everything, and some other things

Upon clicking my cursor into the search box of Google.com today, I for the first time realized that a pulldown menu appears, allowing me to quickly fill in searches I’ve made previously. O, the wonders of technology! In honor of this finding:

THE WEIRDEST GOOGLE SEARCHES
I’VE MADE SINCE I GOT A NEW COMPUTER
IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

110th street
adults
azithromycin
bed
chaos
danger
fish oil, anxiety
forgiveness
good and evil
how long does tofu keep?
jumping jacks
lexington whiskey
magnesium, anxiety
majormajormajormajor
mexican restaurant, byob
no pussyfooting
otis redding
paternoster
portuguese slang
quid
r kelly lyrics
road trip traffic
scabies
spinach, botchulism
subjectivity of pain
time
vitamin b, anxiety
what is tax liability?

In other news, this has been an especially good week for listening. New music includes Jakob Olausson, Karl Blau’s latest, Moondog, Tim Hecker and People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz. I’ve been digging a lot of blues I got from the library, in particluar Muddy Waters’ plantation recordings and Mississippi John Hurt. Also, getting back to my classical roots have been Rachmaninov’s Preludes, Shostakovich’s cello concertos and Sibelius’ violin concerto. Phew, that’s a lot.

Today I finished reading a few essays that a friend graciously photocopied out of a galley of George Saunders’ forthcoming book of essays, The Braindead Megaphone, and mailed to me. They were wonderful! Until now I had only been familiar with Saunders’ short stories and I was thrilled to see how masterfully written his nonfiction turned out to be. He is tackling some big issues (the possibility of miracles, the politics surrounding the Mexican-American border) with poignancy and wit. Despite the frequency with which he is able to bring his reader to some intense truths about human existence (i.e. “I’ve found myself loving my wife of eighteen years more than I’d even known you could love another human being - a good thing, except that it involves a terrifying downside: the realization that there must someday come a parting” or “this low-level ambient fear constitutes a decent working definition of the human: A human being is someone who, having lived awhile, becomes terrified and, having become terrified, deeply craves an end to the fear”) his style is often disarmingly casual. He even infrequently includes an effective “um” or “like” mid-sentence, a quirk I found endearing and not overused in this case. Saunders truly has a keen eye for both sides of conflicts that surround the problematic and he artfully illustrates the internal dialogue that in which we engage upon encountering difficult issues and extends this dialogue in all directions, somehow making the conflicts that plague our world seem to make a bit more sense. Or, he at least makes them interesting. Also, I’m working through Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood and John Berryman’s collection of poetry, The Dream Songs.

Perhaps you will think this is as funny as my roommates did: I almost experienced a panic attack yesterday, when, in a conversation about breast pumps, Arielle reminded me that women have been known to induce lactation simply because they want to lactate or keep lactating so badly that they are able to mentally will their bodies to continue producing milk. This, miraculously, can occur whether you or pregnant or not. I pondered this for a moment and shortly became concerned that if the word “lactation” crossed my mind too many times, my breasts might start involuntarily leaking. I became immediately terrified. The End.