THE GREAT GADFLY:

Tackle Me Emo

After all, it's easy to see why these people get disgruntled, and why the term "going postal" has become part of the national lexicon. Watching some of the people in front of me as they approached the window, you'd think they were sent from another planet to discuss an entire redefinition of the very concept of postal service, stamp by stamp. despite the tremendous swelling of the holiday season line of customers, one woman, apparently a hardcore stamp collector, stood at a window for about ten minutes, comparing the quality of one sheet of kitten stamps to an identical sheet. "Do you have any more like this?" she chirped. "The fur looks a little blurry."

Thankfully, as stated previously, the staff at my local post office is well trained in getting even the most shipment-phobic drama queens in and out and on to the next. And did I mention they were perky?

With this visit, I do believe I've reached a stopping point with my little end-of-year "Best Of 2002" CD project. I sent out about two dozen of my little homemade K-Tel collections, and now I'm broke and burnt-out. Not to say I'm finished sending out dollops of compact disc loving, but rather that the time is nigh for a bit of a breakie-poo. For those of you who have already been assaulted with my bit of aural blight, I hope you found some enjoyment in the mess. If you all aren't on good behavior next year, I might have to make this kind of thing a yearly tradition. Just a warning.

Well, so anyway. On my walk home from the post office, I tripped over something. When I turned around to shake my fist at it and curse it, I realized it was a pouch or carrying case of some kind. I gave the object a little kick. Noticing my leg hadn't been blown off, I decided it was okay to pick the thing up and observe it further.

Now, this was probably not a great idea. Not just because the carrying case might have been a bomb or full of the anthraxes, but more because in picking it up, I then become somehow, ugh, RESPONSIBLE for it. I've entered the noirish world of becoming accountable for some stranger's lost possession, and I enter a situation of figuring out how to reunite the owner of this object with their lost object. Feh.

So I picked the thing up and noticed that it was a blue CD-carrying case with the words "LINDSAY'S EMO COLLECTION" written on one side in black magic marker. I considered putting it back on the ground where I found it, in hopes that Lindsay would revisit the scene of this misplacement, but then my brain went all Dostoyevsky on me and a little voice inside said, "no, someone will see you and they'll think you're planting a deadly emo nailbomb. Better you carry this object with you."

Every time I passed a big stone planting pot, I considered tossing Lindsay's Emo Collection inside. But no. I don't want to be tagged as an emo terrorist! Life's hard enough. Passing a newspaper box, I thought maybe I could do a subtle slight-of-hand and toss the CD case into the box while taking a paper, and then someone would come by later and find it and it would be their problem. But surely, there are top-secret cameras pointed at all newspaper boxes, and I'd be back to the emo terrorist problem.

Oh, curse the day I ever tripped over the Emo Collection of Doom! Curse it!

So. I went to my local video store and considered, oops, accidentally dropping the thing in one of the aisles. Surely one of the employees would see me doing this and I'd be met with, "excuse me, you dropped your emo music."

What IS this "Emo", anyway? I've heard definitions, I've heard the music, but it all sounds like edgy Billy Joel to me. It's kind of like indie punk rawk, only sad. Right? I can't figure it out. I must be, like, old or something. It's like goth, only without the pancake makeup and the big hair, and with break-up anthems instead of songs about rotting vampires? Oh, I don't know. Maybe I should listen to Lindsay's Emo Collection. Maybe it was fate's way of giving me a much-needed music education. But I can't be bothered, and I really don't want to mess with Lindsay's stuff, sitting on my kitchen counter longing for its rightful owner.

Poor Lindsay. Maybe she's one of those people who google the words "CRACK ROCK" and find this diary in the results. What's up with that, anyway? Do you people have ANY idea how many people find my diary from googling the words "CRACK ROCK"? I guess it's better than the person who found me by googling "NO BATMAN ONLY FATMAN", but still. It's like I've become the Patron Saint Of Crack or something. It just ain't right. And now I'm making it worse by talking about it again. Is Whitney Houston considered Emo? I hope so. Maybe I can get this CD case back to Lindsay by some kind of fateful Act Of Google.

On a tenuously related topic, why do the TV ads for the new "Lord of the Rings" movie feature soundtrack music from "Requiem For A Dream"? Why? Will there be evil half-orc walking refrigerators in this latest installment of elfy fantasy? Will there be little Hobbit junkies doing little drug dances for Gandalf in hopes of scoring some fix money? Will Elijah Wood hock the Ring to score a bag of tic? Will Ellen Burstyn make a cameo as a hopped-up wraith with chattering teeth? I don't know. Like so many other things recently, it's all just too confusing for me.

Maybe I'll just go mail something again today. Those post office people are so nice and patient. But wait...that's how I got into this latest mess in the first place.

Oh, lordy.

Lindsay, dammit, come and get your Emo.