Month: January 2005

too much to report more later

Owen, a one year-old baby Hippotamus gets close to his adopted mother, a giant male Aldabran tortoise at Kenya’s Haller Park, January 6, 2004. The 120-year old giant tortoise living in the Kenyan sanctuary has become inseparable from the baby hippo rescued by game wardens, sanctuary officials said on Thursday. (Peter Greste/Reuters)

Cheese racing is now an official sport, as well as being proof of the existence of the Prince of Lies. Hopefully the Apocalypse will happen before the sport goes Olympic.

I mentioned to Paul that nasty white cold flakes of water were going to precipitate out of the atmosphere last night. He moved the car into the garage, and now that I have a chance to survey my domain, I’m glad he took the implicit advice. There’s an even centimeter all over everything.

Watched a PG movie with my family last night. Had to go to bed to recover from the shock. Mind you, it’s always funny watching a teenage girl react to her first Steve McQueen movie. I said “Isn’t he the hottest thing ever?” and she had no difficulty agreeing. So I told her that he made a lot of bad movies, but he made some good ones too and she should check them out… starting with Bullitt. When I was little my dad put together a goodies reel of all his favourite crap on GET THIS Beta…. that’s how old I am!!! and it included, among other things, Stan Freberg’s turn on The Monkees (ha ha, that’s how old I am! I OWNED a Monkees album but sold it when I left TO for Montreal and it’s too bad because I’ve had the overwhelming urge to listen to “This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day” in the last few days) and the chase scene from Bullitt, and I can’t remember what all else right now but it was fun. If I ever put together a goodies reel, it would be interesting. Hm. Just what I need, another project. Hit delete, delete, hit delete, delete… Anyway, we watched the Great Escape. Read the liner notes and was startled to discover that three, count em three, members of the cast actually HAD been in POW camps, which accounted for the non-hollywoodesqueness of the set dec, among other things.

Must remember to thank Bree for the Buffy links. Seeing a picture of Anthony Stewart Head done up like Frankenfurter made it all worthwhile. The transcripts are proving useful, as well. Skipped forward to the sixth season because I HAD to read the lyrics for the ‘musical episode’. Keith and I were in hysterics – can’t wait to acquire the rest of the oeuvre.

Listening to Katie hum the theme to The Great Escape, I said, if you ever want to make a certain kind of grownup laugh, hum that when you’re trying to get away from something. Paul’s making me oatmeal, driving me in, and otherwise making life wonderful. Hm. Actually, the oatmeal’s ready, time to fly.

I type without a net. I have tried typing these things out – yeah it’s TYPING not WRITING what’s it to ya – into a proper text editor but when I transfer it back it’s full of those freaking html hiccups that are so gross I’d rather have an honest typo than one of those monstrosities. So if you see a typo that I didn’t catch, it’s not because I’m too ignorant to spell check, it’s because I’m in too much of a hurry to mess around, most of the time. I am not proud of myself, but I am not making any excuses.

Buffy continues to erode the non-necrotic portion of my cerebellum. I’m getting VERY non watching of the fights, mostly because the shift into the cartoon universe where getting snapped against a concrete wall doesn’t cause depressed fractures, followed by coma and death, is getting really tiresome. I’m much more into the investigating and smooching. I mean, I want to investigate and smooch, I do NOT want to be snapped like the end of a whip into a mausoleum wall.

Note to the woman who promised me a phone call in November and has been known to read this blog. (Lowers voice to whisper.) I’m still waiting.

I am very happy to be heading back to work. A quarter sized chunk of my heart has been ripped out of my body and staked underneath my desk, so I must needs return due to – well, you know about why, I need not explain.

Because people have been fired all over the world for what they said in blogs, I am only going to say nice, or possibly weird and uninterpretable things, about work. So just forget about the heart and the staking. It’s all bogus, anyway. And if I said work is very frequently an even more entertaining and educational place than the Buffyverse, nobody, including most of the people who work there, would believe me.

Which reminds me of a story from Sunday’s supper table. Bree said that a guy who applied for a job at a certain company got googled, apparently that’s S.O.P. now, in which case I’m hopelessly boned for ever getting another job, and said candidate turned out to have a weblog ON WHICH HE HISSED AND HE DISSED about the interview process. Next, please! If only weeding out the morons were always this easy, sigh.

 

Pic is from a car show in Japan; anime comes to life! I had to rub my eyes.

Had a wonderful time singing and playing at Tom and Peggy’s last night. Paul cooked ginger chicken on Friday so the spicing had a chance to spread out a bit; it was really yummy; there were also chocolate macaroons, although if you don’t like coconut that won’t thrill you too much.

And ice cream. Butter pecan.

Considering that she picked up a banjo scant months ago, Brooke is really playing well; and she TUNES it, which is great. She also performed the stellar public service of tuning one of Tom’s 12 strings. I grabbed the Larrivee and played standing up for a change; I should probably give up this singing and playing sitting down stuff. More calories required if you’re standing.

Katie is still recovering from spending 36 hours with her non bf. If I even hint at asking, so what’s going on with this young man? she claws and spits; p’raps I’ll drop the subject for a while.

Paul had a horrible nightmare last night. Sure woke ME up; I’d describe it but it’s too creepy.

Back to work, school, etc for the mass of us tomorrow. John is back tonight, which reminds me. I have to go downstairs and feed Pokey. I am actually looking forward to going back to work, strange as it may sound. I don’t think the kids are looking forward to going back to school. Keith has a project to finish; I should remind him about it before he gets too far into the Buffyverse, because of course we’re still mired in season three.

What is with the right wing Yank pundits? I just exited Juancole.com; there’s an interesting trace on a standard right wing meme. Americans give much to tsunami relief, what about those oil rich Muslim countries giving generously to the relief effort in Indonesia? Then when you do the math, OF COURSE, per capita, places like Kuwait are giving more per person than the US. It’s crazymaking. But once it gets repeated, it is TRUE.

Keith is practicing katakana. He still wants to learn Japanese.

Not much to report. Katie finally came home last night but I have no idea when. Still hard at work on the world building. Could NOT easily sleep last night. My characters were eating lunch in my head and I couldn’t get them to shut up, especially once the new hire started talking. And two more characters strolled up and sat down, and Rick started talking about how this isn’t a job interview, it’s an audition. It’s completely freaky, and it’s more like being possessed than anything else I can imagine. I can see them, I can hear them and they are going places I didn’t know about previously. I knew the building was wired, but it’s insane how much more complicated it is now that I’m actually world building and having to describe all the Millennium Falcon style ‘special modifications’ have been done to the building, much to the landlord’s continuing horror. Oh, do I hate the landlord. I hate him with a passion that is purple and everlasting.

“If audiences in general are underestimated, kids really get the patronizing treatment. Two things are often forgotten about kids. One: They have no taste. They will watch just about anything. This is normal and healthy. Taste comes later. Two: They are not stupid! Kids are born intelligent, and there’s no good reason to make dumbed-down entertainment for them.” *Craig Good, Pixar.

I think I’m going to do a Buffy goodies reel, nothing but interactions between Buffy and Angel. I mean, if it wasn’t for Buffy I would be in this jam.

Comedy class on Thursday. I am so stoked. Printed out all my routines and of course edited on the way by.

Pic is Marilyn Manson as a child.

It occurred to me that you might not have figured out HOW I got the weird piece of metal. You take tin solder and melt it in a spoon over coals in a fireplace and then dump the melted metal into a bucket of water. The variation in the shapes is unbelievable from person to person; Jarmo’s was the most amazing mother goddess figure I have ever seen. The children present got long streamers, and John got a scythe…. which I have to admit freaked the hell out of me.

. . .irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both of that “more” and of the outsider’s incomprehension. . .”

— h. w. fowler, linguist, and author of modern english usage (1968)

Getting ’nuff irony these dayz?

Katie coming to a Harry Potter movie with us on the transit