There's a cat sitting on my lap, and she's sticking her claws through my shirt to reach my soft (apparently) exposed underbelly. This is... nice?

(Pictured: Pain)

...

My review of Lady Gaga's new music video "Alejandro:"

She's been mainlining H.R. Giger.

I don't feel emotionally prepared to handle the gang-bang.

Both of them, of course, with pretty cool debuts. Only one of them has a good name, though. Sorry, TPOBPAT. Your name is stupid.

I'm going to see The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Surfer Blood this Wednesday, up at Bottletree in Birmingham. I'm pretty excited. I like both bands, and I would go to see either of them individually, so having them together like that is pretty cool. There's just that one thing about Bottletree... I really don't dress well enough to get in. I'm afraid the hipsters will sniff me out and that'll be the end of it. Oh, well. Nature of the beast.

Finished reading Gene Wolfe's new novel The Sorcerer's House about a week ago. It wasn't his best work, but it was by no means awful. In fact, it was quite a ways away from awful, it was quite good. Kept me enraptured. As with an An Evil Guest I felt a little unsatisfied by how quickly it wrapped up. I felt like there were some questions raised not entirely answered, or perhaps wrapped up a little too nicely. I didn't feel the transcendent joy I felt at the end of The Book of the New Sun, or The Wizard Knight. But the haunted house meets magical realism (or fantasy, or whatever you want to call it) really really worked for me. And Wolfe's style is just so darn interesting. It sucks you in, and you don't notice just how tricky it is.

Then it was June.

Then it happened.