Daily Routines

I am a person who owns aluminum foil, plastic wrap, Tupperware. I have a blender, a whisk, napkins, plate sets. I butter toast in the morning.

I am someone with a newspaper subscription. I own a TV. I have a number of desks.

I am a man with a mirror in every room, and a sliding glass door to the patio area where the barbeque sits, where the lawn furniture resides next to the potted plants on plant stands, next to the orange wire temporary fence that keeps my dog off my lawn.

I go grocery shopping.

I pick up the mail.

I have two telephones.

I drink water from a metal bottle. I wear shorts to bed. I take showers an wipe the mist from the mirror before I comb my hair.

I am a guy with Internet access.

I chew on pens.

I take out the garbage.

I commute to work, and I pass, each morning, the white cross with hung flowers, next to the traffic light, the exact spot where the man died one morning, in the fog, next to his utility truck, in the field that waits for tract housing, across from the parking lot in front of the strip mall.

And I am a person who owns aluminum foil.

Guest Blogger Eleanor's Top Music of 2013

Hello, my name is Eleanor, and I am almost three months old. I enjoy steady beats, tinny guitars, subaudible bass, and repetition. What follows is a list of my favorite music from 2013. Please forgive me if the albums included in this list were not new in 2013. As I was recently born, all music is new music to me. Also, I do not yet understand the concept of time.

The Ramones, It's Alive
Over the 28 songs in the 53 minutes of this album, Tommy Ramone's relentless beat is only interrupted for a few seconds of soothing white noise from the crowd. Endlessly bounce-able and catchy, with a guitar buzz that can drown out any sudden sense of terror. One star. (I cannot count past one.)

Shabazz Palaces, Black Up
Like heartbeat pulses under the ocean, the arrhythmetic beats of (ex) Butterfly and friend are better than any pacifier. I swear one of the tracks features a baby. I try to talk to it.

Kanye West, "Blood On The Leaves"
The only thing that could make this song even more perfect is if the lyric went, "I came out of your bodies."

My Bloody Valentine, mbv
About every two hours, I get ridiculously tired. One of the best things to sleep to is white noise. My parents would try to soothe me with disc after disc of hipster lullabies (Black Sabbath songs played on music box-like instruments? Give me a break.), and I would scream and scream. Then the 5 disc changer would rotate to the last CD, and mbv's other-worldly, reverb-drenched chords would wash over the living room and transport me to night-night land.

Wire, Pink Flag
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone's like, "The first three Wire albums are untouchable." And don't get me wrong, 154 and Chairs Missing are good albums. I mean, they're fine. But I'll take the tension of a hook-heavy, uptempo, sub-one minute rock song over the tension of a meandering, chorus-pedal-drenched "art" piece any day. But that's just me. I've hardly even existed.

My father's acoustic rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"
My dad does not play the guitar well. After about 5 minutes of him trying to figure out the chords to some god-awful Neil Young song, I start bawling. (I would say, "Tim, this is pretty bad. You should practice before you perform in front of an audience," but I cannot say words.) Then, he clumsily plucks out the melody to "Twinkle" and it is at least tolerable to listen to. By lowering the bar for himself, he was able to leap on to this list.

Parquet Courts, Light Up Gold
I mean, come ON. This album was MADE for babies. Steady, unchanging beat throughout? Check. Single string guitar melodies? Got those. A singer who sounds like a rambling lunatic a la Shel Silverstein reading his own poetry ? Yup. I listen every day.

Well, that's pretty much every album and/or song I have ever heard. Ga-ga goo-goo.

You're going to make me brown?

Those at the highest levels surround themselves with murderers, all with a languid swagger, a drawling patois.

At the table they lean back in chairs, sleeves rolled, smirking at the death on the screen.

Xerox Your Zeal

A
broken
camera
drained
everything
from
Gram's
head--

I
just
know
Lucy
must've...

No.

Quit
rehashing
such
thoughtless,
underhanded,
venomous
whispers.

Xerox
your
zeal.