Month: November 2009

A more than satisfactory day.

In the morning, started a pot roast.  Puttered for the rest of the morning.  In the afternoon shopped (a big, necessary shop) with Jeff and put everything away, which is a pain when you’re buying bulky stuff.  Then went to interview Dennis.  That was absolutely wonderful and I enjoyed every minute of it, and I did appreciate the chance to catch up with Mary as well.  I think she’s looking very well, but she said she was feeling a bit off colour.  I recorded the interview and am looking forward to the transcription.  Because I am clinically insane, obviously.

Then I got up to the old office and talked to Mohammad.  He’s all happy because his wife’s sister came last week after they hadn’t seen each other in aeons, like, 30 years, so there must have been a rapturous family reunion.

And then I came home, watched a really strange Simpson’s episode, a good chunk of Monday Night Football (New England in New Orleans, and the New England guys font dur ce soir, b’en sur.)

Everything I had on my list today I got done, including mailing a thank you card to my grandmother (finally). And I got some sun on my face, always a blessing at the bag end of the year.

Now, sleepy byes.  All I’m missing is someone to snuggle with and life would be a Maxfield Parrish dream, except I’d have something softer than all those damned rocks to snuggle up on.

Gender ender fender bender

Not much connection between the post title and the post.  Not really.  But what is going on with male fertility?  Is every sperm sacred?

Consider the following article on Herbivore Men from Japan.

And this article about bisphenol A.

And this one from 2006 in Japan.

And this one from Madsci.org from the last century.

And this one from India, which says sure there may be an identifiable decline in male fertility but there are issues with the sampling.

Here’s the wikipedia article, which contains the gem “testicular or penile insults” which is referring to physical damage, not “You d!ck, you n~tsack.”

The point I am trying to get to is that I believe it is possible that there is something up with estrogen like compounds and male fertility and hormonally driven changes in male behaviour, but I can’t prove it and I don’t know how I would.

Holy ^%$! Batman

Debbie forwards this gem from the nation’s capital.  There’s more than enough **** to go around in this story.  Calling something a blowback makes it sound like a rough breeze, not feces at high pressure.

I had an amazing morning with Katie here, doing tech support and getting out of her way so she could work on her song. The tech support was trying to find cabling and making sure the inputs were set to record properly in Garageband.  Later in the day, my date, alas, was overcome by weariness from his exertions feasting a friend the previous night at a birthday bash, and cried off… this after texting me at 8:10 this morning that he was just going to sleep.   People nowadays have no idea how to pace themselves (this of course will cause Patricia to burst out laughing when she sees it, since she knows what an utter lightweight I am when it comes to weekend excesses.)  I sang “The Weekend’s Over” to myself, which cheered me immensely, and then worked my way through “Freedom”, “Wish it was Mine” (how I love that song, and the mad crush that prompted it), and about half a dozen other songs.  Seeing Katie with my guitar in her hands this morning nearly made me hyperventilate with excitement and glee.   I got her to visit this site for strummable guitar chords (which makes songwriting so much easier)  After she left (her dad walked her home), I sat down with the piles of sound equipment I got out for her this morning (the USB midi input cable for the Casio keyboard, the mucho expensivo mic which Katie found since I had no clue where the damned thing was, the second best set of headphones, the Kaossilator and associated cables, the laptop of course) and made gamenoise1, and that’s only a fraction of the extremely cool music I composed today. Getting more callouses on my fingers, seeing both my kids and writing tunes have put me in a very happy mood… and I didn’t cook dinner, I ordered pizza and then made Jeff pay for it.  Tra la la.  Oh, and I watched the boys kill zombies, because of course, Elferd Ito is in the house.  (L4D2, Left for dead 2, bad pun.)

It being Sunday morning, here, have some curse words

Stephen Fry on swearing. SPECIAL BONUS, Hugh Laurie in drag.

Attended a Jim Scott house concert at Tom and Peggy’s last night.  I am going to be in a minority here, but I think it’s possible to write songs about peace love light cooperation and the rain forest and still keep some edge in the lyrics. Let me recast that.  His choice of words irritated me a lot, also, too much repetition, please please please have more respect for the audience than that.  Oh, really it was an indoctrination session?  Why didn’t somebody tell me?  He has a lovely voice and a lot of Brazilian nylon string guitar style but I enjoyed the a capella song about peace the most.  There was lots of singing along and I couldn’t open my mouth or I just would have coughed through the entire concert.  Also a church member and his squeeze talked ALL the way through, and when everybody else is quiet and you’re the one sitting next to the rude people it doesn’t add to the joy. Since this person behaved rudely at the last event we both attended, I’ll let him know when he’s had his third strike. It would be polite… no sense bottling it up and when I can firmly and respectfully tell him he’s rude.

However, Al Sather’s mini mousse tarts put some life back into me.  MAN they were good.

Had a migraine by the time it ended, walked home in the rain and collapsed next to Keith on the downstairs sofa (I walked 6.4k last night, pouring rain both ways), while he groused his way through the new Assassin’s Creed II.  Bastards dicked with the UI AND the game play, so you spend a lot of time falling off things you didn’t intend to.  Also, Ezio walks as if he tucked a carrot into his ass crack and his jumps look… well I’ll let you see it, because I fell over the first time I saw it.  Someone’s going to do a mashup of all his moves to techno, and it will be funny.

I am still feeling odd. Part of it is irritation with myself over something I can’t speak of in public, but I think I’m genuinely sick, too.  I’ll see if church is still an option after I have my vitamins and some coffee.  I kinda want to boycott church until they fix the sound system, but really that’s not a sufficient reason.

Tomorrow I interview Denis, and I am so looking forward to it.

Watched these two movies over the last couple of days.  Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima.  HIGHLY recommended.

How do YOU set boundaries with loved ones?  Just asking.

When dinosaurs roamed the earth

… and I lived in Ottawa, somebody came door to door asking my parents what they thought about contemporary television.  My parents said they hated Disney stuff because parents were characterized as idiots, and preferred The Addams Family because the parents were actually parents, and there was love and affection and mutual support in the household.  Further to that theme, a little somethin’somethin’ from the intarwebs.  Happy Saturday, nautilus3 and Loki!

Still feeling fog-eyed

Last night I dreamed I was in a very weird, muddy, tunnelled location. While I was there somebody- I think Katie – brought me the news that Margot had been run over. I remember feeling – nothing.  Jeff and I tramped through some mud as we discussed how this would make Gizmo and Eddie very happy not to have to put up with her any more.

When I woke up I thought how glad I am that my nightmares are so low key, because in real life I’d be flinging myself around like a thwarted three year old.

Margot and Gizmo are not quite to the point where they are twining their tails together when they are campaigning for food, but it’s pretty close.  Gizmo puts up with all kinds of crap from Margot.  I’ll see if I can get video, because it’s really very charming.

wacky roundup

Is everybody going to have more panic attacks as atmospheric CO2 rises?

I think this guy is brilliant.

You’ve gotta be kidding.  Nope, not kidding.  I AM IN THE WRONG FRACKING BUSINESS.

In time for Christmas, a recipe for butterbeer.

It all makes sense now that I know I have a neurological problem. Actually I don’t have a neurological problem big enough to attract the attention of a doctor.  I went to the neurologist, described my symptoms and got told, “You have atypical migraines.  If you don’t want drugs I can’t do anything.  Next please.”  Then I found out I can rid of my migraines by THINKING HAPPY THOUGHTS which is the stupidest thing I ever heard of, except that it works.  Whoda thunkit?

Where one of the stickiest memes in history came from!

I am exactly the same age as Marg Helgenberger. I love her in CSI – her combination of observation and street smarts, and her ability to stay focussed while being sexually harassed by a dwarf… what an actor.

Hell of a way to find a new species of lizard.