Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

O to have believed and seen the mighty Hypnotoad!

With my own eyes, my good family, with my own eyes I have seen the glory of Hypnotoad.  I don’t know if Hypnotoad is a boy or a girl; the bio is sketchy.  See I always want to know, when I run into a deity for the first time, if it’s a boy or a girl, because you bet your nougat-sweet butt, that makes a difference when it comes to propitiating time.  Just as it does in daily life, let alone wrasslin’ with deities.

Hypnotoad is a 30 minute cartoon by the demented minds of the makers of Futurama.  It made it onto the DVD of Bender’s Big Score (which is a magnificent film BTW, IMHO & YMMV).  It is about 25 minutes of a cartoon toad with woobly eyes sitting immobile on a white background.  (Interspersed with bizarre other stuff).  The audio consists of a mesmerizing, throbbing, metallic, mechanical, droning sound, or a laugh track which, you would think, would be pointless when little or nothing is changing (interspersed with weird other stuff).  Somehow, they take the notion of a laugh track, pop a sack over its head and give it a couple of quick kicks in the ass.

Perhaps I was giddy from Jeff having completed my taxes (of course they owe me money) and easily amused. I did get restless after a while, but it was still worth seeing.  Hey Jeff!  We should do a Best of Hypnotoad, and edit it down for everything that ‘happens’ and just leave two seconds of standard Hypnotoad.  And before we do that, we should check the Internet to see if somebody’s done it already.

My word, I can’t stop thinking about Hypnotoad.  The woobly eyes are perfectly spherical, with pea green soup “whites” and with irises like gasping mouths or puckering ani.  They gasp at you and then will abruptly be replaced by advertisements for repellent products, blipverts and subliminals about the repellent products, and advertisements for DVDs of 365 episodes of what you just watched, which was almost all Hypnotoad, all the time. It becomes gently and relentlessly recursive.  It is genius, it is madness, it is …. Hypnotoad.

Towards the beginning end of the 30 minutes, Jeff said, “He’s very self-confident, Hypnotoad.”

Katie sleeps here / a very, vary, random post

I only say Katie sleeps here because one of my all time favourite books, A Midwife’s Tale, contains phrases like that a lot.  Just read the book, it has all-inclusive awesomeness.

If I said that feminism only started to suck when it started being taught in schools, as a discipline, would any of you kick me in the slats?

I want to see For All Time. Seriously, Mary McDonell and Mark Harmon in an steampunk SF love epic based on a Rod Serling story?  Where’s my popcorn and hanky!!!!????  OF COURSE it’s not out on DVD, why would two of the biggest tv stars in the world get a DVD of their well thought of TV movie???  Anyway, this is called a hint, Mr. Universe.  Okay, Ms. Universe.  O, Universe, bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!!! and that movie of course.  And you will, too, if you know what’s good for you.

Very bad night’s sleep.

The system is being shut down at work for a day and half starting noon today.  I srsly gotta get in to work and try to grind through some transactions before the curtain falls.

Strange dreams.

I watched Darjeeling Limited.

Excuse me, o thou great parent of the universe, but I would have watched it a lot sooner if somebody had mentioned the three magic words Natalie Portman naked.  Also, I think Adrien Brody manifests bunnies and excretes cotton candy.

I cooked the folks French toast for brekkie.

Katie’s wearing the pants I got her at H&M.

I did the banking running around yesterday so Katie can get her supplies and pay for first term.  The first cheque I wrote was inadequate; it needed to be carved in two pieces, one hammered and one not.  When I handed over the hammered cheque for 1200 dollars I said, “Katie, if you lose this, it’s like torching 12 100 dollars bills,” sternly, while thinking I’d part with a considerably larger sum to see this day come.

I gotta have a shower, the bus comes in 20 minutes.

Dayum! Missed the zombie walk

Did not get the email this year.  Got it last year. Why am I unloved?

Jerome came by for lunch in the middle of a day which was to be endured and not enjoyed.  He was the only bright spot.  I love him so… I could get extremely mushy about him, but when I like people I’m pretty happy animal about it and don’t bother hiding it.  Anyway, I got to introduce him to my coworkers by their blog names (bwa, likewise ha!).  Best part of lunch: getting outside the building to talk to him alone and then having one of our old workmates come up after his run and beg forgiveness for not attending the stag (which was a good mix of coworkers old and new, and family, not too big and not too, uh, well, dumb).  Second best:  Allegra archly announces “Jerome is getting married this week!” to which ScaryClown responds, “What the fuck do you want to be doing THAT for?” while Robof9 murmured, “Run away, run away!” in demented counterpoint. (They too are my coworkers….)  I’ll leave out Jerome’s immediate response, which is not for public consumption (at least if he wants to stay on course for getting married on Saturday) and cut to his next words, which were said with that large, eerie blue gaze of his, “She doesn’t appear to be crazy!” at which point I was justabout helpless with laughter, because all I could think of was how amused my dad would be at the shenanigans (and you would have been, it was like being in a really good sitcom for about 30 seconds).

AT SOME POINT, Katie is going to have to negotiate staying here while she’s in school.  She’s talked to me and she’s talked to Jeff, but we’ve never had the dreaded “all three of us” talk.   Sooner or later you have to have the dreaded talk, and the only comfort you can take is that somebody is lying, and maybe even you, but ground rules are necessary and will require reiteration. (Otay, that sounded bitter, but I was thinking of something other than the sweet gig I have here with Jeff – even if the landlord’s dog shat in the yard just as I was getting home last night).  Katie stayed overnight, and she has a cheque in her bag which would be sufficient to bring tears to my eyes if the leg cramp which woke me up at 4:15 hadn’t accomplished that task.  Rule number one is gonna have to be a little comment on the toilet lid.  It stays down.  Otherwise I can hear Eddie slurping in the night about three feet from my head, an uncanny noise which does not make for cheerful dreams, what with the toilet being just the other side of the wall.

Katie K’s Vegas postcard came here after she got back.  Made me smile.

I answered another Craigslist ad. For Jeff’s response, scroll up and check with ScaryClown.  More politely stated, of course; Jeff is never rude by accident.  I have YET ANOTHER email address now, but I hate my hotmail and telus and sfu accounts and I will be collapsing them all down by the end of the year.

Migraine signs.  Oh, it’s gonna be a peachy peach of a day.

Peaceful weekend

It was the kind of weekend when I did a little cooking and a little laundry and a lot of lazing around, so I consider it a success.  The crows are flying to their day jobs, the sky is strewn with grey, pink and purple, there’s a siren in the distance and it’s just like a regular Tuesday….. except there’s tapioca in the fridge.

So what happened in the world.  Looks like Canadians are headed to the polls, although the date has not yet been set.  McCain picked a running mate without vetting her seriously first, which strikes me as mildly insane but not really surprising.  The Tories want to revamp public health in the wake of the food borne pathogen outbreak.  I thought this meant they were going to hand out free Pepto-Bismol but apparently they are going to do something a little more substantive.  Well, good luck on that; it’s kind of hard to enforce standards when you have no inspectors.  Maybe they will get more inspectors. Funny family story; when my uncle Gary was a youngun he helped inspect food production facilities in Ontario for a summer and at the end of it the only thing he would eat was Laura Secord chocolates.  I really don’t think much has changed.  When I was a puppy I worked for a structural engineering firm that did the upgrades to the Maple Leaf plants in Toronto and the boys would come back from site inspections and regale the other employees with what actually goes on in a meatpacking plant, especially if the other employees decide they don’t like you.  Blech.  Plus ça change, baybee.

I guess it wasn’t a peaceful weekend for everybody.  Amy Goodman discusses her arrest.

It is over

The first 3 seasons of NCIS are done.  Hiatus I and II sucked wind at a hundred p.s.i., but maybe I’m just mad because they never filmed a dream sequence of Mark Harmon and Michael Weatherly getting it on.  I mean, three seasons in, and Whedon would have done it, but I guess Bellisario is molto square, although he sure makes room for all the slash fic you can think of, what with everybody bein’ so touchy and all.  Boy, does Mark Harmon hug Pauley Perrette a lot in Season 3!?  Then, further to the slashfic.  I’m imagining a mashup consisting of “You’re the Top” sung by Barbara and Ryan with every mention of top and bottom showing DiNozzo and McGee with nice linking motion caps.  Mm.  Could go places.

Really,  really,  I should change the subject.