Happy anniversary to joyful thing. It's been two years since the birth of this site and I think it's progressed swimmingly. You guys have been wonderful. Well, sometimes you were mean, but mostly wonderful.

This is the last broadcast.

On this, my two year anniversary, I bid adieu. Dear readers, your narrator is retiring.

This site began as an exercise in showing up on the page. I've done that for two years. There's few things I've done consistently for that long. Dishes, for example.

I feel that plugging up this area of my creative flow might allow me to dig deeper into other projects I'm working on, some that may actually make me some mula. I'm dragging out my Journalism Degree and dusting it off. In other words, I'm going to be a journalist. Scary, huh?

Plus, you've got to be sick of me by now.

Feel free to peruse the archives if you miss me. (Did you know "peruse" actually means "to read thoroughly", or "to examine closely"?)

Also, check out my favorite diarylanders. They are all quality reads. Most of them significantly better than mine.

I have designed a blog that will be live in the beginning of June. It will largely be a way for my friends to keep track of me in my cross-country travels and as I carve out my new niche in Seattle. You may not find it very interesting unless you're a voyeur -- or my mother. But there might be juicy photographs from the road.

Please get the new Snow Patrol album. It's transcendent.

As an old friend of mine used to say:

Rock safely.

Yours,
the joyful thing

I officially have Brit-pop hair.

Speaking of Brit-pop hair, what was that Charlatans song? "Jesus Hairdo". Yeah. And Beck sings "Devil's Haircut". Isn't there an earthly medium?

Speaking of Charlatans, those slackers have a new album out May 17th.

Speaking of slackers, both Death Cab for Cutie shows are this week. (commence pants-pissing)

Speaking of Death, I had some sincerely disturbing dreams last night. Always, always animal dreams.

I must tell you that for the first time in roughly 15 years, I have reconciled the parakeet dream. Along with trains, it's been a recurring nightmare most of my life and the parakeets appear at least once a week. I'm always killing them inadvertently by squishing them or tearing their heads off or drowning them. I always wake up in a panic, filled with guilt. There are less violent ways of doing away with them, such as starving them to death. In the starving version, my hands are missing and I can see the empty seed cup in the cage but it's impossible to get it. I keep trying to put more seed in but I can't hold the bag and it all spills on the floor. The birds die a long, painful death and I watch.

Not too long ago, I had the final parakeet dream. It was one of those dreams with a cast of characters and a plot, broken up into individual acts. Scene One: Maternally-Induced Guilt. Scene Two: Fear of Rejection. Scene Three: Shame of Sordid Past. And so on.

The Maternally-Induced Guilt scene was bloody. I accidentally left the front door open, and the neighbors wolfhound broke into our house and attacked my mom and my sister. My mother took out a rifle and beat the crap out of the dog with the end of it, shoving the door closed. (As a side note, when I was growing up, my mom actually kept a BB gun in the garage. She used it to shoot this Scottish Terrier in the ass because he tried to bite me whenever I was getting on the school bus.)

In the next scene, I was in my room and I knew my ex-boyfriend was coming over. He was one of the Eternal Boys -- those I will always be drop-dead attracted to no matter how much time has passed -- 6'3", blond, Greekgod body, translucent blue eyes, total Abercrombie and Fitch model. Ugh. I broke him in before he realized he was good looking -- I think he was 15. So over the past twelve years we've been in varying states of contact -- he'll show up at my apartment unannounced and we'll stay in my bedroom for a week and then he'll leave. So the dream was a total rejection of that relationship, because I was putting on red lace lingerie in preparation for his arrival and then when he showed up, I was all, "Fuck you, you inhumanly beautiful devil. I'm not that person anymore. Out of my house!"

In the dream, my sister had a baby. It was at this point that my sister's baby started climbing up the stairs. We had hardwood floors, so the ascent could be unlucky. The kid could barely crawl but it was climbing up the railing of the staircase.

Enter Soleil, my bright yellow parakeet. She swooped down from the rafters and then back up. I couldn't see her, I could only hear her flying back and forth, thumping into the walls, and I saw the ceiling fan on and the window thrown open to the wind. Panicked, I turned around to see a little girl with her arm outstretched.

Soleil flew down carefully and landed lightly on her hand. "It's okay -- I've got her," she said quietly, smiling. She looked exactly like I did as a child. I was looking at myself.

My attention was turned back to the climbing baby, which promptly fell and cracked its skull open on the wooden stairs. I jumped to catch it, but I wasn't fast enough, and instantly felt the guilt.

The little girl passed the parakeet onto my hand, smiled, and said, "That one didn't have wings."

* * *

In my dream last night I got in the back of a pick up truck with a dozen identical dogs -- Springer Spaniels like my friends' dog Sam. All the dogs had the same markings and the same dour expressions. We were headed somewhere awful, and they knew it.

The truck stopped at the edge of the woods and the back opened. The dogs filed out one by one and stopped, lowering their heads. I looked before us and there was a metal pipe a hundred feet long with dogs tied so close that their heads were resting against one another on the pipe. The Springer Spaniels accepted their fate and I looked down the row of dogs in dozens of matching groups. I still wasn't sure what was going to happen, but then I saw the giant sliding double-blade at one end of the pipe. I realized that all these dogs' heads were going to be violently chopped off. They knew it. And they accepted it. They were the dogs from the Humane Society that didn't get adopted. And I couldn't save them all.

Oh my god. It was so awful I can't even put it into words. But I've become very absorbed in the world of animal welfare, and signing up for a volunteer position as writer/web designer at the Washington animal society. Though totally off base, this dream was a reality check; the animals that aren't loved enough are euthanized. It's one of those dreams that's so vivid it's going to sit in my stomach all day as though it actually happened.

But at least I have the parakeet dream under control. I honestly think that dream was some sort of marker for my mental health. Though if last night's dream was a marker for my mental health…

I'm frightened that I've exposed too much of my warped mind. Forgive me. Please go save an animal ASAP.

I was going to compile some clever April Fool’s Day joke yesterday but I haven’t been extraordinarily creative and figured the old “I found out I’m pregnant and getting evicted” would inspire neither shock nor laughter. I was hoping my silence was the holiday leg-pulling. When you don’t say anything, people always assume the worst.

I staged a great joke at work where all the staff assistants were going to call in sick but then come in after the staff had sufficient time to freak out. But then I realized it wouldn't be so funny if we strutted in giggling to find temps sitting at our desks and termination notices in our mailboxes. In the end, half of us were 40 minutes late anyway because the subway broke down. I should have stuck with the plastic wrap on the toilet stunt that worked efficiently in the third grade.

Since I haven’t been creative this week, I have nothing to discuss other than my lack of creativity.

Instead, I’ve become addicted to Smallville and eating bananas and almond butter with a spoon.

I'm sick and nobody loves me. There's no time like major illness to remind someone that they are a) single and b) 1,500 miles away from their family. Someone bring me chicken soup, dammitt!

I've been in bed for 6 days now, minus a stint Friday to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (brilliant! brilliant!). I don't recommend braving the Kendall Sq. Cinema on a Friday night with three opening movies if you've got a fever and have just taken several handfuls of Dayquil. I was ushered dazed through the sea of squealing moviegoers and into the hot darkness. Turns out it was the perfect mind state to see that movie in.

God, it was beautiful.

So now after all this time in my apartment with seven channels of TV and sans the mobility for the video store journey, I have taken to performing mundane tasks such as removing all the keys from my laptop and cleaning them with a q-tip. I discovered an M&M lodged underneath the space bar which explained a few things.

Headache, fever, sinus infection, sore throat, barking cough, and I'm going to choke these fucking parakeets if they don't shut up. They are searing my brain. They've been fighting and quarbling for the past few weeks -- maybe they broke up. Wouldn't it suck to break up and be stuck in the same cage for the rest of your life?

My favorite thing about Robitussin: on the bottle it says, "For a more productive cough."

Two weeks, one day, 12 hours, 34 minutes and 26 seconds. 232 cigarettes not smoked. As if I could, even if I wanted to.

Saturday night I went to see the lovable, sunnysweet Leo Blais at the Paradise. His shows are like a bellyfull of something warm and good for you. All breathy vocals and comfort-food melodies. Love me some Leo. Also playing was Will Dailey. It was a listening party for Will's newly-released CD, Goodbye Red Bullet.

Will was slick with the fingers like some classically trained Berklee mo-fo, and I totally dug his sound. His whole aura was slippery with ease. Sittin comfy, playin loose-limbed, smiling and singing with this thick, full voice. I was gnawing on my straw and frowning in attempt to pinpoint who he reminded me of, and then it dawned: John Mayer.

Which brings us to today's topic of discussion.

I've come to terms with several things about myself recently. Some of them were simply minor confessions. Others required a publicly announced, though flinching, coming-out-of-the-closet. They were tough to own up to. But I'm okay with it now.

See, the thing is... I really like bad pop music.

1. I like John Mayer. Room for Squares was the featured selection in my car's tape deck until I dumped a Dunkin Donuts iced hazelnut onto the dashboard and it dripped down into the stereo, thereby coating the frail TDK with a thick syrup and adhering it to the inside of the tape deck. This was the first of many times I had to pull out the screwdriver to remove a tape from Verna's deck; now I need to implement one during insertion as well.

I went to see John Mayer twice with my dear Nathan Bright-Autumn Sky, who originally made me listen to Room for Squares (and also sent me to my first of four-dozen Howie Day shows -- see #2).

For my first show, John Mayer was playing at a bar in Worcester -- 100 seats max. I was sick and Robitussin-drunk and zoned on our departure time; we left an hour later than planned.

Nate was driving my car because I'd just had eye surgery and was legally blind. Courtesy of MapQuest, we ended up on the wrong side of the tracks, stuck in a perpetual traffic circle that spiraled into hell among salt marshes and abandoned cars until we came upon a gas station and was pointed in the right direction by a toothless dyke with plumber butt. It took us an hour to find parking.

When we finally got to the bar, not only was it full to capacity, but John Mayer had already been playing for an hour. Nate did some sweet-talking, and I'm not sure what was said but money was exchanged and we gained admission. I was thoroughly tripping on cold medicine at this point, and we saw John Mayer perform his a two-song encore from across the room. I was sitting at the bar next to David Mead, who I met at a Jump show at the Middle East when he was opening for them. At the Jump show I had tried to buy him a beer and he told me that the musicians drank free -- I said that wasn't the point… But here he was at the John Mayer show, markedly drunk of his own accord, and for some freakish reason remembered me.

So we got two songs of John Mayer -- enough for me to fall in love in that tiny bar before he started selling out stadium shows and I had to be content with seeing him play at Avalon during a giant ponytail-yanking session a year later. Whether you like him or not, he puts on a great live show.

Nathan Bright-Autumn Sky is an amazing boy who did not get mad at me for screwing up twice in one night and ruining a rare opportunity to see our poprock gem. Instead, on the way home, he pulled my car over on I95 and we layed on the side of the highway in the frozen grass staring up at the orange and purple shooting stars during the century's biggest meteor shower.

2. I like Howie Day.

3. I like Semisonic. I recently made a killer mix for Mon Frere, and as a hidden track I put "Singing in My Sleep", which is a Semisonic song off of Feeling Strangely Fine. The song came out in the fall of 1998 and was seriously my favorite song. I used to put it on my walkman and drive my scooter really fast down Winter Hill. I requested it on WFNX and Nic Carter, the DJ who I was obsessed with at the time, said I had to fax my panties to him and he'd play it. I was working at Fleet Bank and somehow managed to do so without getting caught.

So I put the song on the mix, because Mon Frere and I both loved it, and it's bouncy and fun and it's about making good mix tapes: "In the city the lion sleeps / pray to Sony my soul to keep / now I'm falling in love too fast / with you or the songs you chose..."

I asserted, "They're a good band," in an overly defensive tone, because they're really not, and Mon Frere says, "And they're hot, too."

"I wouldn't know -- I've never seen them," I said.

"Yeah you have. We went to their show at the Paradise," he says. "You, me and Shannon."

"We did? I don't remember that. Did I have fun?"

"Yeah. It was a good show. You liked it."

"Great. I'm glad."

4. I like Dave Matthews. I was sitting at Daniel's kitchen table and he was playing the new Dave Matthews CD. I said I didn't know he liked Dave Matthews. He said he didn't know I liked Dave Matthews. So we shared a mutually hushed confessional, and he said, "You probably keep the CD hidden in your Modest Mouse case."

Not anymore.

Every morning I wake up and thank god that I'm not a teenager.

When I was at the height of my angst, when I was embroiled in some horrifying displays of self-pity, and when my juvenile poetry was mired in bitterness and despair, the web didn't exist. I am so grateful for that. You should be, too.

Somewhere along the line the drama died down a little. The biting edge of everything pulsing and full of ache faded in color and intensity. It's scary that this is me subdued.

What raised the topic of gratitude for not being a seething wildebeest drowning in hormones was me digging through (and deleting) the majority of my web rings. I have realized that everyone on diaryland, or blogs in general, is either a pissed-off self-sorry thirteen-year-old with an inflated sense of self, or an overeducated/underemployed mid-to-late-20's office dweller abusing company resources or waiting for the government check to roll in.

I am, for obvious reasons, partial to the late 20's office dweller. My favorite reads are thusly written, and I have been known to dabble in that lifestyle. I wouldn't consider myself overeducated, but I do know that I didn't require a B.S. in Journalism to play with an Excel spreadsheet all day.

I belonged to quite a few web rings at one point. They were good. But then good people unjoin, and bad people join, and suddenly I'm stuck between two horrible diaries using Marilyn Manson and Britney Spears templates respectively. Granted I shouldn't be one to talk design; I am clearly lacking in the layout department. But as I learned during my three years in internet marketing, Content is King. And Britney's content is so obscured by her usage of bizR c@ps f0r n0 rzn -- LOL! & LR sez UR BFF bt n0 n0tz during cl@ss??? UR @ l0ser!!! wtf???

These kids who are growing up with the internet from infancy are developing their own little language that I totally can't even understand. I get the whole LOL thing, but some people use it so frequently during IM that I picture them sitting at their computer, bouncing merrily and chortling away all night.

Anyway these poor teenagers run the risk of having their neuroses and emotions transmitted via broadband to all corners of the earth. It was tragic enough when I was sitting on the floor in the hallway during lunch scribbling in my Mead 5-subject spiral bound. I can only imagine the torture one would endure reading that.

Although the reading of my scribblings is sometimes on my mind. It's an issue of trust when I start dating someone because I have 73 notebooks in my room, each page filled with incriminating details. Often about them. Ain't much about me I won't tell ya -- just ask. But I leave for work in the morning and that person is alone in my bedroom with every thought I've had in the past 20 years. There's just no practical place to house that amount of literature under lock and key. So I basically cross my fingers and hope that if they decided to take that volume back up off the shelf and crack its weary spine and read, they'd get bored quickly before getting to the rare juicy stuff. I no longer have delusions of grandeur about my idle prattling.

When I was seventeen, my boyfriend thought I was cheating on him so he grabbed my journal from my desk and bolted into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. I screamed and banged on the door in a total panic. I could hear him turning the pages so I grabbed the fire axe from under my parents' bed and tore the bathroom door off.

And I hadn't even cheated on him.

But really, everything was such a big fucking deal when I was a teenager. My favorite thing in the world to do was fall in love with someone and not tell them. Then I could ache from afar and play the abandoned one and drive myself insane. I would write about how I would never be She Who is Adored because of x y or z… but in reality is was because, oh yeah -- I forgot to tell Jeff I had a crush on him. Good lord.

Now I just fall for unavailable people and not tell them. Because then I can ache from afar and at least have a good reason for it.

Oh drama! Angst! I realized recently that I cultivated a sense of humor somewhere around 22. It took me that long. It was when the Interstate Archive was first born, which is this compilation of crap I write in various forms while running around. It started right after I graduated when Ruby lent me a laptop for the summer and I started chronicling my ironic life as a recent graduate in the big city.

I wouldn't have survived without a sense of humor. Some of that shit is really funny -- I was reading it the other day while I was packing away my 73 notebooks. I started keeping the document on the laptop, and then saved it on floppy and brought it to whatever temp job I had that day and wrote there. Whether I was in a state of relaxation or a state of work, I was writing. So it became the Inter-state Archive. But that Archive is the first evidence I see of me having a sense of humor. I was so fucking miserable for so many years that eventually I had to start laughing at myself. At going to the BU Job Resource Center and having them ask me why I didn't go to my individual school's resource center, and me saying, "COM has a resource center?" About breaking my glasses on the way to a job interview and wandering dazed through the entire thing. About my colorfully-chronicled boy-angst as I plowed through guys at a rate of one per week. (Shanono and I were doing research for our screenplay, "Exit Fantasy; Enter Irony". )

I think that's the problem with being a teenager. Or at least it was for me. I hadn't found self-deprecation, sarcasm, or fuckit-you-just-gotta-laugh-ism yet. I was truly and honestly convinced that I would die of things like boredom or heartbreak. That I would just drop dead right there. My eyes would glaze over and cradling my frozen heart, I'd waste away ignored and misunderstood. The world would never know my genius, my beauty, my love.

I'm just glad I kept it to myself.