For a long time, I’ve told myself I would keep a list of really cool lyrics and quotes that I like.  I think I wrote down two and forgot about it.  So recently I have been on a Mountain Goats kick and I’ve re-realized what I’ve known for a while: he is a pretty awesome lyricist.  So I combed through his songs and started jotting down quotes of his that I liked.  When I was done with his library of work, I had 60 quotes.  I’m not going to post them all, because not even my most ardent follower (read: me) would read all those.  But I picked my favorites of the favorites.  I’m just gonna list ‘em.  Enjoy.

“No emotion that’s worth having could call my heart its home.”
- Autoclave

“When you punish a person for dreaming his dream,
don’t expect him to thank or forgive you.”
- The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton

“See the young man who dwells inside his body like an uninvited guest.”
- Birth of Serpents

“I started reading the Bible -
I Corinthians 13 -
where Paul talks all about love,
but I don’t know what he means
because he says that love is kind.
That hasn’t been my experience.
So I set the Bible on the kitchen table
and yelled at it until I was unable.
Yeah, I’m talking to inanimate objects over you.”
- The Doll Song

“Hang on to your dreams ’til someone beats them out of you.”
- From TG & Y

“Our love is like Jesus, but worse:
though you seal the cave up where you’ve lain its body,
it rises,
it rises.”
- Going to Marrakesh

“I loved you so much it was making me sick.”
- Going to Scotland

“Held under these smothering waves
by your strong and thick-veined hand,
but one of these days I’m going to wriggle up on dry land.”
- Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod

“I am not this body
that imprisons me.”
- Isaiah 45:23

“Oh would that you would kiss me
with the kisses of your mouth,
’cause your mouth is sweeter than wine
and has a more complicated history than the American south.”
- New Chevrolet in Flames

“I know that one of us, I’m not saying who,
has got rocks in her head.”
- Orange Ball of Hate

“Our conversations are like minefields:
no one’s found a safe way through one yet.”
- Southwood Plantation Road

“There’s a hole in my chest in the spot that you wormed out through.”
- Standard Bitter Love Song #6

“I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.”
- This Year

“One hopes that the destroyers aspiring to extinguish us
will suffer conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success.”
- Two Thousand Seasons

Each day (give or take) I’ll be showing a picture from somewhere in my life with a little explanation as to what it is.  Enjoy the trip down memory lane.  (CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ARCHIVES!)

In the Arch
Date: June, 1996
Location: Wyckoff, NJ

Description: My prom stories were always pretty interesting.  I went to three proms.  The first, pictured here, was with Susan.  She was dating someone else at the time who couldn’t make it.  So I asked Susan, who was very bummed.  We had a great time.  The next year, after we’d already graduated, I got invited to senior prom by a friend (most of my close friends were in their grade.)  At that time, I WAS dating Susan, but went with Kristen.  It was awkward as I was invited by her to get back at her then-boyfriend (now husband).  I had a good time with my friends and got to meet up with Susan down the shore.  The third, and weirdest, prom was that of my first ever online friend.  She and I got along very well, though the same couldn’t be said for me and her friends, where I remember lots of protracted silence.  At least I got to double-use the tux rental.  Anyway, there’s a picture here that’s tangentially related to this.

Well, okay, that’s a lie.  It wasn’t unidentified, it was a cloud.  And it wasn’t technically “flying”, it was hovering, maybe even coalescing.  But to have a heading of “IHO Sighting” doesn’t really attract the eyes so much.  This was taken with a camera phone that practically doesn’t even take MEGApixel pics, but maybe KILOpixel.  Or just pixel.  Unsure.  Either way, it’s grainy but the photo op was gone by the time I got to a real camera.   Enjoy.

Click to see things larger but still grainy.

So I had this fear that we accidentally ushered in the era of “Landen” as a name.  I had never met a Landen beforehand, and after we named him at the start of 2009, there seemed to be an explosion of Landens.  So I checked with the Social Security list, and it’s held pretty steady:

In 2006, 203rd most popular boy’s name.

2007: 201st.

2008: 199th.

2009: 207th.

2010: 206th.

That’s about as steady as they come.  The name Landon (or any spelling of Landen) itself has become more popular recently, as the “wrong” spelling of the name is in the top 40.   Landyn has somehow cracked the list, improving every year from 844th in 2004 to 371st in 2010.  Seriously, those parents should be hurt.  Landin is even in the top 1000.  So the name itself is more prevalent, but thankfully not the spelling we have which is obviously “right”.

So I guess my fear was unfounded.  I don’t have a need to have a wacko name that nobody’s heard of, but you don’t want your kid to have a bland name that everyone and their uncle seems to have.  One of our unwritten rules when naming Landen was “nothing in the top 100 in popularity.”

The good news, looking at 2010′s numbers, and looking ahead to Peanut, is that the girl’s name we have in mind has actually decreased in popularity every year since 2005.  The boy’s name we have in mind has climbed pretty noticeably every year since 2006.  Neither are in the top 300.  There, that’s enough clues to drive you folks who like figuring this stuff out batty.  We find out the gender (with any luck) in a couple of weeks.