Leo Power! How To Turn Your Negative Traits Into Positives Just By Calling Them “Positives”

My last few precious hours in Anacortes, Washington, are thus far being spent in my empty studio, eating Lays potato chips for breakfast. Last night we finished my album and I burned 30 copies of it and this morning I got up and put a couple stacks of them in various local establishments. The album is called The Goals EP or just “Goals,” and it’s about failure.
Kevin and I had fun (at least, I did) recording it, and using the fancy microphone I was so scared of breaking that my fear actually made me more likely to break it, as I leapt around to grab it out of other people’s hands if I thought it might be slipping, etc. We made a weird little album of strange, and strangely short, songs. They are very sparse, mostly just piano or just guitar. This is unlike my previous efforts which involved shoddy and overwhelming use of “computer”. Anyway, I like it. I feel the summer was almost totally a success. I read a lot, I wasn’t on the internet much, I exercised more than I have in years, I ate really healthy most of the time, I went on tour, I finished an album, and my life partner and I finally fell in love.

Today is his opening. My fantasy is that the people from the war rally will come to it and will be appalled by the roaring violent emptiness of their own hearts. But this won’t happen. And even if they came, they probably wouldn’t perceive anything amiss. Because good art is often “subtle,” and let’s all just admit that those who yell “GIT-R-DONE” and wave photographs of the World Trade Centers exploding do not “do” subtlety particularly well.

Speaking of, how about these 500 “behavioral perception agents” or whatever that are being deployed in airports around our nation? Better not look stressed out, or you might be hiding a vial of the Ebola Zaire virus that you plan to unleash on your flight to Detroit! Yeah, make sure you keep your face looking serene and happy…….AT THE AIRPORT.

Oh well, it’s all just part of God’s beautiful plan.

Speaking of God’s beautiful plan, it’s Sunday! Soon the sound of churchbells will be drowned out by the sound of Lee Greenwood, because you just don’t mess with American pride.

Last night Gary read me our horoscope love-match thing. Whoever wrote that really hates Leos, that’s all I can say. It was really bizarre, because they kept saying the most cruel and unflattering things but putting it in the guise of those things being strengths. Like “Poor Virgo will often feel slighted as you push past him into the limelight, which you are very good at attaining even though you don’t work very hard or care about quality.” The only thing that was true was “Virgo’s meticulous attention to detail will drive Leo up the wall.” But then Gary said that’s what EVERY SINGLE MATCH says about Virgo.

Genevieve and I are actually a much better love-match. Instead of my unbelievable superiority complex eclipsing her tender and selfless behind-the-scenes work (as is apparently true of my actual love-match and me), we are luckily both egomaniacs and our fierce competition will spur each of us to greater creative heights. The idea of having “fierce competition” with Genevieve is very funny to me. “Dear Genevieve. Today I got an A on my paper! Isn’t that GREAT?”

I enjoy dating a Virgo. Case in point: For about three years, my windshield wipers have been useless. They just smear the mud on my windshield around and make everything worse (I refuse to waste water washing my car (this ethical stance enables extreme laziness also, so, two birds)). Then one day Gary drove to the store and got new wipers and put them on and they work great! It would have been literally YEARS before I accomplished such a task.

I don’t know how dating a Leo affects him, though. That’s not my problem.

I love being a Leo! And I think only a Leo would say that. God, I love Leos. I’ve never met a Leo I didn’t instantly like. We’re probably also the only star sign whose horoscope is usually primarily admonishment, and, furthermore, the only star sign who takes this admonishment and somehow perceives it as a compliment. “You can be too bossy.” “THANK YOU!”

I think it’s important to be honest about yourself. I also gave myself a really terrible haircut. now I have awful 7th grade bangs and it depresses me.

Crazy But True: When you import my album, iTunes weirdly assigns it all these random track titles, and calls the album “Old Album.” Further research will reveal that against almost incalculable odds, my album has the exact same track lengths in the exact same order as an unreleased pre-fame album by Tom Delonge of Blink 182.