8/23 Happy Birthday, Sister Bear!!!

Yes, my very own little sister who I distinctly recall teaching how to use swears when she still wearing pull-ups turns 20 today.

I celebrated her birthday (though it's a fake because her birthday doesn't technically happen for several more hours) by being incredibly productive-- drafting my experimental assignment for monday, reading Virginia Woolf, rewriting part of Phylloxera, doing a crap load of research on the novel (my reading load will be obscene) as well as some hardcore work on plotting out the novel. Oh, and I finished 3 poems that have been hovering on the verge of done for about 6 weeks now. Plus I emailed 5 hostels in Cairns about rooms during the 'rents' impending visit-- it's tricky because all hostels have singles, doubles, twins, and dorms, but most make no provisions for two middle-aged people and their adventurous (and dashingly handsome) son. So we'll see how that pans out.

Vindication also arrived in the release of Rilo Kiley's latest album, and the subsequent reviews. You may recall the limited protest staged by Kait, Marco, and myself over the offensively bland song and accompanying slick video for their first single. This review says it all, backing up most of my assertions, misapprehensions, and angers.

"Finding the band's music polished to an almost blinding sheen, Blacklight is not a commercial album so much as Rilo Kiley's conception (or misconception) of what a commercial album is... But beneath that surface-- and Under the Blacklight is at first listen almost overwhelmingly surface-- Rilo Kiley must know they're full of shit. Either they're utterly serious about their flirtation with the mainstream or they're taking the piss with a wink. In both cases, the songs suffer a smothering slow death by context."

Also: word on the short-story contest tomorrow, and in this case no news is bad news-- they're only contacting the winners. Eek!

Drink Count: 5

P.S. I'll be AWOL for the next 2 nights as I take a writing-retreat-Outback-looking-cultural-experience foray to Amanda's quaint little home town of Burra. I have very little idea of what to expect from a mining/farming community stuck in the middle of absolute barren red desert. Sheep, I assume, and some 'roos. Maybe a rock or several.