Thank you everyone... for everything you did for me yesterday. (Especially the dancing. God, the dancing.)

Thanks Amie for the card with the monkeys and JP The Gnome. And the cows.

Thanks Pelowski for getting off work early to come see me... and for making me cry in public. Twice. And holding me while I cried fifteen more times in public.

Thanks Koegel for hanging out with me and trying to keep my spirits up.

Thanks Jim for driving me around.

Thanks Carissa for the free breakfast sandwich.

Thanks Adam for being the first to almost make me cry.

Thanks Clay for being the first to actually make me cry.

Thanks Amanda for keeping me focused.

Thanks Chris for singing Bon Jovi with me. (I know you fucken loved it.)

Thanks Kristen for coming. I just love the hell out of you.

Thanks Matz, Rob, Buegs, Kelly, Christina, Mike, Tony, Fuller, Jason, and Chin for being there for me last night.


But the amount of crying you all saw me do last night was nothing compared to the waterworks that started when I returned home and opened my card from Samantha. It's the most beautiful thing anyone's ever said to me.


And then I woke up this morning to a message to "check outside my door," only to find some stolen Red Star glasses.


Can I just say I have the best friends ever?


Thank you all so very much for making my Duluth experience one-of-a-kind.


I have so much love in my heart for all of you.

As the majority of you know, I am moving away from Duluth.
I am moving very very very very soon.
(What a time for my phone to be on the fritz, huh?)

So I'm peacing out.
It's going to be great. It really is.

But Duluth.

I fell in love with you. It was the most intense love/hate relationship I've ever experienced.

So thank you, Duluth, MN.

Thank you for the music.
Here are five songs that will always and forever remind me of Duluth.
1 - "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" by Wilco.
I hear this song on a jukebox no matter where I am. Luce... RTs... I've heard it at the Red Star... this song follows me around the city.
2 - "Murderer" by Low.
I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard this song. I was nestled comfortably in a plush folding chair in Weber Music Hall between Rob and Franke. Low played this song. And I cried. God did I cry. Every time I hear it, I'm immediately back in that chair between those boys staring intentely at Alan Sparhawk in complete awe.
3 - "13th Chapter" by Crew Jones.
Thanks Crew Jones. I had a great time seeing you guys play all the time. And, I will stand by the fact that every important thing that happened to me in Duluth had something to do with Crew Jones. Especially two of my favorite stories. You'll still hear people screaming "BANJONES" at your shows, this I promise you... but god damn it, if you play it now, I will be rather crushed.
4 - "The Fez" by Steely Dan.
Oh yeah. Starting my sophomore year, there's no way I can associate anything but Megan Koegel's dacing with this song.
5 - "You Give Love A Bad Name" by Bon Jovi.
I will never ever hear this song and not immediately see Muhs and Sammy and their synchronized kick right before the chorus kicks in.
God I love Duluth.

Thank you for the scenery.







Thank you for the food.
I won't forget the amazing times I've had at Luce brunch and the Brewhouse and Sir Benedict's and Louie's Cafe and Amazing Grace and everywhere else.

Thank you for the lessons.
Thank you for the cold.
Thank you for the fun.

But most importantly, thank you for the friendships.
I love you all so deeply.
Thank you for everything.


You know.

Because it's been quite awhile, here is a weekly five, from the land of mountains and Mormons.

(These are direct links.... right-click, save as.)

THE (RECENTLY DISCOVERED) BEST COVERS EVER....... for now.


Red Hot Chili Peppers - Teenager In Love.

I can't stop listening to this song. Everything about this song is... adorable.



Tom Waits - Somwhere (from West Side Story).

Tom Waits really knows how to break my heart.



Al Green - I Want To Hold Your Hand.

Don't hate me. I like this better than the original. Especially the third chorus.



The Who - Hall Of The Mountain King.

I've always liked the original song. I remember learning to play it back when I took piano lessons. The minor melody is so cool, and with Roger Daltrey wailing in the background, it gives it a very creepy feel. (It gets a little weird, but stick with it.)



Marilyn Manson - This Is Halloween.

CREEPY AND AWESOME.


Also, my new hero is Jill Greenberg, photographer extraordinaire. She is responsible for pictures like this:



Yes, I am aware she made babies cry. But still. Look at her artwork and consider forgiving her.

Britney, I'd like to congratulate you on the best decision you've made in nearly three years.

Divorce sucks a lot, but don't worry -- everyone is rooting for you. Did you hear the sigh of relief that echoed across the seas as we all learned of this?

If you properly orchestrate your comeback, the world will welcome you back with open arms. The Prodigal Pop Star returns. It'll be like 1998 all over again.

Hey, you know what would really make it all complete?



Yeah.

Now, Britney, I know that you're scared. I mean, let's face it, you were a mess. A mess. Your idea of romance involved a bag of cheetos. (Is it cliche to say that? Yes. The fact is that it is the TRUTH.) Even your music sucked. I mean, your music was never GREAT, but I will not lie, I owned your first album (come on, I was an eighth grade girl), and I will admit that "Crazy" was a catchy-ass song and that "Toxic" was fucking sweet (and nobody can deny that).

But ever since... well.... THIS:



...well... I mean, I don't mean to rub it in or anything, but you became a joke. A JOKE. A joke. It broke my eighth-grade girl heart.

Remember this?



Look at you!! You are HOT. You are FANTASTIC.

AND NOW?



GOD.

K-Fed ruined you. He RUINED YOU.

Go back to Justin. He's at the top of his game right now (except for Cameron Diaz, who, quite frankly, is nowhere near as attractive as you potentially can be [except for one or two or three photos from her new W spread]) and god damn it, if he can bring sexy back, so can you.

Also, don't let K-Fed worry you. You'll come out on top. And him?



Class all the way.

This is me pre-RHCP.

I didn't take any photos.... so I yoinked someone else's from facebook. (Thanks, unknown friend and fellow superfan who was sitting surprisingly close to my section.) Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the love, the grand majesty, the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Xcel Center.








THE PLAY-BY-PLAY.

They opened with a John/Flea/Chad jam. Then they played the following: "Can't Stop," "Dani California," "Scar Tissue," "Charlie," "Fortune Faded," "Readymade," "BloodSugarSex Magik." Then John busted out "Your Pussy Is Glued To A Building On Fire," which is currently featured on my myspace page. They then played "Snow (Hey Oh)," "Get On Top" (THEY PLAYED "GET ON TOP!!!"), "Stadium Arcadium," "Right On Time," Flea did a solo, then "Don't Forget Me" (I cried during this one specifically), then MOTHERFUCKING "Higher Ground" and "Tell Me Baby." John and Flea started jamming again and slid straight into "Californication," then closed with "By The Way."

Then the encore... oh... the encore. Chad came back out and did a kick-ass drum solo. Then!! "I Could Have Lied" straight into jam. And then... and then... "Give It Away" which kicked ASS. Then Marcel and Omar from the Mars Volta came out, Anthony peaced out, and the five of them jammed for what seems like hours (in the good way).

Hell yeah. Best concert ever.... resulting in:


....the Bro and I, post-RHCP.
Notice how we both cried.

In the next few days, I'm going to want to talk about a lot of things. My concert is tonight, and my mind will be blown. I discovered a sweet new band that I really like. Lots of things are happening, actually. Lots of things.

However, Tuesday is a very important day. The great poet Sean Daley recently told me over a cup of coffee and a myspace bulletin, "I want Bush to go out like a Nixon, not like a Reagan. If we don't at least make a run at it, they'll be naming high schools after him for the next 50 years. Reagan slipped out of Iran Contra and it changed history. Reagan SHOULD have gone out in disgrace like a Nixon. Impeachment comes from the House, indictment comes from the Senate. The Dems are in position to pick up seats to make a legitimate run at impeachment: if they gain control of the House and the Senate, they gain control of all the investigative committees, and we could really see a run at impeachment in late 2007/early 2008. [...] I would like to express to you that Minnesota is SO important. Right now it's looking like Minnesota Democrats will win the open Senate seat, the Governor, the Sec of state, and 4 or 5 of the open House seats. Which would not only help now, but it'd put us in better shape for the Presidential election in 2008."

My father found a blog written by a very smart individual and forwarded it to me. I wanted to share it. It made me laugh and it made me cry. Read, enjoy, get mad, and do something about it.

Why Vote Against Republicans? Because Fuck Them.

America, the good ol' USA, is a country that was brought into existence by groups of terrorists and insurgents aided by foreign powers. Its first rallying document was the Declaration of Independence, a list of reasons why King George III and the British sucked balls. However, no matter what that hand-scrawled Declaration told the colonists, a good many people living in Massachusetts or Maryland could've bottom-lined it for you: "Why revolt against the British? Because fuck them, that's why."

The history of great movements in this nation, of any nation, is a tale of people who are finally, at the end of the day, so fed up with the status quo that all of the rational reasoning mounts and piles up until it all, in essence, comes down to "Fuck them." ("Them" being, of course, whoever the powerful are in a historical moment.) The French Revolution, the American civil rights movement, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, all uprisings of the average person, through the ballot box, the legislative process, or the gun, against those who are dicking them over. Sure, sometimes it doesn't turn out for the best and sometimes things get even worse (see the media-manipulated Republican "revolution" of 1994 with its dunderheaded motto of "Throw the bums out"), but such is the end result of constant, endless disempowerment of the masses, the unending thrum of voices calling wrong what the people know in their guts is right.

Now, even through the deadening fog of Fox "News" rhetoric, multiple jobs, dying pensions, depleting health care, the waterboard effect of credit card debt, force-feedings of fatty foods, soul-killing reality TV, the entire cultural apparatus telling us we must want more and more stuff and shit, the dead-ends of public debate, government-instilled paranoia, dementia masking itself as religious faith, the unsubtle shove towards xenophobic isolation, an antagonistic corporate media, the vicious street-beating death of American intellectual thought, and Bush-worship masked as patriotism, through it all, man, all of it, we have come to this magnificent moment, frightening and exhilarating in its implications, where we, as a majority, are looking at the ruin and waste that surrounds us, piles of shit that we are told are mountains of gold, and we can finally, in this savage season of 2006, at long last come to say, "You know what? Fuck them."

Fuck them for trying to make us believe that America's acts of mass destruction, its bumblings into conflagration and apocalypse, in Iraq are actually just speed bumps, commas, if you will, on the road to a peaceful world of democratic nations bowing down to blow the cock of American hegemony.

Fuck them for holding themselves up as arbiters of morality and when they were confronted with a simple moral equation, they cast their lot with savages and genocidal maniacs. No, not the embryonic stem cell research vote, you backwards ass anti-science fundamentalist fucks. On torture and judicial rights, where even those who proclaimed themselves defenders of the detained and imprisoned ended up dancing like slut marionettes on a puppet pole in the Oval Office when it came down to actually, say, defending the detained and imprisoned.

Fuck them for making Americans fucking hated around the world, as if we're all ex-Nazis or, maybe more accurately, members of Pinochet's Chilean army back in the day, squandering the real triumph of America as a beacon of rights and fairness. However unreal that image was, it's better than being "that big ass country that tortures innocent people."

Fuck them for leaving New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to die, as if somehow those parts of the country were gangrenous toes that could just be cut off.

Fuck them for telling us we're too stupid or traitorous to understand what it is they're doing in trying to re-make the earth in their image, for keeping secrets in the name of their own security while literally and figuratively selling out ours.

Fuck them for lying to us about so goddamn much, about science, about their own policies, about what they actually, really were recorded saying, out of control debt and the melting planet, instead trying to get us to think that, if a couple of guys wanna get married or if some pop singer's tit jumps out of her blouse, Godjeebus will smash the earth with his mighty Bible-club of divine justice.

Fuck them for...well, you know what? Just fuck them.

Fuck them all, all the Republicans in Congress, all members the conservative spooge-bucket brigade, all their corporate masters yanking on their nipple clips and shoving cold cash up their asses for their obeisance, all the liars and sinners and avaricious rats of the evangelical right, and especially all the wads of fuck in the White House. They all had their chance and they fucked it up. So fuck them.

When you walk into the voting booth on Tuesday, no matter where, with that rage burning in you, stab that motherfuckin' punch card, beat the shit out of that Diebold touch screen, and yell, "Fuck them" as you vote them into oblivion.

And if on Wednesday morning it turns out they've dicked us over one more time by hacking the vote, by screwing with the polls, then maybe we've reached a point in this America where it's time to fight or flee.

Click on the picture to see the most god damn ridiculous shit you'll see in awhile.




Kanye... come on. I defend your dramatic, egotistical, diva ass all the time. "Yes," I say, "he gets a little out of control, but have you heard the song 'Get 'Em High'? Have you heard 'Two Words'? Have you heard the 'Diamonds From Sierra Leone' remix? Can you ever get 'Gold Digger' out of your head? He's so good that it doesn't matter."

But for fuck's sake, you've gone too far.

You are a whiny-ass bitch who is NOT seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Sunday night.

Thanks to these three gentlemen, I had a very interesting and enlightening evening.

(...and apparently I hang out with a lot of balding men.)