Ruh roh raggy.

Crud. My computer is hosed. Crappity. I'll be back soon. Meanwhile, here's a picture of the bandit girlpup at bedtime tonight.

Cheers, m'dears!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Stars!

Peter said these shoes had Phlegmmy written all over them, and I suppose I do rather rate in the twinkle-toes department. These gold & diamond stilettos register in at a cool £100,000 jumping-off point. Each solid gold shoe is encrusted with 1100 diamonds.

What's most hair-raising to me is that these shoes have a 1000 year guarantee.

Come again?

I'm trying to wrap my brain around that. So, like, if in 400 years, a diamond falls out, some great-great-great granchild of the designer will pony up a replacement stone? What if they've been quite banged-about? I mean, would that void the guarantee? I'd like to know the specific terms.

Then again, I suppose if you have to have the terms, you can't afford it anyhoo. So much for that, eh?

Thanks for the bit of perspective, though, Peter. I'm always looking for affirmation that the $400 or $600 shoes for which I lust are actually rather modest investments! ;)

How about a nice bit of 50s vintage Cheesecake?

From Son of Sinbad, 1955

I don't know about Sally Forrest's milkshake, but her honeybuns are way more compelling than Princess Leia's, imho. Also, any movie with Vincent Price is a winner, in my book. A Howard Hughes production, this film's abundance of girlie show elements apparently morally outraged some folks. I suppose so-- this is far more erotically compelling than a wardrobe malfunction, or a starlet flashing her bare crotch when exiting a vehicle, yes?

Pimp my cubicle

Pimp my cubicle for under $3.00?

Tempting. Very tempting. Still, I think the owner of my company would look askance at such a decor choice for my cubicle...

Take your cubicle from boring to *bling*

Come to think of it, the folks at work might find the pimpery less alarming than wallpapering the cubicle with crack-shot target papers from leisure time at the range.

What do you think?

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: Puppeh Movie

Was home sick with the puppies on Wednesday and decided to film them so you'd see them in action. Or in inaction. Will try to get you some vid of more activity. Maybe some snortal combat. :)


La!

Get 'em before copyright infringement turns them into unobtanium

Holy crap, but we watched Army Of Darkness last night, and I noticed over at snarkybytes' that Bruce Campbell's birthday was a few days back, and I squee'ed when I saw his post title "Good… Bad… I’m the guy with soup." What a coinkydink!

SciFiWire.com made up some labels for Bruce Campbell's Soup in honor of his birthday. There's a link where you can print the labels out and bung them over your existing soup can. I'm SO having some of this in my shelf. Coolest. Soup. Ever.

Nothing can compare...

Here's a superbly ethereal version of Finley Quaye's Dice (LOVE this song) sung by Beth Orton and produced by William Orbit.

Have a great Saturday. :)

I intend to.

Begging your pardon?

...in which my gentle readers get to settle a fierce disagreement. *snerk*

When I moved into the house, I couldn't use my brand new gas range, because the house has an electric hook-up for the range in the kitchen, and it came with a functioning range. I shrugged it off. I knew very much that this was a project house coming into it, and so using the manky old stove that came with for a while was not an oogy prospect to me. I'd just make sure to not let any of my edibles touch the surfaces, yeah?

Well, the more I've looked at the range, the more I've come to realize it's not that old after all. It was simply limned with a revolting mix of greasy, grungy icky filth. Yes, I've been living with that for a few months now, but looking at it Thursday night, the major gross-out factor on the range was the little venty things which were clotted with muck and oomska. I went to the bathroom, got an old toothbrush and began scrubbing away at the mess. Well, I got the lion's share of the gunk out, but the areas near where the handle attached to the door were un-reachable.

Himself was in here on the computer, typing up a post, and I called him in for an assist with the dismantling of the oven door. With power tools. Yes, it had to come out of there. That gooey muck was so frelling nasty. [How the hell did they get grease, goo and foody bits in those vents? I mean, you'd literally have to have food glops oozing down the front of the range. And it wasn't just one event, because there were different fields of certain colors or textures. One was tomato-red, another baby-doodie golden and so on. Anyway. How? HOW did this happen? How could you have a long gloopy food smear down the front of your appliance and just leave it there? How did I live here for 4 months without scrubbing it out before now?] So, the door disassembled, I merrily tucked into taking the vent and the handle apart and was scrubbing away with the toothbrush, a sponge and a paring knife at the igneous formations encrusted on the vent innards when Himself exits the room and lobs a little depth charge about OCDism.

Me? I'm a messy person. Truly I am. But I'm all about the clean clutter. Yes, there are free-range dust buffalo around my place. There's a backlog of laundry at about any time you come here. But I don't have crusty nasty foody stuff drying/solidifying/molding/mutating anywhere in the place. Does that make me OCD?

What do you think?

I think I was just being thorough. It looks so clean and shiny now and I'm sure it'll do a much better job of cooking now that it feels fresh and cared-for.

I am NOT OCD. If I were OCD, I wouldn't wear mis-matched socks. I often wear my Tuesday panties on non-Tuesday days. If I were OCD, I would have hoovered those two teeny spiderwebs off the front of the inside of my windshield when I noticed them a few weeks ago.

Note to self: must have car detailed.

*ocd cat courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger

"Stop Falling! Stop Falling! You don't wanna crawl anymore...

you left your face and your hands on the concourse..."



Well, it was bound to happen. Lady Gaga has fallen off her shoes in the airport in London.



Mind you, for me there was also the question of a leather train of considerable length, and there was also the matter of trailing chains which may or may not have been attached to the train or to the not-pedestrian-friendly boots from Noritaka Tatehana, a footwear designer LG favors.



Although they look a hazard, I do on some level admire the heel-less wonders she's been trotting about in as she's appeared in recent weeks, like this pair to the right. I'm sure that like myself, Ms. Gaga has probably heard cruel invective such as impossible, ridiculous and torturous with relation to her shoes all her life. On some level, she obviously enjoys it. If I had her budget and her obvious ease of social schedule and lack of an 8-5, I'd probably be sporting some of these puppies my ownself, if only for the sheer novelty. I'd probably be pretty sparing with where I'd choose to wear them, however.



The getup in the aeropuerto was a smidge on the too-much side. In airports, you have to walk absolute miles, darling. Donning fetish gear may be iffy, but wearing something which by nature is nigh impossible to stride in effectively virtually guarantees this type of occurrence, and one which will yield a look-at-me factor of a different variety than one might desire.



If you wear ridiculous shoes, one day-- sooner or later-- you will wipe out, generally in public, and to huge and embarrassing effect. I did have this marvelous pair of Robert Clergerie lace-up oxfords with a very *ahem* severe chunk heel, and I fell flat in them on my uni campus once, and then a few months later I fell in them in front of a store. That was so ossum. *blush* You do that thing where you look back as if you tripped on something, but deep inside you know it was either A) you or B)your shoes or C) some lethal combination of both. Fortunately, camera phones were not available and I was a mere nobody on some unremarkable day going about my own tasks only I would remember. Still, I recognized that for some reason, despite all the heels, wedges, creepers, Frankenhooker shoes I've ever owned and successfully navigated the planet whilst donning, that one particular pair was a hazard when combined with something about my stride or foot or something. I continued to wear them, but only on occasions of minimal walking, and I always stepped carefully thereafter.

She is tremendously talented. I sometimes think Lady Gaga is a test-tube clone-thing of Madonna with a genuinely good voice and some mad piano skills spliced in. She's talented enough to really carry a music career without the gimmickry, but I suppose going out there stripped down to mere-human stature to make her music might be a lot more intimidating than trying to dazzle with outrageousness. I just think that some of the things she wears are damned unflattering. I'm not happy she fell. I suppose I'm a little disappointed for her... ...or maybe it makes her more real than anything she's done on stage. It's a curiosity.

Honorable mention to the assistant with those cute black and white wing-tips. Also the lackey guy with the mini Tin-Tin flip-- are they still doing that?

...speaking of Fashion Victimry-- anyone beside me remember 6 or 7 years ago when Chlöe Sevigny fell off her 8" Balenciaga boots and broke out her eye teeth? There were only a handful of these boots made, they were ghastly-expensive (about $3000, I think?), and mere days after her fall, a pair of them appeared on ebay to much speculation amongst the footwear savvy crowd...

Aw, crap!

Apparently some guy bought a warehouse of Michael Jackson family memorabilia, and among the artifacts were hundreds of masters of unreleased Jackson family recordings. Crap. Are we going to have to listen to that stuff, really?

Oh, wait. There's no nudity and pole-dancing, so it'll probably die in AM radio somewhere.

*whew!*

...the latest buzz...

Even a creature with the gripping intellect of a housefly knows the Affordable Care Act stinks on hot frelling ice. He may think it's fly, but all the rest of us know it's not-so-fresh.

His milkshake brings all the flies in the yard,
and they're like: "it's better than yours."

ew. um. busted.

Goody. Technology gives more opportunities for creepy weird French stalker behaviour.

le yuck.

Call me naive, but...

...when I saw a news teaser that hometown fans went apeshit after the Lakers game in Los Angeles on Thursday, I figured they'd lost, right? Not so.

What can possibly be said about a bunch of people who go bananas and are just looking for a reason to tear stuff up?

A typical liberal reaction would be that these are poor, disenfranchised people who had no means of watching the game. Um, judging by the number of video phones and iPhones which illuminate the darkness around the burning taxicab, I'd say these people are well-off enough to afford cutting edge technology, so the poor-little-poor-things argument doesn't wash here. The LA Times journalist in the second video clip says there were no jumbotron screens on outside the arena, so the fans didn't have the outlet of watching the action inside the venue. (waaah waaah) She asks how can we find a better way to celebrate this victory together? I'm thinking the question is not how do they celebrate, but why on earth they would have such a defective culture as to have an ability to break down so easily from a semi-civilized state into a chaotic mob which destroys the means of livelihood for one of their "fellow citizens?"

That cab was an Independent Cab Company vehicle. I looked up this company and found that -- heigh ho!-- the dirtbags in LA were not destroying the property of some big corporation or even of a huge local company-- they destroyed the means of livelihood for one mere human person who lives in their community. This person probably scrapped and scrounged and saved to earn the capital to go independent. Yes, there are a lot of dirtbag cabbies in the world, too, but I've taken a lot of cab rides here and abroad, and I'd say collectively, they can be some of the nicest folks you'd want to meet. They put up with a lot of crap, they are exposed to a lot of rude, condescending behaviour, and yet they perform their duty which is a service and one on which many folks rely to get around town.

This is part and parcel of why I do not live in a city, for one thing, and plan to never set foot in LA again for the remainder of my life. If your society is so pathetic and wrong-headed that you break into violence when something good happens, I sure as hell plan to be a long way from you just in case something you don't like happens.

Way to go, jerks. I'd agree with Silver that California needs to go, full stop, but there's something of interest to me in the Napa/Russian River Valleys, and other places as well, so it's not a total wash. But San Francisco and Los Angeles?

I say we dust off and nuke the sites from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

In all of life's lotteries...

My steadfast belief is that in all of life's lotteries, the best one to win is having extraordinary parents. I have that in spades and my Dad is the best in all the world. I'm so blessed.

Who could ask for more?

I love you, Dad. Thanks for being such an incredible, one-of-a-kind. I'm so proud of you.

Happy Father's Day.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: Wag-o-matic!

I'm sick. Blegh.

Saturday involved lazing on the sofa with teh puppehs.


Praline was ecstatic after Christina and Silver brought puppehs Tucker and Harley to visit. Her tail was a blur, as you see. I love seeing her so happy. Indeed, I was very happy to have the lovely houseguests as well and am looking forward to their next visit.

The gilding on the lily was that Hols and Johnny came over to join the party for dinner on Friday night. It was so lovely, and we had a grand time. Nice to see such dear friends. :)

I lurveses me some Axe Cop!

So ossum!

Have I got shoes for you!

How long since I posted about shoes here?

Well, that's too long.

Feast your feets on these little darlings from Irregular Choice.

This patriotic number makes me want to straddle a cannon. How about you? I'm not thinking of Cher in that scary video so much as 1940s calendar girl type stuff. *squee* Or maybe just hum some Andrews Sisters...

This feline bootlet is oddly compelling. Can't decide if I'm crazy about them or not, but I'm leaning toward the crazy. Nope. Scratch that-- I totally love these.

Then there's this colorful yet subdued pair that make me think of the Mad Hatter for some reason. *slobber*

BTW, I have a new pair of 5" pewter metallic wedges which fit snugly into the Gladiatrix Space Hooker category. You'd be so proud of me. They match my purse...

Which matches my carry pistol.

I need to wear something downright slatternly on my feet today to offset the mandatory t-shirt scourge at work.

Larry & Laurie David: a couple really in the bag for the environment.

Today's post circles the bowl in a perfect storm of politics, environmentalism and infidelity.

About 5 years ago, Larry David (creator of Seinfeld and creator/star of Curb Your Enthusiasm) and his wife Laurie decided to make a statement. When I heard about this on the news at the time, they said Larry was about to get a new Prius, and his wife persuaded him to donate the old Prius to be a prize/award in some sort of charity sweepstakes or auction. At the time, it struck me that it was a bit tacky that he was giving his castoff as if having been owned by him made the car "value-added." Value-addled, perhaps. [Sort of like the tax return where Bill Clinton valued his used Ermengildo Zegna boxer briefs as having a resale value of $20 per pair. ] Yeah, they were in the bag for the environment, alright. They were good friends of Al and Tipper - he of politics and she of PMRC fame (remember that bag of bullcrap?). Anyhoo, in that imperious, condescending way of so many liberals, today I found a site that described the David's Prius fundraising event:

Tell us how your "Curb Global Warming" campaign came to be. I've seen the commercials where mtvU is hauling away your Prius, and you find out Laurie gave it away without telling you. True story?

True story. I came into my office one day and my assistant asked what I was going to do for a new car. And I said, "What are you talking about?" She said, "Your wife gave away your car." mtvU is working with Laurie to promote the "Stop Global Warming" campaign, so my car is the prize in a sweepstakes for mtvU viewers who sign people up for the march.

So. Being so moved by the hype, Laurie David thought Larry needed to give up his sweet ride to promote awareness for Gore's movement. Little did he know that wasn't the only ride he was losing to Al Gore: Laurie divorced Larry in 2007.

Did you stop to notice how THE voice of environmentalism has been silent on the whole BP thing lately? Rumour has it this was because Al was keeping his head low lest he be decrapitated by the fallout from news of a tempestuous affair.

Turns out, Al and Laurie apparently were the rumoured affair.

Now that is recycling!

So Tuesday night I was at my dance class...

...okay, so it's not a conventional dance class. We all wear hipscarves with coins that jingle jangle jingle, if that gives you any idea. We're a motley lot of folks. Some very young, some eligible for AARP, and most of us are somewhere in the middle. It's surreal sometimes, but I get a kick out of it, and I meet up with two of my favorite people from Big Company, so I'm still getting to see them there, at least.

There were several shocking revelations tonight. The regular teacher wasn't there so someone else led the class, and I figured her for, oh, mid-50s at the least, possibly early 60s. At some point, she said she is 42. I was gobsmacked. Surely not. This county is apparently very hard on women.

Note to self: determine never to seem like a local.

The other shocking outburst came when the daughter of the 42 year old started talking about working the late shift at Whataburger, and how people pull up to the drive-through window in various stages of intimate acts and all manner of the stages of undress. *aherm*

I could have done without that. She went on to say a friend of hers came through the line, passenger in a vehicle where she was giving oral pleasure to the driver. This I could have done without, as well.

The real doozie was when the 60-ish woman said "I did that to my husband. I think it was in the drive-through of a Taco Bell."

Really!

I'm no prude, by a long shot, but I'm dazzled people would speak so casually about such things in front of strangers.

And, uh, yuck! If you're going to debase yourself by doing naughty things in semi-public, at least chose a less down-market theatre for your exploits. Then again, it may have been the perfect setting.

Again-- more information I could have lived a full life without having heard.
I thought I'd pass it along and ruin your day, too. :P

Lightning bugs striking twice and other modern miracles...

Of an evening, I generally go for a walk with Himself*. We set out from the front porch and mosey on over the half mile or so to the town lake. On our way we pass an evil heeler/chihuahua who runs roughshod around town (and will be going to the bargain-basement ball-snipper if I ever get hold of him, but I digress). There are other dogs we pass, but the treats I carry in my pocket are for the chiweenie I've dubbed Little Miss Muffin in the yard near the lake. :) She flops on her back and I scratch her ears through the chainlink fence, and I suspect that it's the highlight of her day when I come a'callin'. Actually, she's probably got dozens of admirers who stop by and pet her sweet little self every day. I just like to think the admiration is utterly mutual.

One night a couple weeks ago, we were holding hands, walking along and I prattled as I do, and we could see beyond the fender of the car parked on the left of the street what looked like a low-slung, scruffy black cat, its tail dragged along on the ground behind it as it scrambled forward ahead of us along the gutter. No yoked oxen ever moved in such perfect unison as we did when we had stepped forward and then instantly shifted our weight on the back foot and began walking in great strides backward as swiftly, smoothly and quietly as my short little pins could manage. That was no cat. Was a skunk. Ew. *dodged a stinky bullet there.* We've laughed several times about how simpatico we were then, though. I never even broke the meter of my blathering - would perhaps have startled Stinky McStinkerson.

Sometimes there are bullfrogs around, and they always croak their chorus around the lake. "Hey Ladies! Come on over to my pad!" We make up cheesy come-hither dialogue for them. These long walks in a quiet town where they roll the sidewalks up at 8pm started off as a nice way to end the day, but they've become a great joy.

I think things turned a corner when we spotted the first wee handful of fireflies. Oh, that's nice! I hadn't seen fireflies in any great number since childhood. In fact, I thought of any mass profusion of fireflies as a sweet but bygone thing, never to be seen again. Not so. Night after night, I would see more and more of the little darlings. Now when we walk, we see hundreds, a chaotic swirl of portable neon. It's truly dazzling.

In Arkansas, the fireflies we had were about an inch long and absinthe-green. THAT is emblazoned on my brain as what a firefly ought to look like. However, the ones I see here I quickly noticed were smaller, their lights not so intense, but a more bluish light, if that's possible. (compact fluorescents?) Last week, I got up to go to the bathroom about 3am, house completely dark. Surreal moment, there was a glowing spot on the floor, a perfect little circle. Bleary-eyed, I wondered if I was dreaming, and I picked it up. It was a dead firefly, tits-up but still glowing. Only about a half-inch long.

I'm thinking of this firefly variety as not lesser, but just different. I'm a million miles away from my childhood in every sense, and much of that I'd not have back for love nor money. But there is still breath-taking beauty to enjoy in the world. Here's to the simple, unparalleled glory of the lightning bug. Life is sweet. :)

"For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost,
that may be found, if sought." — Edmund Spenser

*significant other

Where often is heard an encouragin' word...

I'm often deeply touched by writings over at Mausers and Muffins, and Brigid has become a dear friend. I know that many folks like me have been inspired by her beautifully crafted musings and I can attest to the brilliance of her recipes, as well. In case you haven't been by there today, she lost her mom this weekend, and this would be a good time to send a kind word or warm thought her way.

The Kitchen of Danger

Wow.
In The Dangerous Kitchen, Frank Zappa dares go where mainstream rock really never wanted to be taken...



"...in the dish with the foil where the cream is all clabbered..."

I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned Sunday and you can hardly tell a difference. Yes, it was that messy in Casa de Phlegmo.

Does cream even clabber anymore? No, it doesn't because you can't have cream, can you? It's full of fat and yummyness and someone wouldn't approve. In any case, Frank clearly plumbed the depths and scraped the bottoms of barrels for material.

Big points for the man himself wielding a fly-swatter on the album cover.
You know, come to think of it, I wish I'd written him in on my last Presidential ballot.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: I love the smell of puppy in the morning

Here was the first thing I saw on Saturday morning, and what a lovely sight he was. :)

Looking at the photo, I see his collar was put back on upside down, but otherwise all is well in my world. Somehow, I managed to wake up without feeling an intrepid little tongue darting up my nostril, thank goodness. That seems to be their favored way of waking mommy, because it's guar-on-teed to bring mumsy to full consciousness, however disgruntledly.

Time to get a new thermostat

My house is an old one, and I bought it expecting that everything would pretty much need to be replaced. One thing however, I thought had already been sufficiently updated and that I probably would not need to replace it for years, and that was the digital programmable thermostat.

*GACK!*

I've worked and worked with that thing. Vainly have I tried to override, re-set and in any way adjust its pre-set programming, and the bloody flipping thing is a colossal piece of crap.

*angsty-angst!*

This weekend, I'm going to go buy one of the old manual analog thermostats. You know the kind - one with a dial where you set the bloody temperature and when you put it there, the damned thing won't make an executive decision and boil you in your bed at 3am when the house's temperature has gone up to meet the pre-set 85 melon-farming degrees that it decided to switch over to even though you told it to hover somewhere in the lower 70s. One that knows its place. One that I can be sure will be set on the temp I left it.

ARRRRRGH!!!

I can't sleep in a hot house. I need cool. Sweet, ozone-killing coolness is the only way I can sleep comfortably, and this bloody thermostat has gone rogue and will NOT be programmed. How is it saving energy if I come home to an 85 degree house and my A/C system has to work like a Trojan to bring it down to a decent temperature so then the system has to run for hours just to make it comfortable?

Oh, and just try finding a plain-jane model thermostat on the site at Home Despot-- you have to go through a rattletrap round-robin of what a Great Thing™ programmable thermostats are. I finally figured out how to get the comprehensive list, and I found one just for me. One that will do what I tell it to. One that won't give me no lip. One with absolutely NO frelling digital display.

I'm DONE. This weekend, I'm going retro and damn the torquemadas. And THEN, when this old thermostat comes off, I'm going to do a ritual killing. I'm probably going to shoot, burn and sledgehammer the damned thing. I may take it to Blogorado and see if we can really make it go all 'splodey.

hmph.

It's only fair.

Jiggity jig!

Home again.

Home.

Again.

:)

Chuy is back home. He was still not 100%, but 24 hours on i.v. fluids and antibiotics worked a charm on him and I was able to take him home again.

When I got home from work Wednesday, he'd spewed direer and a frightening amount of blood all over the kitchen floor. I was horrified. I opened the back door to let the pups out and then grabbed a comforter to put over the passenger side of the car, and went back in, and took him swaddled in a big towel to the vet. He was so dehydrated that I could feel how much lighter he was since that morning. He was weak, eyes seemed unfocused and I feared he was in shock already. I cried for hours Wednesday night, worried I'd never see him alive again. My eyelids were pink and puffy when I woke up. I was a terrible mess for the last 30 hours or so, but I'm all better now.

Teh puppeh reunion was happy-licky-love-love, and they were such a blur that this was the best photo I took. Their world is back in order with them together again. Miss Praline had been sad and out of sorts with ickle bruvva missing. She seemed bewildered, and that just made it all the sadder. But that's behind us now.

He's going to be okay. The dr. don't know why, said it's either gastroenteritis or something like colitis. It could be something he ate, or some combination of things, or it could be simply that he's got a sensitive digestive tract. In any case, I'm just going to have to be very careful with him and watch how food seems to be affecting him. If this continues to happen, he may have to go on a special diet altogether.

I'm flooded with relief, and my heart is warmed by the many kind words you left here. And when I say "you," yes, I mean you personally. :) Thank you.

Chuy's going to make it, it looks like.

Chuy is sick.

Got home from work and he'd been violently ill. The kitchen looked like he exploded, and he was weak and obviously in a lot of pain.

He's in the pet hospital overnight on meds and with an IV in. Dr thinks it's some kind of gastroenteritis, but we should know more in the morning. I'll post something when he's better. I'm so, so upset. My baby.

Is it art?

I had my jewelry in a few shows with a mixed media artist who made some of the most adorable things. As I've been unpacking things in recent weeks - things I haven't seen in over a year in most cases, it's been sort of like Christmas to see much of it all again (not the least of which has been my beloved All-Clad and the other kitchen accoutrements). Then I opened the box with this piece and I squee'ed.

This piece delighted me from the first moment I saw it. Called I see London, I see France, the mixed-media artist I mentioned made this and I simply had to have it. The form it's made on was an old department store underwear dummy thing. I think it's adorable and it always makes me grin.

The puppehs were puzzled, but got used to it soon enough. :)

I don't care what anyone thinks-- I like it. It's art to me and that'll have to do. :)

This just in...

There are no fitting product names left. Apparently they think kids need an attachment to get up to mischief with a water hose... ages 3 & up, pls.

Um, okay.

Got one!

This weekend I got a Cherry Chomper and it's fabulous. Super cute, and it really works. It takes a bit of time to get the hang of punching the pits out efficiently, but it was easy and unlike previous pitters I've had, this one actually worked every time. KYOOOT!

***********************

Monday was great. It was nice to go back to work after the weekend not dreading walking in and opening my email. So far so good with this job. The people are nice and I like the pace of it. Refreshing.

Gutted.

Farting around as one does at the dreg-ends of the weekend, I looked up videos by Boston, particularly Don't Look Back and More Than A Feeling. I know I'm not special in that music is deeply woven into the fabric of my life, but there are a few bits of music that for various reasons I identify with so strongly that I can't in my mind and memory consider a period of my life without thinking of that music, and vice-versa.

My older brother was really into Boston, and by extension, I heard the first two albums quite a bit, but Don't Look Back I strongly associate with the last year living in Arkansas and then the move to Texas and the opening of a whole new vista in terms of the positive possibilities of life. This was a very Good Thing.

When Dad and Mom gave me my first car in 1984-- a bitchin' 1974 Camaro-- Don't Look Back and Rush's Moving Pictures [driving fast to Red Barchetta is the best when you've got a bored-out .350 (thanks, Dad!) and gasoline was .63 a gallon *nostalgia moment*] were my concessions to Rock which rounded out my edgier not-found-on-radio imports I scraped out of the bins at VVV and Metamorphosis record stores in Dallas.

I loved Boston, and still do. I love the melodic guitar-heavy compositions and the soaring, beautiful vocals of Brad Delp.

So I have to say that when I went to the wikipedia entry Sunday evening and found out that Brad Delp committed suicide a little over 3 years ago, well, I was gutted. I'm sad someone would feel so hopeless, someone with such a great and unique capacity to give joy. Being a singer, too, I know that you don't always feel like making music. It's hard for singers to put it out there all the time, because they're not just pushing air through a horn or pushing keys or strings-- their body is the instrument. Maybe he needed a tune-up or something, but the thought of his despair makes me want to say something preachy.

All I know is that if you are sad all the time, there is something you need to fix in your life.

There are medications. Maybe you need to get a hobby, fer fecks' sake.

You have to give your own life purpose-- no one can do that for you-- and if you sit around feeling like a sadsack and blaming everyone around you for your misery, well, it's your own fault. You are your own responsibility. Yes, it's a lonely road, sometimes, but we each have to make our way in life. So, you screwed up in the past? Move on and stop screwing up. And if you have a chance to be kind or helpful to people who love you, then do so and do so in good cheer. Don't scuttle your chances at happiness by thinking the world owes you a favor or a plush, luxuriant existence. Get on with life, do the best you can, try not to be an asshole, stay busy and get medicated if necessary. That is all.




Whatever road Brad is on, I hope the sun is shining.

Flood by They Might Be Giants turned 20 this year

Can you believe that?

I cain't hardly believe it.
Here they are doing a live version of Twisting in a studio in 1994. Wow.






Gotta love some whiny nasal nerd kewl. Fabulous.

Why do I have the overwhelming urge to throw my panties?

Tom Jones rocks it out in 1974. Points for the frilly shirt, the bouffy hair-preening, the rodeo champ-een belt buckle the size of a volkswagen and the marching band pants with the stripe down the sides.


Thinking about Tom and also about Sean Connery makes me hope we'll never hear a news story that either one has broken a hip. That just wouldn't be right, would it? On such a day our innocence would surely die.

How many drab fellows shifted uncomfortably in their Barcaloungers watching this broadcast in 1974, boiling with quiet rage as their wives breezed in from the pan of dirty dishes in the kitchen, squealing "ooooh! Tom JONES!" As years went by, he'd remember how Eunice seemed quite agitated at the mere mention of the Welsh crooner. As their twilight years came, he'd think, "sure, Eunice was married to me and hung around, but that was only because she couldn't have Tom Jones. I know who she really loved... *grouse* *grouse*..."

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em, I suppose.

Cherry Chomper

I know this is really corny, but I want one of these cherry pitters. I don't even use cherries that often in cooking, but I wantses it, precious.

It's probably the goofy smiling face that won me over. It could be the delightfully retro packaging. It's definitely not that I don't already have enough cutesy plastic crap around the place.

Black Hearted Love

Wish I could spend today in my PJs, but this treat from PJ Harvey and John Parish will have to suffice.

Love this video

...off to a rousing start...

First day at new job seems promising. Lately I've been nervous about going from one relatively secure job and out into the unknown, even if there were known things I disliked about the previous job. It's all so unsettling. Anyway, first day, first taste, this new company is in the throes of its busiest season and short of staff in my department. That means tadpoles like myself are to be throwed into the deep end pretty soon. Instead of a week of orientation, we got the one day Cliff's Notes version, and they took the 4 of us to lunch at a local eatery. At some point after we'd finished eating, conversation turned to where each had been shot with bb guns intentionally by siblings, in some cases requiring professional medical extractions. I had no tales on that score.

I then launched into how no shooting could parallel the sheer joys of pellet gun action from my youth. I said many folk in my family dipped snuff or chewed tobacco-- even some of the men folk, too. Said Grandpa had a rather impressive pyramid of gallon milk jugs full of fermenting tobacco spit in the back by the outhouse, and when that stuff got a good bloat rolling in the humid Arkansas summer blazes, there was no sound on earth to match the satisfying "thunk!" of pellets entering those bloated jugs, their sicky-sweet contents bursting forth like a Peckinpah movie.

[I wrote about this before several years ago]

Anyway. Just when they thought I was all slick and oober-Dallas, I think I threw them for a loop-de-loop.

Keep 'em guessing, I suppose.

a young family, once upon a time...

In Dallas last weekend, Dad showed me this picture of the family they'd found in Grandma and Grandpa's pictures recently. They're just pups, really. :)

Mom looks chic in a dress she made, and looks rather hawt considering how pregnant she was with me (I was born about 4 months later). It's amazing to think how young they were then, and how much older I am than that now.

Wow. Time is such a strange thing.

Speaking of the fleeting nature of time, I start my first day on the new job today. Should be interesting.

Watch this space... :)