Last night we tried Alary's, on Seventh in downtown Saint Paul. It was more or less not overtly sexual, as bars go, which made the white hot pants the bar girls were wearing (with little pink tank tops?) that much stranger. Devora noted that while two of them walked around quite comfortably, as if not in their underwear in public, one girl obviously felt much safer behind the bar; outside it, she moved in a quick, embarrassed way. I didn't get a lot of time to observe the customers observing the girls, but I didn't have the feeling of being in an especially scopophilic setting. The appearance (at least: it's a matter, of course, as with many other situations involving looking, of not being caught looking too overtly) of 'polite' indifference seemed to prevail. I'm not sure why.

I found two twenties holding my place - a place, I don't really remember it - in one of my copies of 'Leaves of Grass'. I hope I haven't been making a habit of that.

I would like to say that I gave myself an early birthday present today, because I passed the preliminary written exam for my Ph.D. But that would be to try to make more of it than I actually feel. Better to say that some strange, impersonal non-event happened today, and now I don't know what to do with myself tomorrow. I keep imagining that I have to get up and work, still, on papers that have made my existence more miserable for at least two years. But I don't; I never have to look at them again if I don't want to.

I love to read Kogan wax methodological.

Those things below were, like, about the only things I had to say about Mike Jones. But I have had them be the only things I had to say about Mike Jones for months, and I just never typed them into my suck-box. So it's simultaneously irritating and gratifying to see that if I had typed them in just four days sooner, I would have beaten the paper of record to saying them. Not that that would have put me like, you know, at all ahead of any sort of game or race. But at least I didn't crack lame about the muggy weather.

Why sample when you can do it all yourself (presuming you could)? Well, don't the records you sample already mean something? What happens to the old meaning on the new record? Why on earth would you want old meanings? et cet.

For sake of comparison, my robot helper sez these are approximately - it sez that in a robot voice, A-PROX-I-MATE-LEE - the most-played tracks of the past two years according to me, and it, er, uh, me, with it:

'Breathe' (23)
'Party and Bullshit' (20)
'Still Tippin' (17)
'Hey Now (Mean Muggin)' (17)
'To Live and Die in L.A.' (16)
'Kevin Rowlands 13th Time' (15)
'Fancy Clown' (14)
'Black Superman' (12)
'Bathysphere' (12)
'You're Wondering Now' (11)
'Diagonals' (11)
'Gotta Have It' (10)
'II B.S.' (10)
'High Come Down' (10)
'The Jump Off' (10)
'Bus Driver' (10)
'Southern Man' (10)
'Happy People' (10)
'Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit' (10)
'Unmade Bed' (10)
'Happiness' (10)
'B R Right' (10)
'Cadillac on 22's' (9)
'Hovi Baby' (9)
'Under the Sun' (9)
'Just Blaze, Bleek & Free' (9)
'Tokyo Eye' (9)
'Body and Soul' (9)
'Ain't a Thug' (9)
'Yeah' (9)
'Three Card Molly' (9)
'Rainy Night in Georgia' (8)
'Wheaton Calling' (8)
'Rock 'n Roll Suicide' (8)
'Shopping Bags (She Got From You)' (8)
'I Love You (Listen to This)' (8)
'Mind Playing Tricks On Me' (8)
'Bellona' (8)
'Last Exit' (8)
'Send Me Shivers' (8)
'Born Again' (8)
'Bring Em Out' (8)
'Me and Mia' (8)
'Lean Back (Remix)' (8)
'Try Again' (7)
'Flipmode Squad Meets Def Squad' (7)
'KoKo' (7)
'25 or 6 to 4' (7)
'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is' (7)
'Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)' (7)

I'm sure this all means something or other.

I used to be unstoppable with a comma.

I dunno about least interesting - I'm kind of impressed that somehow Mike Jones has grafted onto his flow, here and elsewhere, which kind of wavers between bluntness and lameness (so that, you know, he's real or something), two tics that complement it: the incessantly one-joke self-promotion campaign (who is Mike Jones? who is Mike Jones? who is Mike Jones? I'm Mike Jones! - speaking of which, I'm too shy to call his phone number, 281-330-8004, which is plastered all over the packaging and recording of one of his mix cds, but I would be pleased to find that he actually answers it himself, and disappointed if it's just a message drop, or worse, his agent), and the vaguely hypnotic (I wonder if it has anything to do with screwing and chopping?) repetitions, where for apparently very little reason he'll pick a whole couplet and repeat it like forty times.

I have consulted iTunes, which is more organized than me, except that it fucks up keeping track of playcounts sometimes. It says that I have 57 tracks sitting in my '2005 singles' playlist right now; I've played less than half of them, played those 32 tracks 92 times, and played 'Still Tippin' at least twenty percent of the times. If it does not turn out to be my Skinner Box rat-pellet single of the year, it will be because I get sick of it and never want to hear it again until I am 40, which will probably be embarassing (to someone else).