Readership here is plunging, my friends, and I don't know what to do about it. Create a repulsive but false roommate? An option, I guess. Perhaps I can just write about false achievements on the athletic field. Or maybe I can, I don't know, create some other sort of drama somehow. I'm not sure. (Actually, I've found a method. Keep reading!)

I talked to Tina last night, and I just got off the phone with my parents, and I think I left them fringe-depressed, and that's just too bad. Kind of stressful at work, in general, and sometimes it's getting to me that I'm a half-hour from home when I'm at the office. But, on the bright side, the fact that I live in the Arctic Circle leads to great daytime hours - I'm getting home in the light at 6 p.m., and we're about a month from Daylight Savings Time. There might be snow on the ground, and I might not have seen grass in about a month, but, gosh, we're only a month from spring. For real, y'all. That's pretty cool, I think, and it gave me a smile while I was standing at the urinal today. That's totally the first time I've typed 'urinal' here, I'd hope, anyway.

Also, my master plan of 'not reporting my income earned as an untaxed temporary employee' has backfired on me, as I received one of those 1099-Misc forms. This means that Uncle Sam's getting a paycheck-sized check from me in a few months, and that kind of sucks. Puts a damper on those pending "Tax Refund Sale" sales that are about to start popping up. And, to think, I could've really used the hot tub in my backyard.

I'm in the market for a new apartment, as my roommate is leaving town sometime in the next month or so. I could stay at my current location, certainly, as it's pretty nice. I would have to come up with an alibi for where I've been the last five months, as I've been here, well, "illegally" over that time. Or, shall we say, I've been "undocumented." But it's a pretty nice place.

It seems like a lot of places up here have in-unit laundry, which is just awesome. There's at least one place that has an indoor garage connected to the unit, which is pretty fantastic, too. So I've made about six or seven calls to privately-owned places, and I've seen a few, and I've got to make some calls to complexes, I guess. Is there anything more boring than talking about looking for an apartment? Probably, actually.

On about a tri-monthly basis, I get the urge to read actual literature, and not to stop at Newsweek and Sports Illustrated and Slate and... pitchfork. My last two weekends home, I've also done a fair amount of month-old New Yorker reading, which is uniformly good reading. Long reading, which is both good and bad.

On Saturday afternoon, I picked up Phillip Roth's American Pastoral at the library. The opening chapter was riveting, in its own way, and it's a shame that there's about a 20 percent chance (and that's being generous) of me finishing it. But even if I don't finish it, I'll have encountered this fantastic passage:

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive; we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.

It was preceded by a cool part about 'getting them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again.' I've not read books for meaning in a long time, my friends, but I think this part is getting at the theme of the book. How can I tell? Because it's what the first chapter is about, and it's what the jacket is about.

I've just learned how to increase traffic on my blog. Jenny's officially an expert.

You can a) write and post photos about Icelandic hot dogs, apparently good enough to draw a marriage proposal, or b) write about Chicago's Margie's Candies, but include a hilarious-but-creepy anecdote about a teenage crush on Steve Dahl, thereby causing Steve to read it on air, and thereby surging site traffic. I, however, can do none of the above.

What I can do, however, is write briefly about the albums I've bought in the last two weeks (I realize that this list is bringing me close to the level of aging-non-hipster just trying to hang on, but I'll deal with it. Just about everything I buy now is at Borders, and on sale at Borders. Even the cool stuff):

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away: They're pretty tough to not-like, right? I was surprised recently when I read that James Mercer was 36 years old. I'd like to write that I saw them "before they were big," because it's true, but I think they were opening for Spiral Stairs' Preston School of Industry at the Double Door in October 2001. And, sure, it was a good show. And I knew the Shins, and was looking forward to seeing them (more than PSOI, certainly), but I didn't yet have Oh, Inverted World by that time. But, actually, I most enjoyed The Standard, the first of three bands, and they aren't any good at all. My favorite song on Wincing is "and you had to know that I was fond of you (fond of you)," which is called "Turn On Me." It's not the single, but I think it's what they played on Letterman. I think James Mercer is something approaching a beautiful lyricist, but I don't listen to music closely enough to realize it. I wish I had the patience to really study a record, like I did when I was 15, but I haven't done that for years. A shame, really.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder: I swear, while driving to Detroit last week, I flat hated this. It sucked. Sucked. But then you get over the guy's voice, and what's left are some pretty fantastic songs. There's nothing as immediate as "Over and Over (Lost and Found)" or "In This Home On Ice," from the first record, but, chances are, I didn't like those much at the beginning either. Everyone probably kind of likes "Satan Said Dance," I think, and I think my favorite is "Mama, Won't You Keep Those Castles In The Air & Burning." The songs are slow builds, lengthy, and that's kind of neat.

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer: The packaging here sucks. If you like CDs, like me, you might still opt for stealing. Or iTunes-ing. Because it's this digipack that folds out in all four directions and requires a cumbersome plastic sleeve to keep it from popping open, and then the liner notes are this kaleidoscopic polygon that falls out when you open the sleeve, and it's just annoying. But I really, really like the record. It's a breakup record, which is kind of cool. And it's got "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal," which is 12 minutes of the most intense kind-of twee you'll ever hear. It's got this great part, the part that makes me run faster on the treadmill, when he kind-of wails, "Let's have some fun! Let's tear this shit apart! Let's tear this fucking house apart! Let's tear our fucking bodies apart! But let's just have some fun." It's kind of cool. And then there's this other one, "Cato As A Pun," where it's his rhythm and inflection that truly make the lyrics: "I. Can't even pretend that you. Are my friend. What has happened to you and I? And don't say that I have changed, because, man, of course I have." It's cooler, and less sixth-grade, than it sounds here. And it's certainly not punctuated like that.

Beirut - Lon Gisland: Yeah, it's pretty cool. "Scenic World" is rerecorded, and there are two instrumentals, and it was worth my five bucks at the register at Other Music.

El Goodo - El Goodo: I don't know anything about them, but they're presumably named after a Big Star song, and their disc was in the four-dollar bin at Other Music. I'm so hip. It seems like some pretty wistful pop at times, and it's a little more rocking. I went through it three or four times last Monday, and I'll probably never listen to it again, but I think it's better than I've given it credit for here.

Swearing at Motorists - Last Night Becomes This Morning: I really liked Swearing at Motorists live, but that was opening for GbV, so I was probably overly excited and overly enthusiastic. This is the second record of theirs I own, again a cheapo Other Music purchase. I've only been through it half-asleep on snowy roads at 2:30 in the morning, so my opinion is unqualified on it.

Nellie McKay - Pretty Little Head: This'll never make regular rotation, but it will get played sometimes and put on mix tapes and will probably cause me to go, Oh, yeah, I forgot about that record if one of its many quite-catchy songs pops up on my iPod in shuffle mode. Or, also likely, it won't make it to the iPod because I'm about out of memory.

Bloc Party - A Weekend In The City: The cover art is just fantastic. A cool overhead cityscape, with a series of overpasses and a football pitch (!) off to the right and a basketball court kind of peaking underneath the highway. And it's got bleak urbanish lyrics. ("I'll love you in the morning / when you're still strung out" is the lyric I just heard moments ago.) I think I like Bloc Party, too.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible: My god. My god. So good. Oh, gosh, so good. Just so fantastic. Sweet baby. It's just so intense, but melodically and intelligently and cryptically and creepily. And it makes you want to scream along and pump your fist to the point where you don't realize you're screaming along and pumping your fist while you're joining in on an opening stanza:

Don't want to work in the buildings downtown
No I don't wanna work in the buildings downtown
I don't know what I'm gonna do
Cause the planes keep crashing down two by two
Don't wanna work in the buildings downtown
No, I don't wanna see it when the planes hit the ground

and then you continue

Don't want to work in the buildings downtown
No I don't wanna work in the buildings downtown
Parking the cars in the underground
The voices when they scream, they make no sound

I totally got it prerelease, because Gurs emailed it to me. I think they're just fantastic. Funeral became great over time for me, and I think this one became great on about third listen.

In Sports Illustrated last week, a player for the University of Oregon declared The Arcade Fire to be his dream Super Bowl Halftime Show. Bruce Taylor, or Bryce Taylor, is now my favorite Duck ever. Ahead of Donald, and Luke Ridnour, and even Joey Harrington.

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I was talking to a coworker this afternoon, and he was telling me about his brief - and failed - standup career. He apparently MC'ed a weekly event well-attended by students at a local Christian college, which isn't exactly a great comedy audience anyway. On one particular occasion, he heard an audience member say, "Oh, Guy," to which my coworker stopped his routine, and kind of looked quizically, and said, "You really think God doesn't know what you mean there?" That wasn't that funny, I guess, but the part about the kids going out to their cars to drink wine coolers was.

Another coworker and I have a new catchphrase of sorts. It's awful, but awesome. But mostly vulgar. When something exciting happens, we simply say "Balls." More awful, I guess, but there are probably vulgar-er things that we could say, too.

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I feel like my sister, because I almost forgot to shower. Thankfully, I didn't. Good.