to know. i also have cnn on, but with the sound turned way down, as if to just serve as a visual reminder that, indeed, there *is* a world out there filled with adults who talk about things other than medicine dosing schedules and the consistency of sick child poo.

neither a dragon nor zombie..hmm...sounds appealing...

best.personal.ad.ever.

"You should like words, science, and video games. But you shouldn't be ugly either. Or male. Or a zombie dragon, powerful in life, unstoppable in death."

the diagrams/illustrations are priceless.

moore kicks ass AND takes names.

michael moore publishes *voluminous* notes backing up content of Fahrenheit 9/11 on his website.

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more courtney love drama.

"today is my birthday and I had an abortion," a source quoted Love as telling cops.

i guess all of this begs the question: why is she not hospitalized at this point? clearly her behavior over the past year indicates she's not mentally well...

at first it was all kind of amusing. now its just sad.

afraid of myself

i posted a link to this article (originally from the NYT magazine a couple weeks back) in my livejournal (abandoned in favor of this blog), and was reminded of its eloquence today after reading the current post on dooce.com (which you should read regularly, if you don't already).

been there? yep, me too.

say, where can you get those 'mother's little helpers' anyway?

sometimes it seems to me that my daughter wakes up and decides: well, we had a pretty good day yesterday. i turned the whining down a couple notches for most of the day. i actually ate some pasta and half a banana, succumbing to mama's will over my usually demanded fare of processed goldfish crackers and fruit snacks. yep, overall yesterday was a winner. thus today EVERYONE WILL PAY.

from moment one this morning she was 'off'. and by 'off' i mean: throwing food, flopping on the floor like a demented fish (that's tantruming, not seizuring, for all of you nonparents out there), whining incessantly, refusing all food not fortified with profane amounts of preservatives and unnatural coloring, ripping toys from other children's hands and screaming and crying when i made her give them back... its only 2:30 and i'm fucking exhausted. why aren't we incredibly wealthy so i can hire some sweet, patient nanny-type to come take over on days like today when i'm ready to cart her back to the hospital, claiming i got a defective one and can i please exchange her for another?

for the moment she naps. think slipping a very light dosage of barbituates into her bottle might be okay? ya know, just this once?

michael moore on the daily show.

here.

btw, michael moore + jon stewart = my own personal heaven.

first VH1 commentator, now this.

listen to Juliette [Lewis] & The Licks here.

definitely going for a pj harveyesque kinda vibe.

kerry/edwards

yeah, okay. sure. whatever. where do i sign?

let's just hope the dems don't manage to fuck THIS ONE up. again.

i have gmail.

a free gmail address to the first person to comment! (i only have one invite left.)

alternately, you could hit ebay and pay $2K for antoniobanderas@gmail.com

crappin' you negative.

nothing to do when you're trapped in a vacancy.

today, which is a tuesday, is my day of the week to have a morning without M_. this allows me to remain sane. well, sort of sane, at least. our friends joel & angela have a daughter, R_, who is approximately the same age as M_, so joel (who is a stay at home papa -- and how fabulous is *that*?) and i conspired to do a baby-exchange twice a week so we each get a morning off. needless to say, this is rad.

and one of the best parts of the whole deal is the moment when i get to walk out the door, looking back to see joel -- who incidentally is a large black man with dreadlocks down to his collarbones -- sitting on the floor between two toddlers, helping them with their crayon drawings while sesame street hums warmly in the background.

it warms the very cockles of my cold, cold heart.

the problem is, i have no idea what to do with this time. quite honestly, i am no longer used to having what unbabied folk casually refer to as "free time." oh sure, there's been time when M_ was asleep -- a sort of babied-person's equivalent of free time -- but this was invariably filled with laundry, cleaning, dishes, and the like. god, remember back when you actually had the audacity to be BORED? that near-mythic time when you could leave the house whenever you wanted, get drunk during the day, spend entire afternoons crafting too-well-thought-out mix tapes, and generally be oh so deliciously unfettered and irresponsible? [weeps]

now i'm torn between what i *should* be doing with this time -- namely the boring above-listed litany of chores -- and what i'd *like* to be doing, which would include things like drinking 3 pots of coffee while chainsmoking, watching atrociously bad talk shows (maury! the view!), and trolling internet sites whose content is devoted solely to deconstructing important issues like britney spears's most recent engagement fiasco and which celebrities are suspected of: a) cocaine addiction, b) an eating disorder, or c) plastic surgery of some sort. bottom of the barrel? why, i haven't yet begun to scrape it!

[pauses for a moment to attend to Regis & Kathy Lee, and wonder at the visage of Jeff Bridges -- you mean he's still ALIVE??}

alright alright, i best actually do something productive so as to not compound my inherent mama guilt. that laundry ain't gonna do itself. sadly.

the CDC proudly presents:

infectious disease trading cards! including hits such as "Recreational Water Illness" and "Rabies"!

pairs nicely with giant microbes!

[dies]

365 days project.

a new mp3 a day, free to download, from a collection of "outsider" musicians.

some really amazing stuff to check out.

file under: failure loves company

dean, nader to debate.

awesomeness.

interactive alice & wonderland (from the pop-up book by j.otto seibold of mr. lunch fame).

my day is made.

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