WE GOT LICE. All three of us. We found out on July 5th. The lice are gone now, but man was it a pain in the ass—we had to wash all our bedding, freeze hair accessories for twenty-four hours, put anything that couldn't be washed into plastic bags for ten days.

I liked the woman who combed the nits out of our hair. Her accent and complexion suggested she was from Eastern Europe, but I didn't ask for specifics. I didn't even get her name. In my imagination, her name was Irena. Irena told us that everyone gets nits, they don't discriminate. "No matter race, class, curly hair, short hair—everyone gets them," she said. "You can get them anywhere, too. Shopping, school, camp, anywhere."

It was the day after Independence Day and I started to fantasize about a test for future presidents—that in order to become president you had to spend a day in a Lice Spa, picking nits out of people's hair. That would be a good way to get a decent cross-section of the electorate, albeit pretty tightly delimited geographically. I would one hundred percent prefer Irena to either of the two options we are currently saddled with but oh well.

Suzanne L. and her adorable daughter Lana came to town over the 4th of July weekend and we went on an architecture boat tour with them. I love this tour—I've done it twice now. Our tour guide was named Mitzi and she was fantastic. I would also vote for her if she were running for prez though I am fairly sure that she is approximately the same age as the two main candidates but unlike them all of her critical faculties are in working order.

The only thing is that we were only a few hours out from being treated for lice and the entire time we were on the tour I felt so itchy. It was all I could do to not scratch my head nonstop.

The thing about having lice is that for a week or so after you have this phantom itch. You feel like you have them even though you don't.

That's all for this installment of Mushroom Head. I've been working on a new Study Hall chapter but it is complicated, and thus slow going. I hope to have it ready for the next issue, which comes out a fortnight from today.

In the spirit of 76…here are two revolutionary themed Things That Kept Me Going This Week

1. I finished Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna, and found it to be a quick but somewhat unsatisfying read. I admire her immensely—reading her book made me feel like the laziest person on earth, because she is one of those people who just. never. stops. working—but there is something odd about how she frames herself. She is pretty self-critical, especially about Riot Grrrl, which she helped create, but the entire memoir reads like her life happened in a strange void wherein politics is exclusively sex/gender stuff. She did get her start in Olympia, WA, way before that was a destination on the grunge map, so maybe that's why she could afford to not really know or care what was happening elsewhere in the world? I started the book thinking how cool she was and by the end I just kept thinking “wow, the 90s were stupid.” Anyway, I haven't read any reviews of this book so I don't know if other people felt this way or not. Hanna does share many excellent music-industry anecdotes, however: producer Steve Albini does not come off well (in fact he seems like a complete jerk), Courtney Love once sucker punched her backstage, and her story about meeting and falling in love with Adam Horovitz is ridiculously cute.
2. I've been listening to "The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop", a podcast produced by The Washington Post about the assassination of Grenada's president in 1983, and the subsequent disappearance of his body along with others who were killed. It is one of those stories that seems minor but reveals a lot of uncomfortable truths about the US, its relations with Cuba, etc. I like how the writer, Martine Powers, is able to step back from the event and put things into perspective. At one point one of the people who was closely following the events at the time says the following, which has been haunting me, “All revolutions do have downsides. Revolution itself breeds counterrevolution. Because remember, once you take power, using the gun, which happened in 79, you, in a sense, legitimize the use of that means, and therefore, you are now becoming aware that there may be others who have been inspired by your actions to take those actions against you."

Have a great July! Enjoy our hard-won democracy while we still have it. And careful with the means—do they justify the ends?

Til soon,

Claire