Month: December 2007

Anniversary

Today’s the anniversary of the day I told Paul I was calling it quits.  I phoned Tammy a year ago today and told her I wanted to kill myself.  (I did, too, despite being told that I was being manipulative.) Instead of freaking out, she listened; at the end of about half an hour, she said, in a tone of voice that I recollect when I think I’m friendless (her tone being solemn, helpful and engaged) “You don’t want to kill yourself.  You want a divorce.”

Now I am sure that there a couple of people out there who wish I had offed myself, but frankly I’m glad I didn’t, as a couple of things have happened since that I am glad I lived through.

So today, I’d just like to say a couple of things.  The person sitting next to you may look fine and want to die.  Go easy on people; you don’t know what griefs they are carrying that you really wish you’d known about in advance.  In the rush to judgment do not trample compassion.
The other thing I want to say is that over the span of the last year, a lot of people I thought I knew have revealed their true colours to me.  A lot of people I respect have earned more of my respect.  A lot of people I like have become more likeable.  And a number of people I thought I hated have turned out to be poor, suffering bastards deserving of love and compassion and kindness.  I can’t make them like me – such is not within my power – but I have stopped hating, and that’s a really good place to find myself a year onwards.

Oh, and I think I’ve found somebody to date.  He’s very private and a bit of a Luddite, so I am mentioning his existence only as passing news, as he will not otherwise be turning up in my blog. But anybody who’s into contradancing can’t be all bad, right Chipper?

Your call cannot be completed as dialled

Ho lee crap!  I can now, hopefully, include genuine telecom sounds in a recording of the song that I’ve tried to name so many times without success that I now refer to it mentally as ‘the telecom song’ (a song, Debbie, that’s so old that I actually lived in the same building with you when I wrote it!!).  It’s also known as “Your call cannot be completed as dialled” and “Words Fail”.

Too awful. Don’t read this!

It was a dark and stormy cauldron of boiling fat that great scaly Cthulhu tended, in the cavernous stony depths of the Miskatonic University Cafeteria. The churn and bubbling, the dry and scabrous slither of his slowly circling tentacles, the frightened, witless cries of the starveling catechumens, combined to emit a resonance to erode one’s very vitals.

“Great Cthulhu,” cried one over the awful tumult, “When will the deep fried Mars bars be ready?”

“Dread me and fall to silence,” came the blast of his vast & mighty intelligence, billowing and echoing through the wretches before him as though they were but motes in a standing wave of hatred. “Quit joggling my tentacles, it’ll be ready when it’s ready,” he elaborated. Silence great scaly Cthulhu was not to experience, as once again they cried out in anticipatory, slobbering horror.

“I’ve heard my pancreas will implode,” one whimpered, after many fumbling attempts to speak.

“I’ve heard his Grisly Scaliness will make us slam ‘buca shots afterwards until we all puke,” mewled another.

“I’ve heard he’ll charge us $5 and I blew all my money last night at the rub’n’tug in Ten-Tackle Alley,” whispered another, whose staring eyes and ashen pallor stood out even in that brutish assemblage of livid, ill-clad humanity.

“Man,” said another, not so bereft of fellow feeling as to be rendered unable to respond to such desperation, “I don’t know much, but you sure don’t want to owe that dude money. He makes Jabba the Hutt look like Stan Laurel.”

“It is time. The sacrifice is about to commence,” came the weight of great scaly Cthulhu’s thought, beating its way through the crushed matter of their brains, and the grey green, ichorous tentacle plucked up a skimmer and laid the first deep fried Mars bar on a plate with a side of tempered vanilla ice cream.

“I thought the frat hazing sucked,” breathed one, cherishing the breath that he knew was close to his last.

With hands that shook and trembled with such violence that clutching an implement was scarcely possible, the fear-frisson wracking their frames to a feverous pitch, they commenced their hideous repast.

Cthulhu’s own writing contest

My mother, may she be worshipped and adored, has requested that I write and post an expository piece regarding the deep fried Mars Bar fest this Friday, in the style of HP Lovecraft.  This set me to cracking my knuckles and my thesaurus in about equal amounts; I have my first sentence, “It was a dark and stormy cauldron of boiling fat that great scaley Cthulhu tended, in the cavernous stony depths of the Miskatonic University Cafeteria.” Link goes to MU fight song.

Golden Compass

Man, I wish I’d taken Patricia’s advice.  They got precisely two things right; the girl who plays Lyra, who is perfectly cast, and the fight scene between the two armoured bears.  Everything else sucked the business end of a Greyhound bus station men’s restroom mop.  Fifteen minutes into the movie I was ready to challenge to mortal combat the (screamingly politically incorrect adjective herewith deleted) music department. I went to IMDB so I could abuse who wrote the soundtrack but it was written by a committee as best I can tell and all there is a ‘music coordinator’.  The music was so badly timed to the action it’s like, “We’re going to put all the money on the screen and if the music is cheesier than a grindhouse porn soundtrack… nobody will notice.” Well I f*****g well did you morons, and if this movie cost 160 million to make and I have to watch it with the sound off because (while visually good) the script and soundtrack have me clapping my hands over my ears in horrified disbelief, you’ve not exactly got your money’s worth now have you.  I turned to Keith as the credits rolled and said, “I am so happy I didn’t pay for that.”  To which his response was a simple, “Ditto,” which concluded our discussion of the film.
In other news, I am corresponding with somebody from teh Craigslists whose pithy and entertaining posts are enlivening my life greatly.  Usually I send a pic – or forward my blog link – and the guy changes his email address and leaves town.  I can live in hope; this one hasn’t.