I've known about hoarders before seeing this show. I used to live in the flat next to one in California. This poor woman was a complete nutcase. We both had flower boxes outside our doors. I filled mine up with herbs and watered them every day and used them for cooking and was pretty pleased with myself for having such a green thumb. She put bark and plastic flowers in hers. The backseat of her car was filled with garbage that obscured the windows and she'd cover it with a blanket, as if the rest of us wouldn't notice.

One time she was locked out her her apartment for three days because a pile of her stuff fell over and blocked the door. Of course she was too scared to call the landlord--if he saw what she was doing he'd have kicked her out--so she sat outside for three days trying to dislodge the stuff behind the door by pushing sticks through the mail slot. Eventually, she got back in. She was completely insane in this really suburban, middle-aged hippie sort of way. She asked that I never knock on her door, but that I call her special voicemail line if I ever needed anything. I suspect she didn't want me to see her "stuff."

I never had any concept of what was truly going on in the next flat over until I saw this show. I had always assumed that hoarders were collecting worthwhile things. For example, my father has a tendency towards hoarding but it's always German antiques and cookbooks. My mother refuses to throw away armchairs that clutter the living room, but from an objective standpoint they aren't junk-heap material. I thought that's what hoarding was--having too many things because they're still nice enough to keep. (I'm consciously trying to not mention my father's collection of phone books). But on Hoarders, people are just collecting garbage. Rotting pumpkins, empty Coke bottles, pizza boxes, scraps of paper, dolls with no heads. It boggles the mind. And what is most unbelievable is how some of these people find someone else that compliments their complete insanity, like the compulsive shopper who is married to a compulsive hoarder. She brings stuff in and he won't let it go. It was really terrifying.

And everyone on the show eventually breaks down weeping because of their "stuff." They don't want to get rid of their "stuff." "It's my stuff!" they wail. "I don't want people touching my stuff!" "My stuff is all I have!" It was profoundly depressing. I saw this on the back of reading an article in the New York Times Magazine, The Self-Storage Self a few days ago, while at the same time waiting for all of the storage companies I called to get back to me with price quotes. I'm going to go travelling around Asia for a while and need somewhere to put my "stuff." And now I'm gripped with fear.

Stuff is one of my obsessions. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a compulsive shopper, but I certainly love accumulating. Out of fear, I've counterbalanced this habit by being a compulsive thrower-outer. I throw a lot away. I go through my apartment and donate bags to charity. I'm so terrified of being one of these people where their entire lives are controlled by their stuff that I throw things away and get rid of things constantly. I get rid of more than I buy and manage to hold on to the sides. But just barely. And don't ask about the boxes I have in my parents' garage. That's my stuff.

Over the weekend in London we had the Magic Waves Festival, which was awesome. Straight up slammin' Italo action. While shaking it on the dancefloor, I was introduced to a guy by a friend of a friend. His name sounded familiar, but I didn't have long to think about it. Within moments he was trying to ram his tongue down my throat. As I valiently attempted to maintain my composure, I had a flash. Where had I seen his name before?

The Heart 2 Heart inbox. My first groupie.

One of the things I like about strippers is that even the well adjusted ones seem pretty messed up. They're just like me, except with better bodies.

Because Stacy had insisted on having this fairy-tale wedding and humiliating her best friends in the form of the canary yellow bridesmaid dresses, we decided to fully deliver on her dream. My suggestion that we go to a karaoke booth was ignored, and instead we ended up on Broadway having labia waved 10 inches from our faces. From what I've seen of drunken hen parties in Dublin (they are everywhere, there), the point of a bachelorette party is to humiliate the bride-to-be. The talk should mainly consist of what a tramp she used to be, and she should be forced to wear a crown of penises for the duration of the evening. Unfortunately, due to the 22 hours I spent traveling in order to attend the nuptials, I had lost my voice soon after arrival and was unable to speak for two days. I had to content myself with using hand gestures to convey what a slut she had been, and had a few pretty solid rounds of charades. I also demanded, in sign, that she wear a pair of glow-in-the-dark penis earrings.

We touched down on Broadway and went into one of the dirty stores there. Anything on Broadway proper isn't really that dirty, because it's aimed at assholes on hen or stag parties like ourselves. Did manage to have a good aul chat with the meth head working at Big Al's though--he told me, among other things, that he advises against using a product called "Anal-Eze" because it reduces sensitivity, and what he likes about anal is that it realy fucking hurts. I tucked away this tidbit of knowledge to chew on later, and we proceeded to our first strip club.

They told us it was going to cost us $15 each to get in. Stacy, previously the demure bride, was enraged by the $15 door fee. She dredged up an employment episode from a decade early that I had nearly forgotten about, and insisted that when she had worked the door at one of the Broadway clubs, they never charged an entrance fee to women. The dude working was like, "Wait, what? You worked over here?" Turns out the manager at her club was the same one as the manager at this club, and Stacy insisted that he come out and give her free entry. She seemed unconcerned by the fact that she had been unceremoniously fired from said club for stealing from the till, and managed to get us all in.

A high percentage of the girls in our group insisted that they couldn't get a lap dance because that would be "cheating" on their boyfriends who were not invited to our little girly soiree. They also said it would be "cheating" to sit too close to the stage or "cheating" to tip the strippers, who are, you know, trying to feed their little crack babies/habits entirely off tips. I wouldn't be one to get a lap dance myself, primarily because the dancers seemed unwilling to spend our seven minutes together discussing my problems with intimacy, which is all I'd really want from an encounter with them. I don't know that being polite to a stripper would technically constitute cheating--this may be why my relationships aren't particularly "successful," but frankly, it seemed like a way for my cheap-ass friends to weasel out of tipping the dancers. So like many other strip club patrons, I ended up blowing a "wad" on the dancers.

One of the clubs went to was the one that used to be known as the goth strip club. It brought back fond memories for me--dancers that would dance to Sisters of Mercy and looked completely uninterested in anything, let alone stripping. But this time, there were no goth strippers to be seen. Apparently that business model wasn't working so they decided to re-brand by having girls with names like Whiskey and Imani dance to "Baller for Lyfe." One of the girls fell in love with my friend Mary (who could blame her) and in the midst of her attempted wooing, told Mary that he real name was Candi. Her stage name was Esther. Oh, the misfortune of a girl born with a stripper name who chooses to strip under an old lady pseudonym.

All in all, was a great evening. Hadn't seen that much vag since college. To top off the stripper weekend, I nearly had the opportunity to see the stripper my ex-boyfriend married while we were dating shake her patootie at a genuine goth strip night. Although her junk was not particularly appealing a decade ago and probably hasn't aged well, I was willing to go for you, dear reader. "This would be great blog material," I thought. As it turns out, the bridesmaids were forced to set up tables all night while the groomsmen were off drinking beer and shirking resonsibility, so we were unable to have the pleasure of going to strip clubs two nights in a row and seeing my sex rival show her middle-aged naughty bits to a crowd of men dressed in all black and wearing eyeliner. Next time, California, next time.

*ps. If anyone knows what that song is on the urban dance radio stations all the time right now that goes "baller for life" please tell me. I need to add it to my "routine."

Late last night I got back from a 10 day trip to California. For the first time, I actually felt homesick once I got back. The weather, the burritos, the people without all of those pretentious intellectual pursuits...sigh.

Anyway, I was a little jetlagged out of it this morning and forgot to put my wallet in my purse. Once I got to work, I realized I didn't have enough money on my Oyster card (translation: subway transit card) to get home. Embarrassed, I bummed a fiver off of one of my co-workers and went to the station to try and put it on my card. I had exactly £0.30 on my card. I jammed the fiver in a few times, but because it was so tattered (my co-worker insisted on shoving it in my pants repeatedly before letting me keep it) that the machine wouldn't accept it.

Enraged, I got in line (queued) and finally had a real human help me. I told him that I just wanted to add enough for one bus trip, so could he please put £0.70 on my card? He looked at me and said, "You already have £2.70 on there, love. Save your money."

I don't know if he added the money on there because I looked poor, or the machine did it by mistake but it made my whole goddamned day. Thank you, England.

So when I walk down that long hall, and look to the right and see that the little red light on the door to the disabled toilet isn't visible, and that I'm going to get to spend some time alone pissing in a room that's nearly as big as my entire flat, my heart jumps. Not seeing that red light is enough to buoy my mood right up to the point that I stop thinking of how appealing spree killing seems, which otherwise occupies a significant portion of my day. And yes, I do realize how depressing it is that the highlight of my career is the time I get to spend frolicking around a toilet meant for people with multiple sclerosis.

But yeah, I feel fondly towards these toilets for the disabled. So fondly, in fact, that I tried to crash one this morning around 6am at Heathrow. I was speedwalking, honing in on that sweet disabled action. I had nearly made it inside when some uppity immigrant completely cockblocked me and was like, "This is HANDICAPPED toilet."

I understand why people with really shitty jobs like to hold on for dear life to whatever inane scraps of control they can eke out of their meaningless, demeaning lives and are always telling me things like that I can't use the handicapped toilets. Like, I get that. You scrub airport toilets. Telling people off is pretty much all you have. But toilet-scrubber woman, can't you take one look into my empty, soulless eyes and realize that pissing in a handicapped toilet is all I have?

So I advanced. "C'mon. Let me in."

And she retreated. "It's handicapped. Handicapped toilet."

And I parried. "Those are just guidelines. You don't actually have to be handicapped to use it."

And she repeated. "Then why does it say handicapped?"

"It doesn't actually say handicapped, it just has a picture of a person with wheels. In fact, I don't think you're supposed to say handicapped, it's sort of offensive these days," I say snottily.

She waves at me with her filthy, diarrhea covered mop. "Out. Handicapped toilet. For handicapped."

"C'MON," I plead.

She has had it. She's waving the mop dangerously close to my person. "For handicap only! Are you handicapped? Are you?" She clearly hasn't considered my emotional health and can only see two thick, but able, legs.

"My vagina's broken. Want me to show you?" I say, tugging on the hem of my dress.

"I call security now." While we wait for them to arrive, I sodomize her with the mop.

Although they were both incredibly chaotic, I was less impressed with the snow than the tube strike. On the first morning of the tube strike I woke up early, dreading the walk to work that I was being forced to do by the commie tube workers. It's not an outrageous distance, a couple of miles, but nothing I'd really, like, choose to do at eight in the morning. To be fair, the only thing I'd choose to do at eight in the morning is be either fast asleep or dancing to Niagara Flow in someone's kitchen. But as I lay in bed and attempted to make the arduous journey to consciousness, I heard honking. Lots of it. This propelled me out of bed and out the door to hang over the railing. Since I live in a housing project, there's a lot of hanging from railings so I didn't exactly stand out.

Outside there was gridlock. Major gridlock. And honking. Loads of honking. As someone who thrives on the misery of others, I found this motivating enough to put on a pair of sensible shoes and hit the streets. And I found a London that was like no London I had seen before. It was a London much like New York, actually. The streets were jammed with people who were elbowing each other and not bothering to say "pardon." On Westminster Bridge there were two double-decker buses broken down in the middle of the bridge. Hundreds of people milled around them, some angrily sitting on the curb sulkily smoking cigarettes or threatening to throw themselves off the side of the bridge. Women, unequipped to commute by foot in high heels, staggered around looking shell-shocked. Men would ride by unsteadily on bikes--two of them that I saw fell off. It sort of reminded me of those zombie/rapture movies where everything just shuts down and people are forced to conquer the crippling effects of modern technology and fend for themselves. It was complete and utter (manageable chaos). Definitely my kind of buzz.

I had my first run-in with this pinko health care system they have over here last week. I went in for a check-up and did the blood pressure test and they weighed me and measured me and did all the same things that they do in America except that they have to pay for it in the US of A.

Then the doctor asks me if I'm sexually active. I never know what this means. Like, when they ask you this at your check-ups when you are 16, what they are really asking is if you are a virgin. They want to know if you need std checks or lectures on condoms or to be forced to carry around a flour sack in a romper for a week or two.

But at my age, I am never sure how to answer. I'm pretty sure they assume anyone who has suffered through as many years on earth as I have has also endured the indignity of coupling with a cretin or two, so what exactly are they trying to ask me? Do they want to know if I've been "active" lately? How active is active enough to give an affirmative to this question? Is giving the idea occasional consideration enough?

I gave a hesitant yes, which isn't precisely true, per se. But then the doctor, a blond who couldn't have been a day over 22, asked me when I had last engaged in intercourse. I panicked. I managed to cut the exact number in half before mumbling out my answer. She didn't seem impressed but just went on to her next awkward question.

This is what my life has come to. I lied to my doctor about my sexual "activity" so she wouldn't think I couldn't, like, get any.

I've been writing about music all over the place lately and am in the process of writing a bunch of articles right now, including one about the Egyptian Lover. I'm really excited about this one because he's so fat and amazing. Writing articles is a lot easier than editing my novel, which is basically just like flossing. I'm sure in the long run it's worthwhile but it just seems really tedious and bloody whenever I try it. I really hate editing which is why I like blogging. This is basically because I'm a lazy, slovenly person at heart. I'd signed up to take a food journalism class because my other big hobby lately, other than music writing, has been gaining weight. Over the last two days I've made bahn mi every two hours or so because I got an entire loaf of bread and didn't want it to go stale. Sigh.

All I want to do with my life is travel around Asia and get fatter and fatter. But what am I supposed to do when the money runs out? Haven't figured that one out, so am staying put for the summer, I guess. I guess I can handle one summer here if I at least get to go to Malaysia and eat a boatload of laksa at some point in the middle.

In other news, I moved out of my last flat. So I am on my fourth flat in six months. This time, I'm living with my favorite person. Me. I will never live with another human being as long as I live. Granted, moving in with a failed child star and a failed model was destined to, well, fail, but it was seriously demoralizing. I guess I'll have to give a whole post over to the two of them, but I'm still too exhausted by the ordeal. At least I'm alone again.

I'm going to Amsterdam this weekend for more italo and Holland electro. I'm such a glutton. Last weekend I went to the Bloc festival, which is this electronic music thing in England. They also had an italo day. I'm clearly far too old for this sort of thing, but as long as I have flatmates and don't have a mortgage, I might as well live it up.

I've been working on writing and have been skipping the gym to do it. As such, I'm fat and prolific. I should have an article on Splice Today tomorrow, and an interview on Infinite State Machine soon. I will post links when it all happens. I'm working on a piece (in my head still) called "Loving the Mix and Not the Man." This is to try and talk myself out of loving DJs so much. I need to stop. I don't know what my problem is. Why is it that I need to obsess over imaginary (or sort of real) people? Is this the ultimate proof that I have no real enthusiasm for other people, and as such need to project personalities onto them in order to feign interest? Things I think about has I head back to Holland to continue my stalking.

In other news, my slumlord has refused to fix our heat for 3 weeks. We've had no heat or hot water for three weeks. I've given notice and have to find a new flat, which will bring me to four in six months. London is really a lot like Dickens described it.

Unfortunately, what my flatmate doesn't know when he started this faux-legal battle is that I have long dreamed of being a fake lawyer. In my New Year's resolutions for 2008 I stated that I would like to make a career out of writing pseudo-legal documents. While not a career, arguing with my flatmate via email is still incredibly satisfying. There's nothing that quite wakes me up in the morning like a whack of rage.

I know that getting irritated with him is just giving in to trolling, but it's hard not when someone tries to beat me at my own game. It also irritates me when people make such shameless attempts to sound smart, I nearly take it as an attack on my own intelligence. He must think I'm stupid, I think to myself. He can't possibly believe that I would fall for this shit. This just ratchets up my fury because in addition to attempting to evict me and threatening to sue me, he clearly thinks I'm a moron.

Just since beginning this post I've received another email from the flatmate. This in response, I guess, to my saying that I'd likely stay in the flat for the next ten weeks and wait for a court order to leave just to make him miserable. Just to be generous, I'll provide you with a sample:

Again, let me be clear that the remarks you made on our presumed attempt to unfairly overcharge you are unsubstantiated, factually incorrect and libelous. In saying this, may I remind you that this country has a stricter stance on what is considered libelous than you may be used to in the USA. Since you are understandably keen on your legal rights, I suggest that in the future you carefully consider those of others, who may be far less gracious than me in responding to similar accusations.

Current possible responses: LOL, unsubscribe

"If you had said 2 years ago that I would have gone up to someone and purposely put both of us in rather an awkward position, I would have said “head off”. But, I am delighted to inform you, it was with great pleasure that I did just that not 5 days ago.

Breheny ( I don’t know his first name nor do I care to) pushed me over the edge. The guy has taken a strong disliking to me for some reason that I am sure neither you nor I could ever understand (I mean, I’m just so goddamn loveable!!) After hearing not one but 2 sly comments made about me to Shane on Sunday night I became incensed. First, he hurried past me on the way in to the Village ‘whispering’ to Shane that I didn’t see them so they should run inside for fear that I might. The second jibe came after I coldly greeted Shane when he approached me. He whispered a nasty comment in his ear about me relating to the night he first decided to hate me. Oddly enough that was also the first night he met me…

I decided to keep on ignoring him but after about an hour of us standing one or two feet apart we accidentally bumped into each other. He turned around and said “oh hiya how’s it going? I didn’t see you there!” so I said “no no, I thought we were both just pretending we didn’t see each other.” He stuttered over his words in response “ no..i…we…i…I didn’t..”

Just to help the poor lad out I decided to finish the conversation with one low but deserved blow. “No, it’s cool. I don’t like you either.”

He walked off, flabbergasted, and I stood back to allow myself a few moments to bask in my content. Dutch courage is a beautiful thing. "

I'm sort of delighted that being outrageously direct, making people uncomfortable and saying all of the things that people usually keep in their heads and out of their conversations are now associated with me. Party on.

When I was 14, I was incredibly smug about the fact that all of the friends were seniors in high school and could drive me to Depeche Mode concerts and to off-campus lunch rendezvous at the nearest taqueria. When I was started dating, I daringly went for a man 10 years my senior thus making our relationship a violation of California penal code 261-267. I was so self-satisfied about this declaration of maturity--I couldn't wait to grow up and get on with my life. Now I'm so sick of getting on with my life that I regularly go clubbing on weeknights and have foregone a retirement fund in favor of traveling around Europe in pursuit of bangin' tunes.

I worry that I should be doing more constructive things; I should be at home planning my pension and having babies and focusing on my career trajectory, but the thought just fills me with melancholy. When I was a teenager I signed up for credit cards, took out the entire credit line in cash and then promptly forgot about them. I thought that I'd never live to see 20, so my credit line was something I'd never have to worry about. And now it seems that my credit line is something that I worry about endlessly. That is, when I'm not going to festivals or hanging around with people younger than those I was once paid to babysit. And of course I'm sort of ashamed of myself--this isn't the sort of person that I thought I would turn out to be. But I can't deny that it's pretty much worth it. Doin' it for the craic.

This weekend I'm heading back to Rotterdam to hear some of my favorite italo DJs kick out the tunes, and a week later I'm moving to London. I like to think I'm sort of like those surfers in the Endless Summer, traveling around the world as the seasons turn, chasing the never-ending summer. Chasing the endless buzz.