Monthly Archives: January 2007

Today’s stress factors:

1. I have another unpaid parking ticket I didn’t even know about –
and now it is up to a $100 fine for being unpaid. AND past the
timeframe for contention. I am contesting it anyways, but bloody
hell! I haven’t even received a verdict on the $335 fine I contested
in October – and THAT was for parking in a handicapped spot that was
so coated in dirt and stray paint smears that I couldn’t tell it was
restricted when I parked at night.

2. The Canadian government is messing with some people’s citizenships, and even
though I was born IN CANADA after the law causing the problem changed
in 1977, I’m still worried enough to be applying for a passport to be
sure. Some native-born Canadians are falling through loopholes, and
my BC birth certificate may not be enough.

EDIT: I found this on the Canadian government’s site:

Persons who are citizens

(a) the person was born in Canada after February 14, 1977;

That was all I needed to know!

However, these are all surface stresses. These are little things –
OK, expensive things – but in the bigger picture, so many things are
right that I can Zen them out. I’m upset with myself for being
careless enough to cost $435 in parking tickets…but they’re not
definite charges yet, and even if they are, I can afford it without
missing meals. Mostly, I’m upset with myself for getting so MANY
parking tickets, because if these charges go through, it will be $600
total for 2006.

And the real reason I’m upset is because these tickets seem to be part
of a pattern, a pattern in which I basically burn money without really
paying attention, and a pattern in which I’m careless with tickets,
library fines, credit card interest – things I shouldn’t be paying,
money that I’ve lost for no reason. That’s what really upsets me –
that it’s part of a pattern, that it affects my saving abilities.
That I haven’t learned the lessons of being more careful when parking,
and I should just take my bike more to avoid the risk. That I’m not
paying enough attention, that I can’t save money, that this is why I
never seem to put much away despite having a decent-paying job and a
low-cost lifestyle. After all, what’s the point of bringing lunches,
taking coffee in go-cups, using the library for books and DVDs, if I’m
just going to wipe out a year’s worth of small savings with a couple
parking tickets?

So now that I’m a bit calmer from thinking through everything, I
realize, if this is the best I can do to worry about, I’m pretty set.
2007 will be a ticket free year if it kills me, dammit. And while I’m
still upset over the possibility of paying the old tickets, I can’t
worry about it anymore. I’ll just have to pay it, accept it, move on,
and try to be more careful. This is actually pretty accomplishable.
Is that even a word?

Last night, Paul and I went to the Knitting Factory to see the Cruxshadows. It was a cybergoth evening, with a couple of other power noise/synth bands opening. Specifically, Dancing Ferret artists Ego Likeness, and fellow Canadian Ayria.

However, although I don’t mind Ego Likeness, I’m not a huge fan, and I saw Ayria at Bats Day last summer, so we only just showed up in time for the headlining band. Who were supposed to go on at 10:30 and actually started on time. We walked into a venue that actually had breathing room (unlike the Covenant show in October, when it was packed solid) and I was confused. I heard Cruxshadows, but all I saw was a handful of hot cybergoth girls on stage, and I was wondering if Ayria had acquired a coterie. Then I realized that Ayria would never have a live violinist, and I spotted Rogue, in the audience, singing into a headset, and realized that this was indeed the band we had come to see.

Let me back up for those of you who are not familiar with the band in question. The Cruxshadows are a hybrid of romantigoth and cybergoth, a noise/EBM band with a live, Celtic influenced violinist, and lyrics that reference classical mythology. Hence, dark music, drum machines, and a layer of classical over it that makes them popular with a wide range of goths. The sound has been spun off and influential on other bands – I think of The Last Dance as being in the same family of goth music as the Cruxshadows. But it works, and it’s actually unique, and I like it a lot. It doesn’t stop me from mocking the live show, like when Rogue put on cyber goggles, and I turned to Paul and yelled, “ZE GOGGLES, ZEY DO NOZZING!”, but I love the overlay of fiddle over the cyber.

And it’s a good live show. The band has dancers, which I have actually never ever seen in a live goth band. They were singer-dancers, in headsets, which combined with the male lead singer’s, made it look like the antithesis of a stadium show. I associate those headsets with, say, a JT or a Britney, and this strange show, in a small dark club in Hollywood, was what I imagine fans of those shows would picture a concert in Hell as being like. It gave Rogue the freedom to leap in and out of the audience though, and to stomp on stage, and grab hands, and motion for the crowd to move. And he did a good job of it, and was obviously happy (if exhausted) to be singing. I can only imagine what it would be like to tour like that, in buses and on low budgets, for fifteen years, and to have to take strength from the devotion and enjoyment of the fans that come out to small dark clubs – but this band thrives on exactly that. And while I’m not big on goth cheerleader dancing at a show, the violinist was as active as the singer in showing off, in dramatizing her notes and playing, on emphasizing her parts in the music. They were into it.

A lot of the songs were off the new album, which I didn’t even know was coming out. I knew that the new single (“Sophia”) had made it to #7 on the Billboard Hot Singles, and actually made it to #1 on the Hot Dance Singles chart, but I didn’t really register that there was a whole new CD. There were a handful of classics, especially at the encore. After playing most of the new album, and a few tracks off “Ethernaut”, the encore was “Dragonfly”, and “Marilyn, My Bitterness”. And I admit, this was another part of the show I wasn’t crazy about, where Rogue started pulling fans onstage during the guitar solo. Suddenly, all these teenagers were up on stage, and at the end, they were dancing and singing along, and all I could think of was School of Rock or some other heartwarming show. Again, a heartwarming show set in someone’s idea of Hell, but seeing the lead singer with his arms around fans who clearly adored him, swaying back and forth and happily singing “MARILYN, MY BITTERNESS” at the top of their lungs, was just a little too surreal – and we left before the rush to get out was too bad.

So that was it – first concert of 2007. Here’s hoping there’s many more this year to follow.

http://www.seattlest.com/archives/2007/01/17/set_your_tivo_now_diamond_age_coming_to_scifi.php

Clooney is making “Diamond Age”.

Hopefully, he won’t produce anything as bad as “Wizard of Earthsea”,
’cause I hate trusting SciFi with loved books after that debacle.

I realized a few things today:

1) I have not been updating my blog at all lately. That’s what that
weird itchy feeling is: the desire to write.

2) I have not been reading my FRIENDS’ blogs. Which is just
inexcusable. I’ve been reading a lot of books instead, because those
didn’t require functioning internet (which I was deprived of at home
for ALMOST TWO WEEKS)

3) Speaking of that, I’ve read five full length library books so far
this year, according to my posts of 50bookchallenge. They
are: