Music Monday: Jools Holland compendium

Since it's Music Monday and all, I just wanted to recount my run-in with some emo band yesterday. I took the kid to the shop to get a newspaper, and on our way back there were a trio of lost, skinny ass emo American kids. They couldn't find their way back to a local music venue, so I kindly pointed them in the right direction, as I am nice like that and always looking to help fellow Yanks. I came home, googled the venue, and lo and behold, they are apparently some (all?) members of some Maryland (East Coast - reppin!) band called All Time Low. I joked with The Dude that I was going to take P and run away with them, but I don't like weedy little guys whose skinny jeans are too big for them. In addition, emo guys - ick. They'd probably cry after sex, cut themselves or some such shit.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Rather than focusing on one artist, I'm again going to go with a theme. This week it's artists whose performances I have enjoyed recently on Jools Holland. For those not in the know, Jools Holland is a musician who hosts a show (Later with Jools Holland) on BBC2 showcasing 4 or 5 performers each week. Everyone who is anyone has been on there in the past including my hero Johnny Cash.

No doubt in some cases I won't be able to find the actual Jools performances, since the BBC is obsessed with copyright malarky just like everyone else. Say, like these two:

Jimmy Cliff: Many Rivers to Cross



White Lies: Unfinished Business



Bon Iver: Skinny Love



Liam Finn: Second Chance



Lykke Li: Little Bit



DeVotchKa: Clockwork Witness



I will be doing an all-DeVotchKa week at some stage, so much do I love them. In the meantime, YouTube them and enjoy.

Dawn Kinnard: Clear the Way



Black Kids: I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You



Martina Topley-Bird: Carnies



That ought to keep you crazy kids busy for awhile. I will be doing Mel's NaCommentThingie (I've done my part for today - breaking arm, patting oneself on back, etc) this week, but I don't know if I'll post much before Thursday. I have an interview on Wednesday for a job in a far away place and must spend the next couple of days preparing for my PRESENTATION and interview. Oy. This is like, a Big Time Job (BTJ), one which would need me to be moderately professional and unable to call the manager of my office a cunt with my friend/co-worker as I do now. That's a naughty word, I know, but seriously, the cunt totally deserves it.

Anyway, cuntishness aside, wish me luck. I think we all know I'm going to need it.

Jezebel in Nappies

P is a spirited little girl, and apparently a big ol' slut. It seems word has gotten around the nursery that my daughter is on the prowl for any hunk of toddler man meat. Short toddlers, tall toddlers, chubby toddlers, one-eyed toddlers, toddlers with Proteus syndrome, whatever. To be frank, she is a BIG WHORE.

When I dropped P off the other day, she ran straight to her friend Jack, who was having his breakfast of toast. I was relieved that her preoccupation meant that I could escape unnoticed, and clearly I did not realise that she was making a play for this poor, helpless, doe-eyed cherub. She only said, "Hello Jack!", granted, 8 or 9 times in a row, but this behaviour was seen as tantamount to drunkenly groping a male co-worker's junk when drunk at the office Christmas party. The manager of the nursery said, "Oh, she's flirting with one of her many boyfriends again! She's always flirting with the boys!" What a ho! She does sometimes take Jack's toast in exchange for intellectual discourse and deep philosophical musings - should I be concerned?



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On an unrelated to toddler whoredom note, Mel has organised a big, month-long mutual comment masturbationathon that I have signed up for, along with about 17.4 million others. I took to heart what some of you said a couple of months ago - I want comments or else I die from being unloved, yet I'm not very good at commenting myself. I've been trying to change this, but by having my name firmly on this list of participants I'm strong-arming my way into this and I will do it!

Bear in mind it's not only for the infertile/ex-infertile amongst us. We all need to branch out eventually and leave our cosy little internet uterus, because who knows what we may find? I need another load of feeds to add to my Bloglines like I need another set of string-of-pearl cysts on my ovaries, but conversely I'm a blog reading addict. Who needs to do a job anyway?

In need of enlightening

A friend of mine needs some helpful advice. I, on my trusty white blogging steed, have come to the rescue because as I told Friend, "The women who read my blog are full of good answers". You are. You're brilliant, and full of wisdom that I am far too drunk, high or stupid to come up with myself.

Friend has a friend who is one of (some) of us - a big old infertile. Unfortunately, this woman is becoming a complete barren nightmare. You know the type - bitter to the point of unsociability, melodramatic, hypersensitive. We've seen it all before, we've maybe even been there ourselves. When I was going through all the IF shit, I tried not to be the stereotypical infertile woman. I have my share of lesser moments in which I glared at pregnant women, climbed atop my large soapbox with polycystic ovaries painted on the sides, but I convinced myself that that anger was fleeting. Though I wanted to vent about the latest drive-by and fume about women for whom pregnancy didn't involve shots, catheters or miscarriages, I didn't want that jealousy and rage to consume me.

I'm not trying to be sanctimonious, because of course I understand how easily one can drown in anger and bitterness. I think I only managed to avoid the bulk of it myself because I wasn't a woman with an overwhelming maternal instinct. I wanted a child, but I think it eventually became more about wanting what I might not be able to have rather than specifically wanting to be a mother, fucked up as that may be for an alleged (ex)infertile blogger to say.

Putting aside one's own thoughts and feelings for a moment, what does this attitude do to our family and friends who are trying to help, like Friend? I'm excluding the dumbasses here, so forget about the people who tell you to "just adopt". Friend has a background in medicine and also knows a lot of women who have had trouble conceiving, so she has been particularly sympathetic to this woman's needs. However, this woman has ended up pushing Friend away because she's so high maintenance. Friend has asked me, Patron Saint of Fucked Up Parts, to advise her as to how she should deal with her friend. I suggested the usual - let the friend know you are there for her whenever she needs to talk, refrain from asshattery, don't regale her with endless tales of your children's brilliance, and so on. Friend does all these things, but to no avail. The negativity and melodrama have become too much for her, and Friend just finds herself wanting space, a very big space, between herself and her friend.

Friend tells me that this woman's infertility has been recently diagnosed via that exercise in fallopian torture, the HSG. She and her husband have been trying for a year or so, but have not yet begun treatment. I think this is part of the problem, as getting used to the idea of what all of this means is quite an adjustment. When my doctor first told me that I would probably not have children naturally, I took to my bed for a day and failed to submit a term paper. I think the initial diagnosis yields the highest period of drama because you only see the process in negatives. You may have gone through life up to this point assuming you would have children naturally with no complications along the way. To be told that you have been deluding yourself all this time and that in fact you are facing a very long journey is sometimes too much to face up to rationally. Obviously one's first instinct is to be angry, and sometimes that anger takes years to ebb.

What would you tell Friend to do? Stick it out and just suffer through? Is there any advice or support she should be giving her friend which she may not be doing already? Should Friend practice tough love and tell her friend that in fact, the world does not revolve around her and her uterus? I believe that Friend has pointed the woman to IF blogs and suggested she started her own, which I think is invaluable advice. Can you imagine where we would be today without each other, lovely, lovely ladies? I would no doubt have given up on treatment all together, left The Dude, and lived in a pink house with the ex-boyfriend who had a threesome with some skanks behind my back. You saved me from this path!

In the very clearly enunciated words of P, "Pwees hep".

Music Monday: Americana/Roots

I threatened to do it, and here I am - it's Americana and roots music week! Hurrah! Nerd alert, nerd alert!

Aside from liking this genre of music, I'm doing this in honour of my brother, who leaves to hike a good chunk of the Appalachian Trail this week. He doesn't read this blog, thank god, but this is my nod to him nonetheless. Being the thoughtful sister, I made him a mix in preparation for the trip, cleverly entitled, The Appalachian Trail Mix 08, which, hello - HILARIOUS.



Before moving to the UK, the extent of my knowledge and interest in this genre was what I heard in O Brother Where Art Thou. I liked the music, but could take it or leave it. However, within the past few years I've felt oddly connected to Americana and roots music. Being a transplant sometimes provides you with the most unlikely of outcomes.

Mock me if you like, call me a redneck. I just love the pared-down, simplistic nature of this kind of music. A lot of it goes back to 1920s/30s, a time in history I find endlessly fascinating. Obviously quite a bit goes beyond that - Civil War times, also an interesting period.

I hope that even though you may have preconceived notions of this genre, you give it a listen. You can hate it afterwards, but give roots a chance!

Woody Guthrie: So Long, It's Been Good to Know You



The O Brother element - I'll Fly Away: Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch



The Carter Family: Wildwood Flower



Dock Boggs: Calvary



And because I'm OBSESSED with Tim Eriksen, you must suffer through some of his videos. If you've seen Cold Mountain, you'll recognise his voice. "Haunting" is often used for female voices, but his is the first male voice which comes to mind when I think of that word. Love.

Tim Eriksen: O Death



Am I Born to Die?



Hicks' Farewell



Sacred Harp Singers: Idumea (also from Cold Mountain)- yes, the video is completely unrelated, but it's the best audio version I could find!



I'll leave it at that for now. Given the amalgamation of the whole Americana/roots/bluegrass genre, I could spread this out to more than one post easily. This is not even to mention my love of early Mississippi Delta bluesSorry everyone. I'll get back to the hipster stuff next week.

Odds and sods

Various things to recount for no particular reason, and segues be damned.

-If you visit my blog versus reading on Bloglines/Google Reader, you will see that I have a new header, courtesy of the utterly fabulous Cali. I have never had anything but the standard, boring-as-shit Blogger templates and headers, so goooooooooo me! I even changed my Blogger template, such as it is. It's hardly the world's best blogging aesthetic (the template, not Cali's marvellous header OBVIOUSLY), but until I'm gifted $100 to get someone to design a new template (again, the header staying in place as it rocks), here we are. Cali is designing headers for a FET, so go and send some business her way. Preferably lots of it.

The castle is a photo taken by my fine self, and the kid in the photo was made by my fine self, some small-headed sperm as donated by my husband, and a hot as hell Greek embryologist. This castle is local, because this is England, and castles up the wazoo is how we roll.

-I was looking at a Nigerian student's birth certificate the other day, and noticed that much like transcripts and other official documents originating in Africa and the Middle East, the mother is a secondary consideration. Now, I haven't dug out P's birth certificate (I keep wanting to type "gift certificate") to see where my name ranks, but the mother second on a birth certificate? Is it not enough that the mother carried the child for nine months, gave birth to it, and then was likely its primary caregiver? What's a woman gotta do to be first around here?

-I'm on Twitter, and I hate myself for it. I'm still not fully aware of the point, and I'm sorry friends and followers, gmail chat kicks Twitter ass. However, I will stick with it for a week or two until I get lazy/complacent/bored, so if you desperately want to know what Pru is thinking or doing during her work day or early evening, look me up. I've even put the little Twitter nonsense in the sidebar so I can follow you or you can follow me on Twitter because it seems I have the need to avoid working. Seriously though, if you're not down with the Twitter, please message me on gmail sometime. I'm boring as hell in actual conversation, so fried is my brain and my nerves tested when I'm at work. Tempting, eh? I'm also a whore for non-work conversation. Or just a whore in general. Whatever.

-I'm addicted to this new song, "L.E.S. Artistes" by Philly hipster cool chick Santogold. I know it's not Music Monday, but humour me. I listened to this song 8 times in one sitting the other day and it made me all giddy. On reflection, that may have been two parts Santogold, three parts coffee though.



Happy weekend all.