In Baltimore, I came across this structure as I strolled along the waterfront. I enjoy it for the way it simulates water with blue paint. This is a difficult feat to accomplish.

I also enjoyed the fact that it led me inside a shopping mall where I could order a beer. You may think this is absurd, but in Pennsylvania, we cannot order beer in shopping malls, so even that insignificant allowance is a substantial boon to me. I do often feel that Pennsylvania is to the rest of the United States as the United States is to the rest of the world. This is not an easy impression to have without feeling contempt, but contempt is something I strive to abolish from my perception of reality.

On the way to Baltimore, I stopped in a shopping center which contained a seafood restaurant. The restaurant's logo featured a stern looking crustacean fellow, claws held aloft, Disney eyes bulging, and mouth turned into a frown that bespoke indifference to the pain of being supper. It is amazing, is it not? We anthropomorphize even the things we eat.

Jemina Pearl remembers how to write good songs.

Not that I want this to become a music blog, but I feel I must attempt to draw your attention to Jemina Pearl, formerly of Be Your Own Pet, and her new project. I am pretty blown away.

The songs available here are slyly crafted, lovingly produced pop jems with a lot of heart. They are the polar opposite of BYOP's disastrous follow up album, Get Awkward, a record that was suffering from the worst kind of identity crisis: one where the band appears to be either unaware of, or even worse, apathetic to their own lack of inspiration. It was a record written forcibly and in isolation, and it showed. It was like a band trying, and failing miserably to immitate itself.

These songs maintain Jemina's distinctive snarl, but it sounds here like she's grown up enough to let it be cute instead of trying desperately to cling to the immaturity it so reveled in on BYOP's first album. If the whole record is as solid as the three tracks represented on her page, I can honestly imagine it being even better than her old band's early output. Not something I was expecting, to say the least.

Experiences like this almost make it worthwhile to suffer the disappointment of a dud like Get Awkward.