More moving adventures (or, oh god please make it stop)

I've just spent the last two weeks doing nothing but moving-related chores. Packing, loading, driving, finding parking, unloading, unpacking. Selling, donating, discarding. Organizing, stashing, misplacing, searching, and hopefully finding. Thankfully, the packing-and-moving portion has ended (as of yesterday), but now we face the daunting task of unpacking into a smaller space.

EDIT: Do you ever wonder if our possessions are like our own personal Horcruxes? You know, physical objects which contain small parts of our soul, and if we ever throw them away, a small part of us dies?

JEAN'S AWESOME NEW RULE FOR NOT LETTING THIS HAPPEN AGAIN: No new Horcruxes! This includes gifts, souvenirs, books and movies (libraries and Netflix work wonders), and electronics. EXCEPTIONS (aka Jean's Kryptonite): I have a weakness for crafts, fridge magnets, and music. Out of necessity, I'm also willing to buy textbooks and new stuff that replaces old stuff.

Fellow nomad friends, what do you do fend off clutter and excess stuff?

Yet another blog!

Hello! Now that I'm living among the hipsters, I've created a new blog, Lost Angels City, which will focus on Los Angeles events, concerts, and nightlife. (Don't worry, Machine will still be your main source for the miscellaneous banalities of my personal life. :P) I have a fairly high blog mortality rate, so we'll see if the new one survives. I hope so!

Stuff. Stuff! STUFF!!!

Ahh, moving. No matter how minimally I try to live, there's always more stuff. D:

Seriously, John and I packed a 14' U-Haul and moved it to the new place. And the old place is still livable! What is going on?! (It doesn't help that I can't get anyone on craigslist to haul away my stuff.)

Argh!

Do you know anyone who needs a bed, TV, old computer, rice cooker, or George Foreman grill?! ;)

I Kissed a Girl.

I read in the paper today that some pop starlet has a hit single right now titled, "I Kissed a Girl." It's your basic disco biscuit fare, with a little bit of homo-eroticism thrown in the mix. I appreciate homo-eroticism as much as the next girl, but I remember too fondly Jill Sobule's folk-pop morsel of the same name, which came out *looks at calendar* 13 years ago. (Wow, time flies.) To me, this was the good ol' days, back before bisexuality went mainstream, back before bi-curious college chicks started traipsing around in the straight male spotlight. Jill Sobule approaches the topic with such delightful innocence. She doesn't play it sexy for the camera, she just tells her story of sexual curiosity with humor and honesty. It's such a relief from Katy Perry's oversexed, over-marketed, overrated vamping.

YOU: What about slash, Jean? Isn't that an appropriation of homosexuality by the straights, too?

ME: Alas, it can easily be interpreted that way. But at its core, slash is still a bunch of women writing down their fantasies and sharing them with other women. (That's pretty damn queer, if you ask me.) When House and Wilson make out for May sweeps, I'll re-evaluate my position on misappropriation.

Anyway, here are the videos.

Katy Perry kisses a girl.
Jill Sobule kisses a girl.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Please discuss!