life is pretty normal today

There are some days where there's just way too much damn stuff to do, or potential stuff to do, that you can't possibly get it all done. Yesterday was one of those days and I'll get to that in the next paragraph. Today, however, was just the opposite. A totally average day. So average, in fact, that I discovered a website devoted to daily averageness called MyLifeIsAverage. It's laugh-out-loud funny and better than TextsFromLastNight and FMyLife. Accordingly, my day could be summed up as follows:

The past two days my credit card had been frozen due to a fraud alert. Today I walked a mile through the rain to ASDA to get groceries, hoping my card would magically work. Nope. MLIA.

Yesterday had potential to be significantly less average as I had a difficult decision to make in terms of evening entertainment. A) I could see an early Deerhunter show, playing at the Deaf Institute around 6:00. B) I could see Sharon Van Etten (who I praised earlier this week) opening for a Canadian band at a bar around 8:00. C) I could possibly see both live shows or D) I could read a book and eat Easter candy.

I debated this decision all day. The reason Deerhunter was playing an earlier show was because the late show sold out, so they scheduled to play twice in one evening. I got to thinking what great incentive does the band have to perform well for the first show for the lazy casual fans that didn't buy tickets soon enough? To me it'd just be a warm up for the later performance. I also wasn't really in the mood for a wall of sound, which is what Deerhunter's psychedelic studio work translates into live. My one great incentive to going would have been to grab one of their Rainwater Cassette Exchange EPs which is actually a cassette. I imagine holding one would instantly bring back some 90s memories and when I returned from the flashback I'd have neon splashed clothes and a boombox and I'd say something like, "Whoooooooa."

I read up on the bar that Sharon was playing at and it really turned me off. No stage. Right next to the toilets. This sour review I was reading was for a Badly Drawn Boy show, and he's from Manchester! I've got a really good memory of Sharon Van Etten live and I didn't want it ruined by seeing her again in a crappy location. Therefore I didn't do either. MLIA. Turns out it was my friend Alicia's last night in Manchester so a few of us went out for drinks and karaoke and I spent about as much as I would have if I had picked one of those concerts. FML.

On another note, I did finally finish a book I've started a dozen or so times, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut has a way of writing that explores deeply depressing subjects and characters in a darkly humorous manner. It's like every character Bill Murray's played since the Royal Tenebaums. There's something immensely attractive about that ability.

I particularly liked the bit at the beginning when the narrator's telling a movie-maker that he's writing an anti-war book to which the movie-maker replies, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?". In other words, that there would always be wars and they're as easy to stop as glaciers. I agree with that statement, to some extent. It's hard to put it into perspective now that since 1969 when the book was written, glaciers are melting and "war" has at multiple times been titled before any real declaration (for example no one has ever officially declared war on drugs, terror or Iraq). In the brilliant television show The Wire, detectives Greggs, Carver and Hauk are discussing one of many drug cases in the Baltimore projects:

Greggs: Fighting the war on drugs, one brutality case at a time
Carver: You can't even call this shit a war.
Hauk: Why not?
Carver: Wars end.

And hence the aptly-titled Israeli-Palestine "Conflict". It's true that wars and glaciers are difficult to stop, but as we know, they melt eventually.

Since I made fun of Everclear yesterday, here's a song that goes along with this post's post-modern theme:

Everclear "Normal Like You" (mp3)