Dengue Fever at the El Rey in Los Angeles on August 2nd! If you've never experienced a show of theirs, you're truly missing out and should definitely check this show out!

- Jessica

Well, my grandfather passed away yesterday morning. Although I'd only met him once when I was very young, I remember him being a good man. He would sit on our couch and bounce my little brother on his leg. I'd whine and beg for him to do it to me, and even though I was much bigger than my two year old brother, he'd do it anyway.

My mother loved him with all her being. She hadn't seen him in 11 years, and before that one week it had been 7.

He passed in his sleep, in his home, in his bed. My aunts say that when they found him, he had this look of tranquility on his face, that a slight smile had even formed on his face.

I trust that he is at peace now and that he no longer has to suffer.

Gaaaaaaah guuuurghh maaaaaau baaaaaaaaaashg oof.

The sounds of my frustration are BOOMING today.

Nick Melikian, congratulations! You are the biggest dickhead I know.

So. Tomorrow is the day of romance.
How momentous.

I don't have a valentine this year. Not even a postal one.

Please call me. Write me. Hug me or shake my hand, give me a pat on the back or a kick in the shin. Remind me that we are in each other's lives.

I feel like I have been disconnected from a whole lot.

- I've decided that my new favorite television channel is BBC because they get away with so much juice.
- My Tilly and The Wall ticket came in the mail two days ago so come the 29th, I will throw on my dancing shoes and a flashy little get up and dance the night away with "Escondido Nick."
- The man that I am so deeply intrigued with is now dating a cute little thing and I can't help but want to spit on her DIY clothing.
- I know I saw somewhere that Devendra Banhart was playing a show in Los Angeles in the upcoming months but now I can't track it down and that's making me feel like a) a mad woman and b) a fantasist.

And if one more guy decides that he's going to "just drive around" with me and then park in a spot hidden away in the hills near my house "for the view," play whiny Dallas Green and/or Explosions in the Sky crap and then try and shove his tongue down my throat and make me feel his pathetic little hard on through his jeans stained with his premature ejaculate I will forever turn on the male species. I mean really, c'mon.

Last night I dreamt of setting myself on fire, it being okay. This is probably due to my current reading, "Telling Tales," which is a compilation of authors' (those who wanted to contribute to the book, whose profits all go to an HIV fund in Africa, including Woody Allen, Hanif Kureishi, Claudio Magris, and Salman Rushie) best works. Specifically I was reading Rushie's "The Firebird's Nest" when the subject of 'female combustibility' came up, in a rather sarcastic way too. "They just burn too easily, what's to be done about it? Turn your back and they're alight." It made me laugh, how this story went on and on about fiery women and rainmaker men. In the end, the woman comes out on top. Naturally. ;]

This afternoon a beautiful boy who looked a lot like Andy from Brady Sails walked past the building where I work and I haven't been able to stop thinking about him since, hah. At the cost of sounding like an idiot, I'll say that I have a tendency to fall in love with people I don't even know. I will see someone on the street and instantly create these elaborate stories about them and their lives in my head and sometimes I'll take it so far to the point that I'll begin to question the validity of my stories, almost as if I wanted them to be true, they could be. Not sounding as strange, I think I do this to make my life somewhat exciting, as nothing ever happens, especially at work.


He looked like this and I'm still curious as to why he kept pacing the span of the building. I'm thinking maybe it wasn't so much pacing as it was looking for something, maybe someone? I'm secretly hoping he'll come back, maybe even be so inclined to take a step into the open door of the building and ask why there are so many wild children running around and no one stopping them.

Every year around this time I start thinking about who I would like to have as my certain kind of "postal valentine," as I'd like to call it. There's not much to explain because the name says it all, it's a "sweetheart" who, if different circumstances and distance were not an issue, I would like to be with on Valentine's day. We'll mail each other what ever we feel is appropriate and the idea behind it is knowing that someone is thinking about you and would like to be with you, whether romantically or not, that's not important. I've had postal valentines from as far as England to as close as San Francisco. There's so many people I wish could be here with me on Valentine's day, or any day really, but can't be, so I'm not sure what I'll do this year.

Tomorrow I am going to go see "Teeth." Basic storyline: Girl dealing with her Vagina Dentata, in other words, "vaginal teeth." The trailer looks laughable, reviews claim otherwise, I will have a full critique tomorrow night.

I think that if there's one thing that's really wrong about me, just entirely and inexcusably flawed, it would be the way I express emotion and internally react to things.

I feel like I have no grip on my emotions. When they should be triggered, I couldn't be more indifferent. When I should be spilling apathy out of my ears, I couldn't be more expressive, whether positively or negatively.

Should I really be rushing home to jump into the shower and shave my legs and dig out a pretty dress from my closet and repaint my finger nails and blow dry my hair and make sure I smell nice and really just go out of my way to make sure that I can leave a lasting impression for someone whom I don't know nearly as well as I would like to and not to mention, is leaving in a day? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with this other person because there isn't. I'M the crazy one who expects people to be ready for anything at any given time and in a perfect world, that's how it would go.

In a perfect world, I would walk over to the lone man in the bookstore and introduce myself and he would do the same and there we would be. Two people together, not just two strangers at opposite sides of the room. In a perfect world, if I wanted to hop on a greyhound to North Dakota with someone I didn't really know all that well, simply because it would give us hours and hours and hours and hours to talk, there they'd be, ready to go. In a perfect world things would happen, something my life has been lacking: the do, the don't, the happenings, the awkward situations, the intimate relations, the explosive arguments, the makeup sex, just everything. But, of course, when something does happen, even the smallest thing, LO AND BEHOLD, it slips right out of my hands. I guess that's a bit presumptuous, though. I mean, who's to say I even had it to begin with (actually, I was very far from that)? This is just the unfortunate reality of mi vita (not so bella).

I'd be lying if I said I weren't partially relieved that I won't have to go through the whole 'goodbye' bit, though. Things can be left how they were and that awful parting of two people (or at least in my perspective, it's pretty icky) never has to happen, at least not directly. There's no worse feeling than having to walk away from someone or something that you know you will never have.

I could just be mad that no one's going to see how cute I look right now. Yeah, that's probably it.