Slackateria

In the Olympics of Slack, I would be considered an overachiever.

As I mentioned last month, the in-laws will arrive from San Francisco on Saturday. Joy. Countdown to hearing how everything in Texas sucks. How Californians are all environmentally friendly - that's what they tell themselves when they recycle plastic, glass and paper to salve their consciences because they all spend 2 or more hours per day inundating the environment with petrochemical fumes during their commute into town to do their jobs which are much more important to the world than anything going on here in Texas.

... I have this big event I have to sell my jewelry in in 10 days, and I've been dragging my feet making up new stock to display and sell. Yes, I've been such a slacker that I have only started making new beads for the event in earnest tonight, and not VERY earnest at that. I don't even feel guilty - it's just that when all the family is gathered next week at my Mother-In-Law & FIL's new home, I want a reason to HAVE to bugger off early. "Oh shit - I've gotta go make some beads and jewelry. Darn! I wish I could spend more time with you guys!"

So, I've dawdled and dawdled, squandering precious hours with the elan of a seasoned veteran. After getting up before the crack of noon today, I showered and went outside and lounged by the pool nekkid save for a big luxurious robe, wet hair caressed by the breeze, reading my book, my toes running through the fur on my little dog's flanks. Lazy, but wonderful. I won't regret that hour spent...

Like I said last time, they're staying for a week, and I will be AMAZED if they don't move over to my (filthy) house within 3 days of arriving, so even working on my jewelry I wouldn't be off the hook. Maybe it's the meds, because I feel anesthetized to all this stuff. Add to this the fact that my big sales event coincides with the weekend all my clan is gathering in Arkansas to celebrate my grandparent's - geez - like their 70th wedding anniversary.

Grandpa is not someone I'm overly fond of, but I feel for him, poor old cadger. Grandma, on the other hand, is a gorgeous person whom I dearly love, but she has Alzheimer's, and has often left the building when you see her, leaving a hostile, aggressive woman in her place. It's heartbreaking. As I've been listening to the Neko Case cd, this one song about madness keeps reminding me of her - Dirty Knife.

He sang nursery rhymes to paralyze

The wolves that eddy out the corner of his eyes

But they squared him frozen where he stood

In the glow of the furniture piled high for firewood

And the blood runs crazy...

Terrors borne of a lonely, treacherous place where nothing and no one is familiar, a world peopled by strangers with menace in their eyes. I grieve that I won't be seeing Grandma that weekend, and yet, something in me is relieved, too. And the worst of it all is knowing the torment my darling father suffers because of this. I would give anything to spare him that heartache - he's one of the kindest, gentlest souls on earth, which is very like my grandma is/was.

Sorry, this turned into a bit of a ramble, dinnit? I'll try to be more amusing next time...

This is my new pal Erin. I've declared we are going to open a head shop together when we're old ladies and call it the stoned pony™, even though I don't do anything illegal anymore and strongly urge everyone else to follow my pristine (lately) example, unless they are buying lifestyle accessories which are purely decorative from our store... Anyhoo.

This is her horse, Pops, a 7 year old Arabian. This orange confection is the matador shirt she had to wear for showing in the Western Style, before the pony was up to snuff for English style. She thinks this $500 shirt is garish, and I think it's fabulous, even though it has no fringe down the back of the sleeves. The Dale Evans neckerchief just makes the look. Anyway, I think she looks like a million, gaudy or not.

But about the horse. Pops could get a job at an airport if they ever run out of german shepherds. Apparently, horsie's first trainer liked to indulge in a bit of herb before training sessions, and got Pops into the habit of getting the US RDA of vitamins T, H, and C. Did you know people bake horses by blowing the smoke in their ears? Consequently, this horse never lost the urge to imbibe and would never pass up an opportunity to get comfortably numb. Now, considering how easily spooked horses are, it seems like this could backfire woefully if one started getting paranoid, worrying about the 5-0, etc...

Erin met some chick at a show once, and Pops was obsessed with her purse and would not be dissuaded from nuzzling the handbag. This freaked the woman out, but later on, she pulled out a joint, and Erin said "A-ha, THAT's what he was after." The horse can smell weed a mile away, apparently, and he's mad for it.

I'd like to see an under-achiever pothead horse, sitting around watching Andy Griffith and Mister Ed re-runs, outmoded butt-sprung ugly old velour couch, industrial bag of cheetos and a pony keg of beer at hand. There'll be a picture of dogs playing cards on the wall, and the tv remote will be controlled by a clopper. Clop On, Clop Off. The owner would nag "we never go anywhere anymore - what do you want to do with your life? We never talk." The horse's giant head would sway toward the owner, eyes rolling balefully, as if to say "you talkin' to me?"

OK, kind of a crap photo, but you get an idea of how my studio is shaping up. Yes, the walls are chartreuse. Today I went to IKEA (yes, my horse knows the way to carry my chariot) and got this lovely red peanut table. How cute is that? Got my new tv & dvd player yesterday, so at long last I can stop making jewelry on the coffee table - now I just need to switch out that cable box for one with DVR feature, and I'll be in hog heaven. Plus, this will just be more comfortable anyway. I love my red sparkly-vinyl chair on casters, and the bright green walls are visual caffeine. Plus I've got lots of my favorite knick-knacky shit around the studio which keeps it out of the rest of the house. Well, not completely, but it is nice to have the inspringly wacky stuff around the work area. I told husband he'll probably be nostalgic for me making a mess on the coffee table, and he'll probably say "Ritter, would you come make some jewelry in the living room again?" Probably. That's what I'm thinking. After all, I was working on a couple necklaces a bit ago and watching Ed vs Spencer on BBC America, and he came and laid on the floor. I'll have to put in a doggie bed for the bitch, too, and maybe some throw pillows if husband is going to be hanging out on the floor. Will post more as this progresses.

I'm emailing Chris Levack to see if it's true, but I was told that the Austin artist made this shelf. It's one of my favorite things, and though you can't tell, I've got a collection of flapper-era powder boxes and compacts and chalkware nekkid half-dolls residing there. Click here to see some great sculpture by Chris Levack.

Separated at birth...

Now don't get me wrong. I really do like Sandy Bullock. Apparently my dad thinks she's cute and deflected mom's rancor by saying she looks like George Hamilton. Well. Maybe so, but she's still hot. Seems to me that invoking the spectre of some garish person of your own sex would be the eyecandy buzzkill that would toll the deathknell of a serious crush. Then again, dad being a guy and all - who understand how that brain works anyhoo?

Sandra Bullock wins mad props too for marrying a guy who can administer an oil change. Between you and me - effete himbo Hollywood type males are useless.

And when it comes to British men, I find Geoffrey Hughes who plays Onslow on Keeping Up Appearances WAAAAY more attractive than milquetoast Hugh Grant.

I mentioned I turned 40 in October but that wasn't the moment of onset of older sensibilities, actually, although I've yet to succumb to actual decrepitude. The moment for me was probably aged 35, when watching Gladiator and I realized that I thought the hottest man in the cast was actually Oliver Reed, the hard-ball lover of life who played the august Proximo, gladiator slave-trader in the film. Then again, I once heard it said that old age is when you stop looking at the young girls and start looking at their mothers. Uh, right. Well, we know you guys never stop looking at any of us, but in the case of women, the same might be said.

Incidentally, about Oliver Reed, he died during filming of Gladiator, and Ridley Scott spent $3 million to reproduce his likeness for final scenes of the film. From imdb:

He died of a heart attack in a bar after downing three bottles of Captain Morgan's Jamaica rum, eight bottles of German beer, numerous doubles of Famous Grouse whiskey, and beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling. His bar bill for that final lunch time totaled 270 Maltese lira, almost £450.

Party on, dude!

I mentioned last week on a rainy day I went on a book-and-music-buying rampage. When I buy multiple cds, I'll choose one to start with, and then I hold the others in reserve, hoarding them back like little rarities, each to be enjoyed as its own experience, not all squandered in one swell foop. Knowing my favorite would be the Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, I started with the wonderful island magic of Martin Denny's exotic world. Great stuff, that. I mentioned that would be the essential lounging-by-the-pool music this year, in addition to the Spongebob Squarepants soundtrack which has great stuff from the likes of Motörhead.

Neko Case has turned out to be an astonishing find for me. Her powerful vocals are womanly yet vulnerable, with occasional moments of pure heartbreak that are evocative of the great classic queens of country music like Kitty Wells and Donna Fargo and the venerated Patsy Cline - the stuff I grew up hearing in the car on road trips - classic country/western swing. Click here to listen on Amazon

For me by far the most bewitching track on the cd - Star Witness - sandwiches details of a fatal car crash with narrative about a likely unhealthy juvenile relationship:

My true love drowned in a dirty old pan of oil

that did run from the block
of a Falcon sedan 1969, The paper said '75

there were no survivors, none found alive...

achingly beautiful, the refrain says there's such dandy wolves round town tonight...

...hey pretty baby get high with me, we can go to my sister's if we say we'll watch the baby
the sound of your voice yanks my neck on a chain

and I would do anything to see you again...

You can feel the static in her cheap polyester nightgown as she sings the final words with a pure, plaintive clarity that is evocative of Dolly Parton's sweetest moments:

My nightgown sweeps the pavement
Please
Don't let him die
Oh how I forgot

We are left to wonder if she died in the wreckage too, or if she only lost a piece of her heart - there were no survivors, none found alive. All this bittersweet heartbreak is underpinned by gorgeous guitars that call to mind faded photographs and dusty western sunsets. Great road music.

Anyway, incredible cd, this. Grab your bonnet and sashay right out and pick this one up - you'll thank me.

Yes, since acquiring a DVR feature on my cable television, I've gone to the edge and been sucked into the vortex of crap television. Having the ability to watch later and zip through the commercials has completely changed my tolerance level for tv. I hate all the fake suspense, and I hate most of the reality shows, Project Runway being an exception, the contestants having to bring more to the table than a certifiable pulse.

Late last season, I began watching American Idol. I know. The shame. The shame. Anyway, there's a 21 year old woman from North Carolina who has been working the extreme hick angle overtime.

Simon: You're a minx!
MC gay - er, guy: Do you know what that is?
Ellie Mae: I'm a mink!

MC: Simon said your performance was ballsy.
Ellie Mae: What's a ballsy?

Anyway, I'm so sick of the bitch that I hope she's overplayed her hand at last, her momma is who-knows-where, and her daddy is in prison, so she was raised by a pack of coon dogs on the edges of some backwoods burg. Last night's program was amazing, because they piled the makeup on her, and she looked tarted up like the slutty little girls on SouthPark. Ew. It was just too much. Go away, please.

In perhaps the strangest segue, out of morbid curiosity, I was flipping channels and stopped on Home Shopping Network, or hell, as you may prefer to think of it. Hawking some Birkenstock-like sandals that could easily substitute for birth-control was an enthusiastic poofter German guy with a mah-velous manicure, darling. Anyhoo. He looked a little like Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park. Fondling a denim monstrosity of a handbag with a metal snap-ball closure, he said "I just love those big balls!" and you know what? I'll bet he does.

RIGHT-WING BLOG EXCORIATION

Sunday's Toronto Star cites a Berkeley study here that says whiny spoiled children grow up to be conservatives, and confident, self-sufficient children grow up to be liberals.

Bullshit.

These 100 children were followed from the 1960s forward. I think this conclusion has more than a bit to do with the fact that the study was conducted in Berkeley, the incubator for fin-de-siecle liberalism. Naturally, in the hothouse of American liberalism, liberals WOULD feel confident and self-sufficient, buoyed up by such an enabling atmosphere. Someone who is a contemporary, independent thinker WOULD feel put-upon and paranoid in such an environment that does not welcome differing ideas. Seriously - for all their claims of open-mindedness, places like Berkeley are some of the most hostile environments to voice an opinion that does not fall in lock[goose]step with the herd.

Husband's comments on this issue:

I'm sure it was a double-blind totally objective study.

OTOH, if that's really true, then the future of our country is in great shape.

He's got a point - I see no end of whining children no matter where I go in the country. Yeah, even California. Then again, I'll be able to make a case-study about a California child in about a week-and-a-half. Film at eleven.

5 minutes later:

No wait, I just have to come back here and add a bit more, for my own sake. I am an artist, a free-thinker, and a wild person. I'm independent and have NEVER been a whiner - I don't even nag husband (he often says he wishes I would). I don't need alcohol or drugs to tap into my inner banshee - it's always there, just beneath the surface. I am open-minded and friendly, and non-judgmental of everyone I meet. I make fast friends to whom I'm devoted for life. Because of these traits, acquaintances generally assume I'm a liberal, and feel free to vent their paranoid ravings believing I'll agree with them.

Economically, however, I AM conservative. I think that some social services and safety nets for our communities ARE necessary, but I think that should be done at local and state level, and I think there are simply too many laws on the books at every echelon of US government. 60+ years of the New Deal have created an entirely new dependent class with no incentive to do otherwise than remain firmly clamped on the government teat. (Someday when I have more time, I'll tell you about my California relatives who enjoy the cyclical slavery legacy of our welfare system.)

And THAT, my dears, is why this study has me so cheesed off. No doubt, this bit of pap was funded by taxes confiscated from yours truly, and OK, NOW I'm whining. Let's see a comparably "objective" study made in an Indiana or Kansas farming community - backbone of our very nation - and I'll bet you'll see another result entirely.

I have a lot of stuff to do today, but I just had to vent. Don't be surprised if I come back and vent some more later, for my dander-she is up!

two hours later:

OK, I've had some time curled up with the wonderful diversion of a book, and now I'm calmer. Let me say this study infuriates me because it was conducted in the name of science and has been honed into a political spear. My blathering on about myself and what a study in contradictions I am makes the point that people are more complex than can be serviced by one political ideology, and the people who can be so straight party-line are not doing much thinking, in my opinion. In the John Lydon interview I posted a couple weeks ago, he said "Institutions will not ruin us," but to that I would add "unless we allow them to." This desperate need of the media to compartmentalize the populace into groups is a pat way to manage us and pretend to be addressing our needs and interests at large, when in fact, we as a society are more complex and differing. My balking at the implied "even-tempered cool" (Ted Kennedy? Cindy Sheehan? John Kerry? Really.) of liberals is based on my perception that it is a very liberal element of our society that is sullying freedoms I hold dear. I call it the hall-monitor mentality - the element among us who wants to prevent people from smoking, from plastering the ten commandments on public buildings while forcing us to turn to mecca at sunset, and who go see films like "Supersize Me" and the factually specious films of Michael Moore.

Mark my words: It is precisely this element that will be sifting through your grocery receipts looking for purchases of beer, twinkies and cigarettes to deny you medical services when you are in need late in life. Can a fat tax be far away? I think not.

Really cool old Xavier Sager post card I bought of comely young lass being vivisected by an icky bunch of Edwardian doctor-types.

Oddly compelling. She doesn't seem to mind.

Click HERE for a .wav of Dallas Demigod Reverend Horton Heat extolling the virtues of steak from his cd "Smoke 'em if ya got 'em." Good stuff.

Eat steak, eat steak eat a big ol' steer
Eat steak, eat steak do we have one dear?
Eat beef, eat beef it's a mighty good food
It's a grade A meal when I'm in the mood.

Cowpokes'll come from a near and far
When you throw a few rib-eyes on the fire
Roberto Duran ate two before a fight'
Cause it gives a mighty man an awful lot of mighty might

UNTAPPED RESOURCE. Um, I'm not going to touch this one. Just passing along information.

Husband and I went to Texas de Brazil for dinner last night. LOVE that place. TdB is a churrascaria, [Brazilian steakhouse] and all the Brazilian boys in gauchos come around to the tables with meat on spits. Gotta love it.

(Sorry - blogger photo is wonky right now - will add later. )
(Done.)

I ordered some supplies for the office at my part-time job, and now I'm on crap mailing lists, and these appalling catalogs keep coming to the office, addressed to me, of course. My current favorite is the tackiest one so far which includes all manner of drain-unclogging products, toilet seat pads, and house shoes with mop-bottoms so you can dust your floor as you shuffle around the house. Seriously. But by far, my favorite product is the Nippits™ which are like little adhesive rubbermaid daisies you can stick on your breasteses to keep the nipples from showing through. This amazes me. Why cover up all that creamy goodness?? Besides, If I can't hyp-mo-tize you with my bewitching eyes, then I'll have to resort to plan B and pull you in with my twin tractor beams of feminine mojo. Everybody wins.

Our pool level has risen more than 6 inches since the rain started in the wee hours of yesterday morning. Glorious! I crave rain - I'm always more creative and energized during dreary weather - so it's ironic that I live in such a dry place as Texas. Still, the people here are very friendly and at least there is an upside.

Soundtrack for this rainy day:

One of my favorite songs ever "Swamp Thing" from Strange Times by Chameleons UK - released 1986. Incredible song.

Also, listening to the vibey- mood-enhancing "Spiritual Spiritual" by B-tribe. Exquisite. Particularly track #8, which is an hypnotic ambient variation on Joaquin Rodrigo's extraordinary Adagio from "Concierto de Aranjuez." Dreamy.

Books/Music wot I bought today Just went to the local book/music/coffee emporium and picked up the next novel in the Outlander series, and Purple Hibiscus which I'll read as soon as I finish my book today. Some series of books, such a Piers Anthony - I like to read consecutively, because they are generally fast and pretty entertaining. The Outlander series is more of a palate cleanser, light, bodice-ripper-ish without succumbing to a Harlequin Romance degree of schlock, and I'll read them in-between heavier reading. I also picked up new cds by Neko Case and The Wood Brothers, and an ultra groovy space-age-jungle-lounge re-issue called The Best of Martin Denny's Exotica, which will be required listening when I'm tooling around town with the sun roof open this summer and while lolling with a book in/around the pool.

In the words of Loreena Bobbit - It won't be long now...

In a fracas with the Chicago police, a man severed his own penis and threw it at police officers. Apparently Jakob Fik was distraught over difficulties with his girlfriend in Poland when he began throwing knives and ultimately his amputated limb at the policemen. Not only do they list his name, but they also put his street address in the Chicago Sun Times, so the humiliation may be complete. I don't know, I find that amazing for some reason, printing his address. Just in case anyone's in doubt, you want to know if it's your neighbor who went whack with a knife. I'm all for disclosure and all that, but it seems, I dunno... If I went bananas and created a bad-news story, I'd at least prefer the anonymity of just having my name and not address listed in the daily rag. Oh, and what was he thinking? "shit! I'll show her - I'll cut my own dick off - then she'll be sorry." I have to say, it must have been an impressive thing if it reached all the way to Poland.

Happy St. Pat's!

Had a marvelous time out with dear, evil Liz for sushi and darling wicked Lisa for lunch. I introduced Lisa to a place entirely new to her (she was smitten - for I know all the hep joints in town), and Liz and I ate little fried crabs that looked like the face-huggers from alien. Ah, sweet revenge! That dish was called Kogani Kara Age. Some of the little legs fell off, but your humble narrator is nothing if not deft with a pair of chopsticks and no amount of chitinous material was spared.

We had a marvelous sashimi Aji (Spanish Mackerel), and the waitress took the carcass to the kitchen and fried it for us, and I got the tail fins, and Liz graciously allowed me to eat most of the head, including both eyeballs. Yum! What's the point of eating something that had a face if you don't eat the face, right?Liz had some difficulty controlling her paper chopstick wrapper, and I suggested chopstick/wrapper coupling wmv.s may be an unrealized niche online market.

The immaculate Robin Guthrie has a cd coming out in May, and you can hear a dreamy track here.

I understand enormous storms are in the forecast for the weekend for north Texas, and I'm going to sit doing beadwork in a much-windowed room and enjoy the display. I can't wait - LOVE LOVE lurve dreary weather. Sweet.