Crawford Slug

bye mr. damon
2005-03-02— Posted by: allegra

nmazca.com/blog has ceased operations. I sent him an email saying how very sad I was, and now I am forced to reconsider this blog – is this something I should be doing?

enough sleep
2005-03-02— Posted by: allegra

Today I’m wearing hunter green to the Apocalypse. Suits my colouring, and my eyes *are* green. Got to be well dressed for the end of the world, as we know it, even if I do feel fine.

My King Cobb Steelie CD came in but I haven’t picked it up yet.

I am going back into the recording studio (doesn’t that sound fancy? but it’s in some guy’s apartment, so forget the notion I’m awash in cash) on Thursday night. Mike found him for me, after Gomi turned out to be unavailable until after the Apocalypse. A quick review of my songs brought up about 6 that I really should record, although I’ll be lucky to get one done on Thursday. Then Friday I wanted to go to the Fark party at the Jolly Taxpayer (I really did) but I promised Keith faithfully that there would be no Fark parties for me until AFTER he hit the age of majority. Then we can go get smashed together. We’ve already picked out the bar we’re going to go get drunk in when he turns 19; Steamworks. Considering that Keith’s tolerance for alcohol, never great, has completely evaporated over the last six months, I figure it will be a cheerfully cheap date, even if I have to bring a bucket. And these days, if I drink 6 beers over the course of an evening my ability to get my eyes to track before noon the next day is severely truncated.

Friday the hot tob will be yodelling my name in tight four part harmony. Yesh. This sentence, about how tense I am, would probably not win me any new fans, so I am performing a preemptive product recall. Anyway, I’m looking forward to a soak.

My mother has gone completely insane (I can just imagine her jerking to attention as she reads this) because she wishes to commission a family portrait done in the style of Edward Gorey. For those of you who are Gorey fans, you are dying of jealousy that your mother doesn’t do things like that; the rest of you are contemplating different versions of wtf? I am trying to convey that even if the Apocalypse is coming, I am still trying wring the last drops of fun from the sanitarily moistened towelette of life. Actually I don’t feel too bad. Really.

Lymond
2005-03-02— Posted by: allegra

This won’t mean anything to anybody but me. This is the crest of an imaginary character. Picture somebody smarter (and a better horseman) than Giles, tougher than Buffy, prettier than Spike, more polyglot than Willow, more musically gifted than Oz and with more difficult family dynamics than Xander. That’s Lymond. The all time, all round, best hero ever. I love him more than words can say. Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, may he live forever.

black and white

bitch, moan, whine, wheeze
2005-03-01— Posted by: allegra

I’m dressing up for the Apocalypse again. Patterned green stretch velvet. Think I’ll skip the makeup though. Having put it on, I always forget to take it off and wake up feeling… a little more concrete, so to speak (discretely) than usual. Hey, my eyes are stuck shut!

Raining, thank goodness. It’s been so dry the entire month of February that the trees and plants are probably really happy about the change in the weather.

I really wish I could talk about work yesterday, but instead I’ll mention that lunch was excellent, and free. Thanks Mario.

Honest to Murgatroyd, my life is like – oh I don’t know, let’s find the cheesiest metaphor possible and play it like a marlin. You know those games of skill, where you are trying to get a little steel ball from the beginning to the end, without dropping it in a hole, by tilting the playing field in two planes? Well; my life is like that, except that it’s three dimensional, and the ball is me, and the holes are randomly placed and move without warning, and real and Disney elephants pogo through the playing field, and I’m still expected to do laundry and go to work and perform my wifely duties and write stories and buy the kids’ bus passes and cut hair and shop for food and cook dinner while I am dodging those goddamned holes…. I should just drop the ‘hole’ thing right now. Yesh.

Paul says complainers never get better. Well maybe I’m not PLANNING on getting better. I’m going to croak anyway, (eventually, one hastens to hope) I may as well go out whining. Stoicism is for the unimaginative.

enough sleep
2005-03-01— Posted by: allegra

Goldarn this stupid apocalypse! I got dressed up (black, of course), dyed my hair (Garnier number 60, on sale for 5 bucks) and I even wore makeup, but it just didn’t come through, AGAIN. I mean really. I know exactly what is happening. I’ll be standing mostly naked in the laundry room cursing the people who never clean out the freaking lint trap… and THEN it will happen. I would really prefer to be fully dressed for the event, but I am beginning to think I’m not going to get it my way.

Today is the first day I made it home on the bus in full daylight. Also, there are magnolias in bloom. Our crocuses came up two weeks early. Something has dug an immense hole on the portion of the lawn adjacent to our house which the city owns. Very strange. Looks like it could have been humans, but why?

Came home and found both of the kids here, both feeling very out of sorts and edgy – Katie even cut school today. I can tell they are feeling edgy and out of sorts, they are playing comfort music (Police, greatest hits). Ah, there’s Keith come back with the milk and bread, so it’s time to have breakfast for supper…. the ultimate in comfort food.

Paul says he’s doing better. We shall see.

this and that

I am holding myself and rocking back and forth in pain because, due to (deleted), by fiat we must dress up and so I am wearing a bra AND pantyhose AND a skirt AND… blecch! MAKEUP. I mean, I’ll have it all rubbed off by noon, and not in a nice way, but I actually have black stuff on my eyes.

The apocalypse got delayed until today. Really, I think it was very nice of the apocalypse to hold off until a weekday. I get my game face Monday morning.

Big shout out to Tom and Peggy, who fed me two nights running and probably prevented me from jumping (typed humping, glad I caught that) in front of a train. Humping in front of a train could be just as bad for your health as jumping, quite frankly – what a world of different a consonant makes.

Watched Once More with Feeling so many times this weekend I feel like I could burst into song at any moment, not that there’s a man in this household who could stop me. (Or would. I mean, we burst into song all the time ANYWAY, it’s like living in a really bad sitcom with no musical director).

I had a GREAT IDEA for a community event, Buffy related, and now I am trying to come up with a venue. There’s gotta be someplace cheap I can rent that has a sound system and a damned big TV and DOESN’T serve alcohol. More details when I get a venue nailed down, and at least three other unindicted coconspirators together.

Katie and I role played job hunting yesterday on the back deck. I said, “Do you have a criminal record?” and she said, “Do I need one to work at Tim Horton’s?” which caused me to fling myself all over the back deck screaming with laughter. Okay, it didn’t happen exactly like that but it was still pretty funny.

Big shout out to Katie, who has been very easy to get along with of late and has made me laugh very very hard a number of times this weekend.

I actually played rhythm mandolin last night! We exhausted ALL the songs we know in D, and my fingers are singing a calloused song this morning.

PS I am wearing high heeled boots. Last time I wore these was to fetish night.

My parents are considering commissioning Tori to do a Gorey style portrait of our family. I am so happy about this I can scarcely squeak.

Happy birthday Tam Tam.

I sure hope all the people I know who are depressed right now get over it in a hurry. Including me.

Image is from my fOLks front yard.

HIV news

Aussie scientists may have discovered, if not a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, then a way of dramatically stimulating the human immune system against the virus. This is extremely cool and happy news, so I wanted to share it. More details in the peer reviewed journals, I imagine. The reason I believe this story is true is that a) it was an accident and b) they say they retested it numerous times because they couldn’t believe the results either and didn’t want to punk the scientific community.

 

2019 says o well

moose meat

Tori tells me she still has some moose meat but I gotta motor or I won’t get any (twas a care package from her g’ma in NFLD). IN honour of this, a Swedish moose, editorializing in mime.

 

2019 says I miss Tori and I wish people were better at polyamory; I’m tired of losing friends because other people are hopelessly incompetent at staying friends with people they used to sleep with, and also fuck heteronormative coupling.

42nd St

Just finished watching a seriously strange and wondrous cultural artifact. Keith, for reasons best known to God, decided to pull out the 1933 Opus “42nd Street” and watch it. Like, first thing this morning, which was about 10:00. (Paul had gone off to work).

I realized I had slid onto an alternate plane of processed cheese when I heard 72 year old dialogue like “Anytime Annie? She only said no once, and that was because she didn’t hear the question!”

The movie itself is no great shakes, and Warner Baxter could have stood a thicker mustache (this line deleted) but what really pulled me were the two little pieces of “filler” at the end. Okay, picture that you’re on the Columbia football team and you just won the Rose Bowl and it’s 1933 and for publicity purposes you are being tossed on a bus, and pulled off the bus in Hollywood and thrown into a big pile of BUSBY BERKELEY STARLETS. Oh, da humanity. Then they all dogpile ya, with their fancy clothes on.

The other piece of entertainment was quite amusing. It showed a very raffinee party during which Harry Warner (the composer of the musical – 42nd Street) sang and played, and a whole bunch of his ‘guests’ sang and played. It was like an MTV video that was a) black and white b) didn’t have seven billion jumpcuts per second and c) didn’t take itself really seriously. Oh, and the woman who sounds like Betty Boop….. so wonderful.

Pic is of the path behind the fOlks’ place.

cheerful disbelief

There’s this wonderful story called Obstinate Uncle Otis. In it he disbelieves a whole bunch of things and they all disappear. He finally disbelieves that he exists and Poof~!

Anyway, that’s about where I am right now. I am cheerfully disbelieving everything in the hope it will go away.

Katie is off at the non bf’s; her previous plans got the parental “You’re old enough to make your own decisions but wow you sound like you’re going to get deleted and then deleted in a truck with a couple of deleted” seal of disapproval. For reasons best known to herself Katie decided that these wonderful plans, which don’t sound worse for having the details omitted, were probably not advancing her long term best interests and decided to chill with her non bf instead, which all things considered constitutes a large improvement. I mean, I actually like the kid, and he has a JOB.

Paul was off at circle last night in Poco; he says it was wonderful as always; I was glad to hear it.

Anyway, if anybody has GOOD news, please let me know.

Have you been enjoying the onslaught of mooses? It’s amazing what you get when you imagegoogle weird moose. I am now wondering what other quaint critters I can find.

I light a candle for John and Jackie Knill who were confirmed dead in Thailand. They were friends of a friend of mine; she ran into them in a coffee shop the day they left. We must love each other while we can.

I light a candle for Unca Dave, who blew through town this week and I didna get to see him. I light a candle for Paul, who is not having a good time these days. And for Keith, who went to Karate even though his mouth was still really sore from the dentist.

i am a lamprey

Richardsoni in yer face
2005-02-25— Posted by: allegra

Its own mother will never love that face.

life forms
2005-02-25— Posted by: allegra

Dang nab it! I should always check my mail before I post. Jim P sent me this. This is a Morrison Creek Lamprey, an endangered species, and a very nice cat (either Darla or Nala, I can never remember which). Close up of sucker mouth next.

Buffy gone, Lister moved in

Buffy has now officially saved the world one last time, tossed down her dirty great axe, and she’s gone shopping; and Lister has moved in. Yup, thass right, Red Dwarf, all seven seasons PLUS the Smeg-ups, have moved into our house. Paul’s response to this was quite rhythmical, quite musical, quite unrepeatable, and caused Katie and me to double up laughing. The dreaded hopelessness of life that is about to descend on me – so I’ve been reliably informed – hasn’t happened yet. I’m starting to feel like that broad in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – you know, when Hero says “For us, there will never be happiness,” to which Cute Snoggin’s response is “We must learn to be happy without it…”

http://www.hugi.is/hahradi/bigboxes.php?box_id=51208&f_id=1000

Foregoing site is ‘the bastard spawn of Sam Peckinpah and Monty Python, channeled through a German safety video production company’. Believe me, ya don’t need to know German to appreciate it – like all good physical comedy, it’s universal. PS it’s PG 13 for grossly unrealistic depictions of decapitations, and other limb losing events. I will say that forklifts will never have the same cachet again.