I will sing your fears if you sing my neurosis

This is the week of random fantastic presents. oldcharliebrown's late and most welcome holiday gift arrived in the mail: the Dresden Dolls' vinyl single of "Good Day" (b-side, "A Night at the Roses"). Since "Good Day" was the first Dresden Dolls song I ever heard, when I was trying to find my seat at the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony and wondering what on earth I was listening to, this is most appropriate.* The cover illustration and the faces printed onto the label are terrific, in one of the ways that makes me wish I had an actual talent for visual art. And besides, it's vinyl. I'll have to borrow my parents' turntable to play it, but this is still immensely cool.

Hm. Most likely I am the last person in the universe to find this out, but their new album has a name: Yes, Virginia, and it's due out in spring 2006. This makes me happy. I also see that it contains "Sex Changes," "Dirty Business," and "Mandy Goes to Med School," which are three of my favorite so-far unreleased songs (others are "Boston," "The Sheep Song," and recently "The Gardener" and "My Alcoholic Friends"; if I were to count the ones collected on A Is For Accident, that list would expand like crazy) and includes some I haven't heard yet, like "Me and the Minibar" or "Sing." There are about three bands I follow actively, and the Dresden Dolls are one of them.

Now all I need is a new Jill Tracy album and my need for weird cabaret will be (temporarily) fulfilled. I keep meaning to see the short film of "The Fine Art of Poisoning" or the films in which she appears, but I haven't yet. I need an actual slice of free time to set aside for tracking down oddities by favorite artists of mine. (Hey: compilation. Ah, the internet. Aiding free-association since . . .) I need free time, period. And I need not to use it staring at CDs I can't afford.

My poem "In Sight of the Seasons" (Not One of Us #34) has been nominated for the 2006 Rhysling Award, Short Poem. I am starting to feel guilty.

*I went home with that song stuck in my head, despite the presence of a theremin in the opening ceremonies and the performance of "Christopher Lydon" that eventually found its way onto A Is For Accident. It was the "I took out the trash today and I'm on fire . . ." bit, because I hadn't been able to catch most of the other lyrics. My parents were very patient with me. And years later, I was able to attain semidemisortagod status in the eyes of an adolescent girl on the subway back from the 2005 WFNX Best Music Poll, dressed in serious black and chaperoned by her mother, who looked at me wide-eyed and said, "You were really there?" and I could feel for a moment like some veteran of the war at Troy (or pick a heroic epoch of your choice) before I realized how weird that was . . .