Thank you Jeebus earworm

Five ‘o’ clock World - The Vogues
Jeebus may have finally released me from the clutches of his insidious, feel good about crucifixion, musical. Yesterday took us to about 40 hours of that other song (which I’m not going to name or think about). I can live with one of my all time favourites for 6 to 10 hours.

Diamanda Galas says:

“My voice is an instrument of inspiration to my friends, and a tool of torture to my enemies.”

I’ve been carrying that around in my music notebook for almost 20 years now. I thought I’d share.

Earworms and more

Yesterday, Dennis Moore - Monty Python
Today, God Save The People - Godspell.
Yes, more Godspell. For about 18 hours now.
This drove me so crazy I decided to look at some of the articles. Since it had been brought up recently on NPR I figured there would be a goodly number to peruse.
Sure enough, there were plenty.
The gist of it is: The most susceptible people are musicians, obsessives and women. So there you go, I am apparently doomed.

I also appreciated Oliver Sacks freely copping to having taken “mountains of amphetamine, mescaline, and cannabis”. In future I will use this as ammunition against those who try to discredit my credentials and experiences. After all we all just LOVE Oliver Sacks, don’t we?

AM Earworm

OMG it won’t fricking stop. Same again. That settles it. If this is the way it treats me, I’ll not be watching Godspell for at least another 10 years.

Interfacing

Since Nigel has moved in we have gone on two, count ‘em two, outings. This is highly unusual for me. Being out in public, being around people. I think this issue is related to me not being able to register at a new school. I have my comfort zone that I can handle at school and it took a lot to feel OK there and I’m just a little too tired right now to do it again.

But anyway, I got off the bus at North campus and went to two different art shows. One was “Aging With Attitude”. All the artists were elderly or looking to their elderly future. There was some very cool stuff. This was sponsored by the “Blueprint On Aging” agency I was working for until last Thursday.

Then I went over to the “Inmate Art” opening. I saw some people I knew both on the walls and at the show. My old friends Randy and Kim for example. I can use their real names because he does all the framing every year and his name is all over everything. They and their myriad small people were hanging out. I had never even seen these small people before. It’s been a long, long time. I saw Buzz Alexander for the first time since probably 1986. I used to hang out with his kid. I saw a lot of familiar faces that I see around but don’t know personally.

The art was amazing. I only liked about a third of it, but even the stuff I didn’t care for was like getting constantly punched in the stomach. One of the most poorly executed was one of the most intense. Simple coloured pencil. A hooker in fishnets, working the purse, with 666 tattooed on her forehead. Standing next to a 6 eyed, 6 horned devil pimp working a phone and a fax machine. Various minions in the background. titled “Sealed For Life”. My girl can’t really draw but she knew exactly what she wanted to say.
Then there were several pieces by a guy named Frankie Davis. Way out of my price range or I would have bought one on the spot. There is a name for the style but I can’t recall it. Everything is done in coloured pencil. Everything is flat, no depth. No shading. Very stylized. I guess it’s considered some kind of primitive. One was the gardens of Iraq. Another was called “Opening Day” and was a cornfield. The corn is in rows going up, there’s no perspective. Very Incan and Egyptian. Then there were word banners where the crows were discussing the hunting. I can’t describe it, dancing about architecture and all that.
I looked him up on MDOC today. That makes it all the stranger.

On earworms

Well I of course missed it, because I don’t listen to the external radio (except Sounds Of The Subcontinent). But apparently they had some sort of earworm discussion on NPR this weekend. My friend at the market mentioned it to me because she knew of my propensity for music constantly coming out of my face. But she made it sound as if they were saying that having this fully orchestrated radio playing in your head almost constantly was unusual. I am weirded out, I thought everyone had this. Do you have it?

AM Earworm

More Godspell, I’ll spare you the details except to say that it was one of the duets. Try having that going on in there for a couple hours.

AM earworm

Guinevere - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Yesterday - Helplessly Hoping also by CSN & Y as well as Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord - Godspell Soundtrack
Apparently if you listen to too much hippie music over the weekend, especially things called “Deja Vu”, they will just keep coming back on you like a cheap burrito.

Foodstuffs

I just read a really long set of comments on a foodie blog as everyone had long lists of their most repellent foods and then went on to rhapsodize about favourites. So here is my meme that I’m making up on the spot.

10 favourites, 10 gaggers, and why.

1) Beets. I adore them. Beautiful inside and out. But I’ll never understand why one would add sugar to them for Harvard beets.
2) Cilantro. My body craves it. I could eat cilantro chutney everyday by the bowl full. I was recently informed it removes heavy metals from the body. Not sure I believe it but that would be pure frosting.
3) Chicken Tikka Masala. Also called Murgh Mahkni. The ultimate in tomato and creamy. With Indian spices. You can even leave out the chicken and just give me a bowl of the sauce with either basmati rice or fresh, hot naan.
4) Chocolate. Good, real, chocolate. White chocolate as well. In fact I seem to have a great affinity for any substance coming from that family of trees. I am also allergic to all that family. As well as the coffees.
5) Prime Rib/Delmonico. My favourite red meat. ‘Nuff said.
6) Butter/ghee. God food. Endlessly useful.
7) Good stock. Endlessly useful.
8) Horseradishes. This is how hot should come, with taste.
9) Cheese. Any kind up to the bleus that are so blue they go ammonia. More on that later.
10) Pickles and olives. I lump them together but I shouldn’t because many olives are not pickled and are fabulous. Like Lucque olives, so buttery, so good. There are exceptions, like pickled jalapenos, certain brines or ume plums and vinegar's.

Now gag me:

1) Okra. I try and try. Jambalayas. Bindi’s. Southern style. It just doesn’t work.
2) Coconut. The plain meat fresh or dried. I love the milk. I can tolerate it toasted in small quantities. But I can’t actually swallow regular coconut.
3) Heavy Basil. I can deal with a little. But no freaking pesto with it as the main ingredient. Frankly I’ll pick it out of sauces if it’s still a leaf, or say in Thai food.
4) Anything anise or licourice. The closest I get is a little fennel in something.
5) Eggplant. Although a couple times recently I have tried a few different dishes one Turkish, one Armenian, where I could tolerate it. But mostly I leave it be.
6) Bleu cheeses where they have turned ammonia. Goat cheese easily does this as well. Would you willingly lick a cat box? Me neither.
7) Blue foods. Anything “blue flavour”. The height of chemfood horrificness.
8) Chem food. Things (usually chips) coated with chem dust. TVP. “Nugget” things. Ice creams full of crap. Things all thick with guar to smoothen them. Things shoved full of industrial shortenings. Things sweetened with HFCS. Artificial sweeteners. Big name sodas. One of the few exceptions is plain Pringles. For some reason they’re great.
9) Black-eyed peas and brown lentils. I put them together because they are similar and it’s the same issue. Tastes like dirt. And this from someone who actually likes the taste of different dirt's. But I love red, green and yellow lentils.
10) Raw fish and chamomile. I put these together because I don’t actually hate either one, but my body will not accept them. My throat just closes and says no. Pea skins used to be in this category as well. Go figure.

It’s Back

AM Earworm
Permafrost - Magazine
Showed up yestereve. I thought singing it around the house would satisfy it. But there it was, first thing I opened my eyes...
Certainly could be (and frequently has been) far worse for wurmage but it’s a little thick for the am.

Eat them up yum

I learned the cool new words today. It really gave me pause. The idea that at some point I had learned the word “volition” but never that it had other, related, forms... Which are “volit” and “voliting”. You can probably guess the usage's.
Spellcheck had to learn them as well.

The revolution will not:

Look like YOU think it should or
Judge itself by your standards
Play that mutual masturbation, ego, game you and your friends love so well
Fail without your innovative ideas
Have you for it’s great and glorious leader
Even acknowledge your genius
Define itself by group think
Need a new age guru or psychic consultant to tell it what to do
Get it’s sustenance from granola, seitan, unicorns and crystals
Have a seminar or workshop
Want a full body massage to prep it
Need a liver cleanse and high colonics after
Create space and respect your boundaries
Limit itself to what you can handle
Wait while you grab your bottle of Rescue Remedy
Hold hands and sing Kumbayah
Chat you up without trying to fuck you
Conduct itself according to Kathleen Hannah’s criteria
Act like a well orchestrated event/march/picket
Hire some good PR then
Watch to see how much press it got
Be a duly photographed, and filed away moment,
Happening only at a location near you.
Remain smoke free
Be neat and tidy
Magically fix your life
Acknowledge your charitable contributions
Keep your children from turning on you
Teach tolerance
Stay “safe and sane”
Prescribe you vicodine for your existential pain and mid-life angst
Refrain from hurting your feelings or offending your sensibilities
Realize it’s the weekend and stop calling
Open a center, anywhere
Allow you to “have it your way”
Brand itself for distribution at your nearest Stop-n-Shop
Stay off your lawn
Leave you alone
Do you any special favours
Tell you your dog is cute
Wash your dishes for you
Get you a tax write off
Just “let it go”

Walk Like A Man

The thing I DON'T like so much about “The Best Of Soul Train” is:
Once it moved into the ‘80’s, the male dancers became even more (euphemism) “artistic”. Both in their gear and in the dance moves dept. Don’t get me wrong, I have danced many an all night long with many artistic fellows at the time and since. But if I’m lookin’ for a little sumpin’ sumpin’ that artistic thing just doesn’t put the grind in my behind. Know what I mean?

On a side note, if you google “Nat Morris” The Scene, just like that, you will get a nostalgia website for our own beloved, Detroit, daily, dance show. What a great, little, funky, little, show that was. Everyday after school, or before whatever for some of us, we’d watch that awesomely cheesy thing. Now THAT used to put the push in my, oh never mind.

PS

When we got back in the neighborhood, I made a point to look at the neighbors garden where the earliest snowdrops are each year. Sure enough, they are up, they have colour (so to speak), and will likely open in a day or two.
So it’s more than official now.

The Hooligans of Likker*

Went on an outing with Nigel yesterday. A bit of a walkabout based on going to the Nat. Sci. Exhibit Museum for a project for geology class. Got an awesome Dover book at the gift shop (I LOVE Dover books!) “Art Forms In Nature” 100 plates by Ernst Haeckel. There’s a Hydra in there that I’m completely infatuated with now.

Anyhoo, we meandered home stopping by many places I’ve needed to get by but never go into “uptown” anymore. Perhaps because of such things as many green hatted or garbed, drunken baby ass’s, having a go at St. Practice Day.
So, we hit up Maison Edward’s (they’re out of 4711), Sam’s (a new pair of super padded hiking socks), UBU’s ( for a couple more of my newest addiction, the “Dark Shadows” trashy novels), The Co-op (to show him the ropes there), The Smoothie King (where I can get Emergen-C for half the price of the Co-op and got Nige a free creamsicle smoothie to boot!), Kosmo Deli (cheeseburger for him and Kosmoburger, with everything, for me). After that we walked home via Braun Court (where Keith and Martin are busy, little, empire building, beavers). Passing the mini alley by the corner gas where the melted snow has uncovered a morass of sodden, angry, likker bottles, bedraggled, abandoned, clothing and half filled forties (I’m guessing not with beer). Nige commented that these were the likkers that other liquors were afraid of. That when the Kessler’s got home it said “you won’t believe what I just had to go through”.
A final stop at Knight’s and it was pretty much a quintessential Ann Arbor stroll.

* Nigel’s comment as we stopped and stared.

Psuedo-Snobbery

Well, perhaps not so psuedo, it’s actually pretty straight up.
I have been thinking recently about the phrase “pseudo-intellectual”. I have to say that a primary failing in this epithet is that unless it’s hurled at me by, say, a street person or maybe someone who has worked at Ford’s for 20 years straight out of high school or something similar, it loses much veracity. Someone from U-M calling me a pseudo-intellectual is pretty much like me calling someone a heifer.

Secondarily, I think someone who would use it in the pejorative sense has probably just spent too much time in a university town. The kind of place where people are sadly bright enough to level an insult that is pretty much saying “how dare you attempt to think”. Yep, happy enough to reap the financial rewards of the bidness of higher education, all those lovely monies accrued from people attempting, theoretically, to think, (but perhaps, more likely, to be merely trying to guarantee a specific income level if I’m any judge), but if that person doesn’t think like they’re “spozed”* to, they’re really just a mere pseudo-thinker. That is so laughable. If you translate it into that very language, “oh, you are just an incorrigible psuedo-thinker” the ridiculousness and pindickery of it suddenly becomes apparent and I will hazard a guess that the motivation becomes fairly transparent.

So what is it then that qualifies one as having the bona fides? The actual living, breathing, tower of power, pinnacle-ness of intellect? It simply can’t, please tell me you don't, have the unmitigated nerve, to measure it by a degree. Because I’ll have one soon, neither of my house mates has one, and thank God, for once, everyone in the house is naturally smarter, and far kinder, than I am. So that would be an invalid and therefore unsound, argument.

Myself, I actually prefer people who make the attempt, be it ever so feeble, to think.
As well as that thing His Holiness says about how “his religion is kindness?” Yah, I think you could be dumb as dirt and probably be far better off well on, down that road.

So I will herein make a vow: That having racked my brain and not being able to recall any instance where I have called anyone either a pseudo-intellectual or a heifer, I will dearly attempt to continue to not use those two particular, hypocritical, epithets in my future life. However because I am, not so very kind in my heart of hearts, I will probably continue to call a spade a spade, and a snob a snob.

* “The Way It Spozed To Be” James Herndon

Slugbugblue

More cat stuff:
Every morning, long about 6:30 - 7am, Jetson jumps in the bed and commences punching me in the butt. If this doesn’t seem to be achieving the desired result after about 15 minutes, he’ll headbutt me about 150 times. Normally I’d be annoyed at the daylight savings time change, but this all used to occur at 5:30 - 6am.
People always say,
“Why don’t you just shut them out at night, blah blah, blah.”
To which I reply:
“You’ve never actually had a cat have you?”
No, but really, I like sleeping with cats. What I don’t like is waking up with them.

Earworm segue

It’s flipping between Zappa’s “Hungry Freaks Daddy” (again, because we just love “We‘re Only In It For The Money”) & Pat Benetar’s “You Better Run” (because the little dude in the earworm machine is no arbiter of taste).

The real thing

Something I’ve come to appreciate while watching “The Best Of Soul Train”, aside from the fact that people no longer wear lime green, yellow and orange plaid suits, with matching bow ties, is a room full of real breasts (dancing).

I also really miss the hey day of those amazing, blowout ‘fros. Like the one the main protagonist in “Carwash” had (can’t remember his characters name). They just look so soft and pretty. Put one on top of a really cute guy in those ‘70’s overalls we all wore, and that just makes me happy. If he’s doing “the rock” or the “pop lock”, even better.

Finally Pah*

As far as I am concerned, today is it, the first day of spring. This is my method of getting through Michigan winter w/out sticking a fork in my forehead and to keep passing the (at this time of year, in this location, closed, but could be, opened) windows.

See, I judge that November is not really too bad. Maybe a little snow, grey, but not too cold, and most importantly, psychologically manageable if you stay in the moment and don’t start projecting out over the long, dread, expanse ahead.
So winter really starts on Dec. 1st. Now, I realize I could try to fool myself with the whole solstice = late December part. Thereby giving myself an extra 20 or so days before panicking. But I am just not that gullible. As Hitchcock says (R. not A.) “It’s the darkest time of year”. Add the next 20 days coming out and that is a fairly biblical feeling, 40 days of darkness. Then late January and February are just ass bite cold. I don’t care at that point whether it’s getting lighter. I am just not going out in it if I don’t absolutely have to. Fuck all you cheery sledders, skiers and skaters. You’re just whistling in the dark. And we all know that all that really does is make you a target.

So basically I view winter as a 90 day stint. December, January and February. And as my old hard-core, felonious, braggart, friends used to say, “I can do 90 days standing on my head”.
Well I can. Except for the, my skin drying up and turning into dust part. Or the 9 day cold I just got over. With the residual perpetual sore throat. Or the voracious, I apparently now live in the produce section of Busch's, filling and munching through my fruit basket over and over. The other day I craved greens so badly. I almost peed myself when they had beets with greens intact. I rushed home and resurrected the wilting kale in the rotter drawer and made up a big ol’ pot of sweet and sour greens, all tender and Xmas coloured, with shallots, Chinese vinegar, agave nectar, salt and fresh ground pepper, and both bacon and prosciutto. Oh man. Just thinking about it makes me need to go find the leftovers right now.

* The ASL sign for finally - Both hands in pointer finger shape. Starting at both sides of the mouth draw a C shape up and out to the sides while saying “pah”.