At 6 minutes after midnight I grabbed Neva's phone and showed it to her; the front where you can see the time in the corner. The wallpaper of the phone is her making a face. She looks at the phone and makes the face she had on in the wallpaper. "No," I say, suppressing a laugh, "look at the time." She looks. "Oh, it's midnight. Did you want to watch Conan?"

After laughing for a good while, I say "Greet me, bitch!"

And this is my girlfriend… !

-

Instead I have a gift for you. Go here and click the "Free" button at the bottom, follow the instructions, and you will get a folder of music. It's 28MB, so be warned. It has 5 songs of no major significance; they are not about birthdays and are not clues to my state of mind these past few weeks or anything emo-shitty like that. They are simply songs I have been playing often this month.

The songs are:
* Regina Spektor's "Ode to Divorce" - this is not the song that made me want to listen to her album (that would be "Us") but it is the first track and is damn good. If you like Fiona Apple you may like her. Then again you might not. If you look her up on the Intarweb she is under the "anti-folk" genre. What the fuck is anti-folk? I swear they're just making 'em up these days.
* Aqueduct's "The Suggestion Box" - probably my most-played song this year after Bloc Party's "So Here We Are." It's so fucking addicting. I play it in the morning and when I go to sleep. I sing it in the shower and scream it in the car. It makes perfect sense that this guy opened for Mates of State. I can't believe Ylai's already listening to stuff like this. When I was a freshman in high school it was what, Smashing Pumpkins? "Indie" wasn't even a popular term then, it was still "alternative." This is from I Sold Gold, another Great Album of 2005. Seriously, almost every track is fried gold. And the songs have great names, like "Growing Up With GNR" & "Frantic (Roman Polanski version)"
* Nouvelle Vague's "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" - not so much addicting as it is hypnotic; it's good background music while you're working at the computer. It's the kind of song for a montage scene where the main character's making a mess of their life (getting drunk and into fights) and just hitting bottom after their main love interest has dumped them/cheated on them.
* The Cribs' "Another Number" - this and the last song bring THE ROCK. Just a great little pop song with great hooks and under 3 minutes. Let's see you do that, Coldplay.
* Sleater-Kinney's "Jumpers" - big and rich like a slice of cake you thought you could finish but is more than you bargained for and is probably bad for your health when you think about it but damn it, it tastes so fucking good. Chocolate!

I was going to put Pavement's "We Dance" which is also terrific and is, in my opinion, one of the most romantic things that any man has ever written (but then again I'm weird like that), but I left it in the car CD player. Just download it yourselves or something. I've been listening to Wowee Zowee again and damn is it a timeless album.

My only request is that if you download the songs, you mention who you are in the comments. And then after you've heard the songs, let me know what you think. That is a fair trade, is it not? And go ahead and share the link if you like. Oh, and the file will disappear if it hasn't been accessed in 30 days. Whenever someone downloads it the timer's reset. I think.

And don't forget to hug and kiss the next Ramon you see.

-

If I could meet and speak to my 15- and 20-year-old selves I could tell them some useful things but then after listening to me speak and finding out more things about me they would probably gang up and beat the crap out of me.