The women all look at you like you're bad, and the men all hope you are

One of the stories on MSN today was "5 real Romeos, 5 surprise proposals." So did they all drink poison and stab themselves, or what? I don't usually think about it, but it's a little weird how "Romeo" has come to mean a really romantic man. I guess that happens a lot with the names of people (whether real or fictional) that come to refer to a certain type. Like how "Jezebel" has come to mean a literal whore, when I think the original context was that she was a whore in the figurative, Biblical sense, i.e., a worshipper of gods other than Yahweh. Anyway, I like some of Shakespeare's work, but I've never been a big fan of Romeo and Juliet.

A dream (or perhaps a series of dreams; it can sometimes be difficult to tell where one ends and another begins, especially in retrospect) I had last night involved my old school, the development I used to live in, and trains that made stops at places like England, Paris, and Monhegan Island, a place up in Maine that's primarily an artists' colony [1], but my dad used to go there for gestalt therapy sessions. I have a lot of dreams about riding trains, probably largely because I used to do it a lot, back before I learned to drive.

You know, I like both spaghetti and bagels separately, but going from eating to one to the other makes for kind of a weird taste. I guess that's why sorbet was invented. Unfortunately, I didn't have access to any of that.

I've been listening to a CD bethje just got. It's called Making Singles Drinking Doubles, and it's a collection of single tracks made by artists on Bloodshot Records. One of the more interesting tracks on it is a weird bluegrass cover of XTC's "Complicated Game," by a band called Moonshine Willy. It has a completey different mood from the original (which I love, by the way), but it's quite cool in its own way. I notice they leave out the verse about voting and the bridge (which I often forget about myself; it's the "they wanted Tom, they wanted Joe" part), though. Neko Case contributes a version of "Rated X" that's pretty similar to, but not exactly the same as, the one on The Tigers Have Spoken. I understand that this was originally a Loretta Lynn song, and I don't think I've heard much of Loretta's actual music, but I like most of the covers of her stuff that I've heard. Also, countblastula put one of the songs from the album she did last year on a mix CD, and I thought it was a good song. Anyway, getting back to the record, I like the Kelly Hogan tracks and the Meat Purveyors' medley of Madonna songs. The last track, Jon Langford's "Nashville Radio," is also pretty good, although his vocals are a little on the hoarse side. (Incidentally, the song has a bit of a They Might Be Giants connection, in that former TMBG backup musicians Brian Doherty and Tony Maimone both play on it.)

[1] Jamie Wyeth, son of Andrew Wyeth, has (or at least had) a house up there. I've never been into it, but my brother has, and he said it contained a lot of Nazi paraphenalia and a wind-up penis.