Reminds you of your youth: "The Things We Do For Love," 10cc -- the first song I remember hearing over and over on WLS AM when I was ... oh, hell, seven, I think? Had to be. I remember hearing it while driving through the cemetery with my mom on our way to visit Grandma's grave.
Gives you the chills: "Stripped (live version)," Depeche Mode -- the beginning of that song, the way it builds momentum? Sweet. Find it on the "Say Anything" soundtrack.
Makes you want to bang your head: 3-way tie: "Just One Fix," Ministry (when they weren't doing that "This is Halloween" shit); "The Beautiful People," Marilyn Manson; or "Du Hast," Rammstein -- just fuckin' LOUD, yo. I defy you not to bang your head.
You wish you knew the lyrics to: "Stop," Jane's Addiction -- frankly, I wish I knew the lyrics to MANY Jane's songs, but sometimes, I just don't understand Perry all that well.
Makes you so upset you turn it off: "Superman," Five for Fighting -- I may not necessarily turn it off, but it always pains my heart; was in rotation when my dad was dying, and it makes me think of him.
Was/is 'your song' with someone else: "Possession," by Sarah McLachlan, and "Calling All Angels," (I'll edit when I remember who sings this, probably at 3 a.m. when it hits me) [UPDATE: One of the women who sings that song is Jane Sibberry. Know which one I'm talking about now?] -- these were the songs that John Ryan, formerly of Texas and now of Seattle and married, put on a tape that he recorded for me when he loved me. (Bitter much? No, but see here.)
Makes you want to dance: "Hey Ya," Outkast -- I know, generic. But still, you can't fight the butt groove on that one. [UPDATE: Two more additions -- "Music," by Madonna and -- Hep me Jeebus -- "Toxic," by Britney]
Helps you heal after a breakup: "Seeing Things for the First Time," The Black Crowes -- After DtR and I broke up in '91, I bought "Shake Your Money Maker" and played it INCESSANTLY over that summer. I used to belt this out like I could really sing it.
Your parents made you listen to: The Beach Boys (can't remember the tape, but I think it was a greatest hits) -- late 70s/early 80s model Mercury Monarch with an 8-track, and Dad playing it on our way to one of our summer destinations when he was an insurance salesman. It was a Dad thing, but I grew to dig them.
Ignites a specific memory: "The Ledge," Third Eye Blind -- reminds me of the first summer I met my sister, driving around Elkhart in her Honda Accord garage sale-ing. You know, when we actually liked each other.
You've dedicated to someone: "Been Caught Stealing," Jane's Addiction -- to myself and the other wait staff that took advantage of the registers being down one St. Patrick's Day during my time as a waitress.
You identify with: "Just a Gigolo," David Lee Roth -- not because I'm a big ho, but because I wouldn't mind having a pair of skin-tight spandex pants with the ass cut out of them (not to mention an ass that would look GOOD in something like that, but that's something altogether different).
Oh, whatEVER.

See, he's one of our star reporters, and he now covers a beat I used to cover when he wasn't there. So, in his absence, I of course am sent back in because I know the players and so on and so forth. Well, today, I cover a Board of Works meeting for him, and instead of it being a 10 minute meeting like it usually is, there was intrigue! and possible corruption! and all kinds of nasty stuff that people like to get into, only I don't get to because it's not my beat anymore, and I'm not a staffer. Boooooooo! Also, he stuck me with my least favorite portion of the beat EVER, so a pox on him. (Actually, I love JB very much, and I just like to blow him shit. He used Luca Brasi in a LEDE, fer chrissakes! What's not to love!?!?!)

Oh, and this was on Gawker today -- a rebuttal to this dude who wrote this article about how he's a free-lancing house-husband and can't keep his wife interested in sex. Heh. Pussy ...
Oh, whatEVER.

See, for those of you who don't have cats, the critters do this thing I like to call "getting their groove on": Basically, they pick a place they're fond of and start kneading it with both sets of paws. Having trouble with the visual? It looks kind of like marching in one place, with purring and an intense, trance-like stare on their face. Anyway, my little guy, Elliott, has just started grooving on the down comforter in the bedroom in the mornings, while my older one, Ruben, who used to target one of my cashmere sweaters, tends to do it wherever he pleases.

Well, Kaffy's sexy little man, Mickey, likes to do it on his mama, preferably on her side and boob if at all possible. Mama, however, is not fond of Mickey grooving on her side and boob, because in the process he also hits her rib, and that's not very nice.

So, Kaffy, having just endured an intense several weeks between work and school, decided Saturday was going to be her day to wear jammies, stew in her own juices and do NOTHING all day except watch movies. She was lying on her couch doing just that when the Schmick decided he needed the groove -- except she started getting squicked as she was relaying the story.


At least he found a way to finish the job himself, I reckon.
Oh, whatEVER.

Now, my dream: It starts off with me covering an afternoon event at a gi-normous church (not sure the denomination), and there's a small, rectangular hole not unlike a grave filled with water out to the left in front of the church's yard. Not sure what that's about, but there are benches around it, and people are sitting around enjoying the day. So I'm talking to someone, and I notice a guy in a suit and tie is sitting at the edge of the hole and pushing himself in. Once he's submerged, I realize he's trying to drown himself and start running back toward the church, screaming for people to call 911. About 10 minutes later (at least, in dream time), EMS shows up, and he's dead.

So fast forward to that evening -- I've now covered a Gary Airport meeting, and I'm all fucked up because I just watched a guy kill himself that afternoon, but I follow the people at the meeting to a bar. We get there, and I'm talking to the people, hysterical at trying to explain what's been going on, and I find out that the person was a former friend of mine whom I haven't spoken to in several years because of some retarded falling-out. Well, now I'm all kinds of insane, because I didn't recognize that it was my friend. So, his wife is at the bar, and she and I start talking, and we're trying to figure out what made him want to kill himself; she never saw it coming, and I wouldn't have known anything, either, because we hadn't spoken in awhile. As we're leaving, we get caught in a traffic jam trying to get out of the parking lot, but we end up back at his parents' house when they lived in the area, which just so conveniently had the funeral home attatched to it as well as the house he, his wife and son were living in. She shows me stuff he may have left as clues to his imminent demise (like leaving his savings book on a desk) plus these bags of candy that he would cut the bags into strips, but the candy wouldn't fall out for some reason (!). He didn't cut the bag of long, grape Jolly Ranchers, because I supposedly gave them to him and therefore they were not worthy of his cutting them (!). Well, as we go to the end of the candy-bag line, I see that the house is at the foot of an airport landing (!!), and all of a sudden I'm back at the office trying to look for the story I wrote about my friend's death and comparing it to the competition's account. They, of course, had his name spelled wrong, which thrilled me to no end. At that point or shortly after, the alarm went off.

More on Kaffy's cat boner later. Did I mention that when I woke up from having fallen asleep on the couch, the episode of "A Different World" where Tisha Campbell give a speech about her having AIDS was on?
Oh, whatEVER.

We live in a four-plex, with Greta and me in the top two apartments and the landlords, their daughter and the Hooker in the downstairs two. When Greta moved in almost four years ago, one of the conditions she stipulated for moving in was that the landlords fix the subfloor in her kitchen, which is rotten and sad and apparently a pain-in-the-ass to clean. (My subfloor is subpar, too, but I have sexy oatmeal CARPET in my kitchen to hide that. Aw, yeah. But I'm not complaining, because I love my crib.) So, almost four years go by, and no fixing of her subfloor.

Now, from what I can tell, Greta and the landlords have not gotten along well since day 1, probably because Greta can be a bit ... demanding. Not that she isn't justified in the stuff that she wants, because most of the time, she's right. And a lot of the time, our landlords, while wonderful to me, can be cheap, irrational bastards, but what landlord isn't, right? Bottom line is, Greta doesn't always pick her battles wisely, and today, the landlords fought back. See, when Greta wrote the landlords telling them she would be moving out AT LEAST TWO MONTHS BEFORE HER LEASE WAS UP UPON BUYING HER HOUSE, she also told them that because they never took care of her subfloor -- a repair I would pray Man-Landlord could not possibly deign a feasible endeavor since he's not a contractor -- she wouldn't be paying the last few months' rent. And as her proof to back up that she wasn't entitled to pay it, she enclosed an article written in my paper about how to handle crappy landlords (not written by me, thank God).

Well, yeah, that went over like a shitbrick in a punch bowl.

Even more silly? Last night, when Greta was taking some more stuff out to her truck on a dolly (sp?), the woman-landlord came out and was checking behind her to see if she made any scuff marks to our glorious foyer with the green shag carpet and the OLIVE FLOCK WALLPAPER ACCENTS. Words ensued between the two of them -- especially about one scuff that was made by none other than yours truly the other night, oops -- and Greta got her panties in a wad because they're trying to screw her out of her deposit. I mean, she was absolutely apeshit over this. I said, "Well, you can't honestly be surprised by this, can you? I mean, you're screwing them out of money, so did you REALLY think they weren't going to try to screw you back? In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they're completely hunting for bear off this one."

So, you can imagine my total unsurprise when she walked in this afternoon and placed in front of my face a letter from the landlords' attorney telling her that oh yes, she WILL be paying that rent.

My whole thing is, I don't understand why the big rush to get into a place that you're likely going to be living in the rest of your life when, after closing, you have two, three months to get everything just the way you want it -- ESPECIALLY if you don't have to pay your first mortgage payment until July, as I believe it is for Greta. Sure, I know she's excited to have her own crib, and I'm ecstatic for her, but jeez, man! she's giving herself, like, two weeks to have the rooms she wants painted and everything in and ready to go, and I'm just like, whoa, why are you putting this kind of pressure on yourself!?!?

I told her that when the landlords ask her if she got the attorney's letter, she should say, "No, I haven't gotten anything. Why?" just so she could see them squirm while telling her she has to pay. No, it doesn't change anything, but it might be funny.
Oh, whatEVER.

So it all started with the first accident, which I caught on the morning news as I was waking up after sleeping on the couch. (Sometimes I do that to save myself from the aggravation of jarring myself out a deep sleep by moving on over to the bed. It's a habit I picked up from the one guy.) A big scary accident with jackknifed semis and all sorts of pandemonium -- would hate to be the poor staffer that's going to follow that one all day, I thought to myself. Oh, and the poor deputy editor who was filling in for the regular editor who does her Saturday turn tomorrow? She's not going home tonight.

So Deputy calls me and says, "Hey, I'll need you to go down to the site and see what's going on. You'll do the main story, and a staffer will follow up with the hospitals and stuff." I picked up Mother, because a) she had a hair appointment today at 3:30 that I wanted to make sure I got her to in time, and b) I take her on stuff when I think it'll keep her interest, and we started heading out.

From where I live, the first site is about 20 miles, and by the time we got there, it was pretty well cleaned up, save for a couple County Mounties and State Troopers. But I couldn't turn around, so we continued south when I noticed that oddly, there weren't any cars heading north. A few more miles later, we discovered why: The State Troopers were diverting traffic on to Rte. 2, because there was a second accident, this time involving another semi and a late model Camaro. (Can't say I was too sad about the Camaro, as long as the driver was all right). I called Deputy to let her know, and she was like, all right, while you're down there, stop by the ISP (Indiana State Police) and see if you can get the press release from the first accident this morning. I said, "Sure, but I'm going to have to go further south to turn around."

Now, going further south you start hitting those places where everyone has the same last name and it's not a coincidence (wink wink nudge nudge), but traffic was moving ... until right before the next exit. That's when I saw more flashing lights.

And then? The flipped-over teal SUV.

So back on the cell phone to Deputy, who's losing her mind at this point: "Welp, did you know there's a third accident!?!?"
"You're kidding me," she says wearily.
"No, no I'm not. It's down here by DeMotte/Roselawn (of Naked City fame). Looks pretty heinous -- I'll be surprised if anyone makes it out of this one."
"Well, go ahead and find out what's going on there, too, I guess."
"I will, but I have to get back to Lowell without getting on I-65, because then I'll never get back."
"Do you know the backroads down there well?"
"Well, go north, I reckon. I'm bound to hit it sooner or later."

So, after a harrowing trip over the Kankakee River on a one-lane wooden bridge, we got back to Lowell, stopped at the ISP and found out ... nothing, because they were still cleaning up the fatality I just saw.

Anyway, long story short, got the press release, and I'll be front page, all editions tomorrow. Go me.
Oh, whatEVER.

So I covered this event tonight where a bunch of people had bestowed upon them lifetime achievement awards for working toward a better NWI, and I ran into a former professor of mine. A lovely woman -- certainly one of the sharpest dressed I've ever encountered in academia -- and a tough, but fair, professor. And tough, but I mentioned that already. When I first noticed her, I tried to get her attention, but she didn't see me. So then later, I was holding court with one of our photographers and this dude I know, laughing about how I just called Dude by the wrong name, she walks up and was all happy to see me, as I was her. I introduced her by telling my cohorts that I was one of her worst students, which truth be told, I absolutely was. I mean, my college career? Pretty much a waste of the money my parents didn't have, except for the newspaper experience, which took place out of the classroom. Attention deficit sucks sometimes, but I digress. Anyway, she says, "Oh no, you were one of my best students. I mean, look at what you've made of yourself!"

My first thought to that was, "Sure, if you call a free-lancer who doesn't have her own health insurance and has to scrape up rent each month most of the time and who's packed on an extra 50 pounds in the past 2-1/2 years making something of yourself. I don't know that I necessarily would, but ..."

But then as I was thinking about it as I came home, I kinda thought yeah, I what I do does look kinda cool. And I reveled in that. But not after turning in a disjointed piece-of-shit story.
Oh, whatEVER.