Decisions, decisions

What to watch while writing papers:
the Dr. Who (last season) marathon
or
the Addams Family (T.V. Serial, not movies) marathon.
I’m finding the switching back and forth somewhat annoying...

Variations on variousnesses

• Have you noticed how you can look at certain people, you don’t even have to be able to see their eyes, and you can just tell from their physical demeanor and the way they are holding themselves that they are totally batshit nuts and/or close to going postal?

• My new best friend is the Library. He has a good CD collection and as long as I stick with classical the discs aren’t all scratched up from too many debauched and drunken nights. When he thinks I’ve had them long enough he just sends a polite and non-confrontational email asking for them back. I only wish he liked Erik Satie.

• My bathroom is so very awesome now. It has gone from the dingy room with corroded brass lights, too much wood and a water damaged overlarge cabinet sink, (who puts all that brass and fibreboard in a principal bathroom anyway?) to a beautiful pedestal sink, cool gray-white walls, lovely, ember red sconces, and forest green and ember red throw rugs. All due to MaintMan who is really starting to earn that free rent.

• We also have an actual working light over the kitchen sink as well. Soon we’ll have a freshly painted kitchen ceiling with a hanging pan rack and new ceiling fan. The old fan got broken the day I moved in 14 years ago. Sigh.

• The kittens use the drum wall area as their secret cave. They sleep cuddled up, hidden, behind the front wall. I suppose that might change when band practice starts up again tonight.

• I had no frickin’ clue what I was letting myself in for when I signed up for critical thinking. Those one sentence summaries in the catalogue are completely useless. I’m not sure what I thought, that maybe we’d sit around reading newspaper articles pointing out the unused portions of most peoples minds and trashing Bush or something I guess. I had no idea that I was going to have to learn all these new and formal definitions for words which basically constitutes learning a new language with the conceptual ideas as well. All these diagrams and truth tables and 3 kinds of syllogisms wahh! But it’s good, I can tell it’s good inside my brain, just really, really intense.

• We are at that time of year when I can’t get enough of light. But not just any any light, specifically that afternoon, sideways, slanting, westering, cool, fall sunlight. Send it shooting through a bunch of green, gold and red leaves and it’s one of the most beautiful things on this planet.

Oh, you are SO dreamin'

Oliver and I somehow got it together to go to a show. It was The Ramones at Arcade Five Pinball Parlour (where I spent most of 7th grade and is now Pizza House) which was simultaneously the old Second Chance. It was only 10 bucks and it wasn’t till we were hanging out that I said “Oh yeah, right, they’re all dead.” So really it was in essence a tribute band with Marky on the drums. But a bunch of the old folks (Fotobug, StrudelQueen and Evilpete etc.) were there. Fotobug was bar tending and that hasn’t happened in a long time. I looked down and I was wearing black jeans and black Chuck Taylors and that hasn’t happened in an even longer time. It was pretty detailed, flash pots and special effects, I could taste my cocktail, there were a bunch of subplots going on around us, just like at a real club. And it totally explains why todays AM earworm is “Little Ramona”.

Sitarounday

Mmm Saturday morning. I suppose I should get up and do relevant things - go to the Farmer’s Market, walk by the river, start cooking and cleaning, whatever. I don’t though. I’m all up in Sat. Morning cartoons. Now with the new season there is Superman in addition to Batman, as well as they’ve brought back Beakmans World (double super awesome). So in addition to the half hour of commercial free, old school toon s on Turner it’s back to Saturday TV Savage hood.

Also joyous is a proper cup of tea with a double bagger of PG Tips. I just found a not insanely priced source. Toast made from a decent loaf of bakery bread from Great Harvest Bread Co. A 4 dollar loaf, no holes and cave-ins, a proper chewy texture throughout and even though they don’t have a sesame semolina approximation, I think I can find enough alternatives to make me happy.
I have been super pissed at Zingermans bread for ages. Always full of holes. 8 dollars a loaf and they can’t properly knead it? I am not a Zingerman’s fan. I was 20 years ago, but it all started going downhill when I found a bloody finger condom in a sandwich back in ‘86.

Oh all right, all right. I’ll go be adult and constructive now that it’s noon

Migun love you long, long time

OK then. Third session on the bed. I cleverly took ibuprofen first. This time because my lumbar/sacrum was so sore, I tried the abdominal program face down. Great, not as hard to take although the heat got hot in the crotchal area and made me a little nervous. So that was a 20 minute program, then I turned over and did the manual program on my back. That way I could stop the rollers when they got close to the sore spots.
It seems that you get to a point where everything starts flowing and suddenly you’re wide awake. Circulation is a great thing. I also am convinced that it’s breaking up the lymphatic congestion in the abdominal/pelvic areas due to all the surgeries. I also think that, when I can stand it, letting the lumbar/sacrum process happen does a similar thing as the yogic exercises that open your hips which I had suspected were all closed in as a protective/reactive measure from the surgeries as well. I’ll go again tomorrow, I’m going to give this a serious shot. I know there are theories at each end of the spectrum. The “no pain no gain” and then the “it should never hurt “ ones.
I think it’s a case by case issue and for me the stuff that hurts seems to be more effective rolfing, tattooing, migun, etc. I’m no masochist at all but I think the damage is severe and the pain of the fix pales in comparison to when the damages were occurring.

Migun, me horse and me saddle

So Dali and DoubleN got theyselves a Migun bed and I’ve been checking it out. It’s a little like rolfing so intense is the word. But I have to say that I suspect it’s really good. I am really sore at the moment though. There is a spot it hits and hits and hits which is my number one tension spot and WHOUCH! is it a tough go. But today everything back there is all tingly (and yes sore as hell). It was the second time, it was not as hard and I could tell the difference from the 1st time, so I’m willing to give it a month or so of alternate day treatments and see what happens.
The freaky thing though is there is this infrared heat pad thing to put on problem areas on the front while the back is being worked on, which I could not feel at all in the surgery areas. That is how much nerve damage was done. That just sucks. But I can at least feel the changes resulting from it.

Ahhh the weekend. I have piles of stuff to do as well as homework but I’m really looking forward to it as real progress is being made. I feel like so much less of a consumer and schlub when I know where everything is in my house. The kitchen is getting all nice again as well and that is really a good thing. The thing about having “stuff and pockets” is that you have to turn out the pockets on a regular basis and get rid of all the lint.

Two days earworm radio: Feeling Good - Nina Simone

Timeless truths

But behold, it is to get gain, to be praised of men, yea, and that ye might get gold and silver. And ye have set your hearts upon the riches and the vain things of this world, for the which ye do murder, and plunder, and steal, and bear false witness against your neighbor, and do all manner of iniquity.
THE BOOK OF HELAMAN

4am earworm radio

Lady (Grinning?) Star - David Bowie
Knock 3 Times - Tony Orlando & Dawn

I’ve come to a conclusion

Which is that I hate fringe. Carpets, mexican blankets, various vests, certain shawls, I just hate it. At best it’s annoying, at worst it’s a tangled, screwy and un-fixable mess.
Don’t even try to wash something fringed except by the most careful, laborious and time consuming hand wash method. Don’t take your oriental carpets to the professionals to be re-fringed and fixed unless you have a private income.

I suspect that fringe was made popular by the wealthiest of the victorian upper classes as a way to instantly discern when visiting others, who had enough money to hire a full-time fringe caretaker as a servant.

And the biggest no-no about fringe is don’t try to cut it off. You will then find you’re beyond the valley of time and patience to fix the filthy, knotted, burr-ridden mess it will become. Needless to point out that that only helps if you want the entire item to become one, big ball of matted fringe. Just give it or throw it away beforehand.

They say...

A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue.
THE PROVERBS CHAPTER 17

Homeworkennuialready

Oh joy, I’m down to just 5 classes.
Oh Yeah. I have already determined that, despite my classes being very entertaining, I am likely to have to read an average of 200-250 pages a week between them. Then there is the writing which comes out to about 3-4 pages outside of the 5 major papers I’ll have to write over the course of the semester and 2 additional “projects”. I love my english teacher but man she piles on the work. This all, of course, does not even include quizzes and exams.
I am trying to be far more organized though and start writing/planning for stuff now and just keeping folders from the outset. So far so good. But blogging is likely to suffer the consequence as I am really committed to kitten parenting as well....

Earworm radio this am: Razorface - Elton John/ Bernie Taupin.
Loud! Fully orchestrated. With this line especially playing over and over-
“Razorface, amazing grace,
protects you like a glove
And I’ll never learn the reason why
I love
your Razorface”

Is it safe to dance?

I suppose it’s the de rigeur thing to say something about “it” today. One thing I remember was driving past a Dunkin’ Donuts and just feeling this intense love for the stupid simple things and the fact that Dunkin Donuts was still just standing around making donuts and coffee. Yet it was as if the picture of really solid and grounded was simultaneously overlaid by a wavery screen of wistful ephemera.

A month or two later the Dunkin Donuts was gone, replaced by a different coffee shop. Maybe a better coffee shop, I wouldn’t know as I never actually set foot in either one. Everything I feel or think about the virtue or travesty of coffee and donuts is completely subjective and the absolute truth of them is beyond my ability to research, read about on the internet, watch movies about or trace through government records. All I have is a skittery, chimerical memory of my momentary feeling of love.

So there was a Dunkin Donuts and then there wasn’t a Dunkin Donuts.
I am not any safer when there is a Dunkin Donuts.
There is not any such thing as safety, there never was.

Ooo scary

It’s just that time of year where when if I wake up a little early it’s still dark out yet it’s still warm enough to have the windows open. So I’m getting all the odd noises in the dark. It’s funny how the brain tries desperately to decipher them and put the identifying labels to them. I think we’re again going back to primal biology here. It was the good hunter gatherer who could make good assessments of the threat value of the noises in the dark.
But it is also interesting that, for me at least, the eeriness of odd sounds is very much the length of time till dawn dependent. What I mean is, that for me most things sound much eerier at say 3 am than at 6 am. Why is that? My instinct is to go back to primal memory. For someone who couldn’t just flip on the flood lights in his yard dawn was the time to be able to find out from whence that odd breathing sound outside the cave actually emanated. So 3 am was a much worse time to start hearing weird fumbling and grunting outside the door than say, 6:35.
Why is 3 am such a generally creepy time of night anyway? I don’t know about you but it looms large in my mythology. Maybe if I had ever lived somewhere without blue laws so that all living didn’t pretty much cease at 2:10 am I would feel very differently. Many of my poems and songs mention 3 am. Even in the dream that woke me up this morning, while it was 6 am in reality, I had just asked the person on the dream phone why they were calling me at 3 am.
This may somewhat account for night after night of careful planning ahead that I went through for so many of my drinking years in order to assure myself ahead of time that I would be able to stay drunk right on through and out to the other side of virtually every 3 am.

I hope this post was worth it. You may have no idea how difficult it is to type, in the dark, half supine, with a tiny kitten, nestled sleeping, in the crook of your left elbow.

Naan

Naan-Sequitur William Artemus Elan

ghee

ghee-La Dora Weebit Ratsputin

(fotos by Radiolady)

The New Titular Heads Of The Household

Do you believe...?

I had some odd experiences recently. Two of which involved the library and my space.
I was at the library, this time to look for cds. I picked up the soundtrack for Hedwig and the Angry Inch and thought about it really hard but put it back.
I went to the computer to look up Eric Satie and someone appeared in my peripheral vision. It was Simon, saying hi who I am apparently going to run into a lot now that I made a point of introducing myself and am frequently around the library as well.
I’m walking home and suddenly someone is saying ahem at my right shoulder, it’s D.O. Surprise! So we hang out for a few, go to the coop, get some food for me and beverage for him etc. etc. he wanders off to temple and I wander home.

So I’m at home checking my usual round of bookmarks and I think “oh let me check those two folk that I just ran into on their myspace”. D.O. has changed his player again, and now has ”Wicked Little Town” from Hedwig. Simon has Eric Satie listed on the top of his favourites which I never noticed before. Hmmm.
OK probably just a weird coinkidink.

Then yesterday while returning from dropping off Uncle Bunny after we had left the BBQ at Nitro and Eva Destruction’s I had to call the police twice from the car. A guy was laid out under the RR bridge on Huron and then some stupid, dip shit, cunt threw a rock and hit our windshield on Miller.

It’s not that ordinary magic doesn’t go on constantly under our radar because it does. But one of the only good things about anarchy, in my view, is that it does loosen the restrictive orderliness that keeps magic on the down low.

Like when the grid went down a couple summers ago. I was sitting out on my porch every night until 4 or 5 in the morning with a giant ax just keeping an eye on things. You would not believe some of the stuff I saw once the net of electricity was completely gone and all kinds off things that are normally held down by it could rise up and act naturally. My neighbors garden was a singular hot spot for the middle of a city.

Holy crap blogman

Whew! I have been lost in the Blogger transition to Google thing for weeks. More later, but we have new kittens, pix to follow.