Download This! The Sounds of Angst

My subject totally reminds of those cheesy and badly named cd collection commercials I see late at night when I'm suffering from massive insomnia. Who knows? That could actually be the name of a cheesy collection cd somewhere. Those of you who read my piddling babble know that I've been working on an angsty Danish S3 fanfic and because I'm a fucking nerd I've created a special playlist on my iPod of songs to listen to while writing the fic. Here's a few of the songs I'm using so far:

You Oughta Know (Live Grammy Performance) by Alanis Morissette: http://www.beta.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=034BB327930BE809

This is the best version of the song, imho, because it gets to the heart of something very true but often looked over when it comes to the rage experienced during a relationship's demise. And that's the fact that feelings of hurt and betrayal are usually the cause of that anger. I love this song, even after discovering that it was written about the dude who played Uncle Joey on Full House. Sigh. Why Alanis? Please tell me why it's about Uncle Joey as he is so very lame and totally undeserving of having this truly awesome song written about him. Oh well. I guess she didn't know any better at the time. At least it's not Carrot Top. That's something to be glad about.

All I Ask by Fisher: http://www.beta.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=BB3E6504A8A44392

What can I say about Fisher other than she kicks ass consistently and I've never been disappointed with any music that I hear from her? Hmm... lets see. She's hot? lol. That works I guess.

Forever May Not Be Long Enough by Live: http://www.beta.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=F098A8108D181F98

This song is just intense as all hell and sometimes gives me weird goosebumps while listening to it. Which is sort of lame considering it was written for The Mummy Returns soundtrack. Hrm. One of my favorite Buffy: The Vampire Slayer music videos uses this song in it. Appropriately, the video focuses on Tara's relationship with Willow and her untimely demise on the show.

Secretly by Skunk Anansie: http://www.beta.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=241BC2BA74D2D8B4

Another soundtrack song, this comes from the movie Cruel Intentions. This song tends to mesmerize me into a coma at times so I should really remove it from my playlist. lol. But if I don't remove it I should still be okay because the song after it is by Skunk Anansie again but is much more rock the fuck out and scream sing along with the lyrics than this one is.

Weak by Skunk Anansie: http://www.beta.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=C6B24EF4174B510B

I'd be surprised if anyone who reads this post hasn't heard this song yet. It's been used in countless lesbian fandom music videos. Which is weird because there's nothing terribly dykey about the song. Then again, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the lead singer, Skin, looks every inch a kick ass dyke with her leather outfits and perfectly shaved head.

Animal Cops Detroit: Psycho Kitty Edition

Everyone has a tv show that they fucking love but are sort of embarrassed about loving it so much, right? I'm totally out there with my obsession for cheesy soap opera drama type shows like The L Word, South of Nowhere, All My Children, Noah's Arc, and so on but very few people outside of my girlfriend and roommates know of my fucking crazy addiction to the documentary style law enforcement shows on Animal Planet.

There are five of the shows but they're all basically the same thing. They just star different people and take place in different areas of the country where you follow the work days of various workers for the local branches of the Humane Society, Animal Control, and ASPCA whose job it is to rescue and help animals in various types of situations. A lot of the show involves arresting people who have abused or neglected their pets. I can't tell you how many dogs I've seen on the shows who are just horrifyingly thin to the level that you can literally see and count all the bones in their body.

I like all the shows but my favorite are Animal Precinct and Miami Animal Police. Here's a little information about both of them...

Animal Precinct focuses on the staff of the ASPCA in New York City and has my favorite animal law enforcement worker, Annemarie Lucas, starring on it. She's so wonderfully butch and intimidating with the bad guys but is hilariously sweet and mushy with the animals. Another weird but cool thing about Animal Precinct is that a lot of the people on the force are former agents of the undercover vice squad who used to bring down drug dealers. Their faces end up blurred out because those same people go undercover for the ASPCA to investigate and bring down illegal dog fighting rings which tend to be mixed up with the world of drugs and arms dealing.

Miami Animal Police is my second favorite out of all the various shows because of the Animal Services Unit officer Dierdra "Buffy" Jorgensen. Annemarie is a bad ass but she's totally a sweetheart and you can tell it when watching her, I think. Despite her uber girly nickname, Buffy is fucking harsh as all hell. I totally end up giggling madly whenever she's reading the riot act to the various neglectful pet owners. This show also has the most hilarious guest star, Todd Hardwick, who is the owner of Pesky Critters Wildlife Control. Todd is the guy that they call whenever alligators are becoming a nuisance and must be removed. I think Miami is the most interesting other than Animal Precinct just because a lot of their cases involve exotic wildlife trapping which is kind of cool to watch. I had no idea how many weird ass creatures wander around Miami and I lived there for a few months around four years ago. Yeesh.

The other shows they have in a similar vein are Animal Cops Houston, Animal Cops San Francisco, and Animal Cops Detroit.

Last night I couldn't sleep so I decided to watch my Tivo'd episodes of Animal Cops Detroit and one of them was a pretty damn funny episode. One of the segments in it focused on Animal Control worker, Debbie McDonald, trying to capture a closet full of cats. An old woman had tons of them but she became unable to care for them or herself any longer so her family put her into an assisted living facility and called Animal Control to get the cats. To help them, they corralled all the cats into this tiny closet. Debbie, who just for random information sake is a big huggy bear of a bull dyke in my opinion, sneaks in and there's like nine cats in the closet and one of them is this crazy ass grey cat that keeps jumping on her body and on top of the cardboard boxes containing the already captured cats. It was just hilarious stuff.

What would happen was Debbie would capture a cat with this thing called a cat claw then put it in the cardboard transportation box and the grey cat would see her putting the other cat away and would be like, "Hell no bitch!" Then they'd jump on Debbie then the box and allow the other cat which had been pretty much captured to escape again. Hee. I swear, it was funny stuff.

When they got back to the shelter and examined all the cats the grey one once again escaped and ended up sitting on top of a huge shelf filled with books and office paperwork. They captured the cat by trapping it in this weird fly swatter type of thing that smushed the animal in making what looked like a weird sort of nylon and cat sandwich. Strange to see.

This entire episode reminded me of Pip's longtime pet cat, GoGo Boots, who was named after gee whiz... the gogo boots that Daphne always wore in the Scooby Doo cartoon. GoGo died a few months before I moved into the house with Pip and Stacey which is good because if GoGo was alive she would've probably been a bitch to Vlad and not in a way I'd find it amusing. Seriously though, her cat was fucking insane as hell. Two of the most prominent stories focusing on the cat's crazed mental status involve the oven and the Christmas tree.

Oh so many years ago, I lived across the street from where I live now in a house with Tracy and Laura. The house was a present from Laura's parents upon college graduation and they decided they could do with extra income and they asked Pip and I if I wanted to live in the two spare bedrooms in the house and pay some really minimal and affordable rent. Pip and I said yes, of course, and thus we moved in with our friends and stayed there for a few years. The GoGo stories I'm about to tell are from that period of time.

The cat was suicidal I think because it had this fucked up obsession with jumping into the oven. If there was no food in it and you were opening it to put food in? Jump in! I swear to god, you pull open the oven and you turn to get the food then a fucking black and white blur zips through the air and there's GoGo sitting on the middle shelf in the oven staring at you like you need to fucking shut the door so she can go ahead and get on with the task of killing herself. It got to the point where we actually developed strategies about how to go about opening the oven and preventing GoGo from jumping inside of it. Tracy ended up discovering that GoGo had a weird paranoia about nets falling down and capturing her so she'd always bring a blanket or something and when she saw GoGo nearing the kitchen as she suspected the oven MIGHT be opening, Tracy would hold up the blanket all ominously as a warning. Sort of like, lift up the blanket and shake it then say, "You see that kitty? I'm trapping you with this if you get too close!"

While the oven annoyed me the Christmas tree sort of amused me and still does. GoGo had this weird love for Christmas trees. Each year when Tracy would bring one home, because she's from Alabama and I guess live Christmas trees are hard to come by so she likes getting them here, GoGo would get into massive anticipation mode. Soon as the tree was set up in the stand the cat would fucking jump into the tree and hide in the branches and that's where it would stay. Decorating the tree? Oh don't be freaked out by a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring at you from the center of the tree and hissing noises. That's just GoGo. Seriously. The cat would stay inside the tree for as long as we would let it. Then when January rolled around and we had to throw the tree out, getting GoGo out of it was a task for a small army. The last Christmas we had with that cat it took me, Pip, Tracy, Stacey, Matt, Stephanie, Grace, and Mike shaking the tree for around twenty minutes to get it to finally release it's kitty hold on the branches. Once the tree was removed and thrown away GoGo always did the same thing. She'd circle the area where the tree had been meowing despondently and acting like we had just shot her mother in front of her.

During the pet wars discussion of what are better cats or dogs people always say that cats are smarter and yeah, maybe that's true but smart equals fucking crazy a lot of times. I'd much rather have a dumb but mentally stable dog any day than a Hannibal Lector kitty cat.

I'm doing decently in my angsty Danish S3 cancer fanfic. Although I'm sort of, I dunno, irked or maybe just disappointed that a lot of people are beating me to it. I think there are already four or so fanfics on l-word.com that have their main plots focusing on that spoiler. Oh well. Sometimes you can't be first, you know? I'm collecting music for the fanfic and in an upcoming scene I have Alice and Helena discussing ABBA and how fucking depressing their music is if you just listen to it. I have them listening to a cover of the ABBA song S.O.S. and commenting on how crazy dark it is. If you want to listen to the song here's a link:

S.O.S. (Cover) by Israelvis: http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1JQVUFHBPWCX70JICPWZZZ3YMY

The songs are really similar but I'm stunned about how fucking hard rock Israelvis managed to make ABBA. I'm really incredibly delighted by it. Super groovy stuff.