excellent John Lydon appearance on Jimmy Kimmel recently. Gotta love it. Straight shooter.

John's thoughts on American Idol from this interview:

"They're trying to incorporate you into their methodology, and if you're writing music and you're singing things and you believe in what you're doing, it's from your heart, and that' s the thing those institutions negate on."

After 6 years formal vocal training for a classical operatic career (didn't happen) I can say that what John said there is something that runs through EVERY thread of the music industry. A university music program is a political animal that is designed to KILL THE JOY OF MUSIC. And you can take that to the bank, my darlings.

added Sunday midday - The funny thing is that when I knew of John simply as the godhead of the Sex Pistols and PiL, although I agreed with so much of what he said lyrically, I never thought he was a person who could sit still, but ever since Rotten TV, I have come to see him as someone with a very peaceful, well-grounded inner core who knows exactly who he is and sees the bullshit coming from a mile away and is not afraid to call a dog a dog. THAT's what I mean when I say he's a straight shooter. He's my kind of people, and with the gravitas of physical maturity now that he's hit the ripe old age of 50, I actually find him really attractive. Wow. Now I never saw that coming!

Former Yugoslav tyrant Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell today of natural causes, aged 64. Called the "Butcher of the Balkans" he was known for a campaign of bloodshed that precipitated the breakup of Yugoslavia. The international tribunal of the United Nations found him guilty of war crimes, and he has been imprisoned at the Hague and on trial there since 2002. He is the first sitting head of state to be tried by the UN tribunal.

But let's get to the core of the issue. Yugoslavia is a region that has been embroiled in bitter social turmoil for many hundreds of years. So what if, like Saddam Hussein, a naturally elected leader of a country wants to kill a few thousand or million of the nobodies under their auspices? Right? It's no one else's business, right? Like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan should have lived out his natural life running his own country as he saw fit, because who are we, the international community, to dictate what is moral for another country? Again, what are the deaths of thousands or millions of Serbs, Croats, Kurds, Shiites, Hutus or Tutsis? Right? Who cares?

I care. I think genocide is an outrage whether the tyrannized people have skin color like mine or not. All my life I will feel chagrined at the failure of the civilized world to act and prevent the bloodbath in Rwanda, and I think we in the West deserve to be haunted by those images, if only to embolden us to stand up to tyranny and intervene on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves.

Phlegmmy's most girly HALLOWEEN COSTUME:
1970, I had just turned 5, and mom got me the coolest outfit - I was the girl bugaloo - I felt SOOOOO pretty! Proving you can be a groovy chick at the ripe old age of 5.

Oh, on the subject of the in-laws' new fancy digs - apparently husband and I are going over on Saturday night to take a gander at the place. Too bad my cell phone camera is on the fritz, or I could regale you with pictures as well as madcap tales afterward. More on that later...

Sadly, I finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell yesterday. As I was getting closer to the end, I slowed down and spaced it out rather than charging like a bull as per usual. The prose was simply too beautifully written to rush. It's satisfying when I read a book and none of it has turned out like I expected. Hopefully the author will write sequels to this one.

Here is my current obsession, and can you believe it? For once they are not John Fluevogs. These are the cutest shoes I've seen in 2 or 3 weeks, honest! They are sassy. To paraphrase Air Supply, I can't live if living is without these shoes.

About Madonna's Angry Inch, for the befuddled in the peanut gallery: a few years ago there was a wild rock-opera musical movie (first it was a play, I think) called Hedwig and the Angry Inch about a man in Germany who wanted to become an American citizen and had a sex change to marry an American G.I., but the surgery was a bit botched, so now rather than being one gender or t'other, Hedwig has the ubiquitous angry inch.

Glad y'all like my new blog togs. Cat did an awesome job. Yes, I'm shaking my fanny a bit over here. Woohoo!

Seminal rock and roll moment for your humble narrator. Bauhaus' immaculate remake of T-Rex Telegram Sam. Their Ziggy Stardust also held with my insistence that if you are to cover a classic song, you must improve on it - otherwise, leave it alone. Then there was Lagartija Nick, which only cemented my ardor for them. Me in high school in the early eighties, craving something that went up to 11, this floated my bobber and made me swear off pop radio and MTV forever. Pa-tooey. Hard, driving nasty rock with a brain, Peter Murphy's commanding sinister baritone at the helm. Yee haw!

I said automatic shoes

give me 3-D vision and the California blues

Telegram Sam

You're my main man

U

Um, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed, but I think Madonna has an angry inch! Angry inch! AN-GA-RY INCH!

The good folks at Cute Overload have some incredible Jack Russell photos. My favorites: the dog paws from under the covers is a cute and familiar sight. Love the brokeleg forlorn puppy. He looks repentant. And finally, nothing in the world makes an art form of relaxing like a Jack Russell Terrier. Shameless tarts! You know I love them.

While we're celebrating my Southern rearing, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you a few of my early tobacco and firearms experiences.

When I was about 4 and we lived in Mississippi, my brother had a bb gun that was as tall as I was. It took all my strength to cock that sucker, but I managed. Daddy had a new watch which I laid on the floor, face-up. Now I had seen a magazine ad of an elephant standing on a watch (Timex ad, y'all), and I decided to put daddy's watch to the test. I held the bb gun perpendicular to the ground laying flush on the face of the watch, and proceeded to blow the guts out of the watch. I wondered why an elephant could stand on it but it couldn't take a bb to the face.

This is incidentally the first lie I remember telling.

Dad: Phlegmmy! Why did you do that?

Me: I was aiming at my toe

Dad: I wish you had HIT your toe!

Visiting the maternal grandparents in NE Arkansas, ancient Aunt Eulah (my kind of gal, I now know) with the glint in her eye, was sitting on her own in the kitchen with a big glass of chocolate powder. I was about 3. I said "I like that." She said "You do? Well, go get you a spoon and you can eat all you want! But you have to eat all you take." Having no sense of moderation, I chose a BIG spoon. Yes, I dipped liberally into the glass and shoveled it in, and the instant evil bitter taste of snuff dazzled my wits - my eyes must have been huge - and an atomic explosion of dry snuff sprayed forth from my miserable mouth and nose, and Aunt Eulah cackled for hours.

Living in Memphis, about age 5. Karen from across the street was over, and my mom knew we were too quiet and something must have been up. She heard hushed voices from the bathroom, pushed open the door to see me and Karen looking guilty in a room covered in snuff powder. Dad was never a dipper, and she didn't know what inspired him to get that. Maybe it was a cosmic plan that I have something to play with that day.

Flash forward a few years. Grandpa Smith's farm in NE Arkansas. Yes, by now you have surmised that I come from a long line of snuff-dippers and tobacco chewers, and the answer is yes, the men in the family dipped and chewed, too. I do recall being a very young child and thinking when one's chin gets wrinkly enough that the wicking effect (capillary action) pulls a fine thread of tobacco colored juice down one's chin, it's time to give it up - very unladylike. Anyway, grandpa has always been a big tobacco chewer, and he'd spit his juice in white plastic gallon-milk jugs.

Now, there is a particular kind of heat we get in the south that is unlike anywhere else, and I think it takes people of a certain type of mettle to tolerate this indigenous blend of heat and moisture. Apparently tobacco-laden spittle is made of more fragile stuff. About 50 yards from the back of the house and right near the outhouse, grandpa had a huge mound of these milk jugs, in which the spittle-juice had fermented and bloated like a week-old dead warthog. Brother had the neat idea of relieving the pressure with the application of a liberal peppering of pellets from his pellet gun, which we both did. Oh my brothers and sisters, it was a glorious sight - streams of hot tobacco juice, liberated from their plastic prisons, bursting forth and spraying into the turgid air. It looked like a Sam Peckinpah film- so many ribbons of tobacco bursting forth - classic overkill in the cinematic tradition. The greatest delight, though, was the satisfying "thwunk!" the pellets made as they penetrated the plastic. Superlative!

When I was about 8, the men folk were out in front of Grandpa's house and smoking cigars. I asked if I could try it - all the other kids did - but they inhaled and got sick. I smoked it for about 5 minutes and then handed it back to go play. Dad and uncles laughed that I didn't turn green and puke like the other kids. Yeah, I'm real hardcore like that.

Finally, I'll tell you my favorite shooting experience was the time - maybe 15 years ago? - when dad got out the muzzle-loader the patriarch used in the Civil War, and we fired that puppy on grandpa's farm. It was a marvelous feeling, firing this huge magnificent beast that was the constant companion to gggg-grandpa 150 years ago, or so. There's also something really cool about preparing a weapon like that for firing - more ritualized than simply snapping on a cartridge or slipping a shell into a chamber. I recommend it.

These are far from being my only tobacco/firearms stories, but they are my favorites. I know you are wondering, and I confess that I do not dip or chew, and I only rarely smoke cigars these days.

By the way, my dad read my post from yesterday, and I think he'd want me to let you know he said it was "gross" and "smutty." I think that's his way of saying he's not responsible for the monster that sprang forth from his and mom's loins. Blame me.

OK, kids, time for housecleaning, which means I clean out the lint-trap of my brain and ramble a bit more randomly rather than my usual obsessively on-topic m.o.

I will be beset by the Kalifornia relative ass-wads in exactly one month, which means that I'll be having my pyramid at the same time. Oh, joy. Asshole west-coast liberals, constant in-law social obligations with no me-time, period and its concomitant mud-butt(thank you, Dave Chapelle): JOY!

I have begun spring gardening to get the flowerbeds all gussied up in anticipation of lots of company in April. Spent a grueling day gardening yesterday - but a labor of love, it is. Got some new lavender, and loads of African daisies, ultra-vivid ultra-blue lobelia(favorite!), some heart-breakingly intense dahlias, and sundry other little deadlies for the garden. I also got a wonderful array of shade-lovers for the front-entry garden area. That should be fun. I would be out planting again today, but I need to give the aching body a rest, and I'll hit it again on my off day tomorrow. I noticed today that my big pot of cactus has the tell-tale signs of buds. Here to refresh your memory are blossoms from last spring. Looking forward to more of same. Got this in Yuma, Arizona 2 years ago February, and the cactus and pot weighed about 60 pounds at that time. Now it's probably double that. I'll try to get a current photo soon. What's odd, is the arms of the cactus now are all kind of hunkered together, but when it was blooming, they all spread out and reached in different directions. Maybe it's a winter/spring thing.

I went and grabbed some Popeye's fried chicken for lunch, which I don't do very often because it's difficult to eat fried chicken with my braces, these days. A word on phlegmmy's fried chicken pedagogy: spicy or mild, an important part of your fried chicken experience is proper application of the jalapeno. (We recommend dark meat, btw, and opine that chickens should be available in all-dark only, but we'll take this up with the responsible party at a later date. ) Nibble off the tip of your pickled jalapeno, and dribble its juice over the crust of your fried chicken. Hawtdamn, but that's good. Doglet and I sat at the table poolside and she got the little crummy bits and the occasional hunk of chicken, and lots of the biscuit. Now, storebought fried is different from home-fried - home-fried is too good to sully with garnishes of any kind, and must be eaten with the fingers. (big propers to God, for making me Southern, btw)

One more thing about fried chicken - if you are single and want to hook up permanently with a romantic partner, perfect the art of frying chicken and you will have them lined up at the door. But be careful who you share your goodies with - make sure someone is worthy of your fried chicken before you force them to fall in love with your recipe- for such a conquest is not easily divested once won. Any person worth having will fall in love with you based solely on your mad chicken-frying skills, and you can take that to the bank.

My sister is going to dip her toe in the pool of roller-derby soon, and I'll go along for moral support. Husband asked me if I was going to do that too. Seriously. He seriously asked me that. Now, I'm ENOUGH of a ball-buster to do roller derby, but I don't like looking that mussed in public, and trust me, with 12+ years of hausfrau rage, I would get seriously ugly on they ass. Sis can represent the whole clan ably, I believe, because she's a hot sexy gal, and is so mean she makes me look like a little lamb, heh heh. Look out, roller-bitches!

OK, not the best photos, but you get the idea. This is my first quilt, which I finished piecing last year, and the top measures 71"x53". I'm going to do the quilting by hand after my next jewelry show in April. Yeah, not fancy or difficult, and in places even quite sloppy, but I loved the colors of reds, pinks, orange and yellows together, and you know how much I love making things. I plan to do more quilts in future, but I want to make more free-form art-quilt designs. The Dallas quilt show is in 2 weeks at the Market Hall on Stemmons. That should be fun, if you like that sort of thing. It's always amazing to see the elaborate art quilts, and all the handwork. It's a gorgeous tradition.

Exactly two years ago husband and I drove my sister and her chillins out to see our beloved Grandmother in Arizona. The day we left for Dallas, it was difficult to leave her, and we lingered until late in the afternoon. Nephew was 1 and niece was 7, and we knew they'd go to sleep soon after the sun was down. We sped along the highway meeting few cars and seeing fewer still traveling in our direction. Through southeastern Arizona the sweep of our lights illuminated the majestic Saguaro along the roadside, the desert sentinels standing and beckoning through time across the span of 6 human lives. The Cure's Disintegration looped in the cd player, a brilliant counterpoint to the profusion of stars across the darkening velvet sky, the lush layers of guitar arabesques reflecting the brittle desolate beauty of the desert and its indomitability. Then into New Mexico, the outlines of mountains closer. Everything about that night is as palpable as ever, and I can reach out and remember that feeling, the beauty and the heartbreak as we made our way home.

Someone brilliant recently said "bathroom emergencies are why God gave us Super Big Gulp™ cups." Ok. It was me. I said it and I stand by that statement.

Or the big yellow cups from Dickey's Barbecue - you locals know what I'm talking about. Once husband and I were on the road in his Suburban, and nature called me rather insistently. There were three options: I could either sully the nice upholstery and render his road hog an olfactory nightmare for the remainder of the trip, stop somewhere miles up the road, or pee in a handy Dickey's barbecue cup. Guess what I chose? Damned skippy I peed in the cup. It was a suburban, for heaven's sake, and I relished the engineering challenge. Actually, at that point I was beyond all reasoning. Mission accomplished, we laughed and laughed, and all the while I'm holding the ickily warm yellow cuppa as merrily we rolled along. We turned from the highway onto a smaller road, and I thought that was my chance to discreetly pour the urine out the window, yeah? I know - musta been full of beer not to think that one through. Of course, not only was the side of the suburban inevitably going to be given a golden shower, I gave no thought to the rate at which we were traveling, and I held the cup out, upright, and before I could tip it in either direction, the wind ripped it out of my hands. Ruh roh raggy!

We'll never know if the car behind us got a bit of blow-back or if they were just outraged that I let fly a plastic product in the wilds of nature, but some scowling people drove by shaking their fist at me from their environmentalist be-stickered auto. Meddlesome hall-monitor-assed bitches!

Uh, husband just read this post and said it was a Wendy's Biggie cup. Well, at least I got the yellow part right. Dickey's sounded more fun, though, dinnit?

States I've visited. Um, you can kind of tell I'm a road trip kind of gal, can't you? Husband and I are taking a road trip in November, in fact, and maybe I can add some states to my list. Before hitting the road, I like to check out the route against the oddities listed in Roadside America. After all, it would be a pity to drive within miles of the world's largest olive sculpture or a two-headed calf pickled in brine and miss out on it, wouldn't it? Most excitingly, RA features a comprehensive map of all the Muffler Men left in America. Here is a Muffler Man from my own fair city. If you're a little off-kilter, like myself, here's the muy fabuloso page at RA on Muffler Men and this big butch icon of American commerce, long may she wave. No need to thank me, really, I'm happy to help!

create your own visited states map

Wow. I like to imagine there is someplace on earth where the summers are like today is in Dallas. It's about 80 degrees, the air is dry, and there is a nice breeze. I have to make some beads on torch in a bit, but I took my book outside and sat by the pool with the dog. I didn't read a word. I donned a straw cowboy hat to shade my eyes, and I leaned back and drifted in a half-dreaming state. Glorious.

OK, on Tuesday I was on SUCH a tear, it was ungodly. I think after days like this I must at last acknowledge the existence of PMS or the forces of evil or somesuch.

Normally I'm chipper and accommodating of everyone who comes in the office, but today I slept through 45 minutes of my alarm and I could either be very late and immaculately coiffed, or I could skip the hair mojo and just take a shower. I chose curtain number 2, and as a result I felt rather grumpy today. I was logged into our website and attempting to update some information when the bloody flipping phone rang for the millionth time and as I answered I noticed a group of geezers wandering the property to salivate over a gazillion $$ deal they are working with my company. These types wanna be Donald Trump, which is muy unappealing to moi. Well, in the middle of an attempt to focus on updating text on our site, they sashayed into my office and demanded to see the head of the company. I said, "sure, he's in there" and pointed toward his office. Golly, where did that come from? No leaping up to show them to the conference room? No offering coffee or other earthly delights? Dramatic reenactments from the Song of Solomon, perhaps? These are powerful men, unaccustomed to anything but the warm welcoming smiles from women that come with a tacit offer of pleasures licit and otherwise. Anyway - one of the guys said "I need to talk to you out here" to the other guys, and they stepped outdoors for a minute. I'll bet they went out and said that they'll make firing me a condition of the deal. *tee hee*

Seriously, I didn't lift a finger to bow and scrape, although I would have been more eager to be helpful if they'd been the slightest bit courteous. Trust me, I can be as diplomatic as the next person, but I had been working so hard to focus on my task and it all happened in a heartbeat. I'll bet if I go to the website and look at the text I was working on I'll find I broke off mid-sentence somewhere along the way. In truth, what I do for the company is not even related to that big deal end of things, and I'm a little out of the loop on that process, happily. Mind the nails, chaps. That blood's fresh.