Month: April 2009

pr0n night in Canada

In honour of Marilyn Chamber’s  untimely death, I watched Behind the Green Door for the first time last night.

Yanno, that was not a bad movie at all – I have to admit I like the old fashioned stuff way better than the new.  I watched with the sound off while there was any dialogue, and when the dialogue quit I turned the sound up and learned that the soundtrack (yes, I mean the music) is awesome.  Who knew?  Anyway, she will always be my favourite pr0n star, and I hope she lives forever on celluloid.  I could go on at great length about the costume Johnny Keyes is wearing (O…. My….Flying Spaghetti Monster), the variety of body types in the audience (unbelievable, by contemporary standards), and various other things about the film, but the thing that really got me is how damned CHEERFUL it was.  Srsly.

and now, an anteater in a purple sweater

because the internet says so.

Worked until just before 8 last night.  Nothing is ever simple.  But I can see my desk.  This is important, because it means my desk has been clean two work days running.

I will be blunt.  Very very blunt.  We have hired a woman who is a dead ringer for Morena Baccarin and seems to have just that bubbly kind of personality that makes engineers turn into vast blobs of goo (she’s married – which is good). She also mentioned that she’s very organized, and I believe her.  She’s going to cover Tanya’s maternity leave.  If ever there was a woman who was my polar opposite (except she does have a sense of humour, thank goodness) this new gal would be her.

I, being evil, want Tanya’s desk and that means I have to clean mine off.  See, it all makes sense. Anyway, Newgal starts on Monday so I am, after more than a thirty years of desk surfaces that look like hippos have recently left off fornicating upon them (Catherine’s original phrase was more trenchant but less family friendly, and besides, hippos can’t fornicate because they don’t have souls) I am going to try to train myself to keep it clean.  Jeff, passing in front of my room and surveying Grandad’s desk, gets a hall pass on however many snorts of amusement he wishes to emit, because there are midget high crapstacks on it.  If tidy begins at home, I gots me a problem.

Miss Margot slept on my bed last night and purred.

Big Bang Theory last night was great.

Beautiful day

I got up at 6:30 yesterday and started work on the canonical list of allegrasongs; I checked the 130 strong list of songs, removed the inadvertent duplicates that had crept in because I keep changing the song titles, I found one missing set of lyrics, added a dozen which I actually know the lyrics to but had never (oops) written down, checked the list of songs again and marked all the ones I don’t have lyrics for; was HORRIFIED to learn that I no longer have the lyrics for “But can she type?” which is an extremely 70’s sitcom theme-styled song about looking for a job in Toronto in the early 80’s. The tune I still have, it’s a swooping cheerful rollicking thing.

As best I can remember:

The customer is always right

and so whenever possible

I try to be the customer

But lately I’ve been looking for a job

and it aint easy

Can’t say how much I wish it were!

But can she type, but can she type?

Watch the paper and the fingers fly

the fingers fly….

Pound the pavement knock on doors

it doesn’t matter metaphors

it doesn’t matter what you choose

They all want to pay you this

and you want to make that

Whatever happens you will lose.

and then in an annoying talking blues style…

they give me tests… on a keyboard dinosaur…. date of manufacture – 1964! Christ, this thing is almost as old as me….

and then I’m missing a verse. Candidly, I suck!  But I just copied what I typed into the data base, so, go me.

Then I remembered a huge chunk of a song that when Paul criticized me about it (he gave me a 10 minute lecture on how I should not write about such disgusting subjects, a view he no longer holds and has expressed contrition for) I put the song down.  What is my problem? (ed.  You think you have only one???)  I respond to criticism much as JRR Tolkien – I either ignore it in its entirety or abandon what I was working on, which in a nutshell is why I’ve never made a nickel from my work.  It’s hardly Paul’s fault if I don’t have an adult reaction to comments. Anyway, angry that I had lost the first verse, I wrote another one, which, I am convinced, is better, or at least has a slick internal rhyme.  Thank you Flying Spaghetti Monster in my brain.

Then, after I whined that I was on a creative roll and didn’t feel like cooking dinner, as I had promised to do, the kids and Paul showed up with Chinese food and we stuffed ourselves, and then Paul and I had the untrammelled delight of watching Katie fall asleep on the sofa WITH A BOOK IN HER HAND.  TV does it again.  Katie watched True Blood and loved it (June, 2009, there will be more!) and then I bought her the first book and she went nuts and has since acquired the rest of the series, some bought by her G’ma (that is mOm’s ‘thug’ name, so’s you know) (I am the Notorious M.O.M.) and some by Dax, who doesn’t need a thug name but has softened my prickly heart by buying my girl books.  I sent a cinnamon bun home with him yesterday for his roommate, just to show that I’m not a hater… and one for him, too.  They are the bestest cinnamon bunses ever, as I melted half a 70% Purdy’s bar into the goo, and I’m saving some for Jeff when he gets home from Victoria this evening because he will not want to miss them.  As promised Robof9 will be getting one today.

Then Paul and I went for a walk, the weather FINALLY having cleaned up and then he went to work and the kids hung around until after I went to bed.  Margot didn’t sleep with me last night, sad face.

Now, to fly out to the living room and clean up the ungodly mess of cables and musical instruments I left like a booby trap, a quick shower, and off to my shiny place of employment.  I had a great day yesterday, and I got really really close to getting something crossed off my list.  Excelsior!!

Happy Easter everybody

rawr!

In no particular order:

Jeff is off in the wilds of Victoria; there’s a housefilk in two weeks at Tom and Peggy’s; Keith stayed over Friday night and left late yesterday and how good it was to have him; I’ve got the living room set up like a recording studio; Miss Margot is getting better at staying clean when she visits the loo; the pollen count is so high, despite the rain, that I feel like my brain is swollen; I’m cooking dinner tonight for the folks, which means at some point I have to haul off in this digusting rain and go to the Costco for a hunk of beast; I have a new homily to deliver May 3rd, subject, gardens (I imagine I will be ably assisted in this endeavour by mOm); and for the first time in a couple of months I have cream for coffee at home, thanks to Keith, and I find I’m really enjoying it.

On the to do list today, mando and guitar practice. Writing down lyrics.  Finishing at least one song.

Miss Margot is eviscerating the kitchen rugs again.  Poor things, they will be shreads by the time she is done with them.  Her appetite is such that both Gizmo and Eddie have lost weight in the competition to stay nourished. Her belly is quite big.  I know Persians have a tendency to get stout being bred to sit around and look pretty like expensive odalisques, so I am considering how to keep the fat off her without starving the boys and I must admit it is a puzzle.  It’s not like I can take her for a walk, she’s not that kind of animal….

Keith has noticed that she doesn’t seem to see quite like other cats.  Her coordination and depth perception are good, but there seem to be chunks in her visual field that don’t work.   As a result she swivels her head like an owl, which she already rather resembles, and it’s either offputting or quite charming.

I was supposed to go to the camp this weekend but the weather is far too crappy and the commute would four hours out of this precious weekend.

Two films

Diva and Quills.  I loved both of them.  Diva is almost 30 years old and yet deals with some of the more pressing contemporary media issues – fandom, the break between reality and fantasy, copyright and the rights of the artist… all bound up in a really superb, well shot, well acted action movie with one hell of a soundscape.

Quills is a fantasy based on the life of the Marquis de Sade.  It’s not real in any way, but it makes a rather disgusting case for artistic freedom, so I have to like it for that.  The only reason I bugged Jeff into renting it was because it has the guy who plays Bill the Vampire in True Blood as a minor character (Stephen Moyer).  But it also has Kate Winslet, Geoffrey Rush, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine, the ever amazing Patrick Malahide.  Great script, but stagey and unsatisfying from a dramatic point of view.  I just loved it anyway.  Is there anything Geoffrey Rush can’t do?  Joaquin Phoenix is great.