Still feeling shaky and weak, but generally better today. Well enough to consume some coffee, at any rate, and throw together an obnoxiously upbeat playlist…including the likes of The Flaming Lips, General Public, The Get Up Kids, Le Tigre, Madonna, Manitoba, Metric and Superchunk. This got me revved up enough to search for my passport. We are leaving for Iceland next month, after all. Now, I fully acknowledge that I am a pack-rat of the worst kind. I cling to items with no rhyme or reason, and when it is suggested to me that it is time for a purge, many of these things must be forcibly pried loose from my kung fu death grippe…if at all. So when rooting around the nooks and crannies of my bedroom today, attempting to locate said passport, I came across all sorts of other crap. From the mundane, like ancient Aveda lipsticks, expired condoms, and an unused stick of deodorant (which I promptly threw out, honest). To the more interesting, like letters from my good friend Monica, written when she was in the peace corps in Morocco. And a cheesy little notebook I bought the last time I was in Iceland. And adorable little handbags handed down to me by my grandmother. And the truly odd, from my dear old pack-rat of a Dad. Long before I knew of News of the Weird there he was, scanning the newspapers daily and clipping out whatever articles struck his fancy. These he would save up in little yellow envelopes, and, when one was full, he would entrust it to me. Today I came across one such packet…from the mid-1980s. Many of the articles are just plain depressing. Some are interesting, in that he was following a thread about the ozone layer (circa 1986) and another about the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, while others are just plain quirky. Those are my favorites, of course. A full photoset can be found here.
Bonus: This 404 page made me laugh.
Plus: Apparently the “Amazon Connect” program has been around for a while now, but my personalized weblog or “plog” content just showed up yesterday. Part of me wants to resent the intrusion, but the post was from one of my favorite illustrators, Danny Gregory, and the content seems to differ from what he posts at his Everyday Matters weblog.
And: When the heck is this Angel box set going to come out in the states? It was released in the UK months ago. Grrr.
