Tagged for a meme by Randy: Seven songs you're currently enjoying.

As is my usual memey practice, I participate while tagging not just the number indicated by the tagger, but rather by tagging everyone who might like to be tagged, all at once.

1. "Express Yourself" by Charles Wright - Funky-ass bass riff that can't be beat. It'll put a groove in your duodenum.

2. "Express Yourself" by N.W.A. - Much the same, only with Dr. Dre. "Cuz some don't agree with how I do this/I get straight, meditate like a Buddhist."

3. "Bus to Beelzebub" by Soul Coughing - Kirsten gave me this in a Soul Coughing compilation, and I found it at work on some guy's network-shared iTunes playlist. I love network-shared iTunes playlists. Ultimately, I think most buses take us to Beelzebub.

4. "Spoon" by Dave Matthews, Live at the 10 Spot - One guy, one acoustic guitar, one weird song.

5. "In Hiding" by Pearl Jam - Just one of those songs that makes me nod my head rhythmically in rock and roll fashion.

6. "One Vision" by Queen - Big arena cheese. Love it.

7. "Soul Kitchen" by X - I was never part of the 80's L.A. punk scene, but this song makes me feel as though I were.

***

I've developed feelings for First Person Shooter, the creepy guy who's always at the coffee joint, wearing camouflage and playing shoot 'em up games on his laptop. I think he actually might live in his pick-up, and he's been using the coffee joint to escape from life in a hot metal box baking in a parking lot. Doesn't matter if I'm here in the morning, at closing, weekday or weekend, he's always there, same corner table, looking like he hasn't moved in weeks. At least he used to be.

The other night a customer walks up to him and says, "You're always here. You never go home."

Shooter laughs nervously and says, "No, not really."

"Yeah," intrusive customer insists. "You're here all the time. You live here."

Shooter laughs, painfully, reiterates that he does actually leave, doesn't really spend all that much time here. But the instrusive customer won't leave him alone, just keeps drilling him, despite Shooter's squirming.

And I haven't seen Shooter since. Whatever his circumstances, instrusive customer made them more uncomfortable, I think.

I hope Shooter's found another coffee joint where they give him water and let him sit at the same table for sixteen hours, nursing a decaf.

***

You can skip the following if you're not interested in meta blog thinking.

With the last couple of entries, I've been mirroring Writing and Snacks at my LiveJournal to save LJ users the trouble of clicking over. But, man, I really don't like LiveJournal all that much, despite cool features like friends lists and all that. Over at writingandsnacks.com, I've got all the links to my Flickr stuff and my bibliography and online stories and interviews and stuff, and it's prettier there, I think. But more and more, it seems a bit futile to try to control how and where readers make contact with your content. RSS means that people will read your content in the manner of their choosing, not yours, and fighting against that may be like trying to hold back the ocean with a spork.

So, for now, I'll be posting full entries at both places. But for the record, writingandsnacks seems like home to me, and the LJ is ... something other.