Necessity of Quality Food for Interdimensional Travellers

Last night's tweets;

Key rings about the neck open few doors.
But there will always be tacos for him.
He glides around us in line on shop floors.
His sorrows through Mexican polka dim.

A little portrait in Twitter of a guy I saw at a Mexican restaurant yesterday while I was shopping for my sister's birthday present. He couldn't quite figure out how to be in line--he was one of those people who don't want to quite commit, so he floats around, he wants to look like he's rebellious or something and polite schmucks like me won't just go around him. He wore bright coloured clothes, a backwards baseball cap over messy dark hair, and looked slightly like a guy from 1978 who decided to take a Chevy Chase style vacation to the year 2009 and found himself a bewildered tourist in the face of even the simple changes in taco shop decor. And he was wearing a big necklace of key chains hanging low over his gut--I've known several of the particular variety of socially backward nerd who needs to wear a lot of keys in order establish his presence in a room. Guys who can't manage to talk to people so they have to connect by annoying them. There was a guy like this I knew in high school who attached a train horn to his car.

So tired to-day--not a whole lot of sleep last night. Yesterday I went on some musical explorations while working on my comic, deciding to listen to some works by vocalists featured on the Lord of the Rings soundtracks. First I tried out Sissel Kyrkjebo, who had a decent voice with, of course, fantastic training, but with generally phenomenally cheesy musical arrangements. I could kind of dig her when she was singing songs in languages I couldn't understand, but when she starting giving me a piercing soprano business about love as the greatest gift all, I felt close to throwing up.

Next I tried out a sort of ambient pop artist named Sheila Chandra. I enjoyed her stuff, except it made whatever I was doing seem really serious, bordering on cloying serious like an Edward Zwick movie, but in small doses I think I like her.

Then, despite the fact that she had nothing to do with the Lord of the Rings movies, I started listening to Kirsty MacColl. I'm glad I did--that lady was a genius. Obviously I knew her from The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York", but it wasn't until I heard her rather faithful cover of The Smiths' "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby" that I really wanted to explore her work further.

This song, "Celestine", from her last album, fit so perfectly with what I was thinking about this morning;



Anyway, I'd better get something to eat and get back to my comic. Caitlin Kiernan's new book, The Red Tree, comes out to to-day. It sounds like it's pretty good, so if you're looking for something to read, you might want to check it out.