Here's to Brigette

I first met Brigette when I was at band camp in high school. My friend Molly and I climbed in a minivan with her two sisters, her mom, and her aunt. We six ladies each packed a week’s worth of luggage. Nutty stuff. Molly’s mom dropped us off at the International Music Camp at Peace Gardens (North Dakota/Manitoba), and there we were, Molly with her trumpet and me with my trombone, for a week of extensive band-geekiness and culture shock (weirdly; Canadians are SO AWESOME).

Brigette had traveled to IMC with her French horn from a little town in North Dakota. While I met lots of people at band camp, Brigette has always stayed in touch with me, and been there for me when I needed her. She’s a few years older than me, but we’ve always been on the same page; there are things I’m comfortable discussing with Brigette, who I knew for a few days and have only really met once in my life, that I don’t really feel right talking about with anyone else. She is so clever, creative and unique. She reminds me of me in many ways – I get the vibe from her that she, like me, is comfortable being herself, she’s just not entirely sure who she is yet.

So that’s the backstory. The frontstory is that today I checked my mail and found a package slip. When I picked my package up from the front desk, I saw that it was from Brigette. I opened it up, and it smelled GOOOOOD. Packed in among some plastic shopping bags used as padding, I found a cozy blanket, a composition notebook with a handmade collage cover, a package of ramen, and a Dig Dug musical greeting card. In with the card was a letter.

This package embodies Brigette, for me. It smells like her. It came with a hug in the form of a blanket. She’s nourishing me with food, expressing her creativity with the collage. It’s incredibly generous – a care package from one college student to another is costly in terms of content, time investment, and shipping. The card made me laugh; the letter is so full of beautiful things, both happy and sad, that it brings tears to my eyes.

I find myself wishing there were more people in the world like Brigette; however, if there were, it would be more difficult to appreciate her for what she is: a sweet, gorgeous, enchanting person who makes my life sweeter.

:-Þ

...DUDE. It is the perfect pffting emoticon.

I can die in peace.

Hey look guys! Music!

Think of 25 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. When you finish, tag 25 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good.

1. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd (1975)
2. Maybe You Should Drive - Barenaked Ladies (1994)
3. Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? - Of Montreal (2007)
4. Automatic for the People - REM (1992)
5. Pop - U2 (1997)
6. Nimrod - Green Day (1997)
7. The World Won't Listen - the Smiths (1987)
8. Yourself or Someone Like You - Matchbox Twenty (1996)
9. The Beatles (The White Album) - the Beatles (1968)
10. Hopes and Fears - Keane (2004)
11. Quadrophenia - the Who (1973)
12. The Times They Are A-Changin' - Bob Dylan (1964)
13. Bringing Down the Horse - the Wallflowers (1996)
14. Guero - Beck (2005)
15. Secret World Live - Peter Gabriel (1994)
16. The Moon and Antarctica - Modest Mouse (2000)
17. Used Songs 1973-1980 - Tom Waits (2001)
18. Bleed Like Me - Garbage (2005)
19. Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen (1975)
20. Rum Sodomy and the Lash - the Pogues (1985)
21. Greatest Hits - Boston (compiled in 1997)
22. Kettle Whistle - Jane's Addiction (1997)
23. Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters (2004)
24. Villains - the Verve Pipe (1996)
25. The Wall - Pink Floyd (1979)

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Who's Next - the Who
Tommy - the Who
The Sunlandic Twins - Of Montreal
Sea Change - Beck
Abbey Road - the Beatles
Ready to Die - the Notorious B.I.G.
In Search of the Lost Chord - the Moody Blues
Mellow Gold - Beck
Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix
Good News for People Who Love Bad News - Modest Mouse
Zooropa - U2
Give Up - the Postal Service
A Momentary Lapse of Reason - Pink Floyd
Raising Sand - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
King of Rock - Run D.M.C.
Who Are You - the Who
Achtung Baby - U2
Feeling Strangely Fine - Semisonic
the Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Veruca Salt - American Thighs
the Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
Imogen Heap - i Megaphone
the Decemberists - Her Majesty
the Decemberists - the Tain
[And Plenty More]

NOTES:
1. The albums are not ranked, by any means.
2. Honorable mentions were mostly thought of after I'd filled out the 25. Those that leaped to mind first, I considered the most influential.
3. If more than one album by an artist came up in my musings, I tried to limit it to my favourite album of said artist's, at least on the top 25 list.
3.1 Pink Floyd, as they do, were excepted.
3.2 The Who tried hard, and it pains me greatly not to have "Who's Next" on my top 25.
4. I need to stop writing this notes section because more albums keep occurring to me.

"Though my heart can't take no more...

...I keep on running back to you." Gotta love that Ashanti.

Anyway, I was here:
I love the Internet. I do. Every single day it makes me go OH DEAR GOD WHY IS HUMANITY SO STUPID (YouTube comment threads are like a party van full of drunken frat boys driving off a cliff, diving through a hoop of fire and then shouting "WOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!" into the lamest metaphor ending ever, except everybody is four times more intolerant/racist and 1337 times more pretentious). But at the end of the day, I live for teh intarwubs. It has its moments frequently enough - you know, when it's curled up beside me wearing nothing but a sheet, breathing softly and promising to never leave - that I always come back to it.

Today, I had several of those nice moments, courtesy of Jeffrey Rowland:
http://twitter.com/wigu/status/1271747304
http://twitter.com/topatoco/status/1270771215

The reason I follow @wigu AND @topatoco on Twitter is for tweets like these. The valiant Sir Rowland and his faithful sidekicks (never far behind and always equipped with coconuts) never fail to deliver. Maybe nobody around me right now would get it if I dropped a Contact reference. Maybe noone nearby would laugh at the phrase "pooped in Death's punch bowl". But I would, and so would someone else I'll probably never meet.

So, in conclusion, oh iNtArNeTz: Thanks for the solidarity.
Also I think you gave me herpes of the mind.