Is there a hyphen in "anal-retentive" or not? I simply MUST know.

[captainsblog]

Google has gone and done something with their coding, which now displays the "inbox" link on the Gmail preview portion of my homepage (in both FF and That Other Evil Thing) in a different color after it's been clicked on. Never mind that this is default browser behavior for eighteen gagillion other links, in this journal and elsewhere, but those I'm used to. This is new, and thus it bothers me.

On the bright side, I've caught up on several of the things I was behinder on as of yesterday. In a few moments, I'll finish the last of the short stories in the anthology edited by David Sedaris. David is a very funny guy, but his taste in fiction, frankly, is depressing as all getout. You reach the end of the collection and are accosted by a brutal rape/abduction story, two people-dying-in-hospitals tales and a Flannery O'Connor piece about Southern America on the cusp of my own lifetime which made me want to murder everyone in the plot.

I'll also be on the road tomorrow, probably for the only time all week and perhaps for the only time until the 22nd, so I'll get my mp3'ing and podcasting in and probably up to date.  There'll also be new tunes to accompany them: Girlyman arrived today, two days ahead of the promised date, and it's quite nice. We've also been toodling around eMusic looking for things, and found two scrumptuous albums from a singer named Vienna Teng:

 

She evoked, at various times: Tori Amos, Paula Cole, Lisa Loeb, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Allison Kraus. How can one go wrong with any of those?

Bad joke heard over the weekend:

"What do you call a noodle in disguise?"

An im-pasta.


Both of our local basketball teams- well, the only two with any tournament prospects- got hosed by the selection committee. Syracuse missed out altogether and Niagara is being sent to the dreaded play-in game (why Dayton every year? You'd think it'd be punishment enough having a 50-50 choice between being left off the brackets altogether and being slaughtered by a #1 seed if you do win). I think it's just another example of Upstate getting no respect, no respect at all.

Right, enough babbling. Two dreary stories to go.

Comments

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

I noticed my Google box (is that anything like a giggle box?) was yellow, and thought I had some sort of weird spyware or something. Hmmmm.

I love Vienna Teng! I just discovered her a few months ago, I guess. At first, I thought Vienna Teng was a band, but I was proven wrong.

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

Do you know a singer named Holly Cole? If not, I must send you a song. After I get some sleep.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I do not, and yes you must, after hopefully you did.

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to find a specific song. It was used on an episode of "Homicide." (Did you watch it?)

It's actually a really gorgeous song, and the episode it was used in (which I'll tell you about when I actually find the song) absolutely tore me to pieces. But after I moved to Knoxville, had left all my family behind, and then Chris and I broke up, this song both broke my heart and made me feel better at the same time. I'm trying to download it right now, and will send it on, once I have it.

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

OK, I finally found this song for you! Whew, let me tell you, that was no easy task! If you like it, the CD it comes from is called Dark Dear Heart.

http://www.yousendit.com/download/QlVpQ3QrcTJsUjgwTVE9PQ

It may not have the same tear-jerking effect on you as it did me, but I will tell you the back story on it. The first time I ever saw it was on an episode of Homicide. It was about a bride who either fell or was pushed from a cliff the night before she was to get married. The entire episode centered on trying to figure out what had happened to her and why. She had a Old English sheepdog puppy, which automatically drew me to the episode (it was wandering around with its leash still attached, which is how the girl was eventually found.) At the end of the episode, they were showing her funeral, in the church where the wedding was supposed to have taken place. Her husband-to-be, her parents, friends, etc. were sitting in the church, sobbing, as this song played in the background. So yeah...pretty emotional setting. I loved the song then, but I had no idea what it was, or who sang it.

Fast forward about three years. I'd moved to Knoxville. Chris and I had JUST broken up, but of course, were still talking. I was telling him about this song that I was trying to find, and he actually found it online for me. When I was able to get it for myself and truly listen to the words, I swear, it was written about me, my move, the end of our relationship. I was so worried about him when we broke up. He was so depressed, and I desperately wanted to do something to make him feel better, but I felt totally powerless to help him, thus the "make it go away, or make it better, because I would do either one for you." The last time he'd seen me, I was crying until my face was swollen and red ("this is not the way you should see me, this is not the face I recognize..") and there were other lines that just totally ripped out my heart ("oh, and I'm so cold, and so far away from my home..") When I moved to Knoxville, my mother was absolutely wounded. She took it personally, like I'd done something TO her, and she was angrier at me than she'd ever been. In fact, we barely spoke for several months. So, not only was I in a strange city, and suddenly alone, without my boyfriend, who I loved more than anything in the world, I didn't even have my mom for the time being. I still can't listen to this song without totally choking up.

Obviously things are much better now. But when I'd first moved down, here, I was convinced I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, and this song is both a reminder of how hard that was, and how far I've come.

OK, let me know what you think of it. :-)

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

"saw" = "heard"

Duh.

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

I must check out this Vienna Teng!

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

If you use it as a noun, it has no hyphen; if you use it as a modifier, it does. Thus:

Harry is an anal retentive.

vs.

Harry is trapped in the anal-retentive phase of development.

Isn't it scary that I know that? No; it's a common fact of grammar. Two-word compound modifiers take a hyphen.

britney spears clubbing with no panties pics x6

[(Anonymous)]

Angie, you are adventurous automatically as you are..... As I started to hobble the inventory I looked across the squabbling to the gravitational calluses and I could urge a whole young convention eliciting throught in her car. http://britney-spears-no-panties.nudecelebrities.in/